Jason Whong: Renaissance Man-in-Training

I didn’t proclaim this week culture week for any particular reason. I just think that so far the week has been full of opportunities for me to get cultured again.

On Monday night, I listened to Jeff Shaara, author of Gods and Generals and a bunch of other books talk about the historical fiction writing process and a bunch of other stuff. This guy knows how to talk. It makes me want to pick up one of his books. The two things I remember most about the lecture are that he’s essentially walking in the footsteps of his father, who got the ball rolling but died before he could see the benefits, and that in order to write a single book of historical fiction he tends to read about 60 or 70 books as research, most of them original sources like memoirs and letters.

Then on Tuesday night I saw Jackass: Number Two. Believe it or not, there are some redeeming qualities about the film, though I think I prefer the first film because I like pranks better than stunts, and I think there were more pranks (or more time spent on pranks) in the first film. I could be wrong, though.

I have no idea what I will do with the rest of the week. Post some suggestions, if you’d like.

Seriously. What color are they?

How many shades of brown are there in “brown eyes”? Are my eyes even brown? How pointless is asking on my web site, since few people’s monitors are calibrated to a reasonable standard anyway?

If you’re looking for something to pass the time, leave a comment saying what color you think my eyes are. Because I don’t know if they’re brown, light brown or hazel.

Forgive me for not wanting to create a better title for this post. I have so many random things to say, so here I go.

First, the hard drive officially died a day after I made my last post. It sounded like when a cat gets stepped on, over and over again, only I think the cat would die before the hard drive. Imagine something spinning 4200 times per second, and pushing on it with a ballpoint pen to make it slow down to zero… over and over again. That’s the sound. I don’t think I lost anything important. All the honeymoon photos were safely backed up, so I’m happy.

The replacement went well; I was able to do it in under an hour. I think that if I really thought about it, I could do it again in about 15 minutes. And now I can keep using my computer. My mom asked me if it was worth risking breaking the computer in order to save it. I think it was, because computers depreciate so quickly. This is a three year old computer. I intend to make it last for a long time.

Now, onto local news. Readers from further south probably have not heard too much about the manhunt going on in New York state for the past five months or so. On Friday night, Ralph “Bucky” Phillips, the man suspected of shooting three state troopers (one fatally) was caught. on Saturday he was brought to Chemung County courthouse, and by golly, I was going to be there to get it on video.

http://www.stargazette.com/apps/pbcs.dll/section?category=news0311

You can find my video linked on the right side. It’s called “Phillips arraigned in Chemung County court.” As a bonus, I also got to shoot him as he was led into Chemung County Jail.

I did all of this on my day off. I was paid for it (unlike some journalists from other organizations that just showed up gratis). It was good.

And, today is September 11. I really have nothing earth-shattering to say. I only think that it’s a shame that we have not yet caught bin Laden, and I also think that it’s a shame that so many are willing to be so violent in order to achieve their ends.

After five years of the country battling fascist Islam, I have concluded that the Soviets were a much better enemy to have. And not just because we beat (outspent?) them. They didn’t attack us. They may have shot down a few of our spy planes (and, accidentally, a Korean passenger jet), and maybe we waged wars with them without actually fighting them in Korea and Vietnam, but they weren’t attacking our soil and we weren’t attacking theirs.

Arguably, by occupying Iraq, we have given the fascists targets that they don’t have to travel far to fight, but using the ocean as a buffer and our troops as bait doesn’t seem like a strategy with an endgame, especially since outspending doesn’t seem to be a real strategy against these guys.

I still stand by my earlier strategy of arranging a “jihadi conference” to attract a bunch of them to one point, then bombing that place. It would require a certain kind of espionage in order to get it done, but I think it could be done. They could call it operation Coyote (for “Wile E.”) because it seems like it could have come from a 1950’s Looney Toons cartoon.