I normally am not a fan of American football since any sport where there’s a possibility of people being maimed or seriously injured for the entertainment of the masses smacks too much of the old days of gladiatorial combat for me but I really enjoyed “The Replacements” – an American football movie starring Keanu Reeves and Gene Hackman – yesterday! What appealed to me was the fact that the movie was about teamwork, courage, heart and the will to succeed against all odds – traits that *I* think are some of the best in the human race. It was an enjoyable movie and I think I spent quite a bit of the movie eitehr sitting at the edge of my seat, cheering or dancing to “I Will Survive” along with the characters :p
It was an evening for good movies since I saw another movie that both appealed to me and made me feel good “The American President”. Now Michael Douglas’ Andrew Shepherd is a president that I’d be proud to follow and to vote for! Yes, I agree that movies are idealistic and don’t always show the real view of the world and that real people can’t always take the kind of decisions that tug at your heart strings that characters in movies always do but how I wish it could be so! This Andrew Shepherd is a president with character and integrity – a person who will put what he believes is right before everything else – even his hopes of another term as president! This is the kind of president from the golden days of America when the nation was a true giant and not just a country full of people who are content to lay back on the successes of their ancestors and bask on their reflected glory!! (Is that harsh? I guess so but again, I personally believe that that is the truth about at least 80% of Americans – unfortunately, perhaps 90% of that 80% isn’t online since the online community by far seems to represent the most enlightened and world-aware part of the the American population …)
One of the most moving moments in the movie for me (besides the penultimate moment when Andrew Shepherd makes his stand against his opponent) was the dialog between Lewis and Shepherd where Lewis says “People want leadership. And in the absence of genuine leadership, they will listen to anyone who steps up to the microphone. They want leadership, Mr. President. They’re so thirsty for it, they’ll crawl through the desert toward a mirage, and when they discover there’s no water, they’ll drink the sand.” and Shepherd responds “Lewis, we’ve had Presidents who were beloved, who couldn’t find a coherent sentence with two hands and a flashlight. People don’t drink the sand because they’re thirsty, Lewis. They drink it because they don’t know the difference.” Funnily enough, I can understand and relate to both points of view. Yes people do want leadership and sometimes no, they don’t know the difference – I hope that we will learn to discern the difference between good and bad and not just follow blindly anybody who claims to be a leader …
I had a rant about the recent changes in the US where a lot of “big brother”-like changes have been made (or are proposed) to the system under cover of the recent tragedies but I think I’ve gone on enough for one day and so I will save it for perhaps tomorrow :p Oh yes, did I mention that I’ve started work on Blog again and that future database changes will be automatically carried out by the application itself instead of you having to download an extra utility?
If you’re working on Blog again anyways… 🙂
I thought that it would be nice if the syntax hilighting, spell checking and thesaurus were also in the Template editor.
I’ve got a couple of tweaks to make to my templates, then I’ll send it to you for inclusion in the package (if you want)
Greg