Aww jeeze

I went to return a piece of equipment to the other half of our department, and man have I got lab envy. I mean, I know most labs are nicer than ours in terms of just people, but sheesh, the new building that that half of the department got? It's beautiful. All new and wide-hallwayed, spaces are just clean and well proportioned. Sheeeet dog. So not fair. Even if it had meant moving all our crap over there, that would still have been awesome to work in. Plus, way less annoying to work in in terms of the people about. Half as many floors = half as many people. Not attached to the public hospital or practices = no stupid guests not knowing what floor to take the elevator to. Gah, for what might have been!

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Plan B a go!

( Short discussion, no ranting! Promise! )

Good article, nice discussion of the history of trying to get Plan B off of prescription use and the distortion of the facts surrounding Plan B on both sides. I especially liked that last part. It's telling that having or not having Plan B would neither create those "sex-based cults" the right screamed about nor actually prevent all that many abortions that the left promised it would. What's sad is that we live in a culture so messed up about sex and reproduction that even significant steps towards trying to plan pregnancy are about as likely to work as not having them at all (I think the way the guy in the article put it was something on the lines of Plan B doesn't exactly help if you leave it in the drawer, which people tend to do with medicine). If we educated more on the prevention, talked explicitly about sex, sexual urges, and the consequences thereof, I bet we'd come a lot farther.

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In other news, Tom Cruise is a psycho, and now it's okay (and not again) to say it.

What the F is wrong with a company saying that someone they hired is no longer welcome because of his personal behavior? If you're off the clock, your personal behavior can't be used to fire you unless you drag it into the professional arena (being drunk at work, assaulting your employer, et al). The problem with being a movie star is that you are never being paid attention to where you are not working. That means, if you go on Today or Oprah and act like a moron, you're doing it on company time. They are having you there to promote what you do, even if, being a movie star, what you do is being you (or professionally not being you, it's sort of the same thing in fame). If you promote yourself as a manic desperate asshole when the studio you work for is trying to sell you as an actor with the chops to open movies, they're within their right to fire you. You're misleading the public and giving them one impression of you that will override the one you're being paid to make on film.

Cruise's people have bitched back, saying it's terrible that this guy said these things about his personal behavior being the reason he was axed, and I think the guy saying it has even backpedaled, but I can't imagine why. Not only is Cruise's behavior affecting his draw as a star, but he takes so friggin much of whatever money his movies do make that they have reason to get rid of him just for that reason. The guy walks away with more money from his films than I bet even Steven Spielberg got when they worked together. Those kind of deals amidst this perceived crisis of money hemorrage from the movies aren't going to hold up, not if for every $100 million the studio makes they have to cross off $25 million just for Tom Cruise.

Besides which, Phillip Seymour Hoffman was so awesome in Mission: Impossible III that there was no way Cruise would ever have been able to really be the draw in that film even if he wasn't a raving looney. Hell, anyone in that film was better than he, with the exception of the out-of-nowhere girlfriend (ahhh, where'd you go, Thandi Newton!?). Seriously, Maggie Q was hot, as was PSH's sidekick evil chick, and Dear. God, I finally figured out why feiran thought Jonathan Rhys-Meyers was hot (biggest sin of that movie: he and Maggie Q never got it on but I had to be subjected to Tom Cruise marrying Blandy). And you can't not like Ving Rhames, damn it. Not even over the whole Aquaman thing.

Celeb-reality

I can't help it. This Tom Cruise being fired? Train wreck exciting. It's more exciting than Mel Gibson being a raving drunk anti-Semite because a) no one is being hated on here except someone who has enjoyed a long and overly successful career relative to his ability, and b) schadenfreude. Oh, a and b are kind of the same thing, aren't they? Well, yeah, but still, I'm having a grand old time. Why? Because if anyone had this coming, it was Tom Cruise. I don't even read celebrity rags any more (nosirree, only clean wholesome movie magazines for me!), and I got sick of the bastard. I can only imagine how hellish it was for the rest of the world that couldn't just ignore him. I never forgave him (again, feminist) for his shit about post-partem depression being conquerable without drugs all the time. I know your religion is your choice and it is a right we all have to be religious in our own way. Then you shut the fuck up about how someone else does things with their life when they're not a fucking cultist. Erm, Scientologist. Fucker.

Ahem. Away from the ranty-rant, back to the bitch-slapping fest that is Cruise being booted!

Can you say boycott? Ooh, snap! Take that, Paramount! The CAA is gonna take its stars and walk if you don't apologize and make nice to Tom Cruise by giving all the perks his box-office drawing power doesn't merit. Damn if that doesn't remind me of something...

Oh, might it have been all those rumors about how Tom Cruise put pressure on the powers that be in order to pull a repeat of a certain episode of the show off the air? I'm sure that bears no resemblance to what the CAA's doing...

Here's a thought: it was those darned kids...er, DVDs!

That's right. The decline in DVD sales (caused by piracy, don'tcha know) is what really got Cruise fired. I love conspiracy theories!

And one last note: Oh no! Say it ain't so! Sorry to all my guy friends--Superman is off the market! I guess that settles the actor's gay-rumor mill problem. Maybe in the future, some time, some where, we will finally get that super man who can play the Man of Steel and not have that pesky heterosexuality-loving, wife-and-kids problem. Blech.

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This link provided me by bigscary is just perfect.

Grant Morrison gets exactly was has always bothered me about the second incarnation of Batman: the Animated Series: Batman was too humorlessly dark. While it was pretty funny to see that kind of seriousness contrasted against Superman's earnest optimism in the Batman/Superman Adventures, it struck me as horribly wrong for the Batman solo adventures. The worst offender had to be the episode that introduced Tim Drake. When Batgirl and Batman find out that Tim's father is dead, Batgirl is saddened, and Batman says "Are you expecting sympathy?" when she looks at him. "From you?" she asks. That's awful. It's also lightyears from the Batman of "Robin's Reckoning" in the original animated series. Bruce is everything kind and sympathetic, reaching out to Dick to let him know that he understands the kid's pain and is there to help any way he can. The worst that that Batman did was get distracted trying to find justice for Dick Grayson's parents that he ignored the kid for a while.

It's nice to find out someone so (in)famous likes the same stuff you do. I love that he called Christian Bale's Bruce/Batman definitive. I agree :)