No Choppy!

Let's play a game of "What I Should Have Said Versus What I Actually Said." It's a game I just made up, one for which I should probably find a much shorter name. WISHSVWIAS starts with a setup:

The other night I was mincing some garlic in my fancy, expensive Pampered Chef food chopper thingumbob, so I could put it on the scrumptious pizzas I was making. The Pampered Chef food chopper thingumbob looks just like a Slap-Chop but without the annoying headset-wearing white guy attached. When this modern wonder is in operation, it tends to make some noise. I mean, you can use the chopper thingumbob quietly, but only if you want your garlic to be gently caressed by the metal blades instead of, you know, chopped. So about five minutes into my garlic-mincing routine (this includes a break I took to peel some more garlic cloves), the doorbell rings, and standing outside my front door is the mysterious girl who for reasons unknown is living with my two-faced, often belligerent, usually passive-aggressive downstairs neighbor. This girl looks like a mousier version of Darlene from Roseanne, if she dressed like a sad little emo girl and wore glasses.

The next step in the game is to re-enact the conversation that the setup precludes, with What I Should Have Said in nice blue text, and What I Actually Said in orange text. Darlene's text is just plain ol' this color:

<I open the door>

What? It's garlic-chopping season.

Hello.

Umm, yeah, I was trying to work downstairs, and I keep hearing this banging sound...

Are you kidding me? You work from home and you're complaining? Look, it's barely eight o'clock, and I want garlic in my pizza. You gonna take some of your fancy work-from-home money and buy me some pre-minced garlic in a jar? Is it worth that much to you?

Oh, yeah, sorry about that, that was me chopping some garlic for dinner. Sorry about the noise.

Well, umm, it's really loud.

Hey, funny thing about that. My eighteen-month-old daughter is sleeping eight feet away, and she doesn't seem the least bit perturbed by the sound. Maybe you're exaggerating a little, hmm? How 'bout you go back downstairs and do another guest appearance on The Big Bang Theory while I enjoy my delicious garlicky pizza.

All right, sorry about that. I'm done now, so no worries.

mkay, thanks.

Hey, instead of coming up here and bitching you should appreciate the fact that I am in fact settling for coarsely-chopped garlic instead of the finely minced garlic that I really wanted, because mincing would take longer and make more noise, so out of consideration for my crummy neighbors I'm compromising and my pizza experience is diminished as a result!

<darlene goes back downstairs>

I swear, I am waayyy too nice to people. One of these days I'm gonna look social norms in the eye and tell them to drown in a vat of my hot Mexican-food butt-squirts so I can go around being mean and vile to people who tick me off, and then I'll feel bad about it and probably send some handwritten apology notes because I'm really not a mean guy by nature.

Wait, where was I?

Oh yeah. Fear not, Darlene. Taco Bell chopped my vegetables tonight. You and your skinny boyfriend can cut yourselves, and each other, in peace.

Aaaaand the moral of the story is:

Reviewing the "First" Watchmen Review

Yesterday I learned that the so-called first review of the Watchmen movie had hit the web (but really, who's to say that it's really the first one? I bet there's another. Maybe as many as six of them). Of course, being the massive comic book geek that I am, I rushed over to read it. And no, I did not fear spoilers, because I've already read the graphic novel, so I know what happens. But for the record, I did want to stand outside theaters telling everyone how Titanic and The Passion of the Christ were going to end.

For the most part, the Times' review of Watchmen was positive. Go ahead and read it yourself, you'll see. I was glad to know that the more graphic parts of the original work were kept intact, and that despite the over-slick costumes, the characters seemed to be true to themselves. I was a little bothered by the last sentence, though:

But as the first attempt to make a truly post-adolescent comic book movie,
Watchmen is, literally, peerless.

Someone clearly hasn't been paying attention. "First attempt" to make a post-adolescent comic book movie? All right, just off the top of my head, I can name several previous (and successful!) attempts:

• Road to Perdition
• Ghost World
• A History of Violence
• Persepolis
• American Splendor
• From Hell

All of these were based on comic books. That doesn't even count Sin City, 300, V for Vendetta, 30 Days of Night, Stardust, Constantine, or the Hellboy films. Also comic book movies, although their status as "post-adolescent" could be argued. Of course, that argument would be entirely subjective, hinged upon one's own definition of the term. Does "post-adolescent comic book movie" refer to a movie that is an adaptation of a post-adolescent comic, or a post-adolescent movie that happens to be an adaptation of a comic book? And exactly where are we setting the bar for post-adolescence itself?

Anyway, the presumption that "comic books" equals "super heroes" is annoying enough coming from my fellow (North) Americans, but I expected better from an article that was written for a publication in the United Kingdom. People in the UK should know good and bloody well that not all comic books are wedged into the superhero genre. Most of the best "non-cape" comics on both sides of the pond are penned by Brits.

In closing, I want to go see Watchmen really really badly. Good thing I get paid the day it opens.

F My Life

Today I discovered F*** My Life, a site that's kind of similar to One Sentence, which I've blogged about before, except on this one you can use more than one sentence, the stories have to be about horrible things that happened to you to make your life suck, and people cast votes on your stories, either showing sympathy or telling you "You deserved that."

A lot of the stories seem like they are either: obviously made-up, or told by complete imbeciles. It's surprisingly therapeutic to click through the site and tell these people, "You deserved that one." Try it, you'll like it.

I like to imagine the look on the face of (for instance) the fat girl who posted her tale of woe about how her boyfriend told her she was fat just because she asked him seventy-eight times in a twenty-minute period if he thought she was fat, when she revisits FMyLife and sees that 14,297 people think she deserved it, not for being fat, but for being fat and irritating, while only 114 people have read her story and said, "aww, I agree, your life sucks." I think of that face, and it brings a warm smile to my own.

Over-Thinking Children's Television, vol. 1

Franklin is a Canadian cartoon aimed at preschoolers, based on a series of children's books. It's about a little anthropomorphic turtle named Franklin who is, as near as I can tell, mentally retarded, and manages to wiggle his way into any stupid, easily-avoided predicament that may present itself at any given time.

The show also endorses genocide.

That's a shocking claim, but stay with me here. Almost none of the other characters in the cartoon aside from Franklin's stupid turtle family have names (and even then it's only him and his little sister). They are all just called by whatever animal they happen to be. Franklin's best friend is a bear named Bear. Other idiots he hangs out with are named Rabbit, Snail, Beaver, and Fox. The soccer coach is Mrs. Porcupine, and the teacher is named Mister Owl.

The very few characters who do have proper names are younger siblings (a couple of Franklin's friends have these, I think), fictional characters like Franklin's favorite superhero, and the occasional professional athlete or something.

What this leads me to believe is that in the twisted Franklin universe, the turtles reign supreme and have virtually wiped out all other species. Only a single breeding pair of each other type of animal has been allowed to survive, hence there being a Mr. Bear and a Mrs. Bear, for instance. With no diversity, what need is there for names other than a generic species identifier? If they were enslaving the populace they might at least have ID numbers and barcodes tattooed on them, but nope. The skunk is Skunk, the raccoon is Raccoon, all parents and authority figures are Mr. and/or Mrs., and that's all there is to it.

The fact that other characters with real names only appear in one or two episodes is further proof of the atrocities that have taken place off-camera. They're probably all being shipped off to concentration camps after their token appearances. Or maybe slaughtered for food.

I don't know why nobody has spoken up about this before. These hard-shelled dictators must be stopped at all cost.