After the last post, I’ve got Blade Runner on the brain, so here’s part of Vangelis’s music for the film.
And I’m pretty sure I’ve posted this before, but here’s the Love Theme from the film.
(Sequels and prequels, my ass. Ye Gods!)
No. Please oh please, No.
Sequels and prequels to Blade Runner. Come on. What are we gonna do now? See Deckard and Rachel on the run? Or go back in time so we can see what attack ships on fire off Orion’s shoulder look like? Now, I’ve never been as enamored of Blade Runner as many are — visually it’s a staggering achievement, but narratively I’ve always found it oddly uninvolving — but really, Hollywood, No.
I really think it’s only a matter of time before somebody actually makes Brazzaville, the first installment of the ongoing adventures of former bar owner Rick Blaine and his friend, the ethically-challenged Police Prefect Louis Renault.
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Union
Kevin Drum, in a post from last week that I’ve been meaning to link:
Every single human institution or organization of any size has its bad points. Corporations certainly do. The military does. Organized religion does. Academia does. The media does. The financial industry sure as hell does. But with the exception of a few extremists here and there, nobody uses this as an excuse to suggest that these institutions are hopelessly corrupt and should cease existing. Rather, it’s used as fodder for regulatory proposals or as an argument that every right-thinking person should fight these institutions on some particular issue. Corporations should or shouldn’t be rewarded for outsourcing jobs. Academics do or don’t deserve more state funding. The financial industry should or shouldn’t be required to trade credit derivatives on public exchanges.
Unions are the most common big exception to this rule. Sure, conservatives will take whatever chance they can to rein them in, regulate them, make it nearly impossible for them to organize new workplaces. But they also routinely argue that labor unions simply shouldn’t exist. This is what’s happening in Wisconsin: Gov. Scott Walker isn’t satisfied with merely negotiating concessions from public sector unions. He wants to effectively ban collective bargaining and all but do away with public sector unions completely.
Nobody should buy this. Of course unions have pathologies. Every big human institution does. And anyone who thinks they’re on the wrong side of an issue should fight it out with them. But unions are also the only large-scale movement left in America that persistently acts as a countervailing power against corporate power. They’re the only large-scale movement left that persistently acts in the economic interests of the middle class.
Couldn’t agree more.
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Answers, the ongoing!
Wow, I gotta start getting the lead out with regard to Ask Me Anything! 2011. So here are a couple of sports-related questions!
Andy has this to ask:
Do you think changing up the Buffalo Bills uniforms will do ANYTHING for the team or do you think they will continue having the top five draft pick selections for the next several years?
I don’t think uniforms really have any effect except for in the local sports apparel stores, where lots of fans will undoubtedly spend quite a bit of money to get the new jerseys and whatnot. Sometimes teams change uniforms and then get good pretty quickly thereafter: the Patriots in the 90s did it, and the Broncos changed to their current uniforms and almost immediately won two Super Bowls later the same decade. But usually these types of uniform changes don’t result in a good team; rather, a good team results because of a new management team that changes the uniforms at the same time that they are installing a better approach to team-building.
I think that it’s more likely that this year’s draft will determine whether or not the Bills are drafting in the top five for years to come. If they can get at least four or five solid players out of this draft, including at least two real playmakers, then they should be able to improve fairly quickly. But if they tank on the draft, then the long years of suffering will continue. It seems kind of odd to think about it, since a typical NFL team will draft between six and nine players in any particular year via the Draft, but if you tank an entire Draft class (as the Bills did in 2007, only one player from which Draft is still on the team), it can set you back for multiple seasons.
I look forward to seeing the Bills’ new uniforms — while I didn’t hate the uni’s of the last ten years, I wasn’t wild about ’em, either — I’m looking forward to them drafting well even more. (I do hope that their new uni’s are either their current “throwback” uni’s, or just going back to the uni’s of the 1990s Bills!)
Roger asks:
When will the Pittsburgh Pirates play .500 ball, and what will it take? Will they ever be truly competitive again? Has the management oversold the “we’re a small market team” issue? And any comments on the passing of Chuck Tanner, manager of the we Are Family ’79 WS winners?
