A transcript of a conversation overheard in a liquor store:

"What's that?"
"What's what?"
"Do they accept benefits here now?"
"What do you mean?"
"Look at that thing." (He points at what I can clearly see is a credit card reader)
"What thing?"
"That thing there." (Points again)
"Oh. Yeah, I guess they must."
"Wow."
"Yeah, (sounding more confident) 'cause wine is a food now."
"What?"
"Yeah. You know, they're all talking about how healthy it is for you. And now it's like a food."
"Awesome."
"You know, all the anti-oxidants and whatever."
"Yeah."
"Healthy stuff. They're always telling you, you know, that you should drink more wine."
"Awesome."
"I wish I was on benefits."

I just recently saw The Bourne Ultimatum. I was on a date. My date cared about the series, I did not. So I hadn't see the second one and didn't really care to see this one, but apparently I was in the minority since there was an hour long line. It was like waiting for Harry Potter outside that theater.

Since I hadn't seen the second one, I was sorely disappointed to find out that Franka Potente was nowhere to be found (I could have dealt with a zombie Franka Potente. Take the series in a whole new direction). She's been replaced as love interest by Julia Stiles, who I thought was dead, too, because she hasn't made a movie of any note since Save the Last Dance, unless you count the movie version of David Mamet's Edmond, which I don't because she was only in it for like ten minutes and then he kills her (Julia Stiles, by the way, got her start on the kid's mystery show Ghostwriter, a clip of which you can see here).  Anyway, she's supposed to be a CIA agent, but she's sort of the worst CIA agent in the world.

I didn't care for the movie, myself. I thought that the director's sort of documentary style camerawork was great, until there was a fight scene and then it meant that you couldn't see when someone did a super awesome martial arts move, and it actually made me a little seasick, which has never happened to me during a movie (not even during the Blair Witch Project).

The thing that I noticed about Bourne Ultimatum is that everyone is constantly adjusting their coat. Give it a watch, if you haven't already, and count how many times a secret agent or a killing machine throws on his coat in a totally Fonzie-like way. I saw at least five. 

Maybe that's why Stiles doesn't know to leave the cafe even though the people who'd like to see her dead know she's there. Half of CIA training must be coat coolness operations.

Also saw trailers for, not one, not two, but three missing children movies. One of which stars the infinitely hotter than his brother Casey Affleck.  Grrrrrrowl.

And, yes, I include The Final Sacrifice in that calculation.

The pomma point, is, apparently, some new punctuation mark that the Torque Institute (out of Canada) would like to see instituted. It's meant to express mild excitement. Sort of like, "Hey, love those boots." We're not really excited and the exclamation mark makes it seem like we're screaming, but we're sort of excited, which isn't expressed, they say, by the period. Not that the sentence itself doesn't express sort of excitement just fine all on its own.

It can also show "heightened indifference" which god only knows what that means. I imagine it's like when your bags have been misplaced at the airline and you're shouting, "I don't care how you do it, but I want those bags back now." Because you're indifferent but also angry. Or maybe it's like when some guy wants to have sex with you and you're not really into it, but you're too drunk to say no. Who knows?

Anyway, the real point is that if you're going to be discussing things that are "between period and" anything else, you should disable Google adsense or you'll wind up with this:

Do yourself a favor, listen to this song:

I've been reading about the rearing of domestic silkworms. I don't want to start raising them, mind you; I find that idea repulsive (and, in all honesty, after reading about the worms I don't really ever want to wear anything that's come out of their ass, either). But I enjoy reading about things. 

And then, on this website Wormspit.com (mmmmm worm spit...) I came across this passage. Which terrified me:

"I open the door, and I can hear them. The sound is only a soft, quiet pattering, like rain on the roof ... but I know what they're thinking. "Feed us. You must feed us. Bring the food here to us, now." They wave back and forth hypnotically, like tiny cobras - I have to obey.

