"In a democracy (‘rule by mob’), those who refuse to learn from history will be the majority and will dictate that everyone else suffer for their ignorance."
…it does seem as though the way things are trending that all the shows worth watching will eventually be limited to Brit TV. Spy seems to be another one that’s worlds and away better than anything on American cable TV. Sadly, only six episodes. I’ll have to wait for the Fall “season” for more.
Oh, well. Time to cancel the TV portion of our cable subscription? Have to examine the package discount, but maybe.
As I noted earlier in “Suspension of Belief” one depiction in film/TV that always nauseates me is an absolutely incompetent portrayal of musical performance or direction. The most recent such “gagamaggot” butchery of a depiction of musical direction I’ve seen was given by Academy Award-winning director Peter Dougan Capaldi in an acting role in the 2006 Midsomer Murders episode, Death in Chorus, where he played a “perfectionist” choral director. Badly. Very, very badly. I’d walk out of the first rehearsal run by someone as incompetent as the director as portrayed by this yutz.
*sigh*
And the actors and the director of the episode apparently didn’t know any better, either.
Gagamaggot.
We have an entertainment center cabinet that’s a wee tad over 5′ in length. When I sit on the couch and hold my teensy lil Kindle Fire at arm’s length, it more than covers my view of the EC. Given the gorgeous display on the Fire, it’s like having my own, personal, hand-held “big screen TV”.
So, as long as I can find streaming video to suit my tastes, I can defer buying a bigger TV, eh? 😉
Of course, the lil 15.6″ screen on my laptop seems even larger in viewing area, when viewed from its usual place on my lap… Heck, in use, it appears to cover 3/4 of the whole wall facing me.
Oh what a difference perspective makes.
…why it is that some people who just “can’t stand” to watch TV or movies on their laptops or desktops nevertheless find squinting at TV or movies on an eeentsy-weensy 3″-4″ smartphone’s screen to be da bomb?*
…why some people call their desktops their “hard drives” or think referring to their hard drive as “memory” is appropriate? These are often the same people who think that turning off their desktop’s monitor=turning off the computer.
…how some people confuse “upload” with “download” with “install”.
…how some people can use computers for years and not even know what OS they have installed or the names of the programs they use most OR that “program” and “application” are essentially interchangeable terms.
Just stupid, I guess, ignorant savages who think electricity and everything connected to it is just magic.
*Note: when I find some TV or movie worth watching, the only technology I prefer to avoid using to watch it is a typical big screen theater. Wastes of money on many levels, IMO–particularly in being crammed into audiences increasingly filled with yahoos, boors and “idjits”. TV (big or small screen), desktop, laptop, tablet: all fine with me, especially since in the last three formats I can have volume levels controlled to my taste and in the latter two formats I can use really, really good ear buds or earphones for surprisingly accurate sound reproduction and in the desktop format, my very good surround sound system really makes for great listening in my office. TV? Notsomuch, as its sound is shared (and that’s enough of that story).
Good fiction–written or portrayed on film or stage–requires suspension of disbelief, but that, in turn, requires an at least minimal amount of competence from writers, editors, directors and actors in order that an intelligent and reasonably literate audience not be offended into rejection of the fiction the putative artists are attempting to portray.
It’s usually the little things. In dramatic performances, props and settings don’t have to depict things in meticulous detail in order to be believable within a story’s framework, but such things should at least evoke a credible representation of places and things that advance a story. Items evoking a late 1950s setting should not dominate a late 1960s plot line, for example, and in film, closeups of patently fake stage blood or grossly incongruous weather and lighting, etc., are distractions that any director with half a brain ought to avoid.
So, too, are problems with actors portraying behaviors that their characters engage in daily, routinely–behaviors, “business” in acting terms, that the characters are supposedly competent to perform–and botching the action, sometimes almost too clumsily for words. *sigh* And actors portraying certain professional acts incompetently are complete turn-offs for anyone with even minimal knowledge of competent performance of those actions. My “favorite” is idiots making a hash of portraying music conductors. In fact, in a lifetime of viewing dramatic fiction, I have seen actors portraying the conducting of musical performances do a credible job just twice. The rest of the time the portrayals range from simply stupid and incompetent to offensive.
In written fiction, one of the surest signs of a writer whose characters are little more than babbling descriptions by a blind man of faded shadows of statues based on paintings made from blurred photos of reflections in a carnival mirror is when the writer tries to create a character by listing the things that character owns–usually invoking some currently trendy brands of whatever objects the writer associates with the sort of person the writer thinks he’s trying to evoke. Usually wrongly.
Of course these kinds of things are common in most fiction nowadays, so finding anything contemporary that at least minimizes these sorts of distractions is a Good Thing.
But at least I’m not dealing here with the even more poorly-depicted fiction in newspapers and network news. That’s even worse.
A brief addendum. I’ve mentioned the Brit mystery show I’ve been watching. I’m currently in season seven (of fifteen), and although I still enjoy the incidental instrumental music a great deal and the scenery and sets just as much, one thing has become increasingly grating: the murders. Almost every one of the persons murdered in the stories has been a complete idiot, characters intent on lending Darwin a hand in weeding the gene pool, as it were (though an unfortunate number are portrayed as having reproduced before their stupidity eliminates them).
