I recently reread Alex’s piece from 2007 about that old show Kid Nation (which I wrote about a few months later), and how, before the show ever aired, adults got all up in arms about “oh noes, this show is abusive toward those kids and forcing them to take care of themselves, exploitation!” Something they seem to only ever say when the kids shown are competent and independent, and something they are quiet about when the kids are being abused and actually exploited.

Movie called “Dolphin Tale” came out this past year. I haven’t seen it, but I just gathered it’s based on a true story. My supervisor told me she was going to see it in theaters, and mentioned that, even though it’s based on a true story, she doubts the 12-year-old boy depicted in the film really played at any part in it.

Why would she say this? Well, her son is 12. Maybe she believes him to be incapable of anything great and certainly unable to make independent decisions. Maybe she likes it that way.

Similarly, I’ve actually seen complaints about, of all things, Dora the Explorer! Oh noes! How dare the show depict a 5-year-old girl wandering around… without adult supervision?!

And, of course, let’s not forget… Home Alone. Eight-year-old Kevin is accidentally left home when his family leaves the country, and during this time he must protect his house from burglars. Then later in the sequel he’s in New York City by himself and again managing himself just fine, and ends up rescuing a toy store and a children’s charity from the same burglars. Even though these two movies (I don’t consider any later “Home Alone” movies to exist, it’s not Home Alone without Macaulay Culkin!) are beloved classics now, sure enough, you’ll find no shortage of people who feel personally offended that these films depict a prepubescent child successfully taking care of himself and fending off two burglars without adults around to oversee and take care of him, save for the old man with the shovel and the bird lady who come to the rescue when the burglars do have him cornered. Even where movies with adult heroes are significantly less realistic, Home Alone will get picked apart, because how dare John Hughes suggest a heroic independent child?!

And there’s the people who are even offended that Bart, Lisa, and Maggie Simpson are smarter than their parents.

The list goes on. And it’s not even just fictional characters, as even real youth who show courage and independence or great skill are often derided, and assumed to be neglected or abused.

But if these people are so disturbed by this? Good! Let’s keep disturbing them!

SHUT THE HELL UP!!!!

People who are all like “we’ve got to get kids reading!”

There’s been ads for James Patterson books on TV, and some recent ones start off with “James Patterson gets kids reading!” Because he’s apparently written young adult lit now, so it shows a pre-teen reading from a book about middle school.

Because if there’s anyone who truly knows what middle school is like, it’s authors in their sixties!

But, what, they couldn’t just advertise the book? They have to include some crap about “getting kids reading”?

That takes away the “here’s something you’ll enjoy” factor and turns it into yet another “getting kids to do things adults want them to be doing”. Okay, the implication seems to be “it gets them reading BECAUSE it’s enjoyable”, but it still makes it being enjoyable to the young reader secondary to satisfying some cliched expectation. Because, after all, the world cares nothing for kids’ personal desires and cares entirely for what adults desire for them.

Also, maybe someone should tell these adults that when kids are reading, they’re generally -gasp!- inside and sitting! Oh noes, they’re getting fat! So send them outside to get exercise. Then bitch that they aren’t reading enough.

For one, stop showing a twin brother and sister as “identical”. Identical twins are also identical sexes because of that whole identical DNA thing. They’ll look sort of alike anyway just from being siblings, but they are still fraternal twins as they came from separate eggs and sperm. But you get brother-sister twins being shown looking exactly the same except maybe one hair or facial feature so that you know the sister is female. Or Phil and Lil from Rugrats looking completely identical, and occasionally being mixed up, except for Lil wearing a dress, though that still is basically the same outfit Phil wears. Seriously, writers, stop that shit!

And this isn’t the sort of thing only biology majors or whatever know. It’s almost common knowledge.

