The next person who tries to use a Rotten Tomatoes rating to tell me that a movie sucks is going to be backhanded.  Why do people put so much stock into what this website says?

 

Of course, anyone who says "Rotten Tomatoes just likes hating everything" can automatically be pointed toward the fact that they fall all over any movie that "everybody" is going to love or see as genius.  Dark Knight.  Well, they can't rip on Dark Knight...people might stop putting credence into  their meaningless ratings!

 

This is a site that gives Hostel a 59%.  Hostel.  The movie that is pretty much a softcore snuff film.  In fact, they give a pass to plenty of movies because "they're exactly what they're supposed to be."  Some films are apparently allowed to be full of explosions and boobs as long as that's what they're "supposed to be"....but the "supposed to be" is a completely arbitrary designation.  Vampires Suck is pretty obviously supposed to be a silly mocking of Twilight, among other things, but that gets a 6% rating.   The Nightmare on Elm Street remake?  13%.  Someone explain to me how that movie was not what it was "supposed to be."  Please. 

 

Meanwhile, Piranha 3D enjoys a whopping 75% positive rating.

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    In this world of faster, bigger, better, even a geeka can get overwhelmed and need a break. (I hear the collective gasp of my sister geekas!)  Some find it in gaming, some find it in computer networking, and some brave souls find it in full contact sports.  While I enjoy all of these, with good books, music and movies thrown in for good measure, nothing compares to the Zen of doing dishes.  Let me explain.

 

     When I was a little geeka, I would often see my grandmother doing dishes, staring out into space with a look of utter contentment.  I never understood that.  Like most kids, I could think of no worse punishment that doing dishes or cleaning my room. I wanted to be going and playing and doing.  There she was, though, looking completely content with suds up to her elbows.  She always said that sometimes we had so much to do that nothing got done.

 

      Now, many years down the road, I have over-achieving mini geeks of my own.  One is in college now double majoring in Physics and Chemistry and has moved out on his own but I still have my female geeklet at home.  She just became a teenager and is involved in everything from dance to band to astronomy club to gifted classes to IT Support team to ... you get the picture.  I work full time at one job and seasonally at another while tinkering with painting murals and bookkeeping.  I have a husband who is a Director of Environmental Services for a local municipality and runs several small wastewater facilities on the side. Add to that caring for a disabled mother and you have chaos. 

 

     But then there is doing the dishes... We have a dishwasher that has seen better days and so dishes are better off cleaned by hand.  I noticed an amazing thing while washing dishes -- NO ONE runs into the kitchen offering to do them.  That's right; it's complete silence in the midst of the chaos.  I have time to contemplate the important things in the universe, to still my mind, and to listen to the little voice that reminds me who I am.  I'm lucky enough to live outside the city; my kitchen overlooks a field where horses play and where fancy chickens scratch the ground.  My back deck blooms in the spring and summer with my container garden and the fence is covered with vines. It's stunning in all seasons.  I had forgotten that...I had forgotten the beauty of what is around me.

 

    I have realized that true beauty is most easily found in the mundane.  We live our lives in such a tizzy -- always wanting more power, more action, more technology -- when what we really need is to step back and to do the mundane, allowing our minds to wander along forgotten paths and our souls to breathe and take flight.  We all need that silent place where the chaos cannot invade.  We all need the Zen of doing dishes.

 

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Apparently there was some kind of convention in San Diego recently.  Does anyone know anything about this?

 

No, just kidding.  I and 125,999 of my closest friends hit the ol' Sandy Eggo for some fun far away from the sun.

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I'm not talking about Nicolas Cage's latest bid for movie immortality as the sorcerer who gets together with a cookie cutter twenty-ish student with the intent to train said cookie as an apprentice.  Trailers and commercials might lead you to believe that the true origins of this tale lie in the 1940 film "Fantasia".  Mickey Mouse dons his sorcerer-master's hat and causes all kinds of mischief involving walking brooms and lots of water to the music of Paul Dukas' symphonic poem.

