Month: February 2002 (Page 2 of 4)

I need some hits

So I was talking with my close personal friend Britney Spears about the Winter Olympics figure skating results. She said she thought the whole thing was a bigger embarrassment than the Enron mess, and wondered out loud if Osama Bin Laden or Dick Cheney had anything to do with it. She was writing about it on her weblog, which she maintains on her new flat-screen Apple iMac. Then she had to take off, as she had a Pepsi commercial to shoot and then she had to meet her boyfriend Justin Timberlake, who was still trying to convince George Lucas to keep in his performance in “Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones.”

When I Said Before That Our Culture Was Doomed, I Was Just Kidding

Tonight on Fox (who else): two hours of something called, I am not kidding, “The Glutton Bowl.” The “contestants” in each round watched as an industrial drum was lowered from the ceiling and the contents tipped into a giant bowl – butter, mayonnaise, hard-boiled eggs, brains, beef tongue, bull testicles, etc. Then they ate it. Sports-style commentary was provided as the eaters struggled to use their abdominal muscles to rearrange the food in their stomachs. Judges had to decide how much “smearage” of things like butter and mayo on the combatants’ clothes should be allowed before disqualification.

I think it goes without saying that everyone involved in this production should be pressed through a sieve of piano wire, with the remains fed to wild dogs.

Seems like everyone is either sick, sad, depressed, anxious, lonely, bored, worried, or a combination of those lately. Including me. What a crappy month this has been. I’m thinking maybe it has something to do with these mild winters – they don’t allow you to hunker down and ride it out, and thus enjoy the hell out of it when it goes away. It’s just a big grey expanse.

If it keeps going like this, pretty soon we’re going to be living in Waterworld, and we’ll have to have Kevin Costner tell us what to do. Which is something to be depressed about, as if we needed anything more.

words mean things

Homer: That Timmy O’Toole is a real hero!
Lisa: How do you mean, Dad?
Homer: He fell down that well, and…and he can’t get out!
Lisa: How does that make him a hero?
Homer (angrily): …It’s more than you did!

“It Spoke to Me” Quote of the Day:

“Sure, 90 percent of science fiction is crud. That’s because 90 percent of everything is crud.”
-Theodore Sturgeon

Poor Andy Rooney. It’s easy enough to make fun of him as a commentator who makes millions writing ’60 Minutes’ pieces about the contents of his desk drawer, or whether women make better lawn mowers than men. But things get even worse when Andy tries to make a serious point.

I found myself rubbing my eyes tonight as Rooney began to make a cogent, if simplistic, argument about the misuses of patriotism – to hawk products and advertise the Olympics. Then he had to go screw it up with this jaw-droppingly clueless ending:

“The rest of the world doesn’t like the way we behave as if no one else’s country is as good as ours and we ought to stop acting that way ? even if we’re right.”

Way to make your own point, Andy.

Went to Sam’s Club with my mother today. Sam’s Club, for those not familiar, is a subscription version of Wal-Mart, where people pay a yearly fee to be able to wander the gargantuan aisles, filled with trampolines, frozen giant shrimp, paperpack books, jewelry, jean jackets, pork roasts, and packages of toilet paper the size of a Buick. Everything is in massive quantities, stacked up inside the airplane-hangar-sized building like so much consumerist cordwood.

My mother, of course, goes there to get one item, and stands in line alongside people who are pushing giant double-sized flat-bottom carts, like the ones they use on the loading dock at the airport. Then you box up your own purchases, and get “checked-out” again at the door to make sure you aren’t carrying, oh, 40 pounds of frozen hamburger patties in your coat.

Usually when I go there, I just marvel at the culture that has created a place like this. But in my current grumpy-old-man mode, it made me almost physically ill to see all these people jockeying for position as they consumed massive quantities of a bunch of processed food and other junk they don’t need. Is this all there is?

In case you were wondering, I am not a veterinary assistant at an animal clinic in western Kentucky.

Just wanted to clear that up.

(Who are your online doppelgangers?)

Inspired by Robin’s wonderful collage of artifacts from her father’s house, I decided to do the same sort of thing for my father. I was surprised by the amount of stuff I had connected to him, and even more surprised there wasn’t more of it – his artistic and photographic output was prodigious. Every one of these items has a story behind it. I hope the resulting images will give you some flavor of my father’s personality.

My thanks to Robin for bringing back a lot of memories.

I’m going to take my Snickers and Mars Bar on the plane from Wisconsin to New Jersey. (via Xkot)