One month each spring for three years now, the Tiny Masters have ruled my life. I wake early and stumble bleary-eyed out into the yard to fetch their food. I change their trays every other day, adjust the temperature and humidity in their room so that they will be content, fuss over them and attend to their needs. The main need is food. Every day, three times a day. For the fourth and final week, four times a day. They are always hungry, the Tiny Masters."

 

Girl who sits next to me, about whom I've posted before, is currently (as I type this), freaking the fuck out because her very expensive iPhone isn't picking up when someone calls (snigger). Like she's almost in tears and she's flinging things around and saying things like "this is unacceptable." Now, I'd thought that she was upset because this thing that her mom waited online to buy for her is as broken as I told her it would be if she got the first batch and I assumed that she was going to say something along the lines of, "Don't even say it!" and she would have been right to head me off except of course that she wouldn't be making this kind of fuss if she didn't want some sort of attention so badly that she would even be willing to settle for me telling her that her mom wasted money (ha ha).  Except that she didn't say that, she just kept huffing around so I felt like I had to step in, which I hate doing, and say, "what's wrong?"

And that's when she really surprised me by not being as materialistic as I thought she was (while still remaining batshit fucking crazy).

She: What if someone called me and I couldn't answer it?
Me: Well then you'd have to call them back, wouldn't you?
She: But that's not why you have a cellphone. You have a cellphone so that you can answer it as soon as it rings [and I swear to you, she said this word for word] wherever you are, all the time.
Me: Well, okay, but there are always times when you're not going to be able to answer your phone. I mean calls get missed sometimes. It happens.
She: Not to me.
Me: Never?
She: Accidents happen.
Me: What?
She: Emergencies happen. If someone called me from the hospital, I can't just call that person back. If you're calling from a hospital they don't let you use your cellphone again [I don't have a clue what she's talking about; she's obviously emotional at the moment].
Me: Look, if they're... Wait, I'm sort of lost here, but wait, if they're calling from a hospital.... If they're calling, they're obviously okay.
She: Some things are just important to me [?].
Me: What about when you're on the toilet?
She: We obviously just live in different worlds.

Apparently in her world they don't use the restroom.  In my world I wonder what she did before the cellphone was invented.

From Women's Wear Daily (don't laugh; it's part of the job): "Lingerie has broken out of the boudoir, adding color to the streets of San Miguel de Allende, Mexico [emphasis theirs; I don't know why], and helping to define television's leading ladies. Even in the sociopolitical arena of environmentalism, all eyes are on innerwear."

Every time I'm feeling down, I load up a World Clock and thank my lucky stars that I'm not one of the 3,548 people who have died this year from leprosy.

Book of Deviants is this new flash game which promotes the Toyota Scion in sort of a... weird way.

Basically, you play the part of a Deviant, a horrifying little monster creature (who sometimes has hooks for hands) who hunts down and tortures the innocent Sheeple (regular people, dressed in sheep hoods) to death. That's cool, I'm all for that sort of thing, even if the game really does seem to advocate the death of people who commit the crime of conformity (an actual quote from the game: "Almost there. You've taken back the surface streets and the underground, but many Sheeple have sought refuge in the park. Hunt each one down to bring an end to their dreary domination of the city." I have nothing good to say about censorship, but that's a pretty fucked up message, especially when it's used to promote what, in the wrong hands, could very well be a deadly weapon).

The really fucked up part of the game, though, is not that you kill with impunity, or that in one part you rub the Sheeple blood all over yourself and seem to giggle, or that you look like the fucking Skin Stealer from A Light in the Attic (that poem and it's accompanying illustration, by the way, are the reasons I can't sleep with my legs hanging off the bed), the really fucked up part is that (let us not forget) it's promoting the Toyota Scion. It's a car commercial, and the last stage finds you using the Sheeples' blood to fuel your Deviant (read: Toyota Scion) factory. The Toyota Scion is made with the blood and dismembered body parts of people who conform.

That's some creepy shit.