Contagion didn't catch

The new movie Contagion received great reviews, and we were excited to go see it. The 'chillingly real epidemic' and 'breakdown of society in response' sounded too good to pass up. Despite a renowned cast and obvious scientific background, there just wasn't much to the movie. We were never shocked, disturbed, scared, or awed.  Later on we weren't afraid to touch common surfaces like doorknobs. After the movie someone coughed in front of us and I wished I'd felt a little thrill, an impression carried over from the movie. Did you ever watch The Mothman Prophecies or any other movie where the phone rings as part of the plot? Imagine watching it on DVD and having the phone in your house ring midway through the movie, feeling that quick jolt before you convince yourself it's ok to answer it in real life. That's what was missing from Contagion. It had the chance to really shock and scare us with The Truth, and yet failed to deliver. It's been a while since I've seen it, but I think the movie Outbreak with Dustin Hoffman did a better job scaring people with an infectious disease than did Contagion. Alas!

Speaking of the CDC and a different kind of contagion - have you checked out their page on preparing for a Zombie Apocalypse? Seriously, it makes you appreciate the CDC even more to know they have your back for when Zombies strike. Unless it ends up like The Walking Dead (season 2 starts next month!!) and the CDC is the last place you want to be. Their Zombie Preparedness page has all sorts of useful information like:

"Plan your evacuation route. When zombies are hungry they won’t stop until they get food (i.e., brains), which means you need to get out of town fast! Plan where you would go and multiple routes you would take ahead of time so that the flesh eaters don’t have a chance! This is also helpful when natural disasters strike and you have to take shelter fast."


I've realized in the past few months that I really like zombies. I don't care how sexy or sparkly or glamour-ous a vampire might be, I'm definitely on Team Zombie.

If you stream videos, can you call your computer a boob toob?

Just saw a commercial for Lean Cuisine that touted "Farm Picked Broccoli" as an ingredient. Excuse me, but where else does broccoli come from? It's not like there's a season for Wild Alaskan Broccoli caught by daring broccolimen. Or to go the other direction, there's not a lot of factory-raised broccoli kept crowded together in giant warehouses that never see the light of day. I'm both impressed by and frustrated with advertisers who take a basic feature common to all products and turn it into a key selling point.

I finally joined Netflix, after how many months (years) of saying I was going to do it? I'm enjoying it, but am a bit frustrated with their mix of DVD and streaming movies. Like season 1 of a series will be streamed, but the next seasons are DVD only. And given that next month their features split and prices increase, I'm not sure I'm going to stick with it. I'd go for streaming only, but like I said they kind of lock you into both. We'll have to see. But in response to Netflix, HBO created a streaming site called HBO GO that is free to HBO subscribers. They have all their back episodes of original programming, documentaries, and even the boxing matches in HD. And as soon as a new episode airs it is already up on HBO GO. Haven't fully explored it yet, but it really is a great free feature.

See what happens to broccoli when it's raised in unnatural conditions? Try to use something other than farm-picked broccoli and you could end up with this fractal insanity.

We grew some last year in our garden and while we never got anything quite this big, we had enough to know that a hybrid of broccoli and cauliflower may look cool, but the taste leaves something to be desired. It had a somewhat freaky texture and rather bitter taste, not at all like either of the parent plants. Speaking of cauliflower, it wasn't until I just typed it (spelled correctly, I'm so proud) that I realized the root of the word is caul, and the vegetable does look like one. EEEW!