I English Good or; Crazy Wendigo Doctors Suffering From The Economic Downturn

We no longer need dictionaries.

And since I, at age 11, sat down one week and tried to read one because a)I was socially ostracized because I read books and b)I hadn't read one yet, this makes me mad.

No, this isn't going to be about the rise of text speak, although I personally think that anyone who uses that crap should have their cellphone taken away from them and then be subsequently bludgeoned to death with their keyboard


What this is actually about, is how the laziness with which we use language is starting to cover all manner of sins and is ultimately dumbing us down to a point where, very soon, we'll need to travel back in time to about 10000 BC to find a decent conversation.

There are three phrases that came up in the last 24 hours that I want to talk about (and since this is my blog, I damn well get to talk about whatever I want.)

1)The economic downturn
2)Not guilty by reason of insanity
3)Dr. Phil

So.

1) Once upon a time someone told President Bush (this was about 2 years ago so in the interests of specificity I should add the modifier, "then") that the economy...maybe wasn't doing so hot. So he got in front of a bunch of cameras and, instead using the very serviceable word, "recession", which we've been using to describe crappy economic times that aren't wildly catastrophic for years now, he told everyone, "Don't worry, we're just going into a little bit of an economic downturn." And there was much snickering in the land of America.

Fox news rolled with it of course; by the end of the day every talking head on the network was parroting the term as if it were the most ingenious thing they'd ever heard, but then what do you expect from the official network of the Republican party; if Daddy says it, it has to be good. But everyone else just kind of scratched their heads and said, "Do you think he means recession?" (A note; if your new and nifty catch phrase requires more time to discuss it then to say it, then it probably isn't doing it's job very well.)

Over the next days, weeks and months, Bush dropped this phrase over and over; it became the new, "If we don't do it, the terrorists have won." Soon, the only talking head still waxing bemusement over it was John Stewart, ever the chronicler of the wildly amusing Bushism lexicon. (God I love that man) Time went by and things got worse, and still, no one was saying recession.

Then all hell broke loose and I thought for sure, now, we're going to start hearing some non-jingo speak.

Nope.

To his last day in office Bush was radiating that slightly confused smile of his and saying the economic equivalent of, "What, me worry?"

I figured that once Obama took office, we'd start to regain some sanity and, sure enough, a little bit of realism came back to the world. We acknowledged that, hey, when the stock market is at it's lowest point since 1933, when we're losing jobs left and right and bankers are sewing up great honking golden parachutes with tax payer's dollars, maybe we're in a recession after all. Downturn implies that things are kind of gradually getting worse; you can't really call it that when you've never seen worse conditions in your lifetime.

I breathed a sigh of relief.

And then, yesterday.

I was watching Gordon Brown, PM of the UK, addressing Congress and, I shit you not, he used the phrase "economic downturn" no less than 30 times. In fact, once he accidentally said recession and then made a point of fucking correcting himself!

What. The. Fuck?

The man is...he's fucking English! The country the bloody language was named for, and even he's been infected by this crap. It's like a virus only, instead of getting it by opening a bad email, you get it by listening to daffy elected officials. I'm coining a new term; PTI, Politically Transmitted Infection. I wonder if they make condoms for it yet.

The thing that makes me laugh the most about all this, even as I'm crying a bit into my bowl of dripping rage-snot, is the origin of the word, "downturn." It first entered the English language in 1925, four years before the Great Depression, and was used to describe patterns of mild corporate distress. When you consider the timing it's not all that placating, is it? I wonder if Bush's speech writer is snickering somewhere.

2) For those of you unaware, in July of 2008, a man from my city got on a Greyhound bus bound for Winnipeg, sat around on it for awhile, and then hacked the person sitting next to him to pieces with a machete, cut off his head and stuffed his ears and various other bits into a sandwich bag to be snacked on later. (Not a joke, he actually ate part of his victim while he held the other passengers hostage, I just can't remember which part) I should mention that I was on that same bus route for 52 hours a couple of weeks prior. Not for any particular reason, it's just my closest brush with death in years.

The next couple of days were filled with newspaper stories about how normal he was, how he was generally a nice guy who'd just gone through hard times with his wife and how shocked people who knew him were. You know, the usual Ted Bundy stuff.

And then the weird happened.

The front page of the Edmonton Journal (not a tabloid) ran a page one story about the killer, interviewing, of all people, an expert on the Wendigo. For those not initiated, the Wendigo is a possessing spirit that inhabits a person and forces them to eat human flesh. So being an expert on the Wendigo is kind of like being an expert on the Easter Bunny. (I'd like to point out however, that being an expert on Superman is not at all the same thing. Superman is real and I'll stab you in the fucking eye with a chunk of Kryptonite if you say different. Grr.)

Wendigo expert went into great detail about the similarities between Inapprop-riately Hungry Bus Maniac and the mythical, Sudden Case of the Demonic Hungries. I laughed, shook my head in disbelief and set the paper on fire with my urine. I had a nasty case of PTI that week. (The cure, as it turns out, is large doses of Pirates of the Caribbean, the farthest thing on earth from politics.)

The reason I'm telling you the story about Wendigo expert (from hereon known as Douchebagwhoshouldhavegotabetterjob) is I now believe that his explanation is more reasonable then the one posited in a Winnipeg courtroom yesterday.

Inappropriately Hungry Bus Maniac is, predictably, pleading not guilty by reason of insanity. 'Cause, of course we didn't know that hacking off someone's head and squirreling away their ears for a late snack was a sign of barking lunacy. (Or shared genes with the Royal Family)

I have a problem with this. I'm not going to go on record as saying I don't buy insanity pleas; I genuinely believe that, under certain heightened conditions, it is possible for an otherwise normal, rational person to just snap, do something terrible and completely lack any control or understanding of their actions, I really do. But for me to believe that temporary insanity was at play, certain things have to be lacking. One of those things is self control. Now, correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't the act of putting body parts in your pockets for later consumption smack of a certain degree of self fucking awareness?

