Sentential Links #173

Time for the clicking of links.

:: This is a disgrace, and is emblematic of everything that’s wrong with Buffalo. (Some salty language here, but seriously, what Alan's describing here and in a series of subsequent posts is nauseating. It's sometimes as if Buffalo enjoys sucking.)

:: Official Russian history. The gold standard for truth and objectivity.

:: It's interesting to me to see how my perspective on stories and characterization has evolved over the years; TRUE LIES is a quite different experience for me now than I remember it being on first, or subsequent viewings. (I wish I could remember where I first read this suggestion, but somebody once wrote that the movie's perfect ending would have had Arnold saying something to Jamie Lee Curtis something like, "How can I make up that other stuff to you?" and then, cut to a hotel room, lights out, with Curtis sitting in a chair as Arnold starts doing a striptease. That would have been better than the actual ending.)

:: The amazing science fiction future is actually fantasy. Jetpacks and rayguns are the equivalent of dragons and magic. Buck Rogers is the scientific equivalent of Harry Potter. You can’t have your jetpack any more than you can have Excalibur.

:: I think there is a presumption that people should be able to decide for themselves what facts about themselves to reveal; and that decent people should respect this, absent some compelling reason not to. (Ed Whelan is a shit, pure and simple. He deserves the flak he's getting. He pitched a hissy fit in the only way he could think of; what he did is the blogging equivalent of the time in grade school when some other kid got mad at me at the lunch table so he squirted mustard onto my cookie. What an ass. Hilzoy has it exactly right, here.)

:: Mr Buchanan made the argument for her himself with his confidence that his audience would know what he was sneering at when he sneered at Pinocchio and the troll under the bridge.

A language isn't an assemblage of words. It's a collection of shared references.

You can't speak English well unless you know what troll and what bridge and what happened to him.

:: I wish I could personally slap every single person who ever used the phrase “legislating from the bench”. That’s just code for “making decisions I disagree with.” (Couldn't agree more.)

:: Why wouldn’t Archie want to marry Betty?

The answer is simple. (Another salty language alert...but a hilarious post. But I sure wish somebody could explain just why Archie has a tic-tac-toe sign shaved into the side of his head. I asked on Facebook and nobody knew!)

:: Yet another piece of evidence that, in a lot of ways, the 1970s and '80s were a much better time... (I remember that intro well; Kung Fu used to air in the afternoons on the independent teevee station in Portland that also had Star Trek on after school. I didn't quite understand Kung Fu, but it was there. Once, when I was working in the restaurant ten years ago, I was standing near the front door with our hostess, who was an older lady with a wicked sense of humor. A guy walks by on the street outside with a backpack filled to the gills, walking in that slow amble of a guy walking very far, and my hostess says, "Huh. Guy looks like Kung Fu." She was happy that I got the joke.)

:: When people who are the "other" in this society succeed, they've often learned to navigate both the majority culture as well as their own. For instance, I know there are things that I don't have to endure because I'm a male. I don't always know what they are, but I surely know they exist.

:: I do know that if love transcends the boundaries of life and space and time, I have amassed more than enough to carry me safely to my next destination. And I hope that I have left enough behind to help light a path so that we may one day meet again. (I saw this linked on the AOL main page -- it's the final post of a man who died of cancer last week. It's...well, it's exactly what you'd expect. Deepest condolences to his family.)

More next week.