Then comes the other annoyance. You get shows or movies that are about conjoined twins… who aren’t identical. Conjoined twins are always identical. They didn’t just get hooked together at some point. They, like all identical twins, were initially one fertilized egg that then split into two identical ones. But for conjoined twins, didn’t finish splitting, so they’re stuck together. And still identical. I mean, I’d give Oblongs leeway since on that show the family is basically all mutants anyway, but you get other shows and movies showing conjoined twins with entirely different features and trying to pretend this is how they normally are. Again, writers, stop that shit!

It takes like no time to look this shit up. You’ll save so many brain cells!

Christmas Present takes Scrooge to the Cratchits’ house where Scrooge is informed that sweet lad Tiny Tim is going to die from some unnamed illness that can apparently be cured in 1845 England with enough money at least but money the Cratchits of course don’t have. Then they have their meal and Mrs. Cratchit brings out the dessert, this round chocolate cake thing.

She sets it down nervously in front of her husband, and he takes several severe looks at her while scooping some onto a fork, then he takes a bite, and now is smiling and says “another triumph, my dear!” Followed by invisible-to-them Scrooge saying “what a relief for Mrs. Cratchit!”

Is it just my imagination, or does all that imply that if she screwed up the cake, he’d have slapped her?

I mean, okay, okay, maybe it was just playing around, that she was being a perfectionist and he was quietly teasing her about it.

But then later, during the Christmas Future sequence, after Tiny Tim is six feet under, Mrs. Cratchit is sewing and remarks the color thread she’s using hurts her eyes, then after a minute she says it’s better now. Then she remarks to her remaining children she doesn’t want their father to see her with red eyes when he gets home. Because, as a wife, she’s supposed to completely put away her own feelings or emotions and stick to serving her husband’s every whim. Selfish woman! How dare she be sad that… her son died!

Though that’s not the most disturbing part of the movie. Christmas Present does open his robe at one point to reveal two shriveled waist-high children standing there for some reason…

But we all know that story, so it seems appropriate to hear the song among Christmas music. It’s funny how often this can happen.

If you’re a fan of The Sopranos, you know that one of the characters’ nicknames is Big Pussy, usually shortened to just Pussy. So thinking of the show, you might find yourself talking about things that happen, saying “pussy” a lot, and someone overhearing this who’s not familiar with the show might be like “what?!” I’ve had that happen a couple times!

Matilda is a little telekinetic genius who is stuck with a family that decidedly hates her. Seriously, day she was born, her parents were for some reason pissed and didn’t want her. From then on she’s pretty much neglected entirely. It’s okay because she’s a genius (whether because her neglect meant she had to take care of herself or because of some hardwired gift, it’s unclear, maybe both) and made herself some pancakes instead of the canned soup her mom left for her.

Anyway, she teaches herself to read, gets herself to the library by herself at age four, and the librarian, instead of calling the cops because a little four-year-old is out walking around by herself, helps her find some books. Then she tells her dad she’s supposed to be in school, because she wants to learn more and actually interact with other kids. Her dad refuses until tyrannical headmistress Trunchbull shows up and mentions she has a school, and the dad figures the school seems abusive enough for the daughter he hates.

Matilda is all happy and gets to the school, only for a girl with pigtails that annoy Trunchbull to get THROWN OVER THE GODDAMN FENCE BY HER HAIR! And is unharmed somehow. The kids say they try to tell their parents about what happens there but the parents don’t believe them, in what is surely Ron Clark’s wet dream. And that makes sense, considering any parents who send their kids to that school obviously hate them and are probably glad they’re being hurled over fences and put into the “chokey”. Except the pigtail girl mentioned her mom thought the pigtails were “sweet”. Did mom intend for Trunchbull to lose her shit over the pigtails and throw the girl over the fence then? Because this mom must be one of the parents who sent her kid to that school because she hates her. After this fence scene, the teacher Miss Honey is undoing the girl’s pigtails to help preserve her safety. And on a later day, Miss Honey is AGAIN undoing the same girl’s pigtails, which means this poor girl after getting thrown over the fence over the pigtails, is still being sent to the school with the same damn hairdo! Maybe she thinks if her mommy thinks the pigtails are sweet enough, she’ll stop hating her and send her to a real damn school, so she’ll risk life and limb keeping the goddamn hair that enrages Trunchbull. And it’s worth noting that all these kids who have parents who clearly really fucking hate them and are sent to a school where they are horribly abused all seem to be, well, pretty normal nice kids.