The twist here of course is that he's saying God told him to do it. That religious fervor was the source of his insanity. And here's where the joy of inappropriate definitions comes into play. If he's acquitted, there will be a legal precedent for declaring religious faith a mental disorder; if he's convicted, then, under the law, he wasn't actually insane. That would mean that, while it's possible god did in fact tell him to do it, we as a society find that kind of thing unacceptable and televangelists will start declaring Canada "the nation that told god to fuck off." Just wait, you heard it here first.

If we can't adequately define important terms like insanity and hold them to a universal standard, we're in serious fucking trouble, people. Either seeing things that aren't there and acting on their advice is always nuts, or it's never nuts; we need to solve this soon or there will be more very hungry people roaming the bus system with impunity.

Personally, I'm more comfortable with Douchebagwhoshouldhavegotabetterjob's theory. I think Wendigo told him to do it.

3)I've got nothing. I was going to go on a tirade about the misuse of the word doctor
and how, since Phil has a PhD and not an MD and therefore can't see patients clinically, he probably shouldn't be allowed to pose as a psychiatrist on t.v. (fuck I've got to learn to get away from run-ons) and see them nationally.

Really though, I'm just tired of seeing him on the tube every morning, being interviewed about Octo-Mom. You know who should be being interviewed about Octo-Mom? No one. We're having the worst recession in over half a century, that, officially, makes Nadya Suleman not-news. Dear "Dr." Phil, I'm putting you on notice. Unless you're banging the crap out of Nadya Suleman in a desperate attempt to father her next litter, I don't want to hear one more freakin' word from you on the subject. Pack up your white trash carnival and go peddle it in Louisiana, we're done buying sensationalist stupidity here. (I hope)

Folks, here's the thing. Language is what we use to communicate with each other. Words help us to understand that what I call a chair is the same thing you call a chair. In short, precision is fucking crucial; without it we might as well all be standing at the base of the Tower of Babel, screaming impotently at a mischievous deity who likes to see us utterly confounded.

After all, if we can't decide what words mean, how can we ever decide if Inappropriately Hungry Bus Maniac was following god's instructions properly or if he was just being asked to pass the salt? Crazy just becomes a matter of interpretation.

Misused words, give 'em to me.



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I Am Not Now, Nor Have I Ever Been. But....

I came face to face with the horrendous truth of our existence today. And it was communicated to me in a single phrase that captured everything that is wrong with our society in just four words. (No, it wasn't, "In God we Trust," though that's a close second.)

"Advances in mattress technology."

Over the course of 8 hours I heard this phrase no less than twenty times. Gentle readers, today I was subjected to that most undignified of job related tortures, the vendor training session. And this one was training on how to sell mattresses.

Imagine, if you can, the mind numbing boredom of sitting in a room while six different mattress companies try to convince you that theirs is the only bed worth sleeping on; and then try to feel the frustration I felt, sitting in that room, brain cells being eradicated by the cacophony of inanity I was drowning in, all the while being surrounded by 50 beds that, were my boss not present, I could have curled up on in the fetal position to shelter my fragile mind.

I was inundated with phrases like;

"Coil count."

"Integrated coils."

"Pocket Coils."

"Pillow Top, Tight Top and Euro Top."

But worst of all of these, was, "advances in mattress technology."

Roll that around in your mouth for a few seconds. See if it starts to taste moldy.

As far as I'm concerned there has been only one major advance in mattress technology; it was around the same time that people started thinking it was a great idea to let one person be in charge of the rest of them. Can you guess what it was? It was the invention of the fucking mattress!

That's right folks, I know some of you care about this crap, that some of you will spend literally hours and hours, bouncing between 4 stores, trying to figure out what number of coils best defines you as a person. And yes, I get that, since we spend about half our lives asleep (for some of us significantly more, but usually standing up and going about our daily business) it kind of matters what we sleep on. But, as far as this humble Fox Hating Potentate is concerned, that issue was solved when we first crawled out of our caves, took the skins we'd been sleeping on and stretched them over a box. Ta daa! Mattress. (Well, box spring, but you get my point. And yes I realize that the mattresses used a few centuries later than that were more comfortable and I should shut my ungrateful mouth.)

The reason all of this got me so riled up is that it brought back a conversation I'd had a few years ago about consumer culture; specifically what it meant to us in the context of our struggle to find purpose for our existence.

See if you can follow me on this one.

We have six mattress companies who felt that they had made enough advances to the make up of their 2009 lines that they had to torture me with a seminar detailing the departures from their 2008 lines. That means that, for the last year, actual engineers (I shit you not) who went to school thinking they were going to build the next great improvement to the car, or the building, or (let's face it, most engineer's have god complexes) the sun; these actual engineers got cooped up in dank warehouses, were given piles of springs and foam as well as spec sheets on their competitors products, and then they were told (probably by a 94 year old woman with the world's best posture) to, "Make it better!"

Didn't we master the fucking spring with the Slinky? With all the problems our world faces, do we really need actual intelligent people working on the problem of whether you get more support from one 3" piece of foam or three 1" pieces?

Yes. Yes we do.

Granpa Jules is going to give you a crash course in consumer capitalism. This is the economic system we all live in because we're too shit scared to try anything different. (No, not communism. Communism is for pussies. I'm talking about Feudalism. Worked for thousands of years until people learned to read.)

So. Company A designs a widget. A widget is any useless thing that isn't food, clothing, or prostitutes. But Company A has a problem. No one has any disposable income to buy that widget, and Company A can't afford to mass produce it without customers. But, luckily, Company B shows up on the scene and they've designed a whatzit. Guess what a fucking whatzit is.

Companies A and B happily start hiring people to make their useless crap and the people, who used to get things through the magic of trading like valued things with each other, now use "money" (I know, it sounds as ridiculous and made up as widgets and whatzits) to buy each others products. But wait, says everyone who doesn't work for Companies A or B, we want to buy widgets and whatzits too (since the dawn of time, the Commandment that's been the hardest to obey has been the one about coveting) it's not fair!

