This was one of my favorite children's books from back in the day. A few months back I reread it to see if the story held up to a more jaundiced eye. It did. I believe that this is one of the rare books that can be equally enjoyed by both children and adults. Adults and precocious children alike will appreciate the unending wordplay, puns and explorations of paradox. Adults, especially those who have more time behind them on this earth than they have remaining might also take to heart the book's underlying message that time is precious and what you do on this planet truly matters. The Phantom Tollbooth can also be understood as a quirky Alice in Wonderland story and enjoyed purely on that level. You don't have to find deeper messages in everything, after all. The book made just as much of an impression for the illustrations, provided by famed cartoonist Jules Feiffer, as it did for the story. This is a relatively short story that doesn't waste a lot of time on character development. This makes sense because the protagonist literally doesn't have time for long discussions with one or two people. He's thrown immediately into adventure. People are annoyed that he doesn't get up to speed as quickly as they would like. This is an ongoing source of humor throughout the book. It is interesting that this author was able to get so much out of the "You could do it all along" trope which is found in Dumbo,The Wizard of Oz, and many other stories. Again, I would bet that this book has more puns contained within than any other book with the exception of stories written by Terry Pratchett. Milo is a preteen child who is, despite his tender age, bored and cynical about the world. He can't stand school and views afternoons as nearly impossible to get through. Although he's not suicidal or anything he is a little depressed. Life seems pretty meaningless. And there's too much of it left.
I thought that this story coming out of Santa Monica was interesting because it obliquely and not so obliquely touches on a lot of the fault lines of modern life-race, class, gender, citizenship status. It also reminded me, as many social programs are likely to do, of Kurt Vonnegut's dystopic satire Harrison Bergeron, in which equality is not only the law of the land but is affirmatively guaranteed and vigorously enforced by action of the government. In this story equality of outcome, not equal opportunity, is what is mandated. So no one is allowed to have more or less of anything than anyone else. Smarter people have electrodes placed in their brain to disrupt their thinking. Attractive people must wear prosthetics to make themselves less good looking. Strong people must have weights attached so that they can't take "unfair" advantage of their strength. And the Handicapper-in-General is licensed to arrest or execute anyone who tries to use their natural talents. Broadly speaking, Vonnegut was a man of the left. But the Harrison Bergeron story, which today reads as if it were written by a right wing libertarian, remains a prophetic piece of sci-fi. So this story out of California was intriguing. SANTA MONICA, Calif. — Of all the inequalities between rich and poor public schools, one of the more glaring divides is PTA fund-raising, which in schools with well-heeled parents can generate hundreds of thousands of dollars a year or more. Several years ago, the Santa Monica-Malibu school board came up with a solution: Pool most donations from across the district and distribute them equally to all the schools. This has paid big benefits to the needier schools in this wealthy district, like the Edison Language Academy in Santa Monica, where half the children qualify for free or reduced-price lunch. The campus is decorated with psychedelic paintings of civil rights icons such as Cesar Chavez and the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., the work of the school’s art teacher, Martha Ramirez Oropeza, whose salary is paid by the pooled contributions. That money has also funded the school’s choral program, teacher aides, a science lab and a telescope.
It is fascinating that by browsing in a bookstoreyou can find books that you never would have found online. That's the biggest reason why I still patronize bookstores. You can get a feeling for a story by holding the book and flipping through it that you can't get otherwise. I don't think I had ever heard of this author before. Without his book being on display I would have continued on, blissfully ignorant of his work. Well that would have been a loss. Don't get me wrong. You can also get some truly bad clunkers by picking up unheralded books but overall I've been pretty lucky in finding some heretofore hidden gems in bookstores. Now for all I know this book could have been hyped endlessly in various newspaper reviews. I don't know. All I know was that it was new to me. I enjoyed it. Although this book is not by any means a horror story I found myself being reminded of Stephen King for the quick easy way that Parks outlined his characters and put them in some very dangerous yet believable situations. A truism about life that is both wonderful and yet terrifying is that something horrible can happen to you, something that will change your life forever, and the world will keep on turning. Right now someone somewhere is drawing their last breath. Someone is falling in love. Someone is being fired. Someone just got shot. Someone just got promoted to partner/division head/managing director. Someone is beating their spouse. And someone is joyously listening to their child's first words. And despite all of that the sun is going to rise tomorrow. Suburban Virginia resident and Federal District Judge Scott Sampson experiences the seeming arbitrary nature of life one Wednesday afternoon. He is, as is his prerogative as workplace boss, about to leave work early to pick up his six year old twins, Sam and Emma, from school. The plan is to go swimming at the YMCA as they do every Wednesday. Scott really enjoys being a father. He enjoys every second he spends with his offspring.
