No, Not Upton Sinclair. Sinclair Lewis.

A question for my bookish friends: Has anyone out there read anything by Sinclair Lewis?

I ask because I see a lot of lists of the "Great American Novel," and Lewis is rarely on them. I don't understand that. In reading things like "Babbitt," "Main Street," "Arrowsmith," and "It Can't Happen Here," I see an American who really understood in his time what it meant to be an American, and in reading his books today, I can still see a lot of America reflected in his characters and stories.

He's not a dry writer either. There's a lot of action, and humor, and pathos in his writing.

I mean, he won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1930. . .

I"ll bet this photo prompted a lot of people to want to call him Poindexter. I hope he went with a nickhame with more pizzaz.

Hired Goons?

Long story: Spent the last 24 hours sweating I had committed a miscalculation on our 2023 tax returns because when I checked on my refund status, the IRS was all confused that my information didn't match their information.

Actually DREAMED the IRS goons showed up at the house and my family, rather than getting into a [deleted because Facebook will censor it] with said goons, let them cart me off without incident.

Short story: When checking on the status of your 2023 tax refund, don't enter information from the 2022 tax year.

Even shorter story: I'm *still* a moron, if anyone out there doubts it.

My Facebook friends, of course, had helpful and supportive things to say.

Way Too Late at the Movies: Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget

I so wanted this to be a good movie.

I mean, I knew it was going to be predictable. Mrs. Tweedy was going to make a return -- I had high hopes for Mr. Tweedy to be there too, cowed and ineffectual, but, alas.

But it was not good.

The music was, well, not good. Tack on a jaunty song at the beginning and end because, you know, that's what you do. The music in the film was so bland I don't remember any of it. And while I had doubts they'd bring back Mel Gibson because, you know, reasons, that they also didn't bring back Julie Sawalha because she SOUNDED TOO OLD, maybe that's a sign not to make a sequel to a 24-year-old movie.

Aardman was there in full force in the animation and artwork. But the story, dialogue, and music were definitely lacking. Altogether, a disappointment.

I think what bugged me is that there were absolutely no stakes whatsoever. Yes, Mrs. Tweedy was back. But we've seen the gang defeat her before, so it was a foregone conclusion. At no time whatsoever did I feel like we were going to see anyone but some rando background chicken turned into nuggets. And you'd think that with bringing back the same writer for Chicken Run, and the same director as Flushed Away, both of which had great stories and great stakes, they would have recognized that. But it seemed everyone involved wanted to play it safe. Which is sad, because the chickens in Chicken Run didn't play it safe at all.

House is Gone

 

The house I grew up in is gone.

I won't admit to being a sentimentalist, but it is sad to see it go. All in the name of road widening and traffic safety.

I remember as a kid asking Dad when we'd ever move, and Mom always said maybe when they widened the road. That was in the early 1980s, so forty some-odd years ago. We all did move on, and now the house has as well.

It was a good house, full of memories, but as Albert says, the house lives on in all of us, as we carry those memories with us. And he saved us a few bricks, guaranteed to have been laid by Dad. So that's neat.

(Photos of the house going courtesy of Doreen Sorenson, a family friend. Photos and video of the house gone, courtesy of Albert.)

Another Facebook Absurdity

(Click the photo to embiggen) 

Facebook, surely even you see the absurdity in this.

You "can't show" me whatever offensive content it was I posted. It's so long ago I Gandalf-in-Moria Faced when I looked at the date. You offer me a chance for me to defend my content, but as you can't show it to me and I can't remember it, you may as well have asked me to recite The Lord's Prayer in Klingon as rebuttal; that would be as effective as me stabbing around in the dark trying to defend my honor.

So I went with the standard "You misunderstood my content; it was a joke," not really knowing if this is accurate.

Next time I guess I'll write a vignette about Private Ogilvy as I try in vain to remember what it was you're shoving down the Memory Hole. 

Who Knew AI is Relativistic?

Spotted in the wild (in this case, on a friend's Facebook feed). I don't know if this is an actual AI response or not, but that's how it's being presented. (Am image search tells me this is a real AI interaction, difficulty: The Daily Mail.)

Who knew artificial intelligence is relativistic? And, yanno, it's a cop-out to say it's a hypothetical situation.

What's more important is that it provided some amusing social media commentary:

 

Snow is A Relative Thing, I Guess

The winter of 2022/23 was pretty intense. It started early, snow piled up to the rafters and it left late.

We got 79 inches of snow last year.

This year's been a bit different. Oh, we've had snow, but as late as the last week of February, the ground was bare.

Then came March. As of now, I don't know how much snow we've got in the back yard, but they're telling me sofar we've gotten 51 inches. It feels like a lot less for some reason, but there we are.

