Home Again, Home Again

Holy shit, I'm home! Its been a long and joyful two weeks out and about in the universe but its always good to return to one's own bed. My ladywife and I spent a lesurely two weeks in Prague, punctuated by an all too short weekend in Amsterdam. Of course, for me the rest of my ridiculously charmed life would be too short a stay in Amsterdam, so I'll take what I can get quite gladly. Prague is a beautiful city, with gorgeous architecture and amazing food... that for some reason never really clicked with me. No one's fault, no hard feelings, just couldn't quite find my stride there. That said, if the opportunity arises, definitely go. Seriously, the food is incredible and the cost of living is downright comfortable. The people are a little... brusque, but people suck all over (though they seem to suck a good bit less in Amsterdam) and they seem to lighten up after a couple of the readily available and fantastic beers.

I do feel the need to make a serious comment, however. I spent a prodigious amount of time going from airport to airport this trip, 10 flights in two weeks, and I never felt less safe than when I was returning to this country. We laidover or stayed in half a dozen countries and, with the exception of my own, the border process was streamlined, respectful and complete. Get scanned, confirm your identity, carry on. However, on every occasion upon entering the U.S. the world became a very hostile place. A conspicuous proliferation of armed guards (a disconcerting number of whom had assault rifles), poorly trained K-9 units jumping and snapping at frightened civilians while their handlers laughed. State mandated molestation and intimidation. I couldn't help but feel ashamed at what we've let them do to us under the auspices of guaranteeing safety they do not provide. I really don't want to be preachy about it, but it was a viscerally disturbing experience and I hope one that goes quickly in to the annals of the history of abandoned ideas. Everybody travel safe out there.

Fuck You, You'll Read It

When I was a kid the only thing I ever really wanted was to have real, true love. I know its kinda weird to have a guy admit that but its true, and that goal has played a massive role in my life. I've always prioritized meaningful, intimate personal relationships over everything else; friends should be absolute confidants and partners should be nurtured and embraced as though they are part of the self. This makes me a support character in my own life, and I like it that way. I met the woman who was to be my wife when I was nineteen years old and once it became clear that that was how things were going down I wanted nothing more than to give my life supporting her in her pursuits. I love being a husband, being the support network for my wife, who I met when I was nineteen.

Complete and unconditional love is the only thing I've ever wanted and I got it before I was old enough to drink. How the fuck do you find a new ambition after that? What would be the point? I can (and have) make more friends, but the pressure to socialize is diminished in the face of the ongoing intergalactic genital high-five that is my wife. I could get really into a career if I really wanted to alienate my wife and betray every principle to which I've given myself. I know I sound like I'm bitching but I'm really not, its just struck me lately how awkward it is in our society to not really respect self-sufficiency or independence, which made me think about how I came to that place.

I don't value being independent because none of us really are, and the insidious lie that we are is the source of some very deep-seated issues. Self-sufficiency is just laughable as soon as you aren't completely alone, why work hard just to keep yourself going when a group cooperating provides for more people with less individual effort. The problem here arises from the fact that since I don't value those things I also don't understand a lot of the barriers people put up around themselves.

If there is a bullet point to take away from this its that I'm socially retarded and I don't fucking understand why you aren't, but I don't know. Fuck you, you read it.

So Bad It's... Nope, Just Bad

I was coerced into watching The Stepford Wives yesterday, and boy was that not good. Christopher Walken didn't save this movie. Matthew Broderick was just as affectless and baffled as ever, Nicole Kidman's character was completely loathsome regardless of which completely different personality is presenting, and easily half the cast was superfluous. Glenn Close is in this fucking movie, and it doesn't seem to appreciate that.

The overall theme in this thing is probably feminism. I say "probably" not because I feel in any way ambiguous about it but because the way they handled feminism in the movie is so shit-fingered and pigeon-holey as to be insulting, and I say that from the depths of my pasty white, middle-class penis. Undeterred by circumstance or consequences, Kidman's character is kind of a cunt through the entire movie, only at the end does she seem to actually change. Not that she stops being a cunt, just that now she appreciates her manipulative, bitter, cowardly shit-pile of a husband.

