Being scared every time I saw Peter O'Toole took years off my life

For the five of you that read this, you should add another blog to your bookmarked pages: The Insider. I co-write an entertainment page each Thursday in the paper called The Insider, and now we have our own blog that we'll be updating daily. You should check it out. All the time. Seriously. And leave comments. We had way too much fun live-blogging the Oscars last night.

Things I'm happy about: "The Departed" winning Best Picture.
Things I'm sad about: Jennifer Hudson winning; Mark Wahlberg not winning; Peter O'Toole scaring the crap out of me every time he was on screen; me losing almost four hours of my life watching the ceremony.

Things I Plan On Doing This Summer

1. Go to Disneyland with my brother.
2. Make my brother buy me funnel cakes, pretzels and balloons, as well as take my picture with Disney characters, at Disneyland.
3. Embarrass my brother by wearing a Mickey Mouse T-shirt and a fanny pack at Disneyland.
4. Trick my brother into riding a scary ride, and enjoy watching him scream like a girl, at Disneyland.
5. Visit Dani in Orange County and embarrass her by taking pictures of locations seen in "The O.C."
6. Sit in the shade, covered in sunscreen, at the beach with Dani, refusing to be in direct sunlight for more than 15 minutes.
7. Go to a professional baseball game.
8. Go to a Spurs playoff game (if you feel like buying me tickets, go for it).
9. Spend as much time as possible away from Abilene.

That's all I can come up with for now. Most of this is contingent upon my vacation request being approved, but with the stressful work environment and a creepy weather environment (see below), my birthday (the date of the Carlson Birthday Disneyland Extravaganza) can't get here soon enough.

The sky is filled with dirt:

I bet even Jesus would weep if he read this.

The Arts page for my university newspaper has been hijacked by illiterate hipsters. I know this because of this stunning display of inadequacy (something that is, apparently, supposed to be a review of "Pan's Labyrinth"). Thanks to Facebook, I learned that this contributing "writer" is dating a guy named Tripp, who contributed part two of his enthralling three-part look at the Wii to the same page. They aren't journalism majors, and they aren't staff writers. But they've somehow earned prime real estate on the page too many people who cared too much about movies spent too many hours working to make better. I shouldn't care, but it still makes me want to weep. Weep for humanity, weep for the future, weep for my school. Weep.

So go ahead -- read it. What isn't fun about criticizing sophomore English majors who think "Set in 1944 in the depths of a Spanish forest is Guillermo Del Toro's latest film, Pan's Labyrinth" is a good lede?

My favorite responses from people I sent the article to:

Malinda: "Wow. I was bored two sentences into that. It reads like a research paper for Freshman English."

Dani: "The plot thickens ?!!!!!!!!!!!!!! That sentence alone should be enough to give Doc (journalism professor) a coronary."

Daniel: "Did you send me that so I would be upset? So I would hate this stupid girl who wrote the review? So her absolutely stunning lack of talent and inability to write a good sentence would worm its way into my mind and render me unable to write on my own? I could go through every sentence of her review and refute it either based on style or her reading of the film. Every. Sentence."

See? It's fun.

There is nothing not funny about this video.