Movie trailer voiceover maestro Don LaFontaine has passed on.
An article here.
yeah, it's the "In a world..." guy.
I am sad to hear this news. Not only was LaFontaine only 68, but we'll now be denied the voice my generation associates with the movies.
Godspeed, sir. May your merging with the infinite be as exciting as your voiceovers.
Tuesday, September 02, 2008
Monday, September 01, 2008
Unpolitical Comic Fodder
A new post up about the value of a single vision within the DCU.
The REAL news is that Leaguer Simon has joined up at Comic Fodder. He's reviewing collections and trades, I think, which will fill a HUGE gap in the Comic Fodder galaxy of stars.
Here's his first post on Ellis and Cassaday's "Planetary".
The REAL news is that Leaguer Simon has joined up at Comic Fodder. He's reviewing collections and trades, I think, which will fill a HUGE gap in the Comic Fodder galaxy of stars.
Here's his first post on Ellis and Cassaday's "Planetary".
Sunday, August 31, 2008
Getting Political
Ahhhh... It's that time in a young country's life when so many things are due for a change. That country keeps hearing about "Change" and may even be discovering girls (on the ticket).
For folks newer to the site, here's some background:
The site was originally a bit more political. I was deeply dissatisfied with the Bush administration and the push to war in Iraq (do not equate this with a push into Afghanistan or other Al Qaeda related pushes of the day). The American press was rolling over for talking point dispatches, and more than I was bothered by Bush's strategies, I was deeply bothered by the way the press was happy to play along.
I should note, the force singly most responsible for the creation of League of Melbotis is a thought-provoking conservative in his own right. And while he and I could disagree, there was always an opportunity for me to see things from a new angle. I have no idea if he felt the same way, but that was something I could take away from it.
That's really all I ask out of political discussion. Rational discourse. Keep the emotion to a limited degree (I've been known to get pretty hot about certain issues, I confess), and trying not to deny logic in an argument.
I started LoM in the Boogeyman Era of politics, where the call of the day was "If you don't support X, you hate America", "If you don't buy into Y, you hate our troops", "If you don't agree to Z, you hate freedom", and, my favorite "You're trying to appease the terrorists!". No other time in the history of man has the phrase "appease" been bandied about so much.
For me, the end result of the Bush/ Cable News era, sadly, has been a sneering cynicism about politics in general. Cynicism = bad. If you find our system goofy, go live in Canada, right? Whatever.
Instead, it's been a 7 year lesson in watching the entire populace (who supposedly took high school civics) look the other direction as the law and basic decency have been put to the curb for expediency.
Worse, possibly, it's ingrained in me a cynicism about party loyalists of any stripe. If folks will believe anything That Guy says, why should I believe anything Our Guy says?
It's sort of left me with the impression that we are not so far away from our silver-back respecting primate cousins. There's a reason that against all logic, we spent 100,000 years erecting kings to live in palaces while we toiled on turnip farms and paid them taxes, believing God himself had selected Our Guy for the job. When push came to shove, if we backed Our Guy and adorned him in jewels and let him kick the crap out of us, maybe when the jerks from the other side of the island showed up to kill us and take our turnips, our belief that Our Guy was the REAL guy (and not THEIR jewel adorned guy, who was so obviously a jerk) God would help us smite our enemies.
And because winners tend to write history, sure, God was on our side.
Despite our proclamations of love for the system, I'm not convinced we're not all secret monarchists at heart, in search of a king (or queen). We choose our candidates by how they support the lifestyle we believe we (and everyone else) should be living. We don't look to candidates to change our ways with new and challenging ideas. Every four years is a chance to crown new royalty, and to feel some small victory when or if the victor is the one who confirms our preconceived notions.
If Our Guy wins, things will be better for everyone. He will protect our turnips. Or at least the way we think turnips should be raised and distributed. If the other guy wins, we'll all be turnipless.
The improvement in the situation is that we have an opportunity to choose which guy we're going to go with on this turnip situation very four harvests.
A bit of personal frustration I find in myself is that I absolutely have knee-jerk reactions, and despite the abundance of information available on candidates and their game plans for the future that I came to a decision so quickly regarding who was My Guy. I found myself rationalizing criticisms of My Guy, and backing shakier criticisms against All Those Other Guys. As it's become Our Guy vs. Their Guy (and Our Guy-1 vs. Their Guy-1), things are starting to get serious.
But I don't take any of the candidates all that seriously. You can't.
