Overheard at Table 4: Steve Jobs

iPhone user: Steve Jobs will be so missed. He put entertainment right into our lives.

iPad user: I never knew it was anywhere else.

Overheard at Booth 3: Bank of America v President Obama

Trixi D sez: in this war uv words 'tween the prez and BofA "the American People" have fogottun - actually - dey couldn't uv forgottun b'cuz they never knew - this thing that's called "The Elephant in the Room" - and that is Visa and MasterCard International. They're the ones callin' tha shots. All this talk uv interchange - dat's not collected BY the banks - it's charged BY Visa/MC and givun BACK to the banks, but what choo also doan' know is that Visa/MC also CHARGE the banks just for people usin' dey cards! So for the banks - de income barely covers dere EX-pense, see? Now, uv course, yer BofA and yer Chase and da big boys dey gots it covered, but dis really hurts all the others: y'knoo, smaller banks an' credit unyuns.

So, it breaks down like dis: as the prez and the banks and the congress and alla dem duke it out, Visa/MC are jes' sittin' back an' smilin', smilin', smilin' - all the way 2 da BANK!

Overheard at the Counter: The Great Buck Howard

Steppenwolf says, "Saw The Great Buck Howard the other night. Not bad. It was all right. I liked Malkovich. He wasn't as completely weird as he usually is in most of his roles, not so 'etherial' - but he played this mentalist - hypnotist - who is about 30 years past his best days, and this kid who dropped out of law school and has no clue what he wants to do with his life becomes his road manager, and Malkovich is playing Bakersfield and Akron, all these run down community playhouses and still acting like he's up there in bright neon lights.

"The only time that the movie was not believable was when Buck Howard finally admits that he had known for years that he was done. Didn't know why he was fooling himself. Don't know why they wrote that line in there. I don't think that character would ever admit that - not to himself, and even if he did I don't see how he would ever admit it to anybody else - I mean, here's a guy who has truly become his persona.

"But it's a good movie - not a redemption movie - but one of those that at the end teaches you that it's OK to live a mediocre life, if it's a life that you love to do. That you don't HAVE to have the money or the fame that we all beleive that we should have - but that if your particular place in the world is entertaining an aging and thinning segment of society that still wants to believe that there's a little magic left in the world, then, that's the perfect place for you to be, and be happy in it."

Overheard at Table 3

You know, the more I study the more I come to this conclusion: with the exception of Psalms, Proverbs, Solomon, and Ecclesiastes (which I call Praise Songs, Fortune Cookies, Erotica, and Guide-to-Healthy-Living), if someone is quoting any other book in the Old Testament, but not in the context of how prophesy is fulfilled in the New Testatment, then they're simply trying to establish a position in favor of thier support for their own bigotry, intolerence, murder, and war.

Overheard at Table 1: Dennis Miller HEARTS Tea Party

Framer: Wow, I just scanned through AM the other day and caught Dennis Miller's radio show. I always thought the guy was funny, but man, did he turn out bitter. I don't know what happened, but it seems like he's got his tongue shoved so far up the Tea Party's anus that he can taste the bitter acidity of its black black heart!

Overheard at Booth 4: The Happening

By M Night Shayamalan

What I really like about this guy, and I've said it before, he doesn't make your typical genre movie. And like a really good painter, or an artist of any real talent, he doesn't follow a formula, but you always know that his work is his. He owns it. Good or bad, liked or disliked, each one of his works is distinctly his.

I remember when the movie came out that the conservatives gave it the big 'pooh-pooh' as 'just another one of those pieces that's supposed to make us all feel guilty just for livin' on this planet,' but when I finally watch it, a it's totally different thing altogether.

It's a sci-fi piece with a flair of what they had in the 50's - nature taking back what's its, kind of. Whereas in the 50's, you'd see big giant plants walking around and eating people, this time it's a much more subtle attack, where the plants have suddenly released spores that humans actually trigger as they walk among the trees and the grass, and the spores, when triggered, stop the chemicals in the brain that give us our sense of self-preservation. When that chemical is blocked, people just start killing themselves. Sometimes pretty gruesomely as well. I mean, we're talking guys who start up their riding lawn mowers and laying themselves down in front of it, that kind of thing.

Which actually reminds me of some articles I'd heard on the radio a few years back, about how trees actually do go to war with each other: the article was saying that some spoecies of trees will actually drop their seeds to the forest floor that will have a chemical that will prevent the seeds of other species of trees from being able to germinate - thus killing off the other species. They don't know how this is made - it just is.

Pretty spooky when you think about it. And yes, the movie does have the typical talking heads discussing the greater metaphysical implications of such actions - such as, is this the planet finally saying, 'hey I've had enough of you raping me! Take this, human scum!' ?

Hm. Food for thought

Overheard at Table 2: Sea Turtles and Unborn Babies

Niall Carter, sitting with Millie Nagadoces, is ruminating over a mocha latte. "You know," he says, "The pastor mentioned something last Sunday that still hasn't quite seeped through the mental webbing, if you know what I mean."

"As I rarely do," Millie interjects.

"But he was on his series about the Sermon on the Mount, the Beatitudes, and you know I told you the week before the Meek are apparently those with the backbone enough to tell the government to kill Social Security, but this week was those who thirst for righteousness, and apparently we do not 'thirst for righteousness' if we live in a country where the rights of a sea turtle are protected more than those of an unborn child."

"He said that?"

"He did. Now, there's something logically incorrect about that statement, but I can't put my finger on it. There's some fallacy of logic there."

"It's simple. They're completely separate issues. I call it the False Juxtaposition. You put them together for an emotional statement. It's an emotional appeal to make people think that those who try to protect the environment want to kill unborn babies."

"i.e. 'Liberals'."

"And Progressives. Apparently we're all out to eat your fetuses. But really, the laws or lack therof trying to save a species that will go out of existence, because there are only 1300 of them left were developed in a completely different vacuum than the much more all-encompassing debate of abortion slash right-to-choose. To put them together narrowly reframes the context so that any moral human being would have no other decision, morally, than to be outraged against the abortion. But the argument should have never been framed, because there are so much more facets to each - and separately."

"I knew there was a reason why I like talking to you. Another cappucino?"