The Rabbit Hole

I think someone accidentally dosed Shepard with sex spores.

( Absolutely no specific spoilers, but just in case. )

On the other hand, Bastard Male Shepard is TOTALLY going to pretend to love everybody and sleep with them.

In other news, my colleagues are squealing over Diane Von Furstenburg's (I should be worried that I spelled that completely right, shouldn't I?) new line for GAP. Meanwhile, I am watching this at work, totally spellbound:


I also read this entry on a blog and cracked the fuck up at the entries "John Carter of Dune" (oh God, I'm still laughing) and "The Punisher and Batman debate the death penalty." There are some better conceptual ones (Ferris Bueller's Day of the Living Dead" was pretty inspired) but those two were especially hilarious. I'd actually pay money to see Paul Dini make the Marvel vs Capcom one.

I don't think I have anything in common with these people.

Balloon Juice has a thread up calling for people to sound off on their least favorite Christmas songs. I don't have one. I have plenty of versions I don't like of this or that song, but no one song drives me crazy during this time of year. It is the aggregate of all of them being forced on me for hours at a time that bothers, not the songs in particular. When it's actually Christmas and I'm home with the family, I'll listen to anything, pretty much.

I have, however, found this thread immensely amusing and more than a little helpful. If my family does elect to go upstate for the holiday, we'll need some road music. I'm thinking I'll have to add a few of these numbers to my playlist. I will also say that, but for this thread, I wouldn't have heard Patton Oswalt's riff on what most likely is the worst Christmas song of all time:

I get a free flu shot at work, which is good and expected because I am employed by an entity that includes a hospital. Even though I do not interact with patients--indeed, the best thing about the department relocating is that we're in a building almost devoid of patients--it's good that I'm not a walking disease vector as much as possible. The trouble is that they seem no longer to do the flu shot "drives" where they stick a couple of nurses in the cafeteria and grab passersby. Which means I had to go sit in the Health and Safety office FOR AN HOUR to get stuck with a needle. Hurt a lot less than last time at least, and I got the same nurse who did my check up for volunteering with the research animals. She's a character, very nice.

However, being forced to wait an hour for a shot that took, no shit, five minutes to give (with gabbing with the nurse included in that time point), is torture. It's Hell-on-Earth torture when you factor in the TV blaring the local Fox affiliate's morning show (STAB IT WITH NEEDLES) followed by a morning talk show by a Sassy Black Lady(TM) who tells you how it is. Thank God for this tumblr blog I discovered via Twitter. I think some people might have thought I was laughing along with the SBL(TM), but I was really laughing at this particularly hilarious post featuring Eric Cantor's bitchiest bitch face.

Awesome, I just discovered that I left the tag on my new workout pants this whole morning until just now. Dear God, how will I survive until the end of the day if this is how it's starting?

I read Consumerist fairly regularly, although I take the occasional break from it so I don't lose all faith in financial transactions (buying, selling, minding your own business and getting trouble anyway). However, what really drives me away from the site? The people who post comments on the various blog entries about how one person or another is being screwed by one company or another. These comments are frequently nasty, most often than not in the form of concern trolling, and they almost always blame the people being hurt for their own problem.

Take, for example, a woman who speaks little to no English being kicked off a bus for having a crying baby. Instead of recognizing that stranding a woman off the side of the road--booting her from public transit, no less--is an unconscionable act, the comments are rife with people bemoaning how hard it must be, how dangerous for a bus driver to have to try to drive with a kid screaming in the back. (Who may or may not have been making noise at all, to say nothing of screaming.) Almost nowhere? Sympathy for this woman. No one on the internet ever makes the mistake of doing anything that would generate an unreasonable response, apparently. No one is ever penalized for no reason. These people must not live in fucking reality.

It's a common problem, these sorts of comments, such that there are memes around these sorts of responses, i.e. commenters who chime in with "In before someone blames the OP [original poster, I think]" because, inevitably, even if you're a victim of a senseless crime in which you cannot remotely be assumed to be responsible, someone will say it's your fault. Your baby was crying, ergo, get the fuck off the bus. You were in a bad neighborhood, so you deserved to be shot/stabbed/raped/mugged. It's really, really gross. I need not to read comments any more. This is my reminder to not do that.

I finished the book a while ago (and am even within a week or three of finishing the second book!) but I had yet to watch the show. Honestly, I needed to give it time between book and show or it would end up being like Lord of the Rings all over again. I read The Fellowship of the Ring all of two days before seeing the movie and I was (it pains me to admit) almost bored by the movie because I was watching things I'd just read. (Funny how that doesn't work with seeing a movie more than once--by the time I'd seen Fellowship a second time, I was hooked.)

