The official site of Kelly Sedinger: Reader, writer, photographer, and dreamer
OK, I’ll say this for Wal-Mart: to my knowledge, they’re not using those God-awful self-serve checkouts in their stores yet. (At least not here. I may be wrong.)
The grocery store nearest my home has one of these set-ups as a replacement for a traditional “Seven items or less” express lane, staffed by a real live cashier. I detest these damn things.
(That is all.)
Lynn responds to my post below about Mozart, which was in turn a response to a post of hers about Mozart. Blogistan rules!
Anyway, she makes a valuable point about the way Mozart is viewed these days. We seem to love child prodigies in a “circus freak” kind of way, and Mozart is classical music’s ultimate circus-freak, a kid who was writing symphonies when most kids are still struggling to spell “cat” if you spot them the ‘c’ and the ‘a’. The profound work of Mozart’s maturity is not often explored for that reason. And if that’s not bad enough, there’s all that folderol about listening to Mozart making your brain work better, or some such thing. (I’m pretty sure that stuff has been debunked, but I’m not sure.) So Mozart is not only freakish, but good for you! Thus we turn Mozart into a curiosity that is also the musical equivalent of Brussels sprouts or rice cakes. He’s shoved off into that realm of things that we know we should listen to more often, but dammit, it’s just plain more fun to listen to a Tchaikovsky ballet. (Not to disparage Tchaikovsky ballets, mind you. I adore those, too.)
Also, AC Douglas was also kind enough to leave a pointer in comments to an older piece he wrote for his own blog about Mozart. I seem to remember reading the Norman Lebrecht column to which he’s responding, and I recall being mystified at the idea of being crushed beneath the weight of too much Mozart.
Oliver Willis has redesigned his blog, which now has a more “newspaper”-like appearance. He also has obviously heeded my wise advice about permalinks in the interests of clarity and good judgment. I’m always glad to help!
(Actually, I’m not sure Oliver even knows my blog exists. I’m not that big of an egotist.)
NFL week four thoughts.
:: Geez, two crappy games in a row for the Bills. Ugh, yuck, foulness incarnate! (But if they had to lose at home, at least it was to a team that I like. If it had been, say, the Cowboys, I’d be vomiting in seven different colors.)
So what’s wrong with the Bills? The running game’s complete absence is the main answer. Starting running back Travis Henry sat out after getting hurt last week, but even in the first two games the running game didn’t produce. I’m really confused as to why the running game is so nonexistent. It’s the same offensive line as last year, plus they added Sam Gash, who is one of the best lead blockers in the business. And yet, the Bills thus far in 2003 cannot run the ball. I don’t know if it’s a matter of impatience, and they just need to keep pounding it until it opens, or what. But what does worry me is that each game with anemic rushing, even if they win, will make the Bills that much more likely to press last year’s first-round draft pick Willis McGahee into service as soon as he’s eligible to play and the doctors say his leg won’t fall off.
Actually, I’m wondering if part of the problem isn’t the offensive line after all — a pretty big part, as a matter of fact. The Bills used to fall into this trap in the mid and late 1990s: they would start off the season completely unable to generate much offense, the line would get blamed, but as the year went on they’d get better, they’d have a few big games late in the year, and everyone would figure that the o-line was fine and nothing needed fixing in the offseason. And then the next year, the same pattern would emerge. I wonder if the Bills weren’t overimpressed with the line’s performance last year, and thus did nothing to improve it again in the offseason. Just a thought, but you tend to win (or lose) with the performance of your big guys up front, on both sides of the ball, and Buffalo’s thus far hasn’t been terribly good.
Also, there’s the lack of a consistent number two receiver, although Bobby Shaw seems to be showing signs of life there. Josh Reed was supposed to be that guy, but he’s simply not getting open. This really isn’t all that surprising; NFL receivers tend to take several years to develop. Peerless Price blossomed last year, and that was his fourth year in the NFL; prior to that, he was generally viewed as an underachiever. Eric Moulds didn’t come of age until his third year, and in fact, prior to the 1998 NFL season (when Moulds finally broke out with Doug Flutie at quarterback), the Buffalo News actually labeled Moulds as a rare “bust” for the Bills’ drafting team.
