Recently in Rant Category
I don't go to many concerts, but oh, how many times I've wanted to write a variant of this brilliant letter upon leaving the movie theater. My particular curse is not the annoying music fan, but the Guy Who Narrates Everything That Happens in the Movie to his girlfriend/wife, a tragic woman who apparently is incapable of discerning for herself that yes, Batman is getting into the Batmobile, and yes, he is now driving through the streets of the city, which is of course Gotham City in case you've not paid any attention to anything Batman-related over the last few decades. And that guy wearing the scary scarecrow mask? That is in fact the Scarecrow, who you may recall was introduced to us several minutes ago in this very film.
Most recently I had the pleasure of sitting next to the Guy Who Loudly States Plot Spoilers Before They Happen, since it's important that his wife/girlfriend (and the people sitting nearby) not be surprised by anything that happens in the movie. Fortunately the movie was Pirates of the Caribbean 3, the garbled narrative mess of which stripped spoilers of their usual movie-ruining power.
I am sure that those of you who follow politics have heard about Mitt Romney's incredibly significant and newsworthy gaffe. When asked to name his favorite book, he cited Battlefield Earth by L. Ron Hubbard.
Cue a whole lot of snickering and mocking overanalysis by every blogger and pundit in the universe--all of whom no doubt curl up each night in their favorite cozy chair to read from a dog-eared copy of Crime and Punishment. A presidential candidate who likes a book about (snicker) aliens? A candidate who appreciates a nice pulp sci-fi story? God forbid a candidate respond to that question with a title that falls outside our vaguely-remembered high school Intro to World Literature syllabus. Thank goodness the pretentiati is on hand to assure us that anyone who would read, let alone enjoy, such a novel is, obviously, unfit for any sort of serious position in government. Can't have our betters and those Europeans snickering at a U.S. President, can we?
Fortunately, Romney was quick to recant, assuring a worried public that his favorite novel is really Huckleberry Finn. Clearly, that's an answer straight from his heart, and isn't just a book title deemed by his political consultants as the Book Most Likely to Evoke a Positive Response from the Most Potential American Voters. (Let me guess: other Romney favorites include apple pie, the Bible, the soulful poetry of Maya Angelou, and freedom; and his heroes include Jesus, Abraham Lincoln and Martin Luther King, Jr.) Good save, Romney, good save. For a minute there I was worried that I'd spotted a glimmer of an actual interesting personality beneath the soulless political mask, an honest-to-goodness quirk that hadn't yet been sanded down into inoffensiveness by focus groups and asinine political cliches.
I exaggerate a little; Romney has not completely renounced his enjoyment of pulpy sci-fi. And a few brave defenders are standing up to the literary snobs. But this shocking scandal has got me on the defensive, as I enjoyed Battlefield Earth as a teenager and did not grow up to be Scientologist or an illiterate. Whether or not you think that presidential candidates should be reading B-grade sci-fi, mark my words: Romney's Battlefield Earth answer was the most honest thing you're going to hear from any candidate for the next 18 months; and it was us who, at the first sign of deviation from the predicable norm, mocked him into repenting (so we could then mock him for flip-flopping). Xenu help us--it's going to be a long and stupid campaign season.
It's a good thing nothing important is going on in the world today:
May the gods have mercy on anyone who clicked on that headline. Gaze too long into the abyss...
Today, our car froze shut.
Not just jiggle-the-lock-a-little-and-it'll-be-fine frozen. I'm talking ninth-circle-of-hell frozen.
Struggling through the bone-cutting wind to purchase something involving de-icing technology from the farther-away-than-I-remembered local Walmart, and listening to my good-intentioned wife insist that the level of cold we were experiencing was not really all that cold compared to winters in Vladivostok, I thought about it:
I live in a place where your car freezes shut.
And that led me to the next thought, which was
I live in a place where, if I took off my winter coat and stood around for about an hour, I'm pretty sure I would die.
In the end, we had to wait for the rays of the sun to slowly traverse the parking lot and reach our car door and warm it up enough to unlock. So I'm ready for summer now. How much longer is it again?
My fellow Grand Rapids residents, if you're like me, you have often wondered if it is possible to design a worse and more dangerous intersection than that at the 96/196/Beltline. Yes, I'm referring to the Intersection of Certain Death, where cars traveling at 70+ mph are given approximately four seconds to swerve across multiple lanes of traffic filled with other cars traveling at 70+ mph. I have in the past suggested that condemned criminals ought to be sent through this intersection; if they make it through alive, they would be released on the grounds that God had spared their lives.
But I'm an optimist; I like to think that things can always be improved. And so I've come up with a plan for making that intersection even more dangerous. Granted, I had to draw upon the animal kingdom for help, but I think the city of Grand Rapids should get right on with implementing my new and improved 96/196/Beltline intersection:
What do you think? I realize that the current intersection layout is a pretty tough act to beat, as far as killing the most number of commuters goes. But I think my design deserves a chance to prove itself.
update: Ed has been sending me some major linkage lately. Thanks! You should pay his blog a visit.
