Twisted Spinster

Can I opt out? I mean, do I really have to be counted as being among the same sex as this woman? Sometimes I wonder why the sort of women who actively pursue homicidal males (not women who are simply taken in by the guy because they had no idea, but the ones like the freak who married Ted Bundy while he was in jail waiting to be executed for slaughtering a bunch of women who looked just like her) aren’t simply arrested along with their husbands, because even if they have nothing to do with their beloveds’ crimes, their refusal to face facts about their spouses do much to support those men in their swollen sense of the rightness of their own behavior, and should be counted as a kind of obstruction of justice.

This is the sort of thing that makes me glad I jumped off the atheism bandwagon ages ago. I would almost swear that this the website is simply a well-done parody, like that fake Baptist church one, but these days it’s so hard to be sure. (Note: I was going to title this post “Atheism Jumps the Shark,” but that happened a long time ago. When I’m topical I’m topical!)

(Via this article, which seems to take the site at face value. YMMV.)

Fortunately the stupid remake of The Day The Earth Stood Still (the original of which was lame enough already) is being roundly panned. But you still have to wonder why movies like this are being made — wherein humanity, or at least the mostly European or European-descended, prosperous parts of it, is seen as some sort of disease or mistake and therefore deserves to be destroyed by Our Designated Betters — and what it says about the mindset of the mostly European or European-descended, prosperous humans who green-light them. Since I watch tv scifi I haven’t been able to escape commercials for the flick, which show scenes of Keanu Reeves dully intoning “Your planet?” and “I tried to speak to your leaders…” and “the problem is you” interspersed with juicy destruction of the usual tourist hot spots like the Coliseum in Rome*. I have to admit, if I were an Islamic jihadist stuffed to the brim with hatred for decadent Western society films like this would only encourage me in my terrorist plans. “So they want to die? Okay! I’ll be glad to speed them on their way!” I’ll bet you there’s no scene of the aliens destroying Mecca.

*Correction: I just saw the trailer again and now I think that’s actually meant to be Shea Stadium or some other New York landmark since the main action is set there.

Global Warming, feh! Real aliens do it for the LULZ!

Update, Sunday: well, that takes care of that. Lesson: don’t f*ck with the Doctor’s favorite planet. (Oh, like he really cared all that much about Gallifrey. The few episodes he was actually on his home planet he 1) nearly got killed every time, and 2) clearly couldn’t wait to get off the place even when whatever trouble he was in blew over. I think all his “survivor guilt” in the new series clearly stems from the fact that he probably used to wish dusty old Gallifrey and the stuffy old Time Lords would just disappear, and then it turns out he got his wish. Be careful what you wish for… Hey, it’s the only thing that describes his fairy-tale exposition scene in The Sound of Drums — in all the episodes for Doctors 1 through 7 — I’ve never seen the movie with number 8 — he clearly has nothing but contempt for most of the other Time Lords and their lifestyle.)

Damn, I just don’t know what to say about this. Except, maybe — go us! We Americans don’t need no Big Brother-style government bureaucracy to censor us; we can do it all by our free, individual selves.

(Via Tim Blair.)

(Title Track.)

"I'm the Burger King!"

I suppose I’d be pissed off too if I’d spent a fortune to go to England to see David Tennant play Hamlet only to find that he couldn’t perform that night due to being made of flesh and blood. On the other hand, I’d be in England! Seeing Shakespeare in his country!!! And I could get better closeups of Mr. Tennant watching Doctor Who on my dvd player so I’d get over it. People in Blighty are so spoiled. They are surrounded by art and history and all they seem to do is moan and complain, and so many UK denizens (Scots, Brits, Welsh, whatever) seem to have taken a headfirst dive into the worst crap 21st century culture has to offer (drinking until you can’t see in flashy clubs that play loud, awful music; dressing like thugs and whores; having absolutely shit taste in everything — Skins? Big Brother and its spin-offs? — and their enabler government just indulges them because people are easier to control when all they’re thinking of is the next drunk or the latest cute celebrity). I used to be like that (except for the dressing like a whore part, I could never bring that look off, I just looked like more like a nerd than ever) but I got tired of it all eventually, including the rabid fandom that meant I’d be crushed with disappointment if the opening band I’d bought the expensive concert ticket just to see ended up not appearing because the lead singer got laryngitis and, you know, couldn’t sing.

