Tonight's clip is a compilation of one youtuber's top ten all-time "Seinfeld" moments.
I give the person credit for even trying . . . there's no way I could begin to limit My favorite Seinfeld moments to ten.
But all these certainly belong up near the top.
Snow Day Musings
The predicted snowstorm actually came to pass, and is actually a bit worse than the forecasters predicted (which is rare -- the trend these days is for weather forecasters to irresponsibly overpredict snow amounts and storm severity, leading to the moron in the checkout line in front of Me having her cart stuffed with nine gallons of milk and 22 pounds of ground beef).
Anyway, I took the opportunity for a well-deserved, totally justified, cosmically-mandated snow day!
I've been visiting blogs on My link list. I'm making an effort to keep it clean, removing dead links, moving inactive blogs to the "Emeritus" section, etc. There is more work to do, however.
1. When you make your blog invite only, bear in mind that you are leaving no way for readers to reconnect with you. Is that really the intent? The net result is that I have to remove all these blogs from the list.
2. Some blogs I just have to get rid of. Their authors are either so clueless, so self-absorbed, so ridiculously full of themselves, or just so immensely self-important that deleting them from the link list seems the only reasonable choice.
Part of Me wants to call these people out, and in fact, I've come very close to leaving comments on those blogs from time to time, and I've started and then trashed several posts here addressing the topic. But confrontation serves no purpose -- the on-line universe is already too plagued with rants, call-outs, threats, and simple obnoxious stupidity for Me to add even one direct drop of venom to. Does anyone remember restraint? Self-editing? Simple manners?
The saddest part is that these delusional bloggers are all women. I'm sensing the world was better off when men had the monopoly on crass egotism. One more item to file under "Unintended Horrible Consequences of Feminism." Yikes, that file is getting gigantic! Oh well.
It's still snowing. Yay.
Anyway, I took the opportunity for a well-deserved, totally justified, cosmically-mandated snow day!
I've been visiting blogs on My link list. I'm making an effort to keep it clean, removing dead links, moving inactive blogs to the "Emeritus" section, etc. There is more work to do, however.
1. When you make your blog invite only, bear in mind that you are leaving no way for readers to reconnect with you. Is that really the intent? The net result is that I have to remove all these blogs from the list.
2. Some blogs I just have to get rid of. Their authors are either so clueless, so self-absorbed, so ridiculously full of themselves, or just so immensely self-important that deleting them from the link list seems the only reasonable choice.
Part of Me wants to call these people out, and in fact, I've come very close to leaving comments on those blogs from time to time, and I've started and then trashed several posts here addressing the topic. But confrontation serves no purpose -- the on-line universe is already too plagued with rants, call-outs, threats, and simple obnoxious stupidity for Me to add even one direct drop of venom to. Does anyone remember restraint? Self-editing? Simple manners?
The saddest part is that these delusional bloggers are all women. I'm sensing the world was better off when men had the monopoly on crass egotism. One more item to file under "Unintended Horrible Consequences of Feminism." Yikes, that file is getting gigantic! Oh well.
It's still snowing. Yay.
YouTube Tuesday: Something Else Again
I have a subversive streak -- I take great pleasure in a commercial product put to unintended uses for the sake of art, or for juvenile fun, or for both. Such perversion of concept, when successful, I find highly entertaining and even strangely uplifting.
Tonight's video clip is a great example -- the music is Sal N' Pepa's classic "Push It," and the video features characters from the The Sims 2 dancing along and generally acting strangely. [You might recognize the song from its appearance in the Amp Energy Drink ad in this year's Super Bowl.]
The director pulled off some very nice choreography and the result is funny, and cool.
(No Sims were harmed in the creation of this video.)
Tonight's video clip is a great example -- the music is Sal N' Pepa's classic "Push It," and the video features characters from the The Sims 2 dancing along and generally acting strangely. [You might recognize the song from its appearance in the Amp Energy Drink ad in this year's Super Bowl.]
The director pulled off some very nice choreography and the result is funny, and cool.
(No Sims were harmed in the creation of this video.)
