So apparently watching the Oscars is a thing that people do, go figure. I didn't watch it, because seriously, it is the Oscars, who gives a fuck. But apparently a whole bunch of people on my Facebook newsfeed did! And are talking about somebody tripped or something and the host made some sexist or racist jokes?
The host thing is annoying, to me. Not that he made the jokes, not really. But like three or four people on my newsfeed are all up in arms because those damn feminists are making a big deal out of it because geez, it's only a joke, calm down, why are you wasting your time talking about jokes some dude made when there is real oppression to fight and actually hurting people to deal with, GEEEEEEZ.
Well, fuck off. I don't know what jokes this guy made, but if somebody was offended by it then they have the right to express that. If somebody thought what he said was problematic, they have a right to talk about how and why that is. And the fact that there are bigger problems in the world doesn't mean that everybody has to ignore the smaller day to day injustices that they face, and telling someone that they shouldn't talk about something that upsets them because, say, some Muslima has it worse. Guess what, people don't have to devote every second of every day fighting only the very worst oppression in the world until it's all gone before they can start paying attention to the small acts of oppression that happen to them every day and affects their life whether or not people on the outside can see it. Different people have different priorities, and those priorities are always in flux. Objecting to a rape joke today doesn't mean that they weren't advocating for a women's shelter yesterday or aren't picketing for a union tomorrow. And if you really have a problem with how people obsess over what you consider to be minor, ridiculous things instead of the big problems, then actually do something about those problems. Write letters and stage protests and volunteer and prove that you think that it's important to fix them, rather than just using big problems you don't really care about as an excuse to silence people who are fighting different problems that you also don't care about.
Also, is "somebody fell down on camera" really such a big deal that everybody on my news feed has to make jokes about it? Dang, no wonder I don't watch the Oscars if that's considered to be a high point.
Thursday, February 28, 2013
Monday, February 25, 2013
Super 8
I just finished watching Steven Spielberg and J. J. Abram's movie Super 8 with my dad and brother. I saw the trailer for it before it came out in theatres a year or two ago and went, "Oh, that looks really neat, I should check it out!" then completely forgot about it until my brother put it on tonight.
I'm not actually sure if I liked it much or not. It started off pretty strong, I was having fun with the kids and their movie, and the whole witnessing a freaky train crash thing was cool, if a little excessive -- seriously, what was with the Michael Bay explosions there? That train was crashing and exploding for like, five minutes. It stopped being awesome and started being just awkwardly hilarious less than halfway through the explosion. But the child actors were all pretty good, and it was a fun watch for the most part.
But the movie sort of lost steam as it went on. It's still good overall, but it isn't consistently awesome. The really strong beginning became a decent middle and a kind-of-eh end. I went from being really interested and entertained, to kind of disappointed and only watching to see if it really would be as predictable as it seemed. I'd say I'm trying to be vague in order to avoid spoilers, but I honestly can't think of any spoilers for this movie. Everything just starts running in a straight, generic alien-invasion-movie line. Apparently the movie was originally two different movies, one a movie about a bunch of kids making their own movie in the 70's and the other just, you know, it's an alien invasion movie. Summer blockbuster stuff. But they were worried that the first one wouldn't attract enough of an audience, so they combined them. Which is kind of really disappointing, because the blockbuster-alien-invasion part of the movie is really weak in comparison to the kids-making-a-movie-then-stuff-happens part. It's just, oh look it's an alien, he crashed on Earth and the military held him captive and torture-experimented on him and now he hates humanity and he's on the rampage. How inspired. I've never seen that a million times before. Whereas a bunch of kids making an adorkable zombie movie in the 70's, that's cute! I really haven't seen that movie before, no sarcasm this time. And stuff is happening around them and they gotta find out what's up and it's a totally nostalgic adventure! I'd watch the shit out of that.
