Vacation

Vacation, National Lampoon’s, is a1983 Comedy starring Chevy Chase. It is one of few comedies that I thoroughly enjoy. Written by John Hughes, now famous for such terrible movies as Beethoven and its 4 sequels and drill bit Taylor, was once known as great creative mind in the 80’s. It can be argued that two of his latter movies were better The Breakfast Club and Ferris Bueller’s Day Off in my mind they can not surpass the simple joy that is Vacation. Simple is the key word here while most comedies are held down because of their plots, Vacation excels because of its plot. It has none. It follows the journeys of the Griswald family as they take a car trip across America to the fictional amusement park wally world (a clear Disneyland rip-off with an owner that looks like Walt Disney) along the we get to see some of the lively miss adventures. The constant in the movie that I always found most enjoyable was that it seemed real. Each new disaster that be felled them seemes plausible, if not common. You could see how your own family could end up in this predicament, except for possibly the death of aunt scene. As for me I am currently on vacation or at least that is what others are calling it. While most people go on vacations to exotic places like Europe or Canada, I go on vacations to the mundane world of the Florida panhandle also know as the Redneck Rivera. I came to realize this past week that being in Gainesville has left me aloof much like Obama when he talked about people clinging to guns and religion, we really forget about how the other half lives. While on trip to Wally World (Wal-Mart) with a friend we ran into a friend of his, an acquaintance that I knew a little. His girlfriend, wife, I am not really sure was with him. I noticed, though it was quite obvious, she had no left eye. She might have had a left eye, it could have been sucked down into her face, either way I know that that she use to have any eye because I had scene her before. As we stood there talking I started wondering if she notices that we know. I then think about how I would never see this in Gainesville, for that matter I would never have even consider the possibility that someone would be content walking around missing an eye. The whole experience left me with the impression that our view of the world is very limited. I think that this is what they call Framing. I guess sometimes you do not need to go to Europe to see the exotic it is there all the time right next to you.

Connections

Connections, was a ten-episode documentary television series created and narrated by science historian James Burke and is probably my all time favorite science show. Produced originally for the BBC in 1978, it was later replayed on PBS in the states. A second and third season were also made in 1994 and 1997, though I never saw any of the episodes. The show illustrated how scientific progress did not always progress in a linear fashion and that in some cases scientific discoveries were made because of pure chance. And pure chance is the reason I am writing here now if I had decided to start writing 30 minutes from now chances are that the out come of this prose would be different and is such the case with everything we do. I should have called the blog connections but I always enjoyed a misreading of a friend’s website better. I would like to apologize for this blatant plagiarizism, though the words have been reordered to protect the innocent. I am not sure how long I will keep this thing up but I have a few working subjects already in mind and if nothing else I figure that if come back in 10 years and read this I can remind myself of how silly I was. Finally watch for the bad grammar and misspelled words there will be lots of it. Enjoy.