Chatting Up the Intarweb

• Scott Ott writes what he would say to Cindy Sheehan if he were the President. While eloquently written and initially persuasive, it neatly manages to avoid the crux of Ms. Sheehan’s query which is, “What the heck are we doing anyway?” The nobility of a death with purpose wasn’t ever, so far as I can tell, being called into question it was more a question of “Why was any of this necessary?” The hooey about “…the number of nations where such protest is possible has multiplied…” sounds all valiant until you remember that Iraq didn’t really ask to be “helped” and we (as Americans which includes the American soldiers) weren’t given the clearest picture about what the motivations were. The whole region hates what we’re doing and we may well have made the terrorist’s case for them, encouraging the exact kind of behavior were were ostensibly trying to interrupt and being the best recruiting propaganda tool they could have asked for. Ott writes, “Let’s, you and I, resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain,” but when Bush himself and his cabinet have had a hard time expressing what our plan is, what our rationale was (or should have been, considering their revisionist view of recent history) and what all of this means going forward that sounds incredibly hollow as an answer to the question posed. I mean, you can’t answer someone who asks, “Why did my son die in vain?” with “Buck up or else he will have died in vain.”
• At the same time, we can’t really believe what the administration is saying (even if we could decipher their doublespeak babble) nor can we be sure the information we’re getting is presented in a reasonable manner making the media hard to believe as well.
• In the wake of GTalk’s introduction, the New York Times runs an article talking about the “Do No Evil” company’s new mustache-twirling ways.
• Okay, so it’s not just me.
• Hey, America! You’re fat!
• Whoa, you mean those helpful emails I get several times a day that offer me low low prices on prescription drugs might be shady? I… I… can’t believe it! They seemed so… honest!
• Newsflash: Lots of movies suck. The oft-cited summer movie slump is, assuming it’s even real, commonly attributed to high ticket prices and/or crummy movies by movie goer pundits and piracy/DVD encroachment by studio honchos. The NY Times article suggests it’s probably more the former and definitely not so much the latter. They also suggest that high gas prices may have something to do with it. I know that as of this moment I’m officially sick of people blaming stuff on the high cost of gas… almost as sick as I am of gas being like $3.20/gallon. But back to the movies thing, I think the real problem is in the theater experience. When we saw Four Brothers last weekend, some jerk’s cell phone rang and he had the utter audacity to not just let it ring, but proceed to answer it and have a conversation. I almost flipped my lid trying to keep from getting up and punching the guy’s lights out. I mean hello? How sub-human do you have to be to answer your cellphone during a freaking movie? What I think we need are theaters who give us actual value for our dollars. Yes, movie tickets cost a lot. But I think if the cost seemed justified it wouldn’t be so bad. If my $9.00 got me a clean, comfortable seat in a theater with attendant ushers who got paid enough to care that the theater patrons had an enjoyable movie-watching experience and were present to notice if the sound/picture quality was suffering I would fork it over without reservation. I could even understand having the matinee shows forego the ushers; you get what you pay for. As it is I can’t fathom paying full price for an identically rotten experience. Food prices are ridiculous but smuggling in a handful of candy isn’t much trouble and if they offered human-sized portions I wouldn’t have as much trouble buying the inflated snacks. I mean, $3.00 is a lot of for popcorn, but it’s astronomical when you consider that the “small” you’re paying three bucks for could feed an entire third grade classroom at snacktime. When you throw away 70% of a bag you dropped that much money on, you can’t help but feel gypped. And getting free refills on a 64 ounce soda is so funny it almost makes the $4.50 worth the chuckle you get out of it, but not quite. Anyone who can down 128 ounces of soda in two hours without having their bladder rupture deserves to be on the 11 o’clock news. And if you think dudes answering their cell phones during the flick is annoying, try watching Bewitched with the paramedics cleaning up a splattered bladder from the front six rows.
• Haunting and occasionally beautiful artwork depicting the Bikini Atoll atomic bomb tests.
• One of the funnier, more disgusting posts my brother has made. I approve wholeheartedly.
• Rare it is that I take so long to compose a posting that I have time to retract something I haven’t even posted yet, but I mention above that GMail is still in beta, but I guess you can sign up without an invite… sorta. You have to text message from a mobile phone (something that Dare Obasanjo thinks is a horrible privacy invasion (note that Dare’s site is utter pants in Safari)), but I guess that’s sorta non-exclusive-beta-ish? Or something. Which reminds me, I still have 50 invites milling around if anyone in this planetary system doesn’t yet have a GMail account but wants one.

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