It was a good decision to wait. I've only watched one episode so far, and I already need a break. My mental images of the characters are completely out of alignment with the actors on the show. I can't tell any of the Stark boys apart. (One of them must be Theon, but don't ask me which one.) Despite repeated remarks about Catelyn Stark's red hair, I always pictured her as a blonde and much younger than the woman on the show (though it makes no sense that she'd be young since she has a child of fifteen). About the only person I adore is Sean Bean as Eddard Stark, but it's Sean Bean and saying I adore him is like saying I like to breathe. Arya is good, I suppose. She has the right hungry look. Cersei and Jamie Lannister are completely wrong. I don't get the vicious coldness I've come to expect from her from Lena Headey, and whoever is playing Jamie offends me. The one scene where that useless douchebag tried to start something with Lord Sean Bean Stark I was all, "NUH-UH, YOU DO NOT GET IN THE BEAN'S WAY, YOU PRICK."

Anyway, I'll get around to the rest of the series, but not in any hurry. I'd much rather make progress (and there is so much progress to make) on the sequel. I did come across this article about the female nudity on the show (spoilers for the end!) which I suppose will become much more grating as I get through the series. Unfortunately, I came to through this blog post telling this woman objecting to the objectification of women for no conceivable narrative purpose that she should shut the fuck up (and, presumably, since that's what women in these trolls' mindset are good for, shake her moneymakers). Reading feminist blogs has perhaps shielded me more than usual against this sort of lazy sexism. I'd forgotten how troglodytic is is. (Some commenter actually says that it's fine to have all the tits all the time because it's in the book! It's not the book's fault sexism happened in the Middle Ages! Even if the book is fantasy and not set during this Earth's Middle Ages at all!) ::rolls eyes::

Apparently, The Chronicles of Riddick, the complete series (two movies and the animated shorts) is now on Blu-Ray. Someone at io9 does a write up of why Pitch Black succeeded where Chronicles did not (spoilers for both movies, including their endings, at that link), and I find myself almost in total agreement. In short, Pitch Black works because it is a very human movie, whereas there is nothing human, intentionally so, about the sequel.

Look, I loves me some Vin Diesel, so I admit I'm biased, but I think the character of Riddick is one of the most nuanced and interesting ever committed to screen. I am totally serious. Vin Diesel can be a very capable and subtle actor (it is just not what he's made of his career, and even he admits that). Pitch Black was before being a muscle-man was his career, and I'm betting it's what made him a muscle-man character actor because he was just so good at portraying this ruthless yet utterly understandable character.

( Dear God, I love Pitch Black )

I would recommend Pitch Black to everyone. It is incredibly good, despite the standardness of its premise. I find I like it in much the same way I enjoyed Moon. Yes, there are elements to both movies that you've seen before, a hundred times, but each film takes the tropes and finds something human in them. Something worth investigating and thinking about. Pitch Black may be more of an action flick--I won't argue that it's even as thoughtful as Moon--but it has characters, not just archetypes, who shape an otherwise predictable set-up into a transformative story.

Chronicles of Riddick is a brainless bit of action candy. Don't get me wrong, there are some fabulous parts. This one is a particular favorite. Because it's ridiculous, and Vin Diesel has a way of smiling through a scene that lets you know he's aware of how ridiculous it is. A lot of the fun, however, is offset by some bullshit, of the messianic variety, which particularly ruins one part of Riddick's previously sympathetic backstory. And did I mention that Karl Urban had a braided mullet? Because he did. That is a thing that happened. Judi Dench was also in the movie for...reasons. (I'm sure she had, like, a wing on her mansion that was being painted, and she wanted a weekend away.) If I could somehow go back in time and somehow convince myself not to see Chronicles of Riddick (which, really, is the more impossible task, since I always finish things I start), I would. Because it really cheapens Pitch Black. So see that. Skip Chronicles.

When I'm bored at work, I scour the internet. The problem is that the internet is done by about three hours into my scouring, far as I'm concerned, and then I'm bored. This boredom is made worse by all the links to things I can't read or can't focus enough on to make a coherent post about whatever it is. So I'm going to just collect links here and think about it later. Maybe.

-Predator 2: Not as bad as you think! What? It wasn't! It's nowhere near as smart as Predator. It's fantastically cheesy at parts, too. But it did some effective things. The disc alone means I can forgive this movie because it lead to my favorite activity in playing one-on-one battles with feiran, which was sniping her with the fucking disc. All joking aside, there were some interesting ideas thrown around this movie, and a few genuine laughs, like when the police chase a bad guy onto a subway and fully ten commuters draw guns on the bad guy, too. Or when Gary Busey showed up. Laugh a minute, that.