 

The Sorcerer's Apprentice as a master-pupil story and as a cautionary tale is a good deal older than either of these film interpretations.  Before Dukas was inspired by the story in 1897, Johann Wolfgang Goethe wrote  Der Zauberlehrling a century earlier, channeling generations of the story as it was told throughout the German-speaking world.

 

Leaving his apprentice with a list of chores as long as the Rhine River itself, the sorcerer departs his workshop.  One of these chores is to refill the castle's water supply by trudging up and down a set of steep stone steps to the Rhine, carrying river water back in a bucket.  The apprentice is sick to death of carrying water and decides to implement the magic in which he is not yet fully trained.  He animates a broom and after a crash course in the river relay, he sends the broom to do his work.  One thing leads to another, and by the time the apprentice wakes from a nap, the broom is flooding the castle with no sign of stopping.  In a frenzy, the apprentice grabs an ax and smashes the broom to pieces--only each individual piece becomes an enchanted broom and the cycle begins again.  Finally, the sorcerer returns and breaks the spell.  Instead of kicking the apprentice out of the castle, the sorcerer imparts the lesson that this magic should only be worked by a fully trained sorcerer, and the apprentice sees he has much work ahead of him.

 

This story in a basic form is found throughout European folklore.  The powers that be at Disney (which at that time would have included Walt Disney himself) did not simply pull the tale out of thin air.  Medieval hausfraus and Renaissance child care are responsible for the story enduring through the centuries to the point where we can try and spot the threads of the original tale through the summer blockbuster morass.

 

Taking folklore and twisting it into a spell of a movie--now that would be real magic! 

 

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Have you ever wondered about rubber neckers? You know, the annoying drivers that slow down almost to a stop to gawk at a nasty auto accident?
 
I think this scenario applies to a great many situations in human life. People are fascinated by the appalling. It's an attraction-avoidance conflict in which attraction inevitably wins. Look at the tabloids. Yes, it's cattle fodder, but it also sells. What have been the obsessions? "Al Gore Sex Attack"?  How long has the little beauty queen Jon Benet been dead, and she's still moving magazines. For that matter, what of the Kennedys? There's more said about them in death than in life. What other treats are presented to us? Diet tragedies and starvation stories, have mind-blowing sex but get closer to deity, beauties beat up by enraged spouses, and of course the constant kicker, the imminent end of the world. If we're not living in an apocalypse culture, I can't imagine what this is.
 
In 1991, Feral House published Apocalypse Culture, a compendium of documents depicting the less savory side of our times. Included are "Latter-Day Lycanthropy: Battling for the Feral Soul of Man", "The Unrepentant Necrophile", "Frank Talk from a Psychopath", "Aesthetic Terrorism", "Schizophrenic Responses to a Mad World", and "Long Live Death!" among many others. In 2000, in spite of the ardent determination of editor Adam Parfrey that Apocalypse Culture would never have a sequel, Feral House published Apocalypse Culture II, which is widely regarded as even more extreme than its predecessor.  

What exactly are these books? More than anything, these are books of revelation--books that bring the twisted side of mankind to light for you to peruse, if you dare. These are the things the general media sweeps under the rug, the things people never discussed in a long ago day and age and still consider taboo.
 

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My friends, we have some new imagery from Thor! Brought to us by Marvel and the LA Times (The LA Times article is well worth the read), we have some news too. It has been officially announced that both Thor and Captain America will be finished in 3D.

 

Perhaps in an attempt to stop us from wondering if this is a good thing or a bad thing, they've also released a shot of Odin, Thor, and Loki!

 

 

 

 My thoughts below the cut, as usual!

 edit: There's another image from this week's EW article here!

 

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I was laughing so hard that I'd become a geyser of popcorn and Mountain Dew.

You see, I'm what they call "low maintenance". Yes, I wash regularly, thank you, but I don't go in for all the goofy hair products and sealing waxes for extinguishing skin imperfections. I figure I am what I am and that's what I am and that's that.

Anyway, you can imagine how much of a grain of salt I take with my corporate advertising. That's where the geyser comes in.

