Corporate Worship, T. H. style...

My apologies, but it makes me laugh every time!

T. H. on Fast food restaurants

The heart of a 7-year-old boy

In my continuing Tim Hawkins tribute...
This does, from my experience, remind me of the heart of a 7-year-old boy. Women who have never had sons, maybe you won't be able to relate to this. But it made me roar. It's an Emo-Mick Jager-Jack Black mix of a song, and in particular, reminds me of my eldest son, Ben....

Tim Hawkins week continues: favorite parodies

Well, I am taken with the idea of sharing these funny bits from Tim Hawkins. Here area couple of my favorite parodies by him. You can see his perfomance dates and check out his merchandise at www.timhawkins.net

The Government Can

OK- so I think this guy is hilarious. Sorry if this is too cheesy for you, Gentle Readers. Maybe I'll make this Tim Hawkins week...

Book and movie notes

We are heading out of town tomorrow, and so the blogs will be quiet again for a time. Before we leave, I thought I'd fill you in on what I've been reading and watching...

On my walk this morning (on a beautiful fall day along White Rock Canyon) I made it all the way to Canto 31 of the Inferno section of Dante's Divine Comedy. I am happy to say that four more cantos, and I can leave Hell behind. It's a bit grueling. I'll wait for Purgatory and Paradise before making a final verdict, but I am finding Dante pretty obscure. Perhaps it is my own ignorance that doesn't understand the plethora of ancient allusions. And I am not enjoying the language as I did with, Say, Milton, but that could be a translation problem. I suppose reading Dante in Latin (or was it Italian?) would be a wholly different and more desirable experience. I felt that way when I read a translation of Les Miserables. The story was compelling, but the language was irksome, and that was likely do to the clumsiness of the translation. This is the John Ciardi translation, so let me know, Gentle Readers, if you have opinions on translators...

In my bedtime reading, which always has to be lighter and more friendly, I am enjoying meeting all my old friends in the Fellowship of the Ring. I am happy to say that finally, at something like my third time reading and after several times through audio listening, I did not have to skip over the barrow-wights, which have previously freaked me out. I made it through with barely a blush. And now we are in Rivendell, getting all the history and implications of the One Ring. There is simply little more delightful than a great story, told masterfully!

I continue to pick away at Climbing Parnassus. And it continues to pick away at my educational assumptions.

And recently we have viewed a couple of movies that I thought were worth watching. One was called "A Good Woman" and starred Helen Hunt and Scarlett Johansson. It is an adaptation of the Oscar Wilde short story, "Lady Windermere's Fan." I thought it was well done, and unexpected (especially since I had not read the story previously.) Dave didn't like it as much as I did, but I thought it was quite good.

Even better than that, however, is the quirky little movie entitled "Marilyn Hotchkiss' Ballroom Dancing and Charm School" This was an unexpected little movie. It revealed human pain and pleasure in subtle ways, and went places I didn't expect it to go. Give it a view.

Both of these movies deal with some mature themes, and would not be good viewing by children younger than mature, older teen years. But they both are very human movies, asking important human questions. I enjoyed them!

TTFN, Gentle Readers. Perhaps I'll write from Tucson, but perhaps I'll not see you again until next week.

The problem of popular democracy

"The popular idea of democracy is animated by a very strong resentment of superiority. It resents the thought of an elite; the thought that there are practical ranges of intellectual and spiritual experience, acheivement and enjoyment, which by nature are open to some and not to all. It deprecates and disallows this thought, and discourages it by every available means. As the popular idea of democracy postulates that there shall be nothing worth enjoying for anybody to enjoy that everybody may not enjoy; a contrary view is at once exposed to all the evils of a dogged, unintelligent, invincibly suspicious resentment."
~Albert Jay Nock, as quoted by T. L. Simmons in Climbing Parnassus, p.153