Saturday, September 02, 2006

Email: Corny pickup lines [EH]

I don't understand why men think those corny pickup lines are any good! It must be like "pro" wrestling -- you know it's fake (OK, some don't), but you're into it hoping for excitement anyway. If I were a woman and heard any one pickup line in those books, I would just spew my drink every time! I think women pass them around for long-suffering laughs, while men pass them around secretly (or openly) thinking they will work. Men do tend to have this theory (though scarily and too often it does work) that "chatting up" a woman and just keeping her attention will eventually "pay off." Yuck! The other thing that sickens me about those pickup lines -- and I have never read one that didn't strike me as pathetically unoriginal -- is that they seem to presume the man somehow has an ownership stake in the woman's time, attention span, or her very person -- they are almost always a violation of personal boundaries and a contradiction of the values that most women hold dear. They are fishing expeditions is what they are: Trawler bait for women who have the least common denominator in brains and morality. Any man who would use a pickup line does not care about the particular woman he is addressing; he will pull in the first fish to bite at his line.

Email: Netflix Support

Title request: The Human Body [IMAX] (2001)

Friday, September 01, 2006

Email: Netflix Support

Title request: Lassie (2005)

Words: drub [AHED]

TRANSITIVE VERB: 1. To thrash with a stick. 2. To instill forcefully: drubbed the lesson into my head. 3a. To defeat soundly. b. To berate harshly. 4. To stamp (the feet).
INTRANSITIVE VERB: 1. To beat the ground; stamp. 2. To pound; throb.
NOUN: A blow with a heavy instrument, such as a stick.
ETYMOLOGY: Perhaps Arabic dialectal darab, from daraba, to hit.
OTHER FORMS: drubber —NOUN

Email: Netflix Support

Title request: Max Headroom

Language: juice bag

Kids love juice boxes and Capri Sun has juice bags. (By the way, boxes are to bags as band nerds are to extreme-sports jocks.) So rather than vilify someone with the trendy if distasteful rapprochement "douche bag," why not sanitize such South Park pottymouth vocabulary by just calling that person a "juice bag"?

I am reminded of two other insults that human-disguised aliens give earthlings in the movies: "water sack" and "monkey-boy." (Hear John Lithgow as Prof. Emilio Lizardo intone "Laugh-a while you can, monkey-boy!" in The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai.)

Email: Netflix Support

Title request: Terminal Invasion

Email: United Methodist Church [S]

That's a fine denomination. I love their ads where the bouncers reject people at other churches but not the UMC.

Thursday, August 31, 2006

Quotes: "Art is never chaste" (Picasso)

"Art is never chaste. It ought to be forbidden to ignorant innocents, never allowed into contact with those not sufficiently prepared. Yes, art is dangerous. Where it is chaste, it is not art." -- Pablo Picasso [quoted in Antonina Vallentin, Pablo Picasso (1957), ch. 11].

Words: caper, capriole

NOUN: 1. A playful leap or hop. 2. A frivolous escapade or prank. 3. Slang An illegal plot or enterprise, especially one involving theft.
INTRANSITIVE VERB: Inflected forms: ca·pered, ca·per·ing, ca·pers
To leap or frisk about; frolic.
ETYMOLOGY: Alteration of capriole.

NOUN: 1. An upward leap made by a trained horse without going forward and with a backward kick of the hind legs at the height of the leap. 2. A playful leap or jump; a caper.
INTRANSITIVE VERB: Inflected forms: cap·ri·oled, cap·ri·ol·ing, cap·ri·oles
To perform a capriole.
ETYMOLOGY: French, from Italian capriola, somersault, from capriolo, roebuck, wild goat, from Latin capreolus, diminutive of caper, capr-, goat.

Words: gitchy [UD]

1. Something vintage, retro, and/or cool. Has a unique originality. [Origin: Gucci?]
2. Sexually anxious; mildly aroused or turned on. [Origin: get twitchy?]

Wednesday, August 30, 2006

Media: Cartoons - Brewster Rockit Space Guy!

Musings: Star Trek--yeah...

During the whole course of the various Star Trek series and their episodes, you never (mercifully) had anyone tap their communicator and ask "Computer, what is the location of Commander LaForge?" and get the reply, "Commander LaForge is in the bathroom."

More because Star Trek was hundreds of years in the future than because it's only 10-15 years since we witnessed the surveillance technology of La Femme Nikita (1997) or Patriot Games (1992), you have to wonder why they didn't have better technology for viewing the location of their compatriots. I mean, Federation ships can detect life signs and transport life forms from planetary orbit, while handheld tricorders can discern any species and metabolism in the vicinity. Why couldn't they view a miniature floor plan of Commander Riker's quarters with a superimposed infrared image of all life forms therein--most likely, one chasing or bouncing animatedly atop another?

Tuesday, August 29, 2006

Email: Netflix Support

Title request: Parents (1989)

Monday, August 28, 2006

Musings: Tikka-tikka-tikka

Just as I think Twerpette's toes going Tikka-tikka-tikka on the floor is so cute, I wonder if she thinks my fingers going Tikka-tikka-tikka on the laptop is too cute?

Nah...