This weekend I finally got around to seeing Avatar. It’s only been out for a month, but it feels like I’m behind about 95% of the country. I also bought Beck’s Modern Guilt on vinyl. Although the two are seemingly disparate items, I came out of Cameron’s 2.5+ hour Tour d’FX resonating more and more with the the postmodern hippie’s title track:

Modern guilt – I’m staring at nothing
Modern guilt – I’m under lock and key…

Don’t know what I’ve done but I feel ashamed…

Modern guilt is all in our hands
Modern guilt won’t get me to bed
Say what you will
Smoking my cigarette
Don’t know what I’ve done but I feel afraid

I thoroughly enjoyed the movie, and much has already been said about it on this blog, but all I felt leaving the movie was intense guilt dropped in my hands… and I wasn’t really sure what I’d done. Now maybe that’s more of a reflection of my own psyche than anything else, but the pairing of the two struck me.

Also it’s pretty sweet how Sigourney Weaver’s character lights up a “cigarette” the second she gets back from the “natural air” of Pandora into the manufactured breathable air of their facility…