Boom, boom, boom... not going back to my room!

This sounds like one of those things in the prologue to a mega-disaster film. Clintonville, a small town in Wisconsin, has been experiencing odd booming sounds over the past three days, variably described as sounding like distant thunder, a door slamming, or and things like that.

Experts have been looking into the possibility of methane leaks in the town dump, unauthorized mining activities, and explosives usage, and I guess even fracking. But they haven't figured it out.

I hope it turns out to be nothing (or something to which it can be clearly attributed and then stopped), but for now the possibilities are — if media have taught us anything — as ominous as they are endless.

Mmm.... Bacon. 

Off the top of my head, I'm imagining the scenarios to 2012, Tremors (great film, by the way), or Gasland (the fracking* documentary), or a South Park episode on lactose intolerance.

* Autocorrect is apparently in the pocket of Big Gas, because it keeps changing fracking to tracking. 

...

Getting ready for 2012...

Remember the movie 2012, where John Cusack and his brood barely escape Los Angeles in a small plane just as major pieces of the L.A. Basin crack apart and fall into the sea?

Well, this bit of news — and pictures like that above — had images from that flick popping into my head. (Images from 2012 really disturb me.)

Indeed, this stuff about a 600-foot stretch of San Pedro's Paseo del Mar breaking up and falling into the ocean seemed an eery foreshadowing of the grandest snuff film ever made (all but 0.0001% of the population outside Africa dies — though they continue to have excellent cell phone service up until the very end).

...

Stop destroying my home, people!

I'm still reeling from the vivid scene in 2012 where we see Honolulu in flames as the extinct Diamond Head erupts anew and spills lava all over the Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf I frequent. (And I live about a mile or so inland from where this scene was "filmed.")

Seeing your own 'hood get destroyed on the big screen can be a very unsettling experience, so you can understand my uneasiness with all the war talk of late that involves North Korea. This site, talking about "how North Korean artillery could level Seoul in two hours," shows the effects of a small nuclear detonation right in my neighborhood. My apartment is located right in that little crater of destruction. So's the Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf I most frequent in Seoul.

Thank you very much. I hope my tenants aren't reading this. [HT to Joshua at OFK]

If it's Tuesday, it must be one of the Koreas...

While the Chosun Ilbo reports that John Cusack was appearing at the COEX to promote his upcoming film, 2012, it appears that John Cusack himself was in North Korea doing... God knows what.

Quoting the MTV Movies Blog:

Barack Obama has at least one passionate backer in Twitter-Wood for his Chicago Olympics pitch. Jeremy Piven tweeted support for his home city today, as the International Olympic Committee makes its final decision in Copenhagen. John Cusack, meanwhile, continued his intercontinental rounds and tweets today upon leaving North Korea for Japan, though it's anyone's guess how he got in there in the first place.

Indeed, here is the tweet from John Cusack himself:

In north Korea heading to japan -- feel like I'm being shuttled in and out of country s after international incidents...

Call South Korea "North Korea" and you may just have an international incident on your hands, Mr Cusack.

So, um... What's up with that? Is John Cusack just horribly confused thanks to jet lag? Is he just geographically impaired?

Or (and this is my theory), did the recent death of John Hughes make movie buff Kim Jong-il all nostalgic for 1980s depictions of tidily presented teen angst and so he kidnapped Mr Cusack with the intention of making sequels to Better Off Dead, Say Anything, and The Sure Thing*?

UPDATE (November 25, 2010):
I guess ex-Governor of Alaska, former Vice Presidential candidate, and future Republican nominee for President Sarah Palin and I are kindred spirits. Just as I often quote lines from John Cusack's flicks (e.g., "This is America, you can go anywhere"), Sarah Palin quotes lines from John Cusack's tweets.

* An all-time Kushibo favorite.