The movie passes the Bechdel test, but only barely. There's only one actually important female character, and that's Alice who goes missing in the middle of the movie and the rest of it's about rescuing her from the alien so she's not in a lot of the movie, but instead is off being the damsel in distress. There's a short scene where one of the kid's mom argues with his sister over how she's not allowed to wear that outfit to school, missy! Then the sister comes back later to use her sexy sex appeal to convince a dude to do the main kids a favour. Why can't she do the favour instead of just convincing somebody else through her feminine wiles? Hey, who'd want to watch a girl drive the car, let's just add another male character instead! And both of the two main characters, Joe and Alice, have missing moms, more female characters that have conveniently vanished from the story so we can focus on the all-important male characters instead. Joe's missing mom is kind of plot-related in that she died because she was covering Alice's dad's shift and there was an accident. Alice's mom is just not around, her dad saying she "left" in one scene but the movie never really pays attention to it. So most of the movie is about a bunch of guys running around. I know there are people out there who'd get all bent out of shape that I would ever have a problem about a movie being mostly guys with just a few female characters, because GEEZ NOT EVERYTHING HAS TO CATER TO YOU FUCKING FEMINISTS 24/7 WHO CARES IF GUYS HAVE ROLES IN MOVIES WHAT I GUESS YOU WANT TO BAN ANYONE WITH A DICK FROM EVER SHOWING THEIR FACE IN HOLLYWOOD IS THAT IT BITCH?!!?!?!!!?!!!1
No, that's not it. I wouldn't have a problem with a movie being mostly guys with one or two female characters, or even no female characters -- there are lots of spectacular movies with an all-male cast. But seriously, every movie is about a bunch of guys running around with maybe a couple of love interests or token chicks. Movies are about dudes. Movies about women never get made unless they're romances or something, in which case they're still usually about dudes, just from another perspective. What would change in this movie if say, the arsonist kid was another chick? Or if the mostly-ignored sister Jen was the one who the kids went to for actual help and got more character development instead of just being "the sexy plot device to trick a guy"? Hell, let's look at other movies, not just this one. What if one or two of the Ghostbusters were women? Why were there so few women in the Star Wars movies? Why did it take Pixar thirteen films before getting around to a female protagonist? Think about it. Women account for fifty percent of the population. Yet in 2009, women only recieved 33% of speaking roles. Isn't that a little messed up?
Anyway, feminist rambling aside, I'd probably recommend this movie, I guess. It's charming when it's not being a generic summer blockbuster, and when it is doing the generic summer blockbuster part it's doing it well enough. The monster looks pretty neat, there are big explosions to keep you reasonably entertained despite the lack of twists or surprises, and the child actors are surprisingly talented. Just don't let the movie fool you into raising your expectations during the really good parts, and you'll like it fine.
I'm not actually sure if I liked it much or not. It started off pretty strong, I was having fun with the kids and their movie, and the whole witnessing a freaky train crash thing was cool, if a little excessive -- seriously, what was with the Michael Bay explosions there? That train was crashing and exploding for like, five minutes. It stopped being awesome and started being just awkwardly hilarious less than halfway through the explosion. But the child actors were all pretty good, and it was a fun watch for the most part.
But the movie sort of lost steam as it went on. It's still good overall, but it isn't consistently awesome. The really strong beginning became a decent middle and a kind-of-eh end. I went from being really interested and entertained, to kind of disappointed and only watching to see if it really would be as predictable as it seemed. I'd say I'm trying to be vague in order to avoid spoilers, but I honestly can't think of any spoilers for this movie. Everything just starts running in a straight, generic alien-invasion-movie line. Apparently the movie was originally two different movies, one a movie about a bunch of kids making their own movie in the 70's and the other just, you know, it's an alien invasion movie. Summer blockbuster stuff. But they were worried that the first one wouldn't attract enough of an audience, so they combined them. Which is kind of really disappointing, because the blockbuster-alien-invasion part of the movie is really weak in comparison to the kids-making-a-movie-then-stuff-happens part. It's just, oh look it's an alien, he crashed on Earth and the military held him captive and torture-experimented on him and now he hates humanity and he's on the rampage. How inspired. I've never seen that a million times before. Whereas a bunch of kids making an adorkable zombie movie in the 70's, that's cute! I really haven't seen that movie before, no sarcasm this time. And stuff is happening around them and they gotta find out what's up and it's a totally nostalgic adventure! I'd watch the shit out of that.
