Tag: Sentential Links

Here we go. Click away!

:: The people of Japan have an interesting mental relationship with the battleship Yamato. (Scroll down to first of two entries dated 12-3, since SDB doesn’t do permalinks anymore. [WHY, DAMN YOU, WHY???] Anyhow, I’d point out that the tradition of ill-fated fictional incarnations of the Yamato includes Star Trek, in which the sister ship of the NCC-1701D (the Galaxy-class Enterprise of TNG) is also named Yamato, and which is as ill-fated as the real-life Japanese battleship.)

:: It’s college. I don’t need an ‘undisputed champion’. Do you? (No, I don’t. In fact, I rather liked the old system, when you could have different teams finish #1 in two polls! It gave something to talk about. Besides, how many playoff teams would there be, and how many games would a playoff involve? Do we really want kids that young playing the equivalent of an NFL regular season?)

:: It appears that Spitzer is going to pass his first test as Governor with flying colors. (Coming from a guy who has set his own personal bar pretty high for Spitzer, this is quite a thing.)

:: Fair warning, though: not since Alien³ has the beginning of a sequel so casually ruined the happy ending of its prequel for no perceptible reason. (Technically, this should be reversed, since AlienCubed came out after the item the Tensor is writing about here.)

:: Toppling a regime that was a potential threat to its neighbors and to the USA is an accomplishment if and only if it’s not replaced with a more threatening situation like, say, pervasive chaos.

:: For the past couple of months, I’ve been undergoing total Rocky Horror immersion, culminating over the weekend with the arrival of the 15th Anniversary boxed set. (It’s just a jump to the left! This is a newly-minted group blog, by the way, featuring a bunch of lunatics from Texas. But it’s OK; they’re the good kind of lunatics from Texas. Their tagline is “A nexus of speculative word and thought”. Check it out.)

:: What’s new in the mix is all the Cheetos-stained wretches back home whose “independence” leads them to swallow whole the story offered by government authorities with a proven track record of propagating false information.

And here we thought stenography was a problem with the press corps. It’s got nothing on the right-wing blogosphere. (Amen and all, but do we gotta bash the Cheetos? I love me some Cheetos….)

:: So, Gentle Readers, are you also sick to death of blue television? Do you want fun TeeVee back?

:: Although I have a deep faith that teaches me Joy will be reunited with her parents, siblings, grandson and others as she goes to meet the savior, and I know without question that when my time comes I will see her again, for now I’m left bereft and empty to not have her here to continue to shape and guide my life.

:: Let your heart be a kitchen, making warmth and food. Let your heart be a bed, making safety and rest. Let your heart be a cradle, an embrace, and this planet will be a home for us all, a vessel of life gleaming in the starry darkness of eternal sky.

All for this week. Thanks for some great writing out there, Blogistan!

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I didn’t do a whole lot of blog-surfing this week, but there was some good stuff nonetheless:

:: Yesterday, while shopping at Target, I noticed the Jones Soda Co. had their Turkey n’ Gravy soda for sale again. (Gack….)

:: A refrigerator with the freezer on the bottom – I honestly don’t know why they are made any other way! (Never have I seen such a thing! Wow! This is the spiritual-life focused blog by the same author as Mind-muffins, which I only learned this week.)

:: Would I be grateful if I won the lottery? I already did. I was born into the middle class in the west during the second half of the 20th century.

:: Come to think of it, Star Wars prequels aside, have there even been any spaceship movies in recent years? (Well, there was the amazingly bad Star Trek Nemesis, which probably doesn’t count. Firefly and its Serenity movie sequel definitely count. Animated films include spaceships in Titan AE and even Lilo and Stich, although that last doesn’t take the whole spaceship thing all that seriously. Ditto Treasure Planet. I guess spaceships aren’t cool anymore? That makes me sad.)

:: So, there we were. The smoke was visible from about half a mile away (nice blue-sky clear New Hampshire afternoon). When we arrived we found a garage that had pretty-much collapsed. It looked like a big bonfire. I wish I’d taken a camera with me to show you. (You know, I love deep-fried stuff as much as any good American, but after watching some videos of what can go wrong, I just can’t think that deep-fried turkey tastes that good.)

:: Whenever I get into a Comments spat with somebody who’s just quote-farming and spitting circular arguments — almost always the “I’m a lawyer” or “law professor” comes up. (Which reminds me: over at FSM, the Objectivist Weirdo is at it again [dig into it a few pages], complete with threats of lawsuits and everything! What is it with lawyers on the Interweb? Not necessarily that all lawyers on the Interweb are weirdos, but rather that weirdos often turn out to be lawyers. Odd.)