That’s where Miss Honey comes in. We find that despite the over the top oppressive atmosphere in this school, she maintains a bright happy friendly classroom (which she covers up whenever Trunchbull approaches) and treats her students wonderfully. It’s wondered why she’d choose to teach at such an oppressive school until we later learn she’s Trunchbull’s stepniece, and that she can’t bring herself to leave behind her students for Trunchbull to abuse, that she wants her class to be the kids’ respite from the oppressive principal and the batshit crazy negligent parents all those kids obviously have if they were sent there to begin with. In a way, she’s like an ultrasaccharine version of Galen. The night after first meeting Matilda, she goes and visits her house and tell her parents how awesome she is, only for the parents to of course not care. She and Matilda are like best friends from here on out. Though I wonder how often Miss Honey makes a point to visit her students’ families like this, especially knowing full well these families are full of assholes who sent their elementary school age kids to a place like that.

Much of Matilda’s actions throughout the movie was from when her dad said that when a person does something wrong they must be punished. The narrator even makes a point that he said “a person” rather than “a child”. So she pulls some pranks on her parents for being dickholes. She later resolves to get even with Trunchbull for how she’s treating the kids. Oh, and later it’s found out she has telekinetic powers. Though, interestingly enough, much of what she does and what happens with her is aside from that.

Matilda stands up and supports Bruce when he’s forced to eat that gigantic chocolate cake, giving him confidence to do it as if a fun challenge rather than a vomit-inducing punishment, in defiance of Trunchbull. She and Miss Honey break into Trunchbull’s house to steal back the teacher’s old doll, only to be nearly caught and killed because Trunchbull is fucking crazy. Seriously, she throws kids over fences and out windows and puts them into a narrow pipe full of rusty spikes and has a dart board in her office with pictures of the kids on it and openly talks about how much she despises children (despite having obviously of her own free will chosen the teaching profession). And likely murdered Miss Honey’s father.

Then Matilda realizes she’s got the telekinesis and promptly uses these abilities to fuck with Trunchbull. After this six-year-old girl just waltzes out of the house after dark, and her parents don’t notice or care, but her brother asks where she’s going, only to then fling a carrot at her (which she stops in midair with her Jedi magic and sends it right back at him), she wanders over to the Trunchbull house when it’s all horribly windy and steals back the doll and, all from outside through the window somehow, fucks with Trunchbull’s mantle clock and moves her furniture and burns her painting in the fireplace and replaces it with that of Miss Honey’s dad. Trunchbull knows it’s Matilda because she happened to find her lost hair ribbon outside and threatens her the next day, only for Matilda to remotely write on the chalkboard pretending to be Miss Honey’s dad, and Trunchbull loses her shit even more until all the kids finally are empowered to stand up to her and they hurl their lunches at her and chase her off the school grounds and she’s never seen again, and Miss Honey takes over school and house. Yay!

Then at the end when Matilda is visiting Miss Honey her parents show up to take her away because they’re running from the cops, and Matilda refuses and asks Honey to adopt her, a request granted without hesitation, and in a rather satisfying line, Matilda states she’d had the adoption papers ready ever since she was “tall enough to xerox”. Her parents think for a minute and then sign the papers and Matilda is free from their asshattery and now living happily ever after with Miss Honey who actually loves and respects her.