I’ll let one typical “victim” stand in as a proxy for almost all the rest. After bludgeoning one cooperative soul to death with a handy cudgel, the murderer continues to stand over the body of his complicit victim. As he’s standing there, another useful idiot approaches and says, “What have you done?!?” and very helpfully kneels over the body as if to say, “Me! Me! Kill me next, please!”
Of course, the murderer obliges.
*sigh*
How many idiotic characters will the writers dispose of before the show ends? The answer: both too many and not enough… No wonder the British Empire is no more. 😉 But… given that the show is still so much better than the fare that attracts viewers in droves on American TV, perhaps that indicates something about an inevitable decline of American society and even–maybe–America’s place on the world’s stage, as well.
“That’s not a huge bald spot.”
*heh*
So, lost bunches of fat in the last year-and-a-bit. My Wonder Woman’s been after me to get new clothes, as a result. So, OK. New slacks. But… well, for years I’ve carried my wallet in a front pocket. That started when I was spending 50,000 or more miles a year with my butt planted on a car seat to work and back, lather, rinse, repeat. But, with a cell phone, a wallet, knives (What?!? You carry just one?!?), change, keys and other such effluvia, it’s begun to get cumbersome, so… a man-purse:
Eh~ It was under $7 and got here the day after I ordered it, thanks to Amazon Prime.
Never thought I’d actually like something like this, but… I have already found I like this thing. So far, I ride this “fanny pack” on my left hip. Pockets are empty. It even has room for my Kindle Fire. That’s nice.
And the really fun thing? Shirts that just hang on me, now, hang right over it. *heh*
BTW, lovin’ that Amazon Prime “free” 2-day shipping. I’ve already gotten my money’s worth out of the videos, so the “free” 2-day shipping (though this came next day) really does seem free.
Oh, yeh, the man-purse works well for casual wear. I think I’ll keep it and use it.
I have a little ditty that uses the old Kennel Ration commercial, “My dog’s better than your dog” tune, but I’ll not inflict it on you now.
The point, though? Different does not necessarily mean better. We are all different from the skin all the way to the bone and blood and meat and sinew, heart and soul. Different in composition, talents, abilities, outlook, desire, understanding, etc.
We are also all the same in many ways. Some of the most important ways we are the same include that we all have the same opportunities while at the same time we all have different opportunities.
*huh?!?*
Let me repeat that.
We all have the same opportunities while at the same time we all have different opportunities. We all have the opportunity to choose to be useful. We all have different opportunities (and different kinds of opporunities) to be useful. Some, sadly, choose to be useful in the least positive way, viz.,
“If you can’t be a good example, then you’ll just have to be a horrible warning”–Catherine Aird
And remember,
Of course, the graphic and attendant caption misses the simple fact that there can be many uses for such a distorted, mangled tool, but of course, none of those uses fit within its original design parameters…
Another opportunity that everyone has is the opportunity to be just. Everyone can choose to be fair in dealing with others… or to be hypocritical, applying standards–if any–differently to different classes of people: the very essence of unjust behavior.
“Those children are noisy and rude, while my children [who are engaging in exactly the same behavior] are simply being [enthusiastic, exuberant, creative–pick your own fav hypocritical lie].”
All of us have the opportunity to choose to be grateful… or to be whiners. If you’re alive, know that you don’t deserve to be. It’s a gift. Start there. I like the way Joe Sobran put it,
As one of the characters in Lear tells his father: “Thy life’s a miracle.” Of whom is that not true?
The more we reflect on the sheer oddity of our very existence and, in addition, of our eligibility for salvation, the deeper our gratitude must be. Amazing grace indeed! To call it astounding is to express the matter feebly. Why me? How on earth could I ever have deserved this, the promise of eternal joy?
And given all this, in comparison with which winning the greatest lottery in the world is just a minor fluke, how can I dare to sin again, or to be anything less than a saint for the rest of my life?
I suppose I could continue, but you get my drift, I trust. I’ll leave the other ways we are “the same” (and different in ways that make little difference at all, really… and all the difference in the world, as well) as an exercise for the reader.
I don’t know exactly what it says that my only downloads on Tuesday were Holst’s “The Planets” (performances by an orchestra I’d not heard before) and the Kama Sutra (Kindle format, ‘cos I can’t locate my hardcopy).
Oh, wait. I forgot Knox’s Irregulars, borrowed from the Kindle Library.
Reaching for eclecticism, O I guess. (I loves me some typos in the morning, I does indeedy.)
I had a guy call me this afternoon with a problem installing a printer on an Ubuntu box. Somewhere in the midst of it all he asked me what I would be doing for the Super Bowl.
Him don’t know me vewy well, do he? *heh*
I asked him when it was going to be. He said 5:30. I then asked what day. He said today.
*heh* Who’d-a think it?
Super Bowl? I DGARA.
If I wanted to watch football, I’d look for one of these games: