Category Archives: My Opinion of Something

Jan31

Bread and Circuses Before the Fall

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The Tribe is Speaking!

At its height, the Roman Empire stretched from the British Isles to Turkey and the Middle East. The Romans built roads, aqueducts, and elaborate public baths. They produced writers like Virgil, orators like Cicero, and model statesmen like the Catoes. Under Rome, culture and civilization reached a pinnacle the Western world would not see until centuries later.

Then Rome declined and fell.

One of the salient traits of the late Roman Empire Period was a reliance on what one writer called “Bread and Circuses.” The bread was the public dole of bread each citizen of Rome received, but I’m not really interested in that part of the phrase in this post.

I’m talking about the circuses . . . the games.

At one time, Rome had incredible playwrights and poets who performed their creations in packed amphitheaters. It was a triumph of culture. Somehow, though, the amphitheaters started to empty and fell into disrepair. New plays and poems didn’t come out as much anymore because there was no longer a viable market.

People had swapped the aesthetics of drama and poetry for the circus and in Rome, the circus was the arena for the gladiatorial games. Day after day the throngs would pack out the Colosseum and structures like it, not to watch a play, but to watch men kill each other in a first century prequel of reality television.

The Roman games were the original Survivor: Colosseum. We know what happened to Rome. What I’m afraid of now is the same thing is happening to the United States and I really believe one main symptom is our obsession as a country with REALITY TELEVISION. First came Survivor, then Big Brother, and now the floodgates are wide open. We can watch has-been athletes and actors try to dance or cute little girls try to sing. We can tune in to a real live guy trying to choose among twenty or so nubile young women all vying for his attention as well as his hand in marriage. Now, we can even watch the “saga” of teenage girls too lazy or ignorant to use birth control get rich on a TV contract instead of going away to a relative’s house to keep the matter quiet.

Televisions got the nickname “The Boob Tube” for a reason. Prime time (or anytime) programming has never been mistaken for high art. TV has always been the voice of the masses, but at times, the people in charge of the programming seem to try to have something to say. These guys and ladies called “screenwriters” actually labored away to try and make something worth watching — to try creating “must see TV.”

Sure, it wasn’t all great. For every Hill Street Blues we had four or five Manimal horrors. Still, though, behind it all we at least had a sense of some intelligent life form trying to make us cry or laugh or wring SOME sort of emotion from us. Then a funny thing happened. The writers asked for a little more money. The TV execs said no and the writers went on strike. Then some genius rolled out Survivor and the race for the gutter was on.

“Reality TV” pretty much defines this period in America’s life cycle. Instead of any semblance of plot or characterization, we vicariously follow a group of total losers with names like “Snooki” and “The Situation.” Let me just say this for the record — if you are not a multimillion dollar Hall of Fame quality athlete OR an incredibly talented statesman or possible singer — you DO NOT get an article like “the” in front of your nickname. Babe Ruth could be “The” Sultan of Swat and Abraham Lincoln could be “The” Great Emancipator, but by God no orange faced, greasy haired, chest baring goober of a “Jersey Boy” is going to be called “The Situation” and NOT get laughed at.

Freak of nature. I just want to scream, “Hey, moron, they’re laughing AT you, not WITH you!!”

The burning public buildings in this painting of the sack of Rome look a lot like many of our government buildings. Coincidence or prophecy?

But that’s what television has devolved to. Americans don’t want to think, they want to sit and mindlessly absorb. They

don’t want programs to stimulate them mentally or emotionally so the networks give them what they want — “The Biggest Loser”.

Really?

I started this out talking about Rome. The last Roman emperor, Romulus Augustulus, was quietly toddled off into retirement by a German king in 476 AD, but the “Grandeur that was Rome” had been dead long before that historic day. Rome died once “The Games” became the “In Thing” to do. Oh, they had always been around, but mostly for special days or in some lower level prestige. By the end though, the emperors controlled the masses, not by brute force, but by entertainment. Fifteen centuries give or take before Kurt Cobain penned the words “Here we are, NOW ENTERTAIN US!” The Romans had forsaken their great heritage for celebrity worship. They stopped building, stopped writing, and eventually stopped existing.

With Reality TV on 24/7/365, are we becoming like the Romans?

I hope not, but it doesn’t look good.

Love y’all.

Jan25

Dear Lord The Pain, The Horror, The String!

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A nice, plush, well-appointed torture chamber.

I had to go to the dentist today. I’ve been putting this visit off because prior to Budge signing us up for State Dental Plus insurance, cleanings alone were almost $100 out of pocket. Now I’d like pretty, pearly whites as much as the next person, but from a purely economic standpoint, dirty teeth bite and chew just as well as sparklingly pristine ones.

Aside from the money, though, I also am a wimp when it comes to CHOOSING to undergo infliction of large amounts of pain. If I get hurt, I’ll deal with it, but I don’t go looking to feel something unpleasant. I knew I was in for a world of agony too because my long-time favorite dental hygienist left the practice I patronize to start a restaurant with her husband. Now Patty was a jewel. She was sweet and kind and tender. She dealt lovingly with my poor neglected mouth. I knew that her replacement — sight unseen — was bound to be much harsher.

I was absolutely right, but more on that later.

