Category: words mean things (Page 64 of 223)

The bubble, Part Deux

Sparky and others have lightly chastised me, and rightly so, for being so emotionally invested in the comments over at Mrs. du Toit. I agree it’s stupid. Why should I care about the rantings of a right-wing homeschooling atheist gun enthusiast, or her drooling minions? No logical reason.

But I figured out that in addition to her pushing some major buttons for me, the other reason is the weblog format itself. For reasons I still don’t fully understand, I get more emotionally invested in weblog writings than I ever do with a newspaper article, book, magazine or TV show. Part of it, I think, is the idea that there’s a single real person behind these words. It becomes more like they’re talking to *me* than just to the world at large. And if someone said directly to me the things she’s been spouting, I would feel obligated to respond. If anyone personified Grandpa Simpson’s phrase about “angrying up the blood,” it’s her.

And the tragedy is, I can’t even go back to talking about American Idol! It’s over! Don’t worry. I’m sure I’ll find something.

Rhetorical question of the day

Why do we keep doing things we know aren’t good for us?

Smoking guns

So this is the headline in the Telegraph:

Britain finds Iraq’s ‘smoking gun’: a top-secret missile

From this headline and the rules of basic English grammar, when asked the question, “What did the British find?” you would answer, “A missile.”

Seems simple enough.

Except when you read the story, you learn that what they found were plans for a missile (and nothing much still to put in it, but let’s not get ahead of ourselves). And not plans as in “plans,” but stories from Iraqis now cooperating with the British.

This of course is only Example 1,824 of misleading headlines on top of “smoking gun” stories throughout the “coalition” media, designed to leave the headline’s impression in people’s minds. As someone on Metafilter said, each one of these “smoking gun” stories tacitly acknowledges that all the ones that came before were bullshit. So is this one.

Is anyone else getting tired of being lied to?

Reading: Ender’s Game
Listening: Timbuk 3, Eden Alley
Watching: Defending Your Life
Playing: Grand Theft Auto III (PC)
Eating: Pasta Amatriciana

The bubble

Sometimes I forget that I live in a sort of supportive bubble. Both among my circle of friends and in the place where I live, the fact that I am a gay liberal attracts about as much attention as the fact that I have brown hair and glasses. And then people like Mrs. du Toit wander into my admittedly narrow field, and I realize again that a huge number of my fellow countrymen hate both my political beliefs and literally who I am. I know how naive this sounds, but it’s jarring. And scary. Especially the lengths people will go to to justify their hatred and fear.

I tried to get in on the conversation over at MDT’s site, and mainly I did it to work out some issues in my own head. (I think I did pretty well, considering the climate over there.) Eventually I gave up, and let them rant on about “whoring out our children’s minds to these radical nut cases” and such without my interference. All the while, I knew I wasn’t going to change anyone’s mind. But now, I can’t get it out of mine.

I own a lot of cookbooks. Mostly I just read them. I love food, I love reading about it, and I enjoy cooking when I do it, but mostly I can’t muster up the enthusiasm to cook for myself.

Well, the other day I bought this book. I like Rachael Ray’s “30-Minute Meals” show on the Food Network – she manages to be perky and sweet without being irritating, which is quite a trick.

For some reason, this book inspired me to actually cook something. I decided to make Pasta Amatriciana, which is red pepper tomato sauce with pancetta. Pancetta is Italian rolled peppered bacon, and if you’ve never tasted it, you’re missing out on one of the great inventions of humanity. I ate a little piece of the browned pancetta before putting it all back in the sauce, and it was heaven.

So was the sauce. I don’t think I’m going to buy tomato sauce in a jar ever again.

Words mean things

At lunch today with my mom, I heard an early 20s woman at the next table using the term “freaking,” as in “We went to every freaking store in the whole mall, and didn’t find anything good.” It got me wondering, does anyone (other than this woman) use the term “freaking” in normal conversation? I mean, outside of cable-edited movies with bad dubbing?

Here I go, being all gay and stuff on other people’s weblogs. (via Andrea) I’m sure John could have written a better response, but I gave it my best shot.

UPDATE: It’s still going on. I can’t stop myself.

Lisa would kill me if I didn’t mention how thoroughly I enjoyed the Martha Stewart movie this week starring Cybill Shepherd. My favorite part, bar none, was right at the beginning, where they showed how particularly brittle Martha can be when she has kids as guests on her show. (I’ve even written about this before.) They handled that beautifully.

Overall, it was cartoony trash, but sublimely entertaining cartoony trash. Still, I don’t think they really got Martha’s personality correct. I always thought of her as less of a “smile on-camera but scream off-camera” type and more of a “cold distant perfectionist who likes decoupage more than people but tries to paste on a smile when necessary” type. Get my meaning?

As I’ve said in the past, I really admire Martha in a lot of ways, even if I wouldn’t want to have her over for dinner. She’s one of those people who can manage to re-make the world through sheer force of will. Those people lose a lot, they hurt those close to them (and themselves most of all). But they change the world, for better or worse.

I think trying to get at the “real” Martha would have made a great movie too. But it wouldn’t sell.

Some people say my weblog is too political. Others say they skip reflexively over the more overt pop culture stuff. I guess that proves that I should keep straddling the fence, or I’ll completely lose one group or the other.

For your political/social needs, I strongly recommend putting lies.com on your daily bookmark list. In these scary times, it helps to know that there are people out there who are still thinking about issues, people who think our society is worth saving. That means a lot these days.