Lists

List are fun, but more fun still is having something of my own to say about the items that I post in the lists. Consider movies. We rented a Jodie Foster movie on Saturday. We were looking through the relatively small selection of BlueRay movies at the local blockbuster and spotted The Brave One, starring Jodie Foster.

The title is not at all promising, but Foster is a fine actor, so we rented it. Sure enough, her performance was mostly up to her usual standard. It is an action sort of film dealing with revenge in a way that many "justice" people will find most satisfying. The good bit is the angst of the main character in trying to deal with what her life has become.

The bad bit is that the ending is terrible, all right out of a fairy tale: they lived happily (sort of) ever after. I realliy admire Jodie Foster's work, but the writers and director sure let her down this time.

There, that feels better.

Blame the media

Rant: Yesterday in church, the lady speaking from the pulpit blamed the media for a particular social malaise--in this case, the millions of dollars spent on Halloween candy. I prefer Flip Wilson's character Geraldine (you know, the one who first said "What you see is what you get"), who excused her bad behaviours saying, "The devil made me do it."  Geraldine had sass.  Blaming the media is just dumb.

The media follow; they don't lead.  It's not the media that convince us to buy anything.  Sellers use media to make us think we need their product.  Advertisers buy media products for their clients who have something to put on our faces, on our backs, or in our mouths.  What the media do is sell time and space, not Halloween candy.  So if I put my loonies in the candy box instead of the collection box, I 'm delusional to blame the media.

In fact, it's infantile to say that the media are at fault.  We just need to take responsibility for what we do.  Anyhow, I'm willing to bet that more Halloween candy gets eaten by the householders than by the kids who come around in costume, knocking on doors for "Trick or treat."  Many of those $4 mil of treats get gobbled up by greedy guts who want to point the finger at someone else.  "The devil made me eat up all the candy bars before the kids came, so I had to shut off the lights and pretend that nobody was home."

I am grumpy about the Federal Election. I vote. It is just something I do, have always done. I'm grumpy because it makes no difference whether I cast my ballot. Only rarely has it made a difference, yet I trudge off to the polling station every chance I get.

Does that make me a fool? am idiot? Maybe. Busybodies tell me, "If you don't vote, you can't complain." I am sure the failure to vote never stopped the mouths of many complainers. Anyhow, what earthly good is complaining? For me, all it does is remind me that I am grumpy.

It is astonishing how pleased I am when the person I vote for wins the election. Three times I have voted for the person elected, all for civic government. Maybe I should just vote for the candidate most likely to win. But I expect that would leave a foul smell in the voting booth--a vote fart?

So, I vote according to the principles I hold dear. And then I grumble. I really wish for a form of proportional representation so that I and most other Canadians might be more accurately represented in the halls of political power. It won't happen, however. The process is controlled by the winners, and they have no motivation to change what made them rulers. Alas.

Still, I will vote and vote and vote, and then be grumpy.