It was bound to happen sooner or later: the moment when I would stop finding anything funny on this big, spinning ball of crazy. Charlie Sheen is on tour. One of his stops is Radio City Music Hall. A Pole Dancers for Feminine Hygiene convention could not sully the venue more.
Politicians inflict death from a thousand cuts on labor and teachers' unions while the architects of the Wall Street collapse collect bonuses and enjoy tax breaks. It takes 441,000 people working for $50,000 per year to match the compensation of the top 25 hedge fund managers.
Japan is hit by an earthquake, tsunami and nuclear emergency. Reporters excitedly point to graphics showing fallout has reached several U.S. states...before explaining how low the levels are. (Did you know that bananas are radioactive? Seems Americans are getting hit with what's known as a banana equivalent dose.) Japan's tragedy becomes titillating infotainment. Even PBS gets in on the act, cobbling together footage and rushing out Japan's Killer Quake as a tony addition to the disaster porn playing on all networks 24/7.
Now here's the gift from God that pulls this all together. Angelina Jolie is in Libya. (I know something's going on there but news about the Middle East makes me sleepy.) She's undoubtedly doing something humanitarian there and I applaud her. But the thing that's getting noticed is her new tattoo. In light of what I've written so far, I should be sickened. But I somehow end up Googling latitudes and longitudes for the better part of an hour. You know what this means...
I'm back, baby! Angelina has lifted me out of my existential funk and taught me some basic geography at the same time. I am energized by celebrity and by my absurd fascination with same. Hey, whatever works, right? In case you've forgotten, Jolie has covered her left upper arm with the global coordinates of her brood's birthplaces. So there were six.
But now there are seven. With the exception of Sky News, most media outlets are ignoring her work for refugees and concentrating on that little patch of skin. Forums are filled with those attempting to parse the numbers. From my own sleuthing, I have gleaned that the latitude is North 35 degrees, 10 minutes, 44 seconds.
The rest of the tat is hard to see. Latitude's not much help without longitude. It could be in Iraq. Or Cyprus. Or the ocean. One person thinks it's in Cancun because the Jolie-Pitts went there for vacation. Since it's pretty clear the latitude starts with W(West), my theory is that it points to City Hall in Shawnee, Oklahoma-- Brad Pitt's hometown.
In any case, she's going to need a couple more lines of body art to cover the last of the lasered but still faintly visible Billy Bob tattoo. Remember the witchy S&M girl who kissed her brother at the Oscars and wore a vial of Thornton's blood around her neck? Probably not. She's done a lot of good deeds and collected a passel of children since then.
I believe this is all part of Angelina's re-branding effort. She takes branding quite literally. But in this crazy universe, I suppose it's possible she has no sense of direction or memory for numbers. Maybe she punches that new code into her GPS to get to her favorite Arby's. Stranger things have happened.
More nonsense:
Angelina Jolie, Beautiful Freakshow
High Brow, Low Brow, Meet-me-in-the-Middle BrowLabels: Angelina Jolie, Charlie Sheen, humor, Japan, kathcom, magick sandwich, sarcasm, satire, tattoo, Wall Street
