Things Ooze into Your Home When You Leave the TV On

Much drizzle these last few days, sometimes turning into outright rain, so much so that I was discouraged from raking and bagging leaves. It doesn’t take that much to discourage me from that job, though I did make some piles of leaves in the front yard Sunday afternoon. By Monday morning, more leaves had fallen so that the raked areas looked unraked.

Saw about 30 seconds of Happy Feet on TV the other day, a movie I managed to avoid in its entirety three years ago or so when it was in the theaters. But I knew it to be about anthropomorphic penguins and other creatures of the Antipodes. Still, I was startled to see the happy little penguin tapping his happy feet and singing a line from “The Message.” The line being, “Don’t push me/ ’cause I’m close to the edge.”

I had to wonder just how much of that particular song the happy penguin sang. Probably not much, and very likely none of the lyrics about growing up poor, committing crime, going to prison, being raped there and committing suicide (or being murdered) -- “It was plain to see that your life was lost/you was cold and your body swung back and forth.” That part of the song isn’t suitable for happy feet, I figure.

The long marketing arm of Disney finally caught up with me recently -- also through TV -- regarding its new version of A Christmas Carol. I saw a few seconds of a commercial for it. There’s only one reasonable reaction to that kind of information: Why, God?

Brooks Barnes, writing about the movie yesterday in the New York Times, quoted Mark Zoradi, president of the Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures Group: “ ‘[The story] has never been done with modern technology and with the acting talent of Jim Carrey,’ Mr. Zoradi said, adding that the visual style was ‘very new and very hip. It’s a 3-D thrill ride from start to finish.’ ”

I stand corrected. The only reasonable reaction is, “Dear God, no!”