Happy Valentine's Day
I've written before, more than once, about how love can complicate D/s, and how the Dom/me has to be careful of all these things and bla bla bla . . .
Sometimes, a day like today, especially, it's good to forget all the intellectualizing and the theories and to stop and remember why any of it matters in the first place.
Not only to remember that, but to express it.
iris, storm, tasha: I love you. More than I know how to express or really to even understand. Today and every day I'm amazed and grateful beyond words that you are Mine.
Thank you for being you, girls. There is no better way I can say it.
Happy Valentine's Day.
YouTube Tuesday: Beautiful Disaster
There are few things more satisfying than the perfectly put together, two and a half minute rock song.
And here's one: "Beautiful Disaster" by American Hi-Fi. It's a song that I need to hear again as soon as it stops.
There is a good official video on YouTube, but apparently Vivendi/Unidersal would be irreparably damaged by My embedding said video here, so in lieu of the official video is a nice little anime video. Good job by the director.
"Break it down now
What you want anyway?
Right about now
What you want anyway?
I'll fuck it up again
What you want anyway?
We keep fallin' in love
What a beautiful disaster . . . "
And here's one: "Beautiful Disaster" by American Hi-Fi. It's a song that I need to hear again as soon as it stops.
There is a good official video on YouTube, but apparently Vivendi/Unidersal would be irreparably damaged by My embedding said video here, so in lieu of the official video is a nice little anime video. Good job by the director.
"Break it down now
What you want anyway?
Right about now
What you want anyway?
I'll fuck it up again
What you want anyway?
We keep fallin' in love
What a beautiful disaster . . . "
YouTube Tuesday: Anthrax
Thrity years ago a sub-genre of punk sprang up in Britain, featuring what can only be described as Marxist punk/funk.
The best of the lot were Gang of Four, from what I can dig up. Their album Entertainment is brilliant (politics aside).
Tonight's clip is Gang of Four's song "Anthrax" set to some eerily-modifed 9/11 footage (fittingly enough).
Powerful song, and a strangely powerful video.
The best of the lot were Gang of Four, from what I can dig up. Their album Entertainment is brilliant (politics aside).
Tonight's clip is Gang of Four's song "Anthrax" set to some eerily-modifed 9/11 footage (fittingly enough).
Powerful song, and a strangely powerful video.
Sports Interlude: How Good Does It Feel?
If you happened not to have seen the Super Bowl last night, the New York Giants, My New York Giants, beat the previously-undefeated, perennial recent Super Bowl winning, ready to be crowned best team of all time New England Patriots, 17-14.
My girl iris is a huge Giants' fan too, and last night we talked a little about where this win ranks compared with other big wins by our teams in our memory.
I told iris that "this feels as good as 1994." That's the year that the Rangers (that's hockey -- sheesh, keep up here!) won the Stanley Cup after a 54-year drought. It's hard for anyone but Ranger fans to understand how big 1994 was.
I told iris that this was "bigger then 1996." 1996 was the first year the Yankees won the world Series in almost two decades, and it was big for Me since it was the first win I could experience and appreciate as a thinking adult. 1996 is huge for Yankee fans, young and old.
So why is last night bigger than either of those two?
1. It was unexpected. The Giants were double-digit underdogs. They kept winning road playoff games, despite the odds. They were playing a team that was 18-0, in a game that the "experts" with few exceptions were billing as the Patriots' coronation.
And the road here wasn't so smooth. The Giant's started 0-2 and looked bad in the process. They then reeled off six wins but mostly against inferior teams. Then it got a little rough again, and Eli Manning looked fair to bad, with a couple of very bad games too. Entering the playoffs as the #5 seed at 10-6, everyone said they needed to win one playoff game or the season was a failure and the questions about Eli would intensify.
2. The game itself was a classic, as a football game. It was an incredible, involving, thrilling game to watch, irrespective of rooting interest or lack thereof. Arguably the best Super Bowl ever and certainly in the top handful. That adds to the intensity, the joy of having won it.
