Now I lay me down to sleep, knowing that your lenses peep

[vovat]

bethje and I watched the latest episode of Bullshit! last night. It was about surveillance and the Patriot Act. (For some reason, the earlier one on religious icons isn't available On Demand. There have been other episodes like that in the past as well, but they've all eventually become available.) As you might expect, Penn and Teller came out against the Patriot Act. It was actually a little unclear at the beginning, though, because Penn introduced the whole thing with, "Big Brother is bullshit!" Really, they tend to use the title word quite liberally on the show, sometimes to mean "nonsense," but other times to just generally mean something bad and/or stupid. Anyway, I was already on Penn and Teller's side on this issue. The main point was simply that the Patriot Act infringes too much on personal liberties, with the caveat that it's unlikely that anyone is going to spy on you personally. Of course, it's always possible that the government will choose to make an example of someone. I did think the field test came off as somewhat ridiculous. It just seems so unlikely that someone would agree to spy for an organization that didn't have any identification or documentation. Nor do I think it did much to prove their point. It was mainly just a Candid Camera type trick. I was amused by the over-the-top porno-style dialogue used in the skit, though.

Considering the whole "liberal indoctrination" thing in the college episode, I found it kind of interesting that a liberal radio host was presented as being on the correct side in the most recent episode. I guess that's to be expected from Libertarians, who are generally liberal in other areas and conservative in others, but I still thought it was a bit odd.

Speaking of which, I've really noticed as of late how Bullshit! is often set up as kind of a melodrama. You have your good guys and your bad guys. Penn's "And then there's this asshole" is really pretty similar to getting the audience to boo and hiss when the villain comes on stage. The style usually works, but it tends to encourage the viewers not to separate the people from their ideas. Assholes can occasionally be right; and decent, intelligent people can sometimes be wrong.

In non-Bullshit! news, I went to a pizza place this afternoon, so I could grab a few slices before work. This place usually isn't that crowded, but it was today. I don't whether it was the time I went (I usually go later), or there was some special event going on, but there weren't even any free tables. I went over to the book and music store for a little while, hoping the crowd would thin out while I was there. I had found out from the tmbg community that there was a brief article on Laura Cantrell in the most recent Vanity Fair, so I read that. Her new album is scheduled to be released next week, so that's cool. In the store, they were playing XTC's Skylarking (quite possibly my favorite album ever), which was also cool.

Hmm, my Word-A-Day e-mail says that the use of the term "bread" for money comes from the fact that people use it to buy food. I've also heard that it was short for the Cockney rhyming slang "bread and honey," though. I wonder which is correct. I don't know that I wonder enough to actually look it up, though. {g}

Comments

[revme.livejournal.com]

I still need to see that one -- probably pretty soon, as I basically get my Bullshit! hookup from Aila/aila76. But yeah -- I'll probably enjoy this one more, since I do agree with P&T on this one (figured I would and, well, you confirmed it), and that tends to make the more recent Bullshits go down a bit easier.

Forgot that the new Laura Cantrell was next week. I looked around a little bit yesterday for it, just in case, but I didn't think it was coming so soon, actually. Awesome. I'm totally gonna have to go pick that up next week, as she's another one I've been really excited for, record-release-wise.

[vovat.livejournal.com]

I'll often look for upcoming albums in stores, but the only time I've ever actually found anything early was when I saw The Spine at FYE on the evening before the official release date. I didn't buy it, though, because: 1) I'd already pre-ordered it, and 2) it was overpriced. I've heard stories of people finding stuff in stores a week or so before the release date, but I've never been that lucky myself.

[revme.livejournal.com]

Once in a blue moon it works out -- I got copies of Barton Fink and Miller's Crossing a week before they came out at Costco, and apparently Aila saw Season 2 of Chappelle's Show something like a _month_ early, but the next time she went in, they were off the shelves, so someone must have caught the error.

[slfcllednowhere.livejournal.com]

The Cockney explanation was in The Mother Tongue, and that was by an English experty guy, so I'd go with that. Anyway, the food one is kind of dumb.

[vovat.livejournal.com]

True. I guess it could have related to the "daily bread" they talk about in the Lord's Prayer, but...probably not.