When I was in eighth grade, there was a large poster hanging on one of the walls with the image of Michael Douglas on it and a long speech about greed. I had no idea what it was or why his face was on it but it was an interesting speech, albeit one that went against everything we were taught in school. The speech taught that greed was good and important. We were taught in school that greed was bad and that sharing with others was good and important.
I spent my Saturday evening watching the HBO debut of — Game Change – the misanthropic story of how Sarah Palin almost ruined our nation by becoming Vice-President.
I did not appreciate Julianne Moore as Sarah Palin because she was too reserved and imitative instead of inhabitative. I much prefer Tina Fey’s combative sendup of Ms. Palin because she better characterizes the manic wackiness that made Palin so ridiculous and so very dangerous — we laugh because we are terrified of what could have been. Ed Harris as McCain was ordinary and not angry enough and not stiff enough to be convincing. Woody Harrelson was magnificent. He stole the show as campaign advisor Steve Schmidt.
There’s an infuriating move afoot in several major universities to “dumb down” graduation requirements by removing foreign language fluency from the core program of study. Some schools incredibly want to make a mere semester of a foreign language an elective and not a hard requirement for earning a diploma. When I was in college, we had to take four semesters of a foreign language in order to graduate. Soon, that minimal forced fluency that formed many generations of students will no longer be important to a college education.
I am rather particular when it comes to a brick and mortar shopping experience. Specifically, I like for someone in the store to acknowledge that I am there and to ask me if they can help me with anything while I am there. This is the case even if I know exactly what I want to buy. I once went into a store, knowing exactly what I wanted to buy and walked around the store looking at things, all the time noticing that the store employee was just standing there doing what looked like absolutely nothing. At no point did he even give me a head nod. I would have happily taken my purchases in a sack or a bag if he had even tried a simple hello, but this was not to be.
