Home on the range

On a ranch 19 miles outside of Austin, Texas.

Get Jar-Jar on speed dial

This isn't new, but my friend Jim's list of grievances with the Star Wars prequels is amusing and trenchant. Enjoy.

Something you don't see every day

"No, I've never driven the Weinermobile before, but I did stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night..."

We all won't go together when we go... sigh

A few Sundays back, as my girlfriend and I drove to breakfast, we heard a song on the Head Trip program on Indie 103.1. At some point into the song she commented how it sounded like Alphaville's "Forever Young"; I replied that it was that song, apparently being covered by a band called Youth Group. I followed that with a quip about how that's what the original needed: more of a beat.

My recollection of "Forever Young" is colored by the memory from high school, where one of my friends turned in the lyrics to the song as a poetry assignment in English class. It was abject plagiarism, but because the teacher was not familiar with contemporary music of the time, my friend not only got away with it, but got an A. Likely it was the only such grade he received the entire semester.

That is utter digression, but it is what first comes to mind when I hear that song (in any incarnation). It's probably why I recall the lyrics as well as I do.

When hearing the Youth Group cover in the car that day, I thought of the line at the end of the opening verse (or stanza, if we're sticking with the poetry theme) asking "Are you gonna drop the bomb or not?" and how it seemed so archaic in this era of targeted terrorist attacks. The song seemed essentially a wistful rumination on dying at a young age in a nuclear explosion—which, in the early '80s, was still a significant concern for the youth of the world.

There was something more easily romanticized about the possibility of mutually assured destruction. It's not that death was any more glamorous back then; the way we thought of such tragic death was different. Since the '50s the Cold War made for wonderfully dichotomous notions regarding how the possibility of wiping our species off the planet—the literal end of the world—was more likely than ever, which were combined with the strange comfort of knowing that because both sides had ICBMs pointed at each other, if they launched their missiles at us, we would do the same in kind, and thus our demise would be theirs as well, thus making it less likely to actually happen.

Now, we have the constant but indistinct dread from a small but significant number of us could be killed by terrorists. Not only is there no comfort to be gained from retaliation (lacking a convenient target to strike back against), there's no comfort to be found in what was ultimately the comforting aspect of all of us being destroyed in a climactic unleashing of the atom: Some of us have to survive.

Nuclear annihilation carries with it the implication of no survivors. Bear in mind, we're speaking in terms of romanticizing the event; this is not the same as what would actually happen, where some would die quickly and some would die much slower. This is the scenario where the missiles launch and we all have 30 minutes to lose our virginity with the nearest available person, and any actions taken have no consequences. Best of all, we all die together, so no one has to stay around and mourn, nor feel guilty for having survived.

This post-9/11 world hold less potential for "the bomb" to take us all out in one fell swoop. It's less tragic, on that ostensible front, but really it's worse, because there's nothing to romanticize about less than 1% of us dying together. There's only mourning.

Who can write a decent pop song about that? Especially one that'll be covered 25 years from now?

Something to be thankful for

So last week when I was in North Carolina visiting family we went to Jordan Lake, a large body of water to the south of Durham. Being November it wasn't particularly crowded; in fact, there was only one other person at the area where we stopped.

By the water's edge I spotted a sign, which when I read the text I chuckled aloud and knew I felt compelled to take a picture. When I showed it to my girlfriend she laughed as well and immediately stated, "That's going on the blog."

The sign had two empty plastic bottles (like the kind detergent comes in) hanging from it, and the text indicated they should be used to help someone in the water who is in danger of drowning. What possibly could be funny about potentially life-saving equipment?

If you can't make it out from the picture above, the bottles were called "Life Jugs" on the sign, and it carried the admonition:
Surely, this shows the insidious influence of Jay Leno on our society. He'd show that on The Tonight Show after a newspaper clipping of a recently married couple whose respective last names sounded amusing together.

Letterman would get Regis to float with them in a pool of water just off-camera for the entire show, cutting to shots of him getting wrinkled fingers when going to commercial.

Jimmy Kimmell would get his uncle Frank to pester tourists on Hollywood Boulevard with the jugs.

As I had no talk show hosts nor wacky relatives to amuse us while we were at the lake, I merely took the picture.

It's not enhancing society in any worthwhile way, but it's the sort of comedy that at least some of the country finds amusing, so perhaps it will garner me some of the Leno audience by posting it.

It was only a matter of time until I started to sell out.