Interesting thing about Miss Honey is that, in real life, she’d be all kinds of demonized! Even though we obviously know she’s good, she fits so many “descriptions” of a child predator. I say “descriptions” in quotes because it’s what you hear from people who know very little about child abuse but are more interested in fearmongering about it than actually giving a crap about kids. Matilda’s parents do not like or trust her. Matilda sneaks away from her family to go see her. Matilda breaks into someone’s house with her. She’s *gasp!* friends with her student! And at the end when Matilda’s mom, after the adoption request, asks why Miss Honey would want to adopt an annoying little brat like her, and Miss Honey says “because she’s a spectacular child and I love her!” Because Miss Honey just has to be bad news if she openly defies this child’s parents (parents’ asshattery not important), invites this child to her house alone, talks to her like a human being instead of a servant or property, and gives her love and respect and *gasp!* autonomy!

And it is Matilda’s autonomy that gives her power, moreso than the telekinesis. It was her autonomy (even if a result of negligence) that allowed her to leave the house and seek the library and information. And it was respect for this autonomy, despite being only four at the time, that prevented the nearby adults and the librarian she spoke with from calling the cops or someone because this little kid was walking around all alone, despite being perfectly fine. It was her autonomy that allowed her to practice the telekinesis and then leave to go terrorize Trunchbull that night. It was her autonomy that granted her the knowledge that her family life was awful and that she should get out when she can, so she had the adoption papers ready all that time! Had she been forcefully kept inside and unable to interact with anyone else (well, moreso than she was in some ways), she would probably not only have not gotten away but wouldn’t have seen getting away as even an option.

I mean, I’m not saying four-year-olds should just be left alone to wander streets. Or, actually, depends on location I guess. And the individual four-year-old. Though the amount of autonomy and sense Matilda had and was inadvertently permitted is more than even kids eight or even twelve years old often get. And kids that old can certainly keep themselves safe fairly easily. Then again, how safe can an innocent little twelve-year-old be when out there are perhaps teachers or other adults who know them, who are much nicer than their parents and treat them with the respect they do not get at home? Only by holding kids inside against their will, treating them like crap, and not caring about any abuse their parents dish out can we be totally sure they’ll be safe.

Yup. Woke up just before 6am this morning and turned on the TV to BBC America, just in time for the service. I watched the royal wedding. I watched Prince William and Catherine Middleton get married, just like the whole rest of the world.

At Westminster Abbey, which I visited when I was in London a year and a half ago, so that was kind of cool on its own!

In spite of the annoying obsessions over it, positive and negative, I still watched it.

Then again, why not? It was cute. It was neat. The people on the ground there watching the event and decked out in union jack-themed costumes were hilariously cheesy. It was seeing the continuance of old tradition. It made lots of people happy.

I mean, there are ethical issues with it, sure, depending on who you ask. Some are whether the royal family should even still exist. Some are the amount of tax-payer money that went into it. Some involve issues with preparation. Valid concerns.

And there’s the complaints that since this has been going on, it’s all the news seems to want to talk about, setting things like Japan’s seismo-nuclear clusterfuck and Middle East uprisings on the backburner. Those things are definitely more important than the royal wedding, yes. No argument there. But I do have to ask… did you really expect anything different?

Of course the media is going to focus so much on the royal wedding! Lots of people are interested and it’s a lighter topic. That’s what the media does. Don’t be so shocked when it’s doing the same thing it’s always done. This is why I generally don’t watch the news. They don’t cover anything I want to really hear about. CNN and others are going to talk about this and Obama’s birth certificate ad nauseum, that is to be expected, that’s what they do, so the nice easy solution to that is, obviously, get your news elsewhere.

There are more serious issues and they need attention, yes. But life is too short to be uselessly bitter, and, goddamn it, we need the less serious fun stuff now and then!

And to listen to William and Kate’s vows including the words “for richer or poorer” and to giggle and say “richer is underlined”.

Anyway, so a lot of us just spent the past several hours watching the game as well as a lot of funny, stupid, and grossly offensive ads that cost many millions to air. And I made cookies, of course. It’s a pastime! It’s the Superbowl!

