It's pretty sickening watching some actor beat on the chest of some poor patient whose only crime is to have a heart attack. What's more, they're usually standing or kneeling at the person's side with their arms outstretched. So often they're pounding on the chest as well.
It's awful.
Saturday, July 31, 2010
Grammar!
I'm so sick of hearing sentences like, "Since what happened between he and I..." (from "Psych", the comedy-detective show).
If you don't know what's wrong with that sentence, sue your local and state Boards of Education, then pray someone funds you to take it all the way to the Supreme Court. Our tax dollars should not fund frauds with graduate degrees.
If you don't know what's wrong with that sentence, sue your local and state Boards of Education, then pray someone funds you to take it all the way to the Supreme Court. Our tax dollars should not fund frauds with graduate degrees.
Thursday, July 29, 2010
My crappy father
Not too long ago I heard a fellow on a radio program talking about how he brought home a dozen roses for his daughter on the occasion of some very important event in her life.
I found tears streaming down my cheeks (even though I was driving my car) because it reminded me how my father never bothered to spend more than a cursory fifteen minutes with his daughter, about three times a year.
Fathers, please, take care of your daughters. Your sons, too, but your relationship with your daughter is very important. You need to treat her as a very special, very important, very much loved person who deserves the world. My father was so busy making himself rich "for the family" (by which he meant it was his fondest wish to be rich and a huge spendthrift, and had rationalized himself into believing that all we wanted was the same thing he wanted--to be very rich) that he couldn't be bothered with his own children. My brother grew up to be an arrogant bastard who thought he was entitled to walk on everyone he knew (not because he was spoilt but because he saw that in his father) and I grew up feeling unloved and unwanted.
I'm not going to go into details. Just remember that neglecting your children is bad. Don't do it.
I found tears streaming down my cheeks (even though I was driving my car) because it reminded me how my father never bothered to spend more than a cursory fifteen minutes with his daughter, about three times a year.
Fathers, please, take care of your daughters. Your sons, too, but your relationship with your daughter is very important. You need to treat her as a very special, very important, very much loved person who deserves the world. My father was so busy making himself rich "for the family" (by which he meant it was his fondest wish to be rich and a huge spendthrift, and had rationalized himself into believing that all we wanted was the same thing he wanted--to be very rich) that he couldn't be bothered with his own children. My brother grew up to be an arrogant bastard who thought he was entitled to walk on everyone he knew (not because he was spoilt but because he saw that in his father) and I grew up feeling unloved and unwanted.
I'm not going to go into details. Just remember that neglecting your children is bad. Don't do it.
Sunday, July 25, 2010
"You can't furnish a place without a book case. People would laugh."
Husband of the nightclub songstress, explaining to Jane Wyman: "She bought a bookcase for the apartment, and I haven't read a single book."
Nightclub singstress, adding: "You can't furnish a place without a book case. People would laugh."
These memorable lines are from a 1956 movie, "Miracle in the Rain". This speaks volumes about 1956, and by contrast, volumes about 2010.
What happened to America?
Nightclub singstress, adding: "You can't furnish a place without a book case. People would laugh."
These memorable lines are from a 1956 movie, "Miracle in the Rain". This speaks volumes about 1956, and by contrast, volumes about 2010.
What happened to America?
Saturday, July 24, 2010
Bathroom sinks
How the hell did free-standing basins become all the rage?
I know where they came from. Some MAN needed something new to push on the gullible American public. Like shoulder pads in women's dresses, or clubby heels in their shoes, or changing the acceptable paint colors in houses, or changing the shape of cars so that trim, neat lines turn into "this bar of soap has been used too many times" lines (that is, cars now look like bars of soap, so you had to dump your old car with its straight lines and get a melted-bar-of-soap car), or taking kitchen appliances with their shining black faces, sharp and crisp as they were, and replacing them with brushed stainless steel (and its attendant constant coat of fingerprints), so too we had to get rid of the nasty old fashioned (?!) countertop with sunken basins.
So first came that idiotic Euro sink. (I was in Europe at the time, and never saw a single high-rimmed sink there). Oh, boy, look at that, modernity! Only the big fat ridge kept you from pushing water and stray whiskers and anything else that got caught on the counter straight into the sink. Admittedly it wasn't often you needed to do it, but it sure made it easy to clean such a counter. So damn stupid.