The gay "wife" is, to quote Brian, "The gay version of a minstrel show," and that is apt. And where he is flashy and dramatic his partner plays the equally cliché constervative power-top. Actually, there is no subtlety in this movie at all. At all. Even if somehow the whole thing were some layers deep meta-cross-commentary arthouse fucking pretension, that would still be a shitty, shallow cliché.

Winning the War on Goats

Alright, so it's been hot around here, not like Devil's Valley hot or anything, but hot enough that my tubby Scandinavian ass is melting. As a result, I've pretty much only been able to think about how fucking hot it is and how spectacularly I disapprove of that fact. So today I'm going to talk about why I don't like goats.

1. Goats are Smug:

Look at that fucker. Sitting there with its stupid fishy fucking eyes. Judging. Like a fucking goat knows what the world is like. The pressures we face! With their stupid, shitty little horns and their "cheese". Dicks.

2. They're Creepy: Did you know that goats can climbs trees? Yeah, fucking tree climbing goats. Oh, and they fucking scream, and not just the tree-climbers. While that can be really funny when properly framed, imagine it echoing out over the fields in the dark of an autumn night, row upon row of dead, flat-head eyeballs gleaming hungrily in the starlight.

3. Seriously, Look At Those Fucking Eyes: Goat eyes are fucked up. Rectangular pupils give these little bastards a roughly 320 degree field of vision with no frontal blind spot. They also make a visual organ into a hideous, half-open portal to some barnyard hellscape.

Fucking goats. I'm going to go tape ice cubes to my head, hopefully we get some rain so I can write a coherent post next week.

Pissing away the Future

So here's the deal. Climate change is a thing, its a big thing and by thing I mean problem. Now by problem I don't mean, "oh we're gonna have to have some really uncomfortable discussions." I mean the world as we know it is changing at a frankly alarming pace and if we don't, as a species, do something drastic about it with a fucking quickness a horrific number of people are going to die. It might not seem like it but I hate to soapbox about this, and not just because I think humanity could probably benefit from a bit of a pruning. I hate to get into the climate change thing because talking about it is largely a meaningless proposition for someone like me. Either you agree with me that its a problem and are taking steps in your own life to do what you think can help, you don't care either way and just want to get on with your business, or you think all this "climate" nonsense is just a conspiracy to control the populace or what the fuck ever. If you fall into that last category, by the way, we can't hang anymore and I sincerely hope you die in a painful and culturally scarring fashion, that others may learn from your failing.

The reason I feel the rather rare desire to approach this topic is because of something said on The Nightly Show last week. Usually, I really enjoy Larry Wilmore, he's witty and direct. But to see him flipping shit to the people trying to come up with solutions to a problem that has been plaguing California (not to mention huge swathes of the rest of the fucking planet) for years, a problem that even more of us are staring down the barrel of, pissed me pretty badly off. All water is recycled. Water treatment is a colossal part of the world we live in and people have been doing it in one way or another for a very fucking long time. Some people feel icky about the prospect of drinking water that used to have shit in it and to some extent that makes sense. Unfortunately for these folks pretty much all water has had shit in it. A goodly amount of it has probably been piss. Odds are you drank a little formerly-piss water today even. That's why filtration systems exist, so that by the time you drink it, your water doesn't bear any meaningful resemblance to the piss (or commercial waste, or industrial run off) that it used to be.

I'm hitting this one pretty hard but its not just water. A while back the U.N. suggested people start phasing insects into their diet to prevent against possible insecurity in the food supply. Of course it was kinda laughed off, but livestock is hard to raise, and costly, and if something goes wrong (like the world smolders and livestock becomes too resource intensive to keep alive) a huge number of people are going to be fucked. We can't afford to laugh off solutions at this point, no matter how icky it makes us feel. There are problems amassing in the world, too many to face down and certainly too many to ignore, and its not just irresponsible to keep calm and carry on, its self destructive. 

His Superpower is Punching!

So a friend recently convinced me to watch the new Daredevil series. It should be stated that I've largely avoided the comic/TV bullshit. I dig the new Constantine but I didn't really go for Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D or Arrow or any of that kind of thing. I just don't have any faith in the people who make TV happen and I fucking love comic books, so I tend to ignore TV adaptations. Daredevil is the reason I lack that faith. Not because its bad, but because its made by Netflix.