Then there were the people who just want to bitch and bitch through the whole thing. I don’t mean the people pointing out the misandry, misogyny, and other social ills prevalent in the event, particularly the advertising. Those are legitimate concerns and very worth calling out.

I mean the people who act like they’re hot shit because they aren’t into sports and find the whole thing to be a frivolous waste of time and money. And they must make damn sure everyone around them knows they feel this way. Because they are Very Smart and we benefit from this wisdom. God forbid they should just accept that sometimes that magical glowing box will display something that a lot of people will watch that they personally aren’t interested in, because it’s not like there’s any other way they can use the time!

After the game, I saw a tweet that made me facepalm pretty hard:

OK, 3 hours and about 10 billion dollars later. How is Darfur or Haiti any better off? Enjoy your Doritos. And your Bud.

Really? That’s the card you’re playing? The “there are people suffering elsewhere in the world, so how dare we indulge in our own culture” card? In all fairness, in glancing at that person’s other tweets, he seemed to be watching the game like everyone else, so perhaps not the intention. But it might have been of the crapload of people who retweeted it.

And, yes, I just referred to the Superbowl as a cultural thing. Because it is, consumerism notwithstanding. Yes, we live in a society (world?) that commercializes the hell out of everything even remotely of social importance. Our society is capitalist. This is to be expected. Despite my obvious liberal leanings, capitalism is not in and of itself evil or wrong. It’s just that it oftentimes can be evil and wrong and that should be kept in check. But on Superbowl Sunday, people get together and have parties to watch it, or are like me and watch it alone, there’s excitement leading up to it, there’s other events and activities involved. It’s got all the signs of a cultural event, and just because that culture is American doesn’t make that invalid. Contrary to common stereotype, yes, we Americans have a culture. This is part of it.

Not that those who bitch about the Superbowl because it’s a commercialized cesspool are really worried about that specifically. They just want to bitch about it because, again, they think they’re better than everyone else and want to pretend their stance is because of some sort of real concern rather than annoying others over their personal preference.

As for the “why are we worrying about this frivolous crap?” line, well, do these people listen to music? Watch movies? Play games? Read books? All these things could be considered frivolous. You sound like a damn Puritan.

And of course sports are more frivolous than, say, politics. In fact, it’s sort of WHY we like it. It’s why I can grow really tense watching the last few minutes of a Redskins-Cowboys game, yet secure in the knowledge that regardless of what happens, my life once the game is over will be the same. I’ll still be up the next morning and going to work. There’s a weird sense of fun placing importance, talking trash, feeling intense competition over something that really doesn’t change our lives (assuming no gambling is involved).

But I do have to admit the Puppy Bowl rules.

SHUT THE HELL UP!!!!

I consider sense of humor to be perhaps the most important character trait in anyone. Couldn’t very well go through life without it. Funny stuff is fun. However, then you get the jokes that just get repeated over and over, from different people acting like they invented it and that they’re so smart and witty. If they were ever clever, it was lost long ago.

Two very recent examples?

“I don’t understand! How could Tunisia have overthrown their government without me signing a petition or changing my Twitter avatar?”

And…

“The new Starbucks Trenta is larger than the average human stomach! Lulz!”

Alright, so the Tunisia thing was mildly chuckle-worthy when I first saw it tweeted. Then within only a few hours of that I heard a zillion other people say it as if it were their own creation. Heard and read and laughed at by those who either hadn’t heard it yet somehow or those whose memory is so terrible they forgot they saw someone else say it five minutes earlier. With any iota of cleverness washed away in the repetition, I see the stupid joke for what it is. Uh, of course Twitter awareness campaigns and whatnot don’t alone cause national revolutions nor are integral. #16tovote on the 16th is not intended in and of itself to lower the voting age. Online campaigns like that are for raising awareness and solidarity and keeping dialogue going, but obviously it wouldn’t work alone. Nobody thinks that. Don’t be an idiot.