It was a commercial done in all seriousness extolling the virtues of a "new" body wash made with...yogurt. Well, of course. I mean we all know the intrinsic value of having yet ANOTHER body wash on the market. And this one wastes food at the same time.

Later on, though, I had a thought. Yogurt is made from milk. Milk is a byproduct of blood. And who used blood as a treatment for fairer skin but Erzebet (Elizabeth) Bathory, the Blood Countess of Cachtice Castle. 

Making a long and twisted story short, Bathory had hit one of her servants so hard that the woman's blood splattered Bathory's skin. Later, the Countess noticed that her skin seemed softer and more beautiful where the blood had landed. Having no one to answer to as a member of the highest aristocracy, Bathory went on a murderous rampage, slaughtering peasant women and her servants so that she might bathe in what she believed was a rejuvenating cocktail.

Back to the yogurt body wash. Is it possible that the creators of this "breakthrough" were on some level replicating Erzebet's regime from the 16th century? Do blood and yogurt possess the same skin-refreshing chemicals? What other stories from around the world exist to attest to blood as a beauty product?

And so, today's theory is that the good corporate rodents manufacturing yogurt body wash may have heard the tale of the Blood Countess, which in turn gave them at least the notion of using a blood byproduct.

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One of the most painful conversations to overhear when I'm out and about is the debate over what book to get for an adolescent girl (painful because social mores declare that it is odd for me to interject).  You're likely to hear painful suggestions like Twilight or one of its host of derivatives.  You might hear references to the Uglies series, or perhaps something by Nicholas Sparks or Jodi Picoult.  Maybe they'll even throw out something along the lines of Wicked or the Hunger Games series (which is fine as far as books go, except that I personally found Wicked and Nicholas Sparks to be a bit...adult).  Don't misunderstand me, there isn't anything inherently wrong with most of those options (the exception to that being Twilight, my thoughts on which, however, have been documented elsewhere).  But I would like to offer up some alternate suggestions that are sadly forgotten in today's society.  These are the 5 books that I feel every single girl ought to read before she is 20.

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The French have struck a blow for women’s rights in the Muslim world, by banning the burqa and niqab in France.  That’s what they say anyway.  My question is, how can you say you’re encouraging women’s right by telling them what they can and can’t wear?  

The burqa, according to wisegeek.com is: is a piece of clothing that covers a woman from head to foot. There is an opening for the eyes, but the rest of the body, except the hands, are covered. The burqa is usually made of light clothing, and is essentially outerwear for some Muslim women in some regions. It is worn when women leave their homes, over their indoor clothes. It's not worn indoors in the presence of family.  The niqab on the other hand:  is a combination of head covering and scarf, or a one piece scarf that covers everything but the eyes. It usually flows down to midback to cover a woman’s hair, and may flow down to midchest in the front. The niqab can be worn with the burqa, or with other clothing as part of modest dress for Muslim women.  I’ve seen women wearing burqas and niqabs.  They are hard to miss even in a predominantly Arab Muslim country.  While burqas are an easy target for the French, I call bullshit on their reasoning for banning the burqa.  

Yes, the burqa is a symbol of women’s oppression in Afghanistan.  It is also becoming a symbol for Muslim women against what they’re seeing as the West’s attack on Islam.  They’re choosing to wear the niqab or the burqa not because of a, perhaps extreme, interpretation of the Qur’an, but instead because they’re being told what they can and can’t wear.  How is that any different than those supposedly abusive husbands?

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Why yes. I do have an axe to grind.
No, I haven't been bitten in the ass by the snake of rejection.
 
I do not think romance readers are stupid, sexually-frustrated lackwits with nothing better to do.
 
 
That being said...
 
Here it is. Romance fiction is a billion dollar industry. Romance novels are the biggest selling thing in fiction today. So with all this money being spent and all these novels being written, they've got to be pretty good. Right?
 
I, for one, have never trusted the mainstream. Too much like lemmings, and you know what lemmings do, don't you? They follow the herd right off of cliffs to their watery doom.
 