-This may be a totally relevant and cogent post about how Glee isn't as progressive/transgressive as you think, but I can't read it because I'm still watching the show. Damn it. But I could have told you that. I mean, yay, it has a stable of characters that include people of color, a disabled student, and a gay student. But the show has really missed some opportunities to do more than just throw "teachable moments" at us. For all that I love Kurt, he was the one who pushed and pushed and pushed until [spoiler character] finally snapped and called him the F-word. It's not a nice word, and usage of it is still bad, but some acknowledgment that Kurt provoked it might have been nice. Because gay people are people, too, and sometimes they are pricks. Also, guess what? All the female characters are still crazy and/or evil. PROGRESS.

-I like this stand! Possibly to use to hide kitty litter!

I think if I made my opinions on this post three times as long, I'd never express myself half so well as this post on Hit Girl at Jezebel. Just...wow.

One of many very important parts of her incredibly well thought out analysis:
But I do like [Shit Blows Up And A Lot Of People Die] movies as a rule, and so do about a gazillion other people, so it's probably safe to assume that liking them does not actually make you a bad person who struggles to be compassionate and non-violent in real life. It just means you can suspend your better nature for a short time in order to watch a lot of intense, terrifying shit happen to (and because of) a fictional character, provided you know that character has the intellectual, financial and physical resources to wind up safe and triumphant, and that the fictional people who get slaughtered along the way are all A) evil and B) trying to kill the hero first. Hit Girl is clearly shown to be such a character, fighting such characters. So if you can't stomach this well-established formula with her at the center of it, the obvious question is, are you usually willing to suspend empathy because of the character's resources and the good/evil thing and the knowledge that it is fiction, or because the hero usually has a dick and a deep voice?

And this, definitely this:
I like that I walked out of there with a gut reaction of "That was awesome!" immediately followed by an intellectual reaction of, "Damn, it's fucked up that I thought that was awesome." That tells me I just saw something new, if nothing else. And on further reflection, the new thing for me was not a violent, remorseless, brutalized, potty-mouthed child but a female action hero with all the agency and skill of a man, whom the audience is not supposed to want to fuck. That is a pretty awesome thing, even if it is also frankly pretty fucked up that I thought that movie was awesome.

One of my favorite occasional blogs (as opposed to those I check everyday, several times a day), is Tiger Beatdown. Sady Doyle is one of those people, who, like glvalentine, makes absolutely everything fucking funny. It's safe and accessible feminism with humor, thus giving lie to the "humorless feminist" stereotype. That stereotype fucking sucks. It muzzles women. Today, I had to refrain from commenting on a friend's LJ post that was a bunch of sexist drivel made in pursuit of a political point. If you're that friend, you probably suspect it's you. I'll spare you the suspense: it was.

Anyway, Tiger Beatdown has a post up by a dude--dudes who can be feminists!? WHOA-OA. He happens to be gay, which might explain his lack of being cool with patriarchal norms. He has a post about the de-gaying of movie trailers, specifically about the de-gaying of the trailer for Scott Pilgrim vs. the World. There really is no argument you can make against his thesis.** While Scott Pilgrim has two gay characters and at least one assumedly bisexual character, few of them appear in the otherwise awesome trailer. Coupled with the other examples he cites about Valentine's Day and, more damning, A Single Man, it's hard not to see the trend. Even when the movie is about a gay man mourning the death of his lover, gayness is absent.

It might have behooved him to do a little more research to ascertain that, yes, those characters are in the movie (neither he nor people in the comments seem to realize that). I, for one, am astonished that Wallace wasn't in the trailer given how fully half the laugh-out-loud parts were his doing. That's okay, I forgive him for not doing his research fully: he gave a shout-out to Hollywood Montrose of Mannequin fame. Yes, it is possible to be famous for being in that movie. I'd also like to point out this character to the Hollywood anti-gay-trailer squad: I didn't realize Hollywood was gay until I was in college. I really just thought he was weird. To be fair to me and my obliviousness, he is weird. (He hangs around--voluntarily!--with Andrew McCarthy, for one.) His defining traits have more to do with his outrageous--even for the 80s!--fashion sense and tendency towards hysterics than they do about his being into guys. Notably, however, he does talk about dating men. SHOCK.



**He's right that Wallace is absent, and the authenticity of the bisexual's dual-gendered interests does read as if it's just a fad, not a lifestyle. But he's talking out his ass when it comes to the other gay character, seeing as she's featured fairly prominently in the trailer. Their choice of phrases about the evil exes is also not as he represents. So, really, perhaps Scott Pilgrim was not the best trailer upon which to launch the Bitch Ship.

I don't agree with everything in the top video, but it's a pretty good start on why a lot of video game culture is alienating to women.

Worth a watch and a discussion. ( Some thoughts. )