The official site of Kelly Sedinger: Reader, writer, photographer, and dreamer
OK, folks, sorry for the one-day delay on this, but I called Blogger’s Prerogative, and that trumps all. Last week’s installment was identified by several folks correctly as the Kaaba in Mecca; those who knew it can collect their 1,000,000 Quatloos on February 29, 2009.
And now for this week’s hopeful stumper:
Where are we?
Mr. Bennion has a nifty manifesto, “What a Geek Believes”, that he knicked from here. I’ll reproduce it below, with the things I believe allowed to stand but with the things I do not believe struck out.
(The original is in one long paragraph, but I’m going to break it out into a list format for my purposes here.)
I believe that Han shot first. (OK, I’d prefer it if Han shot first, but I’ve never been able to get really worked up about this.)
I believe that Ally Sheedy was hotter before Molly Ringwald cleaned her up. (No, I liked her better after. But I always thought she should have ended up with Brian, not “Sport-o”.)
I believe in miniatures, models, claymation, and not revealing the shark until you absolutely have to. (Well, yeah, but I’ve never felt the antipathy toward CGI that many geeks do.)
I believe that George Lucas, for better or for worse, change[d] the way we see the world, each other, and ourselves.
And I believe that we will someday reach those stars that he himself made visible.
I believe that George Lucas is also a narrow-minded, money-grubbing, pig-headed slave to the now, who ought to be locked away from his own creations, lest he do them further harm. (“Money-grubbing”? Why does Lucas always get singled out for doing things that everybody else in the business does? And I have no problem with what he’s done lately, as I’ve demonstrated repeatedly.)
I believe that Jean-Luc Picard is the better Starship Captain, but I also believe that James Tiberius Kirk is infinitely cooler. (Kirk’s my favorite Captain. But I love Picard, too — different kinds of guys.)
I believe that a child standing in line to buy a book at midnight is fantastic; I believe that reading makes you smart — it’s schools that make you dumb. (Reading what? What is it about “schools” that make you dumb? This is too generic a statement.)
I believe that any episode of Futurama is better than any program featuring a precocious teenager who’s wise beyond their years. (I’m having trouble thinking up a counterexample, but there’s always a counterexample.)
I also believe Buffy the Vampire Slayer to be the sole exception that proves this rule. (I never got into Buffy, but I liked it just fine when I watched a stray episode or two. I just never wanted to invest myself in getting into it; besides, I recall something else being on in the same timeslot.)
I believe that comic books are an art form, and will someday be recognized as such.
I believe that good shows die too young; and crap shows last too long. (Well, I’m not sure. What I really wish is that American teevee would go the anime route, and put together shows that tell a single story and then go away. The open-ended thing gets problematic, as good hit shows go on past the time when they really should go away (X-Files, ER). Sure, Firefly and Once and Again and My So-Called Life ended too soon, but I’d rather have what we do of those shows than have them spread out over three or four brilliant seasons and then three or four more less-brilliant ones.)
I believe that Eddie Izzard is the funniest man alive, and I don’t care whether you’ve ever heard of him or not — it’s still true. (I am totally unfamiliar with Eddie Izzard, so I’m agnostic on this point.)
I believe that a girl who likes movies about zombies is hotter than whoever is on the cover of Maxim this month.
I believe that Belloch ate that fly. (I’d agree, except that it’s “Belloq”, not “Belloch”.)
I swear to God that I heard Luke call Leia “Carrie.” (To my dying day I will not hear this as “Carrie!”. It always sounds in my ears like something along this lines of “Heyeah!”)
I believe that Samwise Gamgee never quite got the credit he really deserved. (In what way? I don’t think that Samwise Gamgee ever wanted credit. He didn’t want to be a Ringbearer, and he didn’t want to go to Mordor. What he wanted was to see the Elves, and then go home and marry the girl with ribbons in her hair, which he did. The only credit he ever seems to want is for his name to be mentioned in the tales of his age, which it certainly is.)
I believe in magic, I believe in dreams, I believe in the power of music, movies, and the untold worlds inside an everyday library card. And I do not believe that geeks will inherit the earth; I believe that we already have. (Well, that should be on my tombstone.)
And there you are.
Some lazy linkage and updates:
:: The next installment of Unidentified Earth will appear on Friday this week, as opposed to its normal Thursday appearance tomorrow. We’re going to the Fair.
:: I’ve been remiss in noting that Lynn has a new look and a new title. Adjust blogrolls as necessary. (Memo to self: revise the blogroll soon. I’ve got a lot of additions that I haven’t got to yet.)
:: I am now on the blogroll at By Neddie Jingo!, which I consider to be a high honor. Thanks to him. Linkage makes me all tingly inside. (So does rum, but that’s another thing.)
:: Reasons not to like workplace pizza parties. I never much liked them either when I was in my “office” job, because, well, fat chance getting toppings other than pepperoni or plain cheese. If you, like me, occasionally have a hankering for Italian sausage and mushrooms, well, you’re screwed at office pizza party time.
:: I’m rarely one to complain about Buffalo’s weather, but man, this heat-and-humidity is Godawful. I hate it. Of course, it’s not just a Buffalo thing; most of the country is unpleasant right now. But I still detest this steaminess.
:: I just checked out of the library three books by Anais Nin. When did I become interested in her? Seriously, I have no idea — but it may have something to do with the fact that there’s a quote by her on a bookmark that my dearest friend gave me last year. Anyway, I’ll report after I read some of it.
