Happy Birthday Hilaire Belloc!

Here are a couple of my favorite poems by Hilaire Belloc in honor of his 138th Birthday. But mostly I just wanted to add another number to the "poetry" label to make it seem like we're pretty cultured.

Sonnet XXXI

The world’s a stage. The trifling entrance fee

Is paid (by proxy) to the registrar,

The Orchestra is very loud and free

But plays no music in particular.

They do not print a programme, that I know.

The caste is large. There isn’t any plot.

The acting of the piece is far below

The very worst of modernistic rot.

The only part about it I enjoy

Is what was called in English the Foyay.

There will I stand apart awhile and toy

With thought, and set my cigarette alight;

And then—without returning to the play—

On with my coat and out into the night.

The Early Morning

The moon on the one hand, the dawn on the other:

The moon is my sister, the dawn is my brother.

The moon on my left and the dawn on my right.

My brother, good morning: my sister, good night.

Movie Review of the Week: Wall-E

Summertime is full of traditions - baseball, fireworks and outdoor grilling, to name a few - and it seems like new traditions emerge all the time. For instance, every summer, when the corn stalks have just grown to reach knee height, and right after Brette Favre indicates that he intends to come out of retirement, Pixar studios releases an excellent film.

It has happened again this year. Wall-E is on par with everything else Pixar has produced, which means that it is a blue-ribbon movie. And unlike other Pixar movies, this one has a real, live, in-the-flesh appearance by none other than Fred Willard. Yes, in a pioneering move, real Fred is inserted amidst the animation, a la Mary Poppins, playing the role of president of BuyNLarge (a fictitious corporation with a very convincing website).

The entire film is, unfortunately, set to a dramatic backdrop of man-made, corporate-sponsored, environmental armageddon. The term "unfortunately" is deliberately chosen here in place of "tragically", because the politically sensitive theme doesn't kill the movie, and the plot-line and overall message of Wall-E aren't really what could be called "AlGorey". Just the same, promoting any sort of environmentalist message, no matter how tame, seems in today's society to be analogous to promoting an anti-witchcraft message in colonial Massachusetts. In a vacuum, both messages are potentially valuable; but in context, they're just problematic. I am sorry, but I have to dock Wall-E one star just for flirting with the subject. So that's 3 stars to Wall-E. Could have been 4, Pixar! Good thing for you, nobody cares about my opinions...

New Blog Post!

Please enjoy this picture of five South Korean drug-sniffing dog clones chasing a ball. This comes in lieu of a written blog post. The picture was on the Drudge Report a couple months ago, and I was impressed by it.

This is just a little something to let you know that I still care. Hopefully this will keep everybody coming back to the site.

Turns out some people actually do like it!

Today I happened to notice that this blog had an unusually large number of hits from Canada. Any hit from Canada is really an unusually large number here, so naturally I was curious as to what was attracting my francophonic, bacon-loving, neighbors-to-the-North in such high numbers. I dug a little deeper and, well, here's what I found:

http://clubsmartcar.com/index.php?showtopic=15414

I offended everyone! Watch them bitterly insult my Civic. Although a Civic may not compare to the prestige offered by a ForTwo "Passion" convertible, I believe that my point still stands - the Smart car just doesn't deliver the fuel efficiency that it's dimensions would suggest. And soccer is totally inferior in the world of athletics; I'm sticking by that one too. Hockey's cool. I digress.

There now comes a need to address the attention that has been given, here and elsewhere, to my 10 year old Civic, for the fact that it is 10 years old, and a Civic. Back off. It has been a fine automobile. Even so, I must admit that I rarely drive it myself anymore; Jeeves fetches the Bentley whenever I need chauffeuring to the helo launch pad, so mostly I keep the Civic for the maid to use when she's out running errands.

Nevertheless, having experienced the public ridicule of my own beloved rig, I'm thinking that it is possible that I'm being a little tough on the ForTwo. Could it be that I am making a rash judgment of the vehicle on looks alone? That would be an error, for by all accounts much of its charm lies in the driving experience. And so it is that I've decided that it would only be right that I offer to perform a test-drive of the Smart ForTwo. Having administered a test-drive, I would then be capable of providing a more properly informed opinion, and I would do so right here on this blog.

There is, however, one precondition: a test-vehicle will require supplying. It seems that an update gets sent to the ForTwo Delta Force Headquarters in Saskatchewan every time the ForTwo gets mentioned in blogosphere, so you people should get this message and can then decide if and how you're going to proceed. This is a win-win for everybody. I would relish the prospect of writing an automotive review, and if I am brought to see the light, then your car should get the support of all of my readers. That is probably like six people right there! And who knows, if I'm really impressed, I might even decide to buy one of these cars for the maid.

Whatever happens, it's been surprising to see that something written here on a whim (and a beer) interested, albeit negatively, but nonetheless interested a substantial number of people with whom I've nothing in common. Today's lesson: offending people is one easy way that you can get attention.