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Lies from Disney

Leftovers & Links #53

I had to work at the office this Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, instead of from home. The horror, the horror.

At work, my printer is on one side of the room, and I’m on the other. There’s a wall in the middle, so to get to the printer I can either walk to the left, which takes me through a hallway, or walk to the right, which takes me past two co-workers.

I always, always walk to the left and through the hallway. Less chance of human interaction, don’t you see.

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Had a conversation with one of the temps yesterday, about her last job, with Disney. She says she answered phones for theme park tickets and reservations, and that she was required to say “Have a magical day” at the end of every phone conversation. That’s fairly typical tyranny, but her second anecdote caught my attention:

She was working from home, here in Wisconsin, where the weather is often quite different from Florida. If anyone asked, though, she was supposed to say that she was working in Florida, and she could even talk about the weather, based on current Florida weather reports — provided by Disney for exactly this scenario.

What an amazingly petty thing Disney forces employees to lie about.

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Unmasking the most viral page on Facebook.

Quote:  Facebook flipped a switch, favoring comments and reactions over shares, and suddenly a food blogger from Utah became the largest publisher in the country, if not the world. 

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Police can’t demand you reveal your phone passcode and then tell a jury you refused.

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The Blackfoot language is imperiled, as more and more young natives speak only English, so they’ve filmed a movie in Blackfoot. Seems like a brilliant idea to me, but it won’t be much help if the movie sucks. It’s Sooyii (Creatures), and the preview has me intrigued and goosebumped.

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Look, I approve of this wholeheartedly — a memorial bench, to honor a man killed by random gunfire — but since America won’t do anything about the endless gun violence, can everyone who’s killed in a nonsensical drive-by shooting have a memorial bench, please?

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Blade Runner, as a TV series? 

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This is the brightest idea I’ve heard for combating climate change:

Quote:  City governments should purchase an electronic bicycle for every resident over the age of 15 who wants one. They should also shut down a significant number of streets to be used only by bicycles and a small number of speed-regulated, municipal electric vehicles.

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Lobsters and crabs are sentient beings and shouldn't be boiled alive, UK report says. 

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In this black-and-white interview from 1975, Tim Curry was a little-known actor, promoting his then-current low-budget movie, Rocky Horror Picture Show. He was the sweet transvestite, you might remember. The movie, of course, is awesome in every way, but it flopped in its first release, before gradually making its fame as the perennial midnight movie. 

It’s amusing how un-enthused Curry seems to be about it. “I was hesitant in that if it worked, it might be a difficult image to shake off.” 

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Historical figures brought to life through old photos touched up with high-tech and animation. My favorites are Nikola Tesla smiling (5:44) and doomed grand dutchess (6:54).

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OK, let me get cranky for a moment. I saw this graphic somewhere a while back on the NASA website, and it’s undeniably cool in concept, but I didn’t post or link it because it mildly annoyed me. What I know about graphic design is barely more than nothing, but even enlarging the image on my fairly huge monitor, small beige text on a dull blue background remains difficult to read.

There's really nothing wrong with black text on a white background.

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Sorry, one more moment of crankiness. I’m a member of a credit union because All Banks Are Evil, and in an email yesterday they announced that they’re merging/being acquired by some other credit union. Sigh.

In the small print at the bottom of the announcement, they’re required by law “to disclose certain increases in compensation that any of the merging credit union’s officials or the five most highly compensated employees have received or will receive in connection with the merger.” Which is where I learned that the President of my credit union will be paid $1,239,112 in severance as she retires, to make way for the other credit union’s President to take over. 

Since it’s a credit union, they need a majority vote of all members. I'm sure they'll get it, but I've already mailed in my ballot, voting no, and I’m looking for a new credit union. 

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 Mystery links  — Like life itself, there’s no knowing where you’re going:

—①—
     —②—
          —③—

 Sing along with Doug:
Your Mind Is On Vacation, by Mose Allison

Sincere tip 'o the hat:

BoingBoing
Captain Hampockets
Follow Me Here
Hyperallergic
LiarTownUSA
Messy Nessy Chick
National Zero
Ran Prieur
Vintage Everyday

Voenix Rising

EXTRA SPECIAL THANKS:
Becky Jo
Name Withheld
Dave S.

"Stay hungry. Stay foolish."

11/24/2021

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25 comments:

  1. I love the Jesus meme. It made me smile, which amazes me. I lost one of my best friends to Heroin yesterday.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Well, that sucks. Condolences and hug.

    ReplyDelete
  3. He was doing so good.

    ReplyDelete
  4. You can talk about it if you wish, but I won't pry otherwise.

    Just a big hug, no jokes.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Nothing I want to talk about, I guess, but thank you.

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    Replies
    1. Then you get another big hug, and all my leftover turkey.

      I hate turkey.

      Delete
    2. You are a good man.

      Delete
    3. I never shot a guy in Reno just to watch him die, but I am not a good man.

      Delete
    4. I'm a little confused about this. Why the hell did you shoot a guy in Reno at all?

      jtb

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    5. It's just a line from a Johnny Cash song, I think, and it's been one of my recurring/annoying jokes since the 1980s. :)

      Delete
    6. Yeah, Folsom Prison Blues. It's a fine song. I keep forgetting I'm new here and you don't know I'm a wiseguy.

