Sense, Nonsense, and Not-Sense

I was struck some time ago, perhaps by the kerfuffle about Tiger Woods and his wandering eye, to a time of my past where, in my home province, there was the occasional offhand comment about how people of color were slowly and inexorably taking over sport, and that soon, there would be no such thing as a white man in any sporting contest (at least, in the ones that Americans cared about across the country, instead of regional contests like ice hockey or footie). This was portrayed as a bad thing, likely in a "master race" sort of way, the implicit assumption being that white people, at their core, would and should always be better (or at least, competitive) with the other skin colors.

But then, thought I, what if we looked at sport more like the gladiatorial contests, intentionally funneling all the people Romans, err, Americans think of as inferior to battle each other, with the promise of lucrative rewards to the person that manages to kill off all the others, and then perversely encourage this response by institutionalizing certain conditions that make sport look like the only way out, or at least a good enough way out that lots of people will fight each other for the promise of the contract, rather than working to improve their station as a whole? In that case, the continued colorization of sport would indicate that more people were buying into this idea, which seems very bad.

This is likely making mountains of molehills, but it would explain why there's a heavy, heavy push by people of color who made it out of the pile alive to keep young people from entering the arena - it's a long shot at best, and those that don't make it will usually get chewed up.

These are the things we think about at work, or when we have a free moment to connect dots. My own brain can be very scary to look into at times.

The cross graveyard - where all those signs that tell you you're going to hell go to die. Although the Flickr set is termed a cross garden, which makes me think that the placement of all these signs, messages, and crucifixes have some rhyme, reason, order, or deliberateness. If this is the case, then what sort of message is being sent by making the place look more like the graveyard of firebrand preachers' signs?

It's a little jarring to see the graffiti in a place that looks abandoned be all about saving someone from sin, instead of tags, gang signs, or other indications of territory or of the shoddy world around them.

Maybe this is supposed to be some representation of the post-Rapture world, where all the sign-wielding preachers vanished, or the dark places at the Triumph of the Antichrist, with the signs and barbed wire being used as a grisly reminder to the world that their God has abandoned them and those who believe otherwise will meet the same fate as these?

Or perhaps it is the last refuge of the Wandering Jew, forced (or willingly) adopting the trappings of the evangelical so as not to be discovered and Jack Harkness'd before it is his time to be redeemed in the Christian Second Coming?

I don't know. But those pictures are haunting in their own way. If they're supposed to convert me to Jesus, though, they're not doing all that great a job.

This passed through my head while at work, while thinking about superhero shows as compared to, say, RPGs, tile-based strategy games, and others - ever notice how the heroes of Super Sentai/Kamen Rider/Power Rangers shows don't have to go through a tutorial? They know how to use their powers, their changer devices, and their mecha without having a learning curve or any sort of uncertain period (or if they do, it's probably limited to one episode). Some of these shows get away with it by starting in medias res, so we have no idea whether they had to do all that learning beforehand, but even those who come across their power item have an abnormally fast mastery scale, either knowing it all immediately or being able to pick it up quickly.

Thus, the question - what gives? How do these people know/learn that fast, and thus only suffer setbacks when The Plot demands it?

I'll probably need some sort of confirmation on this, but I think that I can tell when someone is going to be a "bad influence" on the other children, or is a bully/problem, in a Berenstein Bears book. They wear a headband. I think Too-Tall did, and there was a book with a Miranda who wore a headband. Maybe it's the evil symbol of Berenestein-world, or some subtle mind-control device that turns those bears evil. Maybe there will be a "Berenstein Bears meet the Evil Mind-Controlling Aliens" book.

...random thought occurs to me, while I've been studiously taking old comic books and designating which ones have come to the end of their shelf life:

Has anyone ever done a study on how Archie Comics characters are the seven deadly sins personified?

Archie is Lust,
Jughead Gluttony,
Betty and Veronica are Envy,
and so forth...

...the things we think about while doing work...