Met for Scrabble yesterday at Pat G.'s and we had a great time. I don't care for the game, but as I've mentioned before, I do enjoy socializing with my friends. And--an unusual event--I actually won one. I was trailing when I got 45 points for the word "fez" that I was able to place over a triple word score.
Good grief! Things are pretty bad when I have to resort to recording my score in a lousy board game! Goes to show to depth to which I sometimes fall. And speaking of depths--cultural depths this time--see below.
Wider: I haven't commented recently on Sarah Palin--in fact, I try not to think about her--but what I saw this morning on tape has opened the floodgates. It seems she complained to Barbara Walters about the Newsweek cover showing her in running shorts, a picture that had been taken for a runners' mag. The oh-so-intellectual Sarah said she was angry because she wants to be depicted as more "substance-oriented."
Now what substance is that, Sarah? Advocacy of the brand of religion that believes infidels should be bombed? The pandering to sub-normals who think all the world's ills can be attributed to non-Caucasians? The over-weening ambition that led her to quit her day job and "write a book?"
Oh, yes, the book. I wonder if members of the reading public--oops, that's excerpting public--realize that most titles are dreamed up by editors and not by the "writer." The trend in these dying last years of literacy has been to grab attention by coming up with titles that try to portray the subject before the book is even opened. Going Rogue is, of course, that kind of title. It instantly suggests a maverick who refuses to kowtow to the entrenched powers and, in her brave and lonely way, fights for truth, justice, and the American---
Pardon me while I wretch. All Palin's performances are, of course, choreographed by a phalanx of professionals: writers, directors, speech coaches, makeup artists, and clothing advisers, all overseen by political handlers who work day and night to present a candidate (I won't even put quote marks around that) who appeals to the brain dead. I thought it so-o-o appropriate that a tape of Palin being "interviewed" (yeah, I will set that off) by Barbara Walters was followed immediately by a uniquely disgusting commercial for dog food. It starts by having an actor--as dog--say that he enjoys "optimal stool quality." Somehow, that seemed to fit right in.