If you are TRULY a glutton for punishment--more so even than myself--then I suggest you refresh your memory by re-reading my blogging of ATLAS SHRUGGED PART ONE.


And then follow up with my blogging ATLAS SHRUGGED PART TWO.


And now, for your reading horror, I present my sitting though ATLAS SHRUGGED PART THREE! In all of its blood-stained glory.

I suppose I am suffering through the third ATLAS SHRUGGED movie for the same reason they made it--because certain anal-retentive morons such as myself do not get closure until things are drawn out to their conclusion. So just as I shall never forgive the people behind the marketing of THE SIMPSONS for abandoning the distribution of the series on DVD--thereby I shall NEVER, in my lifetime, have the FULL SET, thankyouverymuch--I am grateful to the producers of ATLAS SHRUGGED, as much as I poke fun at their terrible, M.-Night-Shyamalan-bad movies (have I finally gone too far with my criticism? Really, Mojo, was THAT sort of cruelty warranted? I apologize)--for flying in the face of common sense and public opinion to see through their awful, awful project to the bitter end. I’m not sure exactly what they were trying to prove, but I appreciate the effort all the same.

A few years ago my parents took the Favorite Husband and I to Yellowstone, and like all good tourists we sat on those nasty wooden benches and waited for Old Faithful to erupt. It was the off season; we had great seats. And the guy sitting next to my mother started talking to her in friendly generalities about just how precise predicting Old Faithful is, blah blah blah. The sort of thing you would indeed talk about while waiting for a geyser to erupt. And then he somehow managed to twist that discussion into Who Are You Voting For In The Upcoming Election, because if my mother failed to vote for So-and-So, well, she might as well stand up on the bench right that minute and scream I HATE AMERICA. And poor Mom, who is way more polite than I ever shall be, just calmly says something like “I’ll vote for whomever I WANT to vote for, and I don’t think it’s anyone’s business but my own” instead of “I’m on VACATION, you stupid mouth-breathing PUTZ, now get the HELL away from me and let me watch a VASTLY MORE INTERESTING GUSH OF HOT AIR than YOU.” Forget enjoying the natural beauty of our national parks, this guy must be CHOCK FULL OF FUN AT PARTIES. It’s okay to defend or decry Ayn Rand or whatever political party or whathaveyou you so desire, but after five or ten minutes of you ranting and not taking a breath I will forewarn you that while I am nodding politely my brain will be shrieking SHUT THE HELL UP. NOBODY EVER CHANGED ANYONE ELSE’S MIND BY RANTING AT THEM. Thus ends my rant. Or, as Famous Movie Guy one said (was it Mayer?) "If you want to send a message, use Western Union."

I don’t get some people. As I have said ad infinitum, I have been online forEVAAR—well, at least since the late 80s to early 90s; we're talkin' pre-web—and every time I think I have seen everything, the interwebs surprise me yet again. Usually with something I can subsequently complain about.

One favorite point of whiny complaint is the Amazon system wherein people can ask questions about a product and others who have purchased it chime in to answer to the best of their ability. Innocuous questions, like “Is this made from high-quality materials?” or “Will this fit on my ’75 Datsun?” Good questions that deserve a response.

And yet, there is a certain percentage of people who respond to these questions with variations of “I don’t know the answer to that one.”

Feel free to produce this dramatic work of art any time you wish. And don't say I never gave you people nuthin.

Interview With a Swill-Pig
a play in 5 acts

                                    Act 1: THREE DECADES AGO

SWILL PIG: Hello. I'm an attention-whoring swill-pig!

MEDIA: Hello, Mister Swill-pig! Have some more swill!

So I am stuck with the dilemma of "Do I make an expensive repair on a twelve-year-old car with 250,000 miles on it?" versus "Do I want the expense and the hassle of a new car?" Which, don't get me wrong, is a heckuva better predicament than "Do I eat this month or pay the electric bill?" But as someone who HATES CHANGE, I do not want a new car. Especially since nowadays, if I want a manual transmission (and I do), I will probably have to special order it.

So like any dutiful child, I unload my burdens on my Favorite Parents. (Some may call it "whining", but I digress. Besides, Mojo is so neglectful a child my Favorite Parents treat my whining as a Special Privilege they occasionally enjoy, since usually our conversations are more along the lines of "How are you?" with me just sort of grunting at them.)

Mind you, these are the people who TAUGHT me how to drive a standard transmission, filled me with tales of just how easy it is to DIE with an automatic, and they OWNED nothing but manuals until about twenty years ago, when my Favorite Father got over his general prejudice of the automatic transmission ("It's just one more thing to go wrong with the car") and now embraces them as an intergral part of his existence. My Favorite Mother, too, not ONLY went through much of her adult life driving a manual, but this HONKIN' BIG ORANGE VAN with three-on-the-tree which was our primary school bus-esque conveyance for us in high school when WE learned how to drive and got to occasionally borrow The Van and offer rides to our scores of worthless, shiftless, carless friends. In the eyes of her peers she was a freakin' TRUCK DRIVER with this MONSTROUS HULK that dwarfed their tiny insignificant four-passenger vehicles. But again, I digress.

I have never been to the Basketball Hall of Fame.

I'm sure this is true of the majority of people in the world, and even true of the majority of Americans. Except, of course, I grew up in the next town over, and I can't think of too many people in my life who have NOT visited the BBHoF at some point in their far-more-interesting lives. Indeed, it's kind of a standard school field trip destination when one is in elementary school, although exactly WHY I cannot say. Not being a basketball fan in the first place, I have the sneaking suspicion a field trip devoted to learning about basketball--let's face it, the rules AREN'T THAT DIFFICULT TO FOLLOW--would be about as appealing as a trip to, oh, say, the box factory.

While I myself don't care much for politics or political arguments in general, as usual I find myself in the minority, as everyone around me likes nothing better than a full-throated screamfest on a nearly daily basis. In a feeble attempt to streamline the process of a political discussion slogging toward where most political discussions eventually end up, I have made another short video of questionable taste and repulsive aesthetics.