The official site of Kelly Sedinger: Reader, writer, photographer, and dreamer
Thirty-nine years ago today, George Lucas was sitting at his desk, working on something, when he got a strange feeling. He looked up, away from his work, and glanced out the window at the dusky sky. He couldn’t quite put his finger on why, but he made a note on his “To Do” list: Look into how to get a restraining order.
Now, why he did this on the day of my birth, I have no idea….
OK, folks: what is this doohickey? It’s a tool I use at work on occasion. It’s not an “everyday” kind of tool, but it’s one I find invaluable for some jobs. Guess away!
I’ll reveal what it is in a few days, unless someone guesses. (Which will probably happen. I tend to underrate the degree to which my occasional little guessing-games are pretty easy.)
(A Political Rant with a bit of rude language)
Here in New York, we have a gubernatorial election coming up in which the Republicans have, as they’ve done in races for various offices all across the country, nominated a complete lunatic. But for some reason I’ve never been able to fathom, Americans seem to every so often get themselves into this weird kind of mood where they get so angry that they decide to embrace lunatics as an expression of their anger. I’m hearing a lot of this from supporters of Carl Paladino: “Sure he’s crazy, but crazy is what we need!”
DougJ at Balloon Juice perfectly captures the inherent dangers of this habit:
This kind of reasoning is nearly always stupid, e.g. “at least with Bush, you know where he stands”. People don’t talk this way about things other than politics. No one says “better a quack than all this medical kabuki” or “better Barry Switzer than all that West Coast offense mumbo jumbo”.
If you want to have good government, you do it by voting for sane candidates whose positions you agree with, not by supporting nuts in order to make some ridiculous point about an imperfect system.
I couldn’t agree more. “Carl’s angry and so are we! He expresses our anger!” But what do you want to do with that anger? “Drop a bomb on Albany!” Yeah…but what do you want him to accomplish? What do you want NY’s state government to look like when he’s done? “I dunno…but we’re angry and so’s Carl!” Lather, rinse, repeat. Every time I’ve asked a Paladino supporter what policy ideas of his they find appealing, they can’t cite a single one. They just like that he acts angry.
Along similar lines, a blogger I read recently wrote that President Obama has brought all of his woes upon himself, and that the Tea Party only exists because of his excesses. “The Tea Party wouldn’t exist without him,” this fellow wrote.
But…of course the Tea Party would exist without him. The Tea Party would have happened to any Democrat elected President in 2008, because for all the grass-roots mythology the Tea Parties like to indulge, the fact is very simple: the Tea Party is nothing more than the same pissed-off Republicans who crawl out of the woodwork en masse every time a Democrat is in office. President Hillary Clinton would have faced a Tea Party. So would President Joseph Biden, President John Kerry, President…anyone at all from the Democratic Party.
And one last thought: Every single US Senator who voted against allowing gays to serve in the military (Harry Reid excepted, who only voted no for procedural reasons) can go to hell — especially those who hide behind the excuse that “It wasn’t fair! You didn’t let us offer amendments!” There’s right and there’s wrong, and the fact that you (a) stood up to be counted with ‘wrong’ and (b) claimed as your excuse that Senate procedure is just so much more important than doing right marks every single one of these people as moral midgets of the highest order. Especially John McCain. What a bastard that guy is.
OK, I’m done.
Today at work, we were talking movies and whatnot as we often do, and we happened on the topic of teevee edits of movies — specifically, the editing of swear words. My friend and I share a favorite one, from The Breakfast Club. During Brian’s (Anthony Michael Hall) confession, Claire (Molly Ringwald) says something that she intends to be comforting but is really condescending and rude. And when she tries to defend herself, she says, “Brian, you just don’t understand the kind of people I’m friends with, the kind of pressure I’m under!” And Brian responds, “What? I don’t understand pressure? Well, f*** you! F*** YOU!“. But, in the version of the film which is often aired on TBS, this is changed to: “Well, flip you! FLIP YOU!”
So now, we like to invoke the phrase “Flip you!” at opportune moments.
In the course of today’s conversation, I related an experience I had a while back. I’ve always had a soft spot for the movie Smokey and the Bandit, the Burt Reynolds flick. I watched it with my parents years ago for the first time, and since then I’ve only ever seen it on teevee. So, as far as I’m concerned, Sheriff Buford T. Justice throughout the film keeps calling people “You scum-bum!”
But…it turns out that’s not what he says. A while back, we checked the movie out of the library on DVD for a family movie night. It was as fun a flick as ever, but I noticed that Sheriff Justice was not calling everyone a “scum-bum”. He was calling everyone a “sumbitch”.
I suppose that’s the authentic, canonical version and all…but years of watching this movie the other way has made “scum-bum” canonical for me.
“Now where are you, you scum-bum!”
As much as I love living in the Buffalo Southtowns, one thing I’ve always missed about this particular part of our region is the general lack of bike paths. Most of the best bike paths in the Buffalo region are north or east of the city — the paths along the river, Ellicott Creek, and in other points therein, mostly. Down here, there really aren’t any good bike paths. (Not to say that there’s no good biking down here; it’s just not of the “path” variety.)
Well, via Brian Castner of WNYMedia.net, I’ve learned that there’s an effort underway to transform the very abandoned railroad I blogged about last winter into a bike path. This would be a wonderful development. That railway runs through some of this region’s most beautiful country. I hope this happens more than I hoped for Bass Pro. (Well, that’s probably setting the bar pretty low, but…yeah, I want the trail!)
Linkage….
:: We have a bad habit of remembering Presidents as if they were or ought to have been genies.
:: Star Wars, Muppets, and Disney: three things I’ve always known.
:: His name was Mr. Crothers, and we called him “The Crud”, or just “Crud”. We called him that to his face. It was a term of endearment, if you can believe it. We loved him. (This is a beautiful post. Go read it.)
:: “Rest in Peace” is the most common line I’ve ever seen on a headstone.
Sometimes I wonder if it isn’t a plea. (Go read this one too.)
Pretty good week out there in Blogistan! Let’s try to keep it going, folks. Don’t let me down!
I noticed this car’s license plate while sitting at a red light a couple of weeks ago. “Song sung blue, everybody knows one!”
Packers 34, Bills 7. Another pie in the face for Bills fans, hooray!!
Wow, it’s fun being a Bills “fan”. It’s fun watching their fourth-year quarterback struggling to get to 100 yards passing; it’s fun seeing him get sacked six times; it’s fun seeing the defense play pretty well but ultimately wear down because they’re on the field forever; it’s fun seeing the line’s inability to block anyone; it’s fun seeing the receivers’ inability to get open or make plays.
Mostly, though, it’s fun when the game ends.
Yeesh, indeed. The Bills have been bad for the entire run of this blog (this is the ninth season during which I’ve been blogging), but right now? This is the worst they’ve been, that I can remember. They may even be worse right now than they were in 2001. I knew they were going to stink, but I had hoped for some small bright spot here and there. Not so much, though.
(But we can console ourselves by following the University of Washington’s football team, right? Because that’s where Jake Locker, the guy currently touted to be next year’s #1 pick in the Draft, plays? Sure…and then we see that yesterday, against Nebraska, Locker went 4 for 20, 71 yds, 1 TD, and 2 INTs. Hope springs eternal!)
The official site of Kelly Sedinger: Reader, writer, photographer, and dreamer
