parlando

old post (from the well) #33, 18 may 00

Posted on March 13th, 2010 by Scraps.
Categories: Music, Words, Media, Comedy, Old Posts.

I am now the publisher of the Sonicnet front page every morning. So I figure I'm getting paid to not write my own headlines:

MTV IN PAYOLA SCANDAL

TOWER TO GIVE AWAY ALL MUSIC FOR FREE

ARISTA REPLACES CLIVE DAVIS WITH DRUNK STOAT

FRED DURST FLAYED

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old post (from the well) #32, 12 oct 98

Posted on March 13th, 2010 by Scraps.
Categories: Music, Words, Musicians, Old Posts.

From a No Doubt website:

"Fan site including +70 pics of Gwen, pics of EVERY band member including horns!"

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old post (from the well) #31, 25 jul 96

Posted on March 13th, 2010 by Scraps.
Categories: Words, Musicians, Old Posts.

Look, Oingo Boingo were pretty damn good, but put down XTC and I kill you. They disconnect my atoms and rearrange them; they reprogram my synapses and polish my dendrites; they save my life every two weeks. If that's pretentious, man, lock me in grad school and shower me with footnotes.

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old post (from the well) #30, 15 jul 97

Posted on March 12th, 2010 by Scraps.
Categories: Words, Comedy, Old Posts.

Whenever I hear the word "fail" I reach for my revolver.

1 comment.

old post (from the well) #29, 1 apr 97

Posted on March 12th, 2010 by Scraps.
Categories: Words, Badness, Old Posts.

Today, just now in fact [well, nearly thirteen years ago, but anyway], I created a very impressive special effect, and I wish i hadn't. You know how corningware's supposed to be virtually unbreakable, except when it shatters spontaneously deep in the cupboard? Don't believe them. I'm housesitting for friends, and I wanted some beans and rice. Pulled out an appropriately-sized corningware pot, and went to the kitchen where the lids are propped on a wall unit. I carelessly pulled the right-sized lid, and it took the next-larger one with it; that lid crashed to the floor, and astonishingly (I wish I were in a position to admire this) crashed right through the pot I was holding. Corningware all over the kitchen floor to the atomic level. Me left holding a very sorry little corningware pot handle. Now I have to (heavy sigh) go clean it up.

And, naturally, this means that there is now a pot without a corresponding lid, and a lid without a corresponding pot. I'd worry about replacing them, but right now I DON'T GET TO HAVE ANY RICE AND BEANS.

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old post (from the well) #28, 21 may 97

Posted on March 11th, 2010 by Scraps.
Categories: Songs, Words, Dance, Old Posts.

Last night I dreamed that I was skipping and running cheerfully along a colorful series of ledges, rails and ropes, with a partner, improvised yet perfectly synchronized, while around us "The Candy Man" by Sammy Davis Jr played, and it was the beats and chord changes of the song that we improvised our steps to. And it all. felt. perfectly. natural.

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where will rush go?

Posted on March 9th, 2010 by Scraps.
Categories: Stuff, Media.

Rush Limbaugh will leave the US if health care reform is passed.

Any sane person would applaud; that was my first thought. But my second was: What country is Limbaugh going to? Most every developed country has national health care. Answer: Costa Rica.

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old post (from the well) #27, 12 apr 99

Posted on March 7th, 2010 by Scraps.
Categories: Words, Old Posts.

Irony is the all-purpose ass-cover.

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old post #26, 13 oct 05

Posted on March 6th, 2010 by Scraps.
Categories: Words, Stock Phrases, Old Posts.

Blurbs that go on about sacred cows, naked emperors, puncturing pretensions, daring to say what others only think, etc, lean upon the reader to agree or be judged cowardly, staid, unhip. It's an attempt to put the reader on the defensive if they don't care for "satire" that is generally about as daring as a fart in class.

Worst of all: "This book has something to offend everyone."

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old post #25, 12 jul 01

Posted on March 3rd, 2010 by Scraps.
Categories: Words, Comedy, Old Posts.

A few gentler ways of saying Myers isn't the writer that Twain was:

1: Myers isn't the writer Twain was. (But then, who is?)

2: Myers, while a fine writer in many ways, is not the towering giant of literature that Twain was.

3: Twain -- and I don't want to overstate this, because after all Myers is young and history may judge him kindly -- was a great writer, of course, while Myers has yet to establish his possible greatness.

4: Without wishing to dismiss your comparison out of hand, or discount its relevance to the argument, I think it's worth pointing out that Twain is a great writer, and Myers is, perhaps, slightly less than great.