Then came the free-standing basin. No countertop at all. No place to stand a bottle of liquid soap, no place to lay a stack of guest towels when you have your friends over for lunch, no place for your toothbrush cup to stand, not even a fluffy little decoration. Gone, too, the cabinet underneath, that provided valuable space to stash cleaning items, the hotcurler box, the ultrasound jewelry cleaner, spare light bulbs, air freshener. Those all have to go in another cabinet. Bye-bye, several extra cubic feet of space. Gone the drawers where you kept your spare towels, your hair brush, your electric razor. Where do those all live now? Certainly not on the rim of the stupidest household item ever invented, the freestanding basin.
Now we have our counters back, but the "chic" place to have this counter (always granite, hideously expensive) is on a table which is allowed a shallow drawer or two for toothpaste and hairbrush. On top of this fiercely expensive counter stand two bowls, outrageously expensive things of various shapes, colors, materials, and styles. Very up to date, very chic, very impractical. For one, if you slosh water over the side, you get to pick up that water. No wiping it over the side into that nasty old sunken basin. For another, from what I've seen, many of them have an unreachable dirt trap underneath, so that you can't mop up water underneath the bowl if it has gotten right to the center and your fingers can't reach. Many people will never figure out to use a towel like dental floss to get the wet out from under the bowl, or won't do it three times a day. Thus there will be mildew and other nasty crap under there. Always.
Well, MEN ... male designers ... I don't care if you're gay, that certainly doesn't make you women, and you don't have these practical considerations. You're interested in cutting edges, advancing design, and making a name for yourselves.
I don't buy it.
I know where they came from. Some MAN needed something new to push on the gullible American public. Like shoulder pads in women's dresses, or clubby heels in their shoes, or changing the acceptable paint colors in houses, or changing the shape of cars so that trim, neat lines turn into "this bar of soap has been used too many times" lines (that is, cars now look like bars of soap, so you had to dump your old car with its straight lines and get a melted-bar-of-soap car), or taking kitchen appliances with their shining black faces, sharp and crisp as they were, and replacing them with brushed stainless steel (and its attendant constant coat of fingerprints), so too we had to get rid of the nasty old fashioned (?!) countertop with sunken basins.
So first came that idiotic Euro sink. (I was in Europe at the time, and never saw a single high-rimmed sink there). Oh, boy, look at that, modernity! Only the big fat ridge kept you from pushing water and stray whiskers and anything else that got caught on the counter straight into the sink. Admittedly it wasn't often you needed to do it, but it sure made it easy to clean such a counter. So damn stupid.
Then came the free-standing basin. No countertop at all. No place to stand a bottle of liquid soap, no place to lay a stack of guest towels when you have your friends over for lunch, no place for your toothbrush cup to stand, not even a fluffy little decoration. Gone, too, the cabinet underneath, that provided valuable space to stash cleaning items, the hotcurler box, the ultrasound jewelry cleaner, spare light bulbs, air freshener. Those all have to go in another cabinet. Bye-bye, several extra cubic feet of space. Gone the drawers where you kept your spare towels, your hair brush, your electric razor. Where do those all live now? Certainly not on the rim of the stupidest household item ever invented, the freestanding basin.
Now we have our counters back, but the "chic" place to have this counter (always granite, hideously expensive) is on a table which is allowed a shallow drawer or two for toothpaste and hairbrush. On top of this fiercely expensive counter stand two bowls, outrageously expensive things of various shapes, colors, materials, and styles. Very up to date, very chic, very impractical. For one, if you slosh water over the side, you get to pick up that water. No wiping it over the side into that nasty old sunken basin. For another, from what I've seen, many of them have an unreachable dirt trap underneath, so that you can't mop up water underneath the bowl if it has gotten right to the center and your fingers can't reach. Many people will never figure out to use a towel like dental floss to get the wet out from under the bowl, or won't do it three times a day. Thus there will be mildew and other nasty crap under there. Always.
