Category: Thoughts

This Explains So Much Of Our Culture

From Patriot Boy:

I was doing some research on the economy, and I discovered something interesting. Of all the items listed below, the price of only one item has gone way down since Bush took office. Everything else has become much more expensive.

Dozen eggs
Gallon of Gasoline
Health Care
Gallon of Milk
Ear of corn
8-ball of cocaine
College Tuition
Loaf of bread

Guess which one?

Housing Linkage: Unsurprising Gloom

No surprises today: CNN reports price drops, but points out that housing is not really any more affordable, as interest rates rise, real incomes stay flat, and the cost of fuel and food goes up. Slate says the housing bubble is like the Iraq war, and the Times profiles ways that criminals and scammers are still making a quick buck in mortgage and credit-rating fraud.

Elsewhere

A strongly-worded letter to the Globe:

The package “Boston 2017” (May 27) made much of a billion dollars on arts, a billion on biotech, and ambitious new bus lines, but it didn’t have one mention of whether anyone will be able to afford to live in Boston in 10 years. Even in the midst of a housing slump, rent and real estate prices are driving away young families, artists, entrepreneurs, and middle-income workers. What are the visionaries of today doing to solve that problem?
AARON WEBER
Somerville

 

And at MeeVee, I’ve got a review of Meadowlands, the new Showtime show

Showtime has something very, very weird on their hands in “Meadowlands,” premiering tonight, and it may help the network compete with HBO in premium cable drama.

After their house is firebombed, Danny and Evelyn Brogan enter a witness protection program. They and their teenage twins Zoe and Mark are blindfolded and shipped off to Meadowlands, a quiet little town somewhere in the British countryside. Everyone is over-friendly, with two exceptions: the handyman and the cop, both of whom seem more than a little psychotic.

Also, nobody ever leaves town for any reason. Meadowlands is safe: everything outside is deadly. By the end of the first episode, we find out why: everyone in town is in the witness protection program. The entire town is populated by people with horrible pasts they never discuss.

It sounds like a collection of ideas plucked from other shows: the dysfunctional crime family from “The Sopranos,” the new identity in a veneer of suburban happiness from “The Riches,” the creepy British town is an obvious reference to “The Prisoner.” Of course, this being Showtime, there’s some disturbing but compelling sex thrown in. With all those elements, “Meadowlands” has a lot of potential for disaster.

Things get riskier when you thrown in twists that can only be described as (David-) Lynchian: Mark Brogan hasn’t spoken since the fire, but carries on a mute peeping-tom flirtation with the middle-aged woman across the street before fixating on her daughter Jezebel, stealing her clothes, and wearing them. Zoe flirts with the handyman, but then the cop finds out and nearly kills the him for it. Jezebel is grossly overweight but everyone tells her she’s the most beautiful person in the world; she’s rude about how much prettier she is than everyone else. A man spotted at the fire, possibly the arsonist himself, moves in next door. The witness protection case manager meets Danny in a sleazy-looking motel, but inside her room is a full-size surveillance office with video screens showing the movements of everyone in town.

Showtime could have gone with an imitation of a dozen different shows and ended up with something mediocre. Instead they’ve aimed high and produced a show that’s genuinely interesting, with direction, acting, and cinematography that don’t let the concept down.

In which humans lie to themselves

From back in 2000, here’s an article about anti-abortion activists who get abortions, and how they justify it. A lot of people will take this as an example of how the right in the US is full of hypocrites, but that’s not quite the full picture: humanity is full of hypocrites.

Recently I got a parking ticket for parking my motorcycle in a residents-only spot in Cambridge. I’d assumed (foolishly) that because Somerville doesn’t require resident permits for motorcycles, Cambridge must have a similar policy. Now, Cambridge doesn’t enforce this law very carefully, but nonetheless it’s a law, designed to decrease traffic in Cambridge by encouraging people to take the damn train. I agree that traffic in Cambridge sucks, that global warming is horrible, and that fewer people should drive in Cambridge. Yet I sometimes drive, because I much prefer riding a motorcycle to sitting in a train. I was incredibly annoyed when I got that ticket, even though I agree with all of the laws and planning decisions that put it there.

Maybe I’m not as hypocritical as someone who wants to outlaw abortion who goes and gets an abortion, or a tort-reform advocate who sues for millions in punitive damages for a slip-and-fall accident, but I sympathize with them anyway. We all share that human tendency to expect special treatment for ourselves.

Obscene

CNN Money talks about the seven dirty words: “Since the 10 A.M. argument was being televised live by the cable station C-SPAN, the judges soon began wondering about the decency of airing a legal argument on indecency. At the argument, after all, the Fox lawyer and the judges were repeatedly saying “fuck” and “shit.” (The FCC lawyer primly referred only to “the F-word” and “the S-word.”)”

Terrorism sucks

Sectarian terrorism is tying up traffic near my office, and interrupting my meetings and phone-calls with stupid sirens and police tape. Someone has found a suspicious package at the abortion counseling center upstairs from the furniture store, so the road is closed off and surrounded by the bomb squad, several fire trucks, a half-dozen motorcycle cops…

What a pain in the ass.