American Idol

Simon Cowell's number 1 complaint about Randy Jackson is that he keeps on hogging the donuts, and Simon's number 1 complaint about Paula Abdul is she keeps hogging all the boys.

Norfolk

Haystack & Bald Mountains; Norfolk, Connecticut.

Not Rude Anymore

When did it get to be fine to eat in front of other people? Wasn't that a thing?

You used to not be able to eat in front of other people because it was rude. Apparently it's no longer rude.

One reason why it used to be rude was that if you ate in front of someone else, and they were not eating, it was effectively denying them food. 'I'm not going to let you have any of this, I'm just going to eat it in front of you.' Remember old lady schoolteachers saying "Did you bring enough for everybody?" That could only have been because it would have been rude to eat food and not share. After all, we're all humans, we all need to eat. No matter how different our social rank, our backgrounds, or our waistlines, anyone with food, in front of someone without, was supposed to offer to share.

But another reason is that eating food is...indelicate. There's chomping and gurgling and wheezing and burbling. Even in the most refined person of manners, if you really listen to them eat, it sounds like a sewer backing up. Now, paradoxically, if both people eat, no one person can really hear the other over the noise, and it's a pleasant time for both.

But, now, all that's swept away. It's gone. It's no longer rude. Now people eat on their own in front of other people without the slightest embarassment at all. And they sound just as sewery and bildgey and bloppy as ever. Grunt and wheeze and salivary glands shooting gushing sprays of spit left and right. It's all good.

Apparently. I say 'apparently' because that's what I see all the time now. Maybe I just spend too much time on a college campus. A college campus particularly populated with self-absorbed, solipsistic, utterly indulged their entire lives, college students.

Who sound like sewers backing up.

Very pretty.

Winter

They say we're up for some snow this weekend. I don't care at all, because the sun has gotten warm enough that Spring is coming anyway. Somehow, this past week, the back of winter has been broken. The crows sense it, the squirrels sense it, the doves have even reappeared. I can sense it. Let Winter do what it wants now, it's lost the battle again.

Scratch that one Off the List

Beautiful woman sits two chairs away. Casual. Sassy. Long flowing hair.

Pops in some gum and starts clacking away at it like she was a platypus in the Galapagos islands.

Breasts & Comedy

I was considering the comedic value of women's breasts.

Well, I was.

Children certainly see it. They find them hilarious. Not that there's any sexual tension in that; they just do. I remember pieces of some ancient joke about a woman who has a dog named 'Titswiggle'; there's a punch line for the joke that you can figure out pretty simply, and then you can write the rest of the joke yourself.

Then it occurred to me, it's the wiggling that is so funny. Anything that wiggles is, by definition, funny.

Think about it, that's why Jell-o is always a hit with kids. I mean, it's gelatin, hardly appetizing, but what could possibly wiggle more? Jelly is funny, too, though to a lesser extent, (the extent to which it still wiggles). Jam is even funny, but just slightly.

So breasts are legitimately funny, in their own right. Wiggly, wobbly, jiggly;—they're naturally funny.

Le Cinéma

I have been a devoteé of French cinema lately. Just trying to catch up with what I've missed, retracing some old ground as well.

And it's striking; apparently in French cinema, the idea of a middle aged man's romantic involvement with a high school aged girl is apparently considered enough of a plot in itself to be the basis of a whole movie.

There need be no more than that.

Not only can that be a whole movie, it's one out of every two French movies.

That's it. Apparently the whole movie-going French public will watch endless permutations of the subject.