All for this week, although I have the nagging feeling I missed a few…anyway, tune in next Monday.

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Once more unto the links, dear friends!

:: You can now transmit high definition tv from a whole two hundred and twenty miles away, showing us exactly what it’s like to live in a small room with only an airflow fan to save you from the smell of your own farts.

:: If you aren’?t a fan of CSI: Miami, trust us, you will be after one round of Caruso playing. (An older post, linked in comments on yesterday’s Burst of Weirdness. A CSI: Miami drinking game! Hoo-boy! Thanks to Laura for the link.)

:: He was staring at me, and I decided to stare right back, a sign of aggression, and generally coming from an opponent that does not want a call. (Aaron’s trying to communicate with me, I know it….)

:: Even so, the results of the Lancet study, combined with what we know about the limitations of other attempts to count the dead, suggest that the war in Iraq has already claimed hundreds of thousands rather than tens of thousands of lives.

It is rather striking, moreover, that critics of this research have mostly avoided calling for additional, independent studies that could provide a scientific basis for either confirming or refuting its alarming findings.

:: Why on earth should a well-known art museum keep a bunch of fusty old Greek and Asian objects cluttering their galleries when they can trade the junk in on shiny new stuff by … oh, whoever seems hot his week. (Buffalo’s arts scene makes the national news, and not in an especially good way, perhaps: our major art museum is selling off a number of antiquities in order to raise money to acquire more modern art. Roger actually e-mailed me this story, but I haven’t been able to formulate a strong opinion either way on this. Buffalo has more than one museum, but nothing else with the scope of the Albright Knox. I fully understand the logic of the decision, but I’m not sure I’m happy about it. One thing that’s certain is that I haven’t been to the A-K in far too long.)

:: Well, we’re off to Egypt tomorrow, and won’t be back until late on the 19th. (Wow, a popular week for going to Egypt — someone else just got back, too.)

:: I have absolutely no idea what the people advocating for “one last push” in Iraq, with an influence of however many additional troops can be temporarily “surged” into Baghdad are thinking. One last push for what?

:: Please, please, someone explain this to me. Because otherwise it would appear that Aaron Sorkin — via one of his characters, speaking with 100% earnestness, as though she were saying something truthful and meaningful — has authored the single most idiotic statement in the history of mankind. (God, I hated that whole storyline in that episode. In fact, I suspect the show would benefit immeasurably if Harriet were to disappear completely. However, the episode airing tonight is much, much better.)

:: The only thing missing is music. In its place, Mr. Schönberg force-feeds us three hours’ worth of chattery non-melodies that sound as if they’d been written by a woodpecker on a xylophone…. (Ellipses in the original. Damn; I love those melodies!)

:: Of course the classics will never go away, just as we won’t stop going to museums to admire paintings and sculptures of old masters. However, none of us visits the museum continuously, unless we happen to work there. My belief is that the concert scene will return to what it was several decades ago. Orchestras did not work full time, and their musicians usually did something else on the side. Recitals were far more varied than today, and it was customary to hear a soloist play a concerto with piano accompaniment. Thus there wasn’t the same need to go listen to an orchestra concert in order to hear one’s favorite violin composition.

:: Cole is our first child and was due on 12/6/06, so his arrival on 11/16/06 was a bit of a surprise. (Huzzah!)

That’s all for this week. Sentential Links will probably occur next week, but more likely on Tuesday rather than Monday, since I’ll be coming off a hiatus. Or I may just not do them at all. I’ll decide then.

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This week’s links are brought to you by the letter “F”. Why “F”? I dunno. F just called and said, “I wanna sponsor the Links.” And you know, when F calls, you gotta listen.

(Yes, I’m aware that the above makes absolutely no sense.)

Anyhoo….

:: Someone needs to tell the New Atheists that Modernism is dead. (I’m linking this in hopes that Sean will connect the dots a bit, because I have no idea what he means here.)

:: So, after years of ragging after Hillary Clinton’s uncertain hairdoes and clothes, we have a new woman politician to check out.

:: They are one of hundreds of great stories across the City of Buffalo. Our economic diversity, unique space, pool of talent, and entreprenuerial spirit were the focus of our marketing efforts during Buffalo Old Home Week and offer the best bet for our economic revival.

:: He’s like a jazz pianist version of Mahler. (Again: great quip, if only I knew what it meant.)

