Some Random Observations

Comments on some stuff....

:: I'm still not much of a fan, but over time I've developed a small bit of appreciation for The Family Guy. Mainly, I find Stewie (the megalomaniacal English-accented baby) and Brian (the articulate, alcoholic dog) reasonably funny. Everybody else, not as much. But I don't hate the show as much as I used to.

However, I'm in no danger of becoming a fan of Seth McFarlane's in general. The Cleveland Show and American Dad are freakishly awful.

:: Last night's Simpsons episode was a repeat of a Sideshow Bob episode I hadn't seen before, that borrowed its plot from the movie FACE/OFF. Bob escaped prison by switching faces with a cellmate. A line I liked, from Bob describing his own removal of his own face: "As Krusty's assistant for many years, I had been hit with so many pies that my face had lost all sensation!" Geez. One wonders what kind of pies Krusty's using, that they hurt that much.

:: I'm not following America's Got Talent all that much -- turning it on occasionally, mainly -- but I do like the "Fighting Gravity" and "AscenDance" acts quite a bit. In fact, both acts are of similar types, so I wouldn't mind seeing both win and end up doing acts in Vegas together. I'd love to see the show end with some act like this winning, as opposed to yet another singer. Three of four winners have been singers thus far (the second was amazing ventriloquist Terry Fator), and if I wanted to watch a mere singing competition, well...that's what IDOL is for.

:: The weather this summer has been awful. June was cooler and rainier here than normal, and July has been one nearly unbroken stream of hot-and-humid. I am more than ready for August, which I've always found the most pleasant of the summer months. (Well, I guess I have to include September, but emotionally, I consider September to be an autumn month, even if it's often in the 80s in September round here.) But this month has been too warm for me to enjoy doing much of anything outside at all.

:: I'm starting to feel the pull of the Siren Song of power tools of all kinds. I'm not sure that I have any real use for one those new Dremel Trio tools, but damned if I don't want one. (No, I'm not going to buy one absent a use for it. I'm not that dumb.)

:: I feel pretty stupid when I have to go into Home Depot to exchange an accessory for a power tool of mine, because I bought the wrong accessory or the wrong size accessory or something similar. I should know what I need, dammit! (Specifically, it was the belts for my belt sander that I bought the other day. I needed 18-inch belts and got 21-inch ones because I wasn't paying attention.)

:: People in West Seneca, NY are resisting the conversion of some buildings that already exist from a no-longer-being-used satellite college campus into housing for low-income senior citizens, on the usual basis that traffic will go way up (because apparently senior homes have traffic rivaling that of local shopping malls) and because it will "lower property values". How it will do this, I have no idea. Personally, I wouldn't mind having a new, built-in community of folks who will spend money in the town, especially since it would mean using pre-existing building stock, but that's just me. Gotta love those NIMBY's -- they're not just about preventing the dumping of nuclear waste in their backyards anymore!

:: Is it just me, or have fireworks displays become, well, boring over the years? Unless you're watching the super-duper displays in New York or Washington or Boston for the 4th of July, or the amazing displays at Disney World, it's just kinda nice and kinda dull now. "Ooooh, a red one! And now a green one! That one's purple AND green! And a couple of those loud BOOMy ones just for effect! And now...a red one and a green one at the same time!"

Maybe, though, fireworks displays were always like this, and I only realize it now because these days, if you want, you can see fireworks somewhere on a weekly basis. At least in Buffalo, you can. When I was a kid, fireworks were on July 4, and that's it. That's the way it was, and we liked it!

:: People who drive in pristine white Oldsmobiles are extremely annoying. But even worse are people who drive around in Camaros as though they are pristine white Oldsmobiles.