Ice Cream Tastes Good

I've noticed that a close associate disagrees with everything I say. It makes me think the shivs are out.

I'm sitting around the table. We're trying to be agreeable in pursuit of our common purpose. But my ideas are the ones that are not good. What to do? Sometimes it's better to suffer in silence. Maybe be the martyr, innocent, who never saw it coming.

I'm wondering when the time is right to reduce it to what it is, being disagreeable for the sake of being disagreeable. There is a certain price to be paid for such action, though, and I'm never sure I want to pay it. For example, any social transgression, however slight, weighs in my thoughts for ages on end.

It's occurred to me that apparent absurdity is one proactive tact, because no one would get it. Just say "Ice cream tastes good." And when they started looking among themselves in perplexity, going "What?," you're like, "It's just something I think. Does anyone agree? Good, then, it wasn't just me."

The American Idol Winners

That's very brutal when you have nine people in one night kicked out. (Some may have a second shot in a wildcard round, but for the most part it's over.)

The winners included Alexis Grace. She was definitely my favorite. Wow. Very good in every way. I was happy to see her go through.

Next was Michael Sarver. He's more of a country artist. The oil rig guy. I was surprised that he made it. But he seems very likable, is a family man, and sings very decently. He would be the natural one for the country fans to gravitate toward. So that's probably how he made it through. I don't think he will win the whole thing, but he might do well enough to come out of it with a lucrative country record deal.

Then the last of the three was Danny Gokey. He has real talent. And seems nice enough. He'll probably do well just as he is, but for me, I'd like to see him exude more personality. And saying that's probably not that fair. I don't want the widower and recently passed away wife angle to be his whole story. Come out with something that shows other dimensions.

It was not much of a moment of suspense at the end when it came down to Danny or Tatiana. I can't believe there was anyone out there who thought between those two it'd be anyone but Danny. As far as I was concerned it was a foregone conclusion that he was going through. If anyone was going to be paired with Tatiana for a thrilling conclusion, maybe Michael Sarver. Because he was a surprising winner, I thought. They even said it was the difference of only 20,000 votes between him and Anoop Dog. So that's tight out of 24 million votes total. (If this was Minnesota we wouldn't know which one was put through till Season 10!)

Treasures Tonight

I went to one of the local thrift stores and got my treasures. I'm always interested in picking up decent CDs and records.

I got one tonight, a CD, that I didn't know existed. I've never seen it around, but of course looking it up on the internet I notice there's numerous copies.

That's one by Roy Orbison, Johnny Cash, Jerry Lee Lewis, and Carl Perkins, from 1986, called "Class of '55." The reviewers at Amazon don't seem overly excited about it but I'm guessing it's a good enough relic. Of course, no doubt, they've all done better work. That was one of the remarks made. But that really would likely go without saying. This is a reunion of sorts, and I suppose there was some casualness about it. I haven't heard it, but it's not hard to guess what it's going to sound like.

My copy is a bit scuffed up. I was surprised about that, because you figure the guy who had this CD would have been a guy who would normally keep his CDs in nice condition. Because he would likely be a collector sort of guy. Just reading his fortune without actually knowing him.

My other treasure -- if that's what you would call it -- was a cassette single by The Cranberries of "Linger." I don't buy many cassettes, virtually none, but I like some of these by people who were once my favorites. It's like buying a 45 with picture sleeve, which I obviously would do, but it's a cassette. I have a few things like this on my shelf, a few by Roxette are the ones I had up there, and now this one by Cranberries.

Here's a site with a great scan of the box.

Francis and Mr. Ed

I found myself involved today in probably the stupidest argument I've ever had in my life.

It had to do with whether Francis the Talking Mule was ever in a movie together with Mr. Ed. I dismissed the idea out of hand, saying that Francis was from the '40s and Mr. Ed was from the '60s. She rightly pointed out that the character of Francis could very easily have been played by a different mule in the '60s. But I dismissed it simply as something that didn't happen. And that was my downfall.

At that point it became an argument based less on the merits than on the contention that I "always have to be right." I'm saying no such thing is the case and "look it up." It's easy enough to find out by looking on the internet.

