Downton

If you like Brits, including upper class twits
Then you can always watch Downton.
Who'll Mary marry? And will Tom go or tarry?
Just be sure to watch Downton.
So Gillingham and Charles both want to be in Mary's love life.
They both seem sweet, but soon she'll meet that lawyer from "The Good Wife."
What can you do?
We know that she likes lawyers,
But really we count for nothing, we're helpless voyeurs
Around Downton.
It's what we all adore. Downton.
Like Daisy and Patmore. Downton.
Or Robert and Cora.

Late in the season everybody's got reasons
They might stay or leave Downton.
Julian Fellowes writes both farewells and hellos
In the plots he weaves. Downton.
Like one bloke who supposedly survived from the "Titanic."
Or Edith's beau whom now we know was offed by thugs Germanic.
Strange ways to go.
The lives are much shorter there.
Between the wars and disasters, there's death in the air.
Beware Downton.
All turns to crisis fast. Downton.
Even poor Isis passed. Downton.
Granny will have the last laugh.

(instrumental)
So Edith took her daughter from the family of that herder.
And one Bates or another surely will stand trial for murder.
What do you know?
There's much that's behind closed doors.
That's where the action is brewing on all of the floors.
Let's watch Downton.
Thomas may be alright. Downton.
Carson and Hughes are tight. Downton.
That's where your Sunday night goes.

Time Bums #43

Time Bums #14

Time Bums #10

Time Bums #9

Time Bums #8

Time Bums #7

Everybody Loves a Loser

It’s widely said that the world loves a winner, but what really gets our juices flowing is failure. We can’t get enough of it. The Olympics coverage was mainly hundreds of hours of extreme close-ups of tearful near winners, or replay after replay, in glorious high-def slow-motion, of skiers wiping out and skaters slamming into the boards.

This is what the whole genre of so-called reality TV is all about. Who survives on Survivor or becomes the next American Idol is anti-climactic. We want to see the ones who get voted off the island, or who get trashed by whoever’s playing the caustic Simon role these days.

But it goes beyond sports and entertainment. Why has MSNBC morphed into the “All Christie, All The Time” channel? They’re circling like vultures, believing the New Jersey Governor’s political demise to be imminent.

Mel Brooks is quoted as saying “Tragedy is when I cut my finger. Comedy is when you fall into an open sewer and die.” Sure. What could be more entertaining that watching someone else’s utter defeat?

And this is what unites us most as humans … our mutual complete disregard for each other’s well being. It’s a beautiful thing.

WTFism

I subscribe to the philosophy of WTF. It covers all the big questions … WTF are we? WTF are we doing here? And ultimately, WTF is the point of it all?

These questions, perhaps worded a little differently, have plagued humankind since the dawn of … uh, questions. In ancient Greece, Thales of Miletus challenged his pupils by asking ω θ φ?¹ Down through Western history, from the ancient Greeks and Latins all the way to modern peoples who don’t speak a second language, these eternal enigmas have been posed again and again. Meanwhile, in the Asian parts of the world, a Zen-like approach has lead to the simplification of these conundrums into the three primary questions: W, T and F?

The beauty of WTF is that it expresses both the questions and the attitude of response. It’s a self-contained dialectic:

You: WTF?

Me²: WTF.

Other philosophies get hung up on truth, but truth is ever-changing. There is a god. There is no god. We have free will. We have no free will. We are all alone as individuals. We are all in a sharing (and liking) community.

And while it may seem that I’m just joking around, I’m really quite serious about this. I’d like to start an organized movement espousing these beliefs but, you know, WTF?

¹ Not really the same thing, but it looks kind of cool, doesn’t it?

² Note: The roles can be reversed for diversity.

Fur Youth

Happy New Year

End of the Year Lists

I’m sure you’ve seen all the Top Whatevers of 2013 lists on various Web sites, in newspapers and magazines and on TV. The problem, of course, is that they start this a week or two before the year is actually over.

If I were a terrorist, I would strike on December 31, too late to make it into any of the end-of-the-year top something lists that the media are so fond of. That way, in addition to whatever havoc I had wreaked, I would have the added satisfaction of knowing that I had proven all the news media wrong.

That said, these lists do serve another important function … that of wasting that generally unproductive time between Christmas and New Year’s.

Top things I totally don’t want to hear about in 2014 (in no particular order [well, alphabetical, but let’s face it … the alphabet is in pretty much random order]):

• Alec Baldwin
• Benghazi
• Billion dollar buy-outs of some kid’s middle school science project
• Boston Strong
• Breaking Bad
• Candy Crush Saga
• Miley Cyrus
• Fiscal cliffs, sequesters and government shutdowns
• HealthCare.gov
• Nuclear weapons made entirely on 3D printers
• Edward Snowden
• Twerking
• Anthony Weiner

Distraction