Along comes Company C who hires everyone else, for substandard wages, without healthcare or pensions and proceeds to make widgets and whatzits at greatly reduced prices and with all sorts of technological advances.

And so on.

The problem with this system, is that no one actually needs this crap. Bigger TV? Old one works just fine thanks. Vacation? Well, the people from There tend to visit Here too, so There can't be all that different/better than Here; why would I save up thousands of dollars to go to the place that guy is coming here to escape from? New video game? Pong's great. New mattress? Fuck off.

And so on.

Really, the only reason "stuff" keeps getting made is, without it, nobody would have jobs/money with which to buy stuff.

So, for no better reason than the perpetuation of a cycle designed to do nothing but perpetually consume, we have to make better mattresses every year. Mattresses that will never hurt your back. Mattresses that will never cause you to accidentally roll towards your lover in the middle of the night for some unintentional hugging. Mattresses that that stupid twat of a princess will NEVER feel that pea through. (The princess and the pea of course being the bedtime story of choice for mattress engineers.)

"But Julian," you say, even though I didn't give you permission to speak, "without capitalism and consumerism there can't be any progress."

You know what? Progress would be a cure for AIDS so that masturbation wasn't the "safe" option when it comes to dating. Progress would be a colony on Mars. Progress would be an economic system that didn't so closely resemble a ponzi scheme. Progress would be the goddamn lasers and flying cars I was supposed to have 9 fucking years ago!

Progress is not just making new versions of the same old stuff, and then telling people that they really really need it.

Do you remember Y2K? The world was going to end if we didn't all go out and buy new computers. In hindsight, it's pretty obvious that it was just a scheme to get the warehouses full of new and incredibly powerful but unnecessary computers that Dell and IBM and HP and Compaq were all sitting on, out into the light of day. But just think about that for a second. You probably know someone (if you or your parents didn't do it yourselves) who went out and stockpiled water and supplies, built themselves a bomb shelter and otherwise stuck their heads in the sand because someone said, "Uh, we may have forgotten a couple of digits when we were building this stuff."

Now, of course, most of us are computer savvy enough to call bullshit on that kind of scare tactic, but really? We went out in fucking droves and spent billions of dollars because we were told the world would end it we didn't. Nine years later we're still hearing the same story.

I heard fifteen commercials in the last week, some subtly, some overtly, hinting that, in order to consider myself a good citizen and help stop the recession, I have to shop damnit! Shop like I've never shopped before! And here, we come to the heart of the issue. We find out why I have to learn how to explain to you that, despite your mattress doing it's job very well (keeping your back off the floor) you need a new one and if only you understood the marvelous advancements in mattresses that have been made by chiropractically endorsed actual engineers, you would buy two of them in a heartbeat.

If you don't buy my mattress, I can't afford to buy someone else's computer. If I don't buy someone else's computer, the company that makes it will go out of business. If that company goes under, everyone it employs will need E.I. and then welfare. If all those people are sucking on the government tit, my taxes will go up to pay for it, and then less people will have enough money to buy mattresses or computers or widgets or whatzits.

And so on.

I know this isn't a new thought I'm having here; that all we're meant for is to consume and then create more consumers and that the whole cycle sucks balls, but I'm genuinely stumped. Clearly our system is broken, unless recessions every twenty years are your idea of progress. But what to replace it with? Every other economic system we've tried has failed (Except feudalism. Bring back feudalism, bring back feudalism. That's catchy, right?) or been deemed evil.

Wait, I've got it. I know how I'll do my part to help the economy.

Do you remember the game snake?



I'm going to make a new and exciting version of this game. I'm going to sell it, and you're going to buy it. Because if you don't, you're a communist. And communism is bad.

How's your mattress?










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Crap Watch Vol 1. Issue 1. or; Homicide by Celluloid

Grrrr.

Not two days have gone by. Two lousy, stinking, itty bitty days since I railed against the injustice of an entertainment industry populated exclusively by talentless hacks who delight in raping the cinematic clouds of nostalgia that permeate the memories of my childhood. And in that time, my enemies (k,maybe not my enemies since they don't actually know who I am and are therefore probably not doing this to me specifically. But still. Grr, aargh)have launched a return salvo against me.

Based on the success of the Friday the 13th opening weekend (and to all of you who went to see it, I will find you, and I will scream impotently at you. Grr, aargh. If you can't tell, I'm super stoked that Joss Whedon has a new show on the air. :D)the PsT.B.(Powers that Be) in Studio Land greenlighted three fabulous new and shiny remakes today.

Grrr Fucking Aargh.

Crap Watch is not going to be in the vein of my usual rants; rather, as cinematic muggings occur, I'll tabulate them here and tell you why I think they're a bad fucking idea. So without further ado; I give you Crap Watch's first list:

DA DA DA

1)The Neverending Story: It ended.

I read this book when I was in Grade 4, 3 years after I'd seen the movie, and let me tell you, it was my first experience finding out how vast the difference between literature and the novels based on said literature usually was. But both media had similarities; the primary one being that "The Neverending Story" fucking very well did end. And I was pissed. I always hated when movies or books were over; I knew it meant it was time to return to the real world, which, even at 9 sucked severe balls for me. Remember any popular kids who read books in elementary school? Yeah, me neither. But here, I thought, finally was (based on the bloody misleading title) something that wouldn't lift me into the clouds only to dump me, two hours later and heartbroken, into the waiting arms (fists) of The Nefarious Jared. (Side note, I ran into T.N. Jared a few years ago. Nice guy, bald; fat, and lisping, but not at all nefarious seeming.) But it ended, illusions were shattered, Jared noogied, and I learned the valuable lesson that titles don't mean shit. (Flowers in the Attic? Not, as it turns out, about gardening in poor lighting conditions. Guh.)

A couple of years later, there was a sequel (starring the soon to be famous and soon after that, dead, Jonathan Brandis) and then another sequel, and then an ill advised attempt at a T.V. show, and then, finally, it was over.