Quite frankly, I don't know everything about every movie, but I don't remember Mr. Ed being in any movies PERIOD, just the TV show. Therefore I felt sure that the two stars -- the mule and the horse -- were never paired.

It went on like that for another minute and she left ... mad.

W.

I was overjoyed to finally be rid of George W. Bush. So it took some doing to decide to watch the movie W.

I read the reviews and pretty much figured what it was going to be. And it turned out to be all that and more. But however good it was, it's not one I want to see again. It's one I would definitely recommend renting, not buying. I want to be rid of Bush, not to see him on my shelf for future entertainment.

One reviewer said it was a fairly sympathetic portrayal of Bush. And I think that's true. He's shown as loud, a big hick, a dunce, consumed with a desire to please his dad, and all the rest. I never thought he was that much of a brain, but I think he is probably smarter in real life than the movie showed. So as much as I dislike, I think I would've gone for an even more sympathetic portrayal, in the sense of keeping it closer to the facts.

You could feel some of those moments where it wasn't according to facts. Like where Bush made some of his more well-known verbal bobbles, like "Is our children learning," "misunderestimating me," others like that. They seemed to me to be in different contexts than they were in actual history. But that's OK. It's necessary to do a certain telescoping, stylizing to make it into a movie of coherence and not just a documentary.

I liked it how Bush kept calling Cheney "Vice." I don't know if he really did that, but it lent itself well to the dumb kind of portrayal Oliver Stone was going for. We definitely know he had nicknames for people, so it didn't seem unbelievable.

Even though there was some sympathetic stuff, there's no way that watching the movie made me long for or like the Bush administration any more. He was disgusting, rotten to the core, and his administration was criminal. Good riddance to bad rubbish. May your name be trompled on in the dust of revolted history and all that. But despite Bush's own sorrows as a leader, it made you long for more intelligence in this country, that we wouldn't elect a crumb like that, just because he was the first George Bush's son. How stupid the whole political scene was in 1999 and 2000, that we had to get this twerp and all the other twerps he brought with him.

One other thing. The portrayal of key figures in his administration was interesting. Cheney, just as sour and miserable as real life. Condi Rice, I think she got a severe portrayal. She seems amused but also very admiring and supportive of this dunce. It makes you wonder what makes her tick. Colin Powell tries to be a straight arrow but is bent by the persistence of the ideologues. Rumsfeld, virtually not there. Wolfy, seeking every in for ideology.

Good movie. Provokes thoughts. Provokes a lot of sorrow. Great ending.

Nigerian News

Nigeria has their own Google News page. That's awesome. I wouldn't expect it.

I went there and was expecting to see a lot of headlines about "Local Millionaire Dies, Leaves Fortune To Random Morons In America," but it wasn't there.

There is an article about "looted funds," but it has to do with Switzerland and Nigeria in some kind of dispute.

What do you think of Nigeria? I'm dumb, what is there to think besides the usual internet money scams? Pop Answers' topic today was "Countries Other Than America" and Nigeria didn't come to mind. Maybe if the topic was "Countries To Strictly Avoid."

Hey, I'm broadminded, at least in my youth. I remember going to a Nigerian Independence Day party in the '70s. Attended by me, another American kid, and a whole roomful of Nigerians. It was memorable.

Eight Is Enough

In childbearing news, we have the strange story of the woman who had eight kids while already having six more at home.

Then today the story of this 13 year old boy who looks eight being the father of this new baby.

I'm not going to pass judgment. I'll just say, like I say when I see the highway patrol with someone pulled over, "Better them than me."

No One Dreamed Lincoln Would Be President

In honor of Abraham Lincoln's 200th birthday, I was reading a little bit today out of a book, "Herndon's Life of Lincoln." It's a pretty old biography, with Herndon being someone who knew Lincoln personally. The edition I have is revised with modern scholarship. Meaning that about every other page (so far) the modern (1960s?) editor corrects or supplements Herndon's information.

According to the blurb on the back, "Herndon admired Lincoln almost to idolatry, yet in telling Lincoln's story he told the truth unsparingly." So that's good.

