CSotD: Random Sunday
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We'll start with the most random musing of the day, touched off by Vintage Juliet Jones Sundays, which is not too far into a new adventure.
I would look at anything Stan Drake did and I'm glad they are shooting from the black plates and not trying to reproduce the full-color version, because his work stands out better this way.
This particular story arc touched off an odd memory from much earlier in history: When I was doing a historical feature for the paper where I worked, I discovered a lot of cheesy circulation promotions around the turn of the century which involved buying the paper and having your friends do so and turning in coupons.
One, at the height of the Klondike Gold Rush, guaranteed that the winner would be outfitted, transported to Alaska and given tips by Joe Ladue, one of the original boomers of that event, who was a local fellow. (The eventual winner decided at the last minute against going.)
Another slightly later contest involved being one of the stars — one male, one female — in a movie to be shot in town, in which the locations would be delightful local places, lots of wonderful local people would be involved and the script, I'm sure, would be something that could be used again in whatever next place the film company landed.
I couldn't find a surviving copy of the film, and it isn't on that list of Great Films to be digitized and preserved. Which is surprising, since it was ultimately produced and screened and pronounced truly wonderful by the paper that had sponsored the contest.
IIRC, it was called "Blossom Time in Plattsburgh," which summons up visions of Max Bialystock and leads us back to this Juliet Jones story.
And today's Rhymes With Orange struck a responsive chord because we're coming to that.
I certainly understand the etiquette of wiping your sweat off gym equipment, though I think there was a time when you just carried a towel and people didn't fuss so much about it.
Now people freak out rather than just grumble about these things, and we have hand sanitizer dispensers about every 20 feet wherever you go, and no wonder everyone is allergic to everything, because nobody is exposed to anything.
Of course, part of the joke here is that kids don't sweat a lot and trees and rocks aren't covered with slick Naughahyde anyway, but the main part is Get Over Yourself, in defense of which message I include this sign which adorns the park on our village green.
At least the RWO sign is polite.
This sign makes a charming contrast with the ones in the neighboring towns that merely say, "Please pick up after your dog — It's the law" and the unofficial ones with the photo of the dog manipulating a poop-scooper himself.
As with the sweaty people in gyms, there's a certain futility to posting reminders in the first place, in that most people are going to do it and the thoughtless few who aren't probably won't anyway.
But there is a particular foolishness in posting these huffy, uptight signs that tell a lot more about you than about the problem you claim to be addressing.
Nagging simply proclaims the bad vibes hanging over the place and every time I see our town's hostile signs, I can't help but think that the kids are more apt to get sick from exchanging germs on the playground equipment anyway.
Only I keep my mouth shut lest I motivate some overly hygienic nitwit to demand plastic glove dispensers, hand sanitizer, paper towels and disagreeable signage over in that part of the park.
Mike Marland offers this commentary on the immigration checkpoints being thrown up on I-95 in Maine that have everyone's knickers in a knot up there.
Somebody went absolutely ballistic on Facebook about the unconstitutionality of these checkpoints, insisting that they're only allowed within 100 miles of the border. Perhaps predictably, it took me all of 30 seconds on Google Maps to learn that the checkpoints he was screaming about were between 63 and 81 miles of the border.
And there are lots of roadside lawyers advising drivers on the best ways to antagonize the Border Patrol at these roadblocks because instead of telling them what they want to know, moving on in five seconds and then writing to your legislators, why not turn a momentary delay into a major event?
The drivers behind you will surely be inspired.
Which doesn't mean I like the New Hostility, but, first of all, it's not new: We had these in Northern New York on I-87 back in 2004, which date I can pinpoint because that's when the first bus slammed into the unexpected stoppage, though nobody was killed in that accident, only seriously injured. The fatalities occurred the second time it happened.
But they resumed the stops in 2014 because it's important to keep vegetables from being picked, and, besides, this one time they caught a guy with a couple of keys of marijuana, so the tax dollars and deaths were worth it.
Meanwhile, out on the West Coast, they locked up a girl who was visiting her mother in British Columbia, went for a jog and inadvertently went too far south and was captured on a beach in the state of Washington.
There apparently were no signs designating the border, and so they held her in jail for two weeks on suspicion of being brown.
(I committed the same dastardly crime while researching this story, and I did it on purpose: I walked from the Eccles Hill monument, past a wooden stake in the ground over to the Richard farm rather than driving around. Come get me, Donnie.)
Well, maybe Marland's type of roadblock could take hold and we could separate some of these brainwashed jingos from the influences that keeps them in a state of racist paranoia.
Because Lt. Cable is right: You're not born that way.
(February 14, 1952)
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