CSotD: Odds and Ends (Mostly Odd)
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Today’s lead-off was an odd coincidence, since it appeared the day after a conversation at the dog park with a Spanish teacher and my friend who speaks Brazilian Portuguese, about the need to not only teach kids a second language but to teach them about the culture in which it is spoken.
One of the oddities that came up was garage sales, or yard sales, tag sales, whatever you call them, which appear to be an entirely American thing. I once wrote a feature story for the paper about garage sales, and it turned out, I found, that people in other countries are mystified that Americans spread their unwanted crap out on the lawn and peddle it to strangers.
It raises a couple of interlocking issues. One is that Americans are so wealthy that they can buy crap they don’t need, which raises the question of why, if they’re so rich, they humiliate themselves with an open admission that they need money.
A casino recently opened here and has received permission to expand their parking because their lot is perpetually filled and their customers are parking at other businesses. But they aren’t parking at the nearby second-hand charity store, because its lot is also perpetually full.
I don’t think the two factors are related, but, then again, I don’t think they’re unrelated either.
And then there’s this reminder that while many people are appalled at Disney/ABC caving in to bullying from the FCC, it’s not as if the Magic Kingdom hasn’t usually followed the conservative party line to begin with.
Walt didn’t want Annette showing her belly button in those beach movies, which he wasn’t even producing, and guys with long hair used to be hassled if not entirely barred from entering Disneyland.
Sheneman piles on a few exaggerations, but the point remains that Disney didn’t have to travel far to arrive at compliance.
Speaking of whom, there was a time, O Best Beloved, before Disneyland and Disney World did for tourism what venture capitalists did for newspapers and what conglomeration has done for television.
Besides media and news coverage, tourism also once included local ownership such that people took their kids to little regional amusement parks and honeymooned in places like Niagara Falls and Ausable Chasm, but now they fly to Anaheim or Orlando instead, and regional attractions are dying.
But people still like autumn foliage and social media is starting to fill with photos of nature that have been grotesquely enhanced with filters because reality just ain’t good enough anymore. I took the above photo on a year when the leaves could have been more spectacular, but that’s what they looked like so that’s what you get.
Much of gen-u-wine photography includes being at the right place at the right moment, and Bob Jackson’s famous photo of Jack Ruby murdering Lee Harvey Oswald is a good example: There was no chance for a second try, because flash bulbs were a one-and-done tool, and nobody but Ruby knew what was about to happen.
Foliage is a little easier to predict, as long as you’re close enough to make a quick decision when it’s time. If you’d like to plan when to visit where for the best foliage, here’s an interactive map you can toggle.
Play with that but don’t insult Mother Nature by adding colors she never dreamt of to your photos.
And for god’s sake, when you visit nature, stop someplace local for lunch, and I don’t mean the local McDonald’s franchise.
Juxtaposition of the Silly
Nothing much to add to either of these, except that, in order to understand them, you have to be both well-informed and culturally literate.
But it’s not necessary to be so culturally literate that you start wondering how Auric Goldfinger would feel about destroying our economy by launching cryptocurrencies with his face on them instead of attacking Fort Knox.
Do you expect me to talk?
No, Mr. Bond, I expect you to invest!
Meanwhile, yes, our government has gone completely gonzo, in a way Hunter Thompson would not recognize.
Fortunately, we have First Dog to explain things, and I may have this part of his analysis engraved in stone:
Yet pointing out the hypocrisy of all this is like saying that water is wet — everyone already knows, and the water isn’t listening.
I disagree with Bok so often that it’s only fair to point out when I think he got one right. We’ll deal another day with the administration’s project to turn Charlie Kirk into a saint, but Bok tinkers with the other project, in which everybody claims the shooter was from the other side of the political spectrum, such that the fascist are calling him a leftist while the liberals insist he’s a groyper.
Until we have firm evidence to the contrary, I’m with a small group who insist that he is a shitposter, which is to say that he spent too much time on line, had some serious emotional issues, and was part of an incoherent, apolitical trolling subculture.
I knew a very nice couple whose son robbed a bank, in the course of which investigation he was also pinned to a ghastly murder. I’ve also known horrible, abusive people whose kids compensated by becoming admirable.
And I’ve certainly known people who were eager to cast the first stone.
Dep’t of Pots and Kettles:
Lisa Benson lives in California, placing her about as far out of (New York) state as you can get without swimming.
Cartoonists: Check Your Work!
Here’s an example of how one distributor of cartoons serves people who see cartoons on their phones: It’s 250 pixels wide and looks just fine displayed postage-stamp sized.
However, here’s how it looks to those of us who read on tablets or desktops, because the distributor sends those same 250 px versions of political cartoons to Arcamax — not just Zyglis’s — and they all come out fuzzy and unreadable.
You’d think one of the cartoonists represented by that distributor would notice and complain. You don’t have to self-syndicate, folks, but you do have to self-protect.
Since today’s rantings were random …
… here’s an equally random oldie with a Jack Davis cover:
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