I loved the story of Bastian, the plucky young bullied boy who wins the geek lottery and gets whisked off to fantasy land to save the day and get the girl and ride on the back of a giant Luck Dog...er Dragon, I really did.

When I was five.

It doesn't need updating, it doesn't have some new current context that will allow it to say fresh and exciting things, it just needs to die. Please. For the love of Atreyu, just let it die.

Wait, read that above description again. Minus the fluffy dragon, doesn't that sound a lot like The Forbidden Kingdom? And really, if you think about, Jet Li was sort of the Luck Dragon in that movie. SEE! SEE! It's already been remade and it did shit at the box office.

Moving on.

2)Total Recall: I don't know. If this is a vehicle to get Arnie out of politics and back into the movies where he belongs, I'm all for it. First, I'm not ready for an Austrian President; I grew up on horror stories of the last time an Austrian ran anything that wasn't Austria. Second, I miss Arnie. So, for him, I would give this a pass. But, if it's not, please please please, Studio Execs, listen to me carefully.

YOU CANNOT FUCKING REMAKE A MOVIE WHOSE ENTIRE APPEAL IS BASED ON PLOT TWISTS, MYSTERIES AND GUESSING GAMES WHEN MOST OF THE PEOPLE WHO SAW IT THE FIRST TIME ARE STILL LIVING AND ALZHEIMER'S FREE.

If the point of the pointless remake is to capitalize on the nostalgia of the built in audience, you don't make movies that they're definitely going to pass on, on the grounds that they already know exactly what's going to happen. We all still fucking remember that Marshall Bell had that weird psychic puppet buried in his chest. IT'S NOT GOING TO SURPRISE US, SO WE'RE NOT GOING TO PAY TO SEE IT FOR MORE THAN TRIPLE THE COST OF THE FIRST TIME!

Asshats. Sigh

And finally:

3)Arthur: No, not a movie about King Arthur. Even though we've already seen a bozillion of those, I will still pay to watch everyone that get's released. As long as Kiera Knightely plays Guinevere. Forever. No, this was Arthur, starring Dudley Moore. I can't bear to tell you this myself, so here's the synopsis, courtesy of IMDB:

"Arthur is a happy drunk with no pretensions at any ambition. He is also the heir to a vast fortune which he is told will only be his if he marries Susan. He does not love Susan, but she will make something of him the family expects. Arthur proposes but then meets a girl with no money who he could easily fall in love with."

Does that sound like something that should be remade?

This turd sat in our Beta collection for a decade and I never got all the way through it. And just so you understand, when I was a kid I loved EVERY movie. All of them. I sat through Fantasia for fucks sake. I watched Twelve Angry Men in black and white when I was ten and didn't hate it. I watched Crocodile Dundee II, 16 times. This movie I couldn't get through once.

I don't know, maybe I'm wrong, but when Arthur is your pitch for a $20 million remake project, maybe it's time to cut off your own balls and stuff them in your mouth.

Or, like the sub-title of this piece says, I'd be more than happy to come down there and do it for you.

Until next time Crap Watchers.

Unless they announce a remake of Romancing the Stone. If that happens I'll just douse myself in gasoline and take my chances in a godless universe. I can't handle anymore Michael Douglas or Danny DeVito in this lifetime.






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Suicide by Celluloid or; Slouching Towards Creative Oblivion

Of adaptations and remakes and reboots and sequels.

Ghostbusters 3.

In a world where it seems like everyone is losing their jobs, where Republicans are concerned about the debt being left to future generations (and if that's not a sign of the Apocalypse I don't know what is) and there are still people claiming that global warming is a hoax, I want to talk about Ghostbusters 3.

The thing is, it's precisely because western civilization is spontaneously combusting that's it's important we have this conversation. So, sit down, pull up a chair, close your yap and listen to your Grandpa Jules. He's about to wax philosophically about the days of yore.

There is a great* episode of South Park that came out sometime around 2000 (I think) that was a spoof of that fabulous** Pauly Shore movie, Encino Man. The episode dealt with a man found frozen for four years who had no idea, once thawed, how to deal with contemporary popular culture. In short, he felt socially isolated because plaid wasn't cool anymore and Ace of Base had largely been forgotten. I laughed my ass off at the misfortunes of 1996 Man because I completely understood what was being said; that we, as a generation, have the attention span of Tara Reid*** at a wine tasting. That anything new that might be considered remotely good will be forgotten faster than abstinence only sex education at a high school grad.

I laughed then, but I'm crying now. I'm crying because, while it was bad enough that the concept of "flash in the pan" became just the standard operating procedure for all things pop culture, I now genuinely fear that the very ability to create things that are NEW has been beaten out of our artistic elite. In the era of book adaptations, remakes, reboots, retools, rethinks, do-overs and utterly unnecessary sequels, where do the new things go to play? How can something without a built in audience hope to make any headway in a distribution landscape peppered with such artistic (autistic?) gems as Transformers 2, X-Men Origins-Wolverine, Star Trek 11 (1, 0, reboot?) G.I. Joe, The Watchmen, or Footloose: The Remake?

I know, you've heard this all before. Everyone with a laptop, a DVD player and a gut big enough to support beer on it has vented on this subject with exhortations of "worst remake ever!" or "I liked it but...", where but is then followed by 4000 words on why the author didn't, in fact, like it.

BUT...

1) Mine is the only opinion I care about.

AND

2) Nobody has really, to my satisfaction, addressed the real danger (yep, I said danger) that all of these phone-it-in "creative" projects pose to our legacy as a culture.

These asshats are trying to improve the past and, in the process, are systematically destroying it.

A few years back Stephen Spielberg dusted off that fantastic piece of sci-fi brilliance, E.T. and, in a fit of retroactive moralizing worthy of Tipper Gore, proceeded to digitally remove every gun in the flick and replace them with walkie-talkies before re-releasing the film on DVD. Ditto George Lucas with Star Wars and the fixing of special effects so that, "the films can be watched the way I always envisioned them." James Bond has been rebooted sans cheezy gadgets and 2.5 sexual conquests per film. The Counting Crows are remaking Joni Mitchell songs. One of the highest ranked novels on last year's best sellers list was a retelling of the Wizard of Oz from the perspective of the Cowardly Lion. Scientists are saying the earth is not, in fact, 10000 years old. Neo-Nazis are denying the holocaust ever took place... Well, you get the picture. The past is out; it's cliched, it's uncool, and goddamn it, we can make it better.

