Tuesday, October 9, 2001

Blogrolling

Dotcomscoop calls "Dot Sears" a "one man Slashdot" and "a valuable resource for any growing mind." From Dotcomscoop I just found my way to Gagpipe, and from there to The Toque, and Stones Remains to Tour. Not quite The Onion, but plenty funny.

Food from thought

Great responses to the questions below. I'll get to my own responses a little later. Meanwhile, I'm excited to see my friend and linguistic guru George Lakoff weighing in with a metaphorical analysis of all the stuff that's going on. A big thanks to Dr. Weinberger for the link.

Here it is

Thanks to Dave, a survey asking roughly the same question below is now up here.

Another angle

A few days ago while I was channel surfing, I caught some old cartoons on the Boomerang Channel. The abbreviation is "Boom." It's for Boomers and their kids, and it shows re-runs of Saturday morning cartoons dating from the Sixties and Seventies. I sat and watched, stupefied, by the stories on the shows I saw. They all had the same plot, roughly, as Independence Day. Alien bad guys blow up, or threaten to blow up, large buildings and cities, before being defeated by superheroes.

I thought about the first Star Trek movie, in which a mystery is solved when the Enterprise crew discovers that one of Earth's first space probes, Voyager, has boomeranged back from its long journey in a far more powerful and transformed state.

Then I thought about how we've been telling ourselves apocalyptically violent stories, from TV cartoons to video games to Bruce Willis and Arnold Schwarzeneggar movies, for decades.

And how that stuff ended on September 11.

I don't know how to do the Survey thing on my blog yet, but I'm not sure it matters. I still want to ask some questions:

Have your entertainment tastes changed since 9/11?What kind of toys and games are you buying for kids this Christmas?What kind of movies and shows are you looking for when you go to blockbuster or channel surf on TV?

Just wondering.