5: I appreciate your point regarding Mark Twain; thank you for bringing it to the table. It certainly can be said that Mark Twain's famous attack on Cooper is similar in some ways to the BR Myers piece. We would be remiss not to acknowledge that. However, I think that it is also worth noting that Mark Twain is a great writer, and that his stylistic and rhetorical skills may have much to do with the success of his Cooper piece; while Myers, though able and worthy, lacks some of Twain's vigor, concision, and insight.

6: Myers isn't the writer Twain was, IMHO.

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old post #24, 22-24 may 99

Posted on March 2nd, 2010 by Scraps.
Categories: Words, Reading Classics, Books, Old Posts.

I'm three-fourths of the way through I Capture the Castle. It really isn't that much like Cold Comfort Farm, in my view, except for the charm of the narrative voice; it's not at all a farce, mainly. It's a romance, a good one, and right now it's awfully sad, though I trust it doesn't remain so.
(. . .)
Just finished I Capture the Castle. It's heartbreaking. I didn't expect that. It's a marvelous book, but I'm not sure I'm ever going to want to reread it.

(Note: It's eleven years. I remember it as a marvelous book, but indeed I haven't reread it. Maybe I will; I'm very forgetful now.)

0 comments.

old post #23, 3 jun 97

Posted on March 2nd, 2010 by Scraps.
Categories: Words, Comedy, Old Posts.

(My entry in a "literary commercial" contest.)

When I was one-and-twenty
I heard a wise man say
'Think well upon your future:
Your life will end someday.

Stash pearls away and rubies,
Embrace security.'
But I was one-and-twenty,
No use to talk to me.

When I was one-and-twenty
I heard him say again,
'A State Farm Family Policy
Was never bought in vain;
'Tis paid in small installments,
And buys you easy sleep
Till you are one-and-ninety
And buried six feet deep.'

0 comments.

old post #22, 2 may 01

Posted on February 28th, 2010 by Scraps.
Categories: Words, Reading Classics, Writers, Old Posts.

A Wrinkle in Time is explicitly religious all over the place, but it doesn't have the veneer of priggishness and cold self-righteousness that ruins parts of the Narnia books. L'Engle's mood is more pitying than judgmental. On the other hand, she treats evil as a force more than a choice, and while Lewis's opposite treatment is more judgmental, it also has more to do with the way evil actually works, in my opinion. I'd rather re-read L'Engle's books, but a lot of the reason the religious message slides right by, in my opinion, is that it's not grounded in the actions of the characters. In the Narnia books, Edmund falls into evil by choice, and is redeemed by choice (as is Eustace, while Susan is cold-heartedly damned). In A Wrinkle in Time, Charles falls into evil because he is possessed by the evil force while trying to save his father. That's scary, but it's also unreal in a way that Edmund's choices are not.

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old post #21, 19 aug 98

Posted on February 27th, 2010 by Scraps.
Categories: Words, Games, Old Posts.

The idea that "chess is relatively easy" is very recent, and very nearly postdates the crucial match. Just ten years ago, it wasn't difficult to find folks in the AI debate asserting that computers would never beat the best humans at chess.

We don't have a problem with machines being stronger or faster than us, but the idea that we can program computers to exceed our mental processes is deeply disturbing. Yet the notion that this is "impossible" is essentially mystical: it insists that there is more to human thought than the physical workings of the brain, and hence can never be artificially created.

When computers start making original contributions to philosophy, there will be folks maintaining that philosophy is relatively easy.

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old post #20, 28 april 98

Posted on February 25th, 2010 by Scraps.
Categories: Words, Books, Old Posts.

I've noticed this in myself and others: We can forgive the things we liked as children, and maybe even still enjoy them, because we didn't know any better and there's an innocent joy in returning to that total open-mindedness. But we can't forgive the things we enjoyed as adolescents, because we were beginning to try to be adults, often self-importantly, and it can be excruciatingly embarrassing to be reminded of what we thought was deep and mature then.

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old post #19, 7 jan 02

Posted on February 23rd, 2010 by Scraps.
Categories: Words, Media, Old Posts.

If advertising were as insidiously, relentlessly effective as all that, we'd all be automatons. (Ah, but how do you know you're not?) We wouldn't be so much like our parents (but who made your parents?), we wouldn't, so many of us, have very much the values of the people who raised and taught us (but who programmed them?). If advertising is so effective, why do we resist it? (Don't make me laugh.) If advertising is so effective, why can't they make us buy anything they want, regardless of quality? (You think you have your own taste, desires, free will? Get real.)

