Once upon a time in our language, we had these things called aphorisms. Adages. Sayings. Collectively, they were known as "common wisdom". We all knew these things, and yet had to remind one another of them periodically. For instance, a mother or father, bemoaning their child's bad grades and wanted to blame it on how "slotted" their attention has become because of TV, video games, Twitter, etc., might say "The slotted spoon doesn't hold much soup." Their friend, wanting to remind them to look at their OWN grades in high school might respond "Well, the apple doesn't fall far from the tree."
Some of these aphorisms became changed over time to mean something else. For instance, have you ever heard someone dismiss someone else by quoting Marie Antoinette's "Let them eat cake"? Well, that's not about haughtiness. That's about being out of touch. When a representative of the French peasants came to her and told her that her people had no bread, she was genuinely puzzled and said "They have no bread? Well, let them eat cake." They cut off her head for it. Or "the proof's in the pudding"? Yuck. Sounds like some bad pudding. Actually, "the proof of the pudding is in the tasting". One of my favorite aphoristic slaughters is "You can't have your cake and eat it, too." Of course you can. That's patently false. As a matter of fact, you'd have a hard time eating your cake if you DIDN'T have it. As a matter of fact, the saying is actually "You can't EAT your cake and HAVE it, too." Meaning you can either have it or eat it. Once you've eaten it, you can no longer have it.
I think that part of the death of aphorisms is the fact that we don't really want to think about what they represent in our modern culture. We desperately WANT to eat our cake and still have it.
One that has fallen seriously out of favor, for instance, is "You get what you pay for", meaning if you pay for low quality you can't complain about getting low quality. We want to believe that we can pay for cheap, Chinese junk (no pun intended) at WalMart and get quality products without compromising our own economy. It doesn't work.
Another one is "a stitch in time saves nine", meaning that if a rip starts in your clothes and you put a single stitch in now, the rip might not become worse and require nine stitches later. This has been replaced with "use it up, throw it away and buy a new one".
Yes, this relates to how we elect our representatives. Another aphorism, this one directly attributed to "Moms" Mabley is "If you always do what you always did, you will always get what you always got."
Peace.
Randal
Friday, November 25, 2011
Sunday, November 20, 2011
Mindless Reaction
I am a cigar smoker.
Have been for about half of my life at this point, but only been really serious about for the last... oh... twelve or thirteen years.
Recently, though, cigars have been lumped together with cigarettes. Why? Is it because they are comparable? No. It's because the fact that they're NOT comparable is just too hard to think about!
Comparing a person who smokes a cigar a day or so because he or she enjoys it to someone who smokes a pack of cigarettes a day is a little like comparing someone who has a glass of fine wine or so per day with the wino getting blotto on Night Train outside of your apartment building. I realize that i'm generalizing here, but most cigar smokers (and, i would venture, NO smokers of fine cigars) are addicts, just as most cigarette smokers are. I say that i'm generalizing, because i do know some addicted cigar smokers, just as a i knew a few (very precious few) cigarette smokers who can smoke say... two or three cigarettes a day and be done with it, just because they enjoy it.
And while we're on the subject, i bet that some of those anti-smoking nuts who lump cigars with cigarettes drink occasionally sometimes themselves. As a matter of fact, i've had conversations with some of them. I've got to warn you... if you're one of these people, avert your eyes! I've lost more than one friend by blinding them with the light of truth! Here goes...
It is difficult to get accurate statistics on deaths from either alcohol or tobacco. Why? Because of all of the other factors that may play in these deaths. For instance, in the eighties, when smoking was on a sharp decline, lung diseases in the United States almost TRIPLED. At this point, we have about ten times the amount of childhood asthma than we did ten years ago, and a hundred or more times that number since the seventies when everyone smoked everywhere all the time. You know how many of these are attributable to cigars? Zero. As a matter of fact, look at famous cigar smokers who have lived into their eighties, nineties or even a hundred plus. George Burns. Milton Berle. Sid Caesar, who'll be ninety next year. Burns, who died in 1996 at the age of 100 was performing right up to the end. Caesar still pops up on TV from time to time.