And it really killed that at the one time when the Bills desperately needed their defense to stand strong and force the Eagles to go three-and-out, they instead gave up that long touchdown run that sealed the game for Philly. In general, the defense had its share of decent plays yesterday, but they didn’t create any turnovers and their tackling was pretty suspect. There were a number of plays yesterday in which an Eagles ball-carrier or receiver would have been stopped had the Bills’ defender wrapped him up as opposed to relying on the “big hit” to knock him down.
So, the Bills are 2-2 right now, when I figured they’d be 3-1. Not a disaster, but they’ve got bigger holes than I thought. And if Gregg Williams wants to keep his job, he needs to get those holes filled, pronto.
:: We’re roughly one-quarter of the way through the NFL season, and right now my preseason predictions seem…well, they’re not in good shape. Of all the teams I predicted to win divisions, only one — Pittsburgh — even has a share of first place. It’s a long season, though, and things will probably shake up a bit. I can only hope, anyway.
:: OK, isn’t that amazing-looking guy who threw all those touchdown passes for the Vikings yesterday the same guy who once injured himself by headbutting a wall in a touchdown celebration? Am I missing something?!
:: Now it’s starting to feel like football season, when it starts to get dark during the late games. This is when I start to get interested in games other than the Bills. I even watched a bit of Kansas City/Baltimore yesterday. Ah, football….
Some funky stuff noticed lately on the referrals:
:: I am currently Number Seven on Anti-President Bush journals on Google. Now, “Anti-Bush” is a pretty good summation of my political stance, but that’s far from my focus here. My blogroll’s loaded with folks a lot more interesting in that regard.
:: Yes, I am a Pittsburgh Pirates fan. But no, I do not know the answer to this. Nor, quite frankly, do I care. (McClatchy is the Pirates’ owner.)
:: Apropos of my recent posting antics, someone arrived here the other day via this search. I’m sorry I can’t provide what’s being sought here, but if you want to see a blogger flailing, well, this is the place for you!
:: Just as an experiment: I’ve been curious as to how long it takes Google to find pages and put them in its database. So, I’m going to stick a weird phrase here and see how long it takes Byzantium’s Shores to show up in Google’s search results for that phrase. And the weird phrase is…”Armadilloes love vanilla frosting”. Start your clocks, now! (Yes, I’m bored.)
I don’t know if SDB has changed his brand of coffee or something, but he’s been even more interesting than usual lately. I found his article on farm subsidies fascinating, not just for why they are in general poor policy but for how they hinder the “War on Terror”.
A lot of folks on the right get annoyed at the mention of “root causes”, and not entirely without reason; examination of root causes tends, to some on the far left, to involve a lot of hand-wringing about what shits we Americans are, complete with rhetorical flourishes like “Bush = Hitler” placards that really do, at times, seem to imply the idea that we had 9-11-01 coming and that it was some kind of cosmic return of the chickens to their roost.
I think that it’s important to look into “root causes” like these, not so that we can be “humbled” or “learn why they hate us” and leave it at that, but out of the realization that maybe, just maybe, there are things we’ve done that have led certain other cultures to embrace terrorism. This strikes me as at least as important to the ultimate goal of defeating terrorism as the short-term military operations such as Afghanistan.
And besides, if we stopped propping up Archer Daniels Midland, maybe we could return to Coke flavored with sugar. (A lot of old-time Coke fanatics insist that the beverage tastes different since the switch to corn syrup as the sweetener.)
In my post last week about Ten things I love and hate about Buffalo, I mentioned Buffalo’s glorious architecture under “Things I Love”, but lamented the lack of striking modern architecture under “Things I Hate”. That may be changing, though, with the unveiling two days ago of the design for a new courthouse in downtown Buffalo. Here’s what it looks like:
This building, once funding is secured, will be erected on a corner of Niagara Square, the central square in downtown Buffalo that is the hub of the city’s radial street pattern. (That’s the obelisk visible in the distance.) The building to the right, not seen in full, is Buffalo City Hall, which is the city’s most visually-striking building, not only for its architecture but for its positioning: the building is very prominently located, and is “front and center” in any view of the city skyline from the west.
The new courthouse will rise to roughly the “shoulder” of City Hall, so as not to overshadow the city’s most distinctive landmark. Of course, buildings don’t tend to look the same in reality as they do in artist’s renderings, but it would be nice if Buffalo had a beautiful building that didn’t date from before the FDR Administration.
(For a good example, you can see the HSBC Center, Buffalo’s tallest building, here. Snore.