I often have no idea if My Guy's plans will work. It's just that My Guy's plans sound more like something I'd do than The Other Guy's plans. When I hear our two candidates talking about their energy plans, is it really that shocking that the solution they came up with matches the preconceived notions of their party faithful? Is the science behind what their saying a legitimate response? Why the @#$% are we asking politicians (of all people) how we should be moving forward with energy solutions? Why aren't we finding out what the facts and science are from someone who doesn't have a political stake in this stuff (such as Ms. Paris Hilton)?
We're looking to our Officially Anointed and Elected Sun Gods to pretend they know how to do everything from run international tariff laws to understanding the complex issues behind our natural resources. Luckily, they gladly fake authority and certainty on such topics, and we go right along with it, mostly because it fulfills the conclusions we've already come to.
I quit talking politics on the site because, honestly, it totally wears me out. I say "red", someone else chimes in to say "blue", someone else says "you don't understand colors, moron", and yet another person says "God only likes blue." And the truth is, we're all right and we're all wrong. We won't ever live in a state of utter hegemony in which we're all moving the same direction and the same solutions work for everyone. (You can try this, but then you're a big, spooky country where people tend to disappear when they disagree.)
The fact is, it's a single vote I'll cast in November. In a state that is massively, proudly Republican, it totally doesn't matter what I think (no matter who I vote for). The arcane and out-dated workings of the electoral college tell me that voting in National Politics is, in fact, pointless. And with the results of the 2000 Election, I'm kind of inclined to think the whole thing is so astonishingly flawed that its going to come down to the fact that we have a Republican-placed Supreme Court, anyway.
It doesn't mean I won't vote. It's just... you know, I'm not completely dumb nor overly illogical. And it sure as hell beats the alternative of not having any say. That's been our lot for the vast, vast majority of human history. And, I don't think too kindly of that particular right being infringed upon.
So I vote more for the ritual of the thing, and because I have hope that one day a vote will actually count for something (we do live in a Republic after all, not a true democracy. But things change.). And that my vote can be a reminder to The Other Guy, if My Guy does lose (and he probably will), that nobody walks into office on a 100% mandate. Anyone taking the Oval Office should remember that almost half the country didn't want to see them in office, and keep that in mind when they start making decisions.
But I'll be dipped if that's what I see actually happen. It's hard to not believe the monkeys howling your name and dropping all those red and blue balloons (all for you!) in those first 100 days. You get to be festooned in jewels and tell the whole country that despite the council's decisions regarding turnip planting, you're not agreeing to plant any turnips until they start growing them and distributing turnips in the way you see fit...
We choose our kings and queens in odd ways and maybe by asking the wrong questions. And certainly by expecting them to be all knowing and seeing with their army of advisors. I don't know what criteria we should be using to make our decisions, but too often we seem to make our decisions based on someone else's checklist. And maybe that's what needs to change a bit.
A quick PS: I am neither for or against Sarah Palin, Joe Biden or anyone else seeking office. I've given Palin a hard time the past few days here at LoM and Steanso's blog. This is not to suggest anything about Palin (other than that probably Photoshopped pics with accompanying taglines are amusing). Here's a hoax link.
I could care less about Sarah Palin or Joe Biden other than their official capacities, and more or less the same about McCain and Obama. If you are in some way related to any of these people and become offended by future links regarding stuff I find funny, then my apologies. Any hang up other readers have regarding the sun god worship of candidates is their own.
I assure you, all of this will get stupider before it gets better.
For folks newer to the site, here's some background:
The site was originally a bit more political. I was deeply dissatisfied with the Bush administration and the push to war in Iraq (do not equate this with a push into Afghanistan or other Al Qaeda related pushes of the day). The American press was rolling over for talking point dispatches, and more than I was bothered by Bush's strategies, I was deeply bothered by the way the press was happy to play along.
I should note, the force singly most responsible for the creation of League of Melbotis is a thought-provoking conservative in his own right. And while he and I could disagree, there was always an opportunity for me to see things from a new angle. I have no idea if he felt the same way, but that was something I could take away from it.
That's really all I ask out of political discussion. Rational discourse. Keep the emotion to a limited degree (I've been known to get pretty hot about certain issues, I confess), and trying not to deny logic in an argument.
I started LoM in the Boogeyman Era of politics, where the call of the day was "If you don't support X, you hate America", "If you don't buy into Y, you hate our troops", "If you don't agree to Z, you hate freedom", and, my favorite "You're trying to appease the terrorists!". No other time in the history of man has the phrase "appease" been bandied about so much.
For me, the end result of the Bush/ Cable News era, sadly, has been a sneering cynicism about politics in general. Cynicism = bad. If you find our system goofy, go live in Canada, right? Whatever.
Instead, it's been a 7 year lesson in watching the entire populace (who supposedly took high school civics) look the other direction as the law and basic decency have been put to the curb for expediency.
