The holiday weekend was one swingin’ time, if your name happened to be James Cameron. Avatar made such a huge pile of money that one of these days it might yet break even, and the movie’s eye candy was so lush most critics were ready to overlook the plot, the dialog, and the fact that Pandora’s natives looked like the result of a horribly misguided recombinant DNA experiment involving Thundercats and Smurfs. (And damn sexy ThunderSmurfs, at that.) But not everyone was in a forgiving mood. Consider Reel Loop’s story of a Utah man who lost his job after telling customers he thought Avatar blew luminous blue chunks in glorious 3-D:

People were calling up and saying that the movie was the best thing they have ever seen in their entire lives. One person actually said, ‘I wish I lived on Pandora. They are so nice there. The movie was so real.’ Really? The blue people seemed nice? You want to live on that planet with the weird rhinoceroses? I told them I’d book a ticket with Nucking Futs Airlines.”

Now, I have doubts—grave, grave doubts—about whether this story is actually true. But it sounds frighteningly plausible, yes? And, really, not all that frightening. Face it: If you’re working for a guy who thinks calling a movie “the best thing I’ve seen since G.I. Joe” constitutes high praise, unemployment can only be a step up.