Everyone deserves Gobbledygook. Sweet Gobbledygook. Even our worst enemies, Lord, deserve Gobbledygook, Gobbledygook. Even the quiet ones, in our family, deserve Gobbledygook. Sweet Gobbledygook.
Here’s a couple of things that I learned this week…
- …from moving pictures:
- That hunting down and killing bad guys can sometimes eat at your soul, regardless of what went down in Munich.
- That Spielberg’s talent is to be gracious enough to let you totally forget that his camera is present, unlike most young directors today (and Oliver Stone) who won’t ever let you forget that you are seeing the world through their eyes; for Spielberg, however, you see the world as the characters see it.
- That the line “There is no peace at the end of this,” could be one of the scariest and most accurate descriptions of the state of affairs in the Middle East.
- That F. Scott Fitzgerald died with most of his books out-of-print, but that before he died, he was a poster boy for what it meant to be rich and famous and fabulously in love in New York City in the 1920s.
- That America once thought of writers the way it now thinks of Brangelina.
- That Ted Haggerty was right again: The Boondock Saints is a damn good movie.
- That the guy from Munich should sit down with the Boondock Saints and explain to them why it’s not always right to kill the bad guys, that what makes a person righteous is not hatred, but forgiveness.
- …from static pages:
- That soap operas can be a wonderful device for communicating the important life lessons that the citizens of every underdeveloped country need to know.
- That the women at Duke University are so screwed up (for a variety of reasons) that one top-ranked female student (and underachieving human) said about her life, “If my mother ever knew [what I do to keep my boyfriend from sleeping with other women], I mean, she would smack me across the face.”
- That just because the author of The Myth of the Eternal Return is from Romania doesn’t mean that his book has anything to do with his homeland, which means, if you’re planning on reading a book from every country in the world in order to learn about those place, you may be a little disappointed that his book was selected to represent Romania.
- That “for archaic man, reality is a function of the imitation of a celestial archetype,” which I think means that, for archaic man, human acts only become legitimate “through an extrahuman model” — in short, for archaic man, reality is beyond us.
- The statement that “the Platonic forms are not astral: yet their mythic region is situated on supraterrestrial planes” does not show me anything new, but it does make things seem a little clearer.
- That my grandmother’s birthday card to me reveals a political streak that she never talks about.
- …from the web:
- That tornadoes can look pretty crazy, even before someone manipulates them with a computer.
- The German engineering means something in the world of sex toys too.
- That at least one of my brilliant friends has a steamy future to look forward to as a philosophy major.
- That Civilization IV for Mac is gonna be the shit, and not just because Martin Sheen told me so, though maybe because Jed Bartlett told me so.
- That Age of Empires III will not be coming to the Mac, which sucks.
- That Sim City 4 for Mac is an absolutely terrible game, not because the game is terrible (it’s Sim City; it is what it is), but because the programmers seemed to have no clue how to do their job.
- That a non-programmer like you and me will soon be able to develop our own social software applications, thanks to Ning.com.
- That tiki bars are friggin’ expensive.
- The the vulgar language of 1811 isn’t that vulgar.
- That there are five reasons to impeach President Bush.
- That I still don’t understand why I should be excited about microformats.
- That the revolution will be televised, but that it will last for over an hour, so I’ll get bored and go watch something else.
- …from life:
- That not having a responsible work ethic can be a major character flaw.
- That some people just don’t care about whether you have a work ethic or not, especially if you have tits.
- That there are few things as fun as sitting around a fire.
- That beds are 10x more comfortable than futons, which is a fact you may forget when you’ve only slept on a futon for 12 months.
- That wet willies are still fun to give, even when you’re 29.
- That ghost stories are still creepy to hear, even when you’re 29.
- That turning 29 isn’t a big deal when you’re incredibly happy with your life.
- That I love talking about art with my friends.
- That going through a divorce can really make it difficult to talk about anything else.
- That life with an trained engineer means a life with the possibility of a tree-house.
- That, regardless of how long you’ve been in this state, Vermont never fails to surprise you with how beautiful it can be.
- That being in a bookstore on a rainy Saturday afternoon is one possibility of heaven.
- That I just can’t bring myself to buy a graphic novel, despite how interested I am in the genre.
- That buying a 65-inch grill can raise your testosterone level by a power of 3.
- That a person can judge a place just by visiting its local Wal-Mart (hat tip to Dawn for pointing this out)
- That having a 13-year old car and no knowledge of automobiles does not a relaxed ride through the back-roads of Vermont make.
- That I’m frickin’ hungry right now.
Now, get your hands out of my Gobbledygook and have a good weekend.
