As we divest ourselves of once familiar physical objects - digitize and dematerialize - we approach a 'Star Trek' future in which everything can be accessed from the fourth dimension with a few clicks or terse audibles.

The lies the government and media tell are amplifications of the lies we tell ourselves. To stop being conned, stop conning yourself.

On August 28,2010, Fox News messiah Glenn Beck hosted a 'Restoring Honor' revival meeting featuring sexy guest star Sarah Palin, much as Bob Hope would roll out Raquel Welch in white go-go boots on his U.S.O. tours to give our fighting men a morale lift in their khakis.

Feature-length film comedy is harder to pull off than the episodic sitcom - it doesn't have the same factory machinery up and running, teams of writers putting familiar characters through permutations - but that doesn't explain the widening quality gap that makes movie humor look like a genetic defective.

It's the contemporary woman that movies don't know what to do with, other than bathe her in a bridal glow in romantic comedies where both the romance and the comedy are artificial sweeteners.

The days when the words 'Hollywood actor' framed Ronald Reagan like bunny fingers as an ID tag and an implied insult seem far-off and quaint: nearly everybody in politics - candidate, consultant, pundit, and Tea Party crowd extra alike - is an actor now, a shameless ham in a hoked-up reality series that never stops.

Bad acting comes in many bags, various odors. It can be performed by cardboard refugees from an Ed Wood movie, reciting their dialogue off an eye chart, or by hopped-up pros looking to punch a hole through the fourth wall from pure ballistic force of personality, like Joe Pesci in a bad mood. I can respect bad acting that owns its own style.

It's the contemporary woman that movies don't know what to do with, other than bathe her in a bridal glow in romantic comedies where both the romance and the comedy are artificial sweeteners.