They don't have to worry about the same standards and practices fuckery that TV producers do. People on Daredevil speak like real people because believe it or not profanity plays an enormous role in human communication. I love this. We've discussed profanity here before, and it holds a dear place in both mine and Brian's lexicon. So a show about people in fucked up situations that allows them to discuss them in those terms is always more enjoyable than you'd expect.

The other big thing about Daredevil for me is the violence. It ought to come as no surprise that I appreciate me some physical aggression, and the clarity and relative honesty of the violence in this show is beautiful. Sure we've still got a guy in a kinda silly outfit throwing down with Russian mobsters and not getting shot repeatedly and dropped in a hole, but that doesn't actually reduce the brutality of the combat.

Now this might sound like an ad spot for this one show, but its not. I like some things about Daredevil. Some of it is ridiculous, of course it is, its a comic book adaptation. But the things I like about it stem from a lack of censorship. They don't have to sugar coat things to placate shitty people.  I'm a geek; I love stories, the exploration of ideas, and the building of narrative worlds. When Constantine leaves out the details of what happened in Newcastle we lose a big part of that story and the motivations of the characters. I really don't have an issue with adapting comics or books to the screen but when we have to hobble them to make them suitable to irresponsible parents and ego-maniacal busybodies we've failed to respect what makes a story great.

Fuck You, Don't Pay Me

So here's a weird thing; I don't like getting paid. Not for my labor, not for goods, not at fucking all. Handling money in general bothers the fuck out of me. I've thought a great deal about why this is and how it happened that the absolute basis of our society came to repulse me. I'm not entirely sure how this state of affairs came about but I do have some reasons.

The main reason, I think, is that being paid to do a thing manipulates the nature of that thing. I'm no longer doing a thing because I want to or because I enjoy it, I'm doing it because I've been bought. At least rented. Now, this is probably some deep-seated fuckery from the circumstances of my rearing or whatever, but that doesn't make it less of a problem. Its to the point that if someone offers to pay me for say, my fucking delicious homemade molasses bacon, I not only don't want to give them any more, but I don't even want to make it anymore. Because clearly this person doesn't appreciate the act of love and attempt at comradery represented by my bacon, and if they don't then what's the fucking point. By offering to pay me it takes a fun, tasty offering of friendship and reduces it, and thus me and my friendship, to a commodity.

That's kind of the rub here, getting paid makes me feel cheap. I don't really value my own survival for its own sake. The things I do are done for earnest companionship, shared and personal joy and, fuck forbid, because I genuinely believe in what's being done. Getting monetarily remunerated just takes all of those great, ephemeral joys and tries to reduce them to a grubby, coke-stained stack of bills. Or worse, a digital means of survival that can only exist theoretically for me. It's saying that yeah, what I do is great and all, but you'd rather wave me away with money than allow a connection to form.

I fully recognize my unacceptable luck at having my needs accounted for, I don't deny for a second that this is a problem evoked only from a position of plenty. Unfortunately, my marketable skills consist of small batch baconry and the ability to swear on the internet, so my prospects are slim on my own. And considering my little neurosis gets worse the more abject my poverty and completely predates my current relative comfort I have, I would be fucked without my goddamn amazing wifemonster. At the same time, I think it says something absolutely disgusting about our culture when the knee jerk response to an attempt at brotherhood or an exercise in delight that results in a physical object, is "Here's some money so you'll keep doing that for me."

Thank You Jeremy

Just this today. Brian and I talk about this shit... just entirely too much. We're creatives at heart, and this is a topic that we grind on even more at home then we do on here. I've had this exact argument in various states with varying degrees of success and I wish with all of my heart that I had ever managed the clarity and passion Jeremy brings to this rant. We here at Kinda Whatevs are once again in your debt sir. Now if you'll excuse me I need to see if I'll ever finish my shitty little story.

Shit-Swilling Subhuman Sonsabitches

This is going to be a short post so I don't devolve in to a crazy-eyed chainsaw-wielding redneck. So swatting is a thing apparently. It's been a thing for a while and it has always been fucked up beyond anything like acceptability. If you hit that link up there you might note that when the police discussed the penalty of the Nov. 6 2014 swatting as a fine and, possibly, a year in prison.