My father, a life-long cigarette smoker, died last year at the age of 72, after having spent the last several years of his life house-bound.
See the difference? Compare that to famous cigarette smokers, who all died young of lung disease. Rod Serling (50), Bogart (57), Edward R. Murrow (57). Yul Brenner actually made it to 65.
You know how many of these deaths are factually attributable to second hand smoke? NONE.
Now look at alcohol. The CDC estimates 25000 deaths per year from alcohol... but that's just alcohol users. How many non-drinkers are killed every year by crazy drunks? In fights, auto accidents and just random acts of alcohol-induced stupidity. And that doesn't take into account the number of people seriously injured or crippled by drunk drivers every year.
If you REALLY want to ban a serious health hazard to people who DON'T use the product, you should work on banning alcohol.
I lived in Seattle the year that they passed the idiotic law banning smoking in ALL buildings, including bars. Including CIGAR bars of all the stupidity. The government actually stood still for this. Aren't we sick of the nanny state taking away our freedoms? Oh, and a note to my republican brothers and sisters... when we talk about "small government", we're not talking about government staying out of corporations' affairs, we're talking about keeping them out of OUR affairs. There are even places where you can't smoke in your apartment. Places where you can't smoke in your own CAR, for dog's sake.
Look, i HATE cigarettes, okay? For nicotine addicts, they are the equivalent of needles for heroin addicts. But smoking is LEGAL. If you want to regulate it, do it in a sane way, not in a mindless, knee-jerk way. Ban it in McDonald's and Chuck E. Cheese, which are mostly for kids. In a place like the Pike Pub in Seattle, which has a HERMETICALLY-SEALED cigar room, keep it legal.
By the way... do you know what illegal drug has never, as far as anyone can prove, killed anyone? Anywhere? Ever? Pot. I don't smoke pot, but legalize it for heaven's sake.
Peace.
Randal
Have been for about half of my life at this point, but only been really serious about for the last... oh... twelve or thirteen years.
Recently, though, cigars have been lumped together with cigarettes. Why? Is it because they are comparable? No. It's because the fact that they're NOT comparable is just too hard to think about!
Comparing a person who smokes a cigar a day or so because he or she enjoys it to someone who smokes a pack of cigarettes a day is a little like comparing someone who has a glass of fine wine or so per day with the wino getting blotto on Night Train outside of your apartment building. I realize that i'm generalizing here, but most cigar smokers (and, i would venture, NO smokers of fine cigars) are addicts, just as most cigarette smokers are. I say that i'm generalizing, because i do know some addicted cigar smokers, just as a i knew a few (very precious few) cigarette smokers who can smoke say... two or three cigarettes a day and be done with it, just because they enjoy it.
And while we're on the subject, i bet that some of those anti-smoking nuts who lump cigars with cigarettes drink occasionally sometimes themselves. As a matter of fact, i've had conversations with some of them. I've got to warn you... if you're one of these people, avert your eyes! I've lost more than one friend by blinding them with the light of truth! Here goes...
It is difficult to get accurate statistics on deaths from either alcohol or tobacco. Why? Because of all of the other factors that may play in these deaths. For instance, in the eighties, when smoking was on a sharp decline, lung diseases in the United States almost TRIPLED. At this point, we have about ten times the amount of childhood asthma than we did ten years ago, and a hundred or more times that number since the seventies when everyone smoked everywhere all the time. You know how many of these are attributable to cigars? Zero. As a matter of fact, look at famous cigar smokers who have lived into their eighties, nineties or even a hundred plus. George Burns. Milton Berle. Sid Caesar, who'll be ninety next year. Burns, who died in 1996 at the age of 100 was performing right up to the end. Caesar still pops up on TV from time to time.
My father, a life-long cigarette smoker, died last year at the age of 72, after having spent the last several years of his life house-bound.
