50 Things I Love About the Simpsons

OK, Tosy did this 100 Things I Love About the Simpsons last month. Then Jaquandor did the same, but said it wasn’t a meme. Now, in honor of the opening of the only summer movie I’m really interested in seeing, I’m doing it, too, but it’s only 50 things. So, is it a meme yet?

1. Mayor Quimby: Now wait just a minute! We’re twice as smart as the people of Shelbyville! Just tell us your idea and we’ll vote for it! (It’s “monorail!”)
2. The evolution of the drawing style from the Tracy Ullman Show.
3. Phil Hartman ‘s many voices.
4. Homer: It takes two to lie, Marge. One to lie and one to listen.
5. Homer: Oh, so they have Internet on computers now!
6. Homer catching Apu “lying in song”; he HATES that.
7. Homer: Kids, you tried your best and you failed miserably. The lesson is, never try.
8. Homer discussing with his brain how $20 can buy LOTS of peanuts. Actually, any debate with Homer and his brain.
9. McCartney, Harrison, and Starr all showing up, separately.
10. “Baby On Board”, with Barney not getting the “Let It Be” reference.
11. Marge: This is the worst thing you’ve ever done.
Homer: You say that so often that it’s lost its meaning.
12. Teen Marge with her hair down.
13. “Hello. I’m Leonard Nimoy. The following tale of alien encounters is true. And by true, I mean false. It’s all lies. But they’re entertaining lies. And in the end, isn’t that the real truth? The answer is: No.”
14. Mrs. Krabappel and Principal Skinner.
15. Homer: Facts are meaningless. You could use facts to prove anything that’s even remotely true!
16. Bart as “The Raven”.
17. Maude Flanders’ absurd death at a sporting event.
18. Sideshow Bob: Because you need me, Springfield. Your guilty conscience may force you to vote Democratic, but deep down inside you secretly long for a cold-hearted Republican to lower taxes, brutalize criminals, and rule you like a king. That’s why I did this: to protect you from yourselves. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have a city to run.
19. Homer to Billy Corgan (of the Smashing Pumpkins): Thanks to your gloomy, depressing music, my children no longer hope for the future I can not afford to give them.
Corgan: Yeah, we try to make a difference.
20. Grandpa: I’m an old man, no one listens to me.
Lisa: I’m a young girl, no one listens to me.
Homer: I’m a white male aged 18 to 49, everyone listens to me, no matter how dumb my suggestions are.
21. Lisa: Why are you dedicating your life to blasphemy?
Homer: Don’t worry, sweetheart. If I’m wrong, I’ll recant on my deathbed.
22. Proctor: All right, here’s your last question. What was the cause of the Civil War?
Apu: Actually, there were numerous causes. Aside from the obvious schism between the abolitionists and the anti-abolitionists, there were economic factors, both domestic and inter–
Proctor: Wait, wait… just say slavery.
Apu: Slavery it is, sir.
23. The classic A Streetcar Named Desire musical.
24. The Itchy and Scratchy theme song.
25. Homer: To start, press any key. Where’s the ANY key?
26. “Everything’s coming up Milhouse.”
27. “Mmmmmmm…” Whatever, donuts, initially, but just about anything that’s unhealthy, unsafe or ill-advised.
28. The various end theme variations
29. The three-eyed fish.
30. Homer: I love these lazy Saturdays!
Marge: But Homey, it’s Wednesday.
31. Bart: I never thought it was humanly possible, but this both sucks and blows.
32. Homer: I was working on a flat tax proposal and I accidentally proved there’s no God!
33. The opening credits when they all rush to the couch in so many different ways.
34. Kent Brockman’s Eye on Springfield montage.
35. Lisa’s wedding.
36. Lisa’s birthday – Bart DOES love his sister.
37. Tony Bennett’s Capital City song.
38. Homer: It’s wonderful, Marge. I’ve never felt so accepted in all my life. These people looked deep within my soul and assigned me a number based on the order in which I joined.
39. Jerry Ford inviting Homer over for beer and nachos.
40. Apu: An all-syrup Super Squishy? Such a thing has not been done!
41. Bart gets a nice photo of himself made for his mom for Christmas; indeed, any time Bart’s dressed up.
42. “Who keeps the metric system down? We do! We do!”
43. The Krusty Comeback Special.
44. Homer: Marge, I’m not gonna lie to you. Well, goodbye!
45. Marge’s flirtation with her bowling instructor.
46. Maggie’s first word, unheard by anyone else.
47. Homer: And how is education supposed to make me feel smarter? Besides, every time I learn something new, it pushes some old stuff out of my brain. Remember when I took that home winemaking course, and I forgot how to drive?
48. Homer: I’m normally not a praying man, but if you’re up there, please save me, Superman.
49: Ralph: Me fail English? That’s unpossible.
50. Bart: Your half-assed underparenting is a lot more fun than your half-assed overparenting.
***
Tosy returns with his Top 10 episodes. Gordon is looking forward to the movie, too.

