bric-a-brac-a firecracker

With all the talk of American soccer-moms, I wonder why the US does not hang on every play of the FIFA match.  What would it take to catch on there?  Why would the States outgrow this game, which is pretty watchable, and not all others, whose strategies and excitement are lamed by commercial breaks and reassessment of the rules?

firewall

With news that China is unseating the US, who has reigned since 1890, as the largest producer of manufactured goods, the internet protocol czars of America are trying to make up for lost territory through licensing agreements and service contracts with aspirations of becoming the world cyber-police. Some really unbelievable things are happening as privacy and neutrality are being chipped away, repackaged and sold back at a premium. Like speculation with gold and currency markets, piracy-assessors apparently have calculated out the retail value lost to an uninspired modern single circulated for free on the internet represents a loss of revenue of some $2000 for the record label, which, imagine, could make a well-stocked and unsanctioned library worth well over $700,000,000,000--in one documented case, making that hard drive the single most valuable object in the world.  Some say the music and entertainment industry is on the verge of collapse, but I think it deserves to implode if there's little art or experimentation and mere reliance on re-runs.

but you can't have Spam, Spam, Spam, Spam, Spam, Spam, baked beans, Spam, Spam, Spam and Spam without Spam

Apparently as anger is directed more and more towards big oil, there's a growing movement to boycott its stations.  Government oil, however, overseas goes by a different name and under a different umbrella organization, so there's not much chance of me crossing that picket-line.  I call it government oil, like government cheese, because its heavily subsidized, and as a relic of the Cold War, VAT and environmental taxes are stripped off the top, to almost the point of being free though surely someone pays.  This martial art--that is, redirecting rage, is another way of exculpating man's own addiction to petroleum, no matter its source.  A boycott completely overlooks the fact that everything from linens, fibers, paints, bottles, jars, cans, cars, labels, computers, jewerly, appliances, solvent, laminate, and more are eiher fully made of oil, covered with a significant sheen of it and and fashioned and transported hither and yon with it.  Maybe the plumbing can be made safer and cleaner, but everything is soaking in it already.

honeycomb hide-out

This summer's a bit dreary by fits and starts, and one thing that I have noticed, but just barely, is the inconspicuous absence of bees despite everything being in full-bloom.  Usually, the flowers are heavy with buzzing but I don't think that I have seen a single honey bee yet.  There's been no headlines of scraping the bottom of the honey pot or bee-keepers getting desparate and wrangling moths but this certainly seems like a dire thing if cell-phone masts, sun-spot activity, WiFi, bluetooth, or subtle changes in the weather have affected the bees' navigation system and there's no mechanism for fertilizing plants and nothing to spur on general hardiness or evolution through cross-pollination.  Maybe they'll descend in great swarms to make up for lost time.

and keep the beaches shipwreck free

The Clash of the Titans remake came to our little second-run theater and though I was very excited to see this new version, I walked away a little disappointed.  The special effects were impressive and the monsters scarier but the Ray Harryshausen style of the original Medusa and Kraken were endearing, and so was Bubo--and rather than paying homage to the little clockwork owl from Hephaestus' forge and was like R2D2, they made fun of him, ever so briefly.  The acting in the original was much better, and Laurence Olivier is more believeable as Zeus.