Romance novels are not my cup of tea. I like horror, science fiction, fantasy, and non-fiction history. But I have read a few romance novels, mostly to broaden my own horizons (and to be able to justify my criticism). I'll be hornswoggled if I can understand why they're so popular. If you happen to like them, good for you. I don't. But that's just my opinion.
 
If you think I'm mean, you should listen to the people I call my friends.
 
I mentioned I was going to add a literary criticism of the romance novels I've read to La Chute. "The key word there is literary," they said. "Romance novels aren't literary!"
 
Well, I'm not going to argue what's literary and what's not. Ever look into the display case at your local Baskin Robbins? Notice all the flavors? That's how many differing opinions there are on what constitutes literary, and every one of them is valid. Like I said, I'm not getting into it.
 
A friend of mine wrote and has published a hair-raising essay comparing the herd of romance readers with the Heaven's Gate cultists, and cult theory in general.   Then there was the story of a woman asked to give some writing tips to the local chapter of Romance Writers of America. She wasn't sure why.  The common joke in a local national scientific facility when coming upon someone enjoying a book is to say, "Is that some romance you've got there?"  Even one of our local used book shop owners (at least one) refuses to stock romance novels for fear of eroding the minds of the readers.
 
Me, well, I think anything that pulls people away from the dross that is American television can't be all bad. I have a lot of respect for the romance author who has worked so hard and put in so much research (so I hope, anyway) to create a book for the enjoyment of their readers. That's a nice thing to do, when I think about it.
 
But I don't like them. Why? Well, here are a few of my reasons:
 

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Obligatory thoughts on Abby Sunderland, a.k.a. That 16-Year-Old What Set Out To Sail Around The World:  as so often happens, I'm of two minds and don't know what to think. 

 

On the one hand, I'm glad that she's found herself a challenging hobby that she loves, and even gladder that she has supportive parents who encourage her to get her geek on.  Set a course for fearless adventuring; I'm pretty sure she'll make one hell of a grownup.

On the other hand, I'm nonplussed by the marketing of the whole thing, where the already incredible feat of sailing solo around the world is downplayed compared to being the youngest person to do so.  I am reminded rather forcibly of Jessica Dubroff, the 7-year-old who died in 1996 trying to become the youngest person to fly across the United States.  In Dubroff's case, it was pretty clear--then and now--that she may have been a precocious pilot and an extraordinary kid, but the whole trip was a stunt orchestrated by her dad for the media's benefit.  I can't help but wonder how much of Abby's trip scheduling was because she and her parents had reckoned her abilities and concluded that she was genuinely ready for it, and how much was pressure to do it NOW before someone younger slipped in ahead of her and her story became less salable.  Part of a parent's job is to substitute their (hopefully) mature judgment for their kid's still-developing judgment, and I feel like her parents at the very least weren't an effective firewall between their child and the seduction of the media, and at worst were accomplices in a stunt that nearly turned fatal.

 

On the OTHER other hand, my 16-year-old self pokes her head up out of my subconscious to tell me that I am now twice her age and therefore old and crotchety; that she considered herself reasonably mature, thanks so much; and that one of the things that sucked the most about late adolescence was all these well-meaning adults telling you what you could and couldn't do.  I must admit she has a point.  I can't judge Abby's abilities, stamina, drive, etc.--she and her parents are better equipped to do that--and people mature at different rates, so it's entirely possible that 16-year-old Abby is better able to take care of herself, even alone in some of the remotest parts of Earth, than many adults could.  And I really hate the attitude that kids must be raised in bubbles and carefully kept from anything but sunshine and bubblegum and pre-chewed food: I'm a firm believer that kids need alone time, unsupervised time, time to take risks and make mistakes, and time to take on bigger challenges than they thought they could handle, because that's how you acquire stories to tell around the campfire learn and grow.  16-year-old me wasn't up to sailing around the world or anything like that, but 17-year-old me was up to spending a summer in Paraguay.