3. The Boston thing. Lately, Boston (Foxboro, where the Patriots play, counts) has been leading a charmed sports life. The Red Sox have won two World Series in four years -- they are the new Evil Empire. The Patriots had won three Super Bowls in six years, and this year had as dominant a season as could be drawn up, especially early on, crushing everyone in their path en route to an 18-0 record. The Boston Celtics made some key acquisitions this past off-season and are currently terrorizing the NBA and looking very good in the process.
So, lately in professional sports it's all about the Bostons.
Until last night. And it's impossible to convey how good that feels, that the Giants, out of nowhere, threw a monkey wrench into the increasingly arrogant and distasteful Boston sports juggernaut.
How good does it feel? Words fail me.
Go Big Blue.
Helpful, Powerful, Cliches
I'm constantly amazed at the utility and power inherent in certain cliches.
The other night I was talking to someone who wasn't in a very good way. Her concerns were real, and serious -- she wasn't exaggerating or making things up. There were good reasons for her to be upset and depressed.
And I found Myself eventually saying something along the lines of this:
On any given day, there are 244 reasons to be depressed, but only one reason to be happy. The trick is to embrace the one and to reject the 244.
She of course asked what the one reason to be happy was.
The only reason to be happy is that today, you wake up, alive and healthy (presumably), and you have an opportunity today to feel, and to be, someone different from the you that you're unhappy about/unhappy with.
I have no problem saying those things, corny as they might sound. Because I honestly, totally, unreservedly believe them to be not only true but also incredibly important. I strive (not always so successfully, alas) to live that way. That they are much easier said than done in no way lessens their value.
But the surprising part is that those statements helped My friend a lot. Not because she had never heard them before -- I'm sure she's heard them in similar forms a hundred times. But there are times when, reminded of something simple but undeniably true, the simple cliche takes on a meaning far beyond the surface sensibleness being communicated.
I don't attribute that amplified effect to any wonderful magical abilities I might have, certainly. I attribute it to the fact that we are constantly in a torrent of emotions, thoughts, and feelings, both our own and countless foreign ones as well. It's not unlike diving into a pool heavily packed with objects of various consistencies -- some bounce off of us, some buffet us and change our path, others are capable of truly injuring us.
And in that environment, when we lift our heads up and focus on something not in the pool with us, it has the capability to really reach us, quickly, deeply, and efficiently. And when that thing we "run into" in that state is something that does have underlying truth and value and a certain inarguable quality to it, its impact is magnified greatly.
The utility and power of certain ridiculously simple ideas truly can be staggering.
The other night I was talking to someone who wasn't in a very good way. Her concerns were real, and serious -- she wasn't exaggerating or making things up. There were good reasons for her to be upset and depressed.
And I found Myself eventually saying something along the lines of this:
On any given day, there are 244 reasons to be depressed, but only one reason to be happy. The trick is to embrace the one and to reject the 244.
She of course asked what the one reason to be happy was.
The only reason to be happy is that today, you wake up, alive and healthy (presumably), and you have an opportunity today to feel, and to be, someone different from the you that you're unhappy about/unhappy with.
I have no problem saying those things, corny as they might sound. Because I honestly, totally, unreservedly believe them to be not only true but also incredibly important. I strive (not always so successfully, alas) to live that way. That they are much easier said than done in no way lessens their value.
But the surprising part is that those statements helped My friend a lot. Not because she had never heard them before -- I'm sure she's heard them in similar forms a hundred times. But there are times when, reminded of something simple but undeniably true, the simple cliche takes on a meaning far beyond the surface sensibleness being communicated.
I don't attribute that amplified effect to any wonderful magical abilities I might have, certainly. I attribute it to the fact that we are constantly in a torrent of emotions, thoughts, and feelings, both our own and countless foreign ones as well. It's not unlike diving into a pool heavily packed with objects of various consistencies -- some bounce off of us, some buffet us and change our path, others are capable of truly injuring us.
And in that environment, when we lift our heads up and focus on something not in the pool with us, it has the capability to really reach us, quickly, deeply, and efficiently. And when that thing we "run into" in that state is something that does have underlying truth and value and a certain inarguable quality to it, its impact is magnified greatly.
The utility and power of certain ridiculously simple ideas truly can be staggering.
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