MORE SENSELESS ACTS OF BLOGGERY

We just wrapped up the Team Frog Whirlwind Stateside Road Trip, which was a quicker-than-usual drive through the usual stops (Chicago! Carbondale! Paducah! Nashville! Maryville-Alcoa! Knoxville! Erlanger, Kentucky!) due to some tighter than usual work schedules at home. Random thoughts follow:

1. Be in my welcome video

I flew to Honolulu last January, about ten days before the inauguration, so Obama was still POTUS at the time. While I was standing in the passport control line, I noticed the TV monitors playing a welcome announcement from Presidente Obama welcoming visitors to the US. As I watched, I thought: “I wonder what the new video will be like?”

So I kept an eye out for it this time when I arrived at passport control in Chicago.

There was no welcome video.

Which speaks volumes, perhaps. Granted, D. Trump has been busy his first 13 weeks, what with making America great again and his busy golf schedule, so maybe he hasn’t had to film one. Still.

2. Signs O’ The Times, Side 1

I saw an awful lot of “now hiring” signs this trip. Seems just about every restaurant, café, retail store or any other place of business I entered was looking to hire more help. Which is surprising, considering what terrible shape America’s economy is supposed to be in, according to D. Trump. Guess he fixed it?

3. There’s only one thing worse than being talked about …

Naturally, it was tough to have a conversation without D. Trump coming up. I’ll qualify that by adding that (1) almost every state I drove through was a state he won (the exception being Illinois), and (2) I did not meet a single person who voted for him or even liked him – and I’m including Republicans. Even my mom – who adored Reagan and Thatcher in the 80s – literally couldn’t bring herself to address him as President Trump, saying (and I quote): “He doesn’t even deserve the mentioning of that title.”

Anyway, while the topic of Trump was inevitable, it was interesting that I didn’t hear a lot of extended rants about him. Most people agreed that the country was still in a state of shell-shock – the reality hasn’t quite settled in that this guy is actually in charge of the country and is making bad decisions about important things almost daily. It’s almost like everyone’s waiting for the episode where he finally gets voted off the island or something.

4. Signs O’ The Times, Side 2

Apart from the “Now Hiring” signs, once I got down to the Kentucky/Tennessee areas I also saw a lot of signs that were pointedly in support of the police. Sample billboard: “Welcome to [town name], where we fully support our police”. Which I guess is the 21st Century equivalent of “N*****, don’t let the sun set on you here.”

Okay, that’s unfair. But it’s pretty obvious that it’s intended as a statement against #BLM and a veiled warning for anyone who supports that movement, based on the false assumption that to support #BLM is to NOT support the police, because as we all know, Law And Order depends on supporting law enforcement 100% at all times no matter how many unarmed black guys they kill. Anyway, I didn’t see any signs like that when I drove through the same places in October 2015, and Trump happened between then and now, so it’s clear some of them felt the need to make that statement to the point of paying for billboard space (and that’s assuming the billboard owner didn’t waive the fee).

5. With the radio on

Our rental car was blessed with a free satnav this time around, but not free satellite radio. Which meant station-hopping from city to city again, and it seems the state of commercial radio programming hasn't improved in the last year and a half – at least not on our route. Granted, neither has the state of commercial music. So, as college radio is also dying, we kept it either on NPR or classic rock stations.

One thing I can confirm: Boston is still terrifically popular in the heartland.

6. Come McKay with me, punker

As usual, I stocked up on books, although not as many as I might have, since we skipped Books-a-Million this year (membership isn’t all it’s cracked up to be), and a couple of other places we usually hit have closed.

Still, there is always McKay’s, and we hit the ones in Nashville and Chattanooga. Here’s my haul from both.







Nice, eh?

Okay, that’s all I have.

There and back again,

This is dF

As you may have guessed, there are some novelty records in my 45 collection. 

But only one of them is a slice of Tennessee history.

In the late 70s, Governor Ray Blanton was caught signing pardons for convicts – some of them multiple murderers – who had bribed state officials, including two from his office. Blanton was never charged with anything directly related to the pardons-for-cash scandal, but he was eventually convicted in 1981 for unrelated mail fraud, conspiracy, and extortion for selling liquor licenses, and served 22 months in the federal pen.

The pardons scandal remains the biggest political corruption scandal in state history. And at some point, when all this was making the news, Brian Blue Christie and the Gitch Your Own Band cut a record called “Pardon Me Ray” – set to the tune of “Chattanooga Choo Choo” done in a mod-country style. It was a major hit on Nashville radio.

And of course I bought a copy. Thus began my interest in political humor (possibly).