Worse, possibly, it's ingrained in me a cynicism about party loyalists of any stripe. If folks will believe anything That Guy says, why should I believe anything Our Guy says?
It's sort of left me with the impression that we are not so far away from our silver-back respecting primate cousins. There's a reason that against all logic, we spent 100,000 years erecting kings to live in palaces while we toiled on turnip farms and paid them taxes, believing God himself had selected Our Guy for the job. When push came to shove, if we backed Our Guy and adorned him in jewels and let him kick the crap out of us, maybe when the jerks from the other side of the island showed up to kill us and take our turnips, our belief that Our Guy was the REAL guy (and not THEIR jewel adorned guy, who was so obviously a jerk) God would help us smite our enemies.
And because winners tend to write history, sure, God was on our side.
Despite our proclamations of love for the system, I'm not convinced we're not all secret monarchists at heart, in search of a king (or queen). We choose our candidates by how they support the lifestyle we believe we (and everyone else) should be living. We don't look to candidates to change our ways with new and challenging ideas. Every four years is a chance to crown new royalty, and to feel some small victory when or if the victor is the one who confirms our preconceived notions.
If Our Guy wins, things will be better for everyone. He will protect our turnips. Or at least the way we think turnips should be raised and distributed. If the other guy wins, we'll all be turnipless.
The improvement in the situation is that we have an opportunity to choose which guy we're going to go with on this turnip situation very four harvests.
A bit of personal frustration I find in myself is that I absolutely have knee-jerk reactions, and despite the abundance of information available on candidates and their game plans for the future that I came to a decision so quickly regarding who was My Guy. I found myself rationalizing criticisms of My Guy, and backing shakier criticisms against All Those Other Guys. As it's become Our Guy vs. Their Guy (and Our Guy-1 vs. Their Guy-1), things are starting to get serious.
But I don't take any of the candidates all that seriously. You can't.
I often have no idea if My Guy's plans will work. It's just that My Guy's plans sound more like something I'd do than The Other Guy's plans. When I hear our two candidates talking about their energy plans, is it really that shocking that the solution they came up with matches the preconceived notions of their party faithful? Is the science behind what their saying a legitimate response? Why the @#$% are we asking politicians (of all people) how we should be moving forward with energy solutions? Why aren't we finding out what the facts and science are from someone who doesn't have a political stake in this stuff (such as Ms. Paris Hilton)?
We're looking to our Officially Anointed and Elected Sun Gods to pretend they know how to do everything from run international tariff laws to understanding the complex issues behind our natural resources. Luckily, they gladly fake authority and certainty on such topics, and we go right along with it, mostly because it fulfills the conclusions we've already come to.
I quit talking politics on the site because, honestly, it totally wears me out. I say "red", someone else chimes in to say "blue", someone else says "you don't understand colors, moron", and yet another person says "God only likes blue." And the truth is, we're all right and we're all wrong. We won't ever live in a state of utter hegemony in which we're all moving the same direction and the same solutions work for everyone. (You can try this, but then you're a big, spooky country where people tend to disappear when they disagree.)
The fact is, it's a single vote I'll cast in November. In a state that is massively, proudly Republican, it totally doesn't matter what I think (no matter who I vote for). The arcane and out-dated workings of the electoral college tell me that voting in National Politics is, in fact, pointless. And with the results of the 2000 Election, I'm kind of inclined to think the whole thing is so astonishingly flawed that its going to come down to the fact that we have a Republican-placed Supreme Court, anyway.
It doesn't mean I won't vote. It's just... you know, I'm not completely dumb nor overly illogical. And it sure as hell beats the alternative of not having any say. That's been our lot for the vast, vast majority of human history. And, I don't think too kindly of that particular right being infringed upon.
So I vote more for the ritual of the thing, and because I have hope that one day a vote will actually count for something (we do live in a Republic after all, not a true democracy. But things change.). And that my vote can be a reminder to The Other Guy, if My Guy does lose (and he probably will), that nobody walks into office on a 100% mandate. Anyone taking the Oval Office should remember that almost half the country didn't want to see them in office, and keep that in mind when they start making decisions.
But I'll be dipped if that's what I see actually happen. It's hard to not believe the monkeys howling your name and dropping all those red and blue balloons (all for you!) in those first 100 days. You get to be festooned in jewels and tell the whole country that despite the council's decisions regarding turnip planting, you're not agreeing to plant any turnips until they start growing them and distributing turnips in the way you see fit...
We choose our kings and queens in odd ways and maybe by asking the wrong questions. And certainly by expecting them to be all knowing and seeing with their army of advisors. I don't know what criteria we should be using to make our decisions, but too often we seem to make our decisions based on someone else's checklist. And maybe that's what needs to change a bit.
