Web Log Archive, September 23rd through October 6th, 2007

Saturday, October 6th, 2007

Every six months or so, I rent four movies at a time (from Sunday through Wednesday at the local video store, it's 'rent two, get two free').
Usually, I go to the entertainment/video section of the local fish wrap online, where I scroll through the reviews to make a list of any flicks which sound interesting and are rated positively by the reviewer. I realize that this is a quite unimaginative strategy but I'll pursue it until I can think of a better one. I look at it this way: if I can save even one poor bastard from renting a barker...then my eight bucks will not have been wasted! :<-)
Although I'd describe myself as one of Jim Carrey's fans, I must opine that, except for his early efforts, like The Mask, Dumb & Dumber and (even) Liar Liar, he's released some dreadful products! Continuing this ten year pattern is his latest: The Number 23. I'm not sure I have the language skills to describe just what is so bad about this movie, but I'll try. It has no pacing...no momentum. There is no (fwoabw) 'chemistry' between the actors. It's like each cast member is performing a play of his or her own. The script is painful...the plot is dreary. Near the end of its ninety-five minutes (which feel more like nine hundred-fifty) there is no reason to care about anyone or anything in the story. Jim is still a beautiful physical specimen (at age forty-five) and the videography is not without some sparkle; but neither of these considerations can rescue this misfire.
The second of my four bargain rentals is Fracture, featuring the great Sir Anthony Hopkins, who will be seventy on the last day of this year. The master does not disappoint but, to echo someone's comments on IMDB, 'he acted too well for the script!' It's not that there's anything overtly bad about this movie. At nearly two hours, it is skillfully paced. It is suspenseful. The interplay between Hopkins and Ryan Gosling (a man less than half the age of his co-star) is strong! At the risk of 'giving something away', my only disappointment is with the plot itself: that, in the end, 'Justice' prevails!  

Friday, October 5th, 2007

Today, a Kentucky jury returned a multi-million dollar damage award against McDonald's Restaurants in a case which seems to illustrate, better than any other, why Bush was elected twice. Even if I live another sixty-one years, I don't expect to ever hear a story with a cast of dimmer bulbs.
Now...at one level, there's nothing funny about this story! One poor slob (a forty-three year-old exterminator, by profession) is serving a five year prison sentence for his role in the caper while the instigator of the whole silly, sorry mess has, very likely, already been wrongly judged innocent by a jury of his peers! The story is so bizarre that several Internet 'Comment Contributors'  have suggested that it must itself be an elaborate hoax to 'extort' monetary damages from the nation's premiere fast-food chain. And such conspiracy theorists must not be blamed for wanting to superimpose 'design' upon this chaos! For no one, after all, wants to believe that God loves stupid people so much that He has decided to create them in batches...like French Fries!   


"Everything is by the book. 'This is how you serve it. This is how you do it. If you follow the book, then you're OK.' I believe the caller picked a fast food restaurant because he knew, once you got them away from that book---once it was something outside the manual or the procedures---that they would be lost." Clinical Psychologist Jeff Gardere

Thursday, October 4th, 2007                         Happy Birthday, Bing!

"In the Sixty Minutes interview with Steve Kroft, Clarence Thomas spoke of his experience at Yale Law School, which set aside a number of slots for minority students. He said he sees his Yale law degree as "tainted"...worth less than a white student's degree. But all Yale gave Thomas was the opportunity. He had to earn the degree! He overlooks his own brains and hard work and resents the fact that he couldn't get a job despite graduating in the middle of his class. Maybe prospective employers thought his white classmates were smarter, or maybe they just didn't want to hire a black man. But even if the whole world undervalued Clarence Thomas, why does he so undervalue himself that he keeps his law diploma in the basement with a "15 cents" sticker on the frame? Thomas really should work out these issues for himself. Instead, he seems to be doing his best to save future generations of disadvantaged minorities from the indignity and shame of a Yale law degree."
Eugene Robinson

Wednesday, October 3rd, 2007

Administrators at the Courthouse in Marshalltown, Iowa had resorted to desperate measures to thwart a rash of toilet paper thefts.

Then, all law-abiding citizens were relieved to learn that one Suzanne Marie Butts had been arrested for the heinous crimes. She was apprehended after someone "spotted [her] leaving with three rolls of the necessary restroom product."

Tuesday, October 2nd, 2007

allposters.com

  

Monday, October 1st, 2007                            Happy Fifty-Nine, Brian!

"The Iranian president impressed me as someone sincerely devout in his religious faith, yet rather superficial in his understanding and inclined to twist his faith tradition in ways to correspond with his pre-conceived ideological positions. He was rather evasive when it came to specific questions and was not terribly coherent, relying more on platitudes than analysis, and would tend to get his facts wrong. In short, he reminded me in many respects of President George W Bush."
Stephen Zunes

Sunday, September 30th, 2007              

For What's It's Worth

Ever since I learned to feed myself, I've been fascinated by what I'll call 'contrary notions'. The more counterintuitive an idea might seem at first exposition, the more likely I am to "check it out"! Maybe it's got something to do with my having been dropped on my head at age one in an Acme Market in North Jersey. This is an inclination which has led me, at times, to behavior from which I consider myself lucky to have emerged alive. Here in my dotage, I am much less exploratory in action but all the more likely to be bored senseless by 'common sense' notions and all the more likely to be intrigued by the intellectual adventurism of someone like Shankar Vedantam, who writes about 'human behavior' for the Washington Post. Here's an excerpt from his latest article: 