I started off my visit being lulled into a false sense of safety and comfort by the little dental hygienist’s assistant. She did the x-rays with the thing you bite down on as it slices the roof of your mouth. Then she polished my teeth. Maybe some of you like that freshly polished feeling, but to me the polisher head sounds too much like that godawful drill they use. Added to the unpleasant aural experience is the wonderful sensation of nails on a chalkboard you get from the feel of the pumice paste touching your teeth. I’ve tried many times to explain that I don’t want my teeth polished, but it is to no avail.

Before going on too far, I have to relate how the whole polishing experience was preceded by a wonderfully refreshing awkward turtle moment. Now, for those who are new to the site and me, I was born without a filter between my brain and my mouth. You never have to wonder about what I’m thinking because if you’ll just give me a few minutes, I’ll tell you. Added to that lack of filter is a wonderfully complex OCD disorder (which really should be CDO to be correct) that makes me want to “fix” whatever is off in my environment and we have the makings of a really nice train wreck.

See, what had happened was while I was getting my x-rays done, the little assistant hygienist was in very close proximity to me. It was during my left upper x-ray that I noticed she had a large stray string somehow caught perfectly in the extreme upper part of her cleavage. This is where the OCD kicks in. (Don’t worry, I’m a little off in the noggin but I’m not a big enough fool to go fishing for an item like that myself.) Now Budge has always told me I am honor bound to tell her if anything she is wearing makes her look foolish, fat, etc. Thanks to my lack of a filter, this has never been a problem. Using Budge’s admonishment as my base, I surmised that no woman would want to go around with a stray string caught in her cleavage. Unfortunately, I couldn’t figure out a delicate way to advise her of the situation. Now most people would have just leaned back and let it go but remember — no filter and OCD.

So, I tried subtlety. I said, “Hon, if you were wearing a long string of pearls, they would have a string caught in them.” She looked at me like she’d just watched me beam down from a spaceship. Well, I tried subtlety and, as usual, it didn’t work so I just used the direct approach with, “Okay, there’s no delicate way to put this and we are both about to turn beet red, but you have a rather sizable string stuck in the upper reaches of your cleavage. I noticed it during the x-rays.” Upon quick examination, she realized I wasn’t just making this up. Of course, the beige string stood out prominantly against the bright red flush now enveloping her (and my) face and neck. Luckily, she is not only a good sport, but we’ve known each other many years now. I even warned her during my last visit when she told me she was moving her boyfriend in with her that she was making a big mistake — you know, free milk and cows and such. Turns out, I was right, but that’s another story.

Nothing on this chart looks very pleasant, does it?

Anyway, she finished up her portion of my cleaning with a maroon glow and I saw her motion in the hygienist. So this was my beloved Patty’s replacement? She was about five foot nothing and just as slightly built as she could be. I felt a wave of relief. After all, how bad could such a delicate creature hurt me?

Turns out, pretty damn bad.

Let me put it this way, had I been a POW subjected to what this little terror did to me, she would be on trial for violations of the Geneva Convention at the War Crimes Tribunal in The Hague. Instead, I had to pay for the whole ordeal with blood and money.

Her name was Maria, but I swear it should have been Ilsa or Helga or something more befitting her powers of pain brokering. I was at the mercy of a miniature Tomas de Torquemada in baby blue scrubs. She poked. She scraped. She sawed. At one point, I swear she had both tiny hands in my mouth and it felt like she was trying to extract my poor uvula through my sinuses. What she was actually trying to do was dislodge a particularly stubborn piece of plaque from a back molar. When the offending bit finally gave way, it sailed out of my mouth and landed right in my left eye. I’ve seen meteorites smaller than the rock she got out of me.

After she’d finished with the “light stuff,” this modern day Brunhilda informed me that I needed the “special treatment.” Turns out this treatment is a machine that pressurizes water into a needle-fine jet that exits a vibrating tip. Supposedly, it makes plaque removal a breeze. I have no idea if it actually does what it’s designed for, but I can vouch that it puts out enough liquid to make you feel like you’re being waterboarded at Gitmo by Darth Vader. When I told her, eyes filling with tears, that I would give her the location of the secret Rebel base, she laughed and said, “Oh you big baby, it’s just water.” Of course it’s just water . . . water . . . the same stuff that cuts steel in some modern fabricating plants oh yeah and carved out that big hole in the Arizona desert called The Grand Canyon.

That’s when she started to get cutesy with me. She said, “You know, some people look forward to coming to have their teeth cleaned!” I quickly replied, “Yes, and those same people probably have a homemade BDSM dungeon in their basement and think being hung upside down is fun, too.” She laughed. Manically. Then she reached for the roll of razor wire she was passing off as dental floss and finished up my cleaning. Once she was satisfied that I was bleeding freely enough from every spot of exposed gum tissue, the Marquess de Sade told me to relax while she got Dr. Leigh.

My favorite dentist ever, Dr. Leigh Ledford!

Finally, salvation.

Dr. Leigh is as gentle as her hygienists are brutal. She just pats you on the cheek with a nice reassuringly cool hand and rubs your jaws. I’ve always told her if she ever wanted to give up dentistry, she could make a mint as a masseuse. She completed her evaluation and pronounced me in fine shape. Then she told me not to wait two years next time and her trained torturer wouldn’t have to treat me so horribly.

