POLARITY 183
this entry brought to you by of montreal, "i was never young"
THE GOOD
Dave Barry's Bad Habits: A 100% Fact-Free Book I'd never heard of Dave Barry before this book caught my eye at work, and it makes sense: the original copywright of this book was 1985 and the printing I have is from 1987. He wrote (or perhaps still does) for the Miami Herald, and this is a collection of his humor column from this paper, and it's hilarious. He has a very sardonic wit, and a very deft way of massacring life's conventions and satirizing American life. Since it was originally published in a newspaper there are no swear words, and sometimes it's nice to read words that are acerbic without being outright mean. Indeed, despite being so good at mocking American culture, getting to the very root of its problems and its curiousities, Barry comes off as happy-go-lucky. If you do happen to come across this book, you should be aware that half the book is filled with references and criticisms to the Reagan administration, but I, being too young to remember too much of that era first hand, found it refreshing to read views on America from someone who was so obviously anti-Reagan at the time it was happening, rather than the blurry and forgetful eyes that history has given President Reagan in the following 20 years.
Jack Handey's Deep Thoughts Speaking of humorous observations, I'll just assume you remember who Jack Handey is, and I'll assume you remember his collection of Deep Thoughts that played before commercials on Saturday Night Live. If you're ever in a cranky mood, I recommend clicking this link. I guarantee you'll be cheered up and laughing within a couple minutes.
Ang Lee's Best Director Oscar win I haven't seen Brokeback Mountain yet, but I've been a huge fan of his since 1997's The Ice Storm, a subtle, moving masterpiece of a film, which I thought was one thousand times better than the similarly themed American Beauty, which won best movie a few years later but I felt was idiotic. So I was ecstatic when he won Best Director the other night on the Oscars. I honestly cannot wait to see Brokeback Mountain.
Pink I don't particularly like her music-- I like her message, but she's too pop for my taste-- but I always thought Pink was kind of hot. Sure, she's not Meg White or anything, but I always thought her look was much more interesting than her contemporaries. I mean, compare her to, say, Kelly Clarkson, who screams mediocrity.
THE BAD
The Village M. Night Shyamalan's movies, critically, seem to be hit and miss-- while people loved The Sixth Sense and Signs, Unbreakable didn't do so well. The Village is his worst reviewed yet, and I can kind of see why. After lovingly crafting a wonderful, gorgeous, curious build-up, with a superb cast doing deep, subtle characters, as well as one of the most horrifying, effective murder in cinema in a PG-13 movie, Shyamalan completely blows it with a slow-moving, overly melodramatic climax and ridiculously silly looking monsters. Still, despite its shortcomings, there is more to the movie than just its plot, and the themes of sorrow, particularly when it is covered with lies, catching up to you are very effective and make the movie worth seeing. It's just a shame the movie is only the least bit suspenseful (if at all), which makes you just sit and hope the movie will hurry up and get to its twist ending.
South Dakota's ban on most abortions Hooray for America! In direct conflict with The United States Supreme Court, the jackass governor of jackass South Dakota decided he was above the fucking law and above the decisions of the highest court in America, and banned all abortions where the birth wouldn't cause the death of the mother-- including pregnancies from incest and rape. Said Jackass Governor knows that it will be ceaselessly challenged, but by the time it reaches the Supreme Court years from now, President George Bush will, most likely, have approved a third conservative Supreme Court Justice, and the court, at that time, would more than likely overturn Roe Vs. Wade. In the mean time he wants to cause a huge fuss, because it's not as if South Dakota doesn't already have a big enough reputation for being a useless, ass-backwards redneck state. Hey, good for him. In other news, I heard that plane tickets out of the country have gotten even cheaper, so hey, there's that.