Dogs were real happy the last week of February with no snow on the ground. Now, they're just depressed and want to piddle in the downstairs bathroom. At least their hearts (and bladders) are in the right place.

Tonight, we had to shovel snow off the roofs of the camper and the utility trailer. It was heavy stuff; I hope the camper isn't damaged, but I do have to get in there this spring and re-do things. Not going to be fun.

Way too Late at the Movies DOUBLE FEATURE: Darby O'Gill and the Little People and Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny

My brother Albert is a fan -- if a fan is the right word -- of 1959's Darby O'Gill and the Little People. I'm not sure why. Maybe it's like with some of the things I take a shine to: They're just stupid enough that you can't stop watching, and by the time you figure out you're maybe wasting your time, there you are already done with the movie and thinking, "Well, it wasn't that bad now was it."

Hold on to that thought as I discuss first Mr. O'Gill, and then move on to Dr. Jones.

Darby O'Gill might be the first movie I saw though memes first -- live memes presented by my brother.

Lots of scenes like this, with little people dancin' about and Mr. O'Gill pretending as most actors do when called upon to play a musical instrument.

I'm not sure there's much of a story here: Darby loves to tell tall tales and doesn't do much work anymore, so a replacement is brought in. Good thing Darby has a daughter who's pining, and not after the lockjawed local yokel whose mother wants Darby's daughter to marry because why not?

A lot of this felt set up to give Disney practice with filming techniques that would later be used to better effect. Still, it's a silly enough film and story to keep you watching if only to see what happens next.

I do like the idea of miniature horses, though. Pretty cool.

Next, let's move on to 2023's Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, and the "Well, it wasn't that bad now was it" vibe I mentioned earlier.

Indy is old. So old.

I have to confess I haven't seen the entire film; I missed the beginning. But suffice it to say there are post-World War II Nazis about and they've found some hunk of junk time portal detector invented by Archimedes, heretofore best known for jumping out of his tub starkers and shouting "Eureka!" when he figured out a way to see if the king's crown was gold or gold-ish.

I think at the end they imply or say or I don't really know but Archimedes really invented the thing to find someone in the distant future who could come to the battle of Syracuse and do some rescuing. Maybe they do say it; the summaries of the film I'm reading online certainly do.

Biggest missed opportunity: That kid who flew the second(!) plane through the time portal should have said "Fly, yes. Land, no," when the lady (whoever she was; I didn't see the beginning or do the reading) asked if he could fly the plane.

Then boom at the Battle of Syracuse and the planes are flying overhead and the idiot Nazis in the plane, being idiot Nazis, begin shooting at everyone, thus ensuring that anyone with a ballistic-style missle weapon was going to start targeting them, making the grand plan of the Head Nazi to turn around and get out of there fail because the plane is hit and crashes and everyone dies.

Not the kid flying the second plane, who successfully lands the plane conveniently close to where Indy and the Lady land after parachuting out, and where Archimedes can find them. Who knew the airport in Syracuse was that convenient to the battlegrounds?

Indy, of course, wants to stay with Archimedes, who at this point isn't actually dead, which is what happened at the end of the Battle of Syracuse, but the Lady, fearing TIME PARADOX knocks him out and brings him back to the 1960s where he's reunited with Marion who brings ice cream but nobody really cares because oh finally the movie is over.

And wow, Sallah, you really became a cabbie in New York? I guess you do you.

Verdict: I'd probably watch it again, just for the sake of saying I'd seen the whole thing. But only for that reason.

News Item: Facebook, Instagram Appear to Be Out of Serivce

 

Panic, of course, in the streets. Including me, I'll confess.

March Comes in Like the Get-Ready Man

Started off today with thunder and lightning, two rounds of hail but, surprisingly, not a lot of wind. The wind is, in fact, suspiciously absent as we've been wallpoed by an early spring snowstorm that dumped about a foot in our back yard.

The dogs, sensing the unstable weather or just being general fusspots, had me up at about 6 am so I could observe said weather phenomena, and ponder whether James Thurber's Get-Ready Man was about to make an appearance.

For those of you unfamiliar with the Get-Ready Man, behold. Or at least read.

But as I gazed out the window upon the lovely morn, I did notice the snow had managed to lop off a rather large limb in the tree in our backyard, viz:

So I knew what I'd be doing this morning. Fortunately, I was gifted a pole saw for my birthday in January, so I was able to make pretty short work of it:

It's not cleaned up by any means, but at least it's in a state where it won't fall any further and spear a weenie dog. I think it did skewer next door's shed a bit, though probably not catastrophically. I'm just glad it didn't flatten anything on the way down.