Losing The Future
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And trophies for all
If only I had vision, I would have bought stock in some company manufacturing anything that holds or displays athletic awards. Because even years ago the writing was on the wall that ten-year-olds from Trophy Club, TX to Silver City, CA would be assembling piles of competition-based bling, and they would need some way to store it. [Read more →]
Mister Niceguy
From the Bully Pulpit comes a papal bull on bullying. It’s bad. Argument? I didn’t think so, and of course neither does Obama. That’s what the gentleman likes; consensus. Unanimity. Preferably that sentiment would adhere to more substantive actions like the late (or nearly so) healthcare reform we knew as Obamacare until the thousandth waiver, but it is not to be. The peevishness this law has stirred in the nation threatens to muddy the man’s cuffs and we can’t have that so this is dealt with by a quiet, adamant change of name. But even Obama’s impressive stable of gunslingers know they cannot count on the tactic indefinitely or universally, this is why the President now does not even vote Present on any remotely controversial topic. That might be interpretted as support. Or opposition. Can’t have that, either. It smacks of a clarity that went out the door with the Grinning Rube and is as unmissed. Indeed, the clarity and decisiveness of that previous seat-warmer is most of what Senator Obama ran against in his predecessor and in his opponent. Decisions? Oh, you’re behind the times, my friend! The Decider is gone. The Denier is here. Or hereabouts. [Read more →]
Lisa reads: Stuff: Compulsive Hoarding and the Meaning of Things by Randy Frost
A friend who read last week’s review of Homer and Langley suggested this week’s book, Stuff: Compulsive Hoarding and the Meaning of Things by Randy Frost as a follow-up. Stuff cover the story of the Collyer brothers in great detail. In fact, that’s one of the things about the book that appealed to me — they focus on case studies, real people with fascinating stories. Some have more insight into their problems than others, but from each I learned very interesting things about hoarding and the people who struggle with it. [Read more →]
e.e. sheenings
Q: What do you get when you mix a celebrity spouting self-truths, the power of social networking, and some people up for a silly little creative writing challenge?
A: Charlie Sheen-inspired poetry, written in the style of e.e. cummings!
So here’s the back story: [Read more →]
The mash-up mentality
With derivative art invading our cultural spaces like never before, is this the start of a new artistic movement or the death of originality?
In 1951, the science-fiction writer Theodore Sturgeon said 90 per cent of everything is crap. Since then, the percentage hasn’t changed, but the volume sure has.
Digital culture serves up more derivative, unoriginal, and — let’s face it — bad art than we ever got in the old analog world. But why? [Read more →]
My first – and last – visit to the “Herd Rock Band Bracket”
Wednesday evening is ‘church night’ for some of us, and you’ll find me attending “The Gathering” at First Prez-Midland each Wednesday night, enjoying a shared meal, fellowship and a variety of activities … sometimes choir practice, sometimes Bible study, sometimes a worship service … and sometimes, an intense discussion of contenders for the title “Best Rock Band” … e-vuh!
[Read more →]
The War on Fire
Hold that thought. And breath. And most especially that fart. You know good and well that you pollute the atmosphere with exhalations of any sort though what comes out of your body is nothing compared to what comes out of your tailpipe. Your auto tailpipe that is. Or your heater vent or the ductwork to your dryer but it all adds up. Burning is bad, you see. It warms up all the earth just as it warms your feet and while you may not have seen an open flame for days or weeks outside of an ashtray, somewhere some villain is burning in your name. He is burning gas, oil and even COAL for cripesake! And this warms the atmosphere. Which is bad. [Read more →]
Talking about art: “Who’s to say?”
When writers do columns about, say, politics, they might hear from people who disagree with them. The comments might be vehement — even violent. Commenters might sling some digital poo — accuse the writer of being an under-evolved toad or something. But did you ever notice that, no matter how nasty the banter gets, no one ever tells a political columnist he is in error simply for stating his opinion at all? So, why is it that a guy who says what he thinks about matters relating to the arts sometimes gets told he should not? I’ll tell you why: art is incredibly dear to people. [Read more →]
Let a thousand concealed handguns bloom?
Strange things happen to your mind when it’s transplanted to a foreign culture. Events and ideas that would have once appeared outrageous become very normal, and before long you accept them without batting an eyelid. It takes a serious jolt for you to realize how normal the hitherto abnormal has become.
Recently I had one of those jolts, when I read that the Texas State Legislature was about to pass a law forcing college campuses to permit students to carry concealed weapons on their persons. There is already a law that says Texas colleges can decide for themselves if they want students to wander around with secret firearms. None permit it; that’s why state lawmakers want to force them to grant students their 2nd Amendment rights. [Read more →]
Marty Digs: Commuter Blues
This week, thou shalt not make one Charlie Sheen joke or reference, however his brother Emilio Estevez is still fair game. But the real issue today is that my commute to work is getting the better of me. According to Google maps, it is 8.3 miles from my doorstep to my workplace of Drexel University. Not bad, right? But the commute takes me anywhere from 45 minutes to an hour each day. My folly is that there is no good way to go. The options I have all gobble up money, time, my safety and my sanity. [Read more →]
Bad sports, good sports: Why do so many try to tear Danica Patrick down?
Even if you are not a fan of auto racing, you have likely heard the name Danica Patrick. She began racing in the Indy Car series in 2005, and then became the first woman to ever win an Indy Car race in 2008, winning a race in Motegi, Japan. In 2010, Patrick began racing stock cars in NASCAR’s Nationwide Series on a part-time schedule. This weekend, she finished 4th in the Nationwide race at Las Vegas Motor Speedway, the highest finish for a woman in NASCAR history. Despite these accomplishments, much of what I read about this weekend’s race involved people finding ways to diminish her accomplishment. I find this very disappointing.