Our Tax Refund Last year we ended up with in excess of 3,000 dollars, which we were simply ecstatic about, and had huge plans for. Problem? It all went to buying a new car, which cost exactly 3,0000 dollars, and since I did some happy splurge spending the day we got it (only about 200 dollars worth) we ended up with only enough money for rent and nothing else, and it took us half a year to get back on track. Well, guess what? After 4 months of surplus money, we are now in the hole 200 bucks, had to get a loan on rent... and our tax return is only 1,500 dollars because I ended up owing money. The problem? The car needs fixing, which will easily take up hundreds of dollars. Goddammit. Yeah, I know it's tacky to talk about money, but fuckit, I'm frustrated.
Serving sizes We all know that serving sizes are a joke, right? Companies always have suggested serving sizes that are ridiculously nonsensical. Well, not always. The box for Cheezit Giant Size said that a serving was 13 crackers, which I thought was perfectly reasonable, considering they're a snack generally meant to be eaten with something larger. But a 20 ounce bottle of Mountain Dew-- you know, the size you pay a buck for and get out of a vending machine-- says that one bottle contains 2.5 servings. I call bullshit! You can't tell me anybody is expected to go to a soda machine, spend a buck, drink one third of the bottle, and then put the rest in the fridge for the next day.
Eating lite So instead of just getting gigantic subway pastrami sandwhiches, I've been ordering off the Low Fat menu at Subways. I went with the Subway Club, which has the same amount of meat as the BMT, the sandwhich that used to be my regular before they introduced the pastrami a couple weeks ago. It's got the same amount of meat... but after eating it, I'm not nearly as full! Fucking low fat bullshit.
Death By L33t I decided to give it a click-through because the art style caught my eye. Unfortunately, after clicking through 100 or so strips, this Penny Arcade wannabe only managed to make me laugh a handful of times. Maybe the strips would be funnier if I could read the news posts-- a folly Penny Arcade is often accused of-- but the link to "news" does not work. Pretty lame overall.
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[edit: The reason this week why there are 6 bads and only 4 goods is because when this entry was originally written, for some reason I erroneously listed it under "the good", when it definitely did not deserve such a classification. this has been corrected at a later date.]
with love from CRS @ 10:56 PM
Monday, March 06, 2006
THE GOOD
Dave Barry's Bad Habits: A 100% Fact-Free Book I'd never heard of Dave Barry before this book caught my eye at work, and it makes sense: the original copywright of this book was 1985 and the printing I have is from 1987. He wrote (or perhaps still does) for the Miami Herald, and this is a collection of his humor column from this paper, and it's hilarious. He has a very sardonic wit, and a very deft way of massacring life's conventions and satirizing American life. Since it was originally published in a newspaper there are no swear words, and sometimes it's nice to read words that are acerbic without being outright mean. Indeed, despite being so good at mocking American culture, getting to the very root of its problems and its curiousities, Barry comes off as happy-go-lucky. If you do happen to come across this book, you should be aware that half the book is filled with references and criticisms to the Reagan administration, but I, being too young to remember too much of that era first hand, found it refreshing to read views on America from someone who was so obviously anti-Reagan at the time it was happening, rather than the blurry and forgetful eyes that history has given President Reagan in the following 20 years.
Jack Handey's Deep Thoughts Speaking of humorous observations, I'll just assume you remember who Jack Handey is, and I'll assume you remember his collection of Deep Thoughts that played before commercials on Saturday Night Live. If you're ever in a cranky mood, I recommend clicking this link. I guarantee you'll be cheered up and laughing within a couple minutes.
Ang Lee's Best Director Oscar win I haven't seen Brokeback Mountain yet, but I've been a huge fan of his since 1997's The Ice Storm, a subtle, moving masterpiece of a film, which I thought was one thousand times better than the similarly themed American Beauty, which won best movie a few years later but I felt was idiotic. So I was ecstatic when he won Best Director the other night on the Oscars. I honestly cannot wait to see Brokeback Mountain.
Pink I don't particularly like her music-- I like her message, but she's too pop for my taste-- but I always thought Pink was kind of hot. Sure, she's not Meg White or anything, but I always thought her look was much more interesting than her contemporaries. I mean, compare her to, say, Kelly Clarkson, who screams mediocrity.