Well, MEN ... male designers ... I don't care if you're gay, that certainly doesn't make you women, and you don't have these practical considerations. You're interested in cutting edges, advancing design, and making a name for yourselves.
I don't buy it.
Tuesday, July 20, 2010
Sunday, July 18, 2010
"THIS BEGS THE QUESTION..."
NO IT DOESN'T
There it is on the TV again. It's a news program and the stupid anchor is misusing this phrase.
Don't people learn anything any more?
"Begging the question" is a logical fallacy pretty similar to "circular reasoning".
It is NOT synonymous to "This question is begging to be asked."
NOT NOT NOT NOT NOT NOT NOT.
If you don't know this, you'd better get a clue and look it up. wikipedia.com has a good and brief section about informal fallacies.
Look it up there, learn to use the phrase correctly, and stop looking like an idiot.
There it is on the TV again. It's a news program and the stupid anchor is misusing this phrase.
Don't people learn anything any more?
"Begging the question" is a logical fallacy pretty similar to "circular reasoning".
It is NOT synonymous to "This question is begging to be asked."
NOT NOT NOT NOT NOT NOT NOT.
If you don't know this, you'd better get a clue and look it up. wikipedia.com has a good and brief section about informal fallacies.
Look it up there, learn to use the phrase correctly, and stop looking like an idiot.
Monday, July 12, 2010
Monk
There's something seriously wrong with how the writers (or is it the producers?) present him. I have a disorder similar to Monk's, in that I don't like germs and I don't like the germs I imagine on other people's hands. I don't like to shake hands with people, I don't like to touch doorknobs. I can't stand pushing a grocery cart and will actually pull my sleeves down to cover the handlebar and keep from getting my hands on it. I use the paper towels in public restrooms to pull the door open. I'll even use sections of toilet paper to slide the latch. More likely, though, I won't even use the restroom at all; I'll hold it till I get home. I use my sleeves to open any public door. I keep handi-wipes in my car to clean my hands in case I pump gas or have to make a call from a public phone. (I don't have a cell phone.) And on it goes.
In most ways I'm not half as bad as Monk. I will shake hands with people without displaying any revulsion. I just keep feeling the *ahem* cooties till I can wash my hands, no matter how much later. If I have to touch a doorknob with my bare hands, I will, but I'll use a handiwipe as soon as I can. I don't worry about alcohol and I don't use scrub brushes or dishwashing detergent; simple soap or just a rinse in plain water are generally enough.
(You may laugh at this but you should know: I used to get four or five colds a year. Since I started not sharing germs with people, I get one cold every four or five years. Is it worth it? I would say so.)
But Monk doesn't seem to have any problems with doorknobs or grocery carts or picking up someone else's briefcase, all of which ought to be covered with germs.
I'll add to this later. But Monk is very inconsistent in his fussinesses.
In most ways I'm not half as bad as Monk. I will shake hands with people without displaying any revulsion. I just keep feeling the *ahem* cooties till I can wash my hands, no matter how much later. If I have to touch a doorknob with my bare hands, I will, but I'll use a handiwipe as soon as I can. I don't worry about alcohol and I don't use scrub brushes or dishwashing detergent; simple soap or just a rinse in plain water are generally enough.
(You may laugh at this but you should know: I used to get four or five colds a year. Since I started not sharing germs with people, I get one cold every four or five years. Is it worth it? I would say so.)
But Monk doesn't seem to have any problems with doorknobs or grocery carts or picking up someone else's briefcase, all of which ought to be covered with germs.
I'll add to this later. But Monk is very inconsistent in his fussinesses.
"Women's advocacy groups" make me sick
You have never heard one syllable from NOW about the way women are treated in much of the Muslim world. Their silence makes me want to puke.
Friday, July 9, 2010
There was this one time in high school ...
So the gym teacher asked me to write down names, I forget why I was making this list for her but girls from the rest of the class would come to me, give me their names, and I would write them down. One at a time. I'm good at spelling (also good at typoing so I do use spelling checker) and didn't have any trouble getting through the names. Until Donna came up.
Donna was one of those girls from the "Popular crowd". I didn't have a clique, which in retrospect I suppose made me garbage in her eyes, as if I cared. She never deigned to speak to me anyway, and I didn't exactly sit around crying about it. "Donna" she said. I started writing it down. "D ... O ... N ... N ..."
