Working On My Avatar Butt

Going to the movies used to be fun, until recently when all you see in the previews are little sneak-peeks of the world ending. The previews just make you want to end it now because, guess what? Tomorrow looks horrible. Humans being farmed for blood, meteors crashing into earth, biochemical warfare… Jodie Foster is going to make a killing in the next few years playing her standard frantic roles. I, personally, am kind of an old-fashioned gal. What if I just want to see a Rom-Com and not something that brings back that familiar feeling of Y2K panic? I’ve burned a hole in my When Harry Met Sally DVD. Get to work, Jennifer and Julia! Get off your ass, Cameron, and give me a mindlessly stupid love story. If movie previews are any indication of what’s to come, the future is exceedingly frightening and I don’t wanna go.


Two nights ago I saw Avatar, which was a surprising move for someone who normally hates all things futuristic and/or Sci-Fi. But let me tell ya: It was amazing. So amazing in fact that I’m now blogging about Avatar, which is by far the nerdiest thing I have EVER done. I will say this: it helped me on a very personal level. My new year’s resolution is now officially to get my butt as tight as an Avatar’s. The problem with Avatar, aside from granting Michelle Rodriguez yet another opportunity to wear a soiled wife beater in the jungle and use dykie one-liners while doing so, was that it made me hate humans. Here you have Pandora, a utopian indiglo forest on a faraway planet, flowing with a network of the positive energy of all living things and inhabited by docile, gentle creatures. And what do the humans do? Bomb the shit out of it. Blow it to smithereens. (Side note: I would hope that by the year 2154 we’d have something cooler to scream in battle than “GET SOME!!!”) It’s no big secret that humans are inherently greedy, but if they could stand to ruin a place like Pandora, Earth doesn’t have a fighting chance.


I am afraid for my own personal success in the future, because I am already struggling with today’s technological challenges. For example: Redbox. Redbox has just bent me over and had me. It all started one evening when I was feeling particularly techy and decided to rent a movie from a Redbox outside of a 7-11. I ran into my first challenge when I was unable to figure out how to get a synopsis of the available movies, and was thus left with just the title and the cast. After much deliberation, I chose something with a pleasant title and an array of Hollywood’s finest. Long story short, it turned out to be a horror movie that I watched alone in the dark and had nightmares about for a whole week. So that was killer. Three weeks passed before I remembered I had to return the stupid thing, and there began the real trail of tears. I went to one 7-11 and three McDonalds in one day, an afternoon that would be completely inexcusable under any other circumstances, trying to return the movie. All Redboxes were full. I then sat on hold with Redbox Customer Service for 30 minutes, listening to their recording that said, “Did you know you can return your movie to any Redbox location? Now that’s convenience with a capital ‘C’!!!” No, that’s an infuriating lie. When I finally got a representative, I told him flat-out that I would not be paying any fees because of the emotional trauma that my afternoon of McDonalds hopping had caused me, and he waived the charges. Victorious, except that I still have yet to return the movie. See?? I’m hopeless. If I’m expected to wrangle a pterodactyl and ride it bareback anytime soon, I’m doomed.


Luckily for people like me, there is still a semblance of normalcy in the world. I still have the option of making my deposits with a teller at the bank and having human interaction. I can still read a newspaper, go hiking without seeing anything man-made for miles, and travel to parts of the world untainted by “progress” and the problems that go with it. Those things are important to me. And as for next time I decide to rent a movie from Redbox? I’ll just let my Avatar handle that.