A quick PS: I am neither for or against Sarah Palin, Joe Biden or anyone else seeking office. I've given Palin a hard time the past few days here at LoM and Steanso's blog. This is not to suggest anything about Palin (other than that probably Photoshopped pics with accompanying taglines are amusing). Here's a hoax link.
I could care less about Sarah Palin or Joe Biden other than their official capacities, and more or less the same about McCain and Obama. If you are in some way related to any of these people and become offended by future links regarding stuff I find funny, then my apologies. Any hang up other readers have regarding the sun god worship of candidates is their own.
I assure you, all of this will get stupider before it gets better.
UT Wins (not a huge surprise)
I don't like the word "fun". People use it to the point that it's almost meaningless. Not everything is equal shades of "fun". Such as going to the comic shop is, indeed, "fun", but it's still really looking for stuff to read that you hope will be even more "fun". Going out to grab a bite with pals is, indeed, "fun". But so is a quiet dinner with Jamie.
If the eskimos have 200,000 words for snow, why are we stuck with one word for "fun"? There should be a scale.
Anyway, all of this is to say that on the fun-scale, I have to rate the UT game very, very high. Yeah, our seats were incredibly high up. We literally walked up ten-flights worth of ramps to get to section 116. But our view was actually really nice, and we could see the Jumbotron and side-mounted scoreboards just fine.
The crowd was great, UT played really well (I have no worries about McCoy's readiness this season. The boy is looking top-notch.), the band was in top form, and we even enjoyed a breeze in our very high seats.
The crew I went to the game with was comprised of myself, my folks and David. David hadn't ever been to UT game (or college game, I think), and its been well over a decade since I've been to a UT game.
The additions to UT stadium since I last went are pretty awesome. Sure, they could use an escalator to the 10th floor, but it's an amazing facility. And football live is genuinely great to watch, especially with a hyped-up, hometown crowd.
For the record, this was UT playing it's annual "bring in the smaller school so we can pummel them and whip our fans into a frenzy" game. UT defeated Florida Atlantic 52-10. Florida Atlantic had no running game to speak of, but did find the weak spots in our secondary in their passing game. Hopefully that can be corrected by the time we play Arkansas.
Man, I'm tired. I'm going to bed.
Hook 'Em.
If the eskimos have 200,000 words for snow, why are we stuck with one word for "fun"? There should be a scale.
Anyway, all of this is to say that on the fun-scale, I have to rate the UT game very, very high. Yeah, our seats were incredibly high up. We literally walked up ten-flights worth of ramps to get to section 116. But our view was actually really nice, and we could see the Jumbotron and side-mounted scoreboards just fine.
The crowd was great, UT played really well (I have no worries about McCoy's readiness this season. The boy is looking top-notch.), the band was in top form, and we even enjoyed a breeze in our very high seats.
The crew I went to the game with was comprised of myself, my folks and David. David hadn't ever been to UT game (or college game, I think), and its been well over a decade since I've been to a UT game.
The additions to UT stadium since I last went are pretty awesome. Sure, they could use an escalator to the 10th floor, but it's an amazing facility. And football live is genuinely great to watch, especially with a hyped-up, hometown crowd.
For the record, this was UT playing it's annual "bring in the smaller school so we can pummel them and whip our fans into a frenzy" game. UT defeated Florida Atlantic 52-10. Florida Atlantic had no running game to speak of, but did find the weak spots in our secondary in their passing game. Hopefully that can be corrected by the time we play Arkansas.
Man, I'm tired. I'm going to bed.
Hook 'Em.
Saturday, August 30, 2008
Friday, August 29, 2008
From the Cabela's Catalog
Simon will be confused by this post as these sorts of hats are, as I understand it, common headwear in Canada.
This item retails at Cabela's for $250, and in no way will make you look completely insane.
In case you're wondering: Yeah, that's a real, dead coyote. You can tell, because the only color they offer? COYOTE.
From the reviews:
"I have purchased a number of fur hats in my day but this is by far the warmest and most comfortable. Not only does it keep the back of my head warm but you can wrap the legs around your face to block the wind. The only reason this hat did not receive 5 stars is due to the fact that I was attacked by a bird thinking it was wounded prey while I was out for a walk. A rare but unfortunate occurrence when wearing an animal pelt on your head. Also great in the rain. Didn't smell at all after it was wet and it makes a great present. I'm getting one for my wife."
That lady is going to feel so @#$%ing lucky.
I just like how their model could be The League with a beard. It's like seeing a parallel Earth where The League has finally snapped.
Special thanks to Denby for the link
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)