More From The "Things That Make You Go 'Hmmm'" Files

I just heard about a cemetery that had to raise the rates it charges for burial plots "due to the cost of living."

Hmmm . . .


Conspiracy theorists typically believe no one connected to their pet conspiracy except for the putative "lone gunman" . . . the one person who has the greatest motive to lie. What's wrong with this picture?

Hmmm . . .

Those who insist that women should be covered from head to toe when they are in public are saying a lot more about their own inability and unwillingness to grow up and have some self-control than they are about the temptations of the world.

Hmmm . . .

Bill Clinton's remarks on Molly Ivins' death were gracious and true. He said she was witty and pointed when he wasn't doing anything wrong--and more so, to devastating effect, when he was.

Dubya's remarks, on the other hand, had to have been written by someone else. Totally polite, and entirely non-committal. Seeing how long she's been calling him "Shrub" (correctly so, I might add), what else could he do without making himself look even worse than he does already?

Hmmm . . .


I watched the first couple of hours of the PBS series about the US Supreme Court last night. It was OK as an introductory historical primer, I suppose, but it could have been a lot better. It was eye-opening in terms of revealing the personal background of Justice John Marshall Harlan, but instead of including his dissent in Plessy v. Ferguson ("the Constitution is color-blind"), the show focused on his dissent in the series of decisions grouped together as The Civil Rights Cases. Maybe the producers and the writers thought the latter dissent was more important because it came earlier in time, but amongst the legal community, Plessy is more important because it crystallized Harlan's thinking in succinctly quotable prose.

Nonetheless, the thing that struck me the most about the Harlan segment was just how much John Marshall Harlan looked like the late, great Peter Boyle playing the monster in Young Frankenstein.

Hmmm . . .

I just love the soaps. They have no compunction at all about misstating legal and medical procedures, collapsing time in impossible ways, or otherwise messing up reality when it suits their dramatic purposes. Even when doing it without misstating everything would be plenty dramatic.

Ferinstance, during court proceedings, testimony routinely consists of emotional assertions of someone's beliefs about another character, with no factual content at all to support the assertions . . . yet no attorney objects nor does the judge quash said remarks as irrelevant. But judges on soaps routinely issue orders and edicts that are totally unsupported by whatever has transpired in court during the trial as aired on the soap.

Feranotherinstance, some character who is a medical professional has good reason to take the HIV test. The results come back inconclusive. Does that character start on the triple cocktail? No. Despite the fact that the triple cocktail is routinely prescribed as a prophylactic measure to medical professionals in real life in such circumstances while another HIV test is run.

Feryetanotherinstance, one year, a toddler and an infant are kidnapped together. The next year, the toddler is out of the script and the infant is in grade school. The year after that, the toddler comes back as a 16-year-old, the putative infant is still in grade school, and the parents haven't aged a bit.

Hmmm . . .

There is a common thread to all these observations. They all make my brain hurt!