WORD OF THE DAY: dystopia
(thanks, Mike)
Category: words mean things (Page 183 of 223)
Heard a wonderful commentary on NPR yesterday, where a man took his fourth-grade niece to the Jacqueline Kennedy exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. The girl, who initially hadn’t heard of Jackie, was tremendously unimpressed with the former First Lady. Why did such an important woman speak in such a tiny, little girl voice? And why was she so concerned with her clothes? The man was amazed that his niece wasn’t more enthralled by it all.
“But she really didn’t do anything,” said the girl.
“What is a First Lady supposed to do?” said the man, a little taken aback.
“Go places and fix problems and help people, like Eleanor Roosevelt did, or Madeleine Albright,” said the girl.
Amen to that. I’ve never understood the fascination with Jackie, except as a participant in the Kennedy mystique. Even as an icon, she represents some pretty superficial aspects of society: clothes (by browsing the museum’s web site, you would think her pillbox hat was equivalent to the Holy Grail), hair, interior decorating, social status, and living a genteel life shielded from the papparazzi. Not much to build a legend around, if you ask me.
I’ve just updated my Amazon wish list, which should be welcome news to the throngs of people planning to shop extravagantly for my birthday, just a couple of weeks away. Thanks in advance. 🙂
New Microsoft/Smart Tags slogan (courtesy of Scripting News):
Where do [we] want [your visitors] to go today?
OK, I promise I’ll try to get off this topic and go back to talking about Bloussant, Britney Spears and Entertainment Tonight.
Extremely good rundown on many aspects of Smart Tags in A List Apart. I know I’ve been on the ‘Smart Tags are evil’ bandwagon somewhat heavily of late, but I honestly believe that they, or some later implementation of the same ideas, could be a major infringement on our freedom to publish on the web. Check it out and decide for yourself.
Wouldn’t you love to meet some of the people whose blogs you read on a daily basis? I know I would. It would be so great to have Mike, Melissa, Moira, Arthur, Miguel, Kevin, Mike C., and Tuesday all sitting out on the patio overlooking Lake Monona. All of the aforementioned have an open invitation to come by any time. I’d even spring for some pizza and beer.
Current web pet peeve: sites that break the back button, so you have to pull down the list of recently-visited sites to get the H-E-double-hockey-sticks out of there. A big BOO! to this passive agressive web behavior.
Apparently my new toothpaste, Colgate 2 in 1, is poison:
“If more than used for brushing is accidentally swallowed, get medical help or call a Poison Control Center right away.”
This is not a reassuring thing to see on the back of a package of something I put in my mouth every day.
Movie line trivia – where does this come from?
[nasally] “We stopped serving breakfast at 11:30.”
I’m thinking of using it as my weblog tagline at some point. Amazing movie, by the way. See it if you haven’t.
Going to “…River..” last night, I had to sit through a lot of pretentious “triumph of the human spirit” previews for foreign films about people suffering and hugging and dancing in faraway lands. Got me thinking about the sad state of movie previews these days. The primary offender, of course, is the “let’s tell the whole movie, including the ending” disease. This is actually a benefit for a movie like “The Wedding Planner,” where you’re relieved they told the whole thing so you don’t have to suffer through it in real time. But for a movie that you actually want to see, well…
I used to really enjoy the previews – they were like little movies unto themselves. Now I’m just a crabby old man who doesn’t want to see even two minutes of the latest Martin Lawrence train wreck. Maybe it’s just the avalanche of crappy movies in the theaters now, but these days I don’t mind if I come in just as the movie’s starting. That way, I’ll likely also be spared a mind-numbing commercial for Mountain Dew. And that’s a good thing.