I hate to laugh at the expense of other people’s pain, but …

A steering problem caused a new cruise ship to roll abruptly Tuesday, throwing passengers and crew to the deck and injuring dozens, including two critically, officials said.

One passenger said seawater flooded several upper decks of the Crown Princess, forcing water from a swimming pool “like a mini-tsunami,” and breaking windows and furniture.

The vessel, with about 3,100 passengers and 1,200 crew, had just departed Port Canaveral on Florida’s east coast en route to New York when it listed badly to its left side, said Coast Guard spokesman Petty Officer James Judge.

and then this:

Chris Broadbent, a 33-year-old honeymooner from New York City, said Tuesday night’s movie on the ship was supposed to be “Titanic.”

Hah!

When Ogre left the Franchise, I made it very clear that I would never shop at any establishment he worked at — at the time, he was selling Nissans. In fact, I gave my word on it.

Until today, I kept that word.

Ogre has moved on from selling cars to slinging a register at a nearby Best Buy. I went there because they had Brisco County jr for $5 under what Amazon wanted for it, and when you factor in the savings on shipping and no wait time … score!

We had a moment. That’s not true. We glared at each other, pretended to be polite, and then were both happy to be through with the unpleasant ordeal.

If you aren’t interested in hearing about the ladies fighting, the heat, or the stupid movie I saw today, don’t read on, there shall be spoilers.

Regal really needs some shady parking lots. Plant some fucking trees. Big ones. With lots of branches to provide shade. Holy jeebus, after three hours in that theater, I got burns all over my hands just looking at the heat eminating off my car. My palms still hurt from the steering wheel and shift-knob.

Owowowowowow.

The theater itself was nice and cold, and would’ve been better except apparently a lot of people still want to see this film, so there were about thirty people in attendance. Unfortunatly for me, I got to sit near two of the more contentious of those — a mother, with her husband and two daughters, and a middle-aged woman (with her adult daughter, I presume) got into a hissy-fit, telling each other to “shhhh” and “stop talking” all through the previews.

Look, I gotta say, when the lights go down, shut the fuck up. Talk during the stupid stuff before the previews if you absolutely have to, but when the trailers start, when the lights dim, you really do need to shut your fucking trap, or, alternatively, have your lips stapled shut (I’m a big fan of the latter, particularly if I get to do the stapling). I was contemplating walking a few seats down and telling them both to shut the fuck up, but once the movie started, they did (thankfully).

Wow. This movie sucked the big one.

Technically, the film is beautiful. The choreography, production design, lighting, special effects … all great, better, as good as. The actors are at least as decent as they were in the original film. The writing … well, they’re trying, so I guess that’s something. But what is it they’re missing? Oh, I remember.

Ever see The Replacements? It’s about a bunch of scabs playing pro-football. At one point, the all-star quarterback crosses the picket line and scab Keanu Reeves is kicked off the team. At halftime during a crucial game, Gene Hackman is asked by a reporter what the team needs to win, and hoping Reeves is watching, Gene taps his chest and says, “Heart.”

Heart was abundant in the first Pirates movie. The movie overflowed with Heart. Apparently, when they were mixing the ingredients for this film, they forgot to put it in, because no where is it apparent. The charm of the first film didn’t carry over, and this one just dragged and dragged and dragged, making me wonder, first, why it was I’d spent $7 for a ticket to see it (I suppose because if I hadn’t I wouldn’t regret spending the money), and second, why is it that people insist on making sequels to films that don’t need one? So we can catch up to the characters? Problem there is that the resulting film is never as good as our imaginations.

A lot of the minor characters are missing from this sequel — Anamaria, for one, although I suppose the cannibals could’ve gotten her. While the bumbling “pirate twins” (Pintel and Ragetti) make it into the film, the bumbling “red-coat twins” (Murtogg & whoever-the-other-guy-was) don’t. This is too bad, because the bumbling red-coat twins were much funnier than the bumbling pirate twins. These are nits, I know, and even had they been in the film, it still woulda sucked the monkey nads.

Also a big thank you to whoever wrote whatever article I read last night revealing that Jack Sparrow got eaten by the Kracken (oh, did you not know this? There’s a big SPOILER warning at the top of the post). I was, however — another SPOILER coming up — completely unaware and shocked by Barbossa’s appearance at the end of the film, alive & well.

I’ll just have to go see Pirates 3 next summer to find out how it all ends, even though this second film sucked money nads.

I’m such a sucker.

I’m going to the 11:45 showing of Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest at Hunt Valley Regal. Have fun in your cubicles.

(One thing I hate — didn’t matinees used to have a fairly decent price cut from the regular showings? Here, matinees are $7 and night showings are $8.75! Ooooh. Not even two bucks? What a gyp. I’m going anyway).

I hate deer. I mean, in concept, I like ‘em just fine. It’s just hard not to develop a pathological hatred for the species when they’re as thickly populated as they are here.

I have not hit a deer in several years (knock on wood). However, I think I ran over four or five hundred when I had my Jeep. All within eight months of each other, too. I’d be driving down the road and they’d just jump out in front of me because, as a species, they’re ridiciculously suicidal. Probably because there are so fucking many of them that all the boy deer aren’t finding any girl deer to fuck, and there is no food for ‘em to eat, so, really, without being able to have sex or eat what’s the point in life? They stand by the road and wait for a car to come and “Goodbye cruel — splaaaaat!”

Actually, it’d be like, screeeeeeeee– BAM! — ch!

Kill ‘em all, I say, mass deerocide, and let Bambi sort ‘em out.

So I’m reading this article about ex-pats fleeing Lebanon, because, apparently, Israel and Lebanon decided to start trying to kill each other, so people are trying to get the hell out of Lebanon ahead of the Israeli army.

The Pentagon said it hired a private cruise liner, the Orient Queen, to pick up evacuees and would send at least one warship as an escort when the evacuation ship docks at the Lebanese capital today.

Great. Wonderful. As it should be.

Then I read this:

At least 80 of American University of Beirut’s 282 American students enrolled in summer or degree programs have signed up to be evacuated by the U.S. Embassy, says Caroline Chalouhi, coordinator for international student services.

Some, including McInerney, are annoyed that they had to agree to pay to be brought out. The State Department has no funds to cover evacuation costs and asks evacuees to pay the “going commercial rate for transport out,” spokesman Kurtis Cooper says.

Huh?

Hey — dipshits: it’s called “taxes”, and part of the reason we American Citizens pay taxes to our government is so that when, if we’re ever overseas, and something like a WAR starts going on, we pay our taxes so you’ve got cash to get us the fuck out safely.

I’ll just tag this: “From the same government that brought us Katrina disaster relief.”

Seriously.

Tyrannosaurus Rex got a midlife crisis!

“I think love was a dangerous game for tyrannosaurs,” said Erickson. “As they came into sexual maturity there was a good chance they started having antagonistic encounters with each other, fighting over mates, fighting over nesting areas,” he said. Females were also under stress to lay eggs and some may have brooded them, meaning they had to stay at the nest and wouldn’t have been able to hunt prey, he said.

It’s a life pattern — high mortality young and then stability until midlife — that is also seen in some modern birds and mammals, he added.

I was more fascinated by this article than any person has a right to be.