CSotD: Even More Monday Merriment
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Between commentary on a holiday now past and pending legislation now passed, the political folks need to do some catching up. Meanwhile, the funny people have done fairly well lately.
I’ve somewhat given up on chopsticks, though I got good with them in the 70s when authenticity seemed important and we were eating short-grained brown rice, which is more chopstickable than white long-grain.
However, it was a melding of two cultures, one in which people move food from table to mouth using forks and one in which it is perfectly normal to lift the bowl part way to the mouth and use chopsticks.
I’ve reached an age where combining Western etiquette and Eastern utensils strikes me as being, at best, impractical.
And it’s hardly the only thing I used to be good at but have lately given up.
I also don’t understand backing into parking spaces, but I’ve never understood that. It seems harder to back in between two cars than to back out from between them, but, even if it isn’t, you’re simply swapping one for the other.
I will grant you that, in pulling out face-first, you have a better view of oncoming traffic, but they’d probably stop anyway and, if they don’t, better they should smack into your backside than into you.
Another thing I don’t understand is how anyone got away with calling that game “Cornhole,” since (for nice folks who don’t know such things) the corn hole is where the corn cob is applied in the sense here jested upon.
It remains jarring to me to hear the term coming from respectable people, since we always used it as a deliberately crude anatomical term.
And besides, all you need to play horseshoes is two stakes and a set of horseshoes, while cornhole requires dragging around large, clumsy ramps.
You need a blacksmith to make horseshoes, however, since they aren’t found lying around on the ground anymore, while cornhole can be set up by anyone with a basic knowledge of woodworking and stitchery.
But of course that element of charm has become obsolete in a world where everything is for sale.
Gonna disagree with this one, and I don’t often disagree with Ben. But interaction with a human should be more fun than interaction with a machine, and he did stand a chance, back when the parents could have placed some restrictions on screen time and offered more personally involving alternatives.
But I’m arguing from the privileged position of someone who had kids when being home with them full-time was practical, plus the technological advantage of them having reached middle-school before Genesis and Sega and so forth existed.
I do, however, know contemporary parents who limit screen time and establish a regular pattern of interaction with their kids.
Had an interesting conversation at the dog park yesterday — all my in-person conversations happen at the dog park — about actors who ruin the movies they’re in. Glenn Close’s name came up, and someone argued that she’d been good in 101 Dalmatians.
My response was that (A) that was an unnecessary remake of a better movie and (B) it was a role that called for massive, unbridled chewing of the scenery, there being things you can do with animation that are hard to replicate in live action.
Which, instead of leading to a discussion of unnecessary remakes, shifted into a discussion of the pluses and minuses of type-casting.
Meanwhile, the dog park being in a bowl the size of three football fields that had been packed the night before with people celebrating the Fourth of July and fireworks over the Connecticut River, my dog was conducting a painstaking grid-search of the entire place, finding stray bits of popcorn and fragments of potato chips, but mostly, we guessed, exalting in the exotic smells left behind by the crowd.
Dogs’ high-sensory capabilities must make their lives like a permanent acid trip, which would also explain why so many of them find firecrackers terrifying.
Constant Readers will anticipate how much I loved this Reality Check.
First of all, I think you should either embrace being an omnivore or give it up entirely and am puzzled by pretend-meat.
I understand pretend-beer, because it’s nice to have something in your hand, and during an extended period of teetotalling, I drank a lot of tonic-and-lime. On the other hand, I know people who avoid meat and eat very well without pretending.
As for that “plant,” I’m also critical of people who do eat meat but believe it is some non-descript pink stuff that comes in plastic foam trays.
Less industrialized people were deeply aware of the sources of their meat and acknowledged their shared consciousness. I’m not sure you need to go that far, but if you don’t know where it comes from, I suppose it might as well be made from soybeans.
Constant Readers also know that I’m critical of a lot of people. And that I swiped the term “Constant Reader” from Dorothy Parker, whose writing makes me seem like a font of generous tolerance.
The Holy Trinity: Dorothy Parker, Molly Ivins and Jane Austen.
Arlo always mirrors me, and as he and Janis prepare to downsize, I’m doing much the same, though I’ve been downsizing by increments and am now down to a bedroom, kitchen and living room, which I’ll be swapping for a studio apartment.
I’ll still have to get rid of a third of my furniture and a whole lot of other stuff, which is okay because the kids sure won’t want it.
About a year ago, I took five bankers’ boxes of books to a used bookstore and it made a dent but there’s more to go. I’ve still got half a shelf of cookbooks and there are just two recipes I still look up on paper, one for red beans and rice, and one for kielbasa z czerwonq kapusta, both of which I only consult to confirm that I could make them blindfolded.
F Minus provides the perfect capstone for today’s completely non-judgmental, neutral collection of tentative theories.
And here’s how I feel about Cruella: The original, not the plant-based version:
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