People die in SWAT raids. I've covered it before, but SWAT actions terrorize civilians, ruin lives and, occasionally, melt babies. So calling in a bomb threat or hostage situation on someone to fucking troll them makes you not a fucking person anymore. The idea that these fuckers get anything less than dropped in a fucking hole is disgusting to me. Many swatters are apparently kids. That doesn't change my opinion at all. If your shitty fucking kid is willing to fuck up someone's life this badly they don't get to try again, and you probably shouldn't either.

We Need To Learn From The Lessons That Herbert West Showed Us.

So I have written something along the lines of this topic a couple of times but it is still something that bugs me. Remakes. This time I was set off because of a very specific remake: The X-Files. I love the X-Files, it was an amazing show, funny at times, tense at others. It balanced the monster of the week and drama genres really well. That being said, the show turned into something unwatchable by the end, mostly due to people splitting from the show as it convoluted itself out of existence.

When I wrote about Fringe I said that shows should get canceled before they get to the point of being terrible, and The X-Files certainly fails that test. It lasted like 2 years longer than it should have, but Fox (the network not the character) calling for 6 more episodes to be produced is fucking absurd. Its basically taking a dead show it ruined over a decade ago and trying to wring more money out of it's corpse. Fuck all that spending money on new shows that might be terrible, lets just Frankenstein this bitch and see how she does on the corner. Because, you know, that always works out for the best. I grew up watching shows like Star Trek TNG and The X-Files, but those shows are done, and I am comfortable with that. I am not craving to know the unanswered questions, I am just sad at how these shows turned bad at the end. Let them stay dead.

This might sound like I am overreacting, and to be fair I am being a little hyperbolic, but this trend also stifles creativity in mainstream media. Broadcast television is getting fucked by stuff like Hulu, Amazon, and Netflix and instead of trying to compete with them by making better shows, they try to scratch the nostalgia itch that these services provide (I have rewatched the X-Files two times in the past few years because of Netflix).

Seriously, thanks to Fox we got shows like the Simpsons, Futurama, The X-Files, Arrested Development, and Firefly. They clearly have the ability to get people who can create great works, so try to create the next Family Guy or King of the Hill rather then trying to rehash your glory days when you had those shows. Then again, they did cancel a bunch of those shows before they hit their stride, so maybe Fox just doesn't know what the hell they are doing. Incidentally, Hulu, Amazon, and Netflix don't just hit the nostalgia spot, they have also been creating new stuff that is good (Deadbeat and Alpha House come to mind) so maybe this is just the death throes of a dying form of media that is trying desperately to remain relevant.

Wade-Giles Fuckery, and Not Deadpool/Buffy Slashfic

Alright folks, this is going to be a (hopefully) short nerd rant. We all know by this point that I have no patience for traditions built on bad ground. Today's shining shit shack of social standards revolves around the process of romanizing languages. I appreciate the value of converting non-english languages into characters comprehensible to english speakers/readers, it would just be great if we made any effort to do that. For instance the Gaelic word Samhain is pronounced sowwan or sahwin. That third letter is a fucking m and has no goddamn place in that word. I've heard the argument that its silent but silent letters are a hold out of a system whereby people use the ability to write "accurately" to enforce social barriers, so fuck that arbitrary elitist bullshit.

Arguably the most pronounced example of this stupidity is Wade-Giles transliteration. This is a method of converting Chinese, which is nuanced and beautiful, into English without any consideration for how those words are spoken. You may have noticed this renders the technique essentially useless for actually learning or communicating the fucking language. There is a chart at the bottom of that link that compares different phonemes and how they are written in Wade-Giles, which was established by two brits at the height of british cuntblubbery in China, and Pinyin, which is the method actually used by the people who speak the language. If you check that list you'll notice that WG seems to have valued exotic spelling conventions over anything even vaguely approaching accuracy.

This isn't super uncommon in romanizing languages, but it is fucking absurd. We romanize languages so that we can learn that language or at least be able to pronounce relevant words without sounding like a fucking moron. So I vote that we start actually writing things phonetically, or at very least consulting with native speakers before we decide how we ought to pronounce their words. Maybe someday we can live in a world where Daoism doesn't set off spell check and its foundational book isn't written as onomatopoeia for an old timey cash register.

