August Burns Red..................God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen
Saturday, December 6, 2014
Too many laws......................................
Ignorance of the law has long been held to not be a sustainable defense, but given the passage of some 40,000 new laws in 2014, how is one supposed to keep up with the criminalization of our daily lives? Police Departments (and Grand Juries) around our fair land have been taking a metaphorical beating lately. Maybe the answer is that we should ask them to enforce fewer laws. One of my favorite blogs takes a look at the issue here. Wee excerpt here:
This kind of race-based law enforcement is given the stink-eye by our friends on the left, but they can't seem to draw the obvious inference: the answer is not better police. The answer is fewer laws. Decriminalize normal nonviolent daily activity, and the police will have a lot fewer excuses to harass people they don't like and who can't fight back.
This kind of race-based law enforcement is given the stink-eye by our friends on the left, but they can't seem to draw the obvious inference: the answer is not better police. The answer is fewer laws. Decriminalize normal nonviolent daily activity, and the police will have a lot fewer excuses to harass people they don't like and who can't fight back.
Fifty years ago........................................
The Rolling Stones...........................................Not Fade Away
Need a list......................................
..................to help jump-start your 2015 New Year's resolutions?
This re-run may be just the ticket.
This re-run may be just the ticket.
Not so sure about this one......................
From The Economist's The World in 2015 issue comes the prediction of The return of nine-to-five. Apparently, when in comes to the workplace, less will become more in 2015. No more late nights, no more early mornings, no more weekends, no more working vacations. Hmmm. Maybe, but all that technology that has both vastly changed the nature of time and, theoretically anyway, made us more efficient, has demands of its own. The essayist says:
"In the best companies Parkinson's Law will operate perfectly and work will contract to fit the time available."
Color me doubtful.
"In the best companies Parkinson's Law will operate perfectly and work will contract to fit the time available."
Color me doubtful.
Friday, December 5, 2014
Stringing words together in a most interesting fashion.......................................................
I don't know James Wolcott and had never heard of James Wolcott before reading this post by Ben Casnocha. I don't know Lena Dunham and had never heard of Lena Dunham until various intertunnel locales I visit started mentioning her recently. Something about a book she wrote. Anyway, Casnocha points to this Wolcott review of Dunham's book, and offers this excerpt:
Callow, grating, and glibly nattering as much of the rest of Not That Kind of Girl is, its impact is a series of glancing blows. The self-revelations and gnarly disclosures are stowed alongside the psycho-twaddle, affirmational platitudes, and show-offy candor of someone avid to be liked and accepted—on her own terms, of course, for who she is in all her flawed, bountiful faux pas glory. Can’t blame her for that. It’s what most talented exhibitionists crave and strive for beneath the light of the silvery moon and the mystic ministrations of Oprah, and Dunham’s ability to put it over is as impressive in its way as Madonna’s wire-muscled will-to-power and James Franco’s iron-butterfly dilettantism. Beneath the surface slop and ditzy tics, Dunham possesses an unimpeachable work ethic, a knowledgeable respect for senior artists (as evidenced by her friendship and collaboration with the Eloise illustrator Hilary Knight and her endorsement of the memoirs of Diana Athill), and a canny knack for converting her personal piques, plights, bellyflops, hamster-wheel OCD compulsions, and body-image issues into serial dramedy. That professional nasal drips such as Times columnist Ross Douthat interpret this as symptomatic of an entire generation’s narcissistic disorder says more about them than her. (Douthat probably would have disapproved of James Dean too, told him to stand up straight.)
Think I might be reading more from James Wolcott.
Callow, grating, and glibly nattering as much of the rest of Not That Kind of Girl is, its impact is a series of glancing blows. The self-revelations and gnarly disclosures are stowed alongside the psycho-twaddle, affirmational platitudes, and show-offy candor of someone avid to be liked and accepted—on her own terms, of course, for who she is in all her flawed, bountiful faux pas glory. Can’t blame her for that. It’s what most talented exhibitionists crave and strive for beneath the light of the silvery moon and the mystic ministrations of Oprah, and Dunham’s ability to put it over is as impressive in its way as Madonna’s wire-muscled will-to-power and James Franco’s iron-butterfly dilettantism. Beneath the surface slop and ditzy tics, Dunham possesses an unimpeachable work ethic, a knowledgeable respect for senior artists (as evidenced by her friendship and collaboration with the Eloise illustrator Hilary Knight and her endorsement of the memoirs of Diana Athill), and a canny knack for converting her personal piques, plights, bellyflops, hamster-wheel OCD compulsions, and body-image issues into serial dramedy. That professional nasal drips such as Times columnist Ross Douthat interpret this as symptomatic of an entire generation’s narcissistic disorder says more about them than her. (Douthat probably would have disapproved of James Dean too, told him to stand up straight.)
Think I might be reading more from James Wolcott.
Fifty years ago.........................................
The Hollies.........................................................Just One Look
The one percent solution......................
...........................................the improvement of everything.
Opening paragraphs..................................
The horror was in the waiting - the unknown, the insomnia, the ulcers. Co-workers ignored each other and hid behind locked doors. Secretaries and paralegals passed along the rumors and refused eye contact. Everyone was on edge, wondering, "Who might be next?" The partners, the big boys, appeared shell-shocked and wanted no contact with their underlings. They might soon be ordered to slaughter them.
-John Grisham, Gray Mountain
-John Grisham, Gray Mountain
Sieve................................................
Ever since I didn't die on a trolley in the Hallamshire Hospital in Sheffield, and a surgeon made an inspired guess, drilled into my head to let the pressure out and my squashed brain began to re-expand, my memory isn't so good.
"Like a sieve" is apt - most of the events, faces and details of the day just run through it. What catches and sticks is ordinary, and precious. Glimpses of the day - two squirrels pursuing each other round a tree in a glimmering grey double helix, Leo flipping his trilby up along his arm onto his head and flashing a grin before setting off to school, the bone-white new moon in a blue-black permanent sky when I lock up the shed - they remain, glittering flakes in the bottom of the sieve.
Songs and their words, those I can remember without effort. Even the ones I don't like stick. Poems, likewise. And there are some holes on some golf courses that I can still walk myself through any time. A strikingly high proportion of those holes are on Shiskane.
-Andrew Greig, Preferred Lies: A Journey to the Heart of Scottish Golf
Thursday, December 4, 2014
Volume up...............................................!
August Burns Red......................................Carol of the Bells
Angels......................................................
You might see an angel anytime
and anywhere. Of course you have
to open your eyes to a kind of
second level, but it's not really
hard. The whole business of
what's reality and what isn't has
never been solved and probably
never will be. So I don't care to
be too definite about anything.
I have a lot of edges called Perhaps
and almost nothing you can call
Certainty. For myself, but not
for other people. That's a place
you just can't get into, not
entirely anyway, other people's
heads.
and anywhere. Of course you have
to open your eyes to a kind of
second level, but it's not really
hard. The whole business of
what's reality and what isn't has
never been solved and probably
never will be. So I don't care to
be too definite about anything.
I have a lot of edges called Perhaps
and almost nothing you can call
Certainty. For myself, but not
for other people. That's a place
you just can't get into, not
entirely anyway, other people's
heads.
I'll just leave you with this.
I don't care how many angels can
dance on the head of a pin. It's
enough to know that for some people
they exist, and that they dance.
I don't care how many angels can
dance on the head of a pin. It's
enough to know that for some people
they exist, and that they dance.
-Mary Oliver
Hey Kurt......................................
.......................................................isn't it time to have a beer?
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