All Questions, No Answers

• Is not the concept of hunting down and killing terrorists contrary to the hallmark of the Western justice system, that everyone is innocent until proven guilty?
  
  
• Why does the Republican party insist on condemning Hollywood? Are they not both dedicated to the same basic principle, i.e., making sure the filthy rich get even more money?
  
  
• How can people insist that it's only illegal immigration they don't like, and then get all up in arms about amnesty? Wouldn't that make more illegal immigrants legal, hence removing a large part of the perceived problem? For that matter, how is it that there seems to be a fair amount of overlap between people who think America (meaning, of course, the United States) is the greatest country in the world and those who oppose immigration? Doesn't it seem like, if they liked the country that much, they'd want to share its greatness with others?
  
  
• Why is the chosen word of criticism for new albums by established artists "mainstream," even when the music sounds absolutely nothing like anything played on Top 40 radio?
  
  
• Since Fox seems to be so eager to introduce new channels, why don't they just create a separate one for professional sports (they already have one for college sports, according to Wikipedia), and stop pre-empting the Sunday night lineup?
  
  
• Why do so few restaurants serve orange soda, or lemonade that isn't "light"?
  
  
• Why does The Dictionary of Imaginary Places only include locations from the first seven Oz books, plus Queen Zixi of Ix? You'd think they would at least include all of L. Frank Baum's fourteen, although the first six would also make some sense, since Baum intended to end the series after that.
  
  
• Is anyone else surprised that there isn't a musical version of Jurassic Park yet? Or is there one, and I just don't know about it?
  
  
• Why do birds suddenly appear every time I cast the spell of Aves Arcesso?
  
  
• Why do I always insist on providing the reason why I was thinking of whatever subject I'm covering in my journal? My recent post about fantasy is a good example. I guess part of it is because I think (probably incorrectly) that people are interested in knowing what I've been doing, and maybe will want to check out the source of my thoughts. But there have been other times I wanted to address a certain topic, but decided I'd wait until I had a specific reason for doing so, and I'm not really sure why I put those limitations on myself.
  

Last night I had a dream that I could fly

Okay, I really didn't, although there WAS one point where I was discussing Mario's power of flight with someone. There was also something about wooden animals in a pool, and I made up some story about how they were real animals that had been turned into wood. It's disappointing when I have dreams where I just THINK about weird things, rather than having them actually happen. But anyway, the point of this post is that there's a new XTC MySpace blog post about the song "Chalkhills And Children," which includes this exchange ("AP" is Andy Partridge, and "TB" is interviewer Todd Bernhardt):
( Read more... )

As I might have mentioned before, most of my dreams along those lines involve me pedaling in the air like I'm on an invisible bicycle. It was probably inspired by cartoons, but it also kind of reminds me of how people walk through the air in the Vegetable Kingdom in Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz. It seems like I might have had some more traditional flying dreams when I was a kid, but they might have just been daydreams. I've always thought having the power of flight would be really cool, but then, who hasn't?

Here are a few other unrelated things I've been thinking about recently:

1. It bugs me when someone argues that it's okay to leave things on the wrong shelf of a store, or not put their shopping carts back in the right place, because they pay someone to clean it up. In my experience, that isn't really true. When I was a grocery store bagger, I had to retrieve carts from the parking lot. When I worked at the toy store under the Sales/Stock title, I straightened the shelves. You'll notice that it wasn't my actual job in either case, but just something extra they made people do because customers were unnecessarily messy. I guess it's possible they would give store employees less hours if it weren't for all the cleaning up after customers, but that would have been a sacrifice I was willing to make.

2. So, how about that weather we're having? Well, having in this part of the country, anyway, which means that most of you won't know anything about it. But it went up to seventy degrees this past weekend, and then last night and this morning there was frost on the ground.

3. I had a Subway meatball sub for lunch yesterday, and I don't think it was as good as they used to be back when I got them all the time. No, this isn't another complaint about the fact that they no longer do the wedge cut. I still think that cut made more sense, and I have no idea why they changed it (probably something to do with Jared), but I've become resigned to the fact that it's gone the way of the Denny's Breakfast Dagwood and Pizza Hut's Priazzo. No, this is about how I think the sauce is different. I haven't had one of those subs in a while, so I can't really be sure, but it seems sweeter or something now. Still not as sweet as the meatball sub I had at Quizno's a while back, though. Who was it who decided that tomato sauce, of all things, should be sweet?