The movie passes the Bechdel test, but only barely. There's only one actually important female character, and that's Alice who goes missing in the middle of the movie and the rest of it's about rescuing her from the alien so she's not in a lot of the movie, but instead is off being the damsel in distress. There's a short scene where one of the kid's mom argues with his sister over how she's not allowed to wear that outfit to school, missy! Then the sister comes back later to use her sexy sex appeal to convince a dude to do the main kids a favour. Why can't she do the favour instead of just convincing somebody else through her feminine wiles? Hey, who'd want to watch a girl drive the car, let's just add another male character instead! And both of the two main characters, Joe and Alice, have missing moms, more female characters that have conveniently vanished from the story so we can focus on the all-important male characters instead. Joe's missing mom is kind of plot-related in that she died because she was covering Alice's dad's shift and there was an accident. Alice's mom is just not around, her dad saying she "left" in one scene but the movie never really pays attention to it. So most of the movie is about a bunch of guys running around. I know there are people out there who'd get all bent out of shape that I would ever have a problem about a movie being mostly guys with just a few female characters, because GEEZ NOT EVERYTHING HAS TO CATER TO YOU FUCKING FEMINISTS 24/7 WHO CARES IF GUYS HAVE ROLES IN MOVIES WHAT I GUESS YOU WANT TO BAN ANYONE WITH A DICK FROM EVER SHOWING THEIR FACE IN HOLLYWOOD IS THAT IT BITCH?!!?!?!!!?!!!1
No, that's not it. I wouldn't have a problem with a movie being mostly guys with one or two female characters, or even no female characters -- there are lots of spectacular movies with an all-male cast. But seriously, every movie is about a bunch of guys running around with maybe a couple of love interests or token chicks. Movies are about dudes. Movies about women never get made unless they're romances or something, in which case they're still usually about dudes, just from another perspective. What would change in this movie if say, the arsonist kid was another chick? Or if the mostly-ignored sister Jen was the one who the kids went to for actual help and got more character development instead of just being "the sexy plot device to trick a guy"? Hell, let's look at other movies, not just this one. What if one or two of the Ghostbusters were women? Why were there so few women in the Star Wars movies? Why did it take Pixar thirteen films before getting around to a female protagonist? Think about it. Women account for fifty percent of the population. Yet in 2009, women only recieved 33% of speaking roles. Isn't that a little messed up?
Anyway, feminist rambling aside, I'd probably recommend this movie, I guess. It's charming when it's not being a generic summer blockbuster, and when it is doing the generic summer blockbuster part it's doing it well enough. The monster looks pretty neat, there are big explosions to keep you reasonably entertained despite the lack of twists or surprises, and the child actors are surprisingly talented. Just don't let the movie fool you into raising your expectations during the really good parts, and you'll like it fine.
Wednesday, February 20, 2013
How Not To Give Up A Dog
My dad sent me a post on Facebook today, it was somebody trying to find a home for a dog. Dad sends me these whenever he finds them. Not because he knows I'm looking for a dog, but because he knows I desperately want a dog but can't have one, and he likes to taunt me.
Anyway, this one stuck out at me. The person who owned the dog, a sweet friendly black lab, was moving and couldn't take the dog with them, and according to the story in the post, they were gonna put the thing down because they didn't know what else to do with it until a friend was all "No, don't do that, I'll hang onto it for now and find a new owner." The post has been taken down now, so I can't find a photo of the dog or give the exact details, but I think someone agreed to take the dog in or bring it to somebody they know looking for a dog.
