Category / OT

by CIDU Bill

Cliché I Don’t Understand

Today, in a bit of synchronicity, I heard two totally unrelated references to the proverbial “slacker who lives in his mother’s basement” (in one, he spends every waking hour playing WoW; in the other, tweeting insane conspuracy theories).

Is this something that actually happens? It seems to me that if a child never leaves home, or returns home after graduation or whatever, he’d be in his old bedroom. Kinda rude to banish him into the basement, innit?

by CIDU Bill

[Very OT] Tweets I Don’t Understand

Following news that Baltimore’s mayor resigned after using her influence to force various agencies to spend hundreds of thousands of copies of a children’s books she wrote, Baltimore-based television writer/director/producer David Simon tweeted

To everyone coming @ me and demanding a season six of The Wire about Catherine Pugh, her ridiculous kiddie-books-as-shakedown and the rank complicity of Baltimore medical systems and charities and such in this citywide grift, let’s be clear: Full stop. No. I don’t do half-hour.

Does he mean he considers this to be a sitcom plot?

by CIDU Bill

Semi-OT: The New Yorkers

I thought this might interest some of you because of the Peter Arno connection.

We saw this show, by the way, and were impressed by how they stitched it all together to create something comprehensible. Also by how much time and expense they put into something they was only going to run for five days.

And now they’re going to make a recording which… is also going to lose a ton of money.

 

 

by CIDU Bill

OT, but worth noting

Yesterday, I happened to read something Norman Vincent Peale wrote in 1957 for Look magazine, regarding school boards banning books like Huckleberry Finn “because of inappropriate language and ideas” (yes, as far back as 1957).

He referred to “the peculiar notion that all ideas in fiction must be good,” and predicted that in the future “supernervous boards might drop Merchant of Venice or the Bible because some characters are depicted unsympathetically or in a way that some people might find disturbing [we’ve already gone there, of course]. If children’s minds are to be shielded from conflict and social change, it might be better to keep them away from reading entirely.”

by CIDU Bill

[OT] Worst Children’s Book Ever

This is the tree in Bill’s back yard.
 
This is the ice storm that knocked down the tree in Bill’s back yard.
 
This is the deck and the gutter that were damaged by the tree in Bill’s back yard that was knocked down by the ice storm.
 
This is the basement that was flooded because of the gutter that was knocked down by the tree Bill’s back yard that was knocked down by the ice storm.
 
I am so ready for 2019 to be over.