The problem with some people in some organizations is they don’t understand scale at ALL. The vociferous bleating of pretend activists on social media seems to have convinced these unnamed organizations there are 100 million people expressing support for certain causes when it’s really just one million people expressing that support 100 times as much as a person with a job and “things to do” would do. One million is an awfully big number in my head. I can’t picture a million objects, no matter how hard I try, so I’m convinced the number is huge, astronomical, and 100 million is essentially the same as one million because I can’t picture that in my head either. But it’s not. 100 million is a lot more than one million. In fact, I daresay, it is 100 times more than one million, so making those one million people happy and not putting forth any effort to figure out what the other 99 million people are thinking would seem to be, well…really stupid, that’s all. The Marvel problem, I fear, is just that there are only a handful of interesting superheroes, and they can’t create new ones because the business model won’t allow for it. It was why Disney paid through the nose for 20th Century Fox. It was solely for the rights of the Fantastic Four and X-Men. Of course, now it takes five to 10 years to develop a single film because of the insane budgets and the years of focus groups and marketing testing and the two dozen trust fund kids who call themselves screenwriters employed to fine tune these screenplays until they drain enough humanity out of them until they seem to have been written by a chatbot in about five minutes. So even though Disney bought Fox seven years ago, still no X-Men, and all they have to show for it is the upcoming Fantastic Four movie, an IP that’s had the life drained out of it by a handful of terrible films produced in the last 20 years. Seeing the city through someone else’s eyes is a marvelous experience. END OF COMMENT.
You are rich, rich with life and experience and full of colorful stories. You are beautiful and kind so yes, even bitches smell wealth they are just limited in their idea of it. She just missed the time of her life. She doesn’t even know it as she looks for a $5 drink.
Our dear ol' U S of A has always been best-understood by following three words of advice: Follow the money. The money started obviously taking over during Reagan's administrations and haven't taken a step back since. Clinton? A mildly-conservative Republican. Obama, a socialist? Like I'm a pro basketball center. All corporate $men.
That said, the Dems are doing a great job of making me feel good about leaving the party during Clinton's 2nd term.
Jeez-a-lou, Don R. I propose you start writing the script for a sit-com (or perhaps a webtoon, you know, keep it trendy to account for our declining attention spans as a whole. Or fuck it, turn the cinematic world on its head by publishing it as a visual sonnet, set at a poetry reading in Chicago, with a jazz soundtrack.), featuring all the dating / relationship scenarios you've found yourself in, with an angel vs devil on your shoulders, bantering in your ears about whether or not things are going to go well, based on what they already know about your date. Less Frasier & Niles arguing, more Harry & Sally. ( I love Frasier & Niles banter, but I adore Billy Crystal & Meg Ryan banter.) Who knows, maybe Billy, Meg, & Harry Connick Jr, would be up for a reunion!
Side Note: Ahem, THERE IS A GODDAMNED TREASURE TROVE OF QUOTABLE MATERIAL IN "WHEN HARRY MET SALLY" BEYOND THE OVERUSED RESTAURANT ORGASM SCENE, PEOPLE! I've been seeking conversational opportunities to insert "Oh, but baby fish mouth is sweeping the nation." & "... and my mother, disguised as an East German judge gave me a five six. Must have been the dismount." since the 90s, which has proved to be a challenge, but worth it, because it is COMEDY GOLD.
Democrats... sigh. Yes, point taken, but the linkage of Democrats to an OnlyFans girl is going to provide a vast well of nightmare fuel, possibly til my dying day. So thank you for that. If I'm transferred from the haunted asylum to the nearest hospital, shouting, "God, No! Not Congressman Schiff... Congressman Raskin?!" I'm holding you partially responsible.
Ok, off to find some music to magic eraser my brain from repulsive & untoward thoughts about... why the fuck is my mental jukebox playing "Tie A Yellow Ribbon Round The Old Oak Tree," segueing into "Smoky Mountain Rain?" Shit. This thing is always on the fritz... Fine. "Thumbed my way from LA, back to Knoxville..." (Hang in there till the chorus, for the pounding piano chord!)
I'm so sorry, but ever since I typed "Smoky Mountain Rain" in my last comment, it will not leave my brain. I am now cursed. I know we live in an era of lies & exaggeration to the point of absurdity, masquerading as hyperbole, but I assure you this is not that. It's driving me crazy, because I like the song well enough, but right now it's playing in my head like an AM radio station that goes in & out & the DJ only has one record.