The thing that struck me about the story was that the owner's first reaction was to have the dog put down. Yeah yeah, the story went on about how sad they would be to do it because he was such a good dog blah blah blah, but still. First reaction is kill the dog. Not a shelter? Really? Because there's a bunch of shelters. There's even a normal and a no-kill shelter in town, so seriously, there's absolutely no reason to go "I can't keep my dog? Welp, better whip out the ol' shotgun!" Old Yeller never had rabies, the family was just moving and didn't want to bother driving to a shelter. Jeez people, when you get an animal you're making a commitment. It's like getting married. If your marriage is falling apart, you don't have your spouse put down, you get a divorce. If you can't keep your dog, you don't have the dog put down, you find a new home for it. Putting an animal down is a last-ditch option, not your first response to an inconvenient situation. What is wrong with you.
Anyway, this one stuck out at me. The person who owned the dog, a sweet friendly black lab, was moving and couldn't take the dog with them, and according to the story in the post, they were gonna put the thing down because they didn't know what else to do with it until a friend was all "No, don't do that, I'll hang onto it for now and find a new owner." The post has been taken down now, so I can't find a photo of the dog or give the exact details, but I think someone agreed to take the dog in or bring it to somebody they know looking for a dog.
The thing that struck me about the story was that the owner's first reaction was to have the dog put down. Yeah yeah, the story went on about how sad they would be to do it because he was such a good dog blah blah blah, but still. First reaction is kill the dog. Not a shelter? Really? Because there's a bunch of shelters. There's even a normal and a no-kill shelter in town, so seriously, there's absolutely no reason to go "I can't keep my dog? Welp, better whip out the ol' shotgun!" Old Yeller never had rabies, the family was just moving and didn't want to bother driving to a shelter. Jeez people, when you get an animal you're making a commitment. It's like getting married. If your marriage is falling apart, you don't have your spouse put down, you get a divorce. If you can't keep your dog, you don't have the dog put down, you find a new home for it. Putting an animal down is a last-ditch option, not your first response to an inconvenient situation. What is wrong with you.
I never read actually Old Yeller. I read Shiloh though, that one was really good.
Tuesday, February 19, 2013
Subeta
As far as I can tell, Subeta is just a knockoff of Neopets. Like completely. Every step of the tutorial walkthrough was exactly the same as stuff you'd do on Neopets. Anyway, I found it because I was fucking around online and got linked to a forum discussion about...something, I can't remember what, on this website Subeta. I made an account because the little avatars were pretty cute, but mostly because I was bored with nothing better to do and the site promised games somewhere and possibly interesting conversations in the forums.
I never got around to playing any games on it, though. I was in the middle of a walkthrough and doing some quests, where the NPC was looking for some random items and I had to find them in the shops. I did a few before I realized that doing shit on this website was worse than doing nothing at all and closed the window. The fetch-quests were annoying, but it was just really irritating to do a shop search and find something that sells for like five hundred coins or whatever in the regular shop, and see literally all of the user-owned stores selling it for over ten thousand. Apparently everybody on that site is a greedy idiot, so there isn't even any point in going on the forums.
Well done, Subeta. You are a direct ripoff of a site that came out in the nineties, and ten minutes of dicking around in your tutorial walkthrough showed me that a.) nothing on your website was original enough to be worth dicking around with in the first place, and b.) you are full of terrible people who overcharge basic crap to a hilarious degree and think the other users are actually dumb enough to buy it! Good job selling the site to newbies, Subeta! I'm off to delete my browser history for the past hour so I can forget about you completely and never come back.
I never got around to playing any games on it, though. I was in the middle of a walkthrough and doing some quests, where the NPC was looking for some random items and I had to find them in the shops. I did a few before I realized that doing shit on this website was worse than doing nothing at all and closed the window. The fetch-quests were annoying, but it was just really irritating to do a shop search and find something that sells for like five hundred coins or whatever in the regular shop, and see literally all of the user-owned stores selling it for over ten thousand. Apparently everybody on that site is a greedy idiot, so there isn't even any point in going on the forums.
Well done, Subeta. You are a direct ripoff of a site that came out in the nineties, and ten minutes of dicking around in your tutorial walkthrough showed me that a.) nothing on your website was original enough to be worth dicking around with in the first place, and b.) you are full of terrible people who overcharge basic crap to a hilarious degree and think the other users are actually dumb enough to buy it! Good job selling the site to newbies, Subeta! I'm off to delete my browser history for the past hour so I can forget about you completely and never come back.