An Open Letter To PETA

Dear PETA,
You people are monsters and you need to stop. You talk about the ethical treatment of animals, something that I believe should be something that people actually talk about, but then you kill 88.3% of the animals you take in. 88.3%! You could have left the animals on the street and they would have had a better chance to survive. You are monsters just on that point alone, especially after you protest against shelters for committing euthanasia. What makes you even worse? You hired a lobbyist to stop Virginia state from restricting euthanasia of animals. This is something I thought you guys would appreciate: something that would stop people from killing animals. But noooooo, you hire one of the most notorious lobbyists in history to make sure you can still kill animals at your whim.

The Virgina Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services filed a report in 2010 that investigated their shelters and found that 90% of the euthanized animals were killed within 24 hours of their arrival at the shelter. You didn't even try to adopt out those animals, did you?

As I said in the first paragraph, I am a believer that treating animals in a humane way is important. I disagree about a few of your other policies and beliefs (specifically about why being vegan is better) but the main view you have, I share.

Most of our meat industry is bad for animals in terms of living conditions. We are in a time in which technological advancement is moving so quickly, you would be vastly better served to help fund technology that replaces animal products or reduces the cruelty of conditions. You are a huge organization, spend some of that money you spend making video games that shame imaginary violence against animals on researching how to make technology not hurt animals. I think that animal testing is kinda fucked up, but its also how we create vaccines and treatments for stuff like AIDS so instead of just protesting, help develop technology for testing without using live subjects. And on the side of animal adoptions, I think that there should be someplace that treats animals well and actually tries to adopt them.

Oh wait, there totally is. The Humane Society doesn't kill any animals, and their rates of adoption are amazing, at least here in Seattle, you have to check individual sites for numbers of adoptions and I didn't feel like looking through all of them. The humane society trumps you completely. You claim on your website that no kill shelters don't accept animals with diseases and massive injuries, but I couldn't find anything like that on the Humane societies website, even though they are a no kill shelter.

So here is my idea for you PETA. Stop killing animals. Start creating new technology. You want to cause change? Create an alternative. Don't just say there should be one and then moralize about how the things you do aren't fucking evil because its you doing them. Instead of making Billboards that show Pink naked, use the money you would have given her to do actual good for the beautiful plethora of life on this planet.

Sincerely,
Brian

What's All This Faggotry Then?

I feel like we've been doing pretty well lately, not getting too rantish. So lets talk about slurs. Now, I feel the need to preface this with some context. I look like what would happen if Thor had a thing about cake and couldn't be bothered to shave, this tends to shade the audience against anything I would have to say about hate speech with either bland apologetics or low rent nazi propaganda. I'm also bisexual, which given my appearance tends to go unnoticed. It also opens me up to a weird perspective on hate speech because, while I'm sensitive to it, most people don't bother to sensor themselves around me. Given that, I've come up with a rule. Just don't be a dick about it.

As with any kind of profanity, slurs are bound entirely by context. So while I can understand a bit of discomfort if someone you don't know very well yells "faggot", if you have a reasonable expectation that they aren't actually decrying someones sexual preference leave them the fuck alone about it. Yes that word is one used by a certain group to make another group feel bad. Its also an expletive and those are just to useful to ignore. The meaning that it has with the offended group relates entirely to the fact that said group identifies with the word. Faggot has meant a lot of things over the years, but you don't hear old ladies getting up in arms about it. No pagans (I sincerely fucking hope) getting their knickers twisted about references to burning heretics. I tend to agree with Louis C.K., faggot only actually refers to a caricature, not necessarily of homosexuals but of a specific brand of annoying pedant. No person should ever acknowledge themselves as a caricature. I'm sure that there are some people who definitely mean gay people when they say that, just as I'm sure that there are some people how very much mean it in the pejorative when they utter any variation on the word "nigger". Those people are using words wrong. Not just those words, all words. They have misappropriated language and should be disregarded.

The trick here is something we've talked about before at some length, language is completely reliant on context. The idea of a word that is inherently bad is absurd in the absolute, as evidenced by the sheer fact that meanings can change. In fact I tend to argue that by legislating language we give certain words undue power. By limiting words like faggot and nigger we're essentially reserving them for the people who are just going to be cunts about their use and that isn't good for anyone. Suddenly, using a certain word ends conversations and shuts down discourse. The only words that should ever have that kind of power are "good bye" and its cousins. Lets get back to being people, stop blaming words for their use and start blaming people for their ignorance and hate.

