I've lived in Coweta County for 24 of the past 36 years, and this is the first time I've seen something like this:

Date: Mon, 3 Aug 2026 21:28:41 -0400 (EDT)
From: Coweta County EMA
Reply-To: Coweta County EMA
Subject: Coweta County Public Safety Alert
Coweta County Public Safety Alert: Black bear reported near Oak Shores Dr in Summer Grove. Secure pets, avoid the area, and do not approach the bear.

Bears? Roaming the subdivisions of Coweta County? It seems the deer have new allies in their Great Uprising, and there can be only one reason for this: they've come for our data centers.

Well, they can have 'em.

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I have recently been wondering if I'm too hard on movies. The public seems to really enjoy some films I just can't stand. Recent examples include Project Hail Mary, Tom Holland's Spider-Man franchise, and anything by Christopher Nolan since Memento. Do I hate them only because they're popular? Am I watching them wrong? Is the problem me?

With that in the back of my mind, I just tried to watch

95/2665. Poor Things (2023)

And I really didn't care for it.

I'm still stinging from the ending of the previous Yorgos Lanthimos/Emma Stone collaboration, 2018's The Favourite, which featured an extended sound ("music" is the wrong word) crafted to make the audience as uncomfortable as possible, so I was never particularly enthusiastic for this. When Poor Things opens to a very similar noise, I knew I was in trouble. It killed any excitement I had mustered toward the 2+ hours in front of me, and from that point forward I was looking for a convenient exit, which I eventually found shortly after the one-hour mark (still several minutes short of halfway) when The Monster watched a sailor strangle a seagull for shitting on him.

Soundtrack aside, my bigger complaint is that Lanthimos and I strongly disagree on what should and should not be shown. Prude that I am, I'm still not talking about that bird or the many, many sex scenes. (They are not designed to titillate, but I did begin to question why so many of them? I would not be surprised if The Monster screwed that seagull killer in the next scene.)

This is self-evidently a cold fairy tale of a naive girl's coming-of-age story in a funhouse mirror society built to turn women into slaves (Frankenstein meets Jane Eyre, if you will). But if the goal is to engage the audience in a philosophical study of autonomy and feminism, take a lesson from, say, Edward Scissorhands and gloss over the details instead of spending the first quarter of the run time grounding The Monster's creation in quasi-science fiction. Like learning how hot dogs are made, the knowledge of pig intestines and rat assholes kills the magic, stripping away the allegorical veneer and leaving only an unresolved uncanny valley of the ethical questions about the nature of consciousness, control, and consent in the sexual behavior of those unable to understand those basic concepts. No, thank you.

Obviously, Ms. Stone had the time of her life acting her heart out in a one-of-a-kind role. Good for her. However, it has become increasingly clear that the parts that interest her to play are no longer the parts I care to watch. (I'd say "Never go full retard," but she did win her second Oscar for this. So you do you, girl.) Stone and Lanthimos have combined for two movies since this one; I have no intention of seeing either. Oh, well. At least I'll always have La La Land.

Sure, I could endure the second half to see if the movie sticks the landing. But this is an adventure story, and all adventure stories are move about the journey than the destination. If I'm not having fun or learning anything along the way, why should I bother going on that trip? Maybe I do just hate everything I see these days. Maybe I need to just get comfortable with that. But I definitely don't need to waste any more of my time on other people's crappy journeys.

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Not to be a downer BUT I've been having a hard time maintaining a joyful attitude lately. I'll enjoy a video game with friends for a few minutes, or a comic book, or a movie, but then as soon as I walk away, I seem to return to a baseline of deeply unsatisfied. I don't know why. Sure, the world's a shitty place, but that's always true. I assume it's chemical, as I suspect these sorts of things so often are.

In the meantime, today I learned that this song is twenty years old (recorded in 2005 but released in the USA in February 2006):

youtu.be/gH476CxJxfg

Somehow, that's not helping.

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Bad dogs.

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70/2640. Crack in the World (1965)
A mad scientist nukes the Earth's crust in the hopes of breaking it, and he succeeds, unleashing a series of earthquakes that threatens to destroy the whole world. It was dull, but I watched the hole thing.

Intense underground heat, Janette Scott? Have a pause that refreshes!

71/2641. The Crowded Sky (1960)
This airplane disaster film plays backwards, with most of the runtime devoted to introducing the characters who will die in the midair disaster, which comes very late. The many, many inner monologue voiceovers are intended to be dramatic but instead come across plane hilarious.

72/2642. Another Face (1935)
This one is also constructed backwards: it's a farce where the only person who has mistaken an identity is the gangster who has had plastic surgery and is trying to parlay his new beauty into Hollywood stardom. Helped greatly by its short runtime, this film nose not to overstay its welcome.

73/2643. The Great Waldo Pepper (1975)
The biplane-era aerial action is the only reason to keep watching this episodic story of the frequently unsatisfying life of an early barnstormer. Many of the episodes end with death; it's an a-salt on the nerves.

74/2644. Big Wednesday (1978)
A long time ago, I read that this American Graffiti-wannabe coming-of-age surfing tale from John Milius (screenwriter of Apocalypse Now and Red Dawn) was the film that Stephen Spielberg and George Lucas thought would be better received than Jaws and Star Wars. Goes to show what they know. Despite its killer cast (hello, Reb Brown!), the autobiographical nature of its themes results in a week narrative.

The 1960s changed America, but Coke soldiers on!

More to come.

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