See the difference? Compare that to famous cigarette smokers, who all died young of lung disease. Rod Serling (50), Bogart (57), Edward R. Murrow (57). Yul Brenner actually made it to 65.
You know how many of these deaths are factually attributable to second hand smoke? NONE.
Now look at alcohol. The CDC estimates 25000 deaths per year from alcohol... but that's just alcohol users. How many non-drinkers are killed every year by crazy drunks? In fights, auto accidents and just random acts of alcohol-induced stupidity. And that doesn't take into account the number of people seriously injured or crippled by drunk drivers every year.
If you REALLY want to ban a serious health hazard to people who DON'T use the product, you should work on banning alcohol.
I lived in Seattle the year that they passed the idiotic law banning smoking in ALL buildings, including bars. Including CIGAR bars of all the stupidity. The government actually stood still for this. Aren't we sick of the nanny state taking away our freedoms? Oh, and a note to my republican brothers and sisters... when we talk about "small government", we're not talking about government staying out of corporations' affairs, we're talking about keeping them out of OUR affairs. There are even places where you can't smoke in your apartment. Places where you can't smoke in your own CAR, for dog's sake.
Look, i HATE cigarettes, okay? For nicotine addicts, they are the equivalent of needles for heroin addicts. But smoking is LEGAL. If you want to regulate it, do it in a sane way, not in a mindless, knee-jerk way. Ban it in McDonald's and Chuck E. Cheese, which are mostly for kids. In a place like the Pike Pub in Seattle, which has a HERMETICALLY-SEALED cigar room, keep it legal.
By the way... do you know what illegal drug has never, as far as anyone can prove, killed anyone? Anywhere? Ever? Pot. I don't smoke pot, but legalize it for heaven's sake.
Peace.
Randal
Thursday, November 10, 2011
Movie Review: The Thing (2011)
First, a little history.
This story started life as a novella called "Who Goes There?" by John W. Campbell. If the name sounds familiar, it's because one of the most prestigious awards in science fiction bears his name. The story is about an alien found in the ice of Antarctica and thawed out. It then begins changing shape, imitating the life forms around it, and attacks the humans on the base.
It was first made into a film by Howard Hawks in 1951 as "The Thing From Another World". The filmmakers originally wanted to simply call it "The Thing", but another film beat them to the punch with that title. It was about an alien discovered in Antarctic ice, which is then thawed out and attacks the humans on the base. Of course, in this film, James Arness as the Thing was basically a six-foot tall walking carrot.
Thirty-one years later, in 1982, John Carpenter made the film again as "John Carpenter's The Thing". It was called this because Carpenter, in his infinite ego, insisted that his name go above all of his movie titles. This created a problem when he made the Stephen King novel Christine into a film, because King (in his infinite ego) had the same stipulation in his contract. This version basically followed the original story, and is probably the best of the three film versions.
Which brings us to the new version, "The Thing", which also basically follows the original story.
THE GOOD: The special effects are great, and the story has some good jumps in it. The cast all turn in serviceable, if not stellar performances. The filmmakers were smart enough to follow Carpenter's blueprint, all the way down to swiping a couple of his effect ideas.
THE BAD: There are some inexplicable logic problems in the film. As an example, there is one moment where they're trying to determine who's human and who's not. Since the Thing can't replicate non-living tissue, they do this by checking everyone for fillings. So far, so good... except that some of the humans can't be excluded because they have porcelain fillings, which can't be distinguished from dentin. Except... they can. Porcelain looks much more like a natural tooth, except as the person ages and lives the tooth changes colors, whereas the filling doesn't. So after twenty or thirty years the filling still looks pretty much like dentin, but if you're looking for it you can see it. And trust me... these people would be looking HARD.
THE UGLY: The filmmakers never really decided how the Thing does its thing. Does it replicate or hijack human beings? One character says "It replicates the being and then lives inside them." Huh? That doesn't even make any sense. In the 1982 film, it is determined that every cell of the Thing is a separate living entity, and it can infiltrate a human being and basically turn into that being, replacing every cell in its body with its own. I wish that the 2011 filmmakers had had the same clarity of vision, it would have elevated this film from simply good and watchable to almost excellent.