It's quite bothersome, because every single time I've heard this song since it came out in 1980, ON MY 11th BIRTHDAY (See?! I'm doomed.), I have struggled to reconcile the lyrics with the singer, the great Ronnie Milsap. As a kid, I thought the song was true. (I also thought "The Amityville Horror" was true, because it said, "Based On A True Story" at the beginning of the movie, which lead to a lifetime of nightmares every time I heard that demonic fucking song replaying in my head.)
Every. Single. Time. I hear "Smoky Mountain Rain" since I was 11, I am haunted by the same questions:
1. What the heck is a blind man doing hitchhiking in the rain?! I can't even fathom how he came to find himself in this scenario.
2. Did phone booths have Braille?! Were they all push button phones? Or dials? Have I ever used a phone booth myself? I don't think so, but why not? Hmm. I think I generally convinced myself that if a blind man can become an award winning pianist, he can certainly manage a payphone, even in a desperate state, in the rain.
3. How was he planning to search for her?! He was completely dependent upon the patience, generosity, & tenacity of a random truck driver. Did he have a current photo of her?
It was a conundrum to my 11 year old brain & every year since.
Also, this: Throughout the entire song, the women are singing the background parts in the choruses & then finally at the end, some male voice we haven't heard yet, belts out "CALLIN' HER NAME" with some sort of gruff, gravelly gusto that made me laugh. I always imagined he was an amalgamation of Michael McDonald, Kris Kristofferson, Eddie Rabbit, & Grizzly Adams, so for simplicity's sake, I'll call him Chuck. Way to go Chuck! He had 3 words at the end & he gave it his all every time! I found this thoroughly entertaining, which was a reprieve from my earlier angst.
So this is the struggle I've been having intermittently for 44 years now, so you can see why hearing it repeatedly has caused me great duress. But I've no one to blame but myself; I am indeed locked in a prison of my own making. I'm not sure venting here will help, I've likely just seared it into my hippocampus, by committing it to writing.
The problem with some people in some organizations is they don’t understand scale at ALL. The vociferous bleating of pretend activists on social media seems to have convinced these unnamed organizations there are 100 million people expressing support for certain causes when it’s really just one million people expressing that support 100 times as much as a person with a job and “things to do” would do. One million is an awfully big number in my head. I can’t picture a million objects, no matter how hard I try, so I’m convinced the number is huge, astronomical, and 100 million is essentially the same as one million because I can’t picture that in my head either. But it’s not. 100 million is a lot more than one million. In fact, I daresay, it is 100 times more than one million, so making those one million people happy and not putting forth any effort to figure out what the other 99 million people are thinking would seem to be, well…really stupid, that’s all. The Marvel problem, I fear, is just that there are only a handful of interesting superheroes, and they can’t create new ones because the business model won’t allow for it. It was why Disney paid through the nose for 20th Century Fox. It was solely for the rights of the Fantastic Four and X-Men. Of course, now it takes five to 10 years to develop a single film because of the insane budgets and the years of focus groups and marketing testing and the two dozen trust fund kids who call themselves screenwriters employed to fine tune these screenplays until they drain enough humanity out of them until they seem to have been written by a chatbot in about five minutes. So even though Disney bought Fox seven years ago, still no X-Men, and all they have to show for it is the upcoming Fantastic Four movie, an IP that’s had the life drained out of it by a handful of terrible films produced in the last 20 years. Seeing the city through someone else’s eyes is a marvelous experience. END OF COMMENT.
You are rich, rich with life and experience and full of colorful stories. You are beautiful and kind so yes, even bitches smell wealth they are just limited in their idea of it. She just missed the time of her life. She doesn’t even know it as she looks for a $5 drink.
Our dear ol' U S of A has always been best-understood by following three words of advice: Follow the money. The money started obviously taking over during Reagan's administrations and haven't taken a step back since. Clinton? A mildly-conservative Republican. Obama, a socialist? Like I'm a pro basketball center. All corporate $men.
That said, the Dems are doing a great job of making me feel good about leaving the party during Clinton's 2nd term.
Simply put, it's pitchfork time.
All just imo, of course.
Hey...you have a great week, mon Frere!