One of Jerry Goldsmith’s greatest film scores, The Wind and the Lion, is getting a lavish re-issue from Intrada Records.
Am I ordering one? You’d better believe it!
Here we go with this week’s selections….
:: And if the argument is that he was violating non-baseball laws, I’ll listen to this as soon as the arguer advocates kicking Mickey Mantle and every other player who took amphetamines out of the Hall of Fame. (This is just about my take on Barry Bonds: yeah, he took steroids, so what. As for people who suggest that his record carry an asterisk in the record books, wouldn’t any batting title from the steroid era also require an asterisk? Should Bonds’s lifetime average carry an asterisk? Hell, if as many players took steroids as are commonly supposed, shouldn’t the entire yearly standings of Major League Baseball carry an asterisk in that period?)
:: I was musing about whether the United States was ready for a black President. (Heck, sometimes I wonder if America is ready for a President at all.)
:: Yesterday started with a root canal, and rather went downhill from there. (Wow. Bad day, that.)
:: I wish I’d started reading this way years ago. Of course, years ago I didn’t see the need. (I was probably going to remove Will’s blog from the blogroll due to inactivity on the next go-round, but now he’s active again!)
That’s all for now. Moving along….
Kevin Drum today:
Of the many things I hold against conservatives, one of the less cosmically important is that so many of them seem to belong to the annoying eager-beaver wake-up-at-the-crack-of-dawn club.
Yeah, I’m deeply suspicious of the crack-of-dawn crowd myself. (The fact that I may be becoming one of them is of no import, because nobody is more deeply suspicious of me than, well, me.)
The ultimate cautionary tale against this “Early to bed, early to rise” nonsense is philosopher Rene Descartes, who all his life had the habit of staying in bed until noon — that is, until he was hired by the Queen of Sweden to be her tutor. Sadly, she required him to be up at the crack of dawn for her study sessions, and within a year, Descartes had ceased thinking, and therefore being, altogether.
Thurman Thomas, Hall-of-Famer.
I could never decide, way back in the days of the Buffalo Bills romping through the AFC every year, which was my favorite player. Sometimes I’d name Jim Kelly; other times I’d name Thurman Thomas. Bruce Smith was always right up there too (although his tendency to get pissed off about his money every other year used to annoy). Andre Reed and James Lofton. Kent Hull. Steve Tasker, of course. Darryl Talley. Cornelius Bennett. Mark Kelso, who wore this gigantic helmet (necessitated by concussions) that made him look like a bobble-head when he was on the field. Phil Hansen.
Those were the Bills teams I watched from afar, while I was in college in Iowa; those teams were the little piece of “home” I took to a place where knowledge of New York geography was such that people apparently thought that Buffalo was just a little bit farther outside New York City than Yonkers. It seems odd to me that next year, 2008, will be the twentieth anniversary of when the Bills first rose to prominence (AFC East champs in 1988, with the season ending in a 21-10 loss to the Bengals in the AFC Championship Game), and that we’re just three years away from the twentieth anniversary of the Bills’ first Super Bowl appearance (lost 20-19 to the NY Giants). Wow.
Anyway, here’s how I always remember Thurman Thomas: cutting back with effortless ease as a bunch of Miami Dolphin defenders gaze, less than lovingly, at the back of his jersey.
Thanks for the memories, Number Thirty-Four!
Again not a whole lot of weirdness that caught my eye this week. Is the Interweb becoming less weird? Or am I just getting less good at finding it? Either way, it’s a disturbing trend. Anyway:
:: Greg reports on Megan Fox’s rather odd choice of body art.
:: Already familiar to readers of his Encyclopedia of Fantastic Victoriana (and if you’re not a reader of it, why on Earth not?!) is Jess Nevins’s defense of Edward Bulwer-Lytton, who is usually derided as one of history’s worst writers. I’ve never read him, personally.
:: For some reason, Steven thinks that people should feel significant cognitive dissonance over the fact that he has long hair and yet is not a liberal. Maybe he’s not living in the right place; I know plenty of fairly long-haired gents who aren’t hippies at all.
:: I was never a fan of Popeye, either in cartoons or in that horrible Robin Williams movie. Never liked him. But until I started reading Comics Curmudgeon, I never knew that Popeye is a daily comic strip too — and a really, really weird one at that.
All Buffalonians need to read this Matthew Yglesias post, which I found to be utterly hilarious. (Unintentionally, no doubt — but I was truly tickled at Matthew’s epiphany here. He’s in Chicago now for YearlyKos, but the post has nothing to do with politics.)
I’m thinking of resurrecting this old series of mine, wherein I once in a while posted a poem that’s particularly meaningful to me. Here is Robert Burns’s “My Luve is Like a Red, Red Rose”:
O my Luve’s like a red, red rose,
That’s newly sprung in June.
O my Luve’s like the melodie,
That’s sweetly play’d in tune.As fair art thou, my bonie lass,
So deep in luve am I,
And I will luve thee still, my Dear,
Till a’ the seas gang dry.Till a’ the seas gang dry, my Dear,
And the rocks melt wi’ the sun!
And I will luve thee still, my Dear,
While the sands o’ life shall run.And fare thee weel, my only Luve!
And fare thee weel, a while!
And I will come again, my Luve,
Tho’ it were ten thousand mile!
“Till a’ the seas gang dry”. It should always feel like that.