Don’t have to tell me twice; I go back in six months!

So, if y’all need a good dentist in Upstate South Cackalacky, make sure you check out Hillcrest Family Dentistry. Yes, the hygienists are dangerous, but they do an excellent job and having your face rubbed by Dr. Leigh is worth the price of admission all by itself. Just tell’em I sent you. Oh, and tell “String” I said hello.

Til next time, love y’all and keep your feet clean.

Oh yeah, and FLOSS!

Jan24

My Completely Amateur Punditesque Thoughts on the SC Primary Results

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I realize I’m late to the game in chiming in on Saturday’s GOP primary results here in my home state. I want to start by saying Stephen Colbert should stop being such a tease and run. If you have the cajones and the deniro to offer to pay for the entire primary, you have enough to run for POTUS and who among us does not salivate at the prospect of a Stephen Colbert / Jon Stewart ticket? Really, how much worse could they screw things up?

Honestly though, I REALLY don’t want a POTUS named “Newt”. Even if he decides to act older than the perpetual horn-dog teenager he seems to be and goes by Newton, he’s still going to have the worst Presidential moniker since good ol’ Millard Fillmore (1850–1853). (Just as a historical aside, I realize the aforementioned M. F. doesn’t get a lot of high marks for his performance as President, but being a former librarian and lover of books, he will always be near to my heart for founding the White House Presidential Library.)

 

I would like to make this observation, however. Recently, a subspecies of Japanese Fire-Belly Newts was discovered that can regrow its eyes up to 18 times in 16 years. That leads me to believe “Newt” might be a pretty good nickname for Mr. Gingrich. After all, the only thing more changeable over 16 years than a Japanese Fire-Belly Newt’s eyes are Newt Gingrich’s spouses, lovers, religious denominations . . . oh yeah, and his political ideals as well.

 

Jan22

Brief Status Update

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Hey everybody! My posting schedule has been seriously haywire for most of December and January and I wanted to let those of you who check in every so often a reason why.

Mama was in the hospital for most of October. This was the first time she’s had to be hospitalized with her C.O.P.D. but it may well not be the last. Doctors’ visits and medicines and followups have taken a huge chunk of time.

Since coming home, Mama hasn’t been able to take proper care of Granny. Physically, it’s just become too difficult for her so we’ve been exploring alternatives.

Over Christmas holidays, Budge’s dad had a chest pain scare that ended up with three loooonnnggg days in the cardiac care unit at St. Francis waiting on his surgery results.

Because of Dad’s surgery, Budge’s issues with her brother came to a head and she hunted him down and had a nice loud conversation with him outside his second home bar. The conversation ended with Budge cussing out Rich AND the entire bar as well.

Realizing she could no longer adequately provide for Granny’s level of needed care, Mama relented and allowed Granny to become a resident at a local, extreme care nursing facility. Being separated from Granny has really taken a toll on Mama in several ways.

Granny fell in the nursing home and fractured her hip so she spent four days in the hospital getting a screw and pin placed into her hip to minimize her pain. Going back and forth to the hospital again has taken a lot out of Mama physically and emotionally.

Granny going into the nursing home has taken a huge chunk of income out of Mama’s household so I am in the process of making out some rudimentary plan to help Mama replace that income and keep her bills paid. This is proving to be a little like hauling eleven gallons of water in a ten gallon bucket.

Chloe, my niece, is scheduled to have the feeding tube removed from her stomach in the near future, but that is being delayed because my baby brother, Travis, and his girlfriend, Danielle, just welcomed baby number 2 while Granny was in the hospital. Little Baby Stoney was a completely healthy and quite stout ten pounds and two ounces.

My little brother, Nick, and my sister-in-law, Keri, are expecting a new little Wham and Keri is finally midway through her second trimester and can eat something besides saltine crackers and 7-Up without risking it reappearing. They aren’t going to find out what this little booger is going to be, so we’re all in for a surprise near June.

Both Budge and I have been fighting sinus infections for several weeks. Mine has more or less finally succumbed to a Z-Pac and Sudafed, but Budge has had to resort to steroid ear drops to help clear her ears up.

Those are the high and low points and with all that going on, it’s been quite an exhausting run since right before the holidays up until now. It APPEARS things are settling down somewhat. Granny is out of the hospital and all my nieces and nephews are currently doing well. Mama is stable, if far from what anyone would call “well,” and Budge is finally on the mend. I have several ideas for posts as well as topics I want to discuss with my fellow Feetsters, so stay tuned and thank you all for your patience with me in this insanity!

Love y’all, and if anyone happens to find a satchel with several thousand dollars in it, please let me know because it’s probably mine (at least that’s the story I’ll use!). Take care everyone and keep those feet clean til next time!

Jan8

Westboro Baptist Church Stands Simpsonville Up . . . Thankfully

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PFC Justin Whitmire: son, brother, soldier, friend. Rest in peace, soldier.

Another one of our boys was laid to rest today. PFC Justin Whitmire, an army combat medic and 2010 graduate of nearby Hillcrest High School, was ushered to his final resting place by the combined populations of Simpsonville, Fountain Inn, and several surrounding hamlets and villages. Driving downtown today as the human wall started to form, I couldn’t help but get choked up. Here was a young man who went off to war to do the duty his country assigned him and he fell in the honorable performance of that duty. His family and friends are justifiably proud of him and, judging from the attendance at his send-off, so were a whole lot of other people.