BONUS TRACK: Ray Blanton is rated one of the ten most corrupt politicians in US History by RealClearPolitics. (Note: by “corrupt” they mean “use of power for financial profit”, which is why Dick Nixon isn’t on it, but Spiro Agnew is.)

I wanna get my money’s worth for what I’m buying,

This is dF

And now, Robert Mitchum sings the Ballad Of Thunder Road!

Moonshiners! Revenoors! The Devil! Kingston Pike!



FUN FACT: A different version of this song served as the theme song of the film. Mitchum recorded his version later.

FULL DISCLOSURE: This is one of my favorite Robert Mitchum films.

DISCLAIMER: That's not actually Kingston Pike in the movie, which was filmed in Asheville, North Carolina. 

Quench the Devil’s thirst,

This is dF

And finally, here’s a photo taken inside McGhee Tyson airport outside the news kiosk: a photo of a Tennessee volunteer statue surrounded by the 50 Shades Of Grey pseudo-bondage trilogy.



Which I find amusing, all things considered.

For my next trick I’ll need a volunteer,

This is dF

I rent cars.

Sometimes they're not cars so much as pick-up trucks.



I should stress it was the only thing available. But it is handy when yr renting a car in East Tennessee, because you just blend right in (provided you put a Tennessee Vols logo and a window sticker praising Jesus on it).

Anyway, I hit a deer with it on I-40 East.



 

You should see the deer.

In a weird way, I was lucky on just about all counts except for the part about actually hitting the deer. For a start, it happened at 1:30am in the middle of nowhere, which meant no nearby traffic, so I had all the room in the world to swerve and avoid a head-on collision, albeit not enough time to miss it completely – I clipped it with the right front corner of the truck. You see the result.

Apart from that, I was lucky that I was able to drive away from it, and that I was driving a truck in the first place. (Ford trucks really are Built Ford Tough™, you know.) If I’d been driving (say) a Chevy Aveo, even a glancing blow like that could have potentially crippled it (and possibly me). I speak from experience – I hit a deer with a 1988 Subaru Justy on a two-lane blacktop at 60mph. The repair bill was $3,500.

So all in all, I got off light.

But then again, maybe not. I have no car insurance (as I don’t own a car), and after forgetting to sign up for the cheap full-coverage plan offered by Priceline, I was dumb/cheap enough to opt for the lowest insurance plan offered by the rental car company – which, I’m told will probably only cover the cost of a new grille. I’m also told that car rental companies can be pretty ruthless about this kind of thing. So I’m expecting the worst, and to be a lot poorer before all this is over.

Fucking deer. Where’s Ted Nugent when you need him?

BONUS TRACK: Oh, and when I came back to HK last night, United Airlines was kind enough to lose my luggage. 

Again. 

The hits keep on coming,

This is dF

I’m from Tennessee. I don’t talk about it much. Except when I have to.

Which seems to be more and more often, now that the state govt is busy transforming Tennessee into a gun-owner’s paradise where the Bible counts as science, no one has sex until they’re married, and when they do, it’s hetrosexual sex only, even if yr just talking about it.

Their latest proposal:



I should point out that I got that headline from Addicting Info, which means it’s both overwrought and misleading.

But not entirely false.

The bill in question, SB 3310 (which passed 28-1 in the state senate) and HB 3621 (now on the floor), is an update of Tennessee’s current abstinence-mostly sex ed law. The new law does NOT say you can’t mention hand-holding or kissing. Not specifically, anyway. What it says is that teachers cannot “promote any gateway sexual activity or health message that encourages students to experiment with non-coital sexual activity”.

“And what exactly counts as a gateway sexual activity?” you may ask.

Well.

It doesn’t say. But it does say that if a teacher mentions any “gateway sexual activity”, parents can sue them. So if yr a teacher in Tennessee, it’s probably better to err on the side of caution and not say anything except “here’s where babies come from, now don’t do any of this or anything that could conceivably lead to this til yr wedding night.”

So theoretically, yes, if yr conservative enough (and if yr a Tennessee legislator, judge, police officer, or parent, there’s a good chance you are), that could include kissing or holding hands.

Or dancing, even.

Stephen Colbert is here to give you an idea just how far this logic can go.



Needless to say, I think the idea of “gateway sexual activity” is silly. But then I think abstinence-only sex ed is a bad joke, and I don’t particularly buy the “gateway drug” argument that beer leads to heroin, so I would say that, wouldn’t I?

ADDENDUM: Oh, that part in the headline about banning teaching about contraceptives? That’s not accurate either. The law says that you can talk about them, provided you do so in a “medically accurate” way that’s consistent with the abstinence-mostly message.