Jeez-a-lou, Don R. I propose you start writing the script for a sit-com (or perhaps a webtoon, you know, keep it trendy to account for our declining attention spans as a whole. Or fuck it, turn the cinematic world on its head by publishing it as a visual sonnet, set at a poetry reading in Chicago, with a jazz soundtrack.), featuring all the dating / relationship scenarios you've found yourself in, with an angel vs devil on your shoulders, bantering in your ears about whether or not things are going to go well, based on what they already know about your date. Less Frasier & Niles arguing, more Harry & Sally. ( I love Frasier & Niles banter, but I adore Billy Crystal & Meg Ryan banter.) Who knows, maybe Billy, Meg, & Harry Connick Jr, would be up for a reunion!
Side Note: Ahem, THERE IS A GODDAMNED TREASURE TROVE OF QUOTABLE MATERIAL IN "WHEN HARRY MET SALLY" BEYOND THE OVERUSED RESTAURANT ORGASM SCENE, PEOPLE! I've been seeking conversational opportunities to insert "Oh, but baby fish mouth is sweeping the nation." & "... and my mother, disguised as an East German judge gave me a five six. Must have been the dismount." since the 90s, which has proved to be a challenge, but worth it, because it is COMEDY GOLD.
Democrats... sigh. Yes, point taken, but the linkage of Democrats to an OnlyFans girl is going to provide a vast well of nightmare fuel, possibly til my dying day. So thank you for that. If I'm transferred from the haunted asylum to the nearest hospital, shouting, "God, No! Not Congressman Schiff... Congressman Raskin?!" I'm holding you partially responsible.
Ok, off to find some music to magic eraser my brain from repulsive & untoward thoughts about... why the fuck is my mental jukebox playing "Tie A Yellow Ribbon Round The Old Oak Tree," segueing into "Smoky Mountain Rain?" Shit. This thing is always on the fritz... Fine. "Thumbed my way from LA, back to Knoxville..." (Hang in there till the chorus, for the pounding piano chord!)
I'm so sorry, but ever since I typed "Smoky Mountain Rain" in my last comment, it will not leave my brain. I am now cursed. I know we live in an era of lies & exaggeration to the point of absurdity, masquerading as hyperbole, but I assure you this is not that. It's driving me crazy, because I like the song well enough, but right now it's playing in my head like an AM radio station that goes in & out & the DJ only has one record.
It's quite bothersome, because every single time I've heard this song since it came out in 1980, ON MY 11th BIRTHDAY (See?! I'm doomed.), I have struggled to reconcile the lyrics with the singer, the great Ronnie Milsap. As a kid, I thought the song was true. (I also thought "The Amityville Horror" was true, because it said, "Based On A True Story" at the beginning of the movie, which lead to a lifetime of nightmares every time I heard that demonic fucking song replaying in my head.)
Every. Single. Time. I hear "Smoky Mountain Rain" since I was 11, I am haunted by the same questions:
1. What the heck is a blind man doing hitchhiking in the rain?! I can't even fathom how he came to find himself in this scenario.
2. Did phone booths have Braille?! Were they all push button phones? Or dials? Have I ever used a phone booth myself? I don't think so, but why not? Hmm. I think I generally convinced myself that if a blind man can become an award winning pianist, he can certainly manage a payphone, even in a desperate state, in the rain.
3. How was he planning to search for her?! He was completely dependent upon the patience, generosity, & tenacity of a random truck driver. Did he have a current photo of her?
It was a conundrum to my 11 year old brain & every year since.
Also, this: Throughout the entire song, the women are singing the background parts in the choruses & then finally at the end, some male voice we haven't heard yet, belts out "CALLIN' HER NAME" with some sort of gruff, gravelly gusto that made me laugh. I always imagined he was an amalgamation of Michael McDonald, Kris Kristofferson, Eddie Rabbit, & Grizzly Adams, so for simplicity's sake, I'll call him Chuck. Way to go Chuck! He had 3 words at the end & he gave it his all every time! I found this thoroughly entertaining, which was a reprieve from my earlier angst.
So this is the struggle I've been having intermittently for 44 years now, so you can see why hearing it repeatedly has caused me great duress. But I've no one to blame but myself; I am indeed locked in a prison of my own making. I'm not sure venting here will help, I've likely just seared it into my hippocampus, by committing it to writing.