On the FOURTH hand, there's a world of difference between regular adventures that are awesome and thrilling and huge achievements that are still potentially achievable by teens, like, I dunno, hiking the entire Appalachian Trail; and batshit insane stunts, like sailing around the entire freaking world solo, that stand a remarkably good chance of killing you.  The winds around 40 degrees south latitudes kill people.  Rounding Cape Horn kills people--kills lots of people, including (read up on the age of sail if you doubt this) expert old sailors with great big sturdy ships and a literal shipload of experienced crewmembers.  It seems to me that, if one is determined to have an adventure, one should perhaps select one that is not quite so... foolhardy.  Do we really need kids pulling a Jessica Dubroff trying to become the youngest to climb Mt. Everest barehanded and blindfolded and without supplemental oxygen, or ski down an avalanche, or arm-wrestle a grizzly bear?

Which brings me back to my first thought, which is that no matter how pure Abby's motives may have been to begin with, money corrupted them into something darker.  I think it's fair to say that media success was at least part of the plan from the outset: her 17-year-old brother Zac has already sailed solo around the world, and apparently the family financed it by making a documentary about it.  I don't begrudge Abby her dreams--even if her dream is "just" to be famous--but I can't say I like the way they've taken form.  At the very least, the family's chosen a questionable way to fund their kids' hobbies. (But who am I to say that?  Should only rich kids have dreams?)  A way that looks less like a kid's genuine desire to sail the world and more like parents willfully risking their child's life in pursuit of a media-friendly story.  It's less about her even than it is about our society's fascination with people living out slightly gimmicky dreams and reporting live on the experience[1], less an adventure than an ADVENTURE! (tm), conceived and produced for media consumption way more than for oneself.

 

[1] Am I the only one bewildered by the craze for books written by people who've vowed to do (or not do) X for a year, apparently with the express goal of writing a book about the experience?  Why, people?  WHY?

 

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I'm not kidding, my friends.  This lady's got a lot in common with my own views.  Whether or not they have anything to do with geekdom is irrelevant at this point.

 

 You know what IS important?

 

If I mention a particular actor's physical attractiveness, "objectify" him as one may say, I'm automatically told to stop behaving as a squealing fangirl.

 

Would you like me to list the number of times male reviewers have discussed the eye-candy factor of female leads?  It'll take quite some time.

 

Oh, wait!  Men, in their infinite wisdom, have made it incredibly easy for me to point out their objectification of the opposite gender!

 

Hottest Sci-Fi Girls 

 

Sweet!  Now I can be lazier than ever in explaining to men why they should now shut the hell up about womenfolk discussing the finer physical points of their gender.

 

Ke$ha herself, attitude about her music aside, states flat out that she uses her songs to turn men's own attitudes against them.  See also:

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I've been working with the character of Thor, the Norse god of thunder and lightning, for years. Years of research and reading and false starts and conversations in the dark with the ceiling that resulted in terrible stories and drafts while I struggled to pinpoint what was there. Years of trying to understand what was at the heart of this god, who was so loved by his people, honored even in many ways above Odin the All-Father. Loved so much, even now, that he was re-imagined and transported into the medium of the comic book for the modern world. Thor, who we will soon be over-saturated by, in the quest for world domination and movie marketing schemes. Hollywood always knows how to run a good man into the ground. But for myself, I'm hoping they do him justice, because after years of trying to find the answer of this god's character, this god's essence, this god's spirit within the scraps of mythology we're given, he became my most favorite of all mythological heroes. (Theseus may be coming in at a close second, but don't tell Thor. I think he'd be hurt, after all our time together.)

 

I think that there was a very good reason that Thor was the preferred god of the everyman, and I don't think that it was because he was stupid, or because he was always getting into brawls and slaughtering giants, or because he was often drunk on mead and loved to feast with the best of us. I don't even think it was because he cross-dressed, although Mimzy tells that story better than I've ever heard it before. I think the reason Thor was so beloved was because he always helped his people. Thor was the god that could be depended on, no matter what had happened, to go out and do what had to be done-- whether that was beating down on Loki, or killing off giants, or drinking a ton of mead, or dressing up as a woman. Thor was intensely loyal, unwavering, and good.