:: I’ve seen so many, particularly those burdened with the heavy invisible backpacks of liberal guilt, including myself, quickly amend their anti-war sentiments with an automatic “of course, I support the troops, 100%.” Really? Always?

:: A nursing mother was thrown out of King Ranger Theatre in Seguin last night. Because she was nursing her child. (GRRRRR!!! The owner of that theatre deserves to have his ass sued off; and shame on the police for refusing to enforce the law in that instance.)

:: She has seen joy, sadness, tragedy, and miracles – and travelled each of those roads with great dignity and poise.

All for this week. Tune in next week, for a very special episode….

(No, not really. Just more links next week. Unless they’re really special. Or something like that.)

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Oh, the hell with it. I had a bunch of links from fine liberal blogs ready to go, but I’m now just sick of the whole damn thing. You can go read those blogs via the main blogroll, of course; that’s why they’re there. But while I don’t avoid politics here as an iron-clad rule here anymore, I don’t find much fulfillment in writing about it, even when it’s the main thing on my mind. So just one non-political link, just to remind myself of what’s really important tomorrow:

:: So it’s like listening to a symphonic story. You are introduced to all of the cast, shown all the sets, and then listen to them wander around for three CDs. It’s Peter and the Wolf on steroids.

Yup.

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And in the end, all the links in all the world shall be clicked….

:: I am married. I love Dee. I am very happy. (And the selfish jerk used nothing but local merchants for all of his wedding needs! What a yutz! But congrats, anyway!)

:: Sorry, but I’m just not in the mood to write anything of meaning, so I think I’ll just see where the keyboard takes me. (I always love it when someone starts off a post with “I’m not in the mood to write”, and then uncorks a long post!)

:: I’ve spent the last fifteen years waiting for another (I am referring to the last great Bond film, Living Daylights) Bond film to catch my eye, to make me hunger for the old Bond. (I pretty much agree, with the proviso that I think Licence to Kill is the most underrated film of the series, and that the Brosnan films weren’t that bad, even if as a whole Brosnan’s run was more problematic than any of the other Bonds.)

:: After spending time in a room full of new mothers and mothers-to-be this weekend, it is difficult not to think about well, babies. (What are you saying, Jen? Hmmmmmmm???)

(Oh, and by the way, can any Buffalo Blogger let me know why Jen14221 is coming up as password-protected? Did she go all-private, all the time?)

:: Religion gets its power from its early-adopted inconsistencies. A few very different ideas were merged, and the result is far richer than any single one of them could be alone. (Long and fascinating post.)

:: Three years of reading, thinking, and learning — and writing about (or synthesizing) that reading, thinking, and learning. (And Huzzah! for all that. Catch up on the links that M-Mv provides to her favorite posts of the last year.

:: As a self-appointed court jester to the Right, Miller has found a bad comedian’s dream—an audience that doesn’t care if he’s funny. (I used to think Dennis Miller was funny — what the hell happened?)

And now the obligatory political ones:

:: One of the running gripes on this blog has been that pundits and commentators are deeply reluctant to acknowledge what is undeniably a central truth about American politics today: That the GOP, not the Democratic Party, is overwhelmingly to blame for the race-to-the-bottom partisanship and degradation of our political discourse that’s dragging us all down.

:: Let’s say you have a problem. You have the choice of two people to solve the problem — the one who caused the problem, refuses to admit it even is a problem and won’t change anything even as the problem grows worse — or the other one. Which do you choose? (Stay the course! Stay it, damn you! STAY IT!)

:: As a result, the political party that, from top to bottom and with very few exceptions, was wrong about virtually everything with regard to Iraq still preens around as the serious national security party that can be trusted, while those who were right are still somehow depicted as the hapless, confused losers whose judgment can’t be trusted to “protect” the country. (I edited out a parenthetical link.)

:: Let’s just say that when one is accused of being unpatriotic because one opposes an Evangelical administration which favours torture, we are all the way through the Looking Glass.

All for this week.

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And so we come once again to that time again! Most of these are my neighbors in the Buffalo Prefecture of Blogistan. Click for context:

:: Val: Hey, isn’t’ that the heat coming on?
Kevin: (After a 5-second silent pause) Hey, the lights on the coffee maker are flashing.

:: Ahhh…sweet, sweet electricity.

:: So, I start a new job in a few weeks – I’ll be working at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia – which is going to be a crazy-ass commute. (So help me Mother of God, if this is a precursor to a family leaving WNY! I’m putting you on warning, Jan14221!)