Peace.
Randal
Thursday, November 3, 2011
Story Review: Mile 81 by Stephen King
Okay, this first thing that I want to say for this review is that it contains spoilers. Why? Because I like my friends and readers and DON’T WANT THEM TO SUFFER THROUGH THIS STORY!
A kid passes out at an abandoned rest stop on the freeway from drinking vodka. Meanwhile an apparently alien car rolls into the rest stop and starts EATING PEOPLE.
THE CAR.
IS EATING PEOPLE.
Sound stupid? Good. Because it is. And it’s not even like chomping them up using its hood as a mouth. That, at least, would be entertaining. It just kind of… absorbs them. As it does, it deforms and then pops back into shape with a sound (according to King) of a tennis ball popping back into shape. So apparently it’s a RUBBER alien man-eating car. Jeez.
“Look, Mr. King… I like you. Been a fan every since I first read Cujo in the early eighties to impress a girl. At your best, sir, you write like no one else in the business. Anyone who can read ‘Salem’s Lot and sleep well that night or Misery and not cringe at the hobbling scene or Bag of Bones and not be moved by the ghost’s plight are so cold emotionally that I don’t want to meet them in a dark alley. For my money, the downward slide in quality started with It, and continued merrily with The Tommyknockers. Since then you haven’t so much been “hit and miss” as you’ve been “miss miss miss hit miss miss”. The only one that was so self-worshipping and bad that I couldn’t finish it was Lisey's Story. The truly amazing thing is that, at about the same time, you published the last of the “Richard Bachman” novels, Blaze. In the prologue of Blaze, you actively apologized for the book and dismissed it as a “trunk” novel. If I’m not mistaken, you even wondered in the text why you even bothered publishing it, AND IT IS ONE OF THE BEST THINGS THAT YOU’VE WRITTEN IN YEARS. You’ve really started to repeat yourself badly, as well. What’s Under the Dome but The Stand meets The Tommyknockers? Please. As a fan, I’m begging you. Quit publishing every piece of crap that you write. Start accepting the input of others, and if anyone that you trust thinks that it’s junk, trunk it. You’re rich enough and you’re really tarnishing your reputation with some of this garbage.”
Speaking of repeating himself, some will be tempted to think that this is a reworking of From a Buick 8 (which was a reworking of the earlier and vastly superior Christine), but it’s really more like his short story The Raft where a group of teens are stranded on a raft in the middle of a lake by an apparently alien monster that absorbs them. He even has a female protagonist trapped by the monster getting a hold of her hair.
THE GOOD: I give King huge points for how far he’s come in his representation of gay characters. One of the characters (read as: car chow) in Mile 81 is a lesbian, and she’s one of my favorite King characters probably since the group in The Stand. She is light-years beyond the flaming stereotypes that he wrote in the opening pages of It.
THE BAD: The rest of the story. It ranges from bad to laughably bad. In particular, the car as antagonist. For those who don’t know, King was struck by a van and almost killed in 1999. When that happened, I remember thinking “Man, I hope that he writes about this one day.” Now, after On Writing, and Dreamcatcher, and Kingdom Hospital and now this, all that I can say is “MAN, I HOPE THAT HESTOPS WRITING ABOUT THAT CAR CCIDENT ONE DAY!”
THE UGLY: The main character, who is passed out through most of the story. King has relied heavily on kids in his books. He says that he has the heart of a small boy (in a jar on his desk), but the “small boy” whose heart King claims to have seems to be stuck somewhere between 1955 and 1970. This boy is not believable as a twenty-first century kid in any way. The kid’s older brother even belongs to a group of kids who call themselves the “rip-ass raiders”. Seriously. Do you have any idea how GAY that would sound to a modern kid? Heck, I’m a child of the seventies and that phrase sounds incredibly gay to me. I think that it’s time that he either stops writing about kids or gets to know them a little better.