Conspicuously absent from the crowd today, despite dire warnings of their imminent arrival, were any protestors from the notorious Westboro Baptist “Church” of Topeka, KS. Now for those who don’t know, Westboro Baptist (hereafter to be called WBC) is a tiny Fundamentalist church out in Kansas. The pastor is an octogenarian disbarred lawyer named Fred Phelps. The vast majority of the massive 50 member congregation are Phelps’ children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren, and anyone unfortunate or stupid enough to marry into this sorry bunch of lunatic fanatics.

Fred Phelps, frontman for a hate group

The church slithered onto the national scene in 1998 when members protested and picketed the funeral of Matthew Shepard, a 19-year-old Wyoming University student who was tortured and beaten to death after he allegedly “made a pass” at another man in a bar. WBC doesn’t like gay people. The church’s home page URL is http://www.godhatesfags.com. Since then, members of the church / Phelps family have taken to protesting funerals of soldiers killed in Iraq and Afghanistan. They claim the soldiers’ deaths are the result of God’s wrath upon America. Oh, and incidentally, they are insanely happy about the 9-11-2001 World Trade Center attacks. If you haven’t figured it out by now, these people are “out there.” I would say they are the fuzzy endmost strands of material on the far end of the lunatic fringe. They hate everybody — homosexuals, military, Muslims, the list goes on and on.

This is funny. How do you know when you are too far over the line? Well, several counter-protests targeting WBC have included members of the Ku-Klux-Klan. True story. You read that correctly. The Klan joined with other regular people to protest WBC. Try to ask yourself this, “just how big of an asshole do you have to be for the freaking KKK to consider you a hate group?”  Hard to fathom, ain’t it?

Irony: a group that claims to hate gays carrying rainbow colored signs in their picketing.

Now, to be honest, I wouldn’t care about a bunch of homophobic nut jobs carrying cheap posterboard signs around if it wasn’t for the fact that these particular homophobic sign carrying nut jobs claim to 1) be Christians and 2) speak for God. That bothers me. It bothers me because they are such vitriolic hate mongers and media whores that they are guaranteed to boost newscast ratings. As a result, anytime they show up they get tons of attention they don’t really deserve. Then, non-believers see them and realize they are nuttier than a can of Planter’s and form the mistaken opinion that “kooky homophobic media whores” equal “Christian.” In the eyes of way too many people, these loons are what Christianity is all about.

That saddens me greatly.

I wish that instead of WBC getting so much press, the news could interview the staff of the church I attend so the world could hear about the Osbornes. This couple took their three preschool aged children with them to the mission field in Papua New Guinea. If you’ve never heard of Papua New Guinea, don’t fret. Most people haven’t. Suffice it to say it’s a 22 hour plane ride from LAX and some tribes on the island still practice head hunting and cannibalism. These lily-white yuppie Americans left behind a nice cushy life to take the Gospel to people who’ve never heard it before. They will be gone from the USA for at least 20 years.

That is what Christianity is all about. Not the putrescence Fred Phelps and his brood spew on a daily basis.

Fred's daughter, Shirley. Apparently, homosexuality is a sin, but flabby arms and unshaved pits aren't.

I don’t expect most of the folks reading this to be mighty theological scholars, but I’m pretty sure most of you know that the Holy Bible has an Old Testament and a New Testament. Apparently, Fred doesn’t. The entire misanthropic website is laden with Old Testament polemics from the always cheery book of Leviticus or dire threats of doom and gloom from the minor prophets. Almost nothing from the New Testament. No Gospel quotes and very little Pauline writing. If I could sit down with Fred and his clan, I’d like to start the conversation by saying, “Fred, you ever hear of this guy in the Bible named Jesus Christ? You may not know it, Fred, but Jesus was a pretty big deal.”

I doubt Fred’s ever seen Anchorman: The Ron Burgundy Story though so he wouldn’t get it at all.

Happily though, despite claims by one of the Phelps Phanatics that “six members of the congregation flew to South Carolina to protest” not a peep came from their mouths, if indeed they ever did show up. Of course, that is probably for the best, considering the appearance of some of the rougher looking members of the Patriot Guard Riders motorcycle group who showed up to form a human shield between the family and any WBC protesters. The “Member of the 1%” on a few of those guy’s riding jackets means something totally different than the Occupy people talk about.

So poor Simpsonville will go unedified by the Gospel according to hate monger Fred at least until our next brave soldier comes home in a flag draped coffin. Should that happen, though, the Patriot Guard and the good people of the Upstate will be here in force one more time.

Love y’all and remember to love each other and keep those feet clean.

Dec30

The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo Won’t Disappoint Larson Readers

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It’s not often that I see two movies in two days, but then it’s not often Budge and I get enough movie gift cards to afford such a display of opulence. Last night, Budge and I joined Deuce and Cameron to check out The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. Budge and I had read the novel; Cameron and Deuce had not.

