Category: Culture

So I was reading that taxpayers in Chesterfield (or people who pay taxes in Chesterfield because they shop there) are funding a dog park:

Folks hounding Chesterfield officials over the years for a dog park finally have a reason to howl in celebration.

The $118,000, two-acre Eberwein Dog Park, the first dog park in the city, is set to open to Chesterfield residents on Sept. 1. The dog park is within the new 18-acre Eberwein Park.

And I got to thinking, how else could the few who own dogs further soak the taxpaying public? And then it hit me: Public, compulsory dog school.

Listen, when you argue with a liberal about public schooling, he will say that it’s best for a civilized society as a whole if its citizens are educated in a mass-produced Procrustean factory of leftist indoctrination (well, he will say all of it up to the prepositional phrase). Then, if you show him this chart:

He’ll say something about how the increased funding raises minorities scores or something, not caring that the math indicates that a whole lot of scores have to go down to make a flat average when the mythical increase of minority scores. But that’s neither here nor there.

By that reasoning, compulsory obedience school for dogs makes a better society. Better-behaved dogs don’t bite, increasing safety. Better-behaved dogs don’t run into traffic, increasing safety. Frisbee-trained dogs provide entertainment and exercise, getting children out of the house and away from the Wii, increasing fitness and combating childhood obesity. Ergo, the government should fund dog obedience schools to indirectly improve society.

And if the costs are astronomical and rising compared to the benefit? That’s what quantitative easing is for. QED.

Ever since he watched Star Wars, the child is full of questions about it, mostly along the lines of “Are stormtroopers bad guys?”, “Is Anakin a good guy,” and “Why was there a monster in that place where they went [the garbage compactor]?”

It was bad enough when George Lucas bollixed it all up with the prequels or even with the originals when reflected upon as an adult (So they’re standing knee deep in waste water on a space station?).

However, the boy also asks questions along the lines of:

• Is Darth Vader real? No.
• Are light savers real? They’re light sabers, and no.
• Is Tatooine real? Uh….

The first four planets orbiting the star 55 Cns were discovered in the late1990’s – early 2000’s. However, they were hot gas giants. After the discovery in 2002 of the planets 55 Cnc C and 55 Cnc D it turned out that there was a wide “gap” between them. However, the results of modular simulation showed that this space can be occupied by stable planetary orbits. Only in 2007 one of the study participants, Professor Geoffrey Marcy, “stumbled” upon the fifth planet – 55 Cnc F, whose mass is equal to 0.155 of the mass of Jupiter (approximately 46 Earth masses) and is removed from its parent star by approximately the same distance as Earth from the Sun.

The new planet was “unofficially” name Tatooine – the name of the homeland of “Star Wars” characters Anakin (the future Darth Vader) and Luke Skywalker, a planet with two suns.

Great. So now I have to admit that some things from Star Wars are real, kind of, and confuse him with why, kind of like how I confuse him by telling him the Star Wars stories are real qua stories, but that the events depicted within them did not happen.

At least it will keep me from trying to explain how Anakin Skywalker will bring balance to the force by killing all the Jedi but two (one of whom dies of old age) and then killing the Sith Master and dying as the Sith Apprentice. Which is a pretty grim bit of balance bringing, that.

Bumblebee is a Volkswagen Beetle, dammit!

Almost 20 years ago, I saw The Visit at the, uh, Milwaukee Repertory Theater when I was in college. What, you don’t believe me?

Sorry, I get confused sometimes. The PAC or whatever the heck they call it now down on Wells Street was a theater complex that had a number of plays running sometimes simultaneously. Was I at the Pabst? Was I at the Caberet? Which theatre was I at that night? I went to so many.

Damn you unbelievers! Even though I was a college senior at Marquette University, I was working 50 hours a week to pay tuition and to take women to the theatre. Why, my senior year of college, I saw The Norman Conquests, all three of them, with three different women. Actually, I saw Table Manners twice with two different women because I booked them incorrectly, as the Rep was rotating them nightly and I got my nights confused.

Damn you unbelievers! Even Marquette women would let me escort them to the theater (where many had never been) when I bought the ticket (with money I made between classes and extracurricular activities and invitations to the Rep by slinging produce for 50 or more hours a week as acting manager of the Produce section of a Shop Rite). Of them, only one was a freshman kind of impressed by the attention of a senior.