Athletics, Advertising and Apathetic Naming Conventions

So there was the SuperThing yesterday that everybody and their dog got their dicks hard about. My apathy resounds on that specific front. I don't particularly care that a bunch of grown men got together to try and kill each other in tight pants, or that an obscene number of people chose to live vicariously through strangers to forget the unyielding, soulless monotony of their existence. I don't even really care that the standard response I receive when I tell people I'm not a "sports guy" is a cross between sneering derision and knee jerk hostility. You know what I do care about? Fucking Katy Perry's Halftime performance. Or better yet, did you see that one commercial that cost as much as the GDP of Jamaica?

There's a point here I promise. See I'm not alone in not being big on watching sports, lots of people abstain from the sportitude, the unrepresented population here seems to be those of us who don't think sports are particularly special. Its not that I don't think that what they do is impressive to some extent, its that the physical talent athletes demonstrate has more to do with the fact that they've spent their whole fucking lives pretty much just playing a game than any thing else. There is talent involved certainly, hell they even serve a degree of social good. Sports brings communities together and that is definitely a net gain. The issue that arises for me is that while I don't have a problem with people who enjoy sports I also don't really care about all of the shit that surrounds sports culture. Its fucked up that that one guy ran a dog fighting ring or whatever, but no more fucked up than the fact that that happens anyway. I find it sickening that that dude beat the fuck out of his wife, just like it is when anyone does it.

"Oh", you may well find yourself saying, "but they're role-models, Children look up to them, so what they do matters more". First, no; they're grown men who get carte blanche because they run real fast and can take the rock to the goal or whatever. Second, children look up to them because they make a shit ton of money for playing the same games they play after school. Children aren't great at recognizing their best interests, that what parents are supposed to be for. Children would also look up to somebody who got rich from eating cake, little fuckers love cake.

Athletes can be fucked up and sports people weird me, but what is worse to me is the people who make a big deal out of demonizing them and talking about how they don't watch the sportsing, and then in the same breath start a dissertation on SuperThing ads and halftime shows. Fuck those people, they are the worst violators of the "if you don't like it, don't look" rule. These are the same class of fuckheads who watch reality shows ironically. They are on par with anorexics bitching about how unhealthy fat people are, sure they aren't fat but they're just as unhealthy and weird about food. Hell, events like the SuperThing make as much money off of random assholes tuning into the commercials as they do from asses in seats. I don't care for sports, so when the SuperThing or the Series of the World (in very small considerations of what "world" means) is on, I fucking do something else. None of that something involves even tangentially the event in question. My thinking is that if enough of us just don't bother at all maybe they'll finally fucking go away. It worked on the Jocks in highschool, maybe I'll get lucky.

CAW CAW BANG! ...Oh Fuck He's Dead

We talk about remakes and reboots just... entirely too much. Today's post isn't going to be about how remakes are all fucked up (though they often are), or reboots are money-grubbing bullshit (though they often are). No today I'm going direct reference. Relativity is doing a remake of The Crow. I fucking loved The Crow, both the comic and the first movie. That said, seriously, don't fucking do that.

For those of you who aren't familiar with the our little tale of woe; Brandon Lee, Bruce Lee's son, straight up fucking died in making The Crow. When your movie kills one of the ridiculously rare instances of a second generation fucking legend you need to pack up and go home. They didn't, they made three more movies and a shitty T.V. show, but that was at best in bad taste. I totally understand that its a nifty concept, I intimately appreciate that The Crow had a huge impact on a certain population, like me. However, The Crow is a pretty self contained story about loss and pain, that does extrapolate out pretty well but that doesn't require the bludgeoning of a deeply intimate story, especially after the first cinematic attempt fucking killed your headliner.

The Crow is essentially about a dude who comes back from the dead to inflict his grief on the people who murdered him and his SO. There are so many fucking ways to do that story without piggybacking the comic or disrespecting Brandon Lee's death. Find one and do that if you wanna make a movie. 

Okay, so I lied, this is all about how how fucked up remakes are and how the film industry is a soulless, money-grubbing fuckscape. Sorry for the deception.

