Thanks to Google, Joan Miro, Spanish surrealist.
Thanks to Julian Sanchez, about whose children I believe Chuck Mangione waxed rhapsodic, Amon Tobin; in particular, Bricolage‘s jazz-trance tracks. That also cued me in to Google’s music search (example), which will give you direct links to the iTunes Music Store.
Schweet.
Don’t worry, we won’t suffer the little children any food deprivation in this country, either.
What gets me is that it manifestly is not the children’s fault. Six and younger really can’t feed themselves, and are utterly dependent on what the parent brings into the home. They aren’t at school spending their lunch money on sugary sodas. They also don’t have spare cash with which to buy things.
So the best they can come up with is kids being exposed to sugary cereal commercials, and again–whining for sugary cereals only works if the parent, an allegedly competent and independent adult, is powerless to buy anything other than what the kids cry for.
My neighbors had this dog, a yellow lab. That dog had the begging thing down to an art form. She would furrow her brow, cock one eybrow in piteous need, and lift one paw, haltingly. I would laugh at her, pet her, say, “Nice try, but I’m gonna get you on a 412,” and would eat my food with greater relish, not sharing it with the dog. Why? Because when I cried for Count Chocula, my parents would say “nice try” and then make fun of me if I caterwauled about it.
I quickly got the picture and didn’t caterwaul, and soon the dog learned not to bother begging from me.
Yeah, it takes some stamina, but it is possible to do.
Two recent stories, thanks to Ginger and Sploid:
Hospitals changing to accommodate increase in morbidly obese patients
Vegas’s new Hefty Ambulance
They kinda speak for themselves, but I also realized this morning that I am down 17 pounds from my peak weight, about 5 or 6 years ago. Put that in yer middle-aged spread and smoke it.
Dammit. I guess I should break down and start working my way through Solaris in Polish. His Memoirs Found in a Bathtub are particularly relevant with the new gargantuan security state Bush is creating.
Hot legislative action, that is.
Apparently not content to wait for the day when an openly Christian man (because women should stay in the kitchen making babies, which would be unhygenic if you believed in that Satan-inspired germ “theory” of disease) can be elected President, the nation’s evangelicals (read: people so insecure they can’t be Christian if anyone around them deviates in the slightest) demand that the Republicans do more to push their agenda.
Wow, we get a couple of extra stem cell lines and it’s the End Times? What about the delay of Plan B, various wars to ensure the State of Israel fulfills the preconditions for the End of the World as described in Revelations, federal funding for religious organizations, and official support for denying various swaths of science?
To the extent their agenda has failed in the legislative branch when compared to the executive branch, it goes to show how simultaneously corrupting and centralizing our system is. The Republicans are trying to buy a permanent majority with an expansion of government that would make a socialist blush…but that also means the evangelicals, stuck at most at 39% on issues like abortion, won’t get all they want lest it disturb the electoral success of Republicans.
It also means that if we elected a Libertarian government in the next election, you needn’t worry about government being reduced to a tenth of its current size. In fact, I’d be willing to wager that government wouldn’t be cut by a tenth, though it might actually be reduced in any political scenario that sees libertarians becoming popular enough to take over (such a scenario is pretty unlikely, as most people would rather believe that a great bearded man in the sky and a great clean-shaven man in the White House can make everything better for them without effort on their part, as long as neither seriously interfere in their ability to chase venal pleasures). The current political system rewards the buying of votes.
But an awful lot of evangelical votes have been bought, so they should count their filthy lucre and enjoy a nice, warm cup of shut the fudge* up.
*Sanitized for Tony Perkins’s protection.
Just a few days ago it wasn’t getting out of the 30s, and now it’s 61 after midnight and going to be 70 tomorrow. The cherry tree outside my apartment is blooming and the birds are out in force. I know March comes in like a lion, but of the big cats, this is resembling a cheetah.
I did something I really rarely do. I watched a movie based on mumblings and automatic recommendations with no prior knowledge of it, and then watched it through again with the commentary track. Partially, that’s because Kevin Smith did it with Richard Kelly.
I’m not going to review or describe the movie–it is not for everybody. Most people I know who should see it will already have seen it, because I’m always suspicious of cult stuff or critic-approved movies (I find Woody Allen completely overrated–amusing like The New Yorker, not hilarious and deep like Brazil). So when people tell me I’ve got to see something, I tend to resist.
Fortunately after the hype dies down I’ll give something a chance when it looks like it’s going to last, and I’m always happy to admit when I’ve been wrong. Firefly was one; Donnie Darko is another. So if you tend to like the films I like, get this and see it. Particularly if you liked Brazil, you’ll like this.
So it’s not for Ginger, with whom I was discussing Brazil today.
Update: I forgot to mention–I focused in on the “Eye” imagery in the director’s cut, and the computer code that goes by is a stack trace from either a Mac OS X box or a NeXT box–lots of references to the Mach microkernel. Sorry, Linus.
Somehow, as often happens with my friend Todd, we got on a search for something cheesy and random. In this case, we got stuck perusing the entertaining TV Cream site’s theme song collection. Sadly, not all of them are the original recordings, but some are or are close enough for government work.
One bit of cheese that was too much dairy even for Todd was the Wonder Woman theme. I was never a fan of comic books in general, nor Wonder Woman in particular, but I did watch a bunch of episodes of hte Linda Carter series on weekday afternoons in elementary and middle school (you would not believe how little there was on TV in those days, particularly living in Taliban-wannabe South Carolina–we actually thought Diff’rent Strokes was entertaining, and not in a retro-camp kind of way). Being the only really breakout comic featuring a female superhero, it has an iconic status far beyond its sales, deeply intertwined with the modern feminist movement–none of which I was aware of until much later. However, that piano bass line is one of the underrated masterpieces of the TV genre, right up there with Barney Miller, and always gets me rockin’. Unfortunately the rest of the song doesn’t hold up to it, but that just served as a vehicle for me to remark that Joss Whedon, who Todd knew from my relentless flacking of Serenity, was hired to write and direct a Wonder Woman movie.
This of course led to a hunt for who was going to play Wonder Woman (nothing decided yet, sorry fellas hoping for hot actress shots) and seeing a bunch of interviews with Joss about it. In it he mentioned something I’d wondered about: he was definitely going to work in the bracelets, an updated version of the tights (well, duh), the golden lasso that makes people tell the truth, above-normal strength (no flying, possibly jumping), and the invisible plane if he could work it in. He mentioned that a key element would be that it’s an origins story, and it would treat Wonder Woman as a young woman or late teen new to our world, and coming to grips with its less savory aspects.
Of course, he gave no specifics and at this stage of the writing there may not be (m)any. But it set me to wondering tonight, as my brain did a weird turn as it is wont to do: how could you piece a story together that has a woman acquire or already have super-strength, get bracelets, the lariat, and maybe a jet–and want to cover herself in something at least somewhat patriotic (to the USA or some star-spangled red-white-and-blue country–sorry, Canadians).
So here’s my guess, based on pure speculation and almost no familiarity or great caring about the original material:
Sandy Smith 