Southpaw Jones

Is This Interesting?
Thoughts/feelings that just might not matter:

Good morning and welcome. Welcome to Year Two of The Southpaw Jones Gazette! Yay! Today marks one year since the debut of southpawjones.net, and it’s still going strong with 259 daily posts and counting. You can still see that original edition HERE.

I know I didn’t provide much build-up to this day. That’s because I just didn’t have time to prepare. I want to present a new look and organization to things around here, and I need a few more days to accomplish that. So let’s say Monday, August 13. Yes, I now proclaim it to be The Day of Rebirth of Blog and Man. Prepare thyself.

Thanks to everyone who visits, subscribes, and helps to spread the word. If this Gazette has a soul, and I like to think it does, you are its horcruxes.

Speaking of great dailies, well, Rupert Murdoch has finally done it, sealing a deal to purchase The Wall Street Journal. May I just be first to say I won’t be reading THAT ONE anymore. Won’t be curling up with a hot cup of joe and THAT ONE in the morning. You won’t see THAT ONE sailing over my white picket fence to rest its rubber-banded folds upon my “Home Sweet Gnome” doormat. I guess my parrot Farnum won’t be pooping on THAT ONE after I’ve read it from cover to cover. I guess the recycling bin won’t be feeling the weight of THAT ONE pile up day after day anymore. I suppose my buying and selling of stocks and bonds won’t depend upon the reporting of THAT ONE no more, dig it?

What I’m doing there in the preceding paragraph is “being facetious.” I’ve never read that paper and I never will. Don’t know anyone who does. But more importantly, one simply can’t trust a single source of information. It’s not healthy in the past, present, or future. I don’t care if it’s owned by Rupert Murdoch or Ollie the Objective Octopus. Everything is biased. It’s the 21st Century, and we are our own reporters, editors, and publishers now. Of course, that’s only if you want to find some modicum of truth. Most people don’t.

So that’s depressing and preachy, unlike The Simpsons Movie, which I saw with Maggie (my girlfriend, not the youngest of the Springfield clan) last night. I gotta say, I was a big fan of the show in the early years, then it started to get bad about a decade in, then sometimes it gets better, sometimes way worse, and now there’s this movie. So I expected to be entertained in a sort of nostalgia-and-goodwill-trumps-unfunny-jokes sort of way.

Well, this movie did not need any help from the past. It did not need the 12-year-old Southpaw begging the 30-year-old Southpaw to give it the benefit of the doubt. I did not watch it sober, but I don’t think sobriety would have hurt it. It was very fun and very funny and cool to see on the big screen with a good crowd. Most folks who aren’t my mother or hyper-critical “fans” of the show should be able to dig it with no problem.

Go see it, even if it is indirectly owned by, that’s right, Rupert Murdoch. The same Rupert Murdoch who popped out of a joey’s pouch in the outback with nothing but a boomerang and a vicious desire to destroy all that is good and holy. Oh, well.

Quotopia
Freshly-picked quotes from the ol’ reference collection:

The paper, published in the Journal of the International Neuropsychological Society, was based on the theory that humor comprehension is a result of resolving incongruities—resolving the conflict between the expected and the actual, which requires a combination of cognitive skills. As older adults age, they experience cognitive declines that the researchers indicate affect their ability to comprehend humor.
Wingyun Mak and Brian Carpenter, Ph.D., Washington University in St. Louis

Online Museum of the Week
Song Title Movie Posters:

Rhyme Thyme!
One clue whose answer consists of two rhyming words:

That sea cow sure does think highly of himself. Rather conceited. He’s got a lot of…
Highlight here for answer: [manatee vanity]

Upcoming Show(s)
Where can I see Southpaw in the flesh?

Thursday, August 2nd, 2007
8:00 PM
Matt the Electrician & Southpaw Jones
Flipnotics at the Triangle
4600 Guadalupe
Austin, TX
(512) 380-0097
www.flipnotics.com
The New Weekly Show!

Thank you, come again!
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