George Will

George Will is one of my favorite columnists, but it never fails that at least one word enters his column each Sunday and Thursday that I have no idea as to its meaning. Thursday's column (requires registration) includes: obstreperousness.

Obstreperous, according to Webster's New World Dictionary, Third College Edition:
adj. - to roar at; to make a loud noise; noisy, boisterous, or unruly, esp. in resisting or opposing.

So from now on, when I read Will's columns, I will include in my blog the word that I needed to look up - along with its definition.

SNL was ahead of its time...

Regarding the absurd tendency for newscasters to pronounce non-American word and names in their native pronunciation.

SNL had a fantastic skit about this with Jimmy Smits and Jan Hooks in the 80's.

Neal Pattman - 1926-2005

It is a sad day. Neal Pattman died May 5.

With the closing of Macadoos (ages ago) where we watched and listened to Mr. Pattman, and danced; Uptown; Peppino's; and now this -- our Athens has passed.

RIP.

Lyrics

Really listened to this song last night, for the first time, even though I’ve had the album for a few years. Maybe it caught my ear because Dave and I had been talking about kids earlier in the day. I really don’t know why. But it caught me nonetheless.

This is the first song I’ve heard that shows the love parents feel for their children, but isn’t sappy (Butterfly Kisses, for instance). I can’t even imagine, really, but this helps.

Angie Aparo
“Wonderland”
She's a child young and willing
In a world that's unforgiving
That in time takes all the living
From your soul

I stand in the night with a silver sword
Killing her demons beating em off her door
Sleep baby don't you cry
Daddy's got a worn-out lullaby

And i live forever dark and damned
To see you spend one minute
In wonderland


And then there’s "Gravity". The realization that this life is what you’ve got, so you better stop wasting time thinking something better is going to come along some day. It’s not, especially if you just sit and wait for it. Forget your pride.

“Gravity”
I saw a wreck at a light
Two cars that gave up the fight
Nobody left to be saved
No steam left under the gauge

And in that carnival light
The show began to unwind
And i saw just how it goes
Out on that old two-lane road

I been saving time for another life
Maybe happiness is coming but you don't know when
When...

The gravity
Of whether you were meant for me
Came crashing down with sovereignty
In someone else's tragedy

I saw the old man again
He only talks about when
There was so much to believe
Before the cancer to be
He can't remember the song
The words they all come out wrong
And all his records are cracked
He knows you can't get it back
It's only faded time

Maybe happiness is coming but you don't know when
When...
The gravity
Of whether you were meant for me
Came crashing like a symphony
In someone else's used to be

And we carried our cross like a clover
And we smoked cigarettes and we lied
About the things we would feel when we're older
Oh god what a fine waste of time
And i miss you are you coming over

Two little other things about Angie Aparo, too. When Dave and I saw him at the Roxy in Atlanta, we sat next to his family. So I've seen the girl "Wonderland" was written for. Kinda cool.

He played Tasty World last night. Sorry I missed that, but he always plays there on Thursdays. Someday I'll suck it up and go to work sleep deprived on a Friday. It's worth it.

As I had hoped

Television without Pity has also reviewed the Brtney and Cletus McK-fed "show."

It's just the recaplet for now. A full line by line overview will be online soon, I'm sure.

Chaotic aka Can You Handle My Truth

For the best in catty, please see Go Fug Yourself. For Stacy's and my attempt at it, please read on.

So it begins...

Brtney, "My love doesn't scare me; other people's love scares me."

Brtney in close association with Kvin, present Our Story

It's Raw

Look at me; look at us; look at me; look at me; look at me!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Clips from The Onyx Hotel tour skip to night-cam images of horrific Brtney face. Is she high?!

Stacy, "This whole show is toxic."
W, "No, they don't look like boobs; they look like knees, idiot."
S, "You could call it 'They look like boobs, but they're NOT. They're my KNEES.'"
W, "It's a piano that you will NEVER play."

commitment and relationships:
Brtney asks her hairstylist and those around her about commitment. "Free Healthcare."
B, "I don't believe in marriage. I've been there, but that was a different story."
W, "But I'll be married in less than five months from now."
S, "She's red."

Flicia - Brtney's assistant
W, "Poor woman."
S, "Wow, Brtney likes her close-ups."

Brtney's ideal guy should not be "shit-face ugly." She's seen a lot, and hopes her man hasn't because she wants to see everything through him. Her hairstylist wants a rich man.

Going to TRL - in London.
She gets antsy in cars. She gets real antsy out of cars, too. She also sings along with Eminem using guttural noises, not words.

And sometimes Stacy and I don't know what to say, so we just look at each other, and laugh.

W, "What the F is that black leather Michael Jackson thing she's wearing?"

It's essential that TRL inspire her with lots of cute guys because she hasn't been on a date in a while. She's tapdancing on the side stage.

W, "Are those strings or highlights in her hair?"
S, "Look at me. If you didn't notice me, I'll do another close-up. Touch my leg, Stephen Dorf." Otherwise known as that song with Stephen Dorf in the video, with the mock suicide at the end.