      Delete
    7. I should've known — it's music, so of course you'd know it.

      Delete
  6. By the way, in the live version, which is the one we usually hear, there's a cheer from the inmates after Cash sings the line, so the inmates like people getting shot.

    Yeah, never happened. There were a couple of whoops from the crowd, but not loud enough to move the needle on the audience mic. Our friends at Columbia Records and Tapes found another place on the recording where the inmates cheered and stuck it in the recording right after Cash sings the line.

    So the audience sounds bloodthirsty when they were just so grateful that Cash was breaking the horrible monotony of prison life, that they would have done anything to please him. Columbia created this mix without Cash's knowledge or approval. He was a junkie at one level or another most of his adult life, but he was also a gentleman. I don't know when he found out what the bastards did; I read about it in the last ten years. It was finally leaked by a former assistant engineer.

    The business part of the music business is pretty terrible.

    John

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    Replies
    1. Everything in show business is fake on some level, though.

      I prefer the studio version of almost any performance, over a 'live in concert' recording. I want to hear the music, not drunks in the audience whistling, idiots screaming in the background, or having the finish drowned out by applause, or worse, applause over the beginning of a particularly popular tune.

      Even the Grateful Dead — give me the studio version, every time.

      Delete
  7. Leonard Cohen in concert (close to verbatim): "I appreciate how familiar many of you are with my work. That familiarity has kept my soul nourished all these years and kept my children fed into adulthood. The band and the singers and I would appreciate it if you could show that recognition silently when we start playing because we need to hear one another to play the song as you remember it. Many thanks for your courtesy and thank you for joining us."

    One of the many reasons I love Leonard.

    I'm a serious Grateful Dead fan, and I don't own a single live Dead, even though the Dead did a better job getting a nicely mixed signal from the soundboard than just about anybody else. The Dead had two sorta=full time songwriters, neither of whom played with the band. I want to hear what they wrote and I want to hear one of the better jam guitar players of the 20th century.

    Rant.

    John

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    Replies
    1. Usually when I say what I said, the vibe that reverbs at me is that I'm gauche and lowbrow, and that *live* music is the *only* music.

      So I am hap-hap-happy to read this, especially from you, because you're more into music than I am. I am liking you, dude!

      Delete
    2. My favorite theoretical physicist is Richard Feynman. Actually, he's one of my favorite people, although he died in 1988. Nobody replaced him.

      The second volume of his (sort of) autobiography is called, "What Do You Care What Other People Think?". That title is a reasonable summary of how he chose to live his life. If you're curious, the first volume is "Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!: Adventures of a Curious Character", and that's a good place to start. There's very little physics in these books, and what there is, is comprehensible.

      But the title of the second always stuck with me. He just never gave a damn what other people thought of him. He was of his time: a little sexist, maybe a little bit old-fashioned. But his intellect ranged far: he was a serious drummer and a novice but competent safecracker. He enjoyed topless joints and Brazilian music and much, much more. And he busted NASA bigtime on the Challenger disaster while he was dying of cancer.

      And he won a Nobel Prize, which they didn't hand out like candy until Dylan came along.

      He's worth reading. What do you care what other people think?

      John

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    3. I've seen some TV footage of a speech and a few interviews from Feynman. He always seemed to enjoy what he did, and he seemed like a personable chap. I'd be curious enough to watch a Feynman documentary, but doubt I could sit still for a book or two. My attention span is withering; I'm always reading 203 books but it's been months since I finished one.

      Delete
    4. I'd like to second Feynman's books. They are very fun and accessible, to a non-physicist. He's a great storyteller.

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    5. Also, just search his name on Youtube. There's a wealth of great stuff on there.

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    6. He's known to me and he's good, but it's been a few years since anything I've seen. I'll look.

      Delete
  8. Yeah, lots of the YouTube stuff is about physics. Books are still a more targeted medium. Doug, this is, of course, entirely your business, but the Web is literally all over the place. If I'm not also reading one book at a time, I start to get a little dizzy. Yeah, I surf a fair amount, but I read a physical book an hour a day or so.

    My sharp view on this, which, again, you have no reason to pay much attention to, is that if you don't read books (start to finish unless they're pieces of shit) you might as well buy your old TV back. That's what the Web has become for good or ill.

    Books changed our brains 500 years ago, and a well-written book still has the power to make our life richer and keep us sane in this distant constellation that's dying in a corner of the sky.

    Brief sermon. Sorry.

    best,
    jtb

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    Replies
    1. Physical books used to be hours every day for me too, but the internet has depleted that to near nothing. It's a sadness and a regret and maybe a shitty trade-off, but the only thing that could unravel it and get me back to reading books all night is if I suddenly lost my internet connection (against my will).

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    2. Same here.

      I don't do much on social media, unless you consider Reddit "social media." Some do, some don't. But I still learn. I just don't read books. Yeah, a lot of what I absorb on the internet is fluff, but I watch a lot of interesting documentaries. I listen to a lot of interesting podcasts. I take in information, just in a different form.

      Delete
    3. I do feel kind of bad about it, though. I used to sneer at people who didn't read books, and now... I've lost my attention span. jeez, the last book I finished reading was a book I'd already read a dozen times.

      Delete

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