With Donald Trump's election there has been a sharp shift in interior and border enforcement against unlawfully resident foreign nationals (illegal immigrants). Per Trump's directives, most of the people detained so far by ICE have been people with felony records and/or previously existing orders of removal. Many people, American or not, fiercely oppose the new Administration's policy changes. Some folks demand that there be not a single more deportation. Others have dropped their pretenses and now insist that the US have open borders. Scarcely a day goes by without one of the major newspapers of record (New York Times, Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, etc) featuring a story, editorial or column decrying the possible removal of illegal immigrants. Some people have drawn analogies between deportations and the US enslavement of Africans or the Holocaust. There have been multiple demonstrations and even a few disturbances here or there. But many people have overlooked the impact that illegal immigration can have on American citizens. This is a story from December of 2016 but it's still quite timely in my view. A group of African-American men filed a lawsuit Tuesday in Chicago federal court alleging systematic discrimination by a temporary staffing agency and several of its clients they say passed over black applicants in favor of Hispanic workers. The alleged discrimination took place at MVP Staffing's Cicero branch office, which the lawsuit claims was directed by clients not to send African-American workers to their companies for assignments. Those wishes allegedly were communicated using code words, according to testimony from former dispatchers and on-site representatives given in prior cases and attached to the filing as evidence. For example, according to the lawsuit, "guapos," which translates to pretty boys, would be used to refer to African-Americans to suggest they don't want to do dirty work. The terms "feos" (translated to mean "dirty ones")," "bilingues" (bilinguals) and "los que escuchan La Ley" (referring to people who listen to Spanish-language radio station La Ley) were used to refer to Hispanic laborers, the lawsuit alleges.
Well another day another HBO Game of Thrones Season Seven trailer. Like the one before it this one appears to be designed to give away precisely nothing while increasing speculation. There are, or apparently will be, three power centers in Westeros now: the reconstituted Starks in the North, Cersei Lannister in King's Landing and The Westerlands and the soon to be arriving Daenerys Targaryen, who will possibly have the support of everyone in the South who doesn't like Cersei. And since Cersei has never been shy about murdering her enemies, that's a lot of people. All three rulers appear set on a collision course. Will Daenerys and Jon learn that they are aunt and nephew? Will the rulers have to make common cause against the long delayed White Walker invasion? And what do Sansa and Littlefinger really think about Jon ruling the North? Jon doesn't exactly have a lot of loyal retainers to call upon since he only survived thanks to intervention by the Vale (which means Littlefinger). Can Cersei and Jaime possibly forgive Tyrion for the murder of their father? Stay tuned I guess. Clip is a little over 90 seconds. Nothing happens.
This 2013 release was a solid action movie that was, strangely enough, the first to feature eighties action film icons Sylvester Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenegger as co-leads. This film is something that really would have been better made in the eighties during both men's salad days. It says something perhaps not so good about the crop of current Hollywood action heroes that I can't immediately think of anyone younger than Sly and Ah-nuld (besides Mark Wahlberg) who could have given this film the sort of testosterone heavy swagger that its two leads attempt to bring across. The leading men aren't as believable in these roles as they would have been thirty years ago but who else could be cast in these parts? Justin Timberlake? 😃 They may be past their prime physically but each actor brings a sense of gravitas and well masculinity that is needed for these characters. Stallone mumbles and Schwarzenegger smirks but what else is new. The story is almost painfully paint by numbers predictable but that's okay for these types of films. You don't watch a film like this for its engaging and surprising story line. You watch to see the put upon heroes struggle, be betrayed, almost fail and then rise above it all to deliver some truly righteous a$$-kickings. And this movie delivers in that regard. And when is the last time you heard Schwarzenegger give extended monologues in his native German? And they even made sense for the story. Schwarzenegger looks like he's having more fun than Stallone throughout the film.
In case you somehow hadn't heard the Republican members of the House of Representatives could not come together to support the American Health Care Act (AHCA). I don't have a lot to write on this at the moment both because (1) I've already written at length why I think that the law (PPACA or ObamaCare) that the AHCA was designed to replace is destined for a slow ignominious demise and (2) my Day Job supervisor has made it crystal clear what my true priorities are during quarter close. And they aren't blogging. But I do just want to say that I think that both the defenders and detractors of ObamaCare are missing some critical points by getting lost in the partisan weeds of denying President Trump a win or trying to ascertain who is up and who is down in the Byzantine politics of Washington D.C. Numbers don't lie. PPACA is a bad deal for younger healthier people. It doesn't reflect their expected value or risk. It's mispriced. They will, all else equal, continue to avoid enrolling in the expected or promised numbers. That's not going to change. The other thing which isn't going to change is that some of the very people who for the past seven years ran around spitting at ObamaCare, waving "Obama is a monkey" signs and voting for people who swore blood oaths to rip up the PPACA root and branch, turned out to have a different feeling about ObamaCare when Uncle Bud was covered for the cancer meds he needed or Cousin Sherri finally got enrolled in a program to help with opioid addiction. There are relatively few people who will, if push comes to shove, place their ideology over their survival. They won't brag about this. It's not the stuff of heroic stories. But it is human nature. And even a lot of big bad Republicans who wanted to kill Obamacare still flinched away from taking away popular benefits. Now that there is Republican control of the executive branch with all of the awesome discretionary prerogatives of that come with it, Trump and his minions could accidentally on purpose help along ObamaCare to an early grave. And there wouldn't be too much that Democrats could do about it. Or given Trump's desperate need for acclamation, he could attempt to reshape the PPACA via executive fiat and administrative choice into something that keeps coverage for many voters but slows skyrocketing premium and deductible growth. I don't think this will work even if Trump were a detail oriented policy wonk, which he is most assuredly not. So the most likely scenario is that the PPACA continues to limp along until the next midterms and then the one after that and so on. It's never going to be unpopular enough to kill. But it will never be popular enough to fix either.