 

That's not to say he couldn't be led off track every so often. Loki makes this perfectly clear in all the stories where they travel together to accomplish some task, or just for the sake of getting out and about. Perhaps Thor is trusting to a fault. Certainly he doesn't seem to take to deception very easily when he's forced to employ its arts. He's not at all like Loki in that way. He'd much rather bust down the door and employ a frontal assault, even if he can't win. And that in itself is something admirable, too-- it's one of the things that I, as a woman, have always respected in those men who also share that characteristic. The men who throw their punches and then shake it off, and buy one another a drink afterward.

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As an aspiring author, it behooves me to support the publishing industry. Usually this means that I just overspent at the bookstore, and almost always this means I came home with a new comic book trade. This weekend, I picked up Superman: Red Son, and let me tell you my friends, it was totally worth the cover price. I love a book that makes me think, and Superman: Red Son delivers that in spades.

 

Red Son is an alternate reality story answering the question "what if Superman had crashed in the USSR instead of Kansas?" and I think they tackle it in incredible ways. Superman is still Superman, still struggling to find a way to give the world the peace he knows it deserves, to give humanity safety, security, the basics of food and shelter, and he is still very much a sympathetic hero, communist dictatorship aside.

 

The really incredible thing for me, in this story, was realizing that the differences in Superman's choices are ultimately very slight. These are choices that Superman might have just as easily made as an American--the difference is not the politics and economics of his homeland, but the cries of the people he loves. The results of those slight differences, however, are incredibly large, and in Red Son, we see Superman take the world into his hands as a political leader, as a lawmaker, as a ruler. Instead of choosing to lead by example and allowing humanity to make it's own mistakes, he tries to keep humanity from making any mistakes and fix the systems in place that are already broken through his own personal interference. Superman decides he knows what's best for the world, and sets it into motion.

 

It would have been very easy for this story to have been made into the typical pro-capitalism propaganda, and they didn't escape those overtones entirely, but they did succeed in writing a story that at least allowed the reader to consider that capitalism and America's Way isn't the only way. In Red Son, there are glimpses of what communism and the Marxist revolutions were meant to be-- a chance at utopia and an ideal world. 

 

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I ask this in all honesty.  It seems that parents have become increasingly protective in theory...but in practice, many seem to expect everyone else to look out for what their kids are watching, listening to, doing, and so forth.  Now,  I do think that a parent has every right to decide what is acceptable for his or her child...but it's not anyone else's duty to enforce those ideals.  Parents need to know what sorts of things come into contact with their children, and if they can't be bothered to do so, that seems to say that they aren't REALLY all that concerned about their child's/children's exposure to whatever it is.  At least not concerned enough to actually, you know, put EFFORT into something.

 

 

Yes, there are a lot of influences out there.  There have ALWAYS been a lot of influences "out there."  "Out there" has been giving parents grief since the beginning of time, which makes the whole "out there" argument a bit silly.

 

I always thought methods of "enforcing" R movie ratings were over the top.  An ID check at the counter, sometimes a police officer checking licenses again at the door to the actual theater...I mean, I'm here to see Law Abiding Citizen, not to fly to Pakistan.  So no, ticket taker, I did not bring my passport so that you have yet one more document to glare at because you don't think my license photo looks like me.  No, it really didn't occur to me to dig through my things to find a passport to go out on a Friday night.  Shocking.

 

Well, parents are worried about their kids seeing R-rated movies, and apparently they're worried enough that they've put the movie theater one step down from the airport in terms of security checks.  And why, exactly, could you not make sure that your child actually bought a ticket for the latest Disney flick on your own?  You could hang around at the theater until your kid actually buys the ticket.  You could buy the ticket for him or her yourself and put it into his or her hand.  Granted, there are ways kids can get around these things if they want to see R-rated movies badly enough, but there are ways around pretty much ANY "safety measure" when it comes to "enforcing" ratings systems, including the ridiculous system that's been implemented in various theaters presumably to ease parents' minds.

 

Whether or not R-rated movies are actually damaging is another issue entirely, and I'm just going to leave that out for now.  Anyway, now parents want someone to come up with yet ANOTHER rating system for ANOTHER form of entertainment - live concerts.  And why, pray tell, are they worried?