My general opinion is anchored strongly in the music. I feel that any film which opens with Trent Reznor doing an excellent cover of the unbelievably hard to cover “Immigrant Song” by Led Zeppelin AND showcases “Orinoco Flow” by Enya in the most ironic and inappropriate moment since the “Stuck in the Middle with You” scene in Q. Tarentino’s Reservoir Dogs (Google it on an empty stomach) is pretty much destined to be a good flick.

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is a good flick. I might go so far as to say a great flick. At the very least, Rooney Mara deserves a nomination for Best Lead Actress in a Dramatic Film. When I see a movie based on a novel I’ve read, one criteria for me is how much do the actors match the images of the characters I’ve created in my imagination. Mara’s portrayal of the brilliant and haunted Lisbeth Salander is closer than any character from any novel based movie I’ve ever seen. It’s like Mara read the novel then somehow absorbed Salander into her soul. Her eyes, her mannerisms, her genius all glare off the screen. She is a character who cannot and will not be ignored.

The rest of the cast are well suited to their roles also. Stellan Staarsgard is particularly gripping in his role as the dutiful and enigmatic Martin Vanger while Christopher Plummer lends his character acting mastery to the role of the grief broken Heinrick Vanger. Personally, two of my favorite performances were minor characters. I thought Steven Berkoff perfectly captured the role of the harried lawyer who is so deeply enmeshed in the family that he pretty much IS a member of the family while Goran Visjinic captures Dragan Armansky’s touching paternalistic solicitude of Lisbeth with pitch perfect precision. When he says, “She’s had a difficult life, can we please not make it any MORE difficult?” the audience gets the sense of a man who cares deeply for a wounded and troubled girl but who has no fleshly interest in her whatsoever.

This film is R rated and it has good reason. Some R rated films, particularly raunchy comedies like The Hangover might be okay for your kids to watch once you realize they hear worse language and cruder humor in the cafeteria and on the playground of the average public school. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo doesn’t really have much in the way of bad language. For a modern film the characters drop very few F-bombs but unless you want to explain what cunnilingus is, leave the kiddos home. What the characters do, however, is see life at it’s seamiest and most brutal. One rape scene in the first third of the film is extremely disturbing as is the revenge the raped takes upon the rapist. Consensual sex is shown graphically, but not frequently although you probably don’t want to take a first date to this show;  oh yeah, and if you’re an animal lover, don’t get attached to the cat.

As with any novel based movie, the question always arises “how faithful to the novel is the movie?” In this case, I feel David Fincher has done for Steig Larson’s work what Peter Jackson did for Tolkien’s corpus. The movie has some rearranging of events to better fit a movie and some events are changed for what seems like monetary or time concerns, but on the whole, the story is remarkably unchanged from the novel. I find that to be a plus, but some people may not really care. If you are a Larson fan, however, this movie won’t disappoint you and I think Larson himself would be proud of the way his debut novel has been brought to the screen.

Incidentally, I know this is a remake of the Swedish film of the same name from just a couple of years ago and since I reviewed Sherlock Holmes 2 so recently, I can’t help but mention that Noomi Rapace, who played the female lead in SH 2 also played Lisbeth Salander in the original Swedish film. I’d love to hear from anyone who has seen the original and would like to tell my audience how the two versions compare.

Dec29

Sherlock Holmes 2 is Exceedingly Well Done

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If you haven’t been to see Sherlock Holmes 2: A Game of Shadows, by all means go see it before it leaves the theaters. Budge and I went to see it yesterday with one of the many movie gift cards we acquired at Christmas and I was completely pleased with the movie as a whole. I realize some people — particularly movie snobs — will think I’m daft, but this film was crafted well enough and cast well enough to be considered for an Oscar. Now I have no delusions of it even being nominated, but if it does get on the slate, it will be the biggest Hollywood coup since Shakespeare in Love topped Saving Private Ryan for Best Picture.

As far as the cast, no one in Hollywood plays a manic dissolute independently wealthy hero as well as Robert Downey, Jr. I am somewhat biased in favor of Mr. Downey, I must confess, because I love to root for the underdog and not very long ago, RDJ was considered, rightly, by many in Hollywood as a washed up has been whose taste for alcohol and drugs had derailed a promising career. I think he has channeled some of that real world skid row gutter experience into characters like the alcoholic Tony Stark and the cocaine addicted Sherlock Holmes to bring a dimension to the screen other actors would be hard pressed to duplicate.

Jude Law as Watson comes across as anything but a sidekick second banana. Far from just a sober baseline foil for Holmes’ mania, Law plays the retired army surgeon as a concerned friend and worthy successor to Holmes’ masterful detective work. He also shows an audience how to help an addict but avoid the pitfalls of co-dependence. Jared Harris also gives a masterful performance as the brilliant but depraved Professor Moriarty — the one man whose intellect and powers of planning are a match, if not quite superior to Holmes’ own skills. When Harris and Downey share the screen, the air fairly crackles with the tension of two brilliant narcissistic geniuses crossing razor sharp intellects.

One particularly good part of this movie that I noticed and I hope others do as well is the marvelous music played throughout the film. From the somber strains of Don Giovanni to the lively wailing of an Irish fiddle, the music is ever-present and ever-changing but always maintaining a goal of helping move the action forward. I don’t know if the studio will release a soundtrack, but I for one would welcome it.