:: The neighborhood is a hive of activity today, resonant with the sound of chainsaws. (This is a newly-launched Buffalo blog, although it’s a second life for a former Buffalo blog that had fallen silent. Welcome back to the fight!)

:: There’s nothing wrong with critiquing how your government officials do their job – I do it all the time on this blog and as part of my 40-hour a week gig as the editor of a weekly community newspaper – but for today I just wanted to say thanks to the folks who had to make the tough decisions and I’m glad they did so.

:: This is no Katrina, but it is still a jolt—like stepping off a curb just as a car speeds by, maybe. Or having your kitchen catch fire, but be extinguished before the house burns down. This—whatever it will be called— has the feel of a warning. Be careful. Be aware of how quickly things can change. Know how lucky you have been, how lucky you still are.

And now a few non-snowstorm links:

:: Never provide a dungeon without treasure. (If you’ve ever played AD&D or a similar role-playing game in your life, please check out Shamus’s DM of the Rings series. You can get to all of the posts here. He’s fashioning a comic strip, using images taken from the Lord of the Rings movies, but writing the dialogue as if the images are actually those of an AD&D campaign. All he needs to capture the feel of the campaign I was in during my college years is a psychopathic elf fighter whose alignment is Chaotic Neutral.)

:: The irony is that the ability of Katie to appear to millions of people (well, fewer every day according to her ratings — oh, snap!) is due to the space program. (sent in by Paul)

Enough for now. Back next week!

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Click these links. Click them. CLICK THEM!

:: Is New York really the only city in the land where audiences can handle this gorgeous work by Japan’s greatest twentieth-century composer? (I just happen to be listening to this piece right now, as I write this. I love Takemitsu.)

:: The world is full of so-called writers who are eunuchs and old women—flaccid, dithering, lifeless nothings.

:: I think maybe it’s time I paid more attention to Hawkman. Clearly I have been missing out. (Via. I’m rather speechless.)

:: Spap Oop! BWAAAhahahaha! (It’ll make sense when you click through. Trust me.)

:: If it makes you think, that’s okay but it shouldn’t depress you and it seems to me that Battlestar Galactica is going out of its way to be depressing. (Well, there’s always ER….)

:: The theme of The Enemy at Home, as in so many conservative tracts, is that whatever goes wrong, liberals and liberalism are always the ones at fault.

:: Sunday evenings are the worst time of the week.

:: Finally, I’d rather carry one grateful passenger than 300 pissed-off ones. (New blog, by Jayne‘s husband. Found it when I saw that Jayne has shamelessly pilfered my Sentential Links series for a series of her own! Betrayer most foul!)

:: Nebraska is not exactly a style paradise, but the one thing you learn if you’re born there is that overalls are almost always sexy. (While I myself am an effective counterexample to this hypothesis, I certainly agree with the sentiment where the womenfolk are concerned.)

All for this week. Tune in next week to hear….

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Time again!

:: The elements are glowing. Toast’s almost done.

:: So toss me into that cardboard box in the corner that is those blogs that just don’t fit into any mold. I don’t mind. In fact I like it in there. I have lots of company. (Tell me about it — maybe we can go to the Island of Misfit Blogs!)

:: So, if you think that celebrating Columbus Day is somehow inappropriate, yet you’re not comfortable with Indigenous Peoples Day, celebrate John Lennon Day today. He would have been 66.

:: We’ll keep having our own lives, our own friends and we’ll also spend time together. (I keep forgetting about this blog….)

:: The jabs, the satire, the shoulder shrugging, the ire, the denial, the avoidance. I get that. We all have to cope our own ways. I just feel pretty alone these days. Dirty, sitting in a fetid pile of injustice, waiting for the rain.

:: I admit it — the guy’s lack of tackiness totally bums me out. (This blog author e-mailed me a few weeks ago, and as is my usual practice, I completely forgot about it until a day or two ago. Whoops! Anyhow, if you like making fun of fanboy and/or fangirl goofery, this is the blog for you.)

:: It’s arguable whether the Iraq experiment could have worked under any circumstances, but it’s undeniable that after three years of miscues there simply aren’t any credible options left. You can’t criticize Democrats for being unable to solve a problem that’s no longer solvable.

:: This is not a claim that can be debated or spun. They’re claiming that Hastert threatened Foley with expulsion unless he resigned. That either happened or it didn’t. And it simply did not happen.

All for now.

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