I gave myself a much-needed reality check: life is too short to be a fan. It looks like the crazed Doctor Who fanatics also need a slap upside the head with Mr. Real Life’s cluebat. It’s one thing to be on a tv show or in a movie — you can do more than one take, or cleverly film around an actor’s illness, broken ankle, inconvenient pregnancy, etc. But the whole point of live theater is the fact that actors are real people who can get sick or injured. That’s why they have these things called “understudies.” I’ve been to maybe two live plays in my whole life and I know that. And not one word from Tennant’s adoring fan to express concern for whatever is wrong with him — what’s that all about? I’ve had a hurt back, and I can tell you that it’s a special debilitating pain that no painkiller really takes care of without knocking you out, and you can’t find a comfortable position either lying down, sitting, or standing. I wouldn’t wish back pain on my worst enemy. And it might never go away. In any case — whether he really does have a bad back or is actually drying out from a heroin binge, you’d think somebody would say something indicating they acknowledge he’s a human being. The human race, sucking for 200,000 years!*

And the critics are no better: here’s some prime blaming-of-the-victim from some guy called Tim Walker writing in the Telegraph bitching about “the folly of celebrity casting” and how it’s a ” form of miss-selling” because celebrities attract people who “are likely not enjoy the experience.” Erm, for one thing, who are you to say who might or might not enjoy something they’ve never done before? And b, or second, or — anyway, how is the fact that some turnip decides they don’t like plays except unless their speshul fave star is in one the fault of the casting director, the theater, the star? This is just more of that “indulge the little people in their little desires, don’t let them get into new things that might GASP change them, above all don’t make them take responsibility for their own behavior” bullshit that is becoming the chief characteristic of too many Western nations (including, increasingly, our own). If you spent a week’s pay on a play you normally wouldn’t bother going to just to see your special guy, he doesn’t show because he’s injured, and you let that spoil your evening, it’s no one’s fault but your own.

Sometimes I think Western culture is doomed and this is one reason why. What’s really sad is that most of the people interviewed in the first story were well into adulthood, not teenage girls. Grow the fuck up, ladies. Get men of your own — I’ll bet more than half of these fangirls are single and have wasted their youth looking for the “perfect” man, and that all their male friends are gay.

*According to Wikipedia anyway.

Update: I wouldn’t blame you for thinking I’ve totally written off American actors, and I mostly have (British actors at least usually go into theater after they become big stars on tv and in the movies; American actors just go to Hollywood, which is increasingly like being dead), but Gary Sinise is an exception. Ooh, and there’s a new episode of CSI:NY tonight. It’s all about some mysterious energy field near the Empire State Building. I guess they never cleared out that Dalek laboratory.

I feel the same way. My tolerance for politics is always very low, and I’m just burnt out on the subject. For those who still care, the FBI actually arrested the governor of Illinois because basically he was a criminal. Or at least that’s how he’d be described if he were a Republican. Still, the Democrats can’t seem to find a way to spin Blago-whatever’s out-Nixoning of Nixon so they’re trying to replace the matter in the national mind with other subjects. Corruption, thuggish threats, and graft? Who cares — we’ve got fantasy global warming dragons to slay!

…is the way they always gild the lily. They could be content with a simple statement, but no, they have to add something unnecessary and extra that makes you want to punch them in the face. Take Sartre, for example, a dead French guy whose philosophy the hipster set likes to claim they base their lives on. (They don’t, though — at least in this country the actual world view of those who can afford to waste their time pretending they read rambling, incomprehensible nonsense by Derrida and Foucault is based firmly in their staid, butter-on-white-bread Protestant-work-ethic bourgeois upbringing.) But as I was saying, take Sartre, as quoted in this article:

“Man is not the sum of what he has already, but rather the sum of what he does not yet have, of what he could have.”

Now, see what he did there? That last section, so not needed: “…of what he could have.” Bitch, you already said “the sum of what he does not yet have,” you don’t need to say it again in a slightly different way! Don’t you just want to go back in time, walk up to him where he is sitting at his little café table with his little glass of wine and his cigar or whatever and deck him?

Hey, here’s a new idea for an episode of Doctor Who:

SCENE: It is 1931. a Frenchman sits at a café table on the Champs Elysée. It is Jean-Paul Sartre. He is drinking cognac and reading a French magazine.

(Wheeze wheeze wheeze wheeze VWORP VWORP VWORP VWORP.)

A blue box with the words “POLICE PHONE BOX“ on it materializes in front of Sartre, who is nonplussed. The box is the Tardis. The door of the Tardis opens and a tall, thin man in a long brown coat steps out. It is the Doctor. He is carrying a cricket bat. He approaches Sartre and looks down at him.

DOCTOR: M. Sartre?

SARTRE: Mais oui!

DOCTOR: Jean-Paul Sartre?

