Well, not really, but he did show how to beat an Obama. Unfortunately, McCain isn’t the man to propound those views.
Category Archives: Popular Culture
For A Friday Morning
Fifty stunning photos.
[Via Geek Press]
Irony At Epcot
A travelogue by Lileks:
The plot was hugely ironical: Timon and Roomba or whatever the warthog is named were building a resort in the jungle, and damning a stream to create a water feature. Simba showed up to demonstrate the error of their ways. The hilarity of any manifestation of the Disneyverse criticizing an artificial lake to build a resort goes without saying. And it did go without saying, of course. Simba said that Timon and Roomba or whatever were acting like another creature that did not behave in tune with nature, and that creature was . . . man.
BOO HISS, I guess. Jaysus, I tire of this. Big evil stupid man had done many stupid evil bad things, like pile abandoned cars in the river, dump chemicals into blue streams, and build factories that vomited great dark clouds into the sky. Like the People’s State Lead Paint and Licensed Mickey Merchandise Factory in Shanghai Province, perhaps? Simba gave us a lecture about materialism and how it hurt the earth – cue the shot of trees actually being chopped down, and I’m surprised the sap didn’t spurt like blood in a Peckinpah movie – and other horrors, like forests on fire because . . . well, because it was National Toss Glowing Coals Out the Car Window Month, I guess. I swear the footage all came from the mid-70s; it was grainy and cracked and the cars were all late-60s models. Because I’m pretty sure we’re not dumping cars into the rivers as a matter of course any more. You’re welcome to try to leave your car on the riverbank and see how that turns out for you.
At the end Timon and Phoomba decided to open a green resort, and everything’s hakuna Montana.
Follow the link for the rest of the story.
Better Than The Book?
Frederica Mathewes-Green thinks that Prince Caspian is a much better film than a book. There is also a list of other films for which many think this the case.
But doesn’t it matter (and quite a lot) whether one reads the book, or sees the movie first? If you like either a book or a movie when you first experience it, it seems more likely to me that you’ll be disappointed when you do the other, because it may not meet your expectations, or have the features that you liked.
And In Plenty Of Time For Christmas
Hey, Father’s Day is coming up, too. This isn’t new, but it’s the first time I’d come across it. Behold, the complete ACME catalog. Considering the election coming up, I could use the anti-nightmare machine. And the atom re-arranger sounds like a proto-form of nanotech and molecular assemblers.
I wonder if they have a gift registry?
Etymology Question
When did “kick-up” become an adjective?
I ask because I get a lot of porn spam using it that way in the subject line (e.g., “kick-up video of Mariah Carey”).
Do people who are into this stuff commonly use that phrase? I’ve never heard of it in any other context. The only Google hit for “kick-up” that seems pertinent is this column by Mark Morford, which is basically a spam dump of his inbox. And it’s not even in the top ten hits. The vast majority of them are a verb (as I would expect). I would have thought there’d be something in the Urban Dictionary, but no.
So is it some new usage that some spammer made up, and it’s supposed to be obvious what it means? Anyone more hip than me (i.e., almost everyone) have any idea where this comes from?
[Update in the afternoon]
Heh. Google works fast. This post is now number seven in a search for “‘kick-up’ adjective.”
Some Graduation Advice
From P. J. O’Rourke:
Don’t moan. I’m not going to “pass the wisdom of one generation down to the next.” I’m a member of the 1960s generation. We didn’t have any wisdom.
We were the moron generation. We were the generation that believed we could stop the Vietnam War by growing our hair long and dressing like circus clowns. We believed drugs would change everything — which they did, for John Belushi. We believed in free love. Yes, the love was free, but we paid a high price for the sex.
My generation spoiled everything for you. It has always been the special prerogative of young people to look and act weird and shock grown-ups. But my generation exhausted the Earth’s resources of the weird. Weird clothes — we wore them. Weird beards — we grew them. Weird words and phrases — we said them. So, when it came your turn to be original and look and act weird, all you had left was to tattoo your faces and pierce your tongues. Ouch. That must have hurt. I apologize.
So now, it’s my job to give you advice. But I’m thinking: You’re finishing 16 years of education, and you’ve heard all the conventional good advice you can stand. So, let me offer some relief.
Read on. Some of it actually is good advice.
Expelled Exposed
SciAm has an article on the six things that Ben Stein doesn’t want you to know about the movie. Just the first one is sufficient to me to think the whole thing a contemptible fraud.
The Logic Of Superstition
For what it’s worth, I set my watch to the destination time zone when they close the plane doors.
Movie Review Time
Over at Lileks’ place:
Their logo looks like a deformed octopus. We get the picture, though. It’s the Klan. This was still a touchy thing in ’36; this must have irritated the people who thought the film ignored all the good things the Klan did, like community outreach and neighborhood suppers and the occasional potluck where a fella could get together with like-minded Americans and talk freely about the Catholics.
Gee, to what or whom could he possibly be referring?