THE BAD
The Village M. Night Shyamalan's movies, critically, seem to be hit and miss-- while people loved The Sixth Sense and Signs, Unbreakable didn't do so well. The Village is his worst reviewed yet, and I can kind of see why. After lovingly crafting a wonderful, gorgeous, curious build-up, with a superb cast doing deep, subtle characters, as well as one of the most horrifying, effective murder in cinema in a PG-13 movie, Shyamalan completely blows it with a slow-moving, overly melodramatic climax and ridiculously silly looking monsters. Still, despite its shortcomings, there is more to the movie than just its plot, and the themes of sorrow, particularly when it is covered with lies, catching up to you are very effective and make the movie worth seeing. It's just a shame the movie is only the least bit suspenseful (if at all), which makes you just sit and hope the movie will hurry up and get to its twist ending.
South Dakota's ban on most abortions Hooray for America! In direct conflict with The United States Supreme Court, the jackass governor of jackass South Dakota decided he was above the fucking law and above the decisions of the highest court in America, and banned all abortions where the birth wouldn't cause the death of the mother-- including pregnancies from incest and rape. Said Jackass Governor knows that it will be ceaselessly challenged, but by the time it reaches the Supreme Court years from now, President George Bush will, most likely, have approved a third conservative Supreme Court Justice, and the court, at that time, would more than likely overturn Roe Vs. Wade. In the mean time he wants to cause a huge fuss, because it's not as if South Dakota doesn't already have a big enough reputation for being a useless, ass-backwards redneck state. Hey, good for him. In other news, I heard that plane tickets out of the country have gotten even cheaper, so hey, there's that.
Our Tax Refund Last year we ended up with in excess of 3,000 dollars, which we were simply ecstatic about, and had huge plans for. Problem? It all went to buying a new car, which cost exactly 3,0000 dollars, and since I did some happy splurge spending the day we got it (only about 200 dollars worth) we ended up with only enough money for rent and nothing else, and it took us half a year to get back on track. Well, guess what? After 4 months of surplus money, we are now in the hole 200 bucks, had to get a loan on rent... and our tax return is only 1,500 dollars because I ended up owing money. The problem? The car needs fixing, which will easily take up hundreds of dollars. Goddammit. Yeah, I know it's tacky to talk about money, but fuckit, I'm frustrated.
Serving sizes We all know that serving sizes are a joke, right? Companies always have suggested serving sizes that are ridiculously nonsensical. Well, not always. The box for Cheezit Giant Size said that a serving was 13 crackers, which I thought was perfectly reasonable, considering they're a snack generally meant to be eaten with something larger. But a 20 ounce bottle of Mountain Dew-- you know, the size you pay a buck for and get out of a vending machine-- says that one bottle contains 2.5 servings. I call bullshit! You can't tell me anybody is expected to go to a soda machine, spend a buck, drink one third of the bottle, and then put the rest in the fridge for the next day.
Eating lite So instead of just getting gigantic subway pastrami sandwhiches, I've been ordering off the Low Fat menu at Subways. I went with the Subway Club, which has the same amount of meat as the BMT, the sandwhich that used to be my regular before they introduced the pastrami a couple weeks ago. It's got the same amount of meat... but after eating it, I'm not nearly as full! Fucking low fat bullshit.
Death By L33t I decided to give it a click-through because the art style caught my eye. Unfortunately, after clicking through 100 or so strips, this Penny Arcade wannabe only managed to make me laugh a handful of times. Maybe the strips would be funnier if I could read the news posts-- a folly Penny Arcade is often accused of-- but the link to "news" does not work. Pretty lame overall.
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[edit: The reason this week why there are 6 bads and only 4 goods is because when this entry was originally written, for some reason I erroneously listed it under "the good", when it definitely did not deserve such a classification. this has been corrected at a later date.]
