"Grandfather is recalling youth by doing granddaughter"

I'd be a lot more upset about the spam if it didn't seem like they were actually stretching creatively and artistically. This, I think, was a stab at some sort of psychosexual analysis of nostalgia and familial taboos both inherent in the human psyche and those absorbed through immersion in society.

And by the sound of it, that's one horny grandpa.

2 Fast 2 Furious: I have the "Tricked Out" DVD of the first movie, but it's so far down on my list of things to watch that the sequel will probably be on DVD by the time I get to it. The only reason I'd watch the first movie in the first place is Vin Diesel, who I still have an irrational fondness for predicated on having seen The Iron Giant and the very excellent Pitch Black (the best movie about a renegade with shiny eyes, as far as I'm concerned) and not having seen Boiler Room, A Man Apart, XXX or The Fast and the Furious. It's perfectly acceptable to like an actor when you haven't seen any of their bad movies, right?

Blue Car: It's about an angsty teen girl with teacher and parent issues. I don't think whoever's in this movie is going to top Lauren Ambrose on Six Feet Under, so there you go.

The Good Old Naughty Days: I don't even know where to start with this. It's a collection of nudie films from the '20s and '30s, mostly French. Who wants to sit in a theater and see ancient porn? For a whole hour? If you want to watch porn, go watch porn, but don't try to act like it's an artsy pursuit of film history.

L'Auberge Espagnole: Aside from having a title that has plauged my film editing duties for the last two weeks, this film stars Audrey Tautou from Amelie, but other than that, I can't think of a single reason to see it. (And I'm not a raging Frankophile like some people I know.) It's about a young man living with a bunch of roommates and you know he's going to sleep with one of them. I smell trite.

The Man Without a Past: Who? What? Finnish? Pass.

Raising Victor Vargas: I've heard nothing but glowing stuff for this, so I may need to make the rare Art Movie House trip to check it out.

Top Speed: IMAX films have been mostly awful for the last year and this one looks like more of the same. The only good IMAX stuff being produced, it seems, is animated or 3D films. But if you wanna see stuff go fast, this is your movie. Well, this and 2 Fast 2 Furious.

You can read my review of The Animatrix online today.

If you clip coupons the way I do, in a fiendish, nickel-grubbing fugue state that only snaps when you see that you've saved $19.55 on a $100 grocery bill, you may have perhaps noticed the most alarming trend in American eating since the McGriddle.

Dipping Sauces. Tons of them. From people who've fattened your ass enough like Hellmann's and K.C. Masterpiece.

Hellmann's has introduced Dippin' Sauce (You like the letter "g" at the end of words in your product titles? FUCK YOU, OLD MAN!) in three extreme flavors: Rockin' Ranch (there's that dropped "g" again), Honey Mustard Madness (MADNESS, I tell you!) and Totally BBQ. You like BBQ? Well this is TOTALLY BBQ. They're not half-assing this BBQ. This BBQ will fuck your shit up!

Not to be outdone by those lazy assholes at Hellmann's (what have they ever done besides Mayo? And their Mayo is no match for Miracle Whip, which is not even technically Mayo and it still kills Hellmann's white goo.), the crazy, ass-kicking, one-legged bandidos at K.C. Masterpiece have unleashed the fury of Dip & Top, two insane new products in Cool BBQ (a Ranch/BBQ combo that while not TOTALLY BBQ, has a secret weapon: an infusion of Ranch. You weren't expecting that were you, Hellmann's? PUSSIES!) and Honey Dijon. There was also an Ass Explosion Spinach Artichoke flavor test marketed, but people's throats simply couldn't handle it. Larynxs were popping from pure flavorful delight. Children died. But they died smiling.

And check out the bottle configurations! "Overturning traditional upright bottle formats, the products, which stand amidst the growing phalanx of flavored dips, sauces and spreads, catch the consumer's eye with their reverse packaging configurations." That's right. Hellmann's and K.C. Masterpiece, despite their long-standing feud, are together in one thing: Taking down the patriarchal "Upright Bottle" structure. A dollar toward these sauces, be they dip or top or TOTALLY BBQ is a dollar toward taking down the Heinz and Hunt's monopoly. Sure, Heinz and Hunt's made upside-down ketchup bottles before, but do you think they were really happy to do it? You naive, blind fool. They got your ass.

On Hellmann's site, a playful flash animation shows friendly veggies like little broccoli heads and carrot sticks tumbling toward delicious dipping Nirvana. But then the French Fries show up, all, "Hey, you little green and orange hippies! You're in my Dippin' Sauce! Don't make me turn you invisible with my awesome grease embrace!"

We, as a nation, obviously need more fatty, lugubrious liquid in which to dip our fish sticks, "chicken" nuggets, onion rings, crisp battered fat runoff and, Hell, let's just say it — our bare fingers into. You've done it. You've dipped your finger into sauce without benefit of foodstuff. Don't act like you haven't.

You like ketchup? Fuck ketchup! You common, scarlet whore. You can get that for free in tiny packets from even the shittiest of fast food restaurants. How is that good eating?

Honey mustard? Plain ranch dressing? You are so living in 1999 at a suburban supermarket.

Yield to these new dipping, topping, battered-fried-fat-carb-foodstuff molesting gods.

They're coming to cover all your food. And they won't stop until total slathering is achieved.

Most amusingly awful spam subject line today:

"Russian army soldiers violenced comrade Svetlana."

First off, "Violenced" is a verb now? That's like when I took a haunted tour of downtown Austin and they said that in the old days, they didn't call it rape in the newspapers; they would say a woman had been "Outraged." It was a weird tour.

Also, "Comrade Svetlana?" I'm thinking tranny. But I don't dare go look.

Ooooooo...

This is the song we sing when we've come to work too early,
This is the song we sing when our eyes are droopy tired.
This is the song we sing when we broke our damned alarm clock,
This is the song we sing when coffee makes us wired.

We sing about the way that our blood is moving slowly,
We sing about the way that the sun has burned our eyes.
We sing about the way that our heads are really pounding,
We sing about the way that it physically hurts to rise.

Don't tell the boss that we'll take three hours for lunch,
Don't tell the boss that we plan to nap at break time.
Don't tell the boss that we can't see what's on screen.
Don't tell our boss that the rhyme that we, uh... Fuck.

It didn't rain.

There's a huge storm coming our way. The skies have been blackened for hours, but as it's been for what feels like months now, the rain just won't fucking come. It thunders. It lightnings. The air smells of it. But nothing pours down.

People in my office keep craning their heads forward, noses close to the big picture windows, asking if it's rained yet. We all have lawns that are dying, skin that is dry from the heat and drought, rain gauges on unemployment.

It's so dark and scary outside, as if the rain has been building up, saving itself for one big torrent. But everything hangs still, waiting for that first drop, backdropped by a blue gray day. It doesn't fall.

I appreciate the help, even though I suspect each of you disappeared one by one, Agatha Christie style, because of some rampaging Guest Blogger Killer whom the authorities are even now pursuing. (One Guest Blogger didn't make it over at all. It's death, I tell you, death!)

Guests of Bloggystyle stay at the posh Omni Hotel and Suites. That is when they're not being murdered. Bwah ha ha ha ha ha!

I'm still here also. Everyone else has a life, apparently.

The sad thing is, I've been worried about not writing anything for the past few days. Guess I'm not the only slacker. Yesterday I discovered there are only 2 Indian eateries in San Antonio. One of 'em is decent.