I only read about 50 pages so far, but there's plenty of interesting nuggets in just that first little section. There's some of the obscurities of Lincoln's family background, which he apparently didn't like to talk about much. There's the story of his educational pursuits as a child, which were very limited. And he seems to have been kind of a rascal if provoked, even writing satirical pieces against people, quite in jest but people of course took it seriously.

Something I like is this notion that people who ran into him never "dreamed" he would be president. To which we might say, "Why would they?" I run into people all the time and don't "dream" that they'll be president someday. There's two references like this in the first 50 pages.

One, his mother is dying. "Stoop-shouldered, thin-breasted, sad -- at times miserable, -- groping through the perplexities of life, without prospect of any betterment in her condition, she passed from earth, little dreaming of the grand future that lay in store for the ragged, hapless little boy who stood at her bedside in the last days of her life." (p. 67, my emphasis.) No, she had other things on her mind, like her poor shoulders, her thin breasts, and all the groping she had to put up with!

The other passage like this is from 1830. The Lincoln family is heading for Illinois with oxen and a wagon. Abraham Lincoln is there. And Herndon says, "As these humble emigrants entered the new State little did the curious people in the towns through which they passed dream that the obscure and penniless driver who yelled commands to the oxen would yet become Chief Magistrate of the greatest nation of modern times. (p. 94, my emphasis.) I don't know, don't you dream that every obscure and penniless person you see might become president someday? Probably not. They were probably more concerned that that big skinny guy let his oxen crap on my front lawn and didn't clean it up.

(This edition is a paperback from the Fawcett World Library, 2nd Premier printing, 1965.)

Blowing Your Nose No Good

The word they use for this is "counterintuitive." The word I use for it is "Now You Tell Me!" After decades of blowing my nose.

The ones this is bad for are the Puffs people. There's some scientists saying that blowing your nose isn't good for you. I guess just leave it stuffed up.

It sounds like something like this, that blowing your nose can cause more infection. But sneezing and coughing is OK.

But it's not all bad news, because if you are going to blow it, one doctor says the best way to do it is one nostril at a time and to take decongestants.

No word from Kleenex yet.

One Night In 1955

I was at a thrift store in a different town today. And it's kind of fun to go to these because the stuff hasn't already been picked over -- by me. The thrift stores in my own town, I'm a regular, so if they haven't got anything new, I'm the first to notice.

I like to pick up CDs, because you can get them fairly cheap. One I got by Bjork, called "Homogenic." I'm not big into listening to her albums, but I have listened to them. But I always think it's worthwhile to pick up whatever there is. I have a couple of others, now this one. I'm happy to get it because I see at All Music Guide that this is rated at 5 stars. Pretty good, huh? I listened to the first few songs ... just my first dabbling ... and I liked it. But that's not a review.

One I got that I regret, a Camden CD (budget in the first place) called "The Original Recordings of Glenn Miller." I was already on to this one, since I've looked at albums for many years. It's not only short but it still has the old cover and they retained the line about stereo effect from monophonic. Just listening to the first couple songs, it didn't sound like it to me, which is an improvement. But the songs seem to have some distortion around the edges, listening on earbuds. And that's no good. Being a budget album, it is very short ... and not good.

The other four I got were jazz CDs, which I like sometimes. Put them on and jazz out. Not always but once in a while. They're cool looking and if I had more time to listen to music, I'd step right through them, yessir. One I did listen to all the way through, while doing other things. That's Duke Ellington's "Piano Reflections," recorded in 1953. The sound is excellent and it's quite a nice listening experience. I got "The Best of Art Tatum" on Pablo. Haven't listened to it or to the Ray Brown Trio's "Don't Get Sassy," but both look like super CDs. The fourth jazz one is "The Oscar Peterson Trio at Zardi's," recorded one night in 1955. I read the brief All Music Guide review of this one and it sounds pretty good. I listened to the first track only and it's clear as a bell. You can hear some of the ambience of the place. The applause sounds like there's about 20 people there. Nice CDs, that one being a two CD set.

I like the sense of that for some weird reason, a trio is recorded one night in 1955, it's basically forgotten, then put out in the '90s, and it's all right there for us to listen to, note by note.