Well, I have to say that 2007 so far has been a REAL PILE OF SHIT, people! Did I not demand not so long ago that the world needed to get better? Well, it hasn't. Stupid world.

Don't get me wrong. Nothing that horrible happened to me or anything. But there was a definite lack of awesomeness this weekend that frankly I resent. It's starting to piss me off.

For one thing, as we often do on Friday evenings, we rented a couple of horrible movies. My tens of faith-ish readers have long known about my near-fetish for appallingly bad movies, and so we figured we were in for a banner night with a double bill consisting of the remake of The Wicker Man and the screamy-meme-y Snakes on a Plane.

Snakes on a Plane featured things like a soon-to-be-dead chick with great big naked tits and a guy getting his dick bit by a reptile.

What does it say about The Wicker Man when I tell you that it could have been vastly improved by both of these things?

I never saw the original Wicker Man, but I am reliably informed that it featured all kinds of gratuitous nudity. WELL, NOT THE REMAKE, BUSTER! And the reason why is clear: director Neil LaBute, famous for such life-affirming works such as In the Company of Men, simply loathes people. All people. Only a colossal misanthrope could take a cult movie noted for its gratuitous nudity and remove all of it in favor of scenes with the ham-scented Nic Cage pointing a gun at a pagan on a bicycle, screaming "STEP AWAY FROM THE BIKE!"

You'll note that I didn't warn you about possible spoilers. That's because I don't want anyone to watch this movie. If you read that and got pissed off, thinking, Well, shit, I'm not going to watch that now, then good. Don't watch it! Nobody should watch it! Ever! It's fucking horrible! It will make you shit out your soul!

Here's another movie-ruining moment! You'll never believe who the Wicker Man is! It's Nic Cage! They burn him at the end! You can hardly see it coming, especially if you're dead or stupid or in a coma or have never once watched that VH1 show that counts down all those old horror movies and gives away all the endings anyway! You'll be shocked and stunned! Mostly at the incredibly laughable acting! Remember Vampire's Kiss? Compared to this film, Nic Cage was sleepwalking in that fucker!

Jesus fucking Christ. When they burned his stupid ass at the end, all the pagan chicks didn't even do that crazy-ass dancing. They just stood there and grinned. God.

Things didn't improve on Saturday when the wife and I went to, Lord help me, Target. (Look, don't ask.)

This required, for one thing, driving up to a section of town known as Northgate, home of the hideous and unspeakable Northgate Mall, which is where fun goes to die. I have it on good authority that at Northgate Mall, the Orange Julius outlet takes pride in pissing in each and every drink. They recently tried to spruce up the place for the holidays by putting in video monitors playing footage of three-legged dogs fucking, but the customers didn't respond well, and there was a nasty streak of suicides as a result. So now the monitors just display text messages like "WHY?" and "YOU ARE ALWAYS ALONE."

Across the street from this Gehenna is Target, and we joyously crawled up the clogged parking driveway, dodging hunted-looking customers and erratic cars before we finally found a parking place at the C3a1B level, darting into a space that was unfortunately occupied by a crack-smoking indigent; we crushed his pelvis against the wall. "YA CRUSHED MY JUNK!" he screamed, and I threw a traffic cone at his head as we locked the car, bip-bip! "Don't scratch our fender!" I yelled. He died moments later, causing a Target employee to rush out and staple a "FLOOR MODEL SALE" sign to his chest, and a minor bidding war broke out among onlookers who all wanted a discounted, slightly damaged, slightly dead junkie corpse at post-holiday prices.

Inside this horrendous place, row after row of denuded racks faced us, and blank-eyed shoppers pushed carts to and fro (and up and down--Target features a shopping cart-sized escalator, lest we consumers be forced to actually ever lift anything), loaded down with things like blister-packed six-packs of extension cords, blister-packed spousal battery complaints, blister-packed blister cream and blister-packed fake blisters. Near every checkout counter was a shocking pile of undifferentiated merchandise, all either returned, rejected or simply dumped incorrectly by some second-thought shopper, and the employees clambered over the heaping mounds of horrible crap like second-string Sherpas, calling to each other in their retail dialect: "Munchin' Purple pants 14! Three-oh!" "That's Joanie. Send it to teen humpwares."

After a long time, we got home. We of course immediately went to the nearest bar. "You guys aren't watching the Seahawks game?" asked our good bartender. "It's halftime," I said hollowly. "I really hope they do it this year . . . " he said, and I snapped, "Are you kidding?" I let him trail off into more feeble nonsense. We had two drinks apiece while I thought about how 2007 was really twisting my dick already. When we left, our bartender said, "Gonna go watch the fourth quarter, huh?" "Yeah," I replied gloomily.

Which we did. And you know what? That was pretty funny. I feel better already.