Alarming News: I like Morgan Freeberg. A lot.
American Digest: And I like this from "The Blog That Nobody Reads", because it is -- mostly -- about me. What can I say? I'm on an ego trip today. It won't last.
Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler: We were following a trackback and thinking "hmmm... this is a bloody excellent post!", and then we realized that it was just part III of, well, three...Damn. I wish I'd written those.
Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler: ...I just remembered that I found a new blog a short while ago, House of Eratosthenes, that I really like. I like his common sense approach and his curiosity when it comes to why people believe what they believe rather than just what they believe.
Brutally Honest: Morgan Freeberg is brilliant.
Dr. Melissa Clouthier: Morgan Freeberg at House of Eratosthenes (pftthats a mouthful) honors big boned women in skimpy clothing. The picture there is priceless--keep scrolling down.
Exile in Portales: Via Gerard: Morgan Freeberg, a guy with a lot to say. And he speaks The Truth...and it's fascinating stuff. Worth a read, or three. Or six.
Just Muttering: Two nice pieces at House of Eratosthenes, one about a perhaps unintended effect of the Enron mess, and one on the Gore-y environ-movie.
Mein Blogovault: Make "the Blog that No One Reads" one of your daily reads.
The Virginian: I know this post will offend some people, but the author makes some good points.
Poetic Justice: Cletus! Ah gots a laiv one fer yew...
…and the stupid, insipid movies, Broadway plays, musicals and commercials that pander to them — all you people who think I put way too much importance on this stuff — read that chick Rachel. She’s opining about some kind of house-hunting “reality” TV show. Maybe I’ve already seen it, maybe I haven’t, I can’t tell ’em apart anymore and I really don’t give a good goddamn. But this does ring a bell.
This makes me want to kill some bitches.
They are so proud of the fact that they own 50 pairs of shoes and two metric tons of cocktail dresses, and that they’ve shown their husband who’s boss by hogging all the closet space. You can see it in their eyes, every time, how cutely sassy they think they’re being. It is absolutely revolting.
I also love how they make a big deal out of pretending that they care what hubby thinks. Some of them are so brazenly unashamed – and proud – of how thoroughly they’ve emasculated their man that they even look right in the camera with a dull-eyed evil grin and say things like, “I like to let him think his opinions count, too.” Die, lady. Just die.
I made a decision, the one & only time I got divorced, not to get back into the marriage thing until the lady in question and society as a whole and most especially the law all agreed that the point of the exercise was for the man and the woman to share a life together. Not to make the woman rich by legalizing her theft of the man’s assets. Not to fatten up the divorce-law profession, and all the parasitic divorce sub-industries. Not to make women everywhere feel good by giving them a forum in which they could dispense and receive tips and tricks about how to make the bastard’s life more miserable. But to form a foundation for a united household…like what marriage used to be all about.
I think maybe we’re just about there, or headed in that direction. I got a woman all picked out, and I can trust her. The law? Well…I’m in California. So that’s a problem.
Society? It’s pretty much turned around. But this thing Rachel is talking about, is the one big exception. You know that timeless story about two guys who get together and they’re complete strangers, neither one knows what the other’s religion is, or favorite sports’ team, or political persuasion. But you can always make friends with another dude by saying “man, women are nuts, huh?” The women have a handy counterpart to that, I’m afraid; you just saw it. “I like to let him think his opinions count, too.” With a smirk. Oh, how droll. Presto! Two women with different backgrounds are instant buddies now! It’s a match for the “women are nuts” thing — worse than that, though, it excuses it.
I saw it on some new half-hour sitcom called “The Bill Engvall Show” or some such. Ah, here it is. A great candidate for the Sickest Show on the Air award. The pilot episode had some extended dialog wherein the wifey fooled the hubby into thinking he’d promised to give up watching the ball game so he could take her shopping on Saturday morning. As he confusedly staggered out of the kitchen to go get changed, the missus revealed that he didn’t really promise that, she just made it up. Hah hah! Isn’t that great? He’s the puppet, she’s the string. Hilarious! Can’t wait to see what comes next!
++Ca-LICK++! Whoops. I touched that dial.
This is what really gets under my skin about this: It’s anesthetizing. It starts out funny…and then, in a manner that would make Saturday Night Live proud…gradually, the jokes lose clever edge, but not their appeal. Eventually there’s really nothing funny about ’em, and people are just watching episode after episode where the man is made into a clueless boob, there’s no wit, no story, not even a twist-ending. No reason to laugh, other than the laugh track communicating the expectation that this is what you’re supposed to be doing.
Maybe that’s why it’s so popular to beat up on the man on prime-time TV — the mind-dulling effect it has on people. This would make economic sense. If I’m a sitcom producer, I’m going to bet there’s better-than-even odds that
1. By the third season, fourth at the latest, my new show is going to have been put up on the chopping block many times, assuming it’s still going at all by that time;
2. Inside of those three years, there is going to be a writer’s strike.
So it makes sense to have a built-in tranquilizing agent. Some meandering theme that dumbs the audience down, and dulls their sensibilities; makes ’em slow to realize the jokes stopped being funny.
Of course sometimes, the show doesn’t even try to be funny…opting instead to wallow around in the muck of “special” episode sermonizing, instructing the audience to believe men should live to do things for women, but women shouldn’t ever, ever, ever do anything for a man.
What household needs that kind of attitude problem?
So yeah, Rachel’s right. You change the rules of the game too much, and pretty soon, the guys don’t want to play anymore. There is a solution, though; it’s right in Rachel’s post title. You can stop watching television. I’ve often wondered what that would be like — wife gets home from the doctor, announces a special surprise, we’ll be hearing the pitter patter of little feet in a few months, and THAT AFTERNOON the television is ripped out. Never to be hooked up again until the kid’s moved out of the house.
That would probably be the most well-adjusted dude or gal ever to step foot on God’s green earth. A borderline superhero. If it was a girl, she’d happily make sandwiches for her man. If it was a guy…uh…well, he’d let ‘er.
Did that bother someone? Sorry. Feminists, you can just BLOW ME. Every morning I’m making coffee for my gal. Every evening, she makes dinner even if she’s been working. I water her tomato plants (even though I hate tomatoes). She straightens up my son’s bedroom so he has places to put his stuff. It’s called doing things for each other.
But this isn’t really just a sex-role problem. It comes from that cheap, easy, uninspired, utility-grade “comedy” in which you toss some guff at the family patriarch, and you have an instant punchline. I remember this spring my son made a friend in the neighborhood, a boy of about eight or nine. They ate their snacks and played their video games until one day, the boy told me to shut up. He thought it was the funniest thing in the world. Until he found out he wasn’t welcome to come around anymore, short of apologizing and promising never to do it again. My boy took care of laying down that ultimatum.
We simply do not tolerate this brand of humor in our household. And I do not understand households that put up with it. It isn’t entertaining, it isn’t about entertaining people, it isn’t about humor, it’s motivated around the personal agendas and pet peeves of complete strangers, there’s a lot of rage wrapped up in it, and it just isn’t funny. But worst of all, it’s a brain-killer. The women and children who delight in their false-victories over this kind of slapstick, and the grown-up so-called “male” who somehow tolerates it, over time they all become drooling idiots. It isn’t healthy and it isn’t natural.
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