I Wasn’t Expecting To Read About That at Wal-Mart

We just got back from a trip to Wal-Mart. As you know, I love Wal-Mart, and I have a special pair of ratty jogging pants I wear when I go. I like the people, the prices, and that promo section at the front, with the $5 coffee grounds, water pistols and cases of bottled water. It’s just past the massive cloud of cigarette smoke at the entrance. You know what I’m talking about.

So we were picking up a few things when something caught our eye and stopped us dead. In the middle of an aisle, in one of those featured promotional displays, was a new product: KY Intense Arousal Gel For Her. I am not making that up. “This can’t be what we think it is,” I said. Elizabeth picked up one of the boxes and started reading aloud the label’s description, which includes the word “clitoris”. A lady passing by gave us a dirty look.

Wal-Mart won’t carry CDs with rough language on them. In fact, the latest Green Day disc is the latest to be banned. So you can’t hear Billie Joe swear, but you can buy KY Intense Arousal Gel For Her? And it’s in the middle of the aisle? Beside the toy department? That doesn’t make sense.

It reminded me of the old Consumers Distributing catalogue stores. You’d go in, pick what you wanted from a catalogue, fill out a form, and someone brought it to you from the back. I always liked Consumers. But there was a snicker-generating item in their catalogue for years: a “personal massager” in a certain shape … we all knew what it was.

Wal-Mart isn’t hiding this, though. In fact, the product screams “sex!” I wanted to wait around to see if anyone would actually buy it — and the display had some empty slots, so it was clear someone brought KY Intense back to the trailer recently. But we had to go. A shame.

Anybody who’s tried this stuff is welcome to leave me a testimonial about it. Go nuts.

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Buck Rogers in the 25th Century of Suck

I just bought the Buck Rogers 1979 movie on VHS. For those of you who remember the TV series, the two-episode pilot was released as a theatrical movie, and it was a big deal for me at the time. If I remember correctly, our minister and his wife drove me 90 minutes to the big-city cinema to see it. I think there may have been McDonald’s involved. As I’ve mentioned before, I am a lifelong Buck fan, so this was an important movie. When it was announced that it would be a weekly series, I might actually have levitated.

I saw the first season of the TV series, but not the second, as our small-town broadcaster chose to drop the show. A shame. I’ll have to seek it out.

Now I’m watching the movie, and I’m appalled at its suckness. Sometimes science fiction holds up, sometimes it doesn’t. The original BSG — which shares a genealogy with Buck, thanks to Glen A. Larson — is still watchable for its sense of adventure and a slight taste of camp. The Buck movie, so far, is just annoying me. It’s poorly paced, boring and dorky. I’m really disappointed.

The opening credits set the tone, with star Gil Gerard (a.k.a. No, Not Lee Majors, But Close) and some strange random woman in glasses. Check out Erin Grey being all sultry and everything.

Shutter Island

You can keep your Transformers, your Terminators, your G.I Joes and your Harry Potters. After Star Trek, there’s only one movie I eagerly await in 2009:

I wrote about this book a few months ago.

Wait, I’m wrong: I’m pretty stoked for the Where The Wild Things Are movie, too.

DJ Data

I needed this today. I really did. And so do you.

Iran and the Media

Did you know we’re in an election frenzy here in Canada? Did you know we may be going to the polls, again, this summer if Iggy pulls the trigger? And do you care?

No, of course not. And why would you, when Iran is imploding in the wake of a blatantly stolen vote? I’ve been watching things unfold there, nodding as I read pundits who say “this is democracy in action” and “why didn’t Americans rise up like this in 2000” and “Weren’t we just advocating the bombing of these people?” If you want to learn more, Google it. I’d post links, but WordPress isn’t fast enough to keep up with this ever-changing story.

To be as clear as possible, let me say this: I have very little interest in the Iranian political situation right now. If I stopped to concern myself with odd politics in other countries, I would get even less sleep than I do now. What concerns me about Iran today is the scary lack of coverage of the issue in the U.S.

I’m lucky enough to live in a country with a public broadcaster. For all its faults, the CBC is governed more by ideas than dollars, and it’s my go-to for radio and television news. The same goes for the Globe and Mail, one of Toronto’s four daily newspapers, and the only one that still offers impact journalism on a global scale.

Americans aren’t so lucky. The major news organisms are ignoring Iran this week. Why? I don’t know. But it makes no sense. Journalists who report based on anything other than the right to report the public shouldn’t call themselves journalists. It’s shameful. Other news organizations, like Bloomberg, are covering the crisis, but they lack the accessibility of TV “news” networks.

On a positive note, social media and the Internet are doing the job CNBC, Fox News and CNN couldn’y. Log on to Digg, Reddit or Twitter, and what you see is Iran Iran Iran … You know what? Someone else explained this better than I can. Let me quote:

We are witnessing two revolutions here – one, the “green revolution” in Iran which may or may not be a success, and the other the technology and news information revolution. We are witnessing the unwitting suicide and slow death of the news media as we know it, as they cave to ratings and apathy rather than getting out there and covering a real story, as they aid and abbet the numbing and dumbing down of the American people.

If you were reading the Dish this weekend you were living in a different universe from someone watching Fox or MSNBC. There is very little difference between no information and misinformation. That is what the American people are getting – a starvation diet of no news and lots of empty carbs. Fatty, salty food with no nutritional value. And we’re too damn apathetic to demand better. There is a great divide in the decisions we make as an informed populace vs the decisions we make as an uninformed or misinformed one. The people I know who rely on the MSM for their news consistently know less about what actually happened than my blogger friends do, and have less nuanced opinions about these events. That’s a damn shame if you ask me. It leads to the support of bad policy.

… E.D. Kain