and while I'm here

Let me add my voice to that of Keith Olbermann, and many others, in calling the Baseball Writers of America a bunch of know-nothing imbeciles ... for once again denying Jim Rice the Hall of Fame.

Juat have to crow a little ...

While wandering through the news-sites on my daily work routine, I stumbled across a really deceptive Fox News story, and decided it deserved some clarifying analysis. My editor posted it as such, and then I blurbed it back on Rational Review News Digest, as:

Media bird-flu scare fake?
Free Market News Network
by Steve Trinward

"NEWS ANALYSIS: Once again, the Fox News/Web MD headline is ambiguous at best, if not downright misleading: 'Bird Flu May Pass From Poultry to Human Easier Than Expected.' The story begins with accounts of new avian flu cases in humans, now spreading to parts of Turkey, where three children from the same family have died, with two of them so far confirmed with the H5N1 bird flu virus. ... However, deeper into the story, it is revealed that, with regard to the Turkish children, at least: 'According to news reports, a doctor who treated those children speculated that the kids had probably caught the virus by playing with dead chickens.' ... In other words, we are still dealing with a virus that only seems to pass from birds to humans if those humans physically handle dead or diseased birds. So the way to stop the avian flu from spreading is to stop people from picking up dead birds, or playing with diseased chickens, and to develop inoculations (or better yet, aerosol sprays) that can stop the spread of H5N1 among the birds themselves!" (01/10/06)

http://fmnn.com/WorldNews.asp?nid=5152

read it for yourself, and make your own call-- Is this just sloppy headline writing, or another piece in the concerted effort by the Shrubbos to con us into both martial law and a ridiculous purchase of several billion dollars worth of Tamiflu, which has still shown little or no effect on stopping the very RARE case of avian flu being transmitted from a bird to a human being, and still NO verifiable instances of human-to-human transmission! (Note the latest story, of the 8-year-old girl in Turkey... who cuddled and KISSED a diseased chicken, before coming down with the H5N1 virus! One would certainly hope children in more civilized parts of the world at least would know better than that ...)

Steve out

An insight into relationships

Yes, I know - I've been AWOL from this space for over a month.

The good news is, I've maybe finally figured out how to make use of it, as I slowly morph into my own website again, which will have blogspace f sorts as one of many functionalities ...

Those random times when something hits me, from whatever direction, and I only have time to jot down the notes for a later exploration ... and the outcome is unlikely to be either a song lyric, or a specifically political piece suitable for FMNN or MFC or RatRev or any of the other places I post at least semi-regularly.

this is one of those ...

While watching the Netflix DVD of Six Feet Under's opening episode of Season #4, "Falling Into Place" ... with writer Craig Wright narrating it (second viewing, and glad I did, since I missed at least two subtle plotpoints the first time ...) I came across a scene where David Foster & Keith are in the process of once more "kissing and making up" ... although this time it looks like they might both be serious about doing so, and not just horny as usual ...

In his voiceover, Wright chose to pontificate a little about the scene:

"David and Keith's relationship is full of paradoxes, and not everyone's convinced they should be together. But the narrative tension provided by their theoretical unfitness for being together buys you a lot more narrative tension, than by putting them each with people with whom they would be better suited. I think you want to push in storytelling whatever keeps people wondering "WHY?" Why on earth is this occurring? I think there are two good feelings to have when watching something: WHY? and OH NO! And every now and then a sigh of relief that it works out … but very rarely…"

And suddenly it hit me: One of the things we often do (at our own peril) in seeking (or seeking to build on) a relationship, is compare it to how things work ... in the movies, or on TV. We see these actors playing out roles, and often are tempted to use those roles (at least in the more "realistic" productions?) as models for our own behavior - the "funny and brash guy with a sensitive heart," the "demure miss with the fire burning for the right one" ... and so forth.

The problem is, those characters are not drawn for compatibility, but for dramatic tension and conflict; otherwise, as Wright notes, there would be no way of creating a plotline around their interaction.

I have known for a long time that the secret to writing comedy is to make sure the characters never actually trust each other enough to tell the truth, to confide in one another when they need to, etc. Otherwise, the plot device - "oh Ricky can't know ..."; "Laura would kill me if she found out that ..."; or (more contemporary, or at least recent) "Rachel and Monica have to think that ..." - would dissolve in about 5 minutes, followed by 20 more of blank blue screen interrupted by commercials.

What I had not considered until just tonight is, drama requires the same dysfunctionality, or the characters become boring as hell in no time. The only time they can ... come together as one (badumpum!), is at the end of the story, and even then we are supposed to wonder how all of a sudden they've all grown up so much that the same demons won't haunt them in the future!

It's also probably why Shakespeare (or whoever it was writing those) made such a point of killing off his heroes in most or all of his tragedies ... allowing them to live on would be just pointless ...

all for now... hope to see you again a little sooner next time!