I've read The Hidden Persuaders, and I probably have more interest in what makes advertising work than is healthy for me, just as I am interested in the rhetoric of persuasive (as opposed to truthful) argument. But, with all due respect, most anti-advertising rants I read (closely related to anti-television rants) strike me as a species of conspiracy theory. If someone wants to say there are strings attached to my limbs and those of my children, I can see for myself that it's not so; a persuasive voice is not a string, and the contentiousness, irascibility, and simple desire to please one's own self will continue to confound and frustrate sellers with nothing good to sell, no matter how sneaky they are.

And I've never met an adult where you couldn't guess a lot more about their parents, schooling, and religious upbringing than what television they watched and what advertising they were exposed to.

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old post #18, 10 nov 01

Posted on February 20th, 2010 by Scraps.
Categories: Words, Old Posts.

I passed a poster today put up by PETA: "Thanksgiving is Murder on Turkeys." This is one of those moronic political ads that so far as I can tell is intended entirely to give a nice smug feeling to people who already agree, since I can't imagine anyone finding it a revelation and having their mind changed about Thanksgiving: "You mean, they kill birds? THIS TURKEY WAS ONCE A FREE, HAPPY, THRIVING CREATURE, A FRIEND TO MAN, CRUELLY CUT DOWN IN ITS PRIME SO MONSTERS LIKE ME CAN SINK OUR ANIMAL TEETH INTO ITS ONCE-QUIVERING FLESH?? --I am so ashamed."

1 comment.

old post #17, 8 may 99

Posted on February 19th, 2010 by Scraps.
Categories: Words, Old Posts.

My big problem with driving on LSD is that inevitable horrifying realization that I can't drive.

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further lies about brad jones (old post #16, jan 98-jun 02)

Posted on February 19th, 2010 by Scraps.
Categories: Words, Untruths, Old Posts.

Brad Jones solved the Trees of Mystery.

You know that creepy feeling that someone's looking at you in the dark? Brad Jones.

Brad Jones is both singular and plural.

Brad Jones disdains the title "producer," preferring to be listed as "mystic wagga."

The Tufted Bean-Warblers have declined to offer arbitration to Brad Jones.

Brad Jones Swallows return to Pensacola every year around Christmas break to party and crap all over everything.

Give Brad Jones a fish and you've fed him for a day. Teach Brad Jones to fish and you're rid of him forever.

The correct plural of Brad Jone is actually Brad Jona.

Brad Jones keeps losing his lab assistants because he insists upon referring to them as "my amanuensis."

Whenever Brad Jones sees Counting Crows on tv his eyes get big and he yells "It's Doctor Jones! Doctor Jones!" until someone changes the channel and he subsides, muttering.

Brad Jones pronounces "infrared" to rhyme with "dared”, to the confusion of his students, readers, subscribers, followers, sidekicks, lackeys, and heirs and assigns.

Teaching Brad Jones is now optional in Kansas. Scientists worry that this will result in Brad Jones growing up pig-ignorant.

You know that really annoying conductor on the 1 train with the same "clever" patter every day? Brad Jones.

63% of Americans can't distinguish between Brad Jones and New Lemon Pledge.

Can you imagine Thursday nights on NBC without Brad Jones? You can't.

Brad Jones has had to be legally enjoined from walking up to small children and informing them grimly that there is no itsy-bitsy spider.

Brad Jones could have had a decent career in competitive jacks had he been able to say "sixies" without loss of muscular coordination.

Brad Jones is a card-carrying card-carrier.

Brad Jones didn't mean to rain on your parade. He can't help it; he's a low-pressure air mass sweeping down from Canada.

Brad Jones's given name is not Bradley; it is just Brad. However, his surname is actually Jonesley.

Have you heard Brad Jones sing the high notes in "Witchy Woman"? Not unless you're a dog.

Brad Jones isn't talking. He is, however, emitting a seemingly organized series of squawks and beeps that experts are attempting to crack.

"Adapt and improve," says Brad Jones, with clenched teeth and jaws.

Sometimes Brad Jones stops dead in the middle of the street and cries out "Christ! what an imagination I've got!"

0 comments.

quotable ebert

Posted on February 18th, 2010 by Scraps.
Categories: Words, Movies.

"This early in the film, we're still asking such logical questions. Later, the despair sets in."

--review of Buddy Buddy

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