Truck Rental
February 28, 2013

The guy ahead of me in line at the truck rental store was as agitated as a washing machine. He kept spinning around to see how many people were behind him in line and then twisting to see how many people were ahead of him. His black knit cap sat high on his head, keeping some of the air above him warm. He spun around like a top until it was his turn.

Just as the customer in front of him was served, the clerk announced that there were no more clean trucks.

With a sigh and a lurch, the young man asked, "Does a truck need to be cleaned? What if I'm not going to use the ... uh... cargo section."

The puzzled clerk asked, "Do you want a truck or a van?"

The guy rented a truck.

I think this was him.

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Music Association: Simon And Garfunkel - Slip Sliding Away








movie review
Despicable Repeat
February 26, 2013


Despicable Me 2 is due out on July 3rd.

As a sequel, it will be like the first movie, and the first movie was a mix of other movies and TV.


TotallyLooksLike.com says the big similarity is Miss Hattie from Despicable Me and Dolores Umbridge from Harry Potter.

Maybe Grace the secretary in Ferris Bueller's Day Off is more like Miss Hattie. 


Both seem equally unimpressed.


Here's Dr. Evil from Austin Powers and Gru from Despicable Me.


Here's the Addams Family house and Gru's house in Despicable Me.


Here's the martians in Toy Story and the minions in Despicable Me.


Here's Boo from Monsters Inc and Agnes from Despicable Me.


Here's the pointy-haired boss from Dilbert and Mr. Perkins from Despicable Me.


Here's the Genesis effect from Star Trek 2 and moon shrinking from Despicable Me


Here's the shark from Jaws and the shark from Despicable Me.


Here's Vinnie Barbarino Tony Manero in Saturday Night Fever and Gru in Despicable Me.

Despicable Me (2010) is like episodic television -- you've seen it before; you saw it just last week.

 The Minions
                                 The rest of the movie

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Music Associations: Foreigner - Cold As Ice "I've seen it before; it happens all the time."  (the looping Gif theme song)
                                     Minions - Banana (cover of The Beach Boys - Barbara Ann)
Novel Association: Minion is a character in Hopes and Dreams: Stuck on AutoDrive





The Side Effects of Television
February 22, 2013

I don't watch much television, so it can have more of an impact on me than on regular viewers.  

Recently watching TV, I was stunned by what I saw and heard. I should have been better prepared for its effects.

It was a commercial for Intermezzo (zolpidem tartrate) by Transcept Pharmaceuticals of Point Richmond (on the San Francisco Bay) in California. Visually, the ad told the story of a light bulb that wouldn't turn off in the middle of the night. The audio story was brief before launching into the side effects of Intermezzo:

Whoa.

The Wikipedia page for Zolpidem says it "is a short-acting nonbenzodiazepine hypnotic of the imidazopyridine class that potentiates gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA), an inhibitory neurotransmitter, by binding to GABAA receptors at the same location as benzodiazepines." Its side effects include: "headaches, nausea, vomiting, dizziness, anterograde amnesia, hallucinations, delusions, altered thought patterns, difficulty maintaining balance, sleep walking, sleep talking, sleep driving, euphoria - dysphoria, increased appetite, increased or decreased libido, uninhibited extroversion, increased impulsivity, and impaired judgment and reasoning." Yeah impaired reasoning caused the patient to take zolpidem in the first place.

This raises a whole night's worth of questions:
I wondered about this all night.

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Music Association: Bobby Lewis - Tossing and Turning

Q: Why did you shovel your yard?
A: Did I? I must have been sleep shoveling.










Okay, that's cute.

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Music Association: Elvis - Teddy Bear

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