Red Box & The Perils of Movie Rental

For the most part, I spend my waking moments in over my head in one busy making activity or another. Expression and entertainment go hand in hand and require constant motion and brain power. Still, it is nice to recharge my batteries with a passive activity from time to time. In such cases I, like most folks, often turn to the wonder of motion pictures. I don't much care for long lines or social interaction, so I have made use of a recent and convenient mechanism to meet that end: Red Box.

Stolen Soviet weaponry.

Red Box is an automatic movie dispenser increasingly found wherever people are. You can spy one at the corner drug store, the gas station, and in markets. During the heavy traffic periods of the day when the highest density of humans are out grazing, Red Box is little different from a movie rental store. There are long lines of people waiting to use it, often comprised of bickering couples, and social interaction is required due to engaging in verbal fencing matches with the rabid herd nibbling at your backside. I try to avoid such entanglements altogether by 'Boxing it at night, preferably clad in the garb of a ninja while waving a white flag.

You can learn a lot at Red Box. Such as these observations that I've made from the safety of the shadows:

1. Men and women will fight with each other anywhere.
2. Total strangers will fight with each other anywhere.
3. Girl Scouts apparently have a new tactic: Redwhacker Boxbush.
4. Hillbillies and elderly still suck at using technology, though, they try anyway.

Pretty sure she doesn't know how to 'Box.

By now I'm sure you get my point: people will screw up anything that was originally intended to make life easier (See: religion.). To combat this frustration, and to help the executives live their dream of swimming in golden coins ala. Scrooge McDuck, Red Box Automated Retail, LLC has spread more seed than Tiger Woods. Soon we will no longer breath the air provided by trees, rather, we will inhale the exhaust of Red Box machines that are more abundant than Mother Nature herself. They are freaking everywhere!

I am no different and feed that fire with each swipe of my credit card.

And so it was, I found myself ready to watch a movie. I turned to Red Box, that Djinn of Wishes, and rented the recent film Paranormal Activity. I have heard a great deal of buzz regarding this flick and figured why not. I loaded the DVD, killed the lights, and huddled under my blanket in the cold of a 3am early Saturday morning.

Thirty minutes in and the DVD came to a garbled, static spewing, shrieking halt. Eject. Checked the disc. It was scratched beyond hope. What. The. Fuji!

Yes, there is one more observational truth I failed to take in to account: most people should not be allowed to handle discs. The Paranormal Activity DVD was so badly scarred, by the mistreatment of former users, that the fact that I made it thirty minutes in can only be explained by the surfacing of my latent mutant super powers.

My DL photo.

Think about it for a moment. How many times have you yourself engaged in, or have been witness to, the abuse of CDs or DVDs? Is there a need for this? Really, is it that hard to take care of your stuff? Okay I know what you are thinking, this DVD belongs to Red Box so the customer didn't take care of it because they didn't purchase it. That argument is bunk. When you create your Red Box account you have to sign a contract, one that handles licenses and ownership of loaned property. Technically, you don't rent from Red Box, you buy a license agreement with a time limit. If you still possess the DVD after a brief window of time the DVD becomes yours; you bought it with daily microdeductions.

If you "rent" with intent to return and then abuse the disc, you are a sadist. Not only are you so pathetic that you can't transport a DVD from a plastic case to your player without first dropping it into a sandbox or rubbing nail files all over it, you choose to impart your badge of failure onto others. Screw you, buddy. Giving people an avenue of instant gratification is almost as bad an idea as midi-chlorians or birthing Hitler, people just can't resist crapping all over success!

The midi-chlorian of Germany.

After my DVD player gave me a wicked glower and puked a horribly mangled disc back at me, I had to drive all over town at 4am, scouring Red Boxes the block over in search of a working Paranormal Activity. I found it, watched it, and thought it sucked. Not only did I have to suffer the wrath of a disc disfiguring sloth, I had to endure a terrible movie for sake of completion.

Red Box isn't a convenient answer for our lust of entertainment, it is a monument to our sins.

Love,
Smiley Grimm

Words: Hammering Down A Tree.

For the most part, we speak with, type with, and utterly misuse words without even considering their origins or application as involuntarily as we breath. Words can be both a reactionary stimuli and a stimuli reaction. Words hold power.

In the end, though, words are just tools for communication. These tools were built by someone, and/or lots of someones, over many long and colorful ages. Like any tool for sale at your local hardware store - say a hammer - some can deliver a great impact, and others miss the mark entirely.

Let us consider some of my favorite words:

Extrapolate. I like this word. It is fun to say, most people don't know what it means, and is one of the few words that sounds smart and kinky at the same time!

Extrapolate: the sex-swing of words.

Conundrum. Another fun word that most don't know the definition of. When I first heard it I thought someone was physically incapacitated by a musical instrument. Once I realized what this word means, it presented the conundrum of whether I should laugh or become violent every time I found myself in one, thus creating an infinite paradoxical loop. It is a conundrum just figuring out how to pronounce it correctly the first time. Joy!

Action. This is one of my favorite all purpose tools. For me it is a placeholder, descriptor, and vocalized pause. It is very similar to "garbage" in this way. You can refer to a slice of pizza as "your action." You can throw a twenty dollar bill at a person in anticipation of "some action." It can be something that someone owns, such as, "Jeff was running around waving his action at everyone." I love it!

The dude in the foreground can't handle Superman's action.

Then again, there are words in our language that I argue were miss-crafted by our forebears. Words that don't sound anything like what they are fixed upon.

For example:

Smorgasbord. Yeah, I know what you are thinking, it's Swedish. Well, those S-weeds messed up on this one. To me it doesn't invoke the image of a large opulent table piled gullet high with food. On the contrary, I visualize something much more broad and higher reaching. I am of the mind that "Smorgasbord" should have been used as the name of a star system.

How does this sound?

"Captain, we have just entered the Smorgasbord System," said the navigator of the SS Flying Platypus.

"Thank you, Jiggy," replied Captain Feriluc. He rubbed his chin in deep consideration then ordered aloud,  "Raise the Sit-Stat to level three. You can never be sure what Smorgasbordians have up their sleeves."

Smorgasbord: a two-star system.

See what I mean? Get that petition started.

Gretchen. To all who claim this name: I pity you. For you see, this is not the name of a female. Rather, gretchen is the act of gretching, and by gretching I mean succumbing to the violent misfortunes of a gretch. Now replace all instances of the word "gretchen"  with throw-up, vomit, or puke, and you will see what I am saying.

"Oh man, that guy is about to gretch!"

"Dude, he is totally gretchen!"

Need I say more?

Now that you are aware of the fact that our ancestors weren't all geniuses, be on the look out for other words that don't match what they represent. One day, when the world is perfect, our ant-children will appreciate it.

Totally gretchen.

Love,
Smiley Grimm