For two people on opposite sides of the political spectrum, I’m sort of surprised they see eye to eye on this story.

Messy Hair Girl writes, “…do you really want the counter clerk at WalMart making a judgement call about your own mental fitness?” She also observes, quite correctly, “It really frightens me to see how blind people can be to things and how quickly they are willing to sacrifice everyone’s personal privacy, rights, and liberties to satisfy their own agenda.”

And over at Right-Thinking from the Left Coast, hardly a bastion of liberal thought (last I checked, libs are character-assassinated on sight), and in his usual sarcastic manner, Lee observes, “So, despite selling a legal product, and living up to all federal laws regarding the sale of firearms, Wal-Mart is somehow responsible for this woman’s death because they decided not to break federal law by peeking at her medical records.” I’m sort of dissapointed he didn’t work in a reference to “asshat liberals”, but he makes his point anyway, and I’m sure there are some insults floating around in the comments box anyway.

I just returned home from the Giant Food in Hunt Valley.

Apparently there was a scheduling crisis, and they only had two employees working the front. One was running around “trouble shooting” the automated checkout lanes. The other was running a register.

Well, for some reason, a bunch of rich stupid people came in to shop. Being rich stupid people, they were too stupid to use the automated checkout lanes, and too rich to wait in line, so one particularly obnoxious woman kept asking the clerk, “Why is there only one lane open? I don’t understand. Why?”

The clerk kept answering her - “I’m sorry, people called out, we didn’t have a lot of people scheduled, call tomorrow and bitch to the supervisor there’s nothing I can do.”

“Why do you have only one lane open? Why?”

The clerk would answer her again. And again, the bitch would ask, “Why only one lane? Why?”

It was like the fucking cunt expected that clerk to walk into the backroom, find a crate of employees marked “Checkout Bitches”, and activate one or two of them like they were androids.

I really wanted to lay into that woman, with some favorite choice words: bitch, cunt, asswhore.

And people wonder where all the Christmas Spirit has gone.

I’m not supposed to be home - but I had a delivery to the neighboring apartment complex, so I swung by here to put a note for UPS on my door, “LEAVE PACKAGE PLEASE.”

We hired this guy at work, I call him Admiral Ackbar because he resembles the Star Wars character. When I came in today, he was making salads. He had five heads of lettuce shopped up, and was using a grate-thingy to get some red cabbage flakes to color it up a bit. He already had a pile in front of him that was about twice as much as we usually use. I told he’d done enough.

Fifteen minutes later, he’s still making red cabbage. This time I ask Zapp to tell him to stop, so Zapp does.

Ten minutes later, he’s still making red cabbage. He’s gone through literally half a head of the stuff. I grab the cabbage and say quite firmly (and I was quite proud of my restraint since I didn’t club him over the head with a carrot) “This is about fifteen times as much red cabbage that we use, when someone who has worked here for a long time tells you that you’ve made enough, you should probably listen to him.”

I wrapped up the cabbage and the carrots and put them back in the walkin. As I walked past Ackbar again, he asked, “Don’t I need to slice up some more cabbage?”

Restraint is an amazing … amazing … thing.

Well, “not only does Mr. Brown write like a seven year old“, now he’s more than that - he’s an alledged plagiarist, too:

A New Zealand author is embroiled in a plagiarism row over Dan Brown’s blockbuster hit, the religious thriller The Da Vinci Code, and has launched legal action against the novel’s publishers.

Their lawsuit claims at least £150,000 damages for breach of copyright, saying a “substantial” amount of their work has been used and asking that copies of The Da Vinci Code be destroyed.

Hat Tip: Bitter Girl.

Tell me that this is just not the coolest website you’ve ever wasted time on!

Hat Tip: Jawa Report.

Earlier today I endured great hardships in getting through the parking lot of Best Buy, getting through the crowds of Best Buy, and getting through the check-out lane of Best Buy. Why did I do this? To buy shiny round discs, including this one.

I’m not a fan of the horror genre, but ever since I saw the trailer last spring, I wanted to see this film. Why? It looked funny, and anylight-hearted look at zombies is probably going to be a good romp, especially when its British. The last British zombie film I saw was 28 Days, and, uh, ew.

Okay, so if one is to believe “Shaun of the Dead”, there is one really important lesson to learn. If your entire town becomes populated by zombies, and you hide out in a bar, 1.) make sure to stop at the gun-store and get a lot of firepower. But that wasn’t the real lesson, the real lesson is 2.) DO NOT STAND NEAR THE WINDOWS BECAUSE THE ZOMBIES WILL REACH IN DRAG YOU OUT AND DISEMBOWEL YOU AS EVERYONE WATCHES.

Also, that scene was very disgusting and I had to close my eyes. Do real people have that much bloody guts, or is it just for the prop dummy that the zombies ripped open?

Xander speak: “Sometimes I shouldn’t say words.”

Is it too late to mention that this rambling, disjointed post may or may not contain spoilers? Okay, ignore the latter - spoilers are a certainty. Also, taxes. Also, at Best Buy? Some old lady said I looked like Rodney Dangerfield. I wasn’t quite sure how to respond so I punched her in the face instead of trying.

There’s a lot to like about the film, but it isn’t over-the-top with the satire. Our hero is a 29-year old loser who likes hanging out with his best bud over the objections of his roomie and his girlfriend. After a particularly bad day at work, she breaks up with him and he becomes depressed. This helps to explain why on his daily commute to the convenience store, he doesn’t notice the dead bodies, the zombies, or the bloody hand-prints on the soda cooler’s glass door.

Well, eventually he and the best-bud find out, and wind up in the garden pitching LPs at some brain-dead supermarket worker who our hero shoves onto a drainage pipe, which promptly impales her. The gravity of the situation creeps in as she removes herself from the pipe, leaving a gaping hole (through which the camera frames his shocked expression as she lumbers forward) in her stomach.

This leads to a hilarious situation in which, like many great films — but for today’s purposes, we’ll just compare it to ‘Star Wars’ — our heroes embark on a (star?) trek to save their loved ones, along the way picking up a lot of annoying (but occasionally helpful) compatriots. Like David, who was not smart enough to brush up on the above mentioned rule #2. But he was smarmy and deserved it, and if I’d seen this in theaters, I’m sure the audience would’ve cheered, like that scene in “Empire Strikes Back” where a horde of horny uganaughts have their way with Threepio’s body parts as he screams, “Stop! Stop! Oh, R2-D — hey, that tickles — where ARE you?”

There are some touching moments in the film, I teared up as Shaun’s dying stepfather, Philip, confesses his love for Shaun, and his failings as a stepfather. Shaun, who has always previously refered to Philip as “not my real dad!” later tells his mother, “He was my real dad! For a moment, he was, but now he’s not - that thing, he’s not Philip, he’s not the man you loved, not anymore.” Because, of course, Philip died and then came back as a zombie. Surprise! I was wiping away tears as I shouted (much I’m sure to the enjoyment of my neighbors who were probably asleep by now), “BASH HIS ENGLISH-LOVING BRAIN OUT! BASH IT NOW!”

There are of course the typical movie cliches. Remember the scene in Weird Science where the blonde kid is holding what he thinks is a water gun and he pulls the trigger and blows a hole in the wall? And of course the good guys show up at the last minute to save everyone with guns blazing.

Funny movie. Worth the rental or purchase. Don’t eat food during it. Disembowlment: yuck. Also, no sex scenes. Dammit.