SARTRE: (warily) Yes, monsieur, that is my name.

DOCTOR: The Jean-Paul Charles Aymard Sartre, the existentialist philosopher, playwright, novelist, screenwriter, political activist, biographer, and literary critic, one of the leading Figures in 20th Century French philosophy? (Ed: the Doctor reads Wikipedia.)

SARTRE: (Amazed) I am?

(The Doctor then raises the cricket bat and brings it down on Sartre’s head. Sartre falls out of his chair and sprawls inert on the pavement.)

DOCTOR: Not any more.

(The door to the Tardis opens. A young girl with long brown hair, wearing jeans and a sweatshirt with the initials CUNY across the front of it looks out.)

GIRL: Is it done?

DOCTOR: (Looking down at Sartre.) Yup. When he wakes up in the hospital he’ll have forgotten everything he learned at the Sorbonne. He’ll decide to go into chicken farming in Provence. Being and Nothingness will never be written.

GIRL: Thank you, Doctor!

DOCTOR: Now, who’s next on the list… (Still speaking, he and the girl go back into the Tardis and close the door. A few seconds later the Tardis dematerializes.)

************

(Slate article via Kathy Shaidle.)

Yes, the post you all wait for, wherein I rant and rave about trivial, petty things that would never bother a normal person. To begin:

First, the word “bespoke.” It means “custom made for a specific person” and originally was supposed to refer to articles of clothing. I know this because I looked it up. It’s not a new word. However, I have only noticed its use recently in publications sold to the public, and the word as used is applied not only to jackets and such but also to furniture, carpets, and other products for the home. And it PISSES ME OFF to no end. Why can’t they just say “custom-made”? “Bespoke,” though apparently a term in use for a long time, is obviously one of those words that are meant for the specialized ears of the fashion industry and the people who depend directly on them. The reason why is because such words used in public sound unbearably twee and precious, and any normal (ie, non-fashion-world denizen) person hearing these words are probably allowed by law to beat the user of such words like a red-headed step-child. Come on, doesn’t reading the phrase “the foyer, with its red wallpaper patterned after a 13th century Kyoto wall hanging and containing a charming bespoke divan upholstered in chartreuse dupioni silk” make you want to find the person who wrote that and beat them with a tire iron?

Second: the way people have started to refer to areas around and in a house as “space.” For example: on one of those tart-up-your-house-to-sell-it (because, duh, no one wants to buy a house cluttered with worn 80s furniture, kids’ toys, with a kitchen covered in a fine layer of old toast crumbs and dried orange juice) shows, people were referring to the home’s back yard and patio as a “lovely space.” It’s a fucking yard and patio, not a “space.” If I’d been working for days (while HGTV’s cameras rolled) in mowing my lawn and cleaning up my back patio, I’d feel rather insulted if someone implied that it was an empty void, which is what “space” more or less means.

Okay, that’s all for now.

She’s got it all except for being a crippled lesbian, and this being the acting universe we’re talking about, news that the latter requirement is fulfilled might soon surface (and there’s also time to put to literal use that old acting saw “break a leg”): a proposal for a British actress of Nigerian and Jewish descent who was in a movie about genocide for the part of Number 11 in the Doctor Who series. This is a riff off a recent proposal of a band of female scientists for a female Doctor, who with clunking earnestness declare that

…making a high profile sci-fi character with a following like Doctor Who female would help to raise the profile of women in science and bring the issue of the important contribution women can and should make to science in the public domain.

Never mind that for most Who fangirls one of the current main attractions of the show is the geeky-hot male star, with the attached fantasy of being his companion/girlfriend. The bad facts are that most girls don’t want to be in charge, they want to be with the guy in charge. Also, math is hard. And this is after decades of girls-can-do-it-too propaganda. They just ain’t listening, and that can’t be blamed on the culture anymore. (Besides, the show has already had plenty of female scientists — companions Jo, Liz, Romana — who was also a Time Lady — just to name a few. Don’t mess with fangirls. We know it all.)

And I’ll bet he eats reindeer sausage.

I don’t know about you, but my estimation of Ikea just went up a little from that report. I mean, I love their cheap Swedish-designed crap assembled into flat packs by Chinese political prisoners like anyone else, but selling reindeer meat during the holidays? That takes balls. I wonder if they have any at my local store… (Probably not, I do live near Disney World after all — God forbid some tourist decide to stop by for Swedish meatballs and see that Donder and Blitzen are shrinkwrapped and ready for snacking…)

(Via.)

Update: “Venison! Venison! Venison!” (About 4 minutes in.)