It's almost as though, realizing that the career of the entertainment writer has become one of abject laziness and blatant plagiarism, the writers in question have pushed back with a resounding shout of, "But it's so fucking old...and we really can do better now. Can't we just show you? We'll be ever so good. Please, please, please, please, please?"

The thing is, I'm genuinely looking forward to a movie version of Watchmen. I'm kind of curious to see what a J.J. Abrams version of Star Trek will look like. I'm loving the scenes that have been released from G.I.Joe the way an ex-priest would love tits. Fuck, I want to see Dan Ackroyd chasing a digitally perfected Slimer around a hotel again. God help me, I even loved Superman Returns.

BUT...

Watchmen, to this day and even though it's a comic book, remains on Time Magazine's 100 best English novels of the 20th century list. Does anyone think that the movie adaptation will make anybody's top 100 movies list? And haven't we said all there is to say about Star Trek; even though space is big, you'll always run into ships traveling on the same geographic plane as you, the good guys are communists, and teleportation doesn't destroy the soul (Star Trek 3, bitches!) How will Ackroyd fit back into that ridiculous suit? And Kevin Spacey as Lex Luthor? Well, I liked him better when his name was Gene Hackman.

What all of these remakes and 20-years-too-late sequels are doing, is telling us that the past doesn't matter and it can always be rewritten and exploited for the purpose of milking the teat of the built in audience, aka the people who like to feel nostalgic every so often, aka, the people who once thrilled to see a man with a silly hat and a bullwhip take on the Nazi hordes.

Aka, all of us.

I'm not saying older is better, I'm not. But you can't call it new if all you're doing is digging up the skeletons of the past and raping them severely, trying desperately to squeeze out a few extra bucks because your muse abandoned you for someone slightly less whorish. It's kind of like that girl who goes on a date with you, laughs at all of your jokes, introduces you to her parents and then, one day, decides she needs to change absolutely everything about you. You kind of want to scream, "Why the hell did you fuck me in the first place, you demented..." Sorry, wrong rant. The point is, when all you're doing is replacing, you're not actually creating anymore, you're just invalidating what came before.

And yes, for those of you sitting there saying, "Hey asshole, do you really think you can do better?" Yes, yes I do.

Here's the good old college try.

A man named simply Frustrated Unemployed Writer buys a gun and a plane ticket and flies to Hollywood. Upon his arrival he rounds up a group of very fat and lazy writers and producer types and holds them all hostage in a big hotel (maybe the set from Die Hard, the first one, you know, before John McClain become an immortal prick.) He then proceeds, at gunpoint, to make them write something wholly original (with of course the benefit and assistance of his fantastically endowed creative muscles). The end result, a movie cleverly titled, "Friday, the Nightmare of a Shopaholic Transforms," fails (due to poor marketing on the part of the distributing studio, Fox) to connect with an audience. Two weeks later, Frustrated Unemployed Writer is found, burnt to a crisp, the only victim of a suspicious movie theater blaze. The authorities declare his death to be "suicide by celluloid." Which, of course, becomes the title of the series of movies made about him. Of which there are 13.

Fuck, I should totally write that.

A civilization's true record left to the ages is it's art. Sadly, we live in a world where movies and television have almost wholly replaced literature, "actual" art, music, and theater. The people who write and produce said media are the ones who we have to trust with our cultural legacy; they are our Watchmen.

The question is, and yes I'm stealing an ending here, "Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?"

Or, for those of you who benefited from a newer, and therefore better, education (which somehow didn't include Latin):

Who watches the Watchmen?

See you at the movies.



*By great I'm not talking Citizen Cane great, it's a fucking cartoon; just because it hits the occasional brilliant note of social commentary doesn't make it art, and I'll spank anyone who says different.

**Yup, I just called a Pauly Shore movie fabulous. I'm either a) gay (because of the use of the word fabulous) and have terrible taste or b) Brian you're right, I am the Antichrist.

***For the sake of future generations who might unearth the hard copy of this post in the inevitable archaeological dig that my very famous future home will become, feel free to substitute any contemporary blond, vapid, frantically determined alcoholic starlet currently popular with your 11 year old daughters. No, don't tell me they don't exist anymore, the future of the human race clearly depends on drunk blonds.




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The Revelation of Some Guy or; What do you Call a Thousand Shrinks at the Bottom of the Sea?

Not really a rant but...(Ok, it turns into one down near the bottom.)

I took a toddler to a horror movie. The one in the yellow rain jacket up top.

Yes, yes, I'm a bad bad man. Cool your jets, it wasn't Friday the 13th part 2938479.

I took my two year old daughter to see Neil Gaiman's new flick, Coraline. You know, the one that kind of looks like A Nightmare before Christmas, but way cooler, and without the monsters bursting into Oscar winning song?

Yes, I was aware that it had a content warning specifically stating that the film wasn't for small children. Yes, I knew it had "frightening scenes." But fuck it, I'm a Gaiman fan from way back, a selfish bastard and I figured, hey, you know what; worst case scenario I have to pay a few extra therapy bills down the road; it's not like she won't need them anyway with a know-it-all prick like me for a dad.



Mostly though, I did it because the kid went apeshit when she saw the trailer a month or so back and, after testing the waters a bit by putting on the aforementioned stop-motion classic from the House of Mouse, it was clear that she wasn't going to have a negative reaction to animation of a more icky sort. (I've now learned that there are very few things as disturbing as a child of two, pigtails and dimples everywhere, pointing gleefully at Jack the Pumpkin King and screaming "Pretty!")