Brtney now asks her dancers about commitment.
So far, no one believes in marriage on this show. And they are all Bitter Betties.

W, "Nooooooo! Brtney Spears just used my phrase! Damnit. Is Bitter Betty a southern thing? F---! How dare she!"
S, "Maybe you have more in common with Brtney than you think.... She just said it again."
W, "She takes every single cliche she's ever heard and drops at least one into every sentence."
S, "Her parents know she's trampy. Don't they? They have to, after all this?"
W, "Oooh, look, another shot up Brtney's nose!"
S, "Look at me, look at me, look at me."

Brtney, "I'm not all about sex, y'all"
B, "There's a time in every woman's life when ... you should be your hot mama self."
S, "Wouldn't she just drive you up the wall?"

Brtney tells her friend that she needs to get laid because her friend needs to get laid and/or take a valium.

Pre-show prep at Wembly Arena. She sings more.
W, "The girl has a decent voice if she'd cut out all that computer crap. She can't be singing for real on stage. There's just no way. If she is, there's got to be a backing track."

Slave for You live.

W, "She just can't be really singing that. She's not singing that."
W, "Oh look, her nose and eyes, AGAIN."
S, "Figure out the camera!"
W, "Ok, I do like the star-light ceiling."
S, "Oh my God, she needs to calm herself down!"

Brtney, "People can take away everything from you, but they can't take away your truth. But the question is, 'Can you handle it? Can you handle my truth? Can you? I don't know. Hahahahaha.'"

S, "This is where she wants to be like Madonna in Truth or Dare."

"What is your favorite sex position," is the question of the day during this part of the show.

W, "Wow, so I'm glad that thousands of little girls probably asked their parents for permission to stay up and watch this. Fantastic."
JC from NSync will not answer. He's shy.
W, "Oh, wait, he has class! Strange!"
S, "She was wanting someone to ask."
W, "But now she won't answer. F---ing tease."
W, "Brtney's teeth! Pig snout!"
S, "Have you noticed how everyone in the room laughs. They like crack up."

More live clips, this one with a cross-dressing fat man.

W, "I don't think she could try much harder to be Madonna."
S, "The boxy outfit."
W, "What is that? It's not at all flattering. It's like a frilly girdle."

She realized on tour that there was this huge void. Why not bring this guy she met in LA a few weeks ago to London?

W, "Oh, I don't know, cause you've only met him once - a few weeks ago."
W, "Brtney was obviously pregnant when filming the interview portions of the show. Show them boobs, baby!"

He was living with his friend from back home.

S, "Not with my baby's momma."

Insert global cringe during close-up of Cletus McK-Fed.
Kvin, "I don't know, something just happened."
S, "Money happened."
S, "She was really thinking, 'I am not going on tour until you shower.'"

Brtney and Kvin debate who told whom to leave, and it's like the insecurity Olympics. Then he says he felt "wanted."

Kvin, "I feel that love is love. Love is a commitment. I don't believe in marriage. I believe you can get married. Heheheheh."

S, "Look at his bottle of gin!"
W, "But I'll be married in five months. I've got one baby with another woman whose pregnant right now."

Kvin doesn't need a certificate or ring to make him feel closer to someone.

W, "Apparently only a velour jumpsuit that says 'Pimp.'"
Brtney asks Kvin what makes sex different from girl to girl. Kvin gives the standard, I want to f--- this girl, "It's different when you have feelings for a girl."

Her bodyguard saw it from the beginning. Didn't like the guy.

Night vision cam - S, "Look at him in the green. He looks like the devil."

S, "They're not tipsy drunk."
W, "No, they're high."
W, "Take a drag on that sexy sexy cigarette, honey. You're so hot in green cam, with a cigarette, talking about Brad Pitt."
S, "look at him! Did you see him?"
S, "Is that all this show is about? I mean, is it?
W, "Uh-huh."

Still in London.

W, "So, what's it been, a couple days, weeks?"
S, "She brought that guy out there to sleep with him."
Brtney, "Everyone has their own interpretation of what things mean to them."
W, "Look, here's Kvin out of the shower, naked."

Brtney, "Let's don't go. Let's just F--- all day."
S, "Her laugh is irking my nerves."
W, "Is that a Rosemary Clooney CD that Brtney just put in the CD player?"

Brtney back on stage, burping into the mike in Wembly Arena for sound check.

W, "Flicia, turn the camera upright! Damnit woman."
S, "I don't know, she held up several fingers." (Regarding the number of times Brtney had sex that day. )

Now we get to see Kvin the shower.
W, "At least we now know that he does shower."

Brtney thinks Pink is very cool. The singer. And her sex with Kevin is very cool. Ecstasy. Three times today. He's sweet, and she likes him.

W, "That's it. It's over?"
S, "That's their chaotic life? She brought him to London to have sex."

Scenes from next week...

W, "Oh, I didn't get it."
S, "We'll have to watch it next week."

Regarding Star Trek - really

Lileks has a way of even making me weepy using something I couldn’t care less about – Star Trek and the finale of “Enterprise”. It’s not the reference that makes me weepy, it’s what he does with the context and the theme and the grandieur of his theory.

