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Life is so much calmer when you mute the people who are leaning hard into horror. I’ve muted everyone who seems to yearn for bad news, and find some grim sense of superiority by being in the clan that knows that all is rotten, and all is lost. Otherwise innocuous Twitter accounts retweet something, and you realize they hold a set of certainties you don’t, and the affiliation with these certainties says a lot. It’s not just the anger, it’s the certainty that all their predicates are true and obvious to anyone with a brain.
The only voices worth listening to are the ones that offer dispassionate facts, refrain from drawing conclusions that fit a preexisting ideological template, and temper the news of the day with the optimism of the year. Or, the voices that have been electronically altered to sound like a dog.
My wife has been watching these YouTube videos that feature a talking dog giving advice. She finds them adorable. A little dog being happy and encouraging the “two-legs” or some such term to be happy and creative. For her birthday, Daughter and I made one with some software and voice-altering tech; it’s Birch, wanting to have a talk about her having another dog online. He’s a bit hurt, to be honest. It was fun to do, and Wife got a stitch from laughing at it. Best birthday present ever! But to change the voice I thought I’d try some apps from the App Store, and they did indeed alter voices along the usual parameters. Helium! Squirrel! Robot! Et cetera.
I tried two. Lousy interface, bizarre instructions, and those tell-tale mangled-English alert boxes that make you scratch your head.
Thank you for that; I would, indeed, like to avoid LOUD HOWLING SOUND.
This was the best; it popped up when I tried to forward the file via message.
Annnnnd delete. Disclose being the strange word. Why do I have to consent to sharing my file with someone else? Or are you saying this goes straight to the servers for the app’s developer (in China, it seems) for reasons I needn’t know?
Anyway, a grand day, in these times. Birthday was jolly, Rotaria gave a practice of her presentation she has to give online, the girls played badminton, I wrote a lot and redesigned some sites, we had Vietnamese dinner, and it was Seventy Degrees. Everyone was in a good mood and the exhausting grey pall of March seems to be receding, psychologically.
That’s all I have today.
Too many germs in the subway: there’s an evergreen item. |
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The last one is interesting: Coolidge is more informative and useful than the “delightful humor of the Taft days.”
People remembered the Taft days. |
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CBD:
Driscoll became editor of the Wichita Eagle in 1919 but was forced out of his position in the 1920s by the Ku Klux Klan, active in Kansas politics at the time.
I find this a liiiiiitle hard to believe.
Does that make me a cynic with no faith in my fellow man? |
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Wikipedia:
Driscoll became editor of the Wichita Eagle in 1919 but was forced out of his position in the 1920s by the Ku Klux Klan, active in Kansas politics at the time.
I find this a liiiiiitle hard to believe.
Does that make me a cynic with no faith in my fellow man? |
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If you’re in the mood, you can knock over the Shipp house: |
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I’ve no idea why they ran these. |
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The Lily, now playing at the America. |
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Behind-the-scenes story on the theater, here. Lots of pictures of old stuff left behind. Still open!
As for the movie - eh. Doesn’t seem to be much about it, and frankly it sounds like a million other movies. Should she? Oh, I don’t know. Depends, doesn’t it? |
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They say humor is perishable. They’re usually right. But we remember the names of the guys who were regarded as funny. |
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Irwin C. Cobb was the highest paid staff writer in the United States.
Here he’s quoting someone else’s material - Finley Peter Dunne. We might remember Cobb; we don’t remember Dunne.
Finley Peter Dunne (July 10, 1867 – April 24, 1936) was an American humorist and writer from Chicago. In 1898 Dunne published Mr. Dooley in Peace and in War, a collection of his nationally syndicated Mr. Dooley sketches.[1] Speaking with the thick verbiage and accent of an Irish immigrant from County Roscommon, the fictional Mr. Dooley expounded upon political and social issues of the day from his South Side Chicago Irish pub.[2] Dunne's sly humor and political acumen won the support of President Theodore Roosevelt, a frequent target of Mr. Dooley's barbs.[3] Dunne's sketches became so popular and such a litmus test of public opinion that they were read each week at White House cabinet meetings.
He coined the phrase “politics ain’t beanbag,” and no one credits him.
He also wrote something about newspapers comforting the afflicted, but I can’t remember the rest of it.
Kidding; of course it’s a famous line. (And not 1 out 100 journalists who uses it could name its author, I suspect.) Context matters:
As a journalist in the age of "muckraking journalism", Dunne was aware of the power of institutions, including his own. Writing as Dooley, Dunne once wrote the following passage mocking hypocrisy and self-importance in the newspapers themselves:
"Th newspaper does ivrything f'r us. It runs th' polis foorce an' th' banks, commands th' milishy, controls th' ligislachure, baptizes th' young, marries th' foolish, comforts th' afflicted, afflicts th' comfortable, buries th' dead an' roasts thim aftherward”
Also: “According to an article in the November 5, 2006 edition of The New York Times, he coined the truism, often wrongly attributed to Tip O'Neill, that "all politics is local.” |
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I love this strip, but I’m not sure I get the gag. |
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Usually the gags are so obvious it’s impossible not to get them.
That is not a compliment. |
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Like I said, that's all I have today! Except for the update. And once again . . . something's different. Eventually. Warning - this one does not end with a return to the menu; it goes to the next area of the site, which is vast, so you may want to bail when you get to the Candy Bars. Because you've seen them before.
Like, oh, five or six years ago. |
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