So we took her to the movie. I was pissed at myself in advance because I knew, from past experience, that we'd only get to watch about half of it and then she'd either get too hyper and start running up and down the aisles, or she'd get scared; either way we'd have to leave early and I would miss out. :(

But wait. What was this?

From the opening credits to the closing credits she sat, jaw agape, soother dangling down past her chin whilst suspended by a string of steel polymer drool, and nary made a sound t'wasn't laughter.

On the drive home, Melissa (my girlfriend and Makayla's mother) kept saying she was convinced Makayla wouldn't sleep at all, that it was a terrible mistake and nightmares would quickly ensue. You know what happened? After buckling her into her car seat it took about 3 minutes of driving before Makayla pumped one fist into the air, shook with rage, screamed "No!", and then passed out with her head in her armpit faster than if someone had dropped an anvil on her. (I shit you not, the whole fist in the air, do not go gentle into that good night routine, is a nightly occurrence; the battle between this child and sleep is freakin' epic!) She woke up 10 hours later, all smiles, demanding to be taken to another movie.

2 points for Dad.

Here's the thing though, over the last couple of days I've told a few people that we took her to see Coraline and all of them have the same reactions;

"Oh my god, how could you? She's too young!"

"You've probably scarred her for life!"

"I'm calling Children's Aid!"

"You're a monster and you molested her mind! Molestererer!!"

What. The. Fuck.

And then I realized who to blame. I blame you, Pop Psychology! (I now slap pop psychology in the face with my multicolored glove of many hallucinations.)

For years those in the "I know you better than you," business have been telling us how bad violence is for our kids. Whether it be the kind found in cartoons from the 70s or video games whose system names sound like whoopee cushions being deflated, we've been lectured to death on how evil and corrupting and desensitizing violent imagery can be to the minds of small children. Hell, without the Thundercats, there probably would have been no Columbine massacre.

I call bullshit. You know why Makayla wasn't scared and why I'll probably never have to face her tearful accusations of mental damage in a shrink's office down the road? Because she had no reason to be scared. We haven't told her what's scary yet. No context, no mental anguish.

Listen, if you spend the first 5 years of your kid's life constantly telling her about all the evils in the world, all the bad things that are going to get her, in short, everything that you've spent a lifetime developing into your own psychoses, of course she's going to be a quivering neurotic mess. No, I'm not saying you should shelter her; that just creates a generation of angsty douchebags who blame their parents for not preparing them for the world; but do you really have to make such a big freaking deal about it all? If your kid smiles at something inappropriate in a t.v. show or book, or game, do you really need to rush immediately to the nearest pharmacy and take out a prescription for Junior Lithium?

If your kid is twisting the heads off of live puppies, fine you've got a fucking problem. But giving too much negative context to stuff they're probably going to find entertaining later in life anyway is just dumb; you're creating fears, you're creating nightmares, you're creating the psychologically deviant monsters of tomorrow.

I'm calling Children's Aid.

Molester.
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Blithering Blubbering Boomers or; Find Your Own Seat Gramps, I Don't See A Cane.

As promised, zero religious content in this post :D (probably)

I hate the elderly. Generally. I'm not talking about the very very old, they're kind of cute, in a way too tall toddler way. I'm talking more about the 60-70 crowd. The ones who think they know everything because they were alive when racism was still kinda cool.

To clarify, I really hate everyone. I'm a 30 year old white male; that makes me, just by breathing, the very antithesis of the politically correct movement. Rather than fight it, I embrace my unwanted, genetically stereotyped, attitude of death and, instead of pointing it any specific ethnic group (like so many of my sheet wearing brethren of the deep south who don't realize that, as well as wearing white after labor day, they've accidentally adopted a horribly unsupportable life philosophy)I just kind of beam it over everyone and everything.

But now, especially, I'm beaming fiery death at you, Boomers.



So, I live in Alberta. For those of you not local to the Canadian hinterlands, Alberta is a mini fascist blemish on the face of our mostly (presumably) democratic nation. There hasn't been a change in ruling party here in about 30 years, mostly because, I think, Albertans equate anything not conservative as being EVIL and QUITE POSSIBLY TRYING TO DRILL US IN THE ASS FOR OIL. Top on my current list of things I hate is the Albertan government and the fine folks who keep voting for the status quo. Imagine my delight then, when I read an article detailing the government's plan to kick any senior earning over $21k a year off medication subsidies.

Yipeeeeeeeee!!

Ok, before you send your grandma to my house armed with an angry buffet table, let me explain why this is a good thing.

Once upon a time, there were more tax paying employees than retirees. In fact, once, if you planned on living after you stopped working, you had to save your own money to do it. Then a little border skirmish called WWII happened and you know what? We won!!! So all of the brave young men who'd spent the last 4 years fighting came home, flushed with the joy of having defeated a truly evil military machine and its generals and proceeded to bend over and hump pretty much any mammal with a vagina. Because war makes us horny. (True fact, there are studies. Take your girlfriend to a movie that has a little bit of blood in it and I guarantee you get laid harder that night then if you watched Confessions of a Shopaholic.)

Apparently being exposed to Nazis is not the same as being exposed to radiation, so the horny young men were also flushed with an abundance of sperm. And that's the story of how the stork had to retire and hire Fed Ex to assist in delivering the largest population spike in human history. Ah, Boomers, there you are. You're soooooo cute.

Amongst their other sins (which I'll catalog a little further down) the boomers decided to be cautious when it came time to pop out their broods.

"I need to go to school for another 10 years first," they said.

"I'd like to explore my sexuality by banging my neighbor's wife and sister first," they said.

"The world is a terrible place to bring a child into," they said.

Long story short, they didn't do their goddamn job and they failed to replace themselves adequately.

