Despite my inclination as a lover of animals (in a strictly platonic sense, of course), I find it hard to get worked up about Eight Belles getting shipped off to the glue factory.
In fact, it’s surprising that this kind of thing doesn’t happen more often. What do you expect when an animal that weighs 1000 pounds or more is forced to run at top speed on little spindly-ass legs? If you mess with the bull, you’ll get the horns, as the saying goes.
Yawn. All of that is ridiculous, course. My issue with horse racing is not because it’s allegedly barbaric. I dislike it simply because it’s boring. Watching a bunch of horses run around in a big circle is worse than watching paint dry. The most exciting two minutes in sports? How about the most over-hyped and anti-climactic?
Corn is king here in central Illinois. It’s been that way for many decades and will continue to be for many decades more.
Corn feeds humans as well as cattle, which in turn feed us some more. And it also feeds the ever-growing maw of the ethanol industry. With the massive subsidies being paid for corn to make ethanol, farmers would be crazy not to go buckwild with the maize.
This, of course, presents some unforeseen consequences: Greater (some might say artificial) demand for corn-based ethanol pushes grain prices up, and less supply for feed (human or otherwise) pushes prices up some more. Add to that the ethical quandaries of taking corn out of the food supply (and putting it into gas tanks) when untold millions in this country and around the world go hungry as well as the clearing of CO2-sucking rainforests and grasslands to make room for corn. There also are all kinds of studies that show corn-based ethanol’s energy inefficiency.
(B)iofuel subsidies … are pushing more farmers to ditch their barley crops — which are necessary to make beer — in favor of crops that earn them lucrative subsidies from regulators trying to fight global warming.
Once again, it’s Basic Economics 101: Less barley for beer means higher beer prices. Being the kind of person who frequents beer stores on a regular basis, I’ve noticed recently that beer prices are going crazy. I pretty much don’t buy imports at all anymore. Hacker-Pschorr is tasty stuff, but I’m not going to pay $9.99 for a six-pack. And Bishop’s Finger is even better, but it costs even more than the H-P for a four-pack.
And with domestic craft beers, it’s not just less barley: There’s a shortage of hops, too. I’m seeing beers that cost $1 or $2 more for a six-pack than they did just a few months ago. Flying Dog varieties have gone from $6.99 to $8.99. You can’t find a sixer of Sierra Nevada products anywhere for less than $8.99 unless it’s on sale at the grocery. Same deal with Goose Island beers, and they only have to make a 3-hour trip south from Chicago. And be prepared to take out a second mortgage for Rogue products: If you’re hankering for some Dead Guy Ale, it’ll set you back $10.49 for a six-pack or $5.99 for a 22-ouncer, and that’s when it’s on sale at County Market.
It’s enough to make a guy get back into making his own suds. I already have most of the necessary equipment, and if the input costs (malt extract, hops, yeast, water and bottle caps) come out to less than 90 cents per 12-ounce bottle (based on the price plus tax of Sierra Nevada), it would make economic sense to resume homebrewing.
Full disclosure: I am a small-dog bigot. I loathe little wussy dogs. Dogs should not have long, flowing locks, nor should they be festooned with bows. They also should not have to suffer the indignity of the shaved ass. If you’re going to get a dog, get a Dog. Otherwise, just get a cat.
There, I said it. *cleansing breath*
This year’s winner of the Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show is Uno, a beagle. That’s a perfectly acceptable breed of canine, one that can actually earn its keep by doing useful stuff like tracking game or sniffing out dead people. Plus, the dog’s name is Uno, which reminds me of back in the day, when we used to make fun of one kid in the neighborhood who had one testicle by calling him Uno. Good times.
In other Man Dog news, Basie went to the vet Monday. He has doubled his weight (he’s 15 pounds now) in the three weeks since he joined our family. Even the vet seemed mildly surprised. Basie doesn’t really eat that much. He’s more of a grazer than a devourer. We’re still on our first bag of Puppy Chow. Maybe it’s the rabbit poop and dead birds he’s filling up on.
Here’s another picture, this time of him gunning for the camera strap:
Merriam-Webster has just released its word of the year. Last year’s top word, “truthiness,” was fun and whimsical. This year’s winner is stupid and irritating.
The 2007 word of the year is “w00t.” No, not “what.” It’s “w00t.” Yes, those are zeroes in there. This unfortunate word is “used by gamers as an exclamation of happiness or triumph.” Merriam-Webster president John Morse says:
It shows a really interesting thing that’s going on in language.
As someone in the language business, I don’t find it interesting at all. I find it loathsome, to be honest:
You don’t spell words with numbers. The whole “l337″ argot is obnoxious. Words are supposed to communicate, and spelling them with numbers hinders that communication.
I’m about as lame and un-with it as it gets when it comes to Internet phenomena, but even I had seen this “w00t” nonsense come and go during the 2006 baseball season, during which the expression enjoyed a brief popularity in in-game threads on Viva El Birdos.