The Downward Spiral is My Favorite Carnival Ride

I've written about my anger issues before, and I've written about depression both in personal and general senses. Recently, its become important to me to note how these things interact and what its like when they do.

First let me say, if you have rage+depression issues, I'm sorry. You're probably fucked. I'm sure there are extensive medication and therapy cocktails that might pull some people out but I've no faith in them. I've yet to see any theory of anger management that seems even vaguely effective and, while I'm sure that many people are helped by modern depression treatments, I find that depression has too many sharp edges that don't take to softening.

The trouble with being a rage addicted depressive is that the cycle never really ends. You get depressed, so you get sensitive, then something happens (usually something meaningless) and you flip the fuck out. When all the face-kicking and abyssal glossolalia has passed you're left feeling (rightly) like a colossal, diseased dick; so your depression gets worse because now you have a reason to hate yourself. As the depression gets worse you get more sensitive and less able to completely describe how you feel or what you are thinking, making you more likely to get mad again and continue the cycle.

Now for the bad news. Nothing you are capable of doing about it yourself will make it any better. Once again, therapy/medication have the potential to save a few of us, but I've yet to see any good works be done. If you try to mitigate your rage the people around you will likely be unable to fully let go of the fact that you are prone to spectacular bouts of aggression. Most people have difficulty distinguishing between you trying to let go of your anger so it doesn't poison you and you being a fucking psychotic. Worse, other people trying to tell you that everything is okay or that they don't blame you will only reinforce the underlying depressive force behind the anger.

I think about killing myself the same way most people think about ordering dinner. I think about assaulting others as at worst an interesting way to spend a day. I've spent my whole life trying to find a way to handle this. I've tried giving in and letting my imbalance run me, I've tried fighting it, I've tried distance and detachment. I've even tried seeking help. The most I can offer is this, surround yourself with forgiving people who love you and want to see you get better and keep fighting. I have to hope that this gets better, I'm sure I've seen it happen somewhere. Probably.

Remake 6: Seriously, Do I NEED To Make More Of These?

I have complained about Hollywood doing oodles of remakes before but I just saw some shit that makes remaking Spider-man seem somewhat sane. So the last of the Sam Raimi Spider-man flicks came out in 2007 and the newer Spider-man movie reboot came out 5 years later. I remember thinking "this is a short turn around time" when I initially heard about the remake, but Disney has just announced that a movie that got no love in the theaters in 2012. John Carter, a movie that I have not seen because it looked... just awful, is being remade. Its been two and a half fucking years! Also, we got two movies about Hercules in the same year. That's two reboots within seven months. I am legend, The Grudge, and Cabin Fever are also getting remakes. I found a list, and there is some disturbing stuff on there.

The worst part about Cabin Fever in particular is that the remake will be using Eli Roth's script from the first film. In one of my first posts on this blog I quoted Marc Maron's bit about consumerism in which we will constantly buy into the latest rehashed shit, even if it looks like shit, because its "new". This is that, but they are selling the exact same shit we already bought back to us in a new box.

On that note I would like to add some new amendments to my rules for film. The first was that Spoilers only count if the movie is less than 10 years old. The second, remakes should only be made if the original movie was terrible, or if the original wasn't what the writer and/or director wanted to produce. The remake of Fright Night is a good example. It uses the original premise and improves upon it greatly. None of this "use the same script" bullshit. The third rule will be that reboots, that is telling the same story in the same way such as Spider-man, should be avoided if at all possible. But, if you absolutely have to make it you need to wait until the movie you are remaking is old enough to drink. That way it targets a new generation instead of bogging down one generation with 3 different spider-men.

There is another option if Hollywood doesn't feel like listening to an internet blogger (because I have TONS of pull with those people, you know) is that we, as consumers could stop going to see the remakes/reboots. Just stop. Resist the urge. Go see independent films, show the movie industry that we won't stand for their shit. Fuck, just stay home and jack it, at least then your two hours will amount to something, and if nothing else it wont cost 12 bucks plus concessions.

Doctor Bond, Professional Spider-man

James Bond, Doctor Who, and Spider-man. What do these three people have in common? All of them are caucasian, male, and have racist fans. OK, that might seem a little hyperbolic, and it is, but its also mostly true. I bring this up because last week a certain sycophantic, obnoxious, racist ass-hat said that Idris Elba couldn't be Bond because he is black. Not only did he get his facts wrong by claiming James Bond is always supposed to be white and Scottish (despite that he has been played by Scottish, English, Australian, and Welsh actors), but he openly admits to being racist about it.

