"We salute your war of terror!"

Phew, busy week. Just a quick ditty today: saw Borat recently. Let me put it this way: I think it's quite possible I squirted kidney bile through my left eye from the intense abdominal pressure caused by laughing too hard, for far too long.

Borat is shameless and belligerent, like a meth hooker throwing her rotted teeth at you in the street; it's angry and cruel like a Christian wielding a chainsaw at an abortion clinic, and god damn is it funny.

Sure, it's hardly an artistic masterpiece (I'd bet about half is likely staged) and you'll probably cringe like a baby and cover your face for a good half of it, but I think Borat may just be the finest execution of gallows humour ever put on film. Forget jokes about dicks in apple strudels a la American Pie - Borat shows you that dick, refuses to wash it for months, and then uses it to write its name across your face with apple crust while you sleep. This is the big leagues, kiddies.

The best scene in the movie is a play in three acts (you'll know it when you see it) that ramps up the insanity in perfect doses and finally ends with gleeful devastation in the festering cultural mecca of our time: the hotel-convention-hall business luncheon. My head is exploding just thinking about it.

Some critics are trying to label Cohen's movie as a grandiose experiment in intellectual irony, as if Cohen were some hipster university professor teaching a class about social norms and how they pertain to fart jokes. Having seen the film, it seems they're missing the point. Sure, there is plenty of fodder for the Mensa-lites to jerk off to here, but Borat is first and foremost a movie about human stupidity in every form, and expounded in every way, by a single, stupid man. The fact that Borat's missteps manage to reveal as much about our own idiocy as they do his is just a side-benefit. In fact, I'd bet the people who laughed the hardest at the screening I saw weren't laughing with Borat, they were absolutely laughing at him - and that's just the way Borat would have liked it.

Paid slaves needed

What the hell is up with the onslaught of $25 writing jobs being offered everywhere? Do these people think we writers are all imbeciles - word-monkeys if you will - just begging for the glorious chance that someone will have the sense of charity in themselves to print our work for free? Or that $25 is a suitable payment for what's likely an entire day or half-day of work?

What's worse is there must be people out there willing to work for such pittances, since these types of listings are growing in number instead of going away (Craigslist, for example, is constantly swamped with these horrifying, yet strangely comical listings). To all you amateurs aspiring to become real writers, crap like this does not get your foot in the crack of any doors that are worth stepping through. Do you really think your contacts will respect you for surrendering hours of your time and effort to work for peanuts? Not a chance. They'll praise the day they met such a sucker and just go on shitting out their spare dimes into your hand. It pains me to think how badly these people are getting ripped off, and they probably don't even know it.

Just check out this listing off of Craigslist:

Research and editing company requires part time and full time writers for freelance work. Work is done from home, but you will be required to visit the office at Yonge and Bloor to pick up work and return materials. Good pay for the right candidate. Must have university degree; Masters preferred.

* Job location is Toronto
* Compensation: Approx $15/250 words

Let's see here, travel and MASTER'S degree wanted, all for the outstanding pay rate of $15 per 250 words? Now that's what I call return on your education investment - grad students, bow down in surrender! Those MAs sure ain't what they used to be...

Of course these penny-stories and slave-wage writing jobs are hardly bastions of literature or editing and so don't take away from the professional writers, it's just disheartening to see the craft of writing cheapened in such a grotesque way. For the love of god, demand more money for your work, even if you're just a kid with a funny story - your writing talents and ideas are uncommon and valuable!