Spoilers follow.

And so we saw the entirety of the Enterprise story as something that had
become Distant History, a story you read in second grade. The ship was Old
Ironsides – interesting, inert, historical, a relic. That was a fun tour, let’s
have lunch. It was a contrast between the tone of a standard episode (what
happens now is incredibly important and the Federation hangs in the balance and
any one of our heroes may be killed, despite the fact that they have signed a
contract for the next season) and the cool regard of history, for whom these
events are simply a matter of record. What Riker was worried about would be
history in the same way, eventually. That’s the point. We think that Today is
incredibly vital and pertinent; surely history will see it as we do, feel it as
we do. Well, no. Not unless it’s a very bad day, and certainly not if it’s a
nice one. Battles turn into paragraphs. Sunk ships are footnotes, if they’re
lucky.

Redheads, unite and breed!

Russ, you are an endangered "species" that may be extinct by 2100.

Dear colleagues, just don’t

Seriously, people, do not ask me to be on conference calls that require anything resembling coherent thoughts on a Friday. And certainly, under no circumstances back to back on a Friday at 11:30am, then 12:30pm. And most definitely, not on Friday the 13th. Is it really too much to ask?

If you want me to help you, it's best to pick times when I'm at my most productive. The above situations are NEVER those times.

Thank you,
Whitney Bryant
Strategic Accounts Manager

Geeks Unite - Saturday, May 7, 2005

OK, I think this is so clever. But only if they’re being clever. It’s absolutely scary if they’re serious.

Mushy mushy mushy

Turns out that even after three years of marriage, Dave and I are still doing those disgustingly cute things like sending each other emails wondering why one hasn’t heard from the other in a few hours, at exactly the same time. Or is it just disgusting that we (ok, I) think that it’s cute?

'Bout sums it up.

If you're like most of us, and can't stand the extremes on either side of the political spectrum, check this out. I don't really think anything else makes the point as well.

Laziness

Alright alright, I know quotations are the tool of lazy writers. Well, I'm lazy. I'm actually so lazy that I haven't read my daily quotations emails in 44 days. I did today. Here are the hightlights.

Hell is full of musical amateurs.
-- George Bernard Shaw
(see this band, and this one with this song, and this person)

"A society of sheep must in time beget a government of wolves."
--Bertrand de Jouvenel

If there is anything the nonconformist hates worse than a conformist, it's another nonconformist who doesn't conform to the prevailing standard of nonconformity.
-- Bill Vaughan

Failure is not the only punishment for laziness; there is also the success of others.
-- Jules Renard
(see the total readership number of this blog, for instance vs. readership of other blogs that actually use original content)

I hope that while so many people are out smelling the flowers, someone is taking the time to plant some.
-- Herbert Rappaport

Much of the social history of the Western world over the past three decades has involved replacing what worked with what sounded good.
-- Thomas Sowell, Is Reality Optional?, 1993
(see public education)

Politics is not the art of the possible. It consists in choosing between the disastrous and the unpalatable.
-- John Kenneth Galbraith
(see social security reform, medicare, presidential elections, etc.)

A cynic is not merely one who reads bitter lessons from the past, he is one who is prematurely disappointed in the future.
-- Sidney J. Harris

If one sticks too rigidly to one's principles, one would hardly see anybody.
-- Agatha Christie

I have learned to use the word 'impossible' with the greatest caution.
-- Wernher von Braun
(see US Space Missions)

Saying what we think gives us a wider conversational range than saying what we know.
-- Cullen Hightower
(see the blogdom, gossip columns and magazines, political pundits, etc.)

I can win an argument on any topic, against any opponent. People know this, and steer clear of me at parties. Often, as a sign of their great respect, they don't even invite me.
-- Dave Barry

The aging process has you firmly in its grasp if you never get the urge to throw a snowball.
-- Doug Larson

The more I study religions the more I am convinced that man never worshipped anything but himself.
-- Sir Richard Francis Burton

Tip the world over on its side and everything loose will land in Los Angeles.
-- Frank Lloyd Wright

Craving

OK, so very strangely, I got a craving for Krystal today. So, to Krystal I went. Just a funny little side note...

Did you know that some Krystal locations are wireless hotspots. That strikes me as funny.

Finally!

This is something I’ve been wondering about for years. I have a very difficult time finding sunglasses that fit, so I’ve always wondered, "When are they going to make contacts that are sunglasses?"

Well, “they” (Bausch & Lomb and Nike) have done it, and gone about 10 steps further!

Known as performance-enhancing contact lenses, they were designed to help
hitters pick up the seams on the ball better and to protect the eyes from the
sun.

"They're almost like wearing sunglasses without wearing sunglasses,"
Roberts says. "I could tell such a huge difference right away that I was willing
to give them a shot." Seven years in the making by Nike and Bausch & Lomb,
the lenses — which will be known in the retail world as MaxSight — are so new
they have made their way only into a few major league clubhouses so far.

The lenses also come in gray-green for golfers, and a set for night use
is in the final stages of development.

I’m totally going to see if I can get a pair of these on my next check-up.