I stopped by the local Toys R Us today this afternoon to pick up some model paints--I've finished painting my Moria goblin miniatures and am eager to start on some Riders of Rohan. Unfortunately, the local Toys R Us carries no model paints--apparently little boys don't assemble and paint models anymore. However, you will all be happy to know that there was an entire shelf full of Decapitating Action!® Spawn© Collector's Edition Action Figures on prominent display.
So, disheartened by the absence of models or model paints, I decided to look for a bag of those green plastic army soldiers that have formed an integral part of the earthly possessions of every male child ever born. (Hey, I want to use them for a WW2 roleplaying game--a lot cheaper than actual metal miniatures!) But alas, those too are a thing of the past; the Toys R Us did not have any.
How depressing.
The only positive part of the Toys R Us trip turned out to be the GI Joe action figures there. I was pleased to see that they're apparently revisiting the 1980s-style little poseable action figures, and they actually looked pretty cool. I noted that they are also now selling Cobra foot soldiers (the generic blue ones) in packs of five instead of individually. This is a worthy solution to a problem I ran into as a child--how do you represent Cobra's teeming hordes of faceless troops when you only have one Cobra soldier? Fortunately, today's generation of GI Joe-playing boys will never face the horror of that question.
OK, so we all have our little personal pet peeves--the things that drive us crazy but don't seem to bother anyone else. One of mine is being forced to participate in the following little drama, played out every Sunday morning in countless churches around the world:
Scene: a church on Sunday morning. The music prelude ends and the worship leader/pastor/whoever steps up to the front grinning fiendishly.Worship leader: Good morning!
Congregation: Good morning!
Worship leader (adopting a scolding tone and a smug grin): Oh, come on! What was that? I know you can do better than that! Let's try it again! Good morning!
Congregation: GOOD MORNING!
This scene is on some rare occasions made even worse when the worship leader decides that the congregation's lack of enthusiasm can be cured by telling everyone to try it again, but standing up this time.
Maybe this little ritual is a helpful way for some people to wake up in the mornings. It unfortunately makes me want to start punching things, which is rarely a good way to get in the mood for a worship service. I'm at church so I can worship, not so I can have my enthusiasm and attentiveness levels judged and found wanting by some well-intentioned volunteer.
I suppose if this is the sort of annoyance I spend my time worrying about, I've got it pretty good. But what's a blog for, if not for airing petty gripes?
Kobe, Kobe, Kobe! Apparently we just can't stop caring about the Kobe Bryant case. What did he do? What shocking things are people saying about the alleged victim? Judging by the fact that this case has been a top story at all the major news sites lately, it seems that we just can't get enough of the crime's dehumanizing details.
So here is my shocking, revolutionary suggestion to the courts, lawyers, plaintiffs and defendants in this case: how about you actually just try Kobe Bryant in a court of law, and then emerge from the courtroom and let us know the verdict? Because that seems far more appropriate than holding press conferences every thirty seconds pandering to the Jerry Springer that lurks just beneath the surface of the American public, don't you think?
A corollary suggestion involves feeding everybody even remotely involved in the case, including the media reporting obsessively on it, to the Rancor. (It's a messy death, but much quicker than the Sarlacc Pit; I'm not above showing a little mercy now and then.)
Sigh.
Today is, of course, the day of the Big Recall Vote. Yesterday evening, I was talking to my mom on the phone about politics (a favorite Rau family topic--here's hoping Michele can learn to cope with it!), and in particular we began discussing the recent car registration tax hike. Some Californians are paying up to $300 now, under the new fee. And we can all agree that paying $300 for car registration is pretty outrageous, right?
Then my mom mentioned that it can actually be worse. Specifically, my sister's new car registration fee is over eight hundred dollars. My parents got off lucky, as their fee is only around $500. I am racking my brain and struggling to come up with a worse idea than this sort of fee hike. (The only situation I could think of that might be worse is if everybody were required to give the state of California direct access to their bank accounts so the state could just directly withdraw money whenever it botches the state budget. Fortunately my sources tell me it has not yet come to that.)
Where on earth are people going to get these extra hundreds of dollars? They're now paying hundreds of dollars for a service that most of the other 49 states are able to provide for circa $50-60, if that. Somehow I rather doubt that my sister, who teaches mentally disabled children for a living, makes so much money that she and other people in her situation can just brush this surprise fee hike off.
Those extra hundreds of dollars have to be diverted from somewhere else, obviously. Which means that people who were saving up to buy new computers, vacations, trips to Disneyland, make car payments, etc. now have the privilege of bypassing the local economy and sending their hard-earned savings directly into the coffers of the state government, whose total inability to manage money is legendary. The state utterly failed to manage the taxpayer money at its disposal, hence the budget crisis. How will giving the same incompetent organization more money fix the problem?
I don't live in California, but I grew up there, and most of my family and many of my friends still suffer under its unbelievably incompetent government. I have no doubt that both sides of the political spectrum have contributed to the mess. But surely there are better ways to revive California's economy than slapping its overtaxed populace with yet another tax hike? Demanding a windfall from taxpayers to cover financial crises brought on by government mismanagement is a band-aid solution at best. Whoever ends up behind the CA wheel after the votes are tallied, I can think of at least one tax they might want to reconsider.
