Mack Hall, HSG
10 July 2014
Sitting on the
Porch with Zombies and Robert Duvall
Thoughts on a summer day, short thoughts, because
sometimes it’s just too hot to think much:
Taking a water pill with water – ironic, eh?
Every evening someone on the local television news says
“Next, the weather, but first...” This
means that the weather report comes after a series of commercials and some
fluffy bit of filler that is neither useful nor amusing. The weather is not next at all, so why does
someone say it is? If the speaker is
unreliable in that small matter, perhaps he is also unreliable in his news
reports.
And speaking of television weather reports – all of you
who remember “weather girls,” wave your Medicare cards (if your arthritis
permits).
Does Really Big Oil Company know who holds the franchises
on their gas stations in the American west?
When you walk into one there’s a Star Wars Creature Cantina©® moment and
a sudden silence as you find yourself being glared at suspiciously by some
fellows who appear to know where the bodies are buried. Even so, they seem merry and hospitable when
compared to an Air Canada cabin crew.
Benjamin Franklin is said to have said that beer is proof
that God loves us, and wants us to be happy.
I’d say iced tea. And dachshund
puppies.
Kirbyville’s Dick Martin, of happy memory, said that beer
should be poured back into the horse it came out of.
Why don’t state and federal governments hassle Big
Internet for their obscure, sticky contracts?
Perhaps it’s because government functionaries have unlimited ‘net access
on the job and sometimes as a take-home perk, paid for by the taxpayers, and so
don’t care. “Let the people eat data.”
“Epic fail” is by now an epic fail. So are “Keep Calm and______” and “Got ______?” Stop it.
Stop it now.
Yep, that manly man on the Orwellian telescreen is still
peddling gold while riding his horse and flying his airplane and hangin’ out in
his manly study. His argument is that you
should give him your worthless dollars in exchange for his valuable gold. But if his gold is so valuable and your
dollars so worthless, why does he propose an exchange?
“Actually” is actually the most overused adverb at
present, and, actually, one of the most pointless, actually. Actually, can anything be unactually said or unactually
experienced? We say “actually” so often
now that actually we risk becoming English, actually. Then we’d follow soccer / futbol. Shudder.
Actually.
Cats are useful because they keep mice and rats from
eating the environmentally-correct but tasty wiring in new cars. Beyond that, they are sort of like decorative
sofa pillows that bite.
Whatever happened to Technicolor©®? Modern movies are filmed in grim, dull halftones
that portray even a forest scene with all the joy of an abandoned Soviet cement
factory on an overcast day in February.
Real, silvery, old-film-school black-and-white is great, as is real
color, but this current fashion in dulled images will date as badly as
hand-held shots and quick-zooms from the 1960s.
Robert Duvall makes any movie a good movie, despite the
mischief of producers, directors, and writers.
He has made himself the best cowboy star of the last thirty years, and
while the future of any work of art is difficult to predict, I’ll bet a round
of drinks down at the Long Branch Saloon that his films, like those of John
Wayne, will be watched, studied, and enjoyed for generations to come. So there, computerized zombie planet of the hamsters
scum.
Okay, that’s enough thinking for one day. Time for sitting on the porch with a glass of tea.
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