Sinister: What to do when your modem goes out, and the Simpsons

[Brandt S. Fundak]

Hello again (I've missed you all),

The other day there was a nasty storm in Ohio and whilst chatting with my
chums on #sinister a lightning bolt struck rather close and fried my modem.
 Fortunately, I had a back up.  Unfortunately, I'd managed to misplace my
driver disk and my system disk, so I had to wait until today to install it.
So basically I had to wait three days to get back on the Internet.  Well
without access or friends for that matter (they all seemed to leave town
this weekend for some reason) and blowing my chance to go to ann arbor with
this incredibly cute girl from Denver thanks to a prior commitment, I was
searching for ways to waste time.  I tried watching Return of the Jedi, but
it is still my least favorite Star Wars film (including the Phantom
Menace), and it didn't really work.  I of course listened to music, but it
has been so dreadfully muggy lately that it really sucked all of the fun
out of music for me. Then it came to me.  why not read a book? I had read
books before and enjoyed them and I had just finished reading the brilliant
Continental Drift by Russell Banks.  So I picked up another book, this time
Veronica by Nicholas Christopher and realized just how liberating reading
could be.  Now I don't feel so dumb for getting that degree in English.

One last note on this reading thing.  I just started reading Almanac of the
Dead by Leslie Marmon Silko.  I'm trying to figure out how long it is going
to take me to read a 750 page book (and how long did it take her to write it?)

Finally a last note on the Simpsons.  I think the reason it is easier to
watch a Simpsons episode that was made past season 2 is that sometime
during season 2 the writers decided to deviate from matt Groening's "Life
in Hell" format of the original Simpsons from the Tracy Ullman Show and
instead decided to use the Simpsons as a forum for social critique.  I
think the most endearing quality of the Simpsons is that the Simpsons are
probably the most effective form of satire on US television.  It's really
no secret that the Simpson's writers are aligned with the American left
politically (and radically so I would say in some cases) but because it is
a cartoon, no one views the show as threatening. I think this is best
illustrated by the recent Easter Sunday episode of the Simpsons, which was
so obviously critical of Christians, and yet really had no protest from the
right wing or Christian Coalition at all. However, to the intelligent
viewer, the simpsons is a serious satire of American life, and pretty much
a good diagnosis of what is wrong with it.  You can do these things with a
smile you know.

Well sorry to have wasted all of your time.  Digest wise this should read:

Check out Russell Banks and Nicholas Christopher
Simpsons #1 because of SATIRE.
Nothing about Brandt's crush.

That's because it hasn't gone anywhere. When something happens, I'll let
you know.

I leave you now with the immortal words of Homer Simpson...

Brandt

"Animals crap on our floors and WE pick it up! What, did we lose a war or
something?"

						--Homer Simpson
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