So you’ll excuse me a bit of triumph here if I can’t recollect exactly which of the women who thought I was good enough for a theatre ticket as friends with which I saw this piece performed lo, those years ago.

No, what is important is the comment I made to her as we walked out: “I hate fascism.”

Heavens to betsy lou! Was it Linda, the woman-girl with whom I’d exchanged notes in the Fall semester philosophy class and who, through some miscommunication, did not know my sorta interest until the Spring? After this play, we went to a bar, and she accused me several times of patronizing her until I said, “Well, it’s all over now, you might as well drive me home.” Could be.

Where was I?

Oh, yeah, this play about Fascism and what it (metaphorically) entails is being put on by the Stray Dog Theatre in St. Louis this month.

If I still lived in the area, I’d be all on that like a stray dog on…. Well, you fill in the metaphor.

It’s the Macy’s Father’s Day Sale. Who are the fathers who will receive gifts from Macy’s?

These guys:

That’s 3 of 6 of the images that have a father and a small child in them. Note that roughly half of these fathers of small children in the Macy’s world have greying or white hair.

(Yes, I know that the second and third pix are of the same model.)

I’m making no value judgments here, just noting.

You know what I would pay to see twice? A film starring William Shatner and Shaquille O’Neal.

Shat and Shaq. What would beat that?

Since Hollywood is out of ideas and cannot probably think of something appropriately awesome, maybe a Lethal Weapon reboot with the colors reversed just so Shatner’s Murtaugh could say, “‘I’m getting too old for this s—,’ my dad says.”

The term localvore is becoming big among the hippie-dippie set. Hey, I’m not knocking growing your own food–I recently uprooted my family to move to a locale where I have more room for my own gardens–and I’m not knocking supporting local farms and local gardeners who participate in farmers’ markets and roadside stands, but you’ve got a whole content industry providing books, Web sites, and even a newspaper column here in Springfield that does nothing but promote how much better local grown produce is than something grown somewhere else in the world and transported to your local grocery store.

I mean, hey, I support buying local produce when it’s fresh and cheap, but there’s no actual moral imperative to do so.

But for some people, it is a MORAL IMPERATIVE! because it’s good for the planet or something. Better for the planet than what the bourgeoisie is doing, anyway.

How many of those hectoring locovores drive Toyota Priia and listen to European techno on their Chinese-made iPhones? I’d like to see the Venn diagram on that.

Barbara Bush cuts a political ad in favor of gay marriage:

And all I think is She could be Wilma Deering in the Buck Rogers reboot.

I’m not gonna get all down on Big Pharmaceuticals here, but don’t the names these days sound a little more mythic than they need to?

Because when I hear about Uloric, immediately I think of a giant blond man with a horned helmet, bearing the mighty four-bladed Xanax in his quest to defeat the unhuman Prinvil and their allies the demonic Zestril and to defend the mighty artifact the Zocor from the predations of the Norvasc and their tyrannical warlord Zithromax.

I think we could build a whole mythology here, or at least keep a comic book running for 40 years, not counting the time spent on alt-history and alt-present stories.

First of all, Merry Christmas to my Christian readers. And happy holidays to everyone else.

Now, I know I’ve made fun of organizations that use “Happy Holidays” instead of Merry Christmas (well, just this Catholic university). I know it’s the time for getting into high dudgeon about ignoring the significance of the Christian holiday at a time when Christianity is under siege in the country and the world. However, before one gets all a-bluster about not saying or not being excited about receiving a “Merry Christmas,” consider why one says that at all.

If it’s just a greeting-of-the-day sort of thing, nothing more than a general “Good day,” then why bother? Just say, “Good morning.”

Of course, it’s not just a timely greeting of the day. It carries additional significance. For many, it’s a reminder of the birth of Christ, the redemption of man, and the fulfillment of a promise from Yahweh. That is what the day means to Christians, and it has a very particular significance. It also celebrates a festival of sorts, some family time, good will, and the more secular emanations of the event. Peace on earth, goodwill to men and so on.

So: consider what you mean when you say Merry Christmas or Happy Holidays.