"No," she sneered and snarled at me, in some of the most burning hatred I had ever heard from another female. "NOT d-o-n-n-a, stupid, D A W N A!!!!"
OOoooh, feel the burn! Shame on me!!! What a pathetic piece of scum I was, for not knowing the bitch spelled her named "DEE AY DUBBLE-YOO EN AY !!!!!
Dawna, whatever your last name is, FUCK YOU.
I'll guess that she went on to college and spent the rest of her life spitting on every female who wasn't in her sorority.
Donna was one of those girls from the "Popular crowd". I didn't have a clique, which in retrospect I suppose made me garbage in her eyes, as if I cared. She never deigned to speak to me anyway, and I didn't exactly sit around crying about it. "Donna" she said. I started writing it down. "D ... O ... N ... N ..."
"No," she sneered and snarled at me, in some of the most burning hatred I had ever heard from another female. "NOT d-o-n-n-a, stupid, D A W N A!!!!"
OOoooh, feel the burn! Shame on me!!! What a pathetic piece of scum I was, for not knowing the bitch spelled her named "DEE AY DUBBLE-YOO EN AY !!!!!
Dawna, whatever your last name is, FUCK YOU.
I'll guess that she went on to college and spent the rest of her life spitting on every female who wasn't in her sorority.
Tuesday, July 6, 2010
My lovely children, I apologise to you
When my first child was a toddler of nine months of age, there was an article in our newspaper that graphically described how a wee bairn of just nine months of age ran out to the ice cream truck, toddling along behind his brothers and sisters who had run out faster than he could. When he got to the street he fell down, unbeknownst to the ice cream man. The truck was already in reverse, coming back to serve the kids who had come out of their home shouting and hollering. Only now they were shouting to stop the truck. This, the driver expected, and continued backing the truck till he ran over the toddler.
Father described to the reporter how he picked up the corpse of his son, covered in blood and limp and lifeless.
I cried. I imagined myself picking up my wonderful, precious, irreplaceable little baby, who had just started walking too, and I cried more. I saw the father hugging his dead son, weeping and helpless to reverse the event, helpless to bring his son back to life, and I cried all the more. I cried all night and continued to sniffle and cry most of the next day, I so empathised with that man, and I cried for his son and his wife as well.
Later when the boys were a little older, the ice cream truck would come through our neighborhood and I wouldn't allow the kids to run out and get an ice cream. I pictured death and destruction around the thing, and I forgot what a joy it was to capture the ice cream truck and buy a simple ice cream off him. I didn't want to support the poor guy who made his living driving the thing around listening to the same obnoxious song blaring over his speaker day after day.
And I believe I deprived my kids of one of the little joys of childhood, and I am heartily sorry for such foolishness. Of course, they probably don't realize how much reinforcement I had from their father's keeping us on such a stingy, miserably tight allowance, since there was usually plenty of spare change lying around the house (though there wouldn't have been any if we had spent it on ice cream), but that was the sort of blind mindset I had. "Steve doesn't want me to spend money, therefore I can't." Never mind that Steve was spending every penny we had taking himself and his friends out to restaurants every chance he got, and putting the expenses on charge cards. Had we paid those things off for once and for all and not charged them back up again, we could have lived much better than we did, without the hysterical "Don't spend a penny!" mentality.
Well, this was part of that insanity. I'm sorry you kids had to pay for it.
Father described to the reporter how he picked up the corpse of his son, covered in blood and limp and lifeless.
I cried. I imagined myself picking up my wonderful, precious, irreplaceable little baby, who had just started walking too, and I cried more. I saw the father hugging his dead son, weeping and helpless to reverse the event, helpless to bring his son back to life, and I cried all the more. I cried all night and continued to sniffle and cry most of the next day, I so empathised with that man, and I cried for his son and his wife as well.
Later when the boys were a little older, the ice cream truck would come through our neighborhood and I wouldn't allow the kids to run out and get an ice cream. I pictured death and destruction around the thing, and I forgot what a joy it was to capture the ice cream truck and buy a simple ice cream off him. I didn't want to support the poor guy who made his living driving the thing around listening to the same obnoxious song blaring over his speaker day after day.