Clarence Thomas’s top ten excuses for not speaking at a Supreme Court hearing in over five years
10. He’s still too upset that he never received any endorsement money from the Coca-Cola people
9. He tried talking once, but Scalia was drinking a glass of water at the same time and Scalia’s not that talented
8. He took Thurgood Marshall’s seat, and he knows if he opens his mouth, the contrast will be too disheartening
7. He refuses to say anything until Anita Hill apologizes
6. Five years ago, Thomas and Kennedy said the word “jurisprudence” at the same time, Kennedy shouted “Jinx!”…and nobody has spoken Thomas’s name since
5. He’s studying to be a mime (though some people might be insulted if they see him wearing whiteface)
4. He’s obsessed by the pubic hairs he can spot all over that big table they sit at
3. After failing to mention on his Supreme Court financial disclosure forms that his wife earned $686,589 from the conservative Heritage Foundation, he thought, “Who am I to judge?”
2. He finds all that power a turn-on, and he’s afraid, if he talks, people might notice his robe is tenting
1. He’s saving all his best rhetoric for the scheduled Supreme Court obscenity case U. S. v. Long Dong Silver
Bob Sullivan’s Top Ten Everything appears every Monday.
Jihad Zero
A courageous sprig has come up at the State Department. As we all know but few care, the Administration launched a war not a year ago and lost it in the span of weeks, much like the Arabs habitually throw themselves, in futility, against Israel. Of course we refer to the War on Fox. The President himself denounced Fox as a fraud, a propaganda outfit masquerading as a news corpse. But this hastily prepared air campaign was destroyed on the ground by native incompetence. Fox seemed scarcely to acknowledge the attack and the President sued for terms from Admiral O’Reilly prior to this year’s Super Bowl. But that has not dimmed the Administration’s fighting spirit. Secretary Clinton is the point man in a new and expanded offensive not against Fox merely but against all domestic American broadcast and cable news, freighted as they are with commercials and arguments that are not informative. After losing so catastrophically against a small fragment of the American media, what practical chance does the Administration have to overcome ALL of American media, however dire the need to silence it? It becomes possible only with the recruitment of a new ally in that struggle; the state owned and controlled Middle Eastern media giant, Al-Jazeera. [Read more →]
The Six Tenths Compromise
I ask a simple question for the first guy that I met. And I said, ‘What about the eleventh year? You guys constructed this health care bill with six years of costs and ten years of revenue. What about the eleventh year?’ And the guy looks at me and says, ‘I’m eighty!’ Sam Zell
Yes, this is the fact of the matter by the admission of reformists themselves; six years of spending supported by ten years of revenue. Mr Zell is actually quite generous here as the fly in the ointment surfaces in the seventh year, not the eleventh. By the eleventh year, even on its own terms, the whole operation will be five years in arrears. And the anonymous Senator presumes he will then be dead and happily so. Well, we assume this is a fellow who knows his own worth. If he is happy we should be happy. But what if his date with eternity stands him up? What if death disappoints? [Read more →]
The republican Democrats
The rats have fled. In Wisconsin and now in Indiana, Democrats who have been shellacked into a piddling minority have screwed up their little faces in rage, taken their balls and gone home. Well, they have not gone home, but they have gone. Evidence indicates that they favor the Land of Lincoln for their refuge for reasons unknown except that here they are beyond the reach of state troopers set on their trail. But their solidarity cracks. One Wisconsin Senator is heavily pregnant. Her needs threaten her resolve. Another declares that the legislated end to direct deposit (a brutal Republican maneuver) puts his escape in jeopardy since his means are slight and life on the lam, expensive. One Tim Cullen has publicly flirted with surrender but been talked out of it. He exists now in a state of quantum ambiguity across State lines, like Schrodinger’s Cat, neither here nor there, neither alive nor dead. In any case the cowardice, dereliction and pure stubborn depravity of these traitors has thrown a broomstick into the spokes of democracy. We should thank them.
Democracy was held in low regard by the bright, drunken fellows who founded our country and drafted our earliest laws. [Read more →]
Charlie Sheen is more rational and honest than anyone else on TV
I think Charlie Sheen is making perfect sense, and that from his point of view, from his experience and position in life, he’s entirely correct.
Is that a scary thing?
I was waiting for a moment, but the moment never came…
I never thought I’d write a “kids today” blog — especially not in my 2nd blog out for this site. In fact, I had another blog practically written, one I anticipated polishing up once I got home last night until I happened to catch the earlier train from work and happened to sit next to a group of high school boys so insulting, so incredibly ignorant, that I spent the rest of the commute composing this very blog in my head.
I am familiar with and accept the notion that “boys will be boys” — in fact, I sometimes am willing to let downright not-nice-crassness go because of it (with a blue velvet Virgin Mary perched above the toilet in my guest bathroom, who the hell am I to judge on crass?), but these kids went beyond even my limits. [Read more →]
Mythical dignity under the magic lens
Bear with me for two reasons: First, I can’t believe that someone, somewhere in the history of philosophical thinking, hasn’t said what I am about to say — but as a guy who cranks out a column a week here and three other pieces per week on his own blog, I’m simply not going to research it and find out. (Please feel free to let me know if I am parroting Descartes or Dr. Phil or something.) Second, I’m going to start with people, in general, and then apply it to the artistic types, so, please be patient, dear reader. [Read more →]
