Blathr Wayne Lorentz

Guys, I gotta go. The cat just barfed on my computer plug.

The magic of work-from-home.

I donʼt think I could ever date a movie starlet. Movie stars are people who make their living pretending to be things they are not. How could you ever really trust someone who is a professional liar?

Not that I was ever in danger of being wooed by an actress. Still, lying seems endemic to the entire social, moral, and monetary economy of Hollywood. Take, for instance, this movie poster for the 1941 version of The Maltese Falcon.

It features a pair of disembodied Bogart hands, each paw with a pistol, furiously filling imaginary bad guys with lead. The testosterone-tantalizing tag line reads, “A story as explosive as his blazing automatics!”

Except, that at no time in the movie does Bogart shoot any bad guys. The closest he gets to violence is backhanding a dandy half his size. His character even makes a point of it in the movie:

Cop: What kind of a gun do you carry?

Bogart: None. I donʼt like ʼem. Of course, there are some at the office.

Cop: You donʼt happen to have one here?

Bogart: Shakes head “no”

So why did the movie studio so conspicuously add non-existent gun battles to this movie? After viewing many dozens of 1940ʼs and 1950ʼs movies and their associated posters, my inexpert opinion is that it was to get men to agree to take their female companions to see the pictures.

Bogartʼs lady fans were more than ready to consume whatever tale he told on celluloid, no matter what the actual story. But getting the men to go along required a little extra push. You can also see this in the titles and artwork of other films of the era that use cheesecake imagery and vaguely-naughty titles that have little to do with the actual content of the films.

Itʼs for this reason that when presented with an old movie, itʼs important not to judge the film by its poster. The two may be only distantly related.

How many parking tickets does the Methodist Hospital courtesy buggy have to rack up before it gets booted by Methodist Hospital?

Among tech companies, Apple has a reputation for being the tightest with protecting peopleʼs privacy. Apparently, that extends to stick people on road signs.

Todayʼs coffee is Nutty Chocolate from Ampersand Coffee Roasters in Colorado.

Bull shit is good for fertilizing coffee crops. And bullshit is apparently a key ingredient in this coffeeʼs marketing. The package is so crammed full of sanctimonious later-day hipster buzzwords that thereʼs barely room for the trophy case of “look how extra I am!” stickers. The only thing missing is a gold participation star from Mrs. Keaneʼs kindergarten class.

Howʼs the coffee? Itʼs slightly below average. The flavors arenʼt as pronounced as the packaging would have you believe, and thereʼs a bit of a chemical-style aftertaste. It is unkind to say that the coffee doesnʼt live up to the hype, because no coffee could possibly accede to the level of boastful globalist hype cosplay in which this company engages.

Still, those poor coffee beans. The weight of the global order is on their shoulders. The only way to put them under more pressure is to actually put them in an espresso machine.

The package promises they will “[provide] the ultimate holistic coffee experience through quality coffee, womenʼs empowerment, environmental regeneration, and upward spirals.”

Itʼs a bag of coffee beans, not a United Nations resolution.

I find it curious that a company so aggressively engaged in forthrightness as performance art should describe its product as “An insane blend of our nuttiest and most chocolaty-tasting coffees.” I guess Ampersand didnʼt get the Slack message that youʼre not supposed to use the word “insane” anymore, as it offends those who choose to be offended on behalf of imaginary mentally unstable people they donʼt even know.

Three things I learned from watching the 1944 film The Conspirators:

1. Nazis thugs have really good penmanship.

   

2. The mirrors in Portugal are defective; they project an image, instead of reflect the image.

   

3. Lisbon has the same johnny pumps as New York.

   

As a society, have we reached the point yet where web developers can finally stop putting “Results” at the top of search results?

Please?

What? Doesnʼt every record store have an “Albums with Marlon Brando on the cover” section?

I guess Chinese spammers have gotten so lazy that theyʼre not even bothering to hide their caller ID anymore.