To sum up, this sequel is every bit as good as the first film and for my part attains the rare pedestal held by other second runs like Terminator 2 as even a measure superior to the original. It is more than just an action flick. It is a thinking person’s movie and it is loaded with great lines, great performances, and great music.

Wikipedia: Terminator 2: Judgment Day is a 1991 science fiction action film directed by James Cameron and written by Cameron and William Wisher Jr. →

Dec5

Instructions Would be Helpful

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Tonight, Budge and I had the privilege to keep the nine-month-old youngest baby boy of some of our friends from our church community group. The parents were going to see Oldest Daughter perform as Comet the Reindeer in the school’s Winter Holiday Christmas program and Middle Daughter would be accompanying the parentals.

However, Baby Boy likes to go to bed at 6:30 to 7:00 in the evening and, even though he is a wonderfully easy baby 99% of the time, he does NOT like being up past his bedtime. With that in mind, Dad gave me a call and asked if we’d get Junior off to bed so He and Mom could enjoy the show.

Since we are childless but adore children, we jumped at the chance!

Now as I said, Junior is an awesome baby. He’s ALMOST got the mechanics of crawling down. He’s got the arm strength built up to hold up his torso and he’s got the rocking motion down, but he just hasn’t quite put all the pieces together to create forward movement.

Mom explained the bedtime routine, told us where the Chicken Enchilada Bake for supper was warming up, and thanked us profusely before heading out the door to the school. Junior played hard for the next 90 minutes. He loves his little soft ball, but he has a hard time keeping it where he wants it and he since he can’t move to get it yet, he gets a little aggravated when it rolls away. So he and I had a great time playing with the ball and the little thing you push down on and it spins. He was having a great time, but all good things wear out and right around 6:35, the little fella started wearing out.

Budge asked me to do the diaper change and put him in his “sleep sack” while she ate supper then she’d take him up and rock him a bit so he’d go to sleep. No problem. Diaper changes don’t bother me at all. When Budge and I kept nursery at our former church, we had a family who sent three children through the nursery and I have no idea what those little ones ate, but they had the WORST diapers imaginable. I won’t gross you out with the hideously gory details, but suffice it to say the diaper, and sometimes even the clothes, didn’t always contain the spillage.

Little Junior’s diaper was a piece o’ cake compared to the Samples’ kids. I got him into the dry and put him in his sleep sack, zipped it up and figured he was ready for the night. Now I’ll admit I was a bit confused about the design of the sleep sack. It looked warm enough aplenty for his tummy to his feet, but his arms and chest were exposed and since I was under the impression the sleep sack replaced blankets in the crib, I was worried that his little upper body was going to get chilled. Still, this was the garment Mom had left for him to sleep in and Mom knows best, so I got him snuggled in the sleep sack, picked up his footie pjs to put in the hamper and went to make the handoff to Budge.

Those of you who know and understand the workings of sleep sacks already realize the problem. I would have loved a call from any one of you about four hours ago.

As soon as Budge saw me holding Junior, she laughed a little. When I queried her about what was so humorous, she informed me THEN that the sleep sack goes on OVER the pjs. Well, that does make sense, but since I like a minimum of cover when I sleep, I projected that onto the baby and figured the sack was all he needed, despite my misgivings about the arms and chest exposure.

Okay, I felt a little aggravated at the fact everyone in the world seemed to know how to dress a babe in a glorified sleeping bag except me, but I got over it quickly in the spirit of getting Junior off to the Land of Nod. So I sat him down and prepared to rectify the mistaken clothing situation.

It was there my troubles began.

See, Junior was an angel for the first undressing and redressing, HOWEVER, it became immediately obvious that he also was not one to suffer fools gladly. I had taken my ONE chance at dressing him properly while he was compliant and calm and I had blown it. Now, I would have to pay for that folly.

Since the sleep sack had just the one zipper, I had him skinned out of it relatively quickly, but then the footie pjs had to go back on. Whoever dreamed up footie pjs should be taken out, stood against the wall, and shot. Then shot again. With the eponymous “footies” on the bottoms of the pj legs, it is impossible to reach up through the leg, take firm hold of the wiggling foot and pull said foot back through the leg. You instead have to do “the point and push” where you start a foot into a pj leg and hope Junior extends his leg. He did . . . after six tries.

Then it was time to get the arms in the sleeves. I could have put socks on a millipede in the time it took me to get Junior’s arms corralled and into their proper resting places. Did you know a baby boy who is pissed off at you because you are too stupid to get him dressed correctly the first time can A) scream louder than the flight deck of a nuclear aircraft carrier during launch and recovery AND B) bend his arm into contortions that would make Houdini proud? By diligent effort, though, I managed to redress the lad in his pjs and wrangle him back into the sleep sack. Of course the zipper stuck a time or two and Budge was making everything soooo very much easier by giving helpful advice like, “Don’t catch his skin in the zipper!”

I really wanted to say, “Hon, I’m a guy. I’m used to ‘not catching things in zippers’ okay?” But I didn’t so I lived to write this entry. When I finally got the zipper zipped and the little tag thingy at the top of the collar buttoned, I threw both hands in the air rodeo style so the judges would know I had finished the hog-tying event. Budge just looked at me with barely disguised laughter of derision and scooped Junior up and took him off to bed.

