And since I’m already Spamming up the joint …
… while looking for something buried in archives, I may as well post a link to something else interesting.
Well, I find in interesting. Also, good to see how I’ve been wrong and right about certain things. Turns out there WAS one more meaningful national election (2010) and that Rahm wasn’t able to screw up the census as badly as I suspected. I largely stand by most of the doom and gloom related to, but not directly a part of, the link above.
Another blast from the past …
Voidacity! (Check the comments for the term, coined by Ron.)
“There won’t be any heroes in coming years.”
Written by me almost five years ago. So far I’ve been correct.
So recently…
… I found myself sitting at the table with the cool kids, playing all the little cool-kid in-crowd games. Having realized what I was doing, I stopped.
What’s the point of this? No point, really, other than to thine own self be true. (I’m pretty sure I read that on the back of a cereal box once.)
Everyone gets everything he wants.
I wanted a football game, and for my sins, they gave me one. Brought it up to me like room service. It was a real choice game, and when it was over, I never wanted another.
Ok, I’m late, but here I am!
I am a bit late writing this post, but I promised it to Karen! I didn’t really want this to turn into “Ron’s Health Odyssey” and I debated how I wanted to write it. Not too mention that I’ve been going back and forth to the hospital a lot and busy posting my game collection for sale on the BoardGameGeek, but here goes.
After months of relatively ineffectual antibiotic, i’m finally having some luck with occupational therapy treating my leg. it’s the old fashioned way; they’re squeezing my leg like a tube of toothpaste, starting at the foot all the way up to the knee. I stick my leg in the leg Squeezer and lie back and think about Tahiti for an hour. It’s finally shrinking, and it has gone down about 2 inches in diameter in just 3 treatments. I go twice a week, and they’re trying to get me a machine of my own! I would have preferred a KitchenAid stand mixer, but you get what you get in life! There are some minor negative side effects; the skin cracks and bleeds somewhat after the machine, and it itches like mad. i’m also wearing something on it during the day for compression. So I’m getting lighter as well. My OT does lymphatic massage on me to move the fluid through.
I really need my car (or a car, at least) as winter approaches. I also intend to go back to the YMCA to get back in the swing of working out.
I will post more when I get more info about what they will do with me. But for now, let’s celebrate
Love to you all,
Ron
Redundancy Alert
It occurred to me a while back that the term WASP – White Anglo-Saxon Protestant – contains a redundancy. For how many non-white Anglo-Saxons exist? So the acronym should be ASP, for Anglo-Saxon Protestant.
Biopic
In the comments in the “Word of the day” post, Icepick mentions that McArthur’s dad would be a good subject for a movie and I agree! But I nominate Merion C. Cooper for a biopic as well… Former head of RKO, fought in the Russo-Polish War, had an Indiana Jones life of exploring the world, wound up on the deck of the Missouri for the Japanese surrender in WWII (retiring a two-star general), produced several of John Ford’s movies after the war, and early proponent of both Technicolor and Cinerama. He’s most famous for directing King Kong…he has a cameo in it as the guy in the plane who knocks the Big Ape off the brand-spanking-new Empire State Building. I remember from an old TCM documentary that after Kong’s success, they asked him what he liked for the subjects of the next film ( a musical!) and he said, “I like airplanes….and South America.” Thus did RKO make Flying Down to Rio which not only have Fred Astaire in it, but would include as Astaire’s partner…Cooper’s girlfriend! But when he proposed to her, she decided she would be marrying the head of the studio and didn’t want to act anymore. So they gave her part to some dame under contract to RKO….Ginger Rogers. A fascinating life!
Neat-o link about Cooper here.
What if?
There’s another controversy afoot. (As if there isn’t always, right?) This one concerns some comments made by some Lit professor in Toronto. You can read the story at the link, and you can read some other stuff over at Comment Home, which is where I read about it. Mostly, I don’t care. The professor in question (one David Gilmore, but not THAT David Gilmore) is basically teaching the stuff he likes, which is mostly stuff written by straight men. In this I don’t see any difference between him and the various [Blank] Studies departments that have sprung up all over academia in recent decades.
But one comment he made had me asking a “What if?” First, here’s a comment of Gilmore’s to give a little context:
I’m not interested in teaching books by women. Virginia Woolf is the only writer that interests me as a woman writer, so I do teach one of her short stories. But once again, when I was given this job I said I would only teach the people that I truly, truly love. Unfortunately, none of those happen to be Chinese, or women.
He went on:
What I teach is guys. Serious heterosexual guys. F Scott Fitzgerald, Chekhov, Tolstoy. Real guy-guys. Henry Miller. Philip Roth.
I read this and thought,
What if Leo Tolstoy and Anton Chekhov could be asked for their opinions about this? Assume that they understood the English language and modern North American vernaculars. Would they appreciate being described as not merely guys, or guy-guys, but as real guy-guys. Personally, I’m thinking Chekhov probably reaches for that rifle hanging on the wall….
Ambiance 