I can’t lie— I’m mostly posting this so that Sam has a face to go with one of our 2010 Summer Jams.
I’m not 100% sold on the video (Elijah Wood?) but, god, getting that album out of my head is like tackling acute histoplasmosis— it’s gonna take a while. I had to welch out of my coworkers’ housewarming party this weekend and am working on a dance mix to assuage my guilt; really, it’s just an excuse to use that one song.
So. Last night, playing Bananagrams with some friends, I laid down the word “jigger,” thinking of the bartending unit of measure. My competitors were aghast; they knew it only as a racial epithet, which was (unpleasant!) news to me. A dictionary confirmed the bartending term— as well as a traditional fishing hook, a parasitic flea and the aftmost mast on a four-masted sailing vessel— but not the slur. It took the Internet to confirm their definition but, yup, I’m sad to say that the story checks out.
Here’s the coda: less than five minutes after the whole Bananagrams bang-up, somebody started singing “Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah” to themselves, leading me to remark “Now there’s something unambiguously racist.” It resolved that, while some folks had vague memories of a Br’er Rabbit movie, nobody else knew Song of the South for the racially coded 1940s cesspool it is. Disney executives themselves have even referred to it as “antiquated” and “fairly offensive” in explaining why it’s never been— and probably never will be— released to the United States home video market.
James Baskett was awarded an Honorary Academy Award for playing Uncle Remus— the first Oscar for an African-American man. He wasn’t able to attend the festivities for the film’s premiere since it took place in then-segregated Atlanta.
I tried really hard to find a halfway decent compilation of supposed Disney subliminal messaging but they all have irritating overlong exposition or Panic at the Disco soundtracks added so, um, here’s this classic instead.
Being the (mostly) positive person that I am, I was elated when introduced to a news source by a friend of mine. Happy News is my kind of place. When I need to catch up on the what’s happening and am not feeling like I can brave the usual mega-news sites I just go to Happy New and pick a few stories. I call it ‘selective positive news consumption’ and I am not at all ashamed.
Ha.
Here’s my other source of news.
Hillary Clinton moved strongly counter to former administration public position in citing the execution of carbombings as an example of one of the “indices of insurgencies.”
I know all the paranoid types are worried about the war hawk drum banging of “Mexico is a dangerous failed state!” I’m just desperately crossing my fingers it isn’t supposed to be (please forgive me) Obama’s Kosovo. Or, worse yet— a pathetic proffer for conservative support. I definitely think better of Obama than that, which is why this Clinton thing has me so rattled.
Sabre-rattling to trick anti-peace drug warriors they mean business for November? Would that be meta wagging the dog?
Our Internet seclusion this weekend led to us missing out on the first few news cycles of this unbelievably inane and vulgar Qur’an burning business. Kind of just makes you want to leave it off. But every once in a blue moon, the Internet makes good on its promise as a democratizing news and entertainment source— or at least points you towards a pretty hilarious and offensive video:
It seems to me that if Bertrand Russell were alive today, he wouldn’t have to use “devastating…cold logic” in Why I Am Not A Christian so much as just make it a scrapbook of Current Events.
My dear friend Michael ruined my night the other day by pointing out to me how Google’s automatic definition giver tackles the word “literally.”
lit·er·al·ly/ˈlitərəlē/Adverb
1. In a literal manner or sense; exactly: “the driver took it literally when asked to go straight over the traffic circle”.
2. Used to acknowledge that something is not literally true but is used for emphasis or to express strong feeling.
What the hell, Google. You are literally killing me with this horseshit second definition business.
In other news, I find it a little uncomfortable to tick off “the power of America’s example” in a list of our virtues literally minutes after expounding on the oft-neglected qualities of George W. Bush. Oy gevalt.
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