I don’t know if this is any indicator of Buffalo’s economy, but I drove by something the other day that gave me pause. In Buffalo, it seems that nearly every shopping center or retail plaza anywhere in the region includes one of those dollar stores. Yesterday, I drove by a dollar store that is going out of business. I’ve never seen that before.
I have to push the pram a lot.
One thing I’ve noticed while watching The Apprentice, version 3.0: several times this season, when the teams are called upon to do some marketing, they casually send out spam. One of the Apprentices, when asked on tonight’s episode “What did you do for marketing,” just casually said something like “We sent out 3000 e-mails to collectors.”
The growth of spam as a marketing tool is not news, obviously, but it’s still a bit depressing to see the spammers so blase about it.
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De plane! De plane!
Craig has a couple of aviation posts, one on the new big-ass Airbus plane and one on the new less big-ass, but more sprightly Boeing plane.
Now maybe NASA can start work on developing the replacement vehicle for the Space Shuttle?
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Oh, come on.
Heck, I might as well start up a daily series under that title, responding to the most bizarre thing I read whilst traveling about Blogistan.
Lynn Sislo was nice enough to link me today, but in comments to her post I find someone (not Lynn, who is always reasonable, even when I disagree with her) saying this:
You’ve hit at the core of the difference between lefties and righties. Lefties believe people who disagree with them are bad people and are hopelessly “lost”, both morally and intellectually. This is why you hear so little of conservative views on NPR and the like-it’s a kind of snobbery, as Tom Wolfe pointed out years ago. Righties think people who disagree with them are wrong but are not any better or worse, as people than anyone else, since we’re all sinners. Lefties don’t believe in sin but they sure as heck believe in poor taste!
Is that right. Well, you’d never know it to look though examples of “Righty” tolerance like this. The Left, so far as I can tell, has nothing on the Right in either the department of intolerance or that of self-delusion.
(BTW, Pandagon is back up and running.)
(Also BTW, another of Lynn’s commenters reports this convention for deciding whether to leave a comment on someone else’s blog or to post to his own blog, with a link back:
I have what I call the “3 paragraph rule”. If a comment I’m writing stretches more than 3 paragraphs, I’ll generally take the whole thing back to my place & use it as a post (with a link back, of course).
I think that’s exactly right. I tend to do a lot more commenting-via-posting here than commenting directly on other blogs.)
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Great Love Dialogue (Geek-out edition)
It’s been a while since I’ve had an entry in this fledgling series, so here’s a bit of love dialogue from, you guessed it, the Star Wars movies. From The Empire Strikes Back, this is also probably the best-known bit of dialogue from the Star Wars films at all. (Except for “No. I am your father.” And that one is almost always misquoted as “Luke, I am your father.”)
The exchange in question consists of just two lines, and they come just before Han Solo is lowered into the carbon freezing chamber in a diabolical test ordered by Darth Vader in order to ascertain whether or not carbon freezing is a good idea for living humans. As the “test” is about to begin, Princess Leia, whose feelings for Solo have been changing throughout the film, suddenly exclaims:
PRINCESS LEIA: I love you.
To which Han Solo replies simply:
HAN SOLO: I know.
This line is almost always interpreted as being part of Solo’s general cockiness, but I’ve never really viewed it that way, because of Harrison Ford’s delivery: he says the line in a tone that is very, very different from the way he delivers his lines when he’s in full-cocky Solo mode. There’s a softness and sadness in his voice and in his eyes that makes me think of the line not being cockiness at all. The “I know” line, by its simplicity, in no way detracts from the gut-wrenching nature of the carbon-freezing sequence. (And yes, for an eight year old for whom TESB was the first real look into storytelling where the good guys don’t win, that sequence really was gut-wrenching.)
What’s particular interesting about that simple, five-word exchange is that it wasn’t even written in the original screenplay. The written exchange went something like this:
PRINCESS LEIA: I love you.
HAN SOLO: Remember that, because I’ll be back.
