Pun Salad

• While the RepubliKKKans are busy trampling civil liberties, thank goodness the Democratic Party is ever respectful of First Amendment rights. Oh, wait…

• But at least they have a good plan to keep Social Security solvent and un-"privatized"! Oh, wait…

• Via BBSpot, more on Mike Judge and Idiocracy.

  There's no reason why someone as brilliant as Mike Judge should be at the mercy of a bunch of marketing tools, or taking seven more years between movies. But there's also no reason he should have allowed himself to get trapped in this situation all over again.even down to working with the same studio. He should be mad as hell. He should be knocking down their cubicles. After all, isn't this what he taught us to do?

  Sorry, Joss Whedon. Mike Judge is my master now.

• I've mentioned Paul Hsieh's Geek Press before, but today he's on a major roll. He notes the 40th anniversary of Star Trek (today!), provides an excellent list of logical fallacies, and what happens when you ask the Google to find 'Confidental "do not distribute"'. Check it out.

This movie rubbed me the wrong way; even the usually pleasing sight of Jennifer Aniston couldn't save it. Review-type spoiler: the fictional characters in this movie think fictional characters in another movie—specifically, The Graduate—are based on them. Even more specifically, Shirley McLaine thinks she's Ann Bancroft, Kevin Costner thinks he's Dustin Hoffman, and nobody thinks she's Katherine Ross, because (it turns out) she died. Ms. Aniston plays her confused daughter who's trying to resolve a personal crisis by straightening out her family history.

There's a lot of dialog that thinks it's funnier than it is. Performances are pretty flat, except for Richard Jenkins, playing Jennifer's dad; he actually seems to care about giving a nuanced three-dimensional performance.

And Kevin Costner's character gave a speech that referred fawningly to Che Guevara. This knocks the asshat score up quite a bit.

Otherwise, the word that kept going through my mind while watching this was: plastic. Ironic!