I went to see 300 today, and I must say, the movie kicked well above and beyond what should be considered the legal limit of ass-kicking; the equivalent of blowing whole-numbers on the breathalyser of ass-kickery, if you will. In short, it was a damned good movie, but you might ask, "What does this have to do with parents being jackasses?"

    Well, the movie is rated R, which means, naturally, that only people of or beyond the age of seventeen, or perhaps a younger lad or lass who is accompanied by a parent or guardian can watch it. I do not believe that when the powers-that-be created this rule so long ago, however, that they could have possibly forseen a couple of dumbasses with a combined I.Q. equal to the amount of children they had brought with them to see the film (both surprisingly high). The whole progeny was sprawled out across an entire row in front of my friend and myself as part of some demented "family fun night" that would make Charles Manson proud. I'm talking about children ranging the ages of two to six; children with pacifiers in their mouths, Ninja Turtles in their hands, and loads in their pants. In short, I'm talking about children...watching one of the most violent and sexually charged movies I'd seen in years.

    To forgo describing the obvious (that they would not shut the **** up the entire time), I'll present the most perplexing question of all: "How could these two 'parents'(who had incidentally admitted, for our listening pleasure, to just coming from church) that brought their young, impressionable children into a movie with scenes of wonton and gratuitous vioelence, nudity, the macabre, and forced sex have been allowed to breed in the firstplace?" We can put a man on the moon, we can clone a sheep, map out the whole damned human genome, but we still can't cure stupid? Give me a break.

    But the highlight of the experience for everyone enjoying the movie that night was of course when Dilios was giving his last, fervid and hearty speech and one of the lil' tykes picked up his lil'er sister and, in what could possibly have been percieved by those with brains in their heads as an acting out of some of the sequences in the movie, sat down, bashing her doughy head into the arm of the chair. Everyone in the theater was silent, suspended with looks of trepidation and jaws agape. Everyone except the lil'er one, of course, who was screaming like a banshee thrown off a building. On the bright side, however, the process of phazing out the stupid gene had come to fruition, as I'll guarantee that no one who left the theater that night went home with aims of making a baby, at least nobody in my row.

    I guess the moral of the story is, if you're going to screw up your kids' mental well-being, at least make sure they're female, because strippers are a much better alternative to getting sniped from a clocktower. Thank you.

Decadence Festival is starting , and for those who don't know, it's that magical time of year when half of the world's gay and lesbian population migrate to my hometown...not that there's anything wrong with that. I work at a dry-cleaners, and one of the customers had come in to pick up his suit. I was making conversation, as is pretty much the norm, and the young man tells me that he is a mortician. I found this kind of interesting and asked if he worked at a local funeral home, to which his reply was "yes." I think he took it the wrong way, however, and began to talk about his ex (a man), and how they split up. Trying to be polite, I humored him in saying that a lot of long distance couples break up, but that sometimes it's for the best. I believe this was misconstrued, however, and the man gave me his phone number. No big deal to me, really, and in actuality kind of a flattering gesture since I am not a homophobe; but that was not what struck me as "strange" in this particular instance. No, no, no, my bewilderment lay in his pick-up line, however original it was, which went like this:

"So give me a call if you ever want to see a cremation."

...I'm sure I will. What a strange day...