Thursday, February 14, 2013
Wednesday, February 13, 2013
Why I Won't Rant About The Big Bang Theory
I wrote a ridiculously long post complaining about the most recent episode of The Big Bang Theory. I had a big long multi-paragraph rant on how irritating the characters have become and how the romantic pairings are awful and filled with misery and how the jokes are old and un-funny (Howard's mom is fat! Ha! Sheldon is a sexist douche! Ha! Ha! Leonard is clingy and smothering and his relationship with Penny will destroy them both! HA!). Then I realized that obsessing about the show that I watch when I want to turn my brain off is doing it wrong. Also, this show has really gone on for too long, it needs to end already. TV shows are not meant to go on indefinitely. Half of the problems I had with the most recent episode wouldn't have been a problem in the first season before the show had so much history and character development to trip over.
Anyway, I deleted that ridiculously long post, because I realized that it's stupid to try to analyze the characters on a sitcom. No sitcom character can ever be anything less than awful, because early in the show's run awful characters are more fun to watch, and late in the show's run everyone has been Flandarized to hell and they're tripping over so much history and backstory nearly everything they do means they're being a dick. Like Leonard, pulling exactly the same thing on Penny as Stephanie pulled on him in season two, and he doesn't seem to remember at all how uncomfortable that made him -- even saying something along the lines of "If you don't want her to move in why don't you just tell her that" to Sheldon, completely forgetting what a useless wad he was in that episode and how he even tried to beg Penny into telling Stephanie to back off for him. Without that history, Leonard's behaviour is naive and clingy, but not that bad. With that history, he is a complete tool.
Oh jeez, here I go ranting again. This is a hard habit to break, let me tell you. But I really should, because seriously, I'm watching this crap because I want something stupid and funny to make me laugh and to stop me thinking for twenty minutes. If I then spend forty minutes writing a rant, and then another fifteen minutes on a half-rant about not ranting after that? It is clearly not doing it's job. Maybe I should just watch The Walking Dead instead, at least that show is fun to hate.
Anyway, I deleted that ridiculously long post, because I realized that it's stupid to try to analyze the characters on a sitcom. No sitcom character can ever be anything less than awful, because early in the show's run awful characters are more fun to watch, and late in the show's run everyone has been Flandarized to hell and they're tripping over so much history and backstory nearly everything they do means they're being a dick. Like Leonard, pulling exactly the same thing on Penny as Stephanie pulled on him in season two, and he doesn't seem to remember at all how uncomfortable that made him -- even saying something along the lines of "If you don't want her to move in why don't you just tell her that" to Sheldon, completely forgetting what a useless wad he was in that episode and how he even tried to beg Penny into telling Stephanie to back off for him. Without that history, Leonard's behaviour is naive and clingy, but not that bad. With that history, he is a complete tool.
Oh jeez, here I go ranting again. This is a hard habit to break, let me tell you. But I really should, because seriously, I'm watching this crap because I want something stupid and funny to make me laugh and to stop me thinking for twenty minutes. If I then spend forty minutes writing a rant, and then another fifteen minutes on a half-rant about not ranting after that? It is clearly not doing it's job. Maybe I should just watch The Walking Dead instead, at least that show is fun to hate.
Oh my god Andrea, can you get any more awful.
Tuesday, February 12, 2013
Welcome NL Blogroll readers!
A few days ago (I am really bad at getting to stuff on time!) my blog was added to the NL Blogroll. Thank you guys for adding me, and welcome any readers who found my blog through there!
Sunday, February 10, 2013
Happy October 19th!
Well okay, happy a few days after October 19th, because the fourth season of Community started a few days ago. But I started this blog post that day, and then forgot about it. So it kind of counts!