Fast forward to now. Unlike when the Canada Pension Plan was born (and we had 10 employees for every retiree) we now only have two employees for every retired person. That means the old fart who made you give up your seat on the bus? I own half his bus pass and you own the other half. (You, the individual person reading this.) That's a huge fucking burden to dump on us and will, just you wait, require higher taxes to be levied against us to compensate for the maintenance of their lifestyle.*

So, because the boomers didn't learn from their parents example and have lots and lots of unprotected sex (though enough to spread the fucking HIV, apparently) we're already stuck bankrupting ourselves to pay for their upkeep for the next thirty years or so. Thank you, life elongating medical marvels of the 21st century. When you add in extra government subsidies, also paid for by you and me, it starts to feel a little like we're being asked to pay for our parent's greens fees. And, the provincial conservatives, being you know, fiscally conservative, have finally acknowledged this. If you make double the poverty line income, you don't get to stand in line for government cheese. Simple.

But nay, it's never that simple. The seniors are up in arms.

"How dare the government attack us?" the ask.

"You're obligated to help us," they scream. (Though that sounds suspiciously like communism and I'm pretty sure you were against that.)

"Now our life elongating, medical marvel medicine will cost us thousands a year instead of hundreds," they whimper. "Wait, what's my name again?"

The things is, if you need something, and you can afford to pay for it, you're kind of required to pay for it. I have no problem with subsidizing the needs of those who fall under the minimum income bracket, that's what social assistance is for; but you whiny, arrogant, assholes who drag your feet on every political issue that promises positive change because you liked things better the old way and can afford to pay to keep yourselves alive? Fuck off.

Now, I'd like to make a distinguishing point here. The ones who aren't boomers. The ones who fought in WWII or stayed at home to keep society and the war effort afloat. If we were talking about you in this category, I would have a different tone. You truly were the greatest generation and what we owe you can never be repaid. But, sadly, most of you are as dead as disco; you missed the meds, and we're flat out not talking about you. We're talking about your progeny. And you know what, what the hell were you thinking when you raised these people anyway? The greatest generation produced the generation that gave us:

a)Hippies
b)Cocaine abuse (see hippies)
c)Yuppies
d)Mandatory minimum drug sentencing (see yuppies, and yes, you people are responsible, you voted for Reagan)
e)Pop Psychology
f)Self Help books as a sustainable industry
g)Political correctness
h)Political Corruption (Yes it existed before you, but you perfected it)
i)The single most ridiculous impeachment in the history of Presidential Politics (Bill got laid, George murdered, through proxies, a whole lot of people. Remind me, which one got impeached?)
j)The doctrine of "Everyone is special." (See my link here to get an idea of the fallout from that particular nugget of wisdom.
www.thingsthatmakemyheadexplode.blogspot.com/2007/06/poo-tornado-or-why-movie-theaters.html )
k)Neo-conservatives
l)The Christian Right.

There are more, but I think you get the point. Do you see anything useful on that list? Bottom line, if you can afford it and you belong to the generation that gave us the list of headaches above, you get sweet fuck all from me. Don't write to the paper saying I owe you something, as far as I'm concerned you've lived long enough already and....

Wait, there is one useful thing the Boomers have given us; Blue Cross Insurance. For fuck's sake, cancel your cable and move that seventy bucks over to an insurance policy. Why the hell are you asking me to help? Assholes.

Jesus Christ. (Fuck, I almost made it. :D)



*And the reason they'll get those taxes raised? The boomers outnumber all the rest of us three to one; when it comes to a voting block we may as well be fighting Mothra.

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The Church of Myspace or; Claustrophobic in the House of Huge

THIS WILL BE A LOOOONG POST.

Oy.

Oy. Freakin'. Vey.

And le sigh.

Here's the article that's sparked today's plaintive cry for reason:
http://www.secularstudents.org/node/1933

Read it, don't read it, it doesn't matter. If you've caught on to the theme of the last month's worth of entries, you can probably guess what the subject of the offending article will orbit around.

I'm really getting tired of writing about religion, the religious, and all things affected by the aforementioned. I am going to do my very best to make this the last piece on this subject for awhile because I'm starting to bore myself and I fucking love me. The reason I'm talking about this one last time is that the above article allows me to unify my loathing for most of the things I've discussed on this blog, namely; Fox, religious zealotry, censorship, and Fox.


So, if you didn't read the article linked to up top, here are the Cliff's Notes. Myspace deleted the Atheist and Agnostic group, the world's largest collection of organized atheists (35000 strong. Remember that number, it's going to be important later.) Not only did they delete this group but, when they finally, grudgingly reinstated it, they'd banned most of the more prolific contributors and deleted the profile of the group's founder. For the cheap seats, Myspace, who are owned by the Murdoch Corporation, who also own Fox News (whom I love so very very much, see references in earlier posts) engaged in blatant censorship and suppression of thought (the digital equivalent of book burning)and then, when the uproar was too loud to ignore, still lashed out and spanked the filthy heathens for daring to talk to one another.

A moment of silent reflection for the glory and genius of the Reichspace.

I should mention that this piece of news is just over a year old, I just found it because, unlike discrimination levied against every other group of minorities, nobody really gives enough of a crap about us pesky malcontents to really mention it when we get downtrodden.

I'm not going to rant. (not yet)

I'm going to tell you a story. It's called;

IN THE HOUSE OF HUGE

Before he left, Damien grew up in a big house.

The house had ten bedrooms; one each for Damien, his two brothers, his two sisters, his mother and father, his mother's parents and his father's parents. The tenth bedroom was the family's shrine to the Invisible Pink Unicorn.

On each wall of the house hung at least one portrait of the Invisible Pink Unicorn; praise was offered to It every night as thanks for a good meal (or a bad one, it depended on how sober Damien's mother was) prayers were offered to It before sleep and, no matter what corner of the house Damien played in, he could always hear his grandparents muttering to themselves about It.

Damien was never allowed to leave the house.

"Why would he want to," his parents asked.

"This house is huge," his grandparents said, "and everything he needs is inside."

And it was true, the house was huge, and full. There were toys (though nothing of an equine variety) and books, and music both to listen to and play. His family were his friends and always had time for him.

But Damien felt squished. The Invisible Pink Unicorn took up so much room!

One day, Damien's mother found him staring at a portrait of It, his eyebrows scrunched together and his hands balled into fists at his sides.

"What's wrong?" she asked.