The original usage of the term actually came from the song “Whoot! There It Is” by wack Miami bass group 95 South. That alone makes me hate the word.
I may be overreacting, though:
“It’s amusing, but it’s limited to a small community and unlikely to spread and unlikely to last,” said [Allan] Metcalf, an English professor at MacMurray College in Jacksonville, Ill.
There are few subgenres of rock music more loathsome than hair metal. Or poodle rock, or butt rock, or cock rock, whatever you want to call it. It all sucks.
Beginning in the mid-1980s, hair metal enjoyed unchallenged popularity on MTV, which was most kids’ main source of music back then (and which actually played music videos). You couldn’t go more than one or two videos without one of those shitty bands in lipstick and blush, dressed in skintight leather pants festooned with bandannas flinging their poodle haircuts about.
Even “Headbanger’s Ball,” where all the actual metal videos were relegated, was overrun with crap like Trixter and Warrant. Perhaps that was because in its early days, The Ball was hosted by Mr. Poodle Haircut himself, Adam Curry.
This kind of music burns its candle of suckitude on both ends. The vapid lyrical content, over-reverbed drums, self-indulgent weedly-weedly guitar solos and scalded-cat vocals are bad enough. It’s the image that these bands project is what makes them doubly loathsome. What is cool about making yourself look as womanly as possible by troweling makeup on and teasing your hair? MTV should have run a contest for girls back in the day: “Win a dream date with Poison, where you can trade makeup and hair secrets!” The stage antics of these bands were just as ridiculous as the way they looked: Singers twirling microphones, guitarists throwing their “axes” over their shoulders, drummers flipping their sticks, etc. It’s all contrived and corny and probably learned at Musicians Institute.
Thankfully, by the early 1990s other bands had come along to relegate hair metal to the cutout bin of musical history. On with the list:
5. “Girl School,” Britny Fox – I don’t recall this one getting a lot of daytime play on MTV. But did it ever rule “Headbanger’s Ball.” You had to sit through two or three videos such as this to get to one from Anthrax or Suicidal Tendencies. It doesn’t take a genius to be able to infer the content of the video from the song’s title.
4. “More Than Words,” Extreme – This song should have been called “Baby I Wanna Fuck You.” It’s not your typical chorusy, reverby, overwrought hair-metal power ballad, but with all the subtlety of a sledgehammer, the lyrics fulfill two of the three main hair-metal cliches: partying, fucking and loving you forever. You can guess which two this song has.
3. The entire “Hysteria” album, Def Leppard – There was a time when Def Leppard didn’t suck. In the early 1980s, they actually were considered among the top acts of the so-called New Wave of British Metal. And as an 8-year-old with two teenaged siblings, I thought the “Pyromania” album (”Onda-gleeben-glouten-globen!”) was the cat’s ass. I listened to that record so much that I even memorized the vinyl noises in between songs on my brother’s copy. But something happened in between “Pyromania” and “Hysteria” that turned this band into garbage. Maybe it was the drummer losing his arm, maybe it was my evolving musical tastes. But during seventh grade, this album spawned a never-ending stream crappy videos, epitomized by:
2. “Unskinny Bop,” Poison – This song contains possibly the worst lyric in the history of recorded music: “Like gasoline you wanna pump me.” Seriously… what the fuck?
1. “I’ll Never Let You Go (Angel Eyes),” Steelheart – Coming at the tail end of hair-metal’s “relevance,” this song very well could have been the one to lower the hair-metal casket into its grave. It neatly encapsulates most of hair-metal cliches: The parentheticized song title; the over-chorused arpeggiated acoustic guitar intro; the over-reverbed drums, of which there are a ridiculous amount; and, of course, the eardrum-perforating, upper-register screeching of the lead singer. Please remove all pets and small children from the room before the end of the video.
In the late 1980s, hair metal, along with R&B counterpart new jack swing, was soulless, corporate music at its acme that even a moderately intelligent 13-year-old could see through. And after seeing these videos again 15 years later, it is music that, even with the benefit of nostalgia, has not gotten any better with age.
My 18-year-old self would not approve of this post.
Back in the day, I had written a column for Windows, the student newspaper at Southeast High School, titled “Take This Shirt And Shove It.” In it, I registered my disapproval at being told by a teacher to turn the T-shirt I was wearing inside out.
So in the current dress-code kerfuffle, you might think I would be on the side of free expression through clothing.
You would be wrong.
To get you up to speed, Franklin Middle School is one of a few schools that require a uniform of sorts, generally khaki pants and a school-colored polo-style shirt. A seventh-grader there is challenging this “uniform” by wearing what she pleases, and Mommy and Daddy are squarely in her corner.