And I believe I deprived my kids of one of the little joys of childhood, and I am heartily sorry for such foolishness. Of course, they probably don't realize how much reinforcement I had from their father's keeping us on such a stingy, miserably tight allowance, since there was usually plenty of spare change lying around the house (though there wouldn't have been any if we had spent it on ice cream), but that was the sort of blind mindset I had. "Steve doesn't want me to spend money, therefore I can't." Never mind that Steve was spending every penny we had taking himself and his friends out to restaurants every chance he got, and putting the expenses on charge cards. Had we paid those things off for once and for all and not charged them back up again, we could have lived much better than we did, without the hysterical "Don't spend a penny!" mentality.
Well, this was part of that insanity. I'm sorry you kids had to pay for it.
The Power of Oprah!
Evidently there are people who slavishly follow Oprah and do everything she recommends. This woman is admitting that when O said you need to meditate X hours a day and she was only meditating X/2 hours per day, she stepped up the hours she meditated. She buys the books O recommends, she buys the items on the "Ten Things Every Woman Must Have in Her Closet".
I'm mentioning this to you so that you can check out the feet of the women you meet. If you see a woman with leopard print flats on her feet, run the other way.
There is something magnificently wrong with such a woman--like maybe the ability to think. And this is sickening.
What's even more sickening is that CNBCW (that's "CNBC for women") is actually taking this subject seriously and has devoted a whole hour to it. How soon do you think we will see an hour on "Critical thinking for women" or "How to have a good communicative relationship with business partners for women"?
I'm mentioning this to you so that you can check out the feet of the women you meet. If you see a woman with leopard print flats on her feet, run the other way.
There is something magnificently wrong with such a woman--like maybe the ability to think. And this is sickening.
What's even more sickening is that CNBCW (that's "CNBC for women") is actually taking this subject seriously and has devoted a whole hour to it. How soon do you think we will see an hour on "Critical thinking for women" or "How to have a good communicative relationship with business partners for women"?
Queen Elizabeth's hat
She is in New York today, and she's wearing a hat worthy of a queen. It's shimmery like satin, with some things sticking out of the band, mostly flowers, but the shape of the crown of her hat suggests to me something in the "industrial" vein of the arts decroatifs era, though it could really be something else and I'm just missing the correct visual interpretation. Regardless, I just love it!
Prayer: O God, please let this woman's idiot son predecease her.
Prayer: O God, please let this woman's idiot son predecease her.
Oh em gee
"Will someone please show me the Nobel Prizes in Math or Science from the Muslim world?"
I have been waiting for someone with a big voice to bring this out. Finally, someone has.
In school they told us that the Arabs had preserved all the great knowledge from ancient times, and that all the wisdom and learning that had gone on during the "Dark Ages" in Europe had taken place among the wise and educated Arab world.
Other than the fact that Arabs had kept some manuscripts preserved in libraries in the Middle East, and hadn't made any attempt to preserve these manuscripts at all by copying them and sending out the copies to other libraries in case of fire (notice how many manuscripts were destroyed in the fire at the library in Alexandria), the Arabs did nothing. No, there was no new learning, no research, no philosophy, not during the Middle Ages, not during the Renaissance, not ever. They had some old books they had no regard for. They had the Koran. The two were incompatible and they loved only one of those--sadly, the wrong one.
Some of you people have been taught all your lives that in order to appear "intellectual", Christianity is to be trashed, and Islam is to be tolerated mainly because it isn't Christianity. You're idiots.
I have been waiting for someone with a big voice to bring this out. Finally, someone has.
In school they told us that the Arabs had preserved all the great knowledge from ancient times, and that all the wisdom and learning that had gone on during the "Dark Ages" in Europe had taken place among the wise and educated Arab world.
Other than the fact that Arabs had kept some manuscripts preserved in libraries in the Middle East, and hadn't made any attempt to preserve these manuscripts at all by copying them and sending out the copies to other libraries in case of fire (notice how many manuscripts were destroyed in the fire at the library in Alexandria), the Arabs did nothing. No, there was no new learning, no research, no philosophy, not during the Middle Ages, not during the Renaissance, not ever. They had some old books they had no regard for. They had the Koran. The two were incompatible and they loved only one of those--sadly, the wrong one.
