Chicken McNuggets are 56% corn.  Also, they’re nasty.

I plopped down into my seat, ready to endure the series of inane movie trivia that usually precedes the feature.  There was none.  Surely there would be some sort of pre-show admonishment…you know, turn off your cell phone, put your feet down, don’t smoke, don’t yell “FIRE!“, yadda yadda.  Lately they’ve been doing it with animated characters, which was cute for the first 2 seconds of the first time I saw it.

They slipped it in there all right, but this time it was in the form of a short film I’ve entitled “Why You Suckers Just Paid $11.50 For A Movie Ticket.”  Local TV news personalities from Channel 3 described to me in detail the IMAX Movie Experience, including the exact dimensions of the screen in front of me, the fact that IMAX film is strong enough to tow a car, and several other things I don’t care about.

After that gripping preview, I was more ready than ever to watch some high-tensile-strength film.  The comic-book-come-to-life imagery flashed onto the screen, and I prepared myself to experience something that “isn’t just a movie, it’s the next step in filmmaking.”

It may or may not be the next step in filmmaking, but it is most certainly just a movie.

Granted, I did get to see a lot of great action sequences, fantastic cinematography, and — thanks to IMAX — breasts that were approximately the size of a Geo Metro.  My complaint is that it turned out to be really, really boring.  With all the hype and Warner Bros.’ sweet web site for the movie, I was expecting to be blown away.  It was graphically violent, and it’s a compelling story, but it didn’t stir my emotions at all.

The audience is told repeatedly of the bravery and valor of the 300 Schpottans, but not shown in any compelling way.  Okay, we get it.  Everyone is Schpotta is a badass.  After that point was quite soundly made, I spent the last half of the movie wondering if anything interesting or new would happen, aside from enemies with different costumes approaching the mounting wall of slain Persians.

You can expect to see a lot of cutting, stabbing, shoving, slicing, eviscerating, decapitating, and even some fornicating if you go to this movie.  If you watch it on the IMAX screen, you can expect to pay $11.50 for what the good folks at Star Cinema must consider to be quite a privilege.  Expect to spend the first 5 minutes of it being told why you should think IMAX is just as impressive as they do.

This post has been moved to the Move Aware blog.

I just today happened upon a blog with a great concept behind it: the sources of various creative people’s ideas. The Bill Hicks quote caught my eye.

[Where Do You Get Your Ideas?]

I just drank something that came out of a cat’s ass.

Well, that’s not entirely accurate. It was actually an Asian Palm Civet, otherwise known as a Toddy Cat or a Luwak.

One of my coworkers ordered a small sample of Kopi Luwak coffee, which is coffee that has passed through the digestive tract of this small mammal. They collect the turds, clean and sterilize the beans, slap on a gourmet price tag, and ship it to you in a nice box. After tax and shipping, one pot of coffee will cost you about $30.

It tastes pretty nice — not being much of a coffee connoisseur myself, I can’t comment on the subtle nuances of flavor and such. It’s not bitter in the least; it tastes to me like your average ordinary swill with a packet of sugar in it. At least that stuff doesn’t cost $10 per cup.

You can read all about this phenomenon at Life After Coffee.

Salon.com is running a review of The Secret, a book that I haven’t read and now never intend to. This review strikes a chord with me when it addresses what I think is a fault in a lot of modern New Age spirituality:

“Secret”-style belief is a perfect product. Like Coca-Cola, it goes down easy and makes the consumer thirsty for more. It’s unthreateningly simple, and a lot more facile, sentimental and, perhaps paradoxically, intractable than the old-fashioned kind of belief. Like Amway, it enlists its consumers as unofficial salespeople, and the people who constitute its market feel like they’re part of a fold. It’s indistinguishable from, and inextricably bound up in, the Oprah idea of self-esteem, the kind of confidence you get not from testing yourself, but from “believing” in yourself. This modern idea of faith isn’t arrived at the old-fashioned way, by asking questions, but by getting answers. Instead of inquiry we have born-again epiphanies and cheesy self-help books — we have excuses for not engaging in inquiry at all. Let other people schlep down the road to Damascus; we’ll have Amazon send Damascus to us.

I think there’s more value in following spiritual guidance from those who have experienced spiritual abundance in their lives (the stuff that really matters) without becoming materially wealthy in the process.

Can’t we have teachers who give away their knowledge for free, or for the cost of subsistence of a relatively simple life?

Aren’t the best teachers the ones that can maintain a connection with their students through common lifestyles and shared hardships, rather than those that preach from the ivory tower of the New York Times best seller list?

You can ignore it, but it doesn’t change the fact that all of this happens on a massive scale. It’s happening as you read this.