As for the Starbucks drink being bigger than the human stomach… welcome to America! Aren’t you so smart, you learned the volume of the average human stomach! In order to, you know, repeat this Trenta joke over and over as if it’s something you came up with all on your own. But here’s another thing about the human stomach… stuff put into it doesn’t just sit there forever. You know that bathroom place you have to visit a few times a day? Yeah…

Those two are fairly new and topical, so they’ll fade after a bit. To be replaced by the same basic shit before long, of course. There are also the jokes that have lasted for years, perhaps decades, some of which weren’t even funny the first time. I mean stuff like…

“I got so drunk/high that I had to cling to the ground to keep from falling off the earth!”

This one I probably laughed at when I first heard it. Then you get a few different comedians regurgitating it, maybe some humorous drugs or alcohol related lists. And at that point it’s like “okay, you’re intoxicated out of your mind, so much that you can’t come up with a new way to express it.” Yawn.

“I think gay people should be allowed to get married and be miserable like everyone else.”

It was on Family Guy. David Letterman has said it about 500 times. So have a crapload of other supposedly facetious commentators. It’s always said with such authority, that the speaker has come up with this all on his/her own after a lot of thought. “I believe they should be just as miserable as everyone else!” Of course it’s said with such confidence. They saw a ton of other people get laughs off the identical statement, so they know the reception it’ll get. Had they truly invented this statement themselves, they might be a bit more coy.

“I don’t trust anything that bleeds for five days and doesn’t die.”

From Mr. Garrison in the South Park movie, plus countless random comedians and other assholes who think they’re being funny and brilliant. Referring of course to us women and the fact that we *gasp!* spew blood out of certain parts for a few days every several weeks. This one is just downright offensive, and not only because it’s misogynistic but because the basis of it is proud willful ignorance. First of all, we don’t “bleed for five days”. It comes out intermittently, starting off heavy and getting steadily lighter until it’s done, and it was all pretty much out of circulation anyway, and not a whole lot is “lost”. Of course, if blood loss is such an issue, how can I trust you when your supposedly gigantic penis fills with blood several times a day and clearly not enough left for your brain? So if we’re monsters and untrustworthy for something that goes on under our clothes once a month that you will not be aware of unless we explicitly tell you, then you aren’t so innocent yourself, Mr. Every Six Seconds.

“Pro-life women are ugly virgins.”
“Pro-choice women are hot sluts.”

Even “great” comedians like Chris Rock and George Carlin (RIP) spew crap like this. It was said in Dogma by Jason Mewes. Plus some lesser comedians have said it. That pro-life women are only pro-life because they aren’t getting laid and have body issues because they are unattractive. That pro-choice women must want abortion legal because they screw everything that moves and want to be able to end the resulting pregnancies. Classic virgin-whore dichotomy. Yeah, sorry, folks, but someone’s stance on abortion is not indicative of their sexual history. Plenty of pro-lifers have gotten laid. Plenty pro-choicers have not. Also, these pro-choice women, who clearly “must be fucking”, would not necessarily want to fuck YOU. What is this, some 1960’s high school? Where if a girl has sex at all, she’ll have sex with anyone? Sorry, guys, but the words “I’m prochoice” do not translate to “I hereby consent to any and all sexual advances and activity”.

There are surely more I’m forgetting. I add them later when/if I remember.

So now you know. So from here on out, try not to be a dumbass. Just try.

For example, in this movie, after they all left the Dursleys’ disguised as Harry, they ended up at the Burrow instead of the Tonks house like in the book. But it was a change that didn’t make much difference.

But that’s about all the deviations really were. The movie was great! They even left in one of my favorite lines: after they all take the Polyjuice Potion to turn into Harry, Fred and George say “we’re identical!” I LOL’d.

They even left in the evil spirits from the locket teasing Ron before he smashed it with the sword.

Although, I could have done without the spirits’ image of Harry and Hermione making out naked. Yeah, guys, I know Rule 34 is quite popular but the movie doesn’t need it!