Some of you people have been taught all your lives that in order to appear "intellectual", Christianity is to be trashed, and Islam is to be tolerated mainly because it isn't Christianity. You're idiots.
There is a Pensacola woman talking to reporters
She's got a nice big camera trained on her stupid face. She's very pretty and there's a kid in the shot with her, possibly her own child.
She's bemoaning what's happening to her beaches. "This is just awful," she declares. Why? prompts the reporter. "Because our beaches are being ruined forever," she wails. "They'll never be the same again."
How ignorant can you be? How can you be so stupid as not to know that nature repairs itself? How can you be so anthropocentric as to think otherwise? What is education giving these people any more? You have to know that environmentalism is a huge part of our curriculum nowadays. Are the teachers feeding the children anything but hysterics? Where is the awe and love for the gigantic majesty and power of nature?
This is the same woman--the same mindset, the same ignorance, the same tiny world with narrow horizons--that Al Gore can sell his global warming hysteria to when he stands on a beach toe-deep in salt water, and lectures us that "twenty years ago the water stopped there"--pointing fifty feet away--"and today it's washing against their back patio"--with a dramatic wave to the luxury houses behind him. Then follows a lecture about how the oceans are rising thanks to global warming.
But only in that one spot. Ten miles north of where he and the youthful press crew stand, the beach is exactly as it has been for decades.
None of the youthful reporters attending this latest of Gore's hysteria events has the knowledge to ask him about "beach erosion, much?" or to point out that the other beaches along the same coast don't seem to have the same rising ocean; perhaps the continental shelf is floating, and thus rising along with the rising oceans?
None have enough education to know the difference between a hundred years and a hundred thousand years, because, like Gore, they have tiny little worlds with tiny little horizons and are incapable of seeing the big picture because for them there IS no big picture. The books they were forced to read in school were all current. No one has ever read about life in the Middle Ages, or under the Roman Empire. None of them have ever seen a movie about any time outside their very own.
I think it's because their teachers are just as ignorant as their students.
But this has turned into a rant about the education system and the serious lack thereof. The woman on TV crying about her beaches being "ruined forever" is ignorant, but she is ignorant by choice, and that's what bothers me.
She's bemoaning what's happening to her beaches. "This is just awful," she declares. Why? prompts the reporter. "Because our beaches are being ruined forever," she wails. "They'll never be the same again."
How ignorant can you be? How can you be so stupid as not to know that nature repairs itself? How can you be so anthropocentric as to think otherwise? What is education giving these people any more? You have to know that environmentalism is a huge part of our curriculum nowadays. Are the teachers feeding the children anything but hysterics? Where is the awe and love for the gigantic majesty and power of nature?
This is the same woman--the same mindset, the same ignorance, the same tiny world with narrow horizons--that Al Gore can sell his global warming hysteria to when he stands on a beach toe-deep in salt water, and lectures us that "twenty years ago the water stopped there"--pointing fifty feet away--"and today it's washing against their back patio"--with a dramatic wave to the luxury houses behind him. Then follows a lecture about how the oceans are rising thanks to global warming.
But only in that one spot. Ten miles north of where he and the youthful press crew stand, the beach is exactly as it has been for decades.
None of the youthful reporters attending this latest of Gore's hysteria events has the knowledge to ask him about "beach erosion, much?" or to point out that the other beaches along the same coast don't seem to have the same rising ocean; perhaps the continental shelf is floating, and thus rising along with the rising oceans?
None have enough education to know the difference between a hundred years and a hundred thousand years, because, like Gore, they have tiny little worlds with tiny little horizons and are incapable of seeing the big picture because for them there IS no big picture. The books they were forced to read in school were all current. No one has ever read about life in the Middle Ages, or under the Roman Empire. None of them have ever seen a movie about any time outside their very own.
I think it's because their teachers are just as ignorant as their students.