I have zero idea of when the Pirates will be good again. None whatsoever. It truly astonishes me that a person who was born the last time the Pirates had a winning season is now old enough to drive, vote, serve in the military, see Kill Bill without a parent being along…everything but buy a beer. The Pirates have been losing longer than most people have had Internet access. Last time the Pirates won, George Bush was President. The first one.
Major League Baseball has long needed some form of revenue sharing that’s more rigorous than the odd, Rube Goldberg system they have now, but after eighteen years of sucking, the Pirates don’t have that as an excuse. They’ve been simply mismanaged for all that time. Bad scouting, bad personnel decisions, and ownership that refused to spend money…ugh.
The Pirates will need to build their farm system and develop good, young players to construct their major league club around. That’s the only way they’ll win again, being in a small market as they are. But it’s not an impossible task; other teams have done it. (Oakland and Minnesota are prime examples; so is Tampa Bay, which has built a fantastic franchise in a town that heartbreakingly doesn’t give a shit.) Small market is part of it, but the major part of it is that the Pirates’ management and ownership has been resoundingly, staggeringly horrible.
More answers to come!
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A Random Wednesday Conversation Starter
Let’s go antiquing!
Over the last year, the Orchard Park Antique Mall has become a favorite place for The Wife and I to spend a few hours. The Sunday before last, we had a couple free hours…and we still ended up rushing through the back parts of the store because our time started running out.
I’ve decided that what I love most about the antique thing is that, while there are familiar things that are always there (several booths of action figures, for example, heavy on the Star Wars), there is always something new, something that’s really pretty unique, something that I’ve never seen before or something that I have seen before but maybe wouldn’t mind buying. You really, truly never know what you’re going to find in antique joints.
Like…a sombrero!
(Yeah, finger on the lens. No idea how I did that. Sorry. But notice the print of comic art down there, next to the sombrero: “But I had to kill her! We wore the same dress!”)
No, I didn’t buy the sombrero. Nor did I want to. It’s the principle of the thing, folks!
Nor did I buy these Toby mugs, although I gazed wistfully upon them for quite a while:
They’re the Three Musketeers, although I’m not sure which is Athos, Porthos or Aramis. Toby mugs are always expensive there…which breaks my heart because I want to own some, really badly. I think that Toby mugs look absolutely awesome. There are always quite a few available at the Antique Mall, but they always go for upwards of $50 or more. Someday!
This bust of Richard Wagner wasn’t there last time:
It had no price on it, oddly. This might have tempted, had it been cheap.
Of course, there are books:
I bought both of these…Phantom for The Daughter, who is hugely into The Phantom of the Opera, and the omnibus of Ian Fleming’s original James Bond novels for myself. Huzzah!
And for all the “OMG, I really want that!” which you’ll find in an antique joint, there are also the items that are remarkable in other ways. Such as…this handbag!
Hand-made, never used. French in origin. All the puzzle pieces fall into place!
The Antique Mall is a brightly-lit store of modern look; no dark and dusky alcoves containing items of unknown origin here. But that doesn’t mean that grim things don’t reside there:
AIEEE!
And if you want furniture with mirrors, well, the Antique Mall is the place for you. The mirrors seem faulty, though; every one of ’em seems to be showing some dork in overalls. Buy with caution.
Yeah, I am slowly getting bitten by the antiquing bug!
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Mellon!
This is where I was when I sat down to read more Lord of the Rings yesterday. Those who have read the book will recognize the artwork there as the inscription upon the Doors of Durin, which lead into the Mines of Moria if one knows the password.
Today, I got up to the Mirror of Galadriel.
God, I love this book.
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Tinkering under the hood….
Sentential Links #239
Linkage….
Even the “liberals are for it so I’m agin it” principle falls flat. I got nothing.
You are never going back home to the waves.
All for this week. More next week!
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More answers!
Continuing the Ask Me Anything! 2001 cavalcade! (And I’m technically still accepting queries, hint hint!)
Quince has a couple of questions:
You mentioned you live in Western NY but I have never seen you post about Chautauqua. Do you have an opinion on the place and its mission?
