Breaking Bad Halloween

You may have already seen this photo; Aaron Paul posted it to his Twitter account and it's been discussed in several Breaking Bad message boards and other forums. Most people, such as myself, think it's cute and funny but as always is the case, *some* people were offended. "Dressing kids up as drug dealers? Horrible idea! Bad parents!" are the basic complaints. What I'd like to know is this:

Do these same people also complain when parents dress their kids up as Dracula, a witch, a zombie or the like? I asked that very question to someone who was up-in-arms over the photo and they said "But these parents are promoting drug use...and that's not cute!  People die every day from using or selling meth!!!"  I had to point out to them that vampires bite people, either killing them or, with the bite, sentencing them to an eternity of being a vampire as well, that witches in fairy tales captured and ate children and zombies...well, they just kill and then eat everyone, particularly their brains.

"But that's fiction!" came the reply.

Uh...and Breaking Bad wasn't?  Dressing your kids up as characters from a movie or TV show doesn't mean you condone whatever it was the FICTIONAL character did. 

Even with all the horrible things the characters in Breaking Bad did, that photo makes me smile.  *Some* people just want to go Breaking Butthurt and are more offensive than whatever it is they're protesting.

Growloween!

Keep Texas Wild: Panhandle

phrenology

phrenology phre·nol·o·gy[fri-nol-uh-jee, fre-]

noun

A psychological theory or analytical method based on the belief that certain mental faculties and character traits are indicated by the configurations of the skull.

More about phrenology at Wikipedia.

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Phrenology has always interested me (not quite "fascinated"). Seeing the word as today's Word of the Day reminded me of a friend I once had back when MSN Groups were up-and-running. We shared political views, but couldn't have been more different in religion, she being a Wiccan. We were in a chat room once, just the two of us and were discussing our belief systems and I said I wouldn't belittle how she believed, but there were some tenets to paganism that I would never trust, especially in foretelling the future, things such as palm reading.

Well, that upset her and I had to suffer through indignantly told stories of how her grandmother had read palms and how the palms of people she knew had predicted their future - their love life and life span, etc.   I didn't say anything until she ran out of steam and then remarked that palm reading was to science as phrenology was to psychology.  She was "silent" for a while, nothing being typed and I knew she had opened up another window and was researching the term.  After a minute or so, she exited the chat room and that was the end of our cyber-friendship.

Oh well.  I was getting tired of all that "Blessed Be!" crap, anyway.

Walk On The Wild Side - Lou Reed

R.I.P. Lou Reed

Note: The following video has an "adult" theme; if you are easily offended by such things, please don't click "Play" on it. There were other videos available, other songs, but this is the one that always comes to mind when I think of Lou Reed.

Driving In The Texas Panhandle

Stumbled across video while looking at Texas Panhandle tornado videos; I'm not positive, but I'm fairly certain this is east of Amarillo, between there and Panhandle (the town).

If that's where it is, it reminds me of the first time my British friend Helen came over to see me. Her flight was later in the day and by the time we picked up her luggage and got out of town, it was just about sunset and we were right at the same place on the road as in the video.

The traffic was much lighter than in that video and she commented on it. When, after about ten or fifteen minutes,  the second or third car passed us going the other direction in the westbound lane, I joked and said the highway was starting to get busy. She thought I was serious, but I told her it was fairly normal for a weekday, plus the "rush hour" after 5:00 was already over and explained to her about the busy traffic early in the morning and at quitting time at the Pantex Plant and also how many people who worked there or in Amarillo lived in Panhandle or the small communities or clusters of houses nearby, making for a lot more traffic than at the current time of day.

We drove along for a while longer, not saying much and I was amused at her staring out the window at the scenery, such as it was. The landscape along that part of I-40 is apparent in the video; other than power and telephone lines and barbed wire fences and the occasional house, the view stretches nearly unbroken all the way to the horizon, nothing to catch the eye other than a few lights twinkling on top the cell towers.

After several minutes of silence, she said something to me, but I couldn't understand it so I asked her to repeat it. She did so, but I still couldn't understand the word she was using and had to tell her I still couldn't understand what she had said. She repeated it one more time, slower:

"It's. all. so. vahst." Vahst? What is that, I wondered, some sort of British slang?

Then it dawned on me what she was saying...

 VAST.