The Lydster, Part 40: She Don’t Need No Education


This may be obvious to those of you who have had children, or who have worked with kids, but that wasn’t me. Even with five nieces, I didn’t see them nearly every day, so I’d failed to pick up the subtleties in their changing language skills.
For instance, in the last few months, Lydia has picked up the notion of the past tense. My wife, the English teacher, explained to me that, just by listening, they pick up the general rules, in this case, the -ed suffix. Then later, they, at least native speakers with people around them who give them examples of standard English, will pick up on the nuances in the language. So, I needn’t necessarily correct Lydia when she says throwed when she means threw, except to reply with the proper form. And I’ve noticed that this is working with growed and grew already. An interesting scientific laboratory in the home.
Meanwhile, she’s doing her numbers, though she seems to skip 14, for some reason. And she prints her name. The L she’s got down pat. The Y looks like an I with a little arrow quiver on the top. The D resembles a paramecium. The I is good. The A is fine, too, but then she augments it with little dots; maybe it’s an artistic statement.
As they say, Reading Is Fundamental. And we do read to her a lot. They are often the same stories, so that memorization often takes place. My favorite book to share with her is Madeline:
“In an old yellow house in old Paree”
“Paris!”, I’m corrected.
And later, I read “again” to rhyme with “rain”, and I’m corrected, well, again. One of these days, I’ll get it right. Or maybe not.
ROG

Michael Jackson’s Disease

This is a post I’ve been avoiding.

And it’s not as though I have some fatal disease, or even suffer any real physical ill effects at all. Every summer, when it first gets hot, I’ve been getting a little heat rash on my forearms for the last decade and a half, which usually goes away when my body acclimates to the heat. But for about the last 18 months, instead of going away, it just blanched out. I know my primary care doctor noticed it last July.

As it spread to my neck, legs and trunk, I got a referral to a dermatologist. But, of course, actually getting to a dermatologist usually takes a while. Meanwhile, it became very noticeable, to me, on the back of my hands. And this was the worst, for one sees the back of one’s hands a LOT. The cliche became untrue: I no longer KNEW the back of my hands.


Anyway, a couple days before my last birthday in March, the dermatologist confirmed what I had long suspected: I have vitiligo. It is an ailment of the autoimmune system. It’s not contagious. Though there is some correlation with some certain ailments of the liver, it’s not causal, and in any case, I took a blood test to eliminate that possibility.

The dermatologist said if I were an 18-year-old girl, then there may be some aggressive topical treatments to suggest, but since I’m “mature”, this would not be the game plan. He said I was mature? Oh, he’s talking about my AGE, not my disposition.

And it’s spread to my face, which I’d been really worrying about. But it’s been more even there, with an almost complete lightening, except for some dark patches under my eyes, which are partially obscured by my glasses.

Here’s the thing: when I started losing my hair, I wasn’t that vain about it. Going gray didn’t bother me. In fact, a few months ago, I got a bread trim and a hair cut, and more than one person said I looked 10 years younger. Interestingly, I didn’t care, certainly not enough to change my behavior. That I weigh more than I did is largely under my own control.

This event, though, has gotten to me. It’s mostly because it isn’t a change that I was anticipating. Also, because of the patchiness, especially on the aforementioned back of my hands, I feel more than a little bit like a leper.

