The Husband's Blog

Sigh.

I've decided to quit this blog.

Best to just leave it at that.

Sorry Jess...

I've held off making this post because I don't want to needlessly offend one of my three readers!  But the latest post I read broke the camel's back.

The woman who writes "I Blame the Patriarchy" is really *not* a critical thinker.  I sometimes read her blog for a good shot of bracing anti-intellectualism.  The latest mockery of critical thinking that pushed me over the edge was the following argument:

26.5% of women have been abused by their partners.  (Men I'm sure, but it never occurs to that statistician to even note that this question does not specifically limit the field to men.)

Conclusion?

100% of men hate women.

26.5% = 100%.  That's some damn fine police work there Lou.  Some vague attempt was made to argue that the 100% derived from the fact that not one single man cares about this trend (she knows this).  I guess no one cares about murder, or starvation, or hell, disease either.  I mean, all those things happen too.  No wonder things suck so much!

When someone pointed out the dubious statistical move there, her response was to sarcastically note that the person had mastered subtraction.  Another, more detailed complaint from someone else about another aspect of her post was totally ignored.  I imagine her seeing the "subtraction" comment, sitting there for 10 minutes trying to think up a good response, and then eventually settling on that.

Conservapedia

Conservapedia: The idiot's answer to Wikipedia.  I don't even know where to begin.  I looked up philosophical entries, most of which were pitifully small.  The biggest I saw was that on Kant: there are no words.  Whatever moron wrote that didn't understand the first thing about Kant.  The claimed Kant praised Christian ethics, and thought the categorical imperative was the same thing as the golden rule.  Idiots!

Oscars

The Oscars are a joke.  Don't expect me to talk about them.

That is all.

Armageddon

For some reason I watched a bit of "Armageddon" again the other day.  I really hate that film.  While it's true that I watch a great many artsy films, and get excited about such things as Criterion releasing a "Late Ozu" boxset, I also like some lowbrow stuff.  I like "Con Air" for example.  When I recently bought some DVDs with Christmas money my purchases included not only "Bicycle Thieves" and the ilk, but also "Commando" ("I LIED!").  I think the difference is that "Con Air" and "Commando" know they are crap, whereas "Armageddon" somehow thought it was good.

In somewhat related news, I can't believe that "Norbit" is popular.  When we saw the trailer for that, it looked appalling.  Apparently people are even stupider than I give them credit for.  I thought that Eddie Murphy was merely talentless, now I see that he must be added to my list of People And Things To Be Fired Into The Sun When I Am King Of The World.

*Partial* list:
Eddie Murphy. <---
Tyra Banks.
The Wayans brothers.
Everyone involved in, and all copies of, any "comedy" movie whose title had the word "Movie" in it.
Same for "Rush Hour".
James Dobson and all his minions.
Ned Holness.
Everyone who believes The Daily Mail, The Mirror, or The Sun.
Dane Cook.
Paula Abdul.
Martin Lawrence.
Anybody who says "it's only a theory..."
Anybody who says "gay agenda".
Any state of the USA that does not have a coast line, except for Pennsylvania and Nevada Las Vegas.
Robert Mugabe.
Hugo Chavez.
Everyone in the White House circa 2007, including the journalists.  And Rummy.
Anybody who says "I'm not racist but..."
Anybody who says "Of course women are equal to men but..."
Entertainment Weekly.
Anybody who uses the phrase "Islamofacists" a lot (to be decided by me).
U2.
Coldplay.
Red Hot Chilli Peppers.
Music "groups".
Music "bands" whose membership is determined by gender or popular vote.
Coronation Street.
Anyone who sues to avoid taking responsibility (to be decided by me).
K-Fed.
E!
The government of Belarus.
Vladimir Putin.
Luce Irigaray.
Switzerland.

And so on.

What can I say.  I'm a very inclusive person.

Blogging

Att: Deluded bloggers

Blogging is not an achievement.  Blogging does not make you a social activist.  I know you want to believe these things, because it's much easier to sit in front of a PC than it is to do something.  But don't kid yourself, your blog is not some incredibly important thing that is going to change the world.  Blogging does not mean that you have actually done something to change what it is you don't like.  Sorry.

Horror films

Being as how this is my blog, this is of course only my opinion.

