Random Word Wednesday IV

Here's the next Random Word Wednesday!  Let's see...  What do we have this week?  Brazilian fashion models, suicidal American abstract painters, British heretics (and no, I don't mean Lennon - we'll save that for another week), Turkish Sultans, the entire nation of Poland, and Muppets!  What an exciting pile of stuff that's bound to be compelling writing.  Thank you and enjoy!


1.  WINDING

I always thought that Ringo looked WAY too serious in this picture.  I know I couldn't keep a straight face wearing polka dots.

When I think of a list of albums in my head that I can put on and not once feel the urge to hit the skip button, that list is pretty small.  Let It Be is one such album, though.  There's something about One After 909 that I really dig for some reason, and I never, ever get sick of listening to Dig a Pony for some reason.  I think that's my favourite one.  I always thought that Long and Winding Road was kind of an anomaly on this album.  For some reason it just doesn't quite seem to fit right with the rest of them.  It seems like the conspicuous song in the album for some reason that I can't quite put my finger on.  That doesn't make either the song or the album any less good.  On the contrary, it adds a character to the album that wouldn't otherwise have been there.  Interesting song.  Great album.

2.  POLISH

A bird wearing a hat?  That must be the inspiration for the old Baltimore Orioles mascot.

Ah, Poland.  What a nifty little country.  Well, I guess it isn't little.  With 38 million people, it's bigger than Canada by a fair bit.  I kinda like that Polish eagle, though.  I always thought that was kind of weird, those coats of arms.  Whether they're Polish, British, or whatever, the head of the animal always seems to be looking off to the side.  In fact, it kind of looks more like an excitable chicken than an eagle, but I digress.  Oh!  Something else Canada and Poland share besides populations in the 30-million range, our flags are both red and white!  Though theirs is a bit more simple.  Just white and red horizontal bars, one on top of the other.  You know, it's funny.  The presidential flag has the eagle, but the national one does not.  Go figure.  Anyway, my grampa was from a farm outside Warsaw before he came over from the old country.  He said that the farm his family had there was so small that if there was a strong breeze and your horse crapped, it would fall into the next farmer's field.  I didn't 100% understand what that meant, but I more or less got the picture.  Viva Polska!

3.  ASSIGNING

Max, have you gone mad? A receptionist who can't speak English? What will people say?

Gisele Bündchen is a Brazilian fashion model...  Wait.  What?  Gisele Bündchen?  Kind of a funny name for a Brazilian fashion model.  That's about as Portuguese as Leonid Brezhnev.  What?  Oh!  Both her parents are German?  Riiiight...  O.k.  Now I get it.  I'll just start over again.

They'll say, "A wuma wa wa wa wa!"

Gisele Bündchen is a Brazilian fashion model and the wife of NFL quarterback, all-star, future hall of famer, and hero to some, Tom Brady.  After the Patriots lost to the Giants, a group of the players' wives were congregating together and Gisele stood up for her husband.  "My husband can not fucking throw the ball and catch the ball at the same time. I can't believe they dropped the ball so many times."  Hmm.  So, I was listening to a sports radio show the week after the Superbowl and there was a conversation upon this subject.  Why does it always seem to be that after big games like this there always this necessary task of assigning one slob to be a hero and another slob to be a goat?  Why can't everyone just concede that it was a good game and the better team won through no fault of anyone on either team?  I mean, they fought all season, survived the playoffs, and punched their tickets to the dance.  They have no one to explain themselves to, nothing to apologize for.  You don't stomp all over the team that got you to the dance - you stomp all over the Colts!  ...like everyone else this year.  Ha!

4.  ENTAIL

Suleiman the Magnificent wasn't just magnificent for his empire's achievements.  Check out that lid!

Now, people are standing back and shaking their heads at Greece and their debt these days, but more than a century age there was another much larger, much broader state that was in its own public debt freefall: the Ottoman Empire.  In 1881 the Ottoman Public Debt Administration was formed.  It was a European-controlled organization that was established in 1881 to collect the payments which the Ottoman Empire owed to European companies in the Ottoman public debt.  Sound familiar?  To give you a picture of the broad scale of Ottoman debt, the "crisis" in Istanbul began in 1854 and the debt was not fully paid for until 1954, a few months shy of a full century later.  So, if you're wondering what these debt problems in Greece are going to entail in the long-term, just take a read into the debts amassed by the Ottoman Empire in the end to find out.  Very fascinating stuff.

5.  HERESY

I like my heretics at a nice medium with a splash of honey barbacue sauce.

And now for the sad case of Edward Wightman.  After attending school, Mr. Wightman started into a nice tidy little career as a mercer.  Business was good, but like many of us, he wanted to do something a little more fulfilling.  So, on top of his cloth business, he became a priest at the local Baptist Church in Burton, England.  Now, while a minister he bumped into the notion of "soul sleep" (a very Lutheran idea if I may say so myself), liked it, and adopted it.  That was kind of the first step here.  Now at the time, the early 17th Century, the despicable James I was in charge.  James was a hard ass Catholic king who later died because of the rebellion led by Cromwell due in combination to the hardness of his ass gross incompetence of his military leadership.  Until then, however, he was very strict on religious matters.  Mr. Wightman, though, was a bit of a loudmouth and a bit of a contrarian.  He rejected this and that notion of Christianity until he had his "Meh, whatever..." moment and rejected the trinity.  Well enough was enough.  He was arrested, charged with, and convicted of heresy, and sentenced to death by fire.  To this day, and probably forever more, Edward Wightman was the last Englishman to be burnt at the stake.