He’s referring to the Chautauqua Institute, which is located on the south shore of Lake Chautauqua in Chautauqua county. Yes, Institute, lake, and county all share the same name! The lake is about fifty miles due south of Buffalo, and about twenty miles or so at its western end due east of the shores of Lake Erie. It’s a pretty big lake, with a big town called Jamestown at the eastern end. Lake Chautauqua is ringed almost around its entire perimeter by summer cottages and houses, and there are two very pleasant little villages — Lakewood and Bemus Point — that are your basic “summer resort towns”. The whole place is actually very beautiful; we used to go to Lakewood every year for the 4th of July. The fireworks would be set off from a park right on the lakeside, and hundreds of boats would gather in the water around the park to see the show. This is beautiful in itself, but another even nicer tradition is how all of the people owning cottages on the water are encouraged to light red flares right at water’s edge at 10:00 pm on the 4th, so the entire lake is ringed by red light.
But the question’s about the Chautauqua Institution, to which I have never been. Ever. Why? Mainly because I’m usually busy in the summer with other things, and it costs money to do things there.
The Institution is, basically, a summer-long arts and education festival that takes place on grounds that, by way of design, hark back to the 19th century, which is when the Institution was founded. There are musical performances all summer long, including operas, chamber music, and symphonic music by a resident symphony orchestra. There are also adult education opportunities: lectures, classes, and the like.
The Institution doesn’t seem to be a big part of the WNY consciousness; maybe that’s because it’s been there for over a century and shows no signs of slowing down. It’s just kind of always there. That could be a part of why I’ve never attended any events there (and I’ve only been on the grounds twice); it just never strikes me as something I should investigate for a summertime activity. And part of that may be because summer is when I’m quite busy at work, we do other things as family activities during those months, and I tend to gravitate toward fall and late winter/early spring for vacations. I have no objection in principle to the Institution; in fact, far from it. I’m glad it’s there and I’m glad that it’s here in WNY. Maybe someday!
Given that an ideal level of debt is zero but unrealistic for most of us, how much family debt are you comfortable carrying? By comfortable I mean not caring anymore about it then say rent or a car payment.
I suppose that the best way to look at this is by percentage of income. I didn’t always think about issues like this, and the results were, shall we say, less than encouraging. It took a number of years to dig out of that particular hole, and now I’m quite a bit more careful about it. Both of us are, actually. Setting aside things like rent (which we have) and car payments (which currently we do not), I would be generally uncomfortable with any debt-to-income ratio of over 25 percent. Once it reaches that point, I prefer to start focus on paying some of it down. That’s just me, however. Since my job gives me small, but regular, raises in income, I find that as long as I keep my debt below a certain fixed number, the margin gets more comfortable over time to maintain.
I don’t spend large amounts of time analyzing my finances, but I’ve made a religious practice of putting a minimum amount of each paycheck into my savings each and every week before I do anything else at all. Then I make whatever payment I need to make that week, and whatever else is left is what I have to get through the week on. This generally works out well, although I do have to budget a bit for when I want to take a few days off from work. Unforeseen absences from work can screw things up quite a lot, but I’m lucky enough thus far that those have been infrequent, and I’ve been building a steadily-increasing savings buffer for such events, anyway. In recent months I’ve revised my approach slightly; instead of relying exclusively on cash (I don’t even have an ATM card), I make a weekly payment to a particular credit card and use that to make purchases during the week. My other “major” credit card is one I’m concentrating on paying down, and I’m now designating it as the “emergency big expense” card. (Like, for example, if a car needs brakes or something like that.)
Generally I view debt as a “necessary evil”. It would be nice to have none, but I don’t think that’s realistic. I prefer a rigorous approach to keeping debt manageable and small.
Other little money-saving things I do? I used to buy lunch at work every day, but now I only buy lunch once or twice a week, and bring my own most other days. Instead of getting coffee every day ($.99 a cup for employees), I buy a box of tea bags and have green tea most days. Even if I treat myself to an expensive container of tea ($8.99 for 25 bags), that comes out to less than $.40 a cup. That adds up. So does my long-time practice of never spending my loose change. I pay for everything with bills, and the loose change every day goes into a jar. I usually redeem a chunk of the change a couple of times a year, when we want to go for a family outing someplace, like our yearly trek to the Renaissance Faire or the Erie County Fair or something like that.
More answers to come!