We went to a Memorial Day cookout yesterday. It was a real sausage-fest. There were plenty of women there -- I just ate too much sausage. Like way too much. Not ribs-in-Australia too much, but enough for me to go to bed with a hurt belly and a overwhelming sense of shame.
Our friends / neighbors organized the cookout, and it was really fun. Lots of little kids there, which is good since we have a little kid. One thing that's nice about having kids, that I never thought about before we started taking Lil' S places, is how you can use them to "tap out" of the grown-up party for a while. Like when you find yourself in boring a conversation, or you don't feel like making small talk -- whatever the reason -- when you're just not into socializing with adults at the moment, you can go play with the kids for a while and then joint the adults a little later. This is an especially useful technique when you are at a function that's composed more of your spouse's friends than your friends.
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I watched Django Unchained on Saturday. It was pretty good. It was really good for the first four-fifths of the movie, and then it descended into a hyper-sensationalized, spaghetti western shoot-em-up. It was like The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly crossed with Amistad crossed with with Robocop. I find Tarantino to be a maddening genius, not a mad genius (although he does seem a bit nutty), but a maddening one. His good stuff is so good -- so much better and more original anything else out there in the mainstream -- but his bad stuff is nearly equally bad. I just can't hang with his Dusk Til Dawn, Grindhouse stuff. Even Kill Bill was lost on me. The end of Django is vintage bad Tarantino, but it's just the end, so it didn't spoil the movie for me, overall.
I can't figure out why Tarantino does this. Does he genuinely like the product -- is his vision successfully fulfilled -- or does he just strikeout sometimes? Like, is the ending of Django what he wanted, or did he try and fail to write a better ending? Or is it something in between?
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This picture was in one of Lil' S's books.
The thing is, everything else in there is as general as can be: ball, boat, socks, boy... I'd expect it to just say "shirt", but it gets specific with "t-shirt", and then shows a picture of a polo shirt. Well done, Bright Baby.
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I listen to a lot of Podcasts, so I always want to have my headphones handy, so that I don't have to hunt them down when I need them. This is causing a minor rift in my marriage, as S also uses headphones often, so they get moved all the time and aren't where I last put them. To fix this I've marked "my" headphones with blue tape, and then S has hers with no tape, and I've instituted a strict use-your-own-headphones-only policy. It works other than the fact I'm now a headphone tyrant. The other day I noticed S using my headphones, and we had the following exchange.
D- "Are those my headphones?"
S- "Uh, yeah, I guess so."
D- "Nope. Take them off."
S- "What? C'mon."
D- "Use yours."
S- "God... This is stupid. You're so obsessive with these headphones. You know that, right?"
D- "I'm not."
S- "Then why won't you let me use these?"
D- "Well, where are your headphones?"
S- "I don't know."
D- "Then there's your answer."
Just call me Napoleon Bose-parte.
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I read an article in The New Yorker recently about how a PBS member station pulled the plugged on a documentary, because it's unflattering to David Koch. Koch, if you're unfamiliar, is a crazy conservative / libertarian billionaire who is best known for funding (along with his crazy conservative / libertarian brother Charles Koch) all sorts of crazy conservative / libertarian causes and candidates. When people begroan the Citizens United decision and talk about how big money is destroying our political system, it's often with people like the Koch brothers in mind.
One thing that struck me in reading this article is just how much many super rich people overvalue their importance in society. It's like they think earning money is a charitable contribution to the rest of us. We saw it in the last election with Mitt Romney, where I think he found it legitimately perplexing that his wealth was used against him to some degree. In his mind, the 1% are the job creators, the people generating wealth for everybody, so why are so many resentful of his fortune? (It must be jealousy!) What he doesn't get is that he's benefited from society much more than society has benefited from him. Where would Mitt Romney or David Koch be if the U.S. economy never existed? Where would the U.S. economy be if they never existed? Exactly. So, quit bitchin' about big government, quit acting like you're something special, and pay whatever we say to pay in taxes.
Back to the article, here's an excerpt that illustrates what I'm talking about.
They went on for twenty minutes, warning that such hateful attitudes could lead many wealthy New Yorkers to move to Florida, where the taxes are lower, and arguing that neighbors of theirs who spent millions of dollars on parties helped waiters and caterers.
The logic is a bit absurd if you follow it through to the end. I mean, let's say a rich person does move to Florida. How long does their old residence -- presumably a premium piece of Manhattan real estate -- stay empty? Are those millions of dollars of expendable income lost forever (Shit, man! The party people moved to Florida. What are we gonna do?!)? Or does somebody else just move right on in, have their own parties, and things just keep on tickin'? To paraphrase Nelson Muntz, "If you didn't do it some other billionaire would have, so quit milking it."
----------------------------------------------------
Lil' S was in bed with me this morning -- I was asleep, he was awake -- and he fish-hooked the inside of my nostril with his little claw-like fingers and yanked it, hard. Waking up at 6 a.m. in a fit of discombobulation, spewing blood from my nose is not how I imagined starting the work week.
