Category Archives: Blogs' Archive

I just took Isabel out to a movie and I must say I had  a thoroughly good time.  I thought ham and cheese flavored popcorn sounded weird, but it was good.

The film was The Secret Life of Pets, and one weird thing both  of us noticed was that there were no other kids in the cinema.  All adults.  I thought that was a bit weird, and it kind of blows my theory.  Theory is a word I use over-liberally, to mean hypothesis, or maybe just a cynical observation, but I have often  stated that the reason people have  children  is so they can go to kid’s movies without embarrassment.

Apparently, some adults don’t feel my need for an excuse.  Maybe because it was in  English, which  is no problem for Isabel but would be for most Czech  kids, or maybe the fact that it was a bit of a late show for children, or whatever.

But children’s movies are great, and the trailers are for other children’s movies, and there was a really funny Minions cartoon, they are basically an animated version of the 3 stooges, a comedy of errors and physical violence.

The film is about Max, a dog in New York City who gets separated from his walker in the park and caught by the dog  catchers, along with his much bigger rival, Duke, and they are rescued by a rabbit and a pig who are leaders of an underground anti-human animal gang, the Flushed Pets, but then their friends come to rescue them, and Max and Duke wind up in  the East River, and then in Brooklyn where they have a weird, psychedelic, almost totally superfluous trip through a sausage factory.

All the classic humor is there: dogs v. cats, big v. small, some great chase scenes with animals driving  cars  and crashing into everybody, a few poop jokes and, of course, happy endings all around, even the insane, terrorist rabbit gets adopted by  a little girl and changes completely, while  the  pig and the alligator dive back into the sewer.

I wouldn’t rank it with the greatest of chidren’s movies.  It was no Ratatouille, or Shrek, but you don’t need to rank them like that.  It was a good time.

When somebody posts a news article about a new technique to produce solar or wind power, or the possibility of contact with  extraterrestrials, you’ll see two or three comments on the thread.  Of course, everybody’s got different Facebook friends, so I might be exceptional, but I doubt it.
On the other hand, the most banal posts can get dozens.

This picture piqued my interest.  It’s an interesting view of a world gone by, focusing on an aspect historians seldom focus on.  Playground equipment, which was certainly different in 1900.  Now, I’m old enough to remember when most playground equipment was made of metal, but I’d never seen anything like this.

Well, predictably, many of the comments were things like “back in the good, old days before everybody was so concerned about child safety and kids were freer.”  I think this is a dumb point of view.  Sure, the kids might have had a bit more freedom and less supervision than kids these days, but they also had  a much shorter life expectancy.  Not just things like flu and polio, but playground accidents, too.  Somebody falling from one of those top posts, or the legs of one of those ladders slipping out from underneath, and a kid could be seriously injured.

This picture is a lovely scene, and everybody has nostalgic memories of childhood, but speaking from a parents’ point of view, I’m glad playground equipment of today is made mostly of plastic, meets certain regulations, and is inspected from time to time.  In the world of reality, safety outweighs nostalgia.

Tomorrow is the  first day of school.  Of course, like the last week or so of school in June, no work will actually be done.  They’ll check in, talk with their friends, get their schedules and stuff like that.  Still, it’s a landmark day.

This has been a wonderful summer, personally (of course, as far as the march of human history is concerned, it has sucked big time), and I don’t really have much desire to see it come to an end, but I’ll be glad to see the kids occupied with the charade of pretending to get an education, at least.

This should be the year when I’m not accompanying either of my children to and from school.  I’ll see Isabel to school tomorrow, but she  was already  agitating for me to mind my own business and stay at home  last year.  Most of her friends go to school by themselves, but most of her friends live within walking distance of the school.  Still, she knows the way, I’m sure she’ll be fine on the Metro by herself, so it’s going to happen. I just need to get used to it.

The age-old wisdom, as old as television itself, is that the networks give the people what they want to see, that it’s all ratings driven.  I no longer believe that.  I can believe that people like a good cops and robbers shoot em up now and again, but I can’t believe that that’s ALL they want.  And I can’t quite believe that huge markets are sitting and watching people bid on lockers full of garbage and people  get excited when they find an old G.I. Joe doll that’s worth  $45.

But what I really can’t believe is that a Clinton/Trump race is good for ratings.  I know I turn Hillary off as soon as I see her, and I’m sure plenty of  people on the other side do the same.  Hillary Clinton, as a guest on Jimmy Kimmel, lost out on ratings to Teen Mom and a rerun of Friends.  Pretty much nobody is looking forward to them debating.

Let’s face it, America is not only disgusted with these two candidates, America is bored with them.  If you  are interested in ratings at all, the smart thing to do would be to open up the race. (You are the mainstream media.  You could  do that.)  Invite Stein and Johnson into the debates.   Start covering their campaign rallies, invite them onto your morning programs.  Your ratings will go up, guaranteed.

If, that is, what you’re interested in.

If your only goal is to get Hillary elected, because she supports your agenda of only telling the people what the government wants them to hear, carry on as you are.

It’s late  and I was nodding  out  surfing the channels -really, who watches these shows?  Some guy fishing?  If you like fishing, I can almost understand that, some outdoor pursuits are nice just  because they get you out of doors, but watching it  on TV – incomprehensible.

But, the point is,  I was nodding  out and there is a blog left unwritten, my daily promise to myself, my daily gift to the dozen or so people who readi it, and I didn’t have a theme.  That is, of course, the hardest part.

My wife  suggested waterfalls, because she just saw some list about the world’s top ten waterfalls, which is kind of meaningless to me because my favorite waterfalls tend to be small ones, out of the way ones, ones with no people around.

Waterfalls are nice, because they make the air feel fresh.  It’s hard to feel lethargic, or negative, when the air is literally, and I literally mean literally, charged.  If you go to Niagara, or one of the other  big ones, you can stand at a distance and watch the water crashing, and it inspires awe, but awe does not make the world go round.  If you know of a waterfall, deep in the woods where nobody goes, you can sit there and watch the water fall and meditate, or you can go stand under it, and feel the power massaging your head.

I really don’t have that much I have to say about waterfalls tonight.  But, I’m over 250 words and I’ll write again tomorrow.