Oh I feel better

Something I'm generally sensitive to is being patronizing. If I haven't told people before, please, if you catch me being a condescending asshole, don't let me get away with it? I absolutely loathe that behavior and I know I am prone to it. Just tell me if I'm doing it. I won't get offended. I'm grateful for such honesty because I don't want to be That Person.

( Apparently, though, I AM that person. )

I do feel so much better now. Ah, me, away from such silly things. Aren't there some half-naked men I could be ogling? Or a post for Pink Raygun I should be writing? Oops, nope, I already did! It was a Sylar-centric episode, but being sick (and being aware of what depths of suck Sylar-centric episodes had reached before), I didn't leap into this one. John Glover, though--man, can't he just sit there and tell everyone how much they suck forever?

You do realize you just admitted you're looking at lawsuits, right?

Or, how not to keep a law you don't like from getting passed:

Roman Catholic and Orthodox Jewish officials in New York are mounting an intense lobbying effort to block a bill before the State Legislature that would temporarily lift the statute of limitations for lawsuits alleging the sexual abuse of children.
...

“We believe this bill is designed to bankrupt the Catholic Church,” said Dennis Poust, spokesman for the New York State Catholic Conference, a group representing the bishops of the state’s eight dioceses.

The Catholic Church has several billion dollars in assets and income and property--so much money they don't even really know how much they have. Going around saying we can't extend the statute of limitations on sexual abuse of minors because it would bankrupt you is tantamount to admitting you've abused a lot of children. Isn't it?

I guess their thinking is more that spurious lawsuits will crop up as all the gold-diggers who were made ineligible by dint of being just a skoosh too old are suddenly given a few years of leeway. But, yeah, that's really not how it sounds when all they can do is complain about giving the courts a little more time to make sure the abused find justice. They would have a better go of it mentioning the disparity between the proposed changes to abuse cases involving religious rather than state institutions.

Then again, this is the institution that said a nine-year-old girl should be forced to birth twins because their lives were more important than hers. So their inability to be sympathetic or even at all aware of how monstrously insensitive they sound is sorta a thing with them.



The new twist on that Brazilian case: The Vatican has officially affirmed that killing fetuses that would kill the girl gestating them is an unpardonable crime. More good news: the stepfather that raped the girl may also have abused her handicapped sister. But since rape and abuse of minor children--to say nothing of incest (yes, the Catholic Church believed at one point even step-relations were unsuitable for sexual partnerships because of incest rules)--is not an unforgivable sin, they're still not touching the perpetrator. Those evil abortionating doctors and the mother, on the other hand, are fair game. They get to be kicked out of paradise for giving a shit about this girl. That's okay. I'll see them in Hell with the rest of us humanist types and reassure them that no matter that ass-full of hot coals, they still did the right thing.

Ugh WHAT?

I find out Mickey Rourke will be in Iron Man 2 last night. I am happy and ready for the sequel already.

I find out Scarlett Johansson will replace Emily Blunt as Black Widow in the same movie, and I am totally over it.

Look, the movie is there to be about Robert Downey Jr. being awesome. I get that that will happen no matter what. However, though I didn't think she was awful, Gwyneth Paltrow was the worst actor in Iron Man. (Not bad, but just less good than everyone else despite the fact that she was fairly well written. She and RDJ had great chemistry at least.)

Compared to Scarlett Johansson, Gwyneth is Meryl fucking Streep. EPIC FAIL CASTING. And Emily Blunt...oh for what might have been! It's like "Here's a decent actress...oh, no wait, have a punch in the face instead!"