Okay, so only darkling1 will have any idea what I'm talking about

Last night's Smallville was so...so Smallville, you know? It's like the show designed by the kid brother of someone who is actually cool. Like the kid who writes the fanfic based on the comics that someone better writes. No, really, I mean, we've always known that, right? Because someone came up with the "let's visit one of the greatest DC heroes in high school!" plot that I'm positive no other fanfic'er has ever done before. Dude! That idea is awesome. I am totally going to write one like it, only mine will be more original, 'cause I'm gonna set it at War College on Caprica, and have it be about soldiers on Battlestar Galactica going through training and stuff, ZOMG it'll be so awesome!!!

Ahem. It's really funny to watch Smallville and take apart the episode as if you were taking apart yet another fanboy/fangirl'd up fanfic. This last night's episode featured the proto-JLA under the guidance of Oliver Queen: the robot kid, the Flash (er, Impulse), and fucking Aquaman (who, if it's possible, and somehow it is, regressed even more towards his caveman ancestry since last we saw him, and who then cracked jokes about his getting naked that immediately caused women everywhere--the two still watching Smallville, so me, and the other girl--to go irreversibly GAY FOR LIFE). And they had this keen plan to take out an evil factory (don't ask--the entire factory was home to Luthor-bred evil!). But first they had to find where it was. I turned to darkling1 and laid money on it being near a river or something, and wouldn't you know? AC with the hook up, dudes: "Dur, that's right by the docks, hurhur ::I swim goods, don't forget::!"

The rest you could probably dissect without reading fanfic if you'd been watching Smallville since it got its start: the reckless barging in by Clark, the gay, gay subtext to every line he says to another man (or any line to Chloe about "his secret"--take a drink!), Oliver getting the girl (ugh, except her being Lois--OMG! DOES AC KNOW????) but not actually getting any of TEH SEX 'cause clearly he is waiting for the Mary Sue of his dreams (also? sex is icky and makes you a slut!!), the Luthors lying to each other and everyone else...

Which brings me to the things that made this terrible fanfic episode one of the best of ever: John Glover, Chloe as "Watchtower," AND NO LANA LANG THROUGHOUT THE WHOLE THING!!!!!!!!! If this show had to be run on three things, you could run it on those three things. Have John Glover be the Magnificent Bastard (TM) to all and sundry (don't you wish he would just stop having a conscience again and crush Lex? Because he is clearly better than Lex and more awesomes); have Chloe show up in one of her perky-booby tops with her fabulous hair and her 733t hacking skillz (she needs a job at the government, like whoa), and have them contemplate the various ways their lives are made better by Lana Lang being gone. They can make a new reason up each week. She fell off cliff when a strong wind knocked her over the edge while trying to take a picture. Clark had sex with her--with his powers intact. She's being parceled into meals for starving kids. She's slowly having chunks of hair and skin ripped off by former Smallville watchers who weren't cool with the LANA IS THE GREETEST! plot of the show.

Dude, I would watch that every week.

And there was stuff with leather this week I didn't even get into. Fanbrats writing for TV = THEY!

Nice try, Disney

Oh noes! Four movies are going back in the Disney vault and you can never, ever have them evers!

Except, of course, that one of the movies is a direct-to-DVD sequel to Lady and the Tramp, and another is The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, which is the first in a series and there's no way they're not re-releasing a super-super-super special edition when the next one comes out (I think they have three versions in stores already right now, I shudder to think what their boxset will look like).

So, yeah, if you're at all worried about missing your chance to own Bambi or Lady and the Tramp, go get those. If you think you need Lady and the Tramp 2: Scamp's Adventure, let me know. I'll come to your house and slap you until you stop wanting it.

ETA: For those of you who bought BTVS season-by-season, Best Buy has the seasons on sale for $20 right now. FYI.

ETAA(gain): FUCK! FIREFLY IS ON SALE FOR $20! I guess I'll be waiting a bit longer to pick up the next season of Doctor Who. Heeeeeee!!!! I have something to spend my Best Buy monies on!!!


*

In other news, I defy any of the ID'ers that exist to explain to me why, if evolution is bunk, the thin covering of bacteria overgrowth at the top of my flask looks, smells, and feels like algae (which are evolutionary cousins)? It was kinda fun to play with, actually. Mmm, bacteria. Now, I go get lunch. And hope to hell those gloves kept all the nasty gunk out.

Cry me a river--cry me the f***ing Amazon

The MPAA is 'fixing' the movie rating process

Raise your goddamned hand if you didn't need a documentary to tell these idiots that the G-to-triple-X movie rating system is a bunch of hooey? I see. So, that's everyone except the board members responsible for handing out those ratings? Yes, it is.

After a few years of tinkering with the formula--adding "contains nudity" or "drug use" or "sci-fi action violence" (my personal favorite, that last one) to the bottom of the little box saying whether a film is good (aka R) or good for kids (aka G)--they've decided to revamp. Except not really. They're changing the appeals process. Those labels are going to stay, folks; they're just going to mean even less now.

I need to bump the documentary up in my queue, methinks, because I'm mad enough reading this stupid article. We've known forever that the MPAA has the most perverse ideas about what is okay and what isn't. Things that people actually do--fuck and say "fuck," mostly--get movies R-ratings; things we would hope to God(s) never to have to do--decapitate terrorists and shoot up shit--give you the all-clear of a PG-13. That's okay, not their fault--they're just stupid Americans, too, and Americans are Puritans with better tech, meaning they're still all for the witch-burning and crusades in the name of baby Jeebus, but if you show a titty, they're gonna zap you with pain rays.

Mind you, I complain, but I can't fathom a better system, except the one of common sense and pesonal responsibility, which I know wouldn't ever be popular. Film ratings were developed because some asshole complained that Alien upset his kid. Then they started to complain that theaters weren't enforcing the ratings (note to morons everywhere: those ratings aren't legal or binding restrictions on the theaters in any way; if they let you in and you complain about it, they're just going to ban you if it's not their national policy to give a fuck about the MPAA trying to stop fifteen-year-olds from seeing Live Free and Die Harder or whatever). It completely ignores the base problem that the application of the ratings is spotty, heavily biased thanks to input from religious leaders and members of the board who stopped knowing what was/wasn't appropriate for kids back in the 1980s when their kids moved out of the house.

I see this getting worse, much worse, not better. We're going to have more ratings than you find in the corner of the TV screen, and how many of us really have any clue--still--what those ratings mean? You turn on South Park, and it says TV-MA, you figure it out. That's about where my extensive knowledge on these things falls apart, cheers. We should have a new system with symbols instead of coded letters: a silhouette of a cock for male nudity, titties for female nudity; a gun for gun violence, a pike for any kind of edge-weapon violence, and someone doing a shoryuken for punching/martial arts violence; fake glasses with false nose for any movie made by an SNL alum; a brain for movies with subtitles; a guy flying, wearing a cape for any movie--no matter how "high brow" (yes, American Splendor, I am talking about you)--adapted from a comic book or graphic novel (let's show the masses how much of their culture comes from our culture--BITCH!); and the number of the person responsible for any movie made from a television show now twenty years off the air (does anyone have the digits for the guy who brought us The Dukes of Hazzard movie? Just checking. I need the number for...uh...stuff).