That’s not nearly as catchy, is it? It’s clunky, dull, and it actually is cocky, which would have stood out like a sore thumb in the course of the scene. And it wasn’t working in the course of filming, so it was finally Harrison Ford himself who suggested “I know” as a response to Leia’s simple “I love you”. (Many accounts have Ford finally just saying “I know!” in exasperation after hearing Carrie Fisher say “I love you” a whole bunch of times over the course of a large number of takes of the exchange, but according to the book Once Upon a Galaxy: The Making of The Empire Strikes Back, Ford actually suggested the line not during an actual take but rather in between takes, while director Irvin Kershner was struggling with changing some of the dialogue. At one point, Kershner actually wondered if Darth Vader even needed to be present for the entire carbon-freezing sequence, suggesting that Vader just walk on at the end. Luckily, someone else told him that wouldn’t work.)
That exact exchange is repeated, by the way, in Return of the Jedi, but with the speakers reversed. That’s one of my favorite “small moments” in Star Wars.
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Phil O’Buster
As a good liberal Democrat, my eyes glaze over whenever I encounter conservative hand-wringing about how awful it is that Democrats in the Senate have used the filibuster to block a handful of George W. Bush’s judicial nominees. My basic response is, “Cry me a river, guys.” When Bush stands up in his State of the Union and solemnly announces that giving every judge an up-or-down vote is some kind of matter of principle, and the Republicans all leap to their feet, I have to wonder just where this matter of principle came from, since it certainly wasn’t operative when between 1995 and 2001 it was Republicans standing in the way of a whole lot of judicial appointments from a Democratic President.
(And while we’re on the subject, don’t tell me that filibustering judges is unprecedented and that the Republicans are somehow still on the high ground since they didn’t try to filibuster Clinton’s judges. First of all, they did try to filibuster at least one of Clinton’s judges; second of all, they also seemed OK with filibustering non-judicial Clinton nominees; and third of all, the Republicans were the majority party for three-quarters of Clinton’s time as President, and thus they never really had to filibuster Clinton’s judges. They simply bottled them up in committee, using fairly arcane rules that Republicans then dismantled as soon as it became a Republican’s judges who were at question.)
There are two things worth remembering about the whole judicial-nominee nonsense, which are really at the root of my “Oh, boo hoo, guys” reaction to Republican complaining. First, look at this: it turns out that George W. Bush has seen a greater percentage of his nominees achieve confirmation than any of the three Presidents who preceded him, including Saint Ronald himself, who also had a Senate majority at his back for the first six of his eight years in office. And then there’s this, by Matthew Yglesias:
It’s not as if Democrats have been filibustering all of Bush’s nominees — they’ve confirmed over 200 and blocked about ten. Nor is it as if the other 200 judges were nice, squishy liberals and the Democrats are filibustering the only real rightwingers in the bunch. So going nuclear takes us from a position where Bush has packed the district and circuit courts with rightwingers, to one in which the district and circuit courts are slightly more packed with rightwingers.
So next time Bill First or Tom DeLay or anyone else tells me that we have to get all of Bush’s judges seated on the bench, or else the entire conservative agenda will fail, my reaction will be – once again – a skyward rolling of my eyes.
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So what do they have to do with smallpox vaccination scars?
Jayme Lynn Blaschke has some photos of a swarm of bees. By all means, click through on the third image to the larger version, which is really nifty-looking (or freaking scary, depending on whether bees freak you out or not). In fact, I’m going to retroactively designate that as last week’s Image of the Week, since I was on hiatus. That’s impressive stuff.
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Sinuses: Item Number One on “Things That Suck”
I’ve had on-and-off trouble with my sinuses for about a year and a half now, resulting in a sinus headache setting in on average once a week. A couple of weeks ago, though, the co-worker of mine at The Store who manages the health foods section told me that we were now stocking Neti pots, and I’ve been waffling on whether to try one or not. I’m now definitely leaning toward trying it — in fact, I’ll probably buy one either tomorrow or the day after — but does anyone out there have any experience with using a Neti pot? From what I’ve read, it doesn’t sound like some B.S. “holistic medicine” type of thing; it actually sounds useful. Anyone?