The bottom line? Don’t read this story. It’s bad. As fans, we need to stop encouraging him so that he can get back to quality writing and quit publishing this junk.
Oh, and don't forget to click on an ad while you're here, will you please?
Peace.
Randal
A kid passes out at an abandoned rest stop on the freeway from drinking vodka. Meanwhile an apparently alien car rolls into the rest stop and starts EATING PEOPLE.
THE CAR.
IS EATING PEOPLE.
Sound stupid? Good. Because it is. And it’s not even like chomping them up using its hood as a mouth. That, at least, would be entertaining. It just kind of… absorbs them. As it does, it deforms and then pops back into shape with a sound (according to King) of a tennis ball popping back into shape. So apparently it’s a RUBBER alien man-eating car. Jeez.
“Look, Mr. King… I like you. Been a fan every since I first read Cujo in the early eighties to impress a girl. At your best, sir, you write like no one else in the business. Anyone who can read ‘Salem’s Lot and sleep well that night or Misery and not cringe at the hobbling scene or Bag of Bones and not be moved by the ghost’s plight are so cold emotionally that I don’t want to meet them in a dark alley. For my money, the downward slide in quality started with It, and continued merrily with The Tommyknockers. Since then you haven’t so much been “hit and miss” as you’ve been “miss miss miss hit miss miss”. The only one that was so self-worshipping and bad that I couldn’t finish it was Lisey's Story. The truly amazing thing is that, at about the same time, you published the last of the “Richard Bachman” novels, Blaze. In the prologue of Blaze, you actively apologized for the book and dismissed it as a “trunk” novel. If I’m not mistaken, you even wondered in the text why you even bothered publishing it, AND IT IS ONE OF THE BEST THINGS THAT YOU’VE WRITTEN IN YEARS. You’ve really started to repeat yourself badly, as well. What’s Under the Dome but The Stand meets The Tommyknockers? Please. As a fan, I’m begging you. Quit publishing every piece of crap that you write. Start accepting the input of others, and if anyone that you trust thinks that it’s junk, trunk it. You’re rich enough and you’re really tarnishing your reputation with some of this garbage.”
Speaking of repeating himself, some will be tempted to think that this is a reworking of From a Buick 8 (which was a reworking of the earlier and vastly superior Christine), but it’s really more like his short story The Raft where a group of teens are stranded on a raft in the middle of a lake by an apparently alien monster that absorbs them. He even has a female protagonist trapped by the monster getting a hold of her hair.
THE GOOD: I give King huge points for how far he’s come in his representation of gay characters. One of the characters (read as: car chow) in Mile 81 is a lesbian, and she’s one of my favorite King characters probably since the group in The Stand. She is light-years beyond the flaming stereotypes that he wrote in the opening pages of It.
THE BAD: The rest of the story. It ranges from bad to laughably bad. In particular, the car as antagonist. For those who don’t know, King was struck by a van and almost killed in 1999. When that happened, I remember thinking “Man, I hope that he writes about this one day.” Now, after On Writing, and Dreamcatcher, and Kingdom Hospital and now this, all that I can say is “MAN, I HOPE THAT HESTOPS WRITING ABOUT THAT CAR CCIDENT ONE DAY!”
THE UGLY: The main character, who is passed out through most of the story. King has relied heavily on kids in his books. He says that he has the heart of a small boy (in a jar on his desk), but the “small boy” whose heart King claims to have seems to be stuck somewhere between 1955 and 1970. This boy is not believable as a twenty-first century kid in any way. The kid’s older brother even belongs to a group of kids who call themselves the “rip-ass raiders”. Seriously. Do you have any idea how GAY that would sound to a modern kid? Heck, I’m a child of the seventies and that phrase sounds incredibly gay to me. I think that it’s time that he either stops writing about kids or gets to know them a little better.
The bottom line? Don’t read this story. It’s bad. As fans, we need to stop encouraging him so that he can get back to quality writing and quit publishing this junk.
Oh, and don't forget to click on an ad while you're here, will you please?
Peace.
Randal
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