Until next time...
Our friends / neighbors organized the cookout, and it was really fun. Lots of little kids there, which is good since we have a little kid. One thing that's nice about having kids, that I never thought about before we started taking Lil' S places, is how you can use them to "tap out" of the grown-up party for a while. Like when you find yourself in boring a conversation, or you don't feel like making small talk -- whatever the reason -- when you're just not into socializing with adults at the moment, you can go play with the kids for a while and then joint the adults a little later. This is an especially useful technique when you are at a function that's composed more of your spouse's friends than your friends.
----------------------------------------------------
I watched Django Unchained on Saturday. It was pretty good. It was really good for the first four-fifths of the movie, and then it descended into a hyper-sensationalized, spaghetti western shoot-em-up. It was like The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly crossed with Amistad crossed with with Robocop. I find Tarantino to be a maddening genius, not a mad genius (although he does seem a bit nutty), but a maddening one. His good stuff is so good -- so much better and more original anything else out there in the mainstream -- but his bad stuff is nearly equally bad. I just can't hang with his Dusk Til Dawn, Grindhouse stuff. Even Kill Bill was lost on me. The end of Django is vintage bad Tarantino, but it's just the end, so it didn't spoil the movie for me, overall.
I can't figure out why Tarantino does this. Does he genuinely like the product -- is his vision successfully fulfilled -- or does he just strikeout sometimes? Like, is the ending of Django what he wanted, or did he try and fail to write a better ending? Or is it something in between?
----------------------------------------------------
This picture was in one of Lil' S's books.
The thing is, everything else in there is as general as can be: ball, boat, socks, boy... I'd expect it to just say "shirt", but it gets specific with "t-shirt", and then shows a picture of a polo shirt. Well done, Bright Baby.
----------------------------------------------------
I listen to a lot of Podcasts, so I always want to have my headphones handy, so that I don't have to hunt them down when I need them. This is causing a minor rift in my marriage, as S also uses headphones often, so they get moved all the time and aren't where I last put them. To fix this I've marked "my" headphones with blue tape, and then S has hers with no tape, and I've instituted a strict use-your-own-headphones-only policy. It works other than the fact I'm now a headphone tyrant. The other day I noticed S using my headphones, and we had the following exchange.
D- "Are those my headphones?"
S- "Uh, yeah, I guess so."
D- "Nope. Take them off."
S- "What? C'mon."
D- "Use yours."
S- "God... This is stupid. You're so obsessive with these headphones. You know that, right?"
D- "I'm not."
S- "Then why won't you let me use these?"
D- "Well, where are your headphones?"
S- "I don't know."
D- "Then there's your answer."
Just call me Napoleon Bose-parte.
----------------------------------------------------
I read an article in The New Yorker recently about how a PBS member station pulled the plugged on a documentary, because it's unflattering to David Koch. Koch, if you're unfamiliar, is a crazy conservative / libertarian billionaire who is best known for funding (along with his crazy conservative / libertarian brother Charles Koch) all sorts of crazy conservative / libertarian causes and candidates. When people begroan the Citizens United decision and talk about how big money is destroying our political system, it's often with people like the Koch brothers in mind.
One thing that struck me in reading this article is just how much many super rich people overvalue their importance in society. It's like they think earning money is a charitable contribution to the rest of us. We saw it in the last election with Mitt Romney, where I think he found it legitimately perplexing that his wealth was used against him to some degree. In his mind, the 1% are the job creators, the people generating wealth for everybody, so why are so many resentful of his fortune? (It must be jealousy!) What he doesn't get is that he's benefited from society much more than society has benefited from him. Where would Mitt Romney or David Koch be if the U.S. economy never existed? Where would the U.S. economy be if they never existed? Exactly. So, quit bitchin' about big government, quit acting like you're something special, and pay whatever we say to pay in taxes.
Back to the article, here's an excerpt that illustrates what I'm talking about.
They went on for twenty minutes, warning that such hateful attitudes could lead many wealthy New Yorkers to move to Florida, where the taxes are lower, and arguing that neighbors of theirs who spent millions of dollars on parties helped waiters and caterers.
The logic is a bit absurd if you follow it through to the end. I mean, let's say a rich person does move to Florida. How long does their old residence -- presumably a premium piece of Manhattan real estate -- stay empty? Are those millions of dollars of expendable income lost forever (Shit, man! The party people moved to Florida. What are we gonna do?!)? Or does somebody else just move right on in, have their own parties, and things just keep on tickin'? To paraphrase Nelson Muntz, "If you didn't do it some other billionaire would have, so quit milking it."
----------------------------------------------------
Lil' S was in bed with me this morning -- I was asleep, he was awake -- and he fish-hooked the inside of my nostril with his little claw-like fingers and yanked it, hard. Waking up at 6 a.m. in a fit of discombobulation, spewing blood from my nose is not how I imagined starting the work week.
Until next time...
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