But this has turned into a rant about the education system and the serious lack thereof. The woman on TV crying about her beaches being "ruined forever" is ignorant, but she is ignorant by choice, and that's what bothers me.
Monday, July 5, 2010
Okay, how ignorant can today's kids be?
Can our miserable, lousy, rotten school system educate them any worse?
Could we teach them that they don't know anything? Maybe cool it on the self-esteem long enough for them to learn that they aren't God?
They never doubt all the garbage they think they know. And whom did they learn this garbage from? From other kids. When they were twelve, their only mentors were other twelve year olds, since their parents no longer rear them but expect the schools to do that job. What these parents don't realise is that the schools abrogated that job three generations ago. "There's no such thing as right and wrong," declared my generation, completely unintelligent enough to understand that sentence refutes itself. Watch, I'll show you:
Stupid hippie: "There is no such thing as truth."
Me: "Is that statements true?"
You think about it for a bit.
Could we teach them that they don't know anything? Maybe cool it on the self-esteem long enough for them to learn that they aren't God?
They never doubt all the garbage they think they know. And whom did they learn this garbage from? From other kids. When they were twelve, their only mentors were other twelve year olds, since their parents no longer rear them but expect the schools to do that job. What these parents don't realise is that the schools abrogated that job three generations ago. "There's no such thing as right and wrong," declared my generation, completely unintelligent enough to understand that sentence refutes itself. Watch, I'll show you:
Stupid hippie: "There is no such thing as truth."
Me: "Is that statements true?"
You think about it for a bit.
How come everyone at Princeton-Plainsboro hates Dr. House?
Is there something about him that is so preciously adorable that WE can love the guy so much, but no one in the series can see for themselves?
Do we think we're special, and that's why we love him--because thinking he's pretty special makes us similarly special?
I remember watching "Blazing Saddles" once, and we got to the part where the cranky old racist white woman gives him a wink and a nudge and entreats him not to mind that she was so racist before. We're supposed to roll our eyes and think to ourselves, "O, God, I'm so glad I'm not that woman, so glad I'm not a stupid, un-self aware racist. Thank you Lord for making me a better person than her." And that's why we like that movie so much--it makes us feel superior.
Yet I don't see any of this conspiratorial "wink, wink, nudge, nudge" attitude underlying "House, M.D.". Yet I sometimes want to smack everyone in the show.
Why are they always trying to "cure" him? Am I the only person who objects to this? He is who he is, and I don't ask him to be what I want him to be. Sure, he'd cheer up his patients if he were kinder to them. So what? If they want bedside manner, they have the other doctors and a hospital full of nurses to cheer them up. Probably they even have family who come to see them.
So lay off the brilliant Dr. House. Let him see his patients as puzzles needing to be solved. He's fine the way he is.
Do we think we're special, and that's why we love him--because thinking he's pretty special makes us similarly special?
I remember watching "Blazing Saddles" once, and we got to the part where the cranky old racist white woman gives him a wink and a nudge and entreats him not to mind that she was so racist before. We're supposed to roll our eyes and think to ourselves, "O, God, I'm so glad I'm not that woman, so glad I'm not a stupid, un-self aware racist. Thank you Lord for making me a better person than her." And that's why we like that movie so much--it makes us feel superior.
Yet I don't see any of this conspiratorial "wink, wink, nudge, nudge" attitude underlying "House, M.D.". Yet I sometimes want to smack everyone in the show.
Why are they always trying to "cure" him? Am I the only person who objects to this? He is who he is, and I don't ask him to be what I want him to be. Sure, he'd cheer up his patients if he were kinder to them. So what? If they want bedside manner, they have the other doctors and a hospital full of nurses to cheer them up. Probably they even have family who come to see them.
So lay off the brilliant Dr. House. Let him see his patients as puzzles needing to be solved. He's fine the way he is.
Well, a lot of things tick me off.
And a lot of things thrill me no end.
I'm just blowing off steam about the miserable and rotten things people do, or about the wonderful and sweet things people do.
It's very unlikely you will be interested in anything I say. But thank you for dropping in.
I'm just blowing off steam about the miserable and rotten things people do, or about the wonderful and sweet things people do.
It's very unlikely you will be interested in anything I say. But thank you for dropping in.
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