Hey, all you Gerber and Carter and Oshkosh people? How about some directions printed on the sleep sack? Too much to ask?

In any event, love all of y’all and keep your feet “sleep sack” warm, dry, and clean!

Dec4

Awkward isn’t just for Adolescents

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As I’ve come to understand it, Americans should get out of college and pair off. Preferably the pairs will marry, but this is no longer the rigid step it once was. As a couple, you’re allowed around two to five years to “get to know each other” and “just be the two of you,” unless you happen to announce your intention to “start a ‘family’ right away.”

In that case, babies can start showing up within a year and stop when the couple reaches their desired number, which could range from one or two in most couples’ cases, to four or five if you want to be on staff where I go to church, all the way up to “20 and counting” if you are Amish, a member of a Quiverfull sect, or want your own lucrative reality television show.

Then you raise those children, get them educated, grown and gone, then retire to a life of travel and leisure while your empty nest periodically refills with grandchildren to bounce on knees and spoil rotten. Then you die, preferably surrounded by all those loving children. THEN — if you’re Mormon and had your marriage sealed in one of the Temples — you get to go to your own planet somewhere in the universe and do this whole cycle again on a deified, planetary level.

So, based on this supposed normal cycle, Budge and I have an awkward social problem. Apparently, we’ve skipped the vital “having and raising children” and, as a result, we are the “older childless couple.”

Let me clarify by saying that we didn’t set out to be an “older childless couple.” That’s just how our life has worked out. Budge was young (18) when we married so neither of us felt a great urgency to add to the world population right away. She still had college to finish and I was a relatively new teacher.

Time passed, we got our own place, and we let nature take its course. After the obligatory five years, we were still childless. Then we found out Budge has P.C.O.S. which will make it difficult if not impossible for her to ever have children. Now that is the main roadblock to our fertility that we know of. I could have issues or she could have another issue. We haven’t ever pursued it simply because life has continually gotten in the way.

We dismissed fertility procedures right from the start. We knew we didn’t have the funds to pursue treatment then and we sure don’t have it now. The profits pharmaceutical companies and some doctors are raking in from people desperate to have a child are obscene. I think it’s borderline criminal to make so much money on another person’s misery and anxiety. Also, we’ve seen first hand and up close what an untrammeled and unfulfilled desire to have a baby can do to a couple financially, but more importantly, emotionally. We didn’t want to put each other through that ordeal when we’ve got plenty more ordeals to deal with as it stands.

We studied adoption and got super-interested in adopting a baby girl or two from China. That door closed for us when China completely overhauled its foreign adoption policies. Looking at several websites of agencies specializing in Chinese adoptions, we soon realized we didn’t meet ANY of the financial or medical criteria China now set for foreign adoptions. After our plan of adopting from China aborted before takeoff, we briefly looked at domestic adoption but abandoned that idea for one reason — money.

So we’ve been married fifteen years and we have no children and, barring a miracle or a tragedy (we are the guardians of several children in friends’ wills), we won’t have any. We’ve come to accept this way of life and found it not so bad. We love children — we wouldn’t have both gone into education if we didn’t. We have a grown niece and four nephews (and counting) that we spend time with. Some of our friends have little ones we adore and spoil as much as possible, but mostly it’s just us. That’s okay with us, but it seems to be a problem for some other people.

You don’t really understand just how much this culture worships children until you’ve been married (or even together these days) with nothing but a small home and several pets to show for it. Churches especially seem to spend a huge section of their budgets on children’s programming and facilities. If you don’t HAVE children, you become — quite without malice, I’m certain — a bit of a second class citizen. We just don’t fit into any demographic.We aren’t singles; we aren’t empty-nesters; we aren’t parents. In such a child-centered world, we are oddballs.

If I had a dime for every time some well-intentioned person asked “so when are y’all gonna have some kids?” I’d be wealthy enough to buy the child of my choice on the black market. It doesn’t make me or Budge mad and we don’t experience the agony some infertile couples do, but it still makes for an “awkward turtle”-esque pause in the conversation.

Being childless also has a few aggravating implications. We are the last people in either of our families to know of any family plans because, “y’all don’t have to worry about schedules and stuff.” The thought being, we don’t have children so we can come and go whenever it suits everyone else. Likewise, people don’t mind “volunteering” us for stuff for much the same reason. We don’t have to worry about baby-sitters. It also means we get excluded from a lot of conversations — even among our friends. I guess they think being childless makes us deaf, too; so they feel free to talk about feedings, clothing, and sicknesses as if we didn’t have anything to contribute to the conversation. We don’t have children of our own but that doesn’t mean we know nothing about children! Go figure.

The only thing that really bothers that people do is when a mother or a father looks at me when I speak up about children and says, “well, you’d think that since you don’t HAVE any children.” Well, goober, no I don’t have any children of my own, but I spent 10 years seeing how idiots like you screwed them up by the time they got to their teen years. I don’t say that much though because Budge usually starts patting me on the leg or back as soon as she hears someone say something that could set me off.

So, y’all, just keep in mind that some of us out here are childless. We didn’t choose to be, but we’re okay with the hands life dealt us — you know, “whatever condition you find yourself in be content?” All we ask is a place at the table. After all, we make great baby-sitters.

