I'M HAVING A POP CULTURE MOMENT -- AND SO SHOULD YOU!
I sometimes now work on a Wintel machine. Our friend Bruce Faber felt I should have one to go with the half-dozen Macintoshes of varying vintage we have in our house, and since I do dialup still, and it has a 56K modem, it's what I use most for getting online.
So I'm getting used to what Windows offers folks with these basic boxes. One thing I enjoy is the ability to rip my CDs into my computer (no, I don't have an iPod yet, either... but my birthday's in August). I play everything on shuffle, so I never know what I'll get.
For some reason today the stretch of music was particularly great, even if it's stuff you may not have spent a lot of time with. In sequence I found five songs I had to play louder than I normally would... "The Guitar," from the Apollo 18 collection by They Might Be Giants... "Cry Love" from John Hiatt's greatest hits collection... "Common People," from William Shatner's brilliant Has Been... "Second Guessing" from Jonny Lang's equally brilliant Wander This World... "See Emily Play" from Pink Floyd's Relics... and "Untamed Girls" from Chain Gang of Love by the Raveonettes. And the sun's even out today! Man, if I only had a job (although I did apply to Holland America Line for a copywriter slot today, and boy, am I perfect)!
And then, tonight... tonight on TV is even cooler. Okay, there's the string of shows on the SciFi Channel that we now watch religiously, most cool of which is Battlestar Galactica. But tonight add Fox's two-hour, four-episode sendoff of Arrested Development, the best comedy show since Seinfeld. And now I see that Turner Classic Movies is showing three great Kubrick films in a row... 2001: A Space Odyssey, Lolita, and, one of my Top 10 of all time films, Dr. Strangelove (Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb). If we didn't have four televisions, three working VCRs, and two TiVos... I don't know what I'd do. All I know is that this is a good night to sit down with a pizza and just be glad for people who are smarter and more clever than me.
One more thing, if you want to truly live the Mike Flynn experience this weekend: Tomorrow at 2 pm EST, 11 am PST: George Washington University's men's basketball on ESPN2. GW is ranked eighth right now, which is higher than it's been since the 1950s. The team is led by Pops Mensah-Bonsu, and it's a fast, well-coached, fun team to watch, even if you're not a huge basketball fan (which, for instance, I'm not). If they go far into the NCAA tournament, maybe people will finally be able to understand I didn't go to Georgetown!
Anyway, it's a fun weekend... and you don't even have to watch the winter Olympics!
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
2 comments:
Sorry to disappoint one of my four regular readers, but most of the sports that will ever be covered at Weird Tales of the Untrue and Mostly Facetious will be baseball. That's primarily because baseball is the sport that I live for. It's the most interesting sport, it's the most fun to play, it can be played professionally by guys of most any size (two names: Ichiro Suzuki and Bob Wickman), and, frankly, I just can't follow more than one professional sport closely.
The reason I wrote about the GW basketball team has less to do with any affection I have for college sports (for the most part, I believe college sports should be done away with in favor of additional library purchases and lab time for undergraduates) than it does for the fact that the value of my degree (sadly) does rise with the fortunes of GW's sole big-time sports program. Secondarily, one grows tired of folks confusing George Washington University with Georgetown. (I can only shudder in empathy for matriculates at and graduates from George Mason University in nearby Virginia.) (Less so, however, after GMU withdrew an invitation to Michael Moore primarily because he's liberal.)
The folks out here seem very excited about the Gonzaga team, and I'm personally looking forward to a bracket matchup that might bring the Zags against the Colonials, if only to see whether either, neither, or both has been misranked by the sports authorities. GW beat Maryland earlier this year, but apparently everybody is beating Maryland this year, so, while a GW defeat of Maryland always thrills me (I went to college during the Lefty Drisell era, just prior to the death of Len Bias), it is apparently no real indication of GW's strength. (In fact, the broadcasters of Saturday's game pointed out that of the 344 Division I colleges, GW's schedule was about the 320th toughest.)
I wish roller derby was back, though (real roller derby, with men and women). And I'll always root for the New York Rangers and New York Giants (and whichever team other than Dallas that Bill Parcells might coach).
Now, as for the Golden Rule. You and I just are not going to agree, and I won't especially agree with you on your three options for more powerful phrases.
In order:
"Cogito ergo sum." Granted, a very powerful argument, and your best challenge. Not only does it state that consciousness creates being, but it implies that with consciousness comes great responsibility. The problem is that this leads to solipsism. Solipsism can lead to Bad Things.
"Just win, baby." This is a Bad Thing to which "cogito ergo sum" can lead. The flaw with this philosophy is that it accepts that the Law of the Jungle should be applied to human interaction in both sports (which is where Al Davis and George Steinbrenner would embrace it), and, where you're implying, to life in general. The entire point of having sentience is to separate ourselves from the beasts and make not just rational decisions, but moral ones. Just so you know, not all morality is relgious.
Finally, you talk about "Don't be evil," which, until five minutes ago, I hadn't realized was Google's informal motto. Frankly, it's just another way of saying "Do unto others as you would have others do unto you," and therefore, I'm inclined to accept it.
Where you and I disagree is what happens outside of laboratory conditions. You correctly point out that people who have achieved "success" (which sounds to me as if you equate with either money or power) have never seemed to obey the golden rule. (Watching Google's share prices tumble this past week, it appears that we can add it to the stew.) But the flaw with this logic is accepting money and power as success. What if the glass is neither half-empty or half-full, but the wrong container for a sweater? That's what we have here.
If we all could adhere to the Golden Rule, the world would be a much better place. Of course, it might be two years instead of two months before the next big change in technology burst onto the scene, or we might find ourselves needing to find places to house the millions who won't be killed by evil scumbags this year, but that's okay.
If you're going to look at money and power as the way to measure things, I can counter with an even more powerful phrase: "We disagree with you, and we have nuclear weapons."
But to change the world for good, that phrase is about 178 degrees in opposition.
Now, as for this Mets thing: Let's accept that I now root for the Mariners even ahead of the Yankees (disappointing many of the friends with whom I grew up, including my oldest pals Joe Confreda and Tommy D'Agostino, as well as my pal from JHS 127, Mike Udolf). But for me to root for the Mets...? You might as well ask for my right leg.
*sigh*
If I thought people were reading this, I might give it another go. I'm most offended by the fact that I appear unable to clearly state my position.
So here's my compromise (and I'll go find a Mets cap and send you a photo of me in it... but not one of those crappy black Mets caps with the blue lettering, a perversion of the Mets uniform, just like half of the major league baseball teams are perverting their uniforms by including black in them, or, worse, selling caps in red, pink, and yellow when your team colors are navy blue or royal blue): In today's world, which is a perverse, horrible, evil, awful, putrid disaster, "Just Win, Baby" is DEFINITELY the most powerful phrase.
However, if you want to change the world, make it a better place, and turn human beings into something more useful than cannon fodder, disposable employees, and potential victims of scumbags, rapists, serial killers, and evil despots, the Golden Rule is still It.
One more thing: You take me to task for inflicting a low blow on you, and I want to clarify that. That statement was not intended to be about you in any way. I know you're not imposing your thoughts on me (or anyone); we're just having a discussion. But there are folks out there who are... they are instigating fatwas and book burnings and worse.
Now... let's talk about something important. Like Cheez Whiz. Or BEAUTY AND THE GEEK.
Post a Comment