The Blind Side

Just saw The Blind Side last night.
I liked it in some ways, but had to notice that the emphasis seemed (despite one statement to the contrary) to be on the ability of white people to help a black guy in need and teach him the skills he needed to get ahead. While that's probably how it happened, speaking as a white guy, I've noticed that it's usually been the opposite. People of color, sometimes from low-income backgrounds, have been the ones to teach me lessons about myself. Often times they struck me as more dedicated (and why not, since more was at stake). I'm wondering if movies have ever portrayed that angle much. Not as far as I'm aware.

Twilight

Yes, I was curious. I actually saw the first two Twilight movies. With help from Mike Nelson and his robot friends. They do commentary for more recent movies now. Yes, I'm a bit geeky at times. I had to have them around, otherwise, I wouldn't have had an excuse.

Other than of course, the excuse to impress women. I know at least two women roughly my age who like the series, so don't accuse me of being into little girls. Also, I can impress other, more liberal girls with talking about how it degrades women, even though I read and enjoyed Allan More's V for Vendetta, which showed an even less healthy relationship. Well, maybe not. To all girls who read this blog: Would you rather have your head shaved or your body covered with bruises?

Or, of course, there was the excuse to make fun of it, which has already been done before, but I wanted to see how true all of it was. You know, kinda like a friend of mine reading The book of Mormon after it was featured on South Park. I was sure enough from reading the descriptions making fun of Twilight to not read it, because I'm a straight guy. So, I watched the movies instead.

The second one was more bearable than the first, but I don't know if that was because the riffing by Mike, Tom, and Crow was better, because I actually ordered it from netflix rather than watch it on YouTube in parts, because it was directed by the American Pie man, or the movie had less of Sparkly Eddie, whose most annoying characteristic isn't his sparkles. Because body glitter is tacky, that's what everyone makes fun of.

I'm not going to bash Edward by calling him gay for glittering like so many other guys have. That's a weak insult because pretty much every guy uses it, mostly against guys their girlfriends are obsessed with. Besides which, gay and bisexual people like Alexander the Great, Eleanor Roosevelt, Albus Dumbledore, and even Lady Gaga have accomplished things that make Edward look even paler by comparison. But enough about Lady Gaga already.

More About Sparkly Eddie:

Bella never calls him Eddie, or even Ed, as far as I can recall. Maybe she does in the book. It seems like they really aren't that close, in spite of everything she says.
A lot of my friends, male and female, absolutely hate Twilight, especially friends who read fantasy books regularly. At first I thought they were being too insistent on Vampires crumbling with sunlight (Dracula didn't originally), being totally evil (every monster deserves a sympathetic Shrek every now and then) and drinking live human blood (at least one likes chocolate-flavored cereal and I'm ok with that).

But when watching the movies, I realized that if you take out castles, coffins, capes, tuxedos, being linked to Satan, foreign accents, bats, etc... you have to replace them with something else that's worthwhile.

Sparkly Eddie fails to do that. He fails to have anything interesting. Admittedly, I'm a straight guy, so not really the target audience here. At least he should be able to play something on the piano that's better than elevator music. I didn't know girls went for elevator music.

Apparently, the other hobbies that turn girls on the most are hunting, baseball, and "protecting" girls from other, supposedly more creepy jealous guys, including injuns (sorry, werewolves). I wouldn't have guessed that combination of hobbies, except maybe for girls who go for John Wayne-types. But Eddie clearly isn't a John Wayne kinda guy. Sorry for stating the obvious. John Wayne does not sparkle or play elevator music on the piano.

The Kinda Girl who Actually likes Sparkly Eddie.

I had heard that the leading lady was a "Mary Sue"-type chick. I had assumed that it meant she was flawless. So, I was surprised to find out that she had issues.

At least in the movies, she comes across as a girl with low self-esteem who is obsessed with death when she isn't obsessed with undead guys. I have to give the movies credit for showing her true colors, especially in the scene in which she goes off with a middle-aged biker dude who says "I'll be anyone you want me to be," and giving her a female sidekick in the said scene who points out how wrong this is. Possibly the people who made these movies are honestly trying to send ironic messages without making them openly (I had Mike Nelson for that, but it would have come accross even without him).

Abstinance:

You'll note that I haven't said anything about abstinance allegories. That's because I have low standards for that kind of thing. Back when I went to high school in Tennessee, they gave us brochures telling us how sex before marriage would always lead to some kind of traumatic stress the next day, even if it didn't lead to any stds. They also claimed that HIV goes right through the pores in condoms, that mutual masterubation is dangerous somehow, etc. and they censored any information on contraceptives.

From what I've read (correct me if I'm wrong) the Twilight series ends with Bella spitting blood, her spine being ripped open by her lawful husband's teeth, and her enjoying it somehow, because she's married, tripping on being a vampire and seeing fancy colors, and it's all okay. Stephanie Meyer might be a genius of using irony to make exactly the opposite point from the one she was supposed to make.

Race Issues:
Again, the irony here is pretty strong, as Bella's willing to cross the living-dead barrier, but not the race one. The disgustingly pale white guy wins, probably for being white and not an injun (sorry, werewolf). My only hope is that all of the Team Jacob girls actually make something out of their newly found love of Native Americans.