Who caught the season premier of Community? What did you all think? Seems like they're definitely playing up the goofiness of Greendale this season. It wasn't really the strongest episode (not that season premiers ever are) but it was still fun and there were some good laughs in there. My brother walked past while I was watching it and had a minor freakout when he thought they added a laugh track, until he realized that it was just Abed's imagination spot. Also, I would watch Greendale Babies. FOREVER.
I didn't get the gag at the end, though. What the heck was that all about? Shirly singing "Oh Lord no!" in a deep voice. Was it implying she's a dude? Was it just a joke about how often she says "Oh Lord no"? I am confused. And a little disappointed, because usually the ending gag is the funniest part of the show. Oh well, maybe they'll do better next episode.
Who caught the season premier of Community? What did you all think? Seems like they're definitely playing up the goofiness of Greendale this season. It wasn't really the strongest episode (not that season premiers ever are) but it was still fun and there were some good laughs in there. My brother walked past while I was watching it and had a minor freakout when he thought they added a laugh track, until he realized that it was just Abed's imagination spot. Also, I would watch Greendale Babies. FOREVER.
I didn't get the gag at the end, though. What the heck was that all about? Shirly singing "Oh Lord no!" in a deep voice. Was it implying she's a dude? Was it just a joke about how often she says "Oh Lord no"? I am confused. And a little disappointed, because usually the ending gag is the funniest part of the show. Oh well, maybe they'll do better next episode.
Tuesday, February 5, 2013
Goodbye, pennies.
Well, it's February 5th. Canadian pennies are officially gone, the last one was minted yesterday. Well, not gone, there's still like a bajillion of them, but the government isn't gonna make any more of them so it's close enough. It's about time, I guess. Nobody uses pennies any more, they're too expensive to make, they clutter up my coinpurse, they've got little microchips inside them recording everything we do so the government can spy on us. Nobody wants a penny.
I'm still gonna miss them, though. I liked pennies, even if nobody else did. I'd collect them in a tin, and throw them at my friend Tree. Now that pennies are on the way out, I'll have to start using nickels. That's like a 500% price increase in ammunition! I can't afford that! Now I have to switch to elastic bands or something. And even that's more expensive than pennies. Times are sad, my friend. Times are sad.
But hey, at least we got a neat Google Doodle.
Monday, February 4, 2013
The Super Bowl Bandwagon
I did not watch the Super Bowl this year. Or last year. I'm not even sure which sport the Super Bowl is for. Apparently there are commercials? And...people want to watch them, for some reason. Even though every technological advance in the past twenty years has been made with the end goal of never having to watch commercials on TV ever again.*
*This is an exaggeration, but just barely..
But everybody else on the Internet is talking about the Super Bowl, so I guess I should jump on the bandwagon despite my complete lack of anything at all to say about the Super Bowl.
The only thing I have to say about it is a personal, possibly embarrassing confession: I did not realize the Super Bowl was happening until I got an email alert from a newspaper telling me who won. Even though I had noticed the entire internet going into Super Bowl mode all week. Honestly, I thought they were still talking about last year's Super Bowl. I don't know why. I should have realized that the internet does not have that kind of attention span. In retrospect, the way people were talking about it made it fairly obvious that it wasn't about a previous event but an upcoming one. And yet...I totally blanked on it. Not my proudest moment. Oh well, it's only [whatever sport it is]. It's not like it matters. Have a My Little Pony gif.
*This is an exaggeration, but just barely..
But everybody else on the Internet is talking about the Super Bowl, so I guess I should jump on the bandwagon despite my complete lack of anything at all to say about the Super Bowl.
The only thing I have to say about it is a personal, possibly embarrassing confession: I did not realize the Super Bowl was happening until I got an email alert from a newspaper telling me who won. Even though I had noticed the entire internet going into Super Bowl mode all week. Honestly, I thought they were still talking about last year's Super Bowl. I don't know why. I should have realized that the internet does not have that kind of attention span. In retrospect, the way people were talking about it made it fairly obvious that it wasn't about a previous event but an upcoming one. And yet...I totally blanked on it. Not my proudest moment. Oh well, it's only [whatever sport it is]. It's not like it matters. Have a My Little Pony gif.
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