Sentential Links

Linkage!

:: It's also a reminder of how people entertained themselves; they sang and told stories and gathered with friends. In the darkness, I considered calling a friend to see if he wanted to meet me at our local pub; remember, there's a reason 'you all begin in a tavern' makes perfect sense in many game-worlds.

For the Cabin Boy and Cabin Girl, the blackout was an adventure; for me, it was a reminder of what my world of adventure is really like.

:: Personal responsibility is cool if you can afford it. (Anyone who says that they did it themselves, with no help from anyone especially the government, is so full of crap that they can be discounted automatically and completely.)

:: There are places you can go where you can escape discomfort. There are places you can plug in machines to pretend weather doesn't exist. There are people who will tell you that humidity is a horrible thing and should be avoided at all costs. Do not go to those places, avoid plugs when you can, and never believe a liar. Because there is nothing more beautiful in this angry, scary world than a hundred fireflies in the dark of a lightening-kissed sky. Nothing. (I like the sentiment here...but I also find heat and humidity loathsome and soul-crushing. Your mileage, and all that.)

:: As much as Will Smith wishes it, he cannot WILL his son into being a movie star.

:: I don't believe there ever has been a time like this in our history. We have had periods of severe political polarization before, but those were periods in which the government was polarized because of conflicting ideas of what the national government should do. Right now, we have a polarization based on the fact that an uncontrollable faction of one of our two political parties — a faction with its own sources of money and power that exist outside conventional political accountability — has decided that the only thing that the national government should do is nothing, a faction that is perfectly situated to make that at least part of a political reality, and a faction that is growing even faster out in the states than it is in Washington. What is leadership if there's more political profit in ignoring your leaders than in being led? Who, in that case, rules? The truly terrifying answer to that is that nobody does. Or, at least, nobody who is elected does.

:: So why did we accept Archie Bunker?

Because Edith loved him. Because the person with the kindest heart on the planet knew he wasn’t really hateful, he was just railing. We loved her and if she loved him then he couldn’t be so bad after all.

:: Funky Winkerbean very, very rarely focuses on the positive. Still, the message I’m getting from today’s strip is: if your father was killed when you were a baby, maybe it’s just as well, because maybe he was an asshole you would’ve hated. (The current storyline in FW is unimaginably bad, even by FW standards. If it didn't take five point seven seconds each day to read the thing, I'd be embarrassed that I'm wasting the time I am upon it.)

:: When Marilyn’s inner light—that luminosity she could turn on with one brilliant pout of her lips, with one glance of moist, widened eyes, with one flash of that glimmering, sometimes puckish smile—departed her body, she didn’t lose her power. She lost her life, and that was tragic and indeed too soon. But that vulnerable woman, that strong woman—a woman both in charge of her life and deeply unsure of herself, full of hope and dope and dreams and fear of the future—that woman maintained her power. (Heavens, what a good essay. Check this one out.)

More next week. If you're nice. Harumph!