Month: September 2012

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Details Add Verisimilitude… or Not

In fiction, the less descriptive details detract from creating suspension of disbelief, the less they might drag a reader out of the story to say, “Nuh-uh! No way! Not so!” and so getting the little things right can make a difference in verisimilitude and suspension of disbelief, let alone simple enjoyment of a story well told.

Let me offer a very small example (one of, sadly, more than a few from a book now in hand):

Speaking about an event in Atilla’s life tied to a specific town in Italy in 452 A.D., a learned gentleman intones,

“The town was founded in the first century, so it was already three hundred years old when Atilla arrived.”

Really? Any (and I do mean ANY) literate person knows that the first century A.D. began with year 1 and went through 100 A.D. 452 A.D. was squarely in the middle of the FIFTH century. It would have made sense to have said, “The town was founded in the first century, so it was already FOUR hundred years old when Atilla arrived.”

When a novel that relies heavily on historical citations (and legends tied to history) begins to pile up errors like that, it starts to seriously detract from the story.

No, before you ask, it’s not a book by Dan Brown. It’s not within several orders of magnitude of being THAT bad. In fact, apart from niggling little things like the one noted above, and quite contra a Dan Brown prose atrocity, it’s actually pretty good reading, which is what makes these niggling little problems… problems.

Continue reading “Details Add Verisimilitude… or Not”

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Eureka!

[N.B. Added link to one example–of many, many examples–of behaviors in support of my thesis below. ;-)]

The Zero has been an open book enigma, wrapped in a con man’s smile, covered by a flack industry’s hand-waving distractions and outright lies.

All this stuff we’ve been seeing from The Zero, his fellow travelers and cronies–the gutting of the economy and building of “golden Solyndrachutes” for the Crony Class, the bowing and scraping and (at least metaphorical) bending of knee to all sorts of foreign potentates and outright enemies of the US, the shredding of constitutional guarantees of fundamental human rights, and on and on and on: it’s all about Moochele’s campaign to combat her childhood nemesis. Yep, her childhood obesity is driving all this.

Oh, I have no picture of her as a fat child, but her psychological derangement is blatantly apparent, and its most likely cause is her own self-image, formed growing up as a fat kid.

And how does this explain The Zero’s (and his fellow travelers, etc.) behaviors? Think about if for a nano-second (that’s about all it takes, of course, to understand so simple a set of minds).

  • That Moochele drags Barry around firmly by the one ball she has let him keep is pretty much a given, taking even a brief glance at their respective public behaviors. One shudders to think what that emasculated quasi-male suffers in private (but then, considering who and what it is, notsomuch with the shuddering, ya know?)
  • That EVERYTHING Barry (and etc.) has done is aimed squarely at enfeebling the US is obvious to anyone with active brain cells numbering greater than that found in the average used Kleenex.
  • That this enfeebling of America has resulted and continues to progressively result in a cancelation of the “super-size” menu plan for Americans is also obvious. Just take a look at that package of bacon you’ve been buying for years. It doesn’t cost a LOT more (in increasingly worthless fiat dollars) now than when the Zero took office, true, but have you stopped to look closely at why that is? Yep. It’s now 12 ounces instead of 16. That package of cookies that’s only a “little more expensive” than in 2009? Yep. Smaller.
  • And as “the little people” have less and less to spend on smaller and smaller portions, Moochele’s dream from her childhood will come to pass. It’s almost biblical in scope. Or Greek god-like in petty, childish arrogance. (Those columns: whose idea were they really? Hmmm?)

And so it goes. Genius! It’s all about slowly weaning Americans from food entirely!

Continue reading “Eureka!”

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Zero Movie

When the movie about The Zero’s reign is made (and, oh, it will be!) themes and titles need to be ready. What would you propose?

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Perspective

Now that a coupla days have passed since folks began bemoaning the effects of the “replacement refs'” advent on their beloved [Whatevers], perhaps an observation from Ring Lardner’s days as a sports reporter in Chicago would be fitting:

“Hero-worship is the national disease that does most to keep the grandstands full and the playgrounds empty.”

As couch potatoes and the never-weres of the sports fields everywhere thrash and moan about the horrible officiating ruining “their” teams’ games, maybe, to borrow a Jonah Goldberg quip, they need to get out and get a tan.

Meanwhile, those of us who were never all that impressed by circuses would like a little less bitchin’ and moanin’ about replacement refs and other inanities. Professional sports for the enstupiation of those with too much time on their hands and no thoughts nor even any worthwhile hobbies to occupy that time? DGARA.

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“Nothing to See Here; Move It Along…”

Well, actually, nothing in this video was done in a corner, but with cover from the Mass MEdia Podpeople Hivemind (A.K.A. “Bylines for Barry”) most people simply have no idea why The Zero fiddles while the Middle East burns, the US economy crumbles*, our security wanes… This video points to part of the reason. The rest? Well, his stated goal to “fundamentally transform”** the US* explains even more.

http://youtu.be/TJfufR7dUM8

Continue reading ““Nothing to See Here; Move It Along…””

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Evidence That Many “Computer Users” Are Patzers?

OK, maybe that’s overstating things a wee tad. Perhaps this:

1 in 4 tablet owners say it is now their primary computer

…is merely evidence that a whole lotta much “computer users” are just media consumers, not really “computer users”. Doing anything productive on a tablet is just silly, if a desktop or notebook is available. Tablets are good (for different values of “good” depending on the activity) for limited email, web browsing (*meh* if you like the limited tablet web browsing experience, I suppose) and viewing videos or listening to music. Yes, despite all the apps available for the iPhad, it, too, is an extremely limited platform. Almost everything else that falls under the rubric of actually doing anything is better done on a so-called “legacy” platform (so-called by tablet fanbois-n-gurlz).

So, yeh, if the article has its facts straight, 1/4 of “computer users” are just consumers of stuff (I’m counting their limited web browsing, “social media” faux socializing, etc. as “stuff” here), using their tablets to get their consumer fix.

Color me impressed that so many are being removed from the pool of those who REALLY need to be inhabitants of Assisted Computing Facilities.

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“Eye Candy” at “The View”?

So, The Zero appeared on “The View” instead of, oh, I dunno, doing his job, and offered, “I’ve been told I’m just eye candy here.”

I’ve seen better:

Come one! Somebody tell me that’s racist.

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False Memories

I really have no idea how common this is with other folk, but I have certain false “memories” that, no matter how much I exorcise them with facts, keep recurring. All the ones I’ve identified are dream-based.

Example: I sometimes wake in the night with a sense of loss, of having done something really, really stupid, and then I “recall”–very vividly–that I left the first car I ever bought behind in a move, just sitting in a parking space in front of a neighbor’s house with the key in it. Now, we moved from that house more than 20 years ago… and that was eighteen years after someone *cough* drove my car into the ground and had it hauled off to the junkyard while I was traveling with a music tour for the summer.

But still, every now and then, despite knowing what happened to that car, I “remember” leaving it behind, sitting in front of a neighbor’s house when my wife, kids and I moved.

Now, I’m always able to–temporarily–exorcise the “memory” and, like other false memories, I’ve always recognized it as such (though sometimes, in the middle of the night, not until I’ve given it some thought). But do I recognize all such false memories as being false?

How can I know?

Continue reading “False Memories”