Keep those feet clean and know that I love y’all!

Nov29

Paolini’s Worthless Inheritance

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"Copy one source and it's plagiarism; copy a bunch of sources and it's research . . . or The Inheritance Cycle.

One of my beloved Budge’s greatest strengths to me as a wife is her ability to hold up her end of the conversation in most of our realms of discussion. She’s as smart as she is pretty, which means she has quite the formidable intellect. It’s also safe to say we agree on many more things than we disagree on. One thing we don’t see the same way — AT ALL — is Christopher Paolini’s “Inheritance” Trilogy +1.

Budge just finished the fourth book of the series and pronounced it quite a good read. I read Eragon and Eldest and stopped because, not to put to fine a point on it, I’ve come to realize Christopher Paolini is a no-talent hack at best and an unrepentant plagiarist at worst. His talentlessness exceeds even Stephanie Meyer, which is something I never thought I’d say. At least Ms. Meyer was “original” (read: moronic) enough to take on vampires in a new and idiotic way because . . . wait for it . . . VAMPIRES DON’T FREAKING SPARKLE!

Paolini, however, is as unoriginal as a peanut butter and jelly sandwich . . . and has about as much taste. Now here’s the thing — I’m not the only one who recognizes what a horrible writer / copyist he is. In fact, ever since the publication of Eragon by Knopf back in ’06-ish, scores of scathing blog entries have eviscerated his childishly vapid and overwrought prose as well as his shameless appropriation of at least one major trait of every decent fantasy series since Tolkien.

Want ten reasons why Paolini is overrated? Check out Blair Mathis’ list.

Doubt the plagiarism? Read this Amazon.com review and see how, point for point, Eragon is Luke Skywalker with a dragon instead of an X-Wing and a sword instead of a light saber.

Finally, you can go to the Anti-Inheritance Wiki and see VOLUMES complete with page numbers, etc. showing just how horribly written and fraught with errors this drivel is.

However, I want to be frank and quote a REAL author, in this case Margaret Mitchell, by saying  “my dear, I don’t give a damn” about any of the errors in the book or the prose or the magic system or the plagiarisms. No. What pisses me off to no earthly end is all the press and fame Paolini has gotten making it look like he’s actually DONE SOMETHING! Make no mistake, this guy is not, as we Waffle House devotees like to say, “all THAT and a bowl of grits.”

What has he done? Well, he’s written a book. Correct. He was fifteen years old when he wrote Eragon and Eragon reads like a book a fifteen year old Tolkien / Star Wars fanboy would write. Nothing more. You can actually do a web search for Tolkien fan-fiction and find BETTER works by YOUNGER writers. I taught high school English for ten years and I can say with some expertise nothing about a 15 year old kid writing a book as bad as Eragon is exceptional. I had plenty of girl and guy freshmen fantasy addicted emogoths write novellas approaching or exceeding Paolini’s quality in ONE CLASS PERIOD (on the 90 minute block system just to clarify.)

No, Paolini is not exceptional. Exceptional is S.E. Hinton writing The Outsiders while still in public high school. If Eragon is still selling 500,000 copies a year in 2056, maybe I’ll reconsider my opinion. Personally, I doubt it will still be in print (physically or electronically) in 20 years, let alone 45.

Speaking of Hinton and public high school brings to mind another problem I have with Paolini — he was homeschooled. Now don’t get me wrong; I’ve got nothing against homeschooling per se. I don’t believe all the hype that would make every homeschooler out to be a genius, but that’s another post for another time. What I’m saying is how many novels could one of my emogoths have churned out if he or she’d had all day to work on such a passion at leisure?

"Why YES, yes I am quite the smug little prat! Thank you for noticing!"

My bottom line where Christopher Paolini and his lack of talent is concerned is simple — Eragon would NEVER HAVE SEEN THE LIGHT OF DAY if Paolini’s parents were not somewhat wealthy. They had enough money to get his pet novel published by a vanity press and last time I checked, that ain’t cheap.  They had enough money to send him on “book tours” to libraries and schools to do “readings” of his “work” to captive audiences and Carl Hiaason’s kid happened to be in one of those audiences and the rest is history . . . and hype, good lord, don’t forget HYPE. After all, if you don’t have talent, you’d better have marketing!

How many teens have the beginnings of a much better novel than Eragon sitting in a composition book or on a computer hard drive? We’ll never know most of them because those teens have to go to school and a great many of them have to work and not rely on Mommy and Daddy to fly them to the next “reading event.” If Mama had been rich enough to vanity press some of my work, I’d have had a few books out before college, too. As it is, Mama kept a roof over my head and food in my fat belly and I’ve got a box of rejection slips instead of bank notes.

But I’m not bitter.

If it seems like I’m being harsh . . . well, I am. Paolini represents a lot of the things I despise in the world. To me, he’s an arrogant “HAVE” thumbing his nose, very undeservedly, at all the “HAVE-NOTS.” He’s proof — like Paris Hilton and the Kardashian clan — that money can buy fame, but it can’t buy talent.

Love y’all, keep those feet clean, and remember —  Friends don’t let Friends read crappy fantasy books!

Frodo lives!