"I try and I try," he said, tears rolling fat down his cheeks, "but I can't see It. All I see is the field."

Damien's mother frowned and squinted at the picture. It was a lovely painting of a grassy green field with a small hill in the foreground.

"But that's how you know It's invisible," his mother said, sounding vexed. "The proof of It's power is that It's both invisible and pink. That's very tricky, you know."

"I know," Damien said, "you've said that before. But if It's invisible, how do you know that It's really there?"

"Let's ask your father," she said with a smile.

So Damien and his mother walked up a long flight of stairs, and down a long hall and the walk was so long that Damien started to doubt his own doubt; surely a house so large could only have been made by the Invisible Pink Unicorn. Finally though, they came to the room of his father and they stepped inside.

"What's wrong?" Damien's father asked, seeing the dismayed looks on the faces of his wife and child.

"I can't see It," Damien announced, pointing at another picture of a field that hung on his father's wall. "All I see is the field."

"Hmmm," said his father. "Well, you've never seen a field; how do you know that that's what it is?"

"I've seen them in books," Damien replied.

"Well," said his father, "you've also read about It in books, haven't you?"

Damien nodded.

"Then you have to believe in It, just as much as you believe in the field," Damien's father said triumphantly, the matter closed.

"But," Damien pointed out calmly, "I can see the field. I've never seen even a picture of It."

Damien's father looked at Damien's mother and shrugged.

"Let's ask my parents," she said with a smile.

So Damien and his mother and his father walked up a long flight of stairs and down a long hall and the walk was so long that Damien began to doubt his own doubt; surely his parents patience and kindness could only come from the Invisible Pink Unicorn. Finally though, they came to the room of his mother's parents and they stepped inside.

"What's wrong?" Damien's grandparent's asked in unison.

Damien started to point but his father spoke first. "He won't see It," he said, a plaintive tone in his voice.

Damien's grandfather turned away with a grunt, but his grandmother knelt towards him with a smile.

"It made your eyes, you know," she said to him kindly, "your heart as well. It's only invisible because It wants you to see It with your heart. And you do," she said confidently, "whenever you do something good, it's because It's moving your heart. You know that," she chided.

"But how do you know?" he insisted.

His parent's and grandparents smiled at each other sadly.

The five of them walked up a long flight of stairs and down a long hall and Damien began to doubt his family. But maybe, he thought, my other grandparents will know. And finally they came to the room of his father's parents, and they stepped inside.

"He won't see," said his parents.

"He can't feel," said his mother's parents.

Damien stood in silence as his father's parents looked at him grimly.

"To the shrine," they said in unison, "and then he will know."

So, the seven of them walked up a long flight of stairs and down a long hall and Damien began to fear his family. What if he didn't find his answer in the shrine? Would they let him out again? Finally they came to the room of his family's god and outside it, boys on one side and girls on the other, were his siblings.

"The Unicorn loves you," his brothers said calmly.

"The Unicorn forgives you," his sisters said calmly.

"But how do you know?" Damien cried.

His siblings pointed behind him and said, "Because they told us so."

And then Damien was ushered into the room at the top of the House of Huge, the door latched behind him not thick enough to block out the sound of their muttering.

In that room there was dust, and dirt and pictures of fields. And Damien despaired that he would never be let out. And then he saw the cross on the wall.

It was the same as all the other crosses in the house, simple and with clear glass on all four sides of it. All his life he'd been told to keep his distance from the crosses, they were evil, he'd been told. They were reminders of beliefs best forgotten, and held confusing pictures of the Outside, pictures he wasn't old enough to understand yet. But here, in the room at the top of the House of Huge, there was no one to keep him from seeing up close.

So Damien walked towards the cross and when he came near, he saw a latch that could be opened and, through one of the panes, a real field!

Before he left, Damien lived in a big house. But in the field behind the cross there was no one to tell him to look for Invisible Pink Unicorns.

And now a little bit of ranting.

The one thing nobody in the great debate ever talks about is the question of why most atheists are so militant and angry. And by nobody, I mean nobody worth talking about; there are opinions bandied about, but really, who cares about the opinions of superstitious monkey haters? (See, so angry, we really need to chill out. Bad me!)

An awful lot of it, I suspect, is social claustrophobia.

A couple of numbers for you to chew on.

35,000- the population of the world's largest organized atheist group.

1,100,000,000- the population of the world's largest religious group (the catholic church)

There are, in the U.S. alone, over 1000, specifically christian, radio and television networks or programs. I have only ever seen 2 atheist mass media outlets, one on public access t.v. and one limited to the internet. There are millions of churches in North America, and I'm guessing that the number of those that have ever been crashed by screaming atheists could be counted on two hands at most and yet...anytime I happen across an atheist website or blog, more than half the comments are from religious people whipped into a frenzy by the very fact that someone dares to offer a viewpoint based on thought rather than emotion. These "people" (in the interests of staying calm, I'm refraining from calling them sub-human, shit eating, ass hats) wax poetically (albeit with spelling that would make Huckleberry Finn cringe) on how anyone contributing to these sites is misguided at best and going to Hell at worst, and probably is some form of sexual deviant, and here's a list of the things I think you probably do with sheep and small children while dressed in leather...ahem, you get the idea.

Because there is no such thing as an openly atheist federal politician anywhere in North America, you people have the world's largest bully pulpit. There is no equal representation for us.

With all that in mind, do you really need to flip out at the fact that a few thousand of us want to get together and bitch about you? For fuck's sake, put yourself in our shoes; it's like we're the 4 live people in Night of the Living Dead, only the zombies have just enough intelligence to round up all the weapons and burn them before they start chasing us.

My favorite epitaph was originally a quote from Ovid; "Bene qui latuit, bene vixit." It means, roughly translated, "he who hides well, lives well." It was used by Rene Descartes as his epitaph and I have to wonder what the man who invented circular logic to prove the existence of God was hiding from. I know that I'm not interested in hiding and that I have just as much right to live well as you do.

Fuck off and let me have my Myspace page.

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