lovehatethings

A bizarre juxtaposition on SanLuisObispo.com. Full kudos for covering the protests in China during the 60th anniversary of communism, but is such an important world event best paired with the "party girls" from F. McLinktock's Saloon and Dining Lounge? Maybe I'm wrong. Perhaps most of the protest signs are actually ads for The Gap or Stuckey's.

My two word review of the Fall TV Hit Glee, plus freaky-ass cereal mascots, how Patrick Swayze cost me my job, and how Tom Waits song titles become poetry.

As crazy as most cereal boxes are when they introduce characters and mascots, sometimes the non-traditional juxtapositions make for the nuttiest futuristic things you never thought you'd see as part of your cereal box fort.

1. See ya soon, but probably not.
2. You are what it sounds like when lungs cry.
3. Nick O'Teen is the cancer leprechaun chasing a pot of tar at the end of the rainbow.
4. The filter is to protect the cigarette from your breath.
5. Smoke menthol. Like lacing your shit with mint.
6. You are Darwin's proof.
7. You can't spell "tobacco" without your lungs.
8. You know all those oldtime movie stars that made smoking sexy? All dead.
9. Worried about your teeth and fingers turning yellow? Your lungs are dreaming of yellow.
10. Stop kissing ass. Get the butt from your mouth.
11. Cancer's cool... if you're a zodiac symbol.
12. If they put cigarette package warnings on milk, would you pour it on your cereal?
13. Every cigarette shortens your life by ten minutes. Light up. I want your job.
14. Light up. You're in my dead pool.
15. How many roads must a man walk down? Don't worry, we've got oxygen masks.
16. When someone calls them Cancer Sticks, let's not argue over the semantics of them being "sticks". You don't have time to waste. I'd rather spend our remaining time basking in your asphyxiating musk.

One of the features Amazon has built into its recommendation engine is the "Frequently Bought Together" section that, I'm guessing, is supposed to inspire you to think "WOW! If other people are buying that, I should probably by it too!"

In the case of a recent purchase of, however, (and what I'm sure isn't a rare occurrence) there were two pieces of media that I could never imagine going together... ever. You see, the concept of "Frequently Bought Together" would indicate to me, more than once. Now I could buy into the fact that perhaps no one who had purchased that Ben Folds' University A Cappella! CD would necessarily buy the same second item before leaving Amazon. I more than expected the second item in the side-by-side purchase push to be another CD by Ben Folds or similar genre pounding piano rocker. I was shocked to find out that, as evidenced by the "Frequently" recommendation, the most popular accompanying item was the DVD Repulsion by Roman Polanski.

Ben Folds CD is described as "a great mix of pop-sounding arrangements (with beat-boxing and voices substituting as drums) and more traditional a capella singing (with lovely harmonies, etc.)"

Polanski's Repulsion, on the other hand, "shows us, in simple but effective terms, the horrors that lurk inside a troubled psyche. While obviously working on a shoestring budget, Polanski recreates with disturbing impact the strange and unsettling horror of a mind that has begun to turn upon itself. Carol Ledoux is not on a strong emotional footing as the story begins: she's at once compelled by and terrified of her sexual needs, and she displays an unhappy emotional distance from others that suggests a mild form of autism. When Carol is left alone after her sister leaves on vacation, her fragile connection with the rest of the world gives way, and. as she isolates herself in her apartment, Carol's mind fragments into a hallucinatory state, which Polanski manifests on-screen with an apt surrealism. Within the increasingly grim and shadowy confines of the flat, revolting images of rotting food and buzzing flies mingle with things that shouldn't or couldn't actually be there, and Polanski's impressionistic use of odd angles, visual distortion, and blunt, shocking violence make Carol's world seem as frighteningly alien to us as it must be to her."

Now those Ben Folds haters out there might think themselves clever by saying... "I get it. Ben Folds REPULSES me!" But to use film commercial techniques, I believe I can make the case for the tie...

The new Ben Folds CD is "simple but effective". Its "strong emotional footing" will convince detractors as "the rest of the world gives way". A "frighteningly" "apt" selection that will have an "impressionistic" "impact" all over the "world".