"...a paradox involving happiness: Americans report being generally happier than people from, say, Japan or Korea, but it turns out that they are less likely to feel good when positive things happen and more likely to feel bad when negative things befall them. Put another way, a hidden price of being happier on average is that you put your short-term contentment at risk, because being happy raises your expectations about being happy. When good things happen, they don't count for much because they are what you expect! When bad things happen, you temporarily feel terrible, because you've gotten used to being happy!
'I have some friends who are very well off and have great lives,' reports a psychologist from UC Riverside. 'If you ask them, they will say, "I am very happy", but the most minor negative event will make them unhappy. If they are traveling first class, they get upset if they have to wait in line. They live in a mansion, but a little noise from their neighbors infuriates them, because their expectations are so high. Their overall happiness is high, but they have lots of daily annoyances.'

Yet as I ruminate about ole Shankar's piece, the more it seems a mere dismal, dry and prosaic regurgitation of a timeless insight:

That 'this is not Burger King...you can't have it your way!' That 'one man's ceiling is another man's floor'. That 'one man's garbage is another man's treasure'. That 'I cried because I had no shoes until I saw a man who had no feet'. That, as my baby sister is wont to say, 'when all else fails, lower your expectations'. That, 'he who cries the loudest is often the least hurt'. That, 'who goes out for wool often comes home shorn'. Or, simply, 'Count yer blessings' and 'Kwitcherbellyakin' '. Or, my personal favorite: 'When there is peace, the warlike man attacks himself '.  ;-)

Saturday, September 29th, 2007

Can you say: "Slow News Day"?

"We don't buy the best toilet paper. Someone is going to walk in on him...and we'll catch him!"
 Allen Buechel, Fond du Lac County, Wisconsin

Friday, September 28th, 2007                     Happy Fifty-Seven, Mari!

"I thought somebody had taken her or she was in an accident. I thought all kinds of things. And the only way that I was able to not crumple up in a little corner was to think, you know, the least damaging to anything was that maybe she just didn't want to be around me for a while, but I still wanted her found. I let them search the house. I told them they didn't have to have a warrant for anything, just ask."  Tom Rider

"...he was sitting down to take a lie-detector test at the sheriff's office when officers told him the car had been found."

Thursday, September 27th, 2007

Here's a silly one that's been around for a while...in many versions:

'...a Guy's Point of View'

1: I won't complain that you left the toilet seat down if you won't complain that I left it up! 
2: If I ask what's wrong and you say "nothing", I'll conclude that nothing's wrong.
3: I AM in shape! 'Round' is a shape!
4: News Flash: if you ask a question to which you don’t want an answer...you might get an answer you don’t want.
5: Crying is blackmail! 
6: Sunday is 'Sports On TV'. Please talk only during commercials. 
7: When we go anywhere, anything you wanna wear is OK. 
8: Shopping is not a sport! You've got enough clothes...and too many shoes!
9: Anything I said more than three days ago is inadmissible in an argument.
10: It's never going to be like it was during the first four months (so quit whining to your girlfriend)!
11: You're not a Victoria’s Secret model and I'm not a soap opera guy.
12: Don’t cut your hair. The reason guys don't wanna get married is that married women get short haircuts!
13: If you think you’re fat...you probably are.
---If I find myself sleeping on the couch tonight, I'll pretend I'm camping.

Wednesday, September 26th, 2007          Olivia Neutron Bomb is Fifty-Nine

"I'd like to thank my family for loving me and taking care of me. And the rest of the world can kiss my ass!"
Spoken by convicted murderer Johnny Frank Garrett just before he was executed by injection on February 11, 1992 in Huntsville, Texas.

"In Iran we don't have homosexuals like in your country. In Iran we do not have this phenomenon. I do not know who has told you we have it."
Spoken by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on September 24th, 2007 in New York City.

According to Maureen Dowd, Katie Couric remembers how to pronounce the Iranian President's name with the mnemonic “I’m a dinner jacket.”

Tuesday, September 25th, 2007

"I'm just a little bit shocked that a college would back up students who insist that people who have been through college and have a master's degree have to teach that there were such things as talking snakes...
or lose their job!"
Steve Bitterman, ex teacher at Southwestern Community College in Iowa

Monday, September 24th, 2007

Within a glass case in the main lobby of the Valley Baptist Medical Center in Harlingen, Texas, there is on display, along with obsolete gynecological/obstetrical, enema & optical hardware, a Nurses' Manual from 1887. Among its many fascinating chapters---which give us a glimpse of daily life in a pre-electrified world---is this one: 

Sunday, September 23rd, 2007

"They gave us democracy,
But took our freedom.
We could play music—
So long as it was approved
By industry professionals
who knew what we really wanted.
We could watch their movies and their television
They gave us burgers to eat for a dollar.
But everything tasted like cardboard.
Their ministers were pedophiles;
Their teachers, test-givers;
Their doctors, pill-pimping chart-readers.
They taught us to hate terrorists
Then bombed a million civilians.
We could live in Trump’s Tower.
We could shed a tear with Oprah.
We could laugh with Paris
Or dance with Britney.

But the honeybees died
And the frogs stopped croaking.
The glaciers melted.
The savannahs burned."

Excerpted from Revolution, by Gary Corseri

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