Whatever that means.

And if you don’t, parents can sue you for that, too.

See what they did there?

And that’s why I don’t talk much about being from Tennessee. Though there are worse states to be from, I guess.

Don’t look at me,

This is dF

Previously on Senseless Acts of Bloggery:



And now it’s been approved by the House Education Committee.

My opinion on the bill hasn’t changed. But it does get me wondering how this is going to play with the Other Gays Is Scary Law that state Republicans are promoting.

No, not the It’s Illegal To Make It Illegal For Businesses To Discriminate Against Gayz one.

Rather, I’m talking about the It’s Okay To Bully Gayz As Long As You Do It For Religious Reasons b/w It’s Not Okay To Bully Christian Kids For Hating Gayz bill.

It’s essentially the same bill as the one in Michigan, and I feel the same way about both.

Anyway, if both bills pass, it presents an interesting conundrum.

Basically, the Don’t Say Gay bill says you can’t mention homosexuality in school at all. The Selective Anti-Bullying bill says you have the religious freedom to express negative opinions about homosexuals in school.

Which I think means that it’s okay for Christian kids and teachers to criticize and insult gay people on religious grounds so long as they don’t actually say why they’re criticizing and insulting them.

Or something.

Well, look, no one ever said bigotry had to make sense.

Anyway, good luck with that conundrum, Tennessee.

Southern discomfort,

This is dF

How Nashville prays:



DISCLAIMER: Yes, I realize he’s probably making deliberate references to both Talladega Nights and local boy Darrell Waltrip. And the fact that I actually caught the Waltrip reference means I’m in no position to judge. And, all right, if you gotta pray in public, you might as well have a little fun with it.

Still, product placement in prayer is kind of a sadly apt metaphor for the state of the nation right now.

Boogity boogity boogity,

This is dF

ITEM: The state of Tennessee makes it a crime to use a friend's login to listen to songs or watch movies from services like Netflix or Rhapsody – even if you have their permission.


On the one hand, I’m fascinated by the argument that using someone else’s Netflix account is similar to sharing cable TV with the neighbors (which is of course not only illegal, but also likely a violation of yr ToS). From a cable-TV theft POV, using someone else’s Netflix account (outside of your home, at least) is a little harder to justify.

On the other hand, the law doesn’t distinguish between hackers who sell passwords in bulk and someone using their mom’s Netflix account, and knowing the MPAA and RIAA, they’re not really going to care. As far as they’re concerned, sharing a Rhapsody account is no different from selling pirated copies of Ke$ha CDs out of the back of yr car (or, for that matter, breaking into EMI’s bank account and stealing all their money).

Typical.

For me, the best way to evaluate laws like this is to ask the following question: does the remedy solve the problem?

If the problem is piracy and financial losses for the music and film industry, the answer is “no”. Actual criminals who steal and sell passwords are already breaking the law, so making more laws isn’t much of a deterrent. And people who can’t or won’t pay for media services generally will not become paying customers just because you outlaw ways to get it for free. You might get less people to use someone else’s account, but I seriously doubt you’ll get them to pay for their own. And a lot of people will keep sharing accounts anyway.

Conclusion: it’s a law that creates new ways to put people in jail without remedying the problem it proposes to fix.

Typical.

Access denied,

This is dF

Did you know there’s a Titanic Museum in Pigeon Forge, TN?

Neither did I. But there is. It’s even shaped like the Titanic.

See?





My sister’s family had been there and she wanted to take us. And – having been interested in the Titanic long before James Cameron invented it – I was game.

I have to say, it’s put together pretty well. Not many artifacts from the actual wreck, and most of it was old territory for me, but they put together the narrative well, with minimal reference to the movie (which also meant no Celine Dion, for which I was grateful). They even hand you a card with the name of a passenger on it, and you find out at the end whether or not yr “character” survived ot not. (I was Harvey Collyer, and I drowneded.)

The other interesting bit is the part where you can go out onto a deck mock-up and dip yr hand in water that’s 28ºF – the temperature of the water in the North Atlantic where the ship went down. Hold yr hand in that for 10 seconds, then imagine doing that for the four hours it took for the Carpathia to arrive to rescue survivors. You can also experience the slope of the ship as it sank to get an idea of how long you’d be able to hold on for yr life before you dropped into that 28º water.

On the downside, the whole experience all falls apart when you enter the gift shop at the end, where any emotional impact of the tragedy is drowned in cheap, gaudy commercialism.

Much like the rest of Pigeon Forge.

The upcoming ice-carving content is also in questionable taste.

Next: The end of an era!

Going down,

This is dF