Some well-meaning but misguided people are trying to make a federal case out of this. Others, seemingly completely without irony or perspective, are calling the girl’s actions “heroic” and comparing her “plight” to that of Rosa Parks:
How much longer before the administration starts widdling that down to the kids with blond hair and blue eyes sit in front, kids with black hair and brown eyes in back. … (I)t took one woman to stand up for her rights by saying No,I will not give up my seat so you can sit down. History was changed. This is about what is right and just.
Dress codes! It’s the new racism!
Is undermining the school’s authority “right and just?” This is a school rule. Students are to follow school rules. If a student can defy a rule and still pretty much get away with it, why would any other student follow the rule? Not being able go to a dance or a basketball game is hardly a punishment.
Still others think that the dress code is some sort of conspiracy to push clothing that the school sells:
This school capriciously enforces a standard of dress that is designed to push the sale of school apparel. It is no coincidence that this “policy” began soon after the sale of candy was eliminated. It’s all about the money, foks!
OK, so what? What’s the difference between buying a polo-style shirt at Kohl’s and buying a Falcons sweatshirt from the school? And is it such an awful thing to actually support your public schools beyond the property taxes you pay?
It’s all very simple. The school rule is very clear. If you break the rule, there will be consequences. Well, there were consequences, until the Franklin principal folded faster than Superman on laundry day.
And this is the message that is being sent to the students: If you don’t like the rules, don’t follow them. They aren’t going to be enforced anyway.
I just don’t understand the people who complain about how bad they think District 186 is but still actively undermine the district’s authority to enforce its own rules.
I’m not sure which is more appalling: The fact that there is a two-CD compilation called “Buzz Ballads” or the music contained therein.
I was watching a DVRed episode of “The Sarah Silverman Program” (which is brilliant, by the way) this morning and before I could grab the remote to fast-forward through the commericals, an ad came up for this “Buzz Ballads,” which apparently comprises “32 of the most rockin’ alternative power ballads,” according to the spot.
I remember a time when “alternative power ballad” would have been a contradiction in terms, so that’s strike one. Quote-unquote alternative rock came to the forefront partially because of the worn-out, cliched power ballad.
Strike two is the use of the word “buzz” in reference to this kind of music. It’s as useless a term as “alt-rock” or “modern rock.”
Strike three is the actual musical selections. There’s not a single halfway decent song among the 32. It’s all that garbage that KPNT (”105.7… The Point!”) overplayed to death in the mid-1990s. Selections include:
“Lightning Crashes,” Live
“Glycerine,” Bush
“Runaway Train,” Soul Asylum
“Jumper,” Third Eye Blind
“Sex and Candy,” Marcy Playground
etc.
Wait… this does have one good song: “Smells Like Teen Spirit.” Except it’s the Tori Freaking Amos version. *retching sounds*
Among other bands included are Better Than Ezra, Candlebox and Eve 6. Don’t they want people to buy this CD?
It looks as if all the iPhone users who have been kicking, screaming and holding their breath over the iPhone price cut have gotten their way:
Apple Inc. CEO Steve Jobs apologized and offered $100 credits Thursday to people who shelled out up to $599 for an iPhone this summer and were burned when the company chopped $200 from the expensive model’s price.
This, apparently, after Jobs received “hundreds of e-mails from iPhone customers” whining about the price cut. While I certainly won’t turn down $100 from the Apple Store, I really don’t understand why people are complaining.
Certainly, every person who waited in line on June 29 should have expected that, at the very least, a price cut would be soon to come.
After all the pre-release hype about what the phone could do, there was just as much hype about what it couldn’t do. People knew that they were going to be getting a less-than-perfectly-featured phone (no 3G capability, no GPS, low capacity, etc.), and yet they willingly waited in line to drop down a stack of billz for one (or more).
And now after two months, Apple merely lowered the price. But some early-adopters act as if Apple pulled a fast one on them and proceed to go all 3-year-old on Apple. What’s going to happen in another two months, when Apple releases a more powerful iPhone with 3G capability, GPS and more storage at the same $399 price point, just in time for Christmas?
I stood in line on June 29 with the rest of you, eagerly awaiting my chance to willingly give my money away in such fashion. I don’t feel the least bit cheated or swindled or whatever it is others are whining about. I gots mine, as the kids say. And so did you.
The people who sat on the fence for several weeks before deciding in the affirmative might have a legitimate beef. If I may relay part of an e-mail my dear friend Steve sent me Thursday night:
My receipt is dated the 20th. I think I just missed that (full refund) window…
But if you stood in line on the release day, you have nothing to complain about. It was your choice. You knew the risks, but you did it anyway. Act like you have a pair.
Oh, and thanks for the $100 in Apple Store credit, whiners. I’ll probably get the Remix Tools for GarageBand.
Despite my inclination as a lover of animals (in a strictly platonic sense, of course), I find it hard to get worked up about Eight Belles getting shipped off to the glue factory.