 

 

 

Because Lady Gaga is evil and will give your children TEH GAY.

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It's become very apparent that Facebook has become a great source of Social Status for today's Internet users. That is, Facebook has become society.  

 

I noticed one day a friend's relationship status had gone from "in a relationship" to "single" and several of her friends commented on the change, and I knew then society had changed. No longer do we wait to hear something direct from a friend or relative, we just need to log on to Facebook and it's all there in the News Feed. Whether it's a couple breaking up, a couple getting together, or someone becoming friends with someone else. As for couples getting together, it's become very clear in today's Internet society that you're not REALLY together, unless it says so on Facebook. But as soon as that status changes people jump all over it to comment, whether good or bad.
 
If you are looking to join a group for something, you look on Facebook. If you're interested in a sport or sports team, you go to Facebook. Events are all planned on Facebook with people getting invites. And if you didn't get an invite, you feel hurt. And Birthdays, well, I only happen to remember so many because of the little convienent reminder which takes me directly to their wall to post Happy Birthday!
 
And if you don't have Facebook, well, you're pretty much shunned. What do you mean you're not on there? How will you ever know that Beth is attending the store's grand opening, or if Michelle and Paul break up? We've given up calling friends, and moved on to texting with our cell phones, and now, we don't even bother with that most of the time. Wanna know what your friend is up to tonight? Well, just check her Facebook status and see, or look at what events she's said she is attending. Simple as that. Why even bother talking to people at all?
 
I have been part of events where the people involved had no clue what was going on, because they weren't on Facebook, and the others running it couldn't be bothered to even just email people the details. It was posted on Facebook and if you didn't see it or didn't have Facebook, oh well.
 
It was bad enough when Facebook first came out, when everyone was trying to out do each other with the number of friends they had. Now, that's no longer where it ends. Mad at your friend and want her to know she upset you? Well, just remove her from your friends list. Did you dump your dirtbag of a boyfriend and want people to know? Well, just change your relationship status to single. Easy. Hell, you don't even need to directly break up with someone, you can just change your status to single and let them firgure it out.
 

I admit, I'm guilty of having a Facebook account and checking it a few times a day, but I also don't post every detail of my life to the point that people know when I leave for work in the morning. And I don't use it as a weapon in the social war with friends. I think that's where we lose touch with the REAL society.
 
People need to actually talk to eachother, to find out info. Or at least, go back to texting and emailing directly.

 

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It seems that no matter what mythology we find them in, being a hero is the crappiest of all lives to live. Maybe if you're a demigod and particularly lucky, you'll end up not entirely dead, but for the most part being a hero means one thing: years and years of struggle, conflict, and death defying acts of courage to be repaid with some kind of betrayal and a really pathetic and ignoble death. Let's start with the men, shall we? The most classic of heroes!

 

Three Case Studies:

Theseus
Son of Poseidon and King of Athens, Theseus fights his way through monsters as a young man when his trip to Athens takes him by the six entrances to the Underworld. Once in Athens and recognized by his other father, he defeats the minotaur, freeing his people from paying tribute, in lives, to Crete. He takes the amazon queen for his wife (he kind of has a history of womanizing). He battles centaurs. He travels with Pirithous to the underworld and comes back again! When he gets back he goes into retirement. Why not, right? He's had a long and busy life, and after a trip to the underworld, he probably isn't interested in continuing to push his luck. He makes arrangements with a King friend of his to move back to the country island lands of his ancestors. When he gets there, he's either betrayed and pushed off a cliff, or, worse, he slips and falls on his own. To his death.


Lame Factor: 4 (out of five) if he was pushed. 5 if he fell. But 3 if someone can find me proof or hearsay that Poseidon rescued his immortal self and turned him into a god.

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I am annoyed.  There is far too much idiocy on the Internet.  No, this isn't anything new or surprising, but sometimes I run across so much idiocy on a single subject that I feel the need to beat some sense into everyone.  Of course, since this is the Internet, I can't.

 

 But if you're free to put your claims out there, I'm free to bitch about their inaccuracy and lack of logical insight.

