From The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy:

In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move.

File this one under “Eeeeeww!!”

According to this Reuters article, a customer at a Wendy’s burger joint in San Jose had a rather… *urp* …unpleasant dining experience envolving a bowl of Wendy’s chili (which, incidentally, I would not eat if I was starving to death).

Here’s the direct quote from Ben Gale, director of the Dept. of Environmental Health.

“This individual apparently did take a spoonful [of chili], did have a finger in their mouth and then, you know, spit it out and recognized it. Then they had some kind of emotional reaction and [edit: unate the chili].”

Emotional reaction?! Gyyyeaaaahck! Talk about an understatement.

What is really funny is the ads that came up with the article on Yahoo News. (I swear I am NOT making this up.)

*Croons* Isn’t it ironic… don’t ya think?

Drudge linked an article today that reports that, at least with respect to Hollywood movies, sex does not sell.

At a recent convention of movie theater owners, the National Association of Theatre Owners came to blows over whether or not to spell theater with the r before the e. But before that, they actually got some good discussion in. Such as when their president, John Fithian, urged Hollywood film studios to stop making so many R rated movies and start putting out more PG and PG-13 flicks.

It seems that theater owners are tired of screening R rated movies and then losing money on them.

As any theater owner will eagerly tell you, American audiences like their movies PG and PG-13, not R, and certainly not NC-17.

Last year, five of the top-10-grossing movies were PG. Of the top 25, only four were rated R.

The article lists many overtly sexual films that have tanked financially in the last few years despite heavy marketing from studios and even some Oscar nods.

“Lolita”, “Striptease”, “Showgirls”, “Henry and June”, “Crash”, “The Brown Bunny”, “The People vs. Larry Flynt”, “Crimes of Passion”, “Wonderland”, “Original Sin”, “Eyes Wide Shut”, “Inside Deep Throat”, “The Dreamers”, “Closer”, and “Kinsey” just to name… well… a bunch.

Now, sex is still selling some movies. Goofy, slap-stick, “teen” comedies (ala “American Pie”) can be as sexual as you please and still make a profit. That’s really sad, but to some degree it makes sense. Kids love to watch shows that parody sex because they don’t yet understand how serious sex is and their MTV society doesn’t teach them otherwise. (BLARING BULL-HORN NOTE TO PARENTS: It’s YOUR job to teach your kids otherwise. Please don’t be prude about talking about sex. If you are, I guarantee your kids won’t be prude about having it.)

Still, it’s good to see some concrete evidence that Americans do not all have their minds’ in the gutters. Funny… if you look at a map of America, and you think of the gutters as being along both sides… sure enough, entertainment capitals New York and L.A. are as deep in the gutters as you can get. Hmmm.

You can read the complete article here.

Alas, two weeks late, I have come to satisfy your white board quip desires.

“She was extremely short for her weight. I figure, ’bout seven feet.”

WBQotW #18 comes from a song called “Count ‘Em Up Queek”. It’s the story of a weary soul who goes on an inexpensive vacation and runs into “Mona, the mmmonkey woman” who is described in our quip of the week.

The band, if you can call them that, is called 2NU (pronounced “too new”) and specializes in off beat, eclectic ballads rich with sound effects and back masking. 2NU’s claim to fame was a song called “Ponderous” that enjoyed a short stint on the pop charts back in the early nineties and lead me to buy the cassette. This was the impetus that eventually lead me to be a fan of Doctor Demento.

I received the Ponderous CD as a gift. It was my first ever CD, and since I did not have a CD player, I never opened the box. Now that I think about it, it was a rare and no longer available long box. Oooh. Where did I put that thing?!

Good grief. I can’t leave me alone for a minute. I turn my back on me for just a little while and a whole week goes by without a post. I should be ashamed of myself. I will now send myself to my room without dessert and tell myself to think about what I have done. Then, I will pout and sob quietly as I submit to my punishment.

(If you see a lot of blank space below this line, your screen resolution is too small! Scroll down to see the rest of this post and ask your kid how to set the resolution on your monitor. Thanks!)

I saw this banner ad on my favorite web comic, PvP. Scott Kurtz, who draws PvP, is a large fellow and has made many comments on his site about his size and how people react to it. I’m no fan of obesity, but I can certainly appreciate a good sense of humor. And the shirts on this web site are plain old funny. See all the designs at FatGuyShirts.com.

Okay, so that headline is a little off, but it was fun to come up with!

In the news in London, the National Union of Teachers, NUTs for short (I’m not making this up!), are championing a campaign to ban sexist insults on school playgrounds. It seems that the NUTs have decided that words like “slut” and “whore” promote domestic violence. (Wha?)

A NUT spokeswoman [edit: *snicker*] said: “Words like these promote the attitude that females are lesser beings, and as lesser beings they can become the target of violence… We need to nip that attitude in the bud and get kids to treat each other with respect.”

Playground kids… Respect… Yyyeah… Good luck with that.

No word yet on the legality of “Poop-head”.

This Saturday, Tammy went to Disciple Now, a youth retreat that almost all of our “kids” attended. I took the opportunity for a little movie time. I got out my trusty IMDB movie list (movies I want to see if I ever get the chance) and picked a few.

Now, I’ve been going on a lot lately about tHGttG. I had a vague memory of seeing a little bit of a BBC TV version back when I was a kid. So I gave it a shot. I asked the clerk about it and, low and behold, they have just released a two disk DVD version of the 1981 BBC mini-series! w00t!!

The DVD contains all six episodes of the TV series, so it’s a little disconnected; nothing like watching a movie. The acting is… well… BBC, and the special effects are as much a source of laughs as the show itself. What a gas!

I had a great time watching this and it got me back up to speed on tHGttG. It’s only a thin slice of the BBC radio series, which was a pretty thick slice of the book.

It has quite a few Monty-Python-Holy-Grail type scenes. You know, stuff that’s only funny because it’s completely off the wall and devoid of logic. None the less, I really recommend this campy, off-beat, and very enjoyable little show. If you take pride in you geek-hood, then you really need to see this. I give it a solid three grins.

This weeks White Board Quip is another jewel I found on my old Doctor Demento tapes. Andy Griffith, before playing Mayberry’s Sheriff Taylor, was a stand-up comic. His country bumpkin style along with his sharp wit made him one of the best. He performed a piece of Shakespearesque prose, put to music, called, “To the Lovely Juanita Beasley”. This week the white board pays homage to this lost piece of Americana. (Phonetic spelling was necessary to convey the spirit of the quip.)

“Behold, I love yer awl. Yer eyes, yer hair, yer hands, yer ears, yer tooth… yer ever’thang.”

There is a new “exclusive internet only” trailer for “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy”. (I may have to start using an ultra geeky acronym for this one too! tHGttG? Sure. Why not.)

This new trailer is much better than the theatrical trailer and gives a little more of an idea of what tHGttG is all about.

I’m getting very excited about this. It might just be one of the very few movies I go see on opening night.

*Marking calendar… April 29th*