{"id":1092,"date":"2006-06-03T17:45:26","date_gmt":"2006-06-03T21:45:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.very-simple.com\/blog\/2006\/06\/03\/trying-too-hard\/"},"modified":"2007-07-28T13:59:49","modified_gmt":"2007-07-28T17:59:49","slug":"trying-too-hard","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.very-simple.com\/blog\/2006\/06\/03\/trying-too-hard\/","title":{"rendered":"Trying too hard"},"content":{"rendered":"<div style=\"margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px;\" class=\"sharethis-inline-share-buttons\" ><\/div><p>I get a lot of junk mail.  Usually 4 or 5 catalogs a day.  I&#8217;m not entirely sure how it happened, as I never signed up for any of them, <i>and <\/i>they all seemed to follow me and grow in number when I moved (Seriously, now, what the hell am I going to do with a catalog for patio furniture?).<\/p>\n<p>So, Friday, I&#8217;m at the mailboxes, flipping through the mail and tossing what I don&#8217;t want (we have a conveniently located recycling bin in the lobby right next to the mailboxes, which I take full advantage of), and I come across the funniest piece of junk mail I&#8217;ve gotten in quite a while.  It&#8217;s from some sort of religious group, and it&#8217;s about their new &#8220;God on Film&#8221; series.  Now, aside from the fact that a <i>church<\/i> would send my liberal jewish\/atheist self an invitation to their seminar, they&#8217;re clearly reaching for a theme here (&#8220;reaching&#8221; being the operative word).<\/p>\n<p>It starts off with what is obviously the hook:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\nJune 4 <b>The Da Vinci Code<\/b>: the truth behind the fictiion, part 1<br \/>\nJune 11 <b>The Da Vinci Code<\/b>: the truth behind the fiction, part 2\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>OK, fine, everyone and their mother is talking about the Da Vinci Code.  I personally think it was a hacktastic book (perfectly fine beach reading, but, um, <i>obviously <\/i> fiction, and not particularly well written). Clearly this one makes sense.  Then&#8230;<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\nJune 18 <b>Cars<\/b>: what drives my life?<br \/> <br \/>\nJune 25 <b>Click<\/b>: pausing for what matters most<br \/> <br \/>\nJuly 2 <b>Superman Returns<\/b>: how to begin again\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Disney movies and comic books as life lessons?  Sure I get the whole superhero parable, but the &#8220;theme&#8221; for the cars discussion just cracks me up.  &#8220;Hey, it&#8217;s a movie about computer animated cars!  clearly we can tie this to how to live your life!&#8221;  Too funny.  But not as funny as the final two &#8211; here&#8217;s the first:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p> July 9 <b>The Devil Wears Prada<\/b>: succeeding in stressful situations <\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Haaa!  Ha Ha Ha.  Sorry, I can&#8217;t stop laughing.  Because, if you don&#8217;t know, the movie is about a bitchy Anna Wintour clone and, is based on a tell-all book written by a woman who used to work for her.  The movie is clearly intended to be satire.  incredibly <i>bitchy<\/i> satire.  Being analyzed by a <i>church group<\/i> to discuss how to succeed at work!!  And then there&#8217;s this&#8230;<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>July 16 <b>Pirates of the Caribbean<\/b>: escaping the bonds of debt <\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Now I&#8217;m falling out of my chair because I can&#8217;t stop giggling.  Because apparently the message you&#8217;re supposed to take from a movie about Johnny Depp dressed up in Keith Richards drag hamming it up as a pirate from a Disney ride (oh, sorry, the <i>sequel<\/i> to the movie based on the Disney ride), squaring off against Bill Nighy dressed like a <i>giant squid<\/i>, is how to pay off your credit cards.   Hee heee heeee.   Sorry. no, wait.  heee heee ha ha ha.<\/p>\n<p>OK, now I realize that these are actually timed with the movie releases, and they&#8217;re trying to imply some sort of hipness or something.  But seriously.  I&#8217;m <i>still<\/i> giggling.  Come on!  Pirates of the <i>friggin&#8217;<\/i> Caribbean!!  As a life lesson! about managing debt!  What <i>isn&#8217;t <\/i>funny about that?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I get a lot of junk mail. Usually 4 or 5 catalogs a day. I&#8217;m not entirely sure how it happened, as I never signed up for any of them, and they all seemed to follow me and grow in number when I moved (Seriously, now, what the hell am I going to do with [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[],"tags":[17],"class_list":["post-1092","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-movies"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6ZBi-hC","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.very-simple.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1092","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.very-simple.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.very-simple.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.very-simple.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.very-simple.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1092"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.very-simple.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1092\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.very-simple.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1092"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.very-simple.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1092"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.very-simple.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1092"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}