 

I'm not going to provide any links because I don't want to give these particular sites any more traffic, but lately I've run across a boatload of articles about the brainwashing conspiracies behind Disney, pop music, and so forth...all backed by either the Illuminati or the Freemasons.  For some reason, people who write this sort of thing think the two names can be used interchangeably.  Probably because they're so busy trying to keep their kids from watching the Lion King that they can't be bothered to open a book or perform a Google search.

 

Just to show the Internet how incredibly easy it is to find basic facts, I will now direct you to the first link that shows up when I Google each of these terms.

 

Illuminati 

 

Freemason 

 

All of that effort, including the effort of putting the links into this piece, took me less than sixty seconds.  While Wikipedia is often a questionable source, it still illustrates my point:  this information isn't all that hard to come across.   The words "Illuminati" and "Freemason" should not be used interchangeably simply for the purposes of accuracy (and credibility, if you're going to go around claiming that we're all being brainwashed by Tuna Helper, or whatever). 

 

If you're not offended enough yet, just wait.  There's more. 

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It's probably not good to admit this, but last Sunday evening found me on my couch watching the Hollywood crowd spend zillions of dollars to pat themselves on the back for their mad movie-making skillz.  Other people call it the Academy Awards.

 

 Even though the show is shallow, useless, and outdated, I always look forward to watching the Oscars.  I wrote my thoughts about last year's event and thought I'd have some commentary on this year's as well; then I actually saw the telecast.  Oh, snore!  I hung in there to the bitter end so I could watch Sandy get her statue, but honestly!!  It was so boring!  The hosts and presenters were woefully unfunny (except for you, Robert Downey Jr.) and even Neil Patrick Harris seemed to say as he sang his snappy opening number: "This is as good as it's going to get, folks."  He was right.  It was downhill from there. 

 

And yet at the end of the evening, I still sat there on my couch, sinking further into my four-hour-old butt imprint and wondering what the heck happened.  Wherefore Hugh Jackman?  Wither the good music?  Why had the funny so forsaken us all?  Tilda Swinton wasn't even there to wear a heinous dress for me to laugh at!   And I'd made cupcakes!

 

The one thing that made this telecast survivable (besides the cupcakes, which I ate anyway) was Twitter.  You've all heard about my new and belated obsession with Twitter, tweeting, being retweeted, and basking in the glory of my 48 followers. (If you want to follow me @Cecilyjk, I don't care.   I'm not counting or anything.  And I refuse to mention here that I actually got retweeted by Neil Gaiman last week.  I KNOW!  I go into geek arrest just thinking about it!) 

 

Sorry.  Anyway, the Tweetverse was hilarious during the Oscars.  We made pot shots at ugly dresses, giggled with glee when Avatar didn't win Best Picture and cheered loudly (in a virtual way) when a woman won the Best Director award for the first time in the history of the Academy Awards. (Kathryn Bigelow for The Hurt Locker)  And that moment when the crazy lady totally pulled a Kanye West on that dude during his award speech?  Heh.  We tweeted about it!  It was fun to participate in one of the most well-deserved MST3K sessions ever.  Thank you, World, for making the Oscars bearable for me this year.

 

 I know what you're thinking.  Why do I keep watching if it's so dull and shallow?  *sigh*  I don't know.  I'm an entertainment junkie.  I don't even see all the movies nominated, but I just love the event.  You know?  I guess it's the girl in me that likes shiny things.  Or maybe it's just my attempt to live vicariously through pretty people for one evening.  Who knows?  The bottom line is, I will always watch.  I have come to accept this bizarre fact about myself.  Thank goodness technology has provided me with a way to make it bearable during years like this one.  I'll never watch without the interwebs again.

 

But the point to all of this rambling about the Oscars is to seamlessly segue into presenting you with this most triumphant video.  Brought to you via Urlesque, this trailer for Movie Title brings you all of the best things about a good Oscar-winning film crammed into 3 minutes of glorious meta.  I can't say more than that.  Click play and giggle.  And then go follow me on Twitter.

 

 

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