I often wonder why horror films have such a loyal niche market.  The genre is undoubtedly, except for porn, the worst of any.  The vast majority of horror are incredibly bad.  If you take a look at the films which are serious contenders for the worst of all time, the majority are (intended to be) horror films.  Manos.  Plan 9.  Robot Monster.  Off the top of my head, Glen or Glenda is the only non-horror film of that caliber (it is also, I will say, my vote for the worst film of all time).

I like the idea of horror films, so I keep trying.  The number of great ones I've seen has got to be less than ten.  The vast majority of so-called horror "classics" are crap.  Last House on the Left - shit.  Halloween - mediocre.  The Haunting - dull (except for the loud banging scene).  Romero's Dead films - all shit.  The Exorcist was garbage.  And so on.

Recent times haven't been any kinder.  I saw Cabin Fever because it was hyped.  It was unbelievably bad, one of the worst films I've ever seen.  Dog Soldiers was mediocre.  The Descent started off alright, and got worse and worse the longer it went on, until the completely disastrous ending (that's the US one - the UK one sounds even worse).  The Devil's Backbone - crap.  All the Japanese horror films I've seen were on the boring side, although some of them were at least scary.  Hollywood's recent attempts at horror films...the less said the better.

Check out this list of the 50 top rated "horror" films on IMDB (I've seen about 42 of them I think).  There are certainly good films on that list, but note how many of the best wouldn't actually count as horror to the average, say, Fangoria reader.  Jaws?  Les Diabolique?  The Night of the Hunter?  Even The Vanishing ("Spoorloos") is questionable.

Sorry horror fans.  I just don't get you!

P.S. #13 (as I type) on IMDB's list, Onibaba, is a relatively obscure Japanese horror film that's really good.  You should see it.

P.P.S.  I know it's blasphemous to say it, but am I the only film fan who thinks that Psycho really isn't that great?  It's only a middling Hitchcock to my mind.  Better than his very late stuff, but not as good as The Birds, and certainly nowhere near such heights as Rear Window, Notorious, or Rebecca.

"The Secret"

FUCK YOU.

Tyra Banks is an idiot

I've seen bits and pieces of her show here and there, and she's always struck me as being a complete moron.  I saw part of her show yesterday.  It was about witchcraft - which they defined very broadly as including Wiccans and Satanists, etc.

I don't think much of Wicca.  It's a hodgepodge of silly new age ideas, its primary characteristic being a lack of rigor and any kind of unified standard.  This allows practitioners to believe whatever they want, and feel unique and special.  As far as I can tell the main attraction of Wicca is to make bored suburbanites feel that they're free thinkers.

So you'll appreciate what it means when I say that Tyra's show offended me - on behalf of the witches.  I found the lack of intellectual honesty and fairness just staggering.

Tyra didn't know the first thing about any of this, and didn't care to learn.  She kept banging on about spells and asking if they'd (the witches they'd dragged in) ever cast any death spells or whatever.  Then she went on and on about how they must have liked horror movies when they were young as opposed to romances.  That really pissed me off, I mean, how fucking condescending.  The Satanists were completely beyond her.  They tried to explain that they didn't believe in the devil, and her response was "I can't believe I've got devil worshipers on my show!"  They patiently tried explaining yet again that they weren't devil worshipers, but it was all a waste of time.  She just wanted to know about Marilyn Manson and if they had orgies.  That particularly  annoyed me, because unlike Wicca, Satanism  actually constitutes a somewhat coherent philosophy of action, and deserves a more thorough treatment.

Tyra left the best for last, when she dragged up an ex-Wiccan who was now, you guessed it, a born-again Christian.  This woman was allowed to state her beliefs without interruption of course, which were essentially that witchcraft was evil, it almost killed her (if it's all fake how did that happen?), and that Christianity was the only way.  When some of the witches tried to defend themselves, Tyra said to the Christian "Well I'm sure most of our viewers agree with you."  Just in case you weren't clear where Tyra came down on this debate.

I guess it's foolish to expect anything worthwhile from a model.

Decorum

Maybe I'm just a stickler for rules, but if you ask me, you shouldn't finish off a university exam with a misogynistic joke.  Apparently this student I'm grading disagrees.  This is the second time he's done so!

What the hell is wrong with people?