If you read the hyperlink above, you’ll notice “How Can People Cope With the Emotional and Psychological Aspects of Vitiligo”. This is relevant, because, for a while, and even now from time to time, it has really messed with my head. In part, it’s because this ailment has become associated with some wacko pop star. In part, it’s because I LIKE my brown skin, and it’s been part of my identity for so long.

There are ways to hide the effects with makeup, but, bottom line, some days, it’s really made me rather melancholy.
ROG

I AM the Iron Lady

Dennis, are you at the gin again?
Which Annoying B-list Celebrity Are You?
Brought to you by Rum and Monkey.

It’s the librarian in me. Cartoonist Doug Marlette died recently, but he’s not showing up in Dead or Alive. The Pulitzer Prize winner was as least as significant as Kerwin Mathews, who “starred in the movie ‘The 7th Voyage of Sinbad’ and “had other swashbuckling film roles in the 1950s and 1960s”, who died on July 5; or Claudia Cohen, the “high-profile gossip reporter often seen on ‘Live with Regis & Kelly'”, who passed away on June 15. So, I’ve submitted Marlette’s name, so far unsuccessfully. Maybe if enough folks do it, they’ll change their minds. They’ve done it before with singer Ruth Brown, who they initially ignored.
***
In this worrisome article, an argument against the (mere) censure of the President suggested by Sen. Russ Feingold (D-WI) is made, whereas this piece says that censure is an appropriate “senatorial compliment to the burgeoning movement for impeachment.” I would support the censure.
But the main thrust of the former article is that there will be some self-generated trigger to send a population already primed for an attack on the “homeland” to war: Chertoff’s “gut feeling”, followed by a more stark “national intelligence estimate” (NIE) of the situation, compared with 15 months ago, to show that the intelligence community was “correct”. So, say, San Francisco is secretly attacked by our own government and this will justify an attack on, e.g., Iran? Very paranoid, I hope.
In any case, Mark Evanier, who linked to this article nailed it: “If [the new NIE is] right, we’re in for more terrorist attacks. Isn’t it comforting to know that either that’s true or the entire U.S. intelligence community doesn’t know what they’re talking about?”
***
A YouTube video called Led Zeppelin – Rip-off Artists. I like LZ, yet this, admittedly, is a hardly exhaustive examination of the appropriation of songs by the band.
***
ADD linked to a wonderful reminiscence of the glory days of local TV news in Albany by former anchor Ed Dague (the best news anchor Albany, New York ever had). This is almost certainly true. He justified the link in his mostly comic-related blog because I have a comment.

Scott answers my questions about God and baseball.

I provided 5 questions to a bunch of folks. Here are the replies from ADD and Greg and Johnny B and the person who gave me questions in the first place, Jaq.

Also, I did a meme, and at my request, Mrs. Lefty and Edwin and Gordon responded to it.

Those relationships I get, people I mostly don’t know, but I’ve read their stuff, and they mine. But I was looking at my Technorati thingy, and found that I got picked up by a couple aggregators, including this one. The Internet continues to fascinate and confound me.

Oh, speaking of Gordon, something I did a while ago and forgot about:

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***
Spam is 70. Possibly literally.

ROG

A Whuppin’

When I was growing up, we had an upright piano. I’m not sure why, because no one really knew how to play. (I took lessons when I was eight for about a year, but I was never particularly proficient.)

And, for reasons I no longer remember, it was painted some beige/tan/eggshell color. Maybe it was to cover up the discoloration or marks in the wood.

One day, when I was five, the piano was marked up with crayons. My father asked my sister Leslie, who was four, who had done it, and she said that I did. So, I got spanked. I kept denying my guilt, which angered my father, and I got spanked some more. Now this wasn’t by hand, but with this leather strap I guess was used for sharping razors, or whatnot. Eventually, through these denials, my father decided that either 1) I was stupid or 2) I really DIDN’T mark up the piano. So, he went back to Leslie, asked her again, and she finally confessed. Then she got got it, not only for marking the piano but for lying. But I got the worst whupping of my life for something I did not do.

Happy birthday, Leslie. Believe me, I understood and I forgave you long ago.

love,
ROG

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