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Meta-hiatuses
Sheila Viehl has some thoughts on how to keep blogging “fresh”, if you’re concerned with such things. (Another way, of course, is to take the Nefarious Neddie approach and only post on average once every eight weeks.) I’d add this to her excellent suggestions: if you’re a regular blogger, and by “regular” I mean that you offer new content at least five days a week on most weeks, take a hiatus once in a while. Like I just did.
It doesn’t have to be very often (the hiatus I’m just concluding is my first since last August), but it’s really a good idea. Like anything, it’s generally helpful to step back once in a while and let the batteries recharge. Make the hiatus long enough to be restful to you, but not so long that it appears instead that you’ve abandoned the blog. Whenever I decide that a hiatus is called for, I decide a month or so in advance when I’m going to do it, and then I post a notice to that effect in the sidebar. That way it’s not a shock to your readers, and that way they know when to expect your return.
And what do you do while you’re on hiatus? Whatever you do when you’re not blogging, only more of it. This can actually be a good time to execute Sheila’s Suggestion #6 – – just type up posts like normal, but save them in Word or whatever as opposed to publishing them to the blog. Then, on Hiatus Return day, just cut-and-paste them and publish them, and go on your way. Or don’t write anything at all, or write something completely un-blog related. I’ve gone both ways. But read new stuff – books, blogs you haven’t seen, et cetera. Catch up on movies you’ve been meaning to see. Go for walks. Whatever. Just don’t post to the blog.
How do you know when it’s time for a hiatus? Well, you pretty much know it when you feel the creeping sense that you have nothing to say, day in and day out. At least that’s how I know. I also try to time my hiatuses (hiati?) with vacations or times when the Wife is going to be off. But I’ve taken a few breaks just because, for no real reason. But if you find yourself posting out of habit or a sense of grudging obligation, or if you find yourself writing posts that start off with some variant of “Geez, has it really been four days since I posted last?”, it’s probably time to take a break.
:: In other metablogging news, I have made some new additions to the blogroll (mostly cultural or music blogs, but a couple of left-leaning political ones as well), and updated some overdue URL changes. Specifically, All Things Jennifer and Mike’s Baseball Rants have changed locations; Michael Brooke is blogging again; and Alan of BuffaloPundit has a new location and new design (but same old URL).
Oh, and if you want to sponsor something, sponsor Michelle, if only to shame her into posting more regularly! (I’m still waiting to see what you thought of Last Light of the Sun, Michelle!)
UPDATE: Erin has a new address as well. Pretty soon, Byzantium’s Shores will be the only Buffalo blog at its original URL. But that’s OK, seeing as how Byzantium’s Shores is the one, true Buffalo blog.
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O the intemperance….
(WARNING: I deploy a few bits of profanity, including the F-Bomb, in this post, for which I do not ask your pardon.)
Short of wearing a t-shirt with it printed across the breast, coupled with a baseball cap with the same thing printed on the forehead, I don’t think you could more effectively announce to all the world “I AM A COMPLETE ASSHOLE!” than by setting up a website like this.
(Cho Chang, for those unfamiliar with the Harry Potter books, is a girl at Hogwarts School in whom Harry becomes, well, romantically interested in the series’s fourth book, which is currently being made into the fourth movie.)
Dear Rebecca: Grow the fuck up. Love, me.
(Link via a Google search inspired by an article linked in this BookSlut post. BTW, here’s a site for Ms. Leung that’s more positive, although its design literally hurts my eyes. And here’s what Ms. Leung looks like. What the hell is wrong with her? I mean, really – what the hell is wrong with her? Nothing that I can see. Why are people deciding they hate her for no apparent fucking reason?!)