If you say “Merry Christmas,” to another Christian, of course it’s a greeting and a reminder of shared values and whatnot. If you say “Merry Christmas” to someone who is not a Christian, it’s a lot like saying, “Happy Independence Day” to a Canadian or having a Canadian say “Happy Victoria Day” to you. You might as well say “Merry Saturday.” Merry Christmas lacks the special significance textually to the non-Christian recipient. If you say it to share the general goodwill of the season, as you probably do, there’s nothing wrong with it. However, “Happy Holidays” captures this spirit, too, and organizations and commercial enterprises that deal with more than just Christians might not so much want to throw the Christian holiday to the lions as to share the goodwill emanating from the holiday to all.

Of course, if your purpose in saying “Merry Christmas” is to greet fellow Christians only and to proselytize to the non-believers at the same time, to throw in their face their heathen status, and to serve as the single calling to God after which the non-believers can burn in Hell for believing differently, I can see why it’s very important that everything in Christendom bear those words in that order.

Of course, it’s most likely not the intention. Instead, most who say “Merry Christmas” are the former, sharing general goodwill and fellowship. So what’s the difference, then, between saying, “Happy holidays” versus “Merry Christmas”?

Too many Christians think that their religion is under assault from secularists who want to take the lower case t out of Christmas because it looks like a cross and turn the holiday into Chrismas. Or something. They’re afraid that inclusiveness in cheer and well-wishing is going to strip their meaning from the holiday.

Crikey, the generic tidings of a marketing team or a right-thinking fellow can’t diminish the birth of Christ and your celebration of it that much, can they? I should hope not. Besides, the person who says it to you probably means pretty much the same thing as you do except he or she is expressing it as he or she can.

On the flip side, of course, anyone who gets wished a Merry Christmas who gets insulted because he, she, or it is not a Christian should take the tiding in the spirit in which it was probably offered and spare the self-righteous indignation at the ignorance of the Christer who offers it. For Pete’s sake, hail the all powerful Pete, All-Doing and All-Seeing immortal Pete, it’s not a direct attack on the fact that you’re different from the speaker. Punch the END button before your attorney answers and respond “Merry Christmas” or say “Happy Holidays” instead, or “May Pete’s Sweat of Opulence fall upon you” and let it go.

Headline of the day, or at least the morning before 7am: Music business leads to a career in retail industry.

Wait, I’m being handed a late-breaking bulletin!

• Theatre business leads to career in food service industry!
• Writing business leads to career in caffeine dispensation industry!
• College degree in [strSensitiveCauseDuJour] Studies leads to career in cleaning Mom’s house, reluctantly and occasionally, in return for bunk and a couple bucks for gas!

(Yes, I realize the headline links to a story about a public relations person in the retail industry, not someone greeting people at Wal-mart. But what’s the fun in going off on a tear if you have to stick to reality?)

Wherein “gold” in this case might mean “$12”:

For a nation at war with its own values, “Fair Game” is a compelling, pertinent and scrupulously true political thriller in the honorable tradition of “All the President’s Men.”

Valerie Plame, smartly portrayed by Naomi Watts, was a CIA operative who specialized in defusing the nuclear ambitions of terrorists and rogue regimes. When President George W. Bush’s administration said Iraq was stockpiling uranium from Africa, it didn’t square with Plame’s information. She suggested to her bosses that her husband, former ambassador Joseph Wilson (Sean Penn), was qualified to investigate.

When the American public goes to films, it doesn’t go to see artists twisting facts to make a compelling narrative designed to hector America and Americans; that’s why a couple of them still take their daily papers.

I predict Fair Game comes in 9th this week if not lower.

My preschool child brought home this worksheet:

Not to put too fine a point on it, but American money doesn’t look like that any more.

Sometimes, I could use a modern cheat sheet in my pocket to help me identify which coins are which.

Angela Dorian, PMOY 1968, is in custody for attempted murder.

She appeared in the original Star Trek episode “Assignment: Earth” as Isis, the cat/human companion of Gary Seven.

I just read Star Trek: The Eugenic Wars, which features the characters Gary Seven and Isis.

It’s getting harder and harder to explain these intersections to my wife, particularly after the whole Shannon Tweed/The Firing Line film selection. But therein lies another story.

UPDATE: Name changed to protect the presumed innocent as corrected by Charles Hill in the comments.