An amusing typo

IM doesn't encourage careful typing under the best of circumstances, and one of our traders has only a passing familiarity with the written word, so it's often a challenge to be sure what he has meant to say. Today, he blended together the name of one of our customers, G*---, with the word "forgot", to get "gorgot". Which I thought was totally lovely. It's clearly a monster, but I'm not exactly sure which kind: a gorgon which causes amnesia with its gaze is one possibility, but I have to say that I'm more attracted to the idea of a medusa who turns petrifies people and uses their statues to stage Samuel Beckett plays.

Tiring of South Park

Last week (I'm slowly cacthing up on my friends' list), docbrite indicated an inability to watch South Park, and took a little glee in Isaac Hayes walking out on them.*

*Assuming he did, anyway. I can't be the only person in the world to have noticed how odd it is that Hayes chose to address the issue of whether someone else was making decisions in his name by having a spokesperson say that no one was making decisions in his name.

Poppy's disenchantment sprang from two sources: one, realizing how much the show had devolved into petty pop-culture put-downs, and the other realizing how much the show revolves simply around being hurtful--both of which I think are much more true than they used to be and are fair markers of the show's decline. I realized while watching last week's episode ("Smug Alert") on tape last night that my enjoyment of South Park is almost completely dependent upon whose ox is getting gored this week, and sometimes even that isn't enough. I loved the episode a couple of years back which mercilessly presented the true facts of the foundation of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, but the episode attacking the Scientologists was only Good in Parts. (I consider the Mormon Church to be a pathetic fraud, more sad than evil, but the Scientos are an international criminal conspiracy posing as a destructive cult to gain respectability.)

A big part of it is what has been called "South Park Conservativism", which is apparently the belief that, well, yes, right-wingers may variously want to re-enslave blacks, imprison gays, rape the environment, and let the poor die in the streets, but you know, liberals are really annoying because they oppose racism, so really they're at least as bad. Last week's episode perfectly encapsulates that. Hybrid cars are a great idea, but because Matt and Trey think their owners are smug, they should be destroyed? How does this improve the discourse? Add in the extended, repetitive, and lazy George Clooney joke (I originally wrote "jokes", but let's be honest) and it was a painful experience.

(And I don't even know who they thought they were parodying in last season's episode about Alcoholics Anonymous. I guess one too many recovering alcohol tried to thirteenth-step Trey.)

The ending of "Smug Alert" had a delightful turnaround which shows that they're still capable of writing very clever things, but it wasn't enough to overcome their own smugness, and I fear South Park--one of the high points of television--is finally running out of steam.

Anti-war song commandment

Via pnh.

( One More Parade )

One of my contrarian friends posted an "are there any good pro-war songs" request (in a friends-locked post). The top finisher was

( The Battle Hymn of the Republic )

but my choice is

( Battle Cry of Freedom )

about which I said,

... it's a thin, singable tune and contains the best rationale for a just war I've ever read in two lines. . . . It also has the honor of being so good that the enemy in the war stole it and rewrote it for their own purposes.

(Is there any other song which can claim that honor?)