Look, I get that people who like pop culture tend to want to see more of the same with no changes lest it ruin their show, but grow the fuck up. It doesn't fit with the way you think it "should be" so its automatically ruined? Is James Bond being white (or even male for that matter) that integral to what makes James Bond,  James Bond? I always thought Bond was a badass because he did all the cool spy stuff and was charming and witty while he did it. Race and sex have nothing to do with it.

The same type of thing happened when Peter Capaldi got cast as the current Doctor. In the weeks leading up to the announcement people argued about who should get the part, and a disturbing amount of fans only wanted to see a white, British, male get the part. This is ridiculous, just because it is a change doesn't mean that the show won't be as good. It might be better. Spider-man being biracial also sparked an outcry from people. They all claim to be purists, and I think they are, just not in the way they think.

Basically, what I am saying is that the best part of pop culture artifacts like the Doctor and Spider-man are cool because of what they do and how they do it. Gender and Race have nothing to do with that, and thus don't matter. Spider-man could still swing around and lay out "hilarious" one liners even if they were African American. James Bond could still kill everyone in spectre in cool spy-y ways even if they were Jane Bond. Stop trying to enforce your insecurities on other people.

For the record I think Idris Elba would be a good James Bond. I would also Love to see Chiwetel Ejiofor get the part as well, but thats mostly because I have had a man crush on him since I saw him in Serenity. Natalie Dormer could also do a good job with Bond. Make the casting call on ability, not to fit the character people expect. Hell, maybe they will shake up these over-done characters. The second one of these "white male only" roles gets someone who is not a white or male and does a great job with it, the more people will get over this prejudice. And if they don't, fuck em, the world will turn on despite their hangups.We can't expect to survive (even in a pop culture sense) if we keep pandering to the weak and stupid.

Jesus Christ Not Again

So, ugh, we've talked about shitty police stuff before. I can't describe how much I want to not have to do this, but I can't help it at this point. I've been trying to hold my tongue for a while here, hoping it would get better, but my hopes are often vain and counter to the impulses of human nature. So I'm just going to say it.

If you choose (and in our culture it is fucking always a choice) to go into law enforcement you need to understand that you aren't a person while you're wearing your uniform. Police officers are servants, says it right there in the oft repeated, usually disregarded motto, protect and serve. Any system of policing that values the safety and comfort of officers over the safety of absolutely all civilians, criminal and casual observer alike, is despotism. You went into a field where a certain (astronomically low) percentage of the population feels the need to kill you, don't fucking antagonize people. The role of a police force is to protect the populace and ensure that those who commit crimes against that populace are processed by the legal system arbitrated by the society. It is absolutely fucking never okay for a police officer to kill. It doesn't matter if your life is in jeopardy. It doesn't matter if you feel entitled or justified. You are not a person. You, as a police officer,  are a construct manifested by our society to make sure that due process is maintained. Any law that protects you above a citizen is tyrannic, and system that allows you to kill is, at best, catastrophically unjust. Police officers are representatives of justice, as the society they serve defines it. No extra privileges, no special treatment. They are mechanisms as long as they are acting in an official capacity, and civilians the second they aren't.

Seasonal Disa-fuckthis Disorder

I loathe people this time of year. Its not entirely a christmas thing or a holiday thing, or even a rabid consumerism thing, though my issue is related. I hate people in the winter because american culture apparently demands that, what is for me, the most beautiful, comfortable, and peaceful time of year has to be fucking terrible.

Between the narcissistic, masturbatory rage of the evangelicals bitching about how their monopoly on a season is slipping, to the tragic slide of joyous celebrations into vile obligations as progressively more distant and abusive families bludgeon each other with politics and forced proximity, society fails this season completely.

Additionally, this season means enough cooking to rival the feast of Tantalus, and though I love to cook, it means that I have neither the patience nor the inclination to write more on this subject than this. So I'll just say that if its cold outside and you're an asshole, fuck you. Viciously. With the pointiest, most horrific, seasonally appropriate prop you can find.