\u00a7\u00a0 I would value your input here — please help educate me.\u00a0 In more films than I can count, there is a scene in which a character is wronged or finds him\/herself in a no-win situation, and the character responds (after a moment of seething) by trashing the room they are in, throwing objects against mirrors, sweeping figurines and framed photos onto the floor, and otherwise violently unleashing their negative energy onto their surrounds.<\/p>\r\n
Items resting quietly on pianos and fireplace mantles are particularly vulnerable.<\/p>\r\n
My question is: does any real person<\/em> ever come close to doing this, or are such histrionics just a tired Hollywood trope?\u00a0 Sure there have been times I’ve been frustrated and angry, but never (ever!) on such a destructive binge.\u00a0 It make me think such episodes are over-represented in film, just like pre-meditated murders are, but I don’t have any data.\u00a0 Do you think everyday people really act out their frustrations so forcefully ?\u00a0 (You don’t have to answer personally.)<\/p>\r\n \u00a7\u00a0 I have a problem with human noses and toes.\u00a0 There are lots of beautiful things about the human body, but noses and toes aren’t among them.\u00a0 Plastered here, pointed there, growing more curved and contorted as we age.\u00a0 Consider noses, whose primary purpose seems to be to interfere with kissing — did noses really need to evolve that way to keep the bugs and rain out?\u00a0 Or do downward-pointing nostrils serve more to hide our nose hairs? \u00a0<\/p>\r\n And take toes — please!\u00a0 If toes are so important, why didn’t they take on a more elegant design?\u00a0 What tenet of natural selection could justify their stubby appearance and their constant need of grooming?\u00a0 And why do we need five of them?\u00a0 (I am talking about toes per foot, not noses per face.\u00a0 Thank God for that<\/em> scant bit of evolutionary economy.)<\/p>\r\n Sometime soon, I will post a gallery at ART@CHC of my feet-and-toes photos, both real and statuesque, and I must say in advance that sculptors of feet have great imagination.<\/p>\r\n \u00a7\u00a0 Not that it’s your problem — it never is! — but I can’t count the times I’ve thought of a knock-em-dead idea for a Thoughts@Large<\/em> item, then opened my laptop to record it for our joint pleasure, only to lose the thought along the way.\u00a0 As Mitch Hedberg said about the jokes that came to him in the middle of the night, “If the pen is too far away, I have to convince myself that what I thought of ain\u2019t funny.”\u00a0 Yep, same.\u00a0 Except Mitch may have had higher standards.<\/p>\r\n \u00a7\u00a0 On a more serious note, I would have liked to have been, at the very least, <\/em>considered for the post of Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives.\u00a0 I would have been a natural for the position, given my political savvy and microwave skills.\u00a0 So, when I heard that some Louisiana guy named Mike Johnson<\/em> was elected, I was crushed.\u00a0 Nearly cried (but didn’t — I’m a man).\u00a0 I wasn’t even given the chance to drop out of the running first.<\/p>\r\n If this white guy from Louisiana had any cred at all, he should have been known as Wailin’ Mike Johnson<\/em> or Jukin’<\/em> Mike Johnson <\/em>and he should have his own line of hot sauce and a string of barbecue joints.\u00a0 But just Mike Johnson<\/em>?\u00a0 C’mon dawg.<\/p>\r\n It was just last week that a Ohio man named James Daniel Jordan<\/em> — after the 2oth book of the New Testament, and then after the lion’s den guy, and then after the river Jordan for good measure! — still wasn’t righteous enough for Republicans to elect him Speaker.\u00a0 But then they turn around and pick James Michael Johnson<\/em>, named after the very same book of the Bible, and then after the row-your-boat-ashore guy, and then after Walter Johnson, the iron-arm pitcher for the Washington Senators (1907-1927) who won the second-most games of anyone in baseball history.<\/p>\r\n It came as a surprise to me and many others, how the election of Speaker came down to how Congress felt about Johnsons.\u00a0 But I guess it’s all about numbers: 189 of the 222 Republican House members have them.<\/p>\r\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" \u00a7\u00a0 I would value your input here — please help educate me.\u00a0 In more films than I can count, there is a scene in which a character is wronged or finds him\/herself in a no-win situation, and the character responds … Continue reading