The Wide Angle: Lamenting our global table top

Published 6:35 am Saturday, January 12, 2019

In this day and age, it’s awfully easy for the mind to get swept away and cluttered with a variety of things.

So with that in mind and feeling I represent the most cluttered and random of us all, let’s take this week and touch on just a few things swimming around in the old noggin. The old bean if you will.

Winter blows

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The wind we endured earlier this week has been just abysmal.

Blowing at least 350 mph (possibly some exaggeration, but let’s face it, not much), it’s been creating havoc for the trees in the backyard, which are being amputated at a ridiculous rate.

The other day I came home to find two large branches laying in the backyard  in what looked like a mass tree killing of the worst kind, and despite trying to convince myself that I now had free firewood for the fire-pit, such as it is, it still irritated me that I even have to break out a saw later this year to cut it all down to manageable chunks of wood.

I also find it irritating that I was forced to look at the bright side of things.

I’m not a lumberjack, even though I do own a red and black plaid shirt. If Mother Nature is so intent on tearing down my trees one branch at a time, then I wish she would have the common courtesy to cut them up for me.

Interesting is still arguing we live on a sphere

We live in an “interesting” time period to say the least. I could probably write a whole four weeks worth of columns, if not more, on the three-ring circus that is Washington, D.C.

But what really makes this time in our lives truly interesting, nay perplexing, is the amount of people who still think the world is flat, gravity is made up and every scientist in the world is in league with “The Man” to feed you these lies — with the help, of course, of spraying mind-altering chemtrails from the afts of jet airliners.

In my time, I’ve believed in Bigfoot, ghosts and all manner of other things that at best I just thought were cool. Since those younger days when I was 40, I’ve refined my beliefs somewhat. Now I require proof while at the same time allowing for a certain possibility that these things may be real.

That being said, I’ve never denied myself the fact that the Earth is round, not flat.

On my day off Monday, I watched a whole bunch -—and by bunch I mean way to many — of YouTube videos on the subject of Flat-Earthers.

Oh yeah, the whole flat earth debate is not only a thing, but they hold conferences because you’re just not considered serious enough until you have your own conference.

Essentially, it was one man and his channel, hunting for the “best” of these and then promptly and easily debunking them.

I suppose, it’s one obsession against another — that of a people that believe in a subject proved false by people from ancient Greece and that of a lone journalist who is easily distracted.

That smile

There is a commercial for permanent, artificial teeth implants that drives me up a wall.

Never mind the fact that the man in this particular version of the commercials smiles throughout, which is understandable during the confessional.That’s not the issue.

It’s for teeth after all, but here’s the problem I have. This gentleman, who I’ve gathered is a card dealer at a casino, says during the commercial that it’s common for players numbering five or six a day to comment about how nice his new smile is and how white his teeth are.

Listen, you vampire, they are not. They are looking at their cards and dreaming of the James Bond women they think will be draped from their arm once you turn over that Jack of Hearts.

Yahtzee!

Along those lines

Valentines Day isn’t too far away and the short reprieve we got from commercials featuring sexy men and women standing in the desert with shovels or walking out of glimmering golden pools will be gone.

These are the commercials for perfumes and colognes. Now, if the commercials have their way, we would all be standing in scenes of oversaturated blues or browns, hair blowing in the wind and chiseled chests bared for all to see.

I don’t have a chiseled chest for the record, so stop looking at me that way.

Take the commercial for something or other where Johnny Depp is ultimately standing in the desert after burying something. There is a sultry close-up of darkened eyes as he narrates something or other I’m not convinced even he knows what he’s talking about. Overhead, the clouds whisk by at super-speed and his voice, soft and graveling recites the name of the cologne.

At no point can any guy relate to this — ever.

Or this commercial of some model, I always think looks like Charlize Theron, walks sensuously out of pool, sans clothes of course because this is a perfume commercial and its hard to be sensual with clothes on. She walks toward the camera, desire deep in those eyes. She owns the camera.

Other women are … wait, are they hanging from the ceiling?

Electronic pop music plays as she appears to be walking a runway and in the end, as the camera takes one last look at you —yes you — that voice we take to be hers whispers, “Duor, fragrance for women.”

And there’s a mad stampede for the perfume counters right?

I always wonder if these commercials work. What I know for sure is this: as the most common, common man you will ever find, I find it hard to relate to any of them.

Also, there are no deserts for me to bury random items in and I’m pretty sure the Jay C. Hormel Nature Center would undoubtedly call the cops if they caught me doing so.

I assure you it’s relevant

A friend and I the other day were having the completely releventant and natural conversation of who would win in a fight: Godzilla or King Kong.

Yes, I’m 44. Stop looking at me like that.

This is a no-brainer: Godzilla.

The matter will be revisited once again next year when the two are set to square off for the third time on the big screen. If memory serves me right, they have already faced off twice before, once in a Japanese version and the other in an American version. It’s been ages since I’ve seen either so I’m not remembering right off the top of my head who won in either, though if I’m a betting man, movie-goers were probably chanting “USA, USA” in their version … well, because we chant “USA, USA” at everything.

Either way, “Godzilla vs. Kong” comes out supposedly in 2020 and I’m super excited as any 44-year-old teenager should be at the idea of two giant creatures battling it out on the big screen. These aren’t two giant robots fighting each other, these are not giant robots fighting giant alien lizards. These are two giant legends battling for supremacy and you can bet I’ll be there.

The fight of the century, the fight to end all fights, the fight to … ahhh … to fight. Whatever, you know what I mean.

If you can’t get excited over two large, fictional monsters leveling cities in the mother of all fights then clearly … you have a very nice smile. Now deal me that Jack of Hearts, I’ve got a Bond girl to take to a Flat Earth Convention.