I smell smoke that comes from a gun named extinction

Ugh, my ear has been getting worse. Yesterday morning, it was in real pain, and prevented me from sleeping properly. I went to the drugstore to get some eardrops, and I've used those and a variety of other methods to try to remove the blockage and dull the pain. It is less painful now, but the blockage doesn't seem to want to go away. So that sucks. I hope I get over this soon.

On Sunday night, bethje, Dorothea, and I went to the movies to see The Devil's Rejects. I thought it was pretty good. It's been a while since I saw House of 1000 Corpses (which Rejects is the sequel to, in case you didn't know), but I got the idea that the sequel was more disturbing in parts, but also funny in others. The more disturbing parts came in because a lot of the torture was more realistic and less exaggerated. But there were some things that made me laugh out loud, like the argument about ice cream and the Mario-mustached movie critic. And hey, Brian Posehn was in it, which was pretty cool.

After the movie, Beth and I watched the two most recent Bullshit! episodes, which focused on ghosts and endangered species, respectively. The ghost one was sort of first-season-ish, in that it had Real Science used to combat pseudo-science. Perhaps there was a little too much "hey, look at these idiots trying things that don't work," and too little on the scientific arguments against ghosts, but it still made its point pretty well. I guess I was kind of hoping for something akin to the alien episode from the first season, where they explained how a lot of alien sightings were inspired by movies and such.

I was afraid I would be offended by the endangered species one, but it turned out to be much better than I thought it would be. It focused on the Endangered Species Act, and how it is largely ineffective, inconsistently applied, and sometimes detrimental to people. They pointed out how the act sometimes halted land development, as in the case of a woman who wasn't allowed to build a house on her property because of the presence of scrub jays, even though a Wal-Mart was being built in the same neighborhood. I don't know that I totally agree with Penn and Teller, who, in their typical Libertarian way, seemed to be suggesting that the protection of endangered species shouldn't be regulated by law at all. I wouldn't go that far, but the inconsistencies in the act do bother me, and I definitely think there are politicans and others who use it to their own ends. (Hey, what law do politicians NOT use to their own ends?) There's a general attitude on the show that helping animals is all well and good, but it shouldn't be done at the expense of human welfare and enterprise. I know there was an earlier episode (maybe the PETA one, but I can't remember for sure) where Penn said he'd be willing to sacrifice a million baboons if it would save one junkie on the street, or something along those lines. Oh, and I thought it was amusing that one of the people in favor of the Endangered Species Act was named Bill Snape.

We also watched the newest Family Guy, and while there was definitely some funny stuff in it, it suffered from two problems that show up from time to time on that show. One was the lack of resolution. Granted, the main issue was resolved, but Brian's worm problem was not, and Lois' taking diet pills seemed to happen simply to set up the ribcage xylophone joke. Nothing else came of it. The other problem was jokes being drawn out too long, which happened with both the Four Peters and the ecstasy bit.

Hmm...I got an e-mail with "She wants a better sex?" in the subject line. So are they advertising sex change operations? I also got some kind of update from Friendster, causing me to think, "Is that thing still around?"