6.  ABSTRACT

That's my bedroom window in January - as depicted by Rothko.

Finally!  I get to write about Mark Rothko!  Oo, I love the guy.  He is by far my favourite abstract painter.  You know at a time where you had Rosenquist popping right off the canvas, , Lichtenstein taking a laugh at the industry, and Warhol being Warhol, there was Mark Rothko, slouching tall and thinking deep thoughts about gloomy things.  The above picture is one of the more... nice ones that I could find.  You'll find with Rothko, there were a whole lot of dark, coagulated blood reds in his works.  There was a lot of darkness.  A lot of darkness.  In fact, he insisted that his exhibits have low, low lighting as though you're walking into a dimly lit cavern looking at paleolithic art, because his art had something, that one thin string that connects all humanity together like beads on a necklace.  I can't say what that is because I don't think that anyone can.  It's not a thing but a feeling, and that's the feeling that you get with his art.  It hits you in a place where very few things get to you.  Ever.  You know, I throw the word "awesome" around a lot, but in this case I really mean it in the literal, real sense of the word.  Mark Rothko was awesome.

7.  PERSONALITY

Cool!  Her glass has a straw!  I didn't think press conference/important meeting water glasses had straws.

Just once.  That's all I ask.  Just once I'd like one of our heads of state to be involved in a sex scandal.  I mean, we had Vic Toews last week, but he's small potatoes.  Why is it that all of our prime ministers and governor generals have to be happily married people?  Why not have a single prime minister?  You know, one that's charismatic and has dates and romps around the town?  That'd be great!  But no, instead of Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky you get something more like Mr. and Mrs. Wilson from Dennis the Menace, and man is it boring.  You know, why can't we have a nice, good natured sex scandal?  You know, one where everyone comes out ahead - well, so to speak.  I mean, look at poor Monica here.  She's been demonized so much in America she had to quit selling her handbag line, end her television career after five episodes of Mr. Personality, and flee to London.  Well, I hope she's doing alright these days.  I wish her well and only the best.  And you know, if she's ever in Ottawa, Stephen Harper's image could use a nice fresh coat of sleaze.  You know, ruffle up his hair a bit, if that's possible.

8.  WINNER

Now if you look very carefully you can make out the guy with the camera just above his right shoulder.

Let's see.  The Pittsburgh Pirates, the Washington Generals, and Beck!  All three are famous because they are losers, plain and simple.  However, Beck turned the losing into winning.  After his breakout song 1994 "Loser" from the album Mellow Gold, he went on to win Grammies for Odelay, platinum many times over, and blah blah blah.

No, the real accomplishment here is that I get his work.  I totally get it.  You know, the first time that I had ever seen Jack Black was during the Sexx Laws video.  "I PICKED COTTON!" became one of my all-time favourite lines.  And I get it!  I totally understand the song.  Lost Cause is such a tear-jerker.  I mean, Paul McCartney couldn't do that song better.  Deadweight is absolutely brilliant, as well.  I'd totally dig my desk being n the beach.  I think that the common thread that pulls through all this diversity is something that I find in a lot of great musicians that do weird things, i.e. Beck, Tom Waits, (earlier) Beastie Boys, and so on.  There is this absolutely perfect pairing of medium and message.  How something is expressed is as important as what is being expressed, and that is something you don't see every day and ought to be respected.  And that makes him a winner.  Period.

9.  DUAL

U mad?  U jelly?

It's easy to criticize, but hard to criticize well.  Now these two have been in the business for decades providing dual trashings of the acts on the Muppet Show, raising criticism to an art form.  Statler and Waldorf are actually named after New York City hotels, the Statler Hilton and the Waldorf-Astoria.  In fact, in one episode Statler calls in sick and has his wife Astoria join the balcony instead.  I always found it, like, beyond interesting that they hate the show, trash it every chance they get, heckle like crazy, make Fozzie's life miserable, and yet they still show up every episode.  Every episode they're there trolling away from the balcony.  At first I thought, gee, why do they always go if it's such a poor performance and all they do is heckle.  And then I remembered why I like to watch the Toronto Maple Leafs so much. 

10.  DEVELOPER

See?  Potter's not all bad.  "NO DOGS ALLOWED". 

I thought about it for a minute and then decided ah, what the hell, let's go for it.  I work in real estate for my day job and you know what?  I've never, ever seen a real estate developer portrayed in a positive light in any medium.  Ever!  Let's look at the body of evidence.  "Ernest Goes To Camp"?  Nope.  "L.A. Noire"?  Nope.  "Avatar"?  Nope.  Oh, I know!  "It's A Wonderful Life"?  Nope.  "Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy"?  Nope.  "Who Framed Roger Rabbit"?  Nope.  "Princess Mononoke"?  Nope.  "Godzilla Vs. Mothra"?  Nope.  "Leverage"?  Nope.  "Boss"?  Nope.  "Harvest Moon: Save The Homeland"?  Nope.  "The Raccoons"?  Nope.  ...  Now, I could go on here for a very, very long time here, but in defense of developers and development, it's not all bad.  I don't know why everyone makes them the scapegoat of every movie that they're involved in, but there's a lot of good in taking land and improving it.  Improving land and land value, municipal tax base, infrastructure, etc.  So, the next time you meet a real estate developer, think of the good they do and not just the caricature that you get on TV and in movies.