Again, this also first appeared on Facebook, I've clearly changed my mind enough on blogs to write this one.
I'm realizing that I already am a blogger practically with what I've done on Facebook. However, I have some serious problems with blogs generally. I hardly every read them, so maybe I can't judge them. Still, it seems that blogs have several defects.

1. If a blog is written and no one is around to hear it, is it worth anything? My earlier attempt at a blog, called "The Pounder" hardly got any views. Or at least none that I could see, and no one commented. I guess that last part might have been a good thing, see below.

2. You can write complete lies on a blog, and no one will catch you for it, unless you do. For example, on "The Pounder," I once wrote "'The Simpsons' is coming to an end, but we still have 'Futurama.' " Both of those statements were completely false at the time (Futurama had been cancelled and was exclusively re-runs). No one corrected me for either of them. I think this shows how much I suck as my own fact checker.

3. I've hardly ever seen an interview on a blog. It seems that bloggers mostly talk to themselves.

4. You don't get paid for any of the work you do. At least not starting out.

5. The debates I've seen with Facebook notes have been refreshing but the debates I've seen between trolls on news, video, and blog sites are as unoriginal as they are angry. Right before I left Mexico, I looked at how the border/immigration debate was going. Every argument was either one of the following:

a. We're under illegal invasion!!

b. We are a nation of immigrants.

Both arguments are pretty stale, and neither one really discusses currency rates, corn subsidies, factories moving from Mexico to Thailand and China, or even the personal stories of actual migrants or people who might lose jobs to them. So you only get your opinion confirmed and don't learn anything else. One reason is lack of decent research. The other is 6.

6. Who writes blogs? Usually people with spare time, who aren't worried about the boss reading them. In other words, exactly the people we don't need to hear from, because they're doing pretty well. The working class of all races is pretty underrepresented, and unemployed people even more so. The blogosphere is a joke compared to the ground.

7. The biggest achievement of the blogosphere to date, according to a source that I will leave uncited was reposting a bunch of cartoons about mohammed that were neither funny nor thought-provoking, and had already been printed by a newspaper in Denmark.

The Splendor that was Rome

This is another Facebook yarn, so to speak. I admit that it was one of my lesser ones.

It's been a while since my modest healthcare proposal. But don't think I'm going to stop yet.

Some people call what the U.S. has got right now an Empire. Yes, I agree. But compared to other empires of the past we really don't have much to say for ourselves. Can we really compete with the splendor that was Rome?

Yes, we can. How?

Public Bath Houses!

Only ours would be co-ed. Making them several times more awesome, if a little bit harder to pull off in occupied territories.

And with that in mind, I describe my affiliation as "Bath-ist"

Me in drag as Vibrata in a college production of "A Funny Thing Happened on the way to the Forum."

To Use My Name

Again this was written before I had officially my own blog and had only written on facebook. Keep that in mind. I just put it here to show why someone who believes as little in blogs as I do would have a blog.
OK, so let me spell out a few things. In the past, I've loved using this facebook page to comment on serious issues, usually in a sarcastic or crazy way and sometimes in an honest way. I'm hoping to get a blog at some point, on which I could say some of the same things. However, I have to be looking for jobs right now. People will see this facebook page.

So, I can't sound too suspicious. I can't call myself an "evil socialist," or say "fuck the imperialist gringo pigs" even if I mean such phrases sarcastically, or as a pun refer to myself as "bath-ist" (in that I support the creation of bathhouses). Or can I?

I also can't let on that I spent a night in a guest house formerly used by the rebel Sub-commander Marcos in Mexico, or that I found inspiration in a group of people in San Salvador Atenco who have been accused by the media (probably wrongly) of wanting to set hostages on fire with gasoline. Or can I? These are just the examples of instances that I have already written.

Look, I could go on and on, or could I? Should I just put everything on a separate blog under a different name? Will people still find it that way? How many pseudonyms do I need to have?

Should I Keep it to myself? Create a new Facebook page, and have to spend double the amount of time on it?

A Modest Healthcare Proposal

Okay first off: health-care. Which is what Sarah Palin started out with. Either that or the youth in Asia (which I'll get to later, they made my sneakers).

I think both sides are missing some important points. When some towns have no playgrounds except at McDonald's and the government's idea of "cleaning up" pollution is to move it to some poor hopeless mostly-black farming county in Alabama who may not have health insurance (see: Kingston TN ash spill) I think we're pretty much screwed. Yeah, it'll be more expensive than in France, Britain, Japan or pretty much anywhere else, unless each of us changes just about everything.

Which no one really wants to do, especially not Barrack "I can't believe its not change" Obama.

So instead, I'm going to make a modest proposal that involves something that we U.S. Americans do best: Making people in other countries do our shit for us. According to Newsweek

New Zealand is best for quick primary care. I know almost nothing about New Zealand, except for having watched their excellent historical documentary The Lord of the Rings . I assume that they are not still ruled by a large flaming cat's eyeball (possibly a flammable female sex-organ), and are now possibly ruled by that dude from "A History of Violence." In any case, they should run our health insurance program.

If they don't want to, we should do the next thing we do best: INVADE! This should be easy as they still use medieval technology. I expect we can mow down a team of elves with bows and arrows with our missiles pretty easily.

Or, we could just give young people the same "socialized" medicine we already give old people. But that's really too expensive and would raise taxes. Unlike war, which is cheap.

That dude from "A History of Violence." Photo courtesy of Wikipedia.