"Don't stop believin" is the ultimate 80's skating rink song. Close your eyes and picture it; glide, set-up... and... jump. There ya go.

It doesn't have to be any deeper than that.

I guess I would have been about 14 years old when I saw Journey do that song live. I sort of hated Journey (for all the reasons many people have listed here), but my best friend loved them. She loved Schon in particular, enough that she persuaded her mom to drive us to the airport in hopes of catching the band as they boarded their private plane. Midnight, Memphis International Airport, 1983... two teen girls running barefoot around the concourse, holding their shoes in their hands, asking security guards if anyone knew where Journey was. Would you believe it, someone told us?

Thus, my face-to-face encounter with Journey. Large bodyguard, bundling Steve Perry onto a plane while he peered around to see what was happening. Spotlights everywhere. My lunatic friend charging across the runway shouting "ARE Y'ALL JOURNEY?" "Yes," I hissed. "That is Journey. That is Steve Perry. Now get back here before we both get arrested."

1983 was a gentler time. We didn't get arrested; we just got escorted out of the airport. I'm pretty sure my mom's friend bribed someone. In any case, a night to remember.

Tony's a little older than I am, but I bet he has a few memories set to that song too.

I loved the ending, I wasn't provoked, I don't think it's ambiguous, I was satisfied, and I even found it cathartic. The point, that you were set up by your own expectations which have nothing whatsoever to do with this show and these characters, seemed pretty obvious. Point remains valid even if your personal psyche requires that you concoct a conspiracy theory to create an ending that satisfies your need for closure. Not one person won the pool on this one, and Chase didn't set you up, you set your own selves up.

And yeah, I am an elitist and I do think I'm better than you, so nyah. Seriously, what's with the hostility already? Some people really do like the ending. They aren't faking it, pretending to like it just to tick you off, they really do like it.

Watching people thrash all over the place trying to "get" the ending makes me glad I don't write for TV.

To Eagleton, postmodernism, with its repudiation of inherent or "deep" meanings, is, for all its revolutionary rhetoric, a variation on the same theme. To get back to the question driving his book, the motto "Life is what you make it" may sound banal, but it reeks of a similar hubris. It "reflects an individualist bias common to the modern age" by insisting that we all find our own meaning of life in a personal, private realm. But if meaning has its own roots in language, then claiming this, Eagleton argues, is like claiming that everyone gets to make up their own personal meanings for words.

But this one is so easy to rebut! Oh dear.

No one person's life is identical to any other person's life, therefore the word "life" (in the sense in which it's used in the phrase 'meaning of life') by definition means different things when applied to two different lives. This is like saying that two apples can't taste different because both are apples. What is the taste of an apple? Depends on the apple. What is the meaning of life? Depends on the life!

And then this:

The need to do these things, to live this life, he says, arises not from God but from the nature of human beings themselves. We can't get away from it; it's our essence. We are social animals who thrive on love; not just love for our kith and kin, but the kind of love, called "agape" -- caring for our fellow man -- that is "a practice or a way of life, not a state of mind." The more this type of love circulates in our community, the more meaning we find in life itself and the happier we become.

Any first year philosophy student can knock this down in ten minutes. Agape love makes people happy. But why should people be happy? You can't get from "is" to "should be" without some sort of perspective, which brings us right back to postmodernism, which is exactly what he was supposedly arguing against in the first place. Saying, "I am human, therefore I think humans should be happy," would be valid, but in that instance the value judgment is located within the speaker, not the universe itself.

I'm hoping the review does a poor job of representing the book, because these are high school level arguments.

Nothing else to say, really, you nailed it.

(I also have, well, not my dream job but pretty close, and I sometimes succumb to the temptation to go off on rants at the other people who let the system abuse them. Y'all, you deserve better, and by not standing up for it, you screw it up for everyone!)

Did I mention I love you, Cary?

Isn't the whole point of a double-entendre that tight-asses are supposed to pretend they don't get it?

Honi soit qui mal y pense, you dirty old man!

1980 really blew chunks, trust me, even at the time. You can look it up and verify it. Movies had ugly people in them, music was dull, and for some unknown reason even rich people ate a lot of beef stroganoff and meatloaf, because it allowed you to pretend you could afford enough meat to feed your family.