Kill Your Television

Before your television kills you.

I quote Walter Berglund's character in Mr. Jonathan Franzen's delightful novel Freedom, a fantastically cynical look at young adult and middle-aged existence in the U.S. today, and the near-and-dear-to-the-heart family and cultural values held by the majority of the American population.

"And TV: TV was like radio, only ten times worse. The country that minutely followed every phony turn of American Idol while the world went up in flames seemed to Walter fully deserving of whatever nightmare future awaited it."

I love everything about this novel. I adore how Franzen treats religion with such subtle harshness, and how he doesn't hesitate to criticize, through his characters, the things that it has become taboo to attack (ie. 9/11, overpopulation, simple, honest-to-goodness, salt-of-the-earth working people with no need for la-di-dah education and fancy thinkin', homeland security measures, etc.), at least in America.

I can honestly say that reading this book has made me feel more sane. Ironic, because one of the subplots involves mental illness. Odd how these things work out.

I officially have a girl boner for Rooney Mara

Although I think my girl boner might still be largely due in part to Noomi Rapace, as Rooney Mara is transforming into the Lisbeth Salander character for David Fincher's adaptation of The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo.

I can't help but adore the Lisbeth Salander character. Intelligent, pan-sexual, unforgiving, tortured, and yet capable of torture herself, and equipped with a set of morals so black-and-white in an ironically twisted fashion as to turn her into a vigilante who doles out punishment as she sees fit. Which is to say that she takes no mercy or shit. And that's hot as hell. Nothing turns me off more in a woman, whether in real life, or on the screen or in a book, who whines and bemoans her shitty lot in life without fixing anything. Or a woman who meekly accepts cruelty at the hands of any abuser, whether it be a rapist or even her own husband, and quietly turns her cheek for more.

I understand there's a psychology behind that but I have a hard time believing a person doesn't feel rage enough to do something about. Last June a man grabbed me on a crowded bus and my response was to put my knee in his crotch right before disembarking. I've practically got a boner for myself just thinking about it.

Noomi Rapace did such a fantastic job kicking ass and impressing the hell out of me (I had not read any of the books before spontaneously seeing the movie at a screening at U of T) that when it was announced that there would be an American remake I groaned inwardly but I felt better once I knew David Fincher would direct.

When it was announced that Daniel Craig would play the lead role, I groaned audibly. First off, I find him unbearably wooden as an actor. Secondly, I've never understood the sex appeal. I know he was Bond. And Bond is a sex symbol (again, something I've never understood).

Does someone want to explain this to me? He looks like a
Russian politician or a spaniel or something. Also his head is
disturbingly round. I would not want to be the woman having his baby.

However, he does very much resemble Michael Nyqvist who played the role of Mikael Blomkvist in the original film.

I totally see a resemblance even if you don't.

And this isn't about you.

After Rooney Mara was chosen to play Lisbeth Salander, I was even more skeptical. I have only ever seen her being sweet and soft and dewey-eyed and rosy-cheeked.

Not until S. showed me photos of her done up as Lisbeth Salander did I start to gain confidence that the film might not be bad after all.

I could stand to look at her for 90+ minutes.

More photos, official and not-so-official, can be seen here and here .

I am impressed with just how much she seems to fit the role already, and now I really can't wait to see her shove a dildo up a rapist's ass.

Please David Fincher, don't cater to American audiences and remove that gem of a scene. I think it will do a lot more for young girls than the Jonas Brothers and abstinence classes and purity rings combined.

All of which are infinitely more horrible in the first place.

Slush

If anyone ever believed that we are all unique, and that we are, each and every one of us, a beautiful snowflake of individuality in a blizzard of human existence, they should work as a research worker doing social and academic phone interviews for non-profit organizations, and speak with Canadians all across the country, and thereby learn that there is rarely anyone who seems remotely separate from the homogeneous masses.

Whenever anyone thinks they are making a lighthearted comment or a joke, it is always one I have heard a thousand times before. If a person thinks they have a clever retort ("Why don't you give me your phone number so I can call you?"), I know it came from the same Seinfeld episode I've seen on rerun, and that it was a witticism way back in about 1993.

And so I have reached the point that when I know I am speaking with someone that I might as well have spoken to before, given the lack of individuality, I find that my reserve of patience has slightly dwindled.

Here are some people I have spoken to far too many times:

1. Your name is usually Douglas or Gordon, and your wife selects you as a respondent but not without warning first that "my husband hates surveys, he'll just slam down the phone on you dear". Ironically your wife is always a sweetie, and completely willing to be compliant, and we have to carefully explain why we can't speak with her. But we can never get a hold of you anyways because you are usually out hunting or fishing or working on your truck. If we do manage to speak with you, you always behave as if you know exactly what we're calling about, but always manage to display your deep and fettered lack of intelligence by missing the point completely. I want to slam the phone down on you.

2. It is pathetic that you are a woman living in what seems to be in constant fear of your husband. "I can't stay on the line too long in case my husband calls the house". "My husband will wonder who I'm talking to, and I'm interested in your study but I just don't want to have to explain to him." "I'd love to chat but my husband will be home soon and wanting his supper. Can you call back on Saturday afternoon? He'll be out bowling with the boys then." Do you . . . realize what you sound like? I can find it in my heart to feel sorry for you if you sound at least old enough to have at least started off as a housewife in the 50s, maybe the early 60s. But if you sound at all like you came of age, married, had children, all that, in the post-60s and feminist era, I find it difficult to tolerate you.

3. Just about anyone from anywhere in B___ County, Ontario. You say things like, "We're just honest-to-goodness folk here and we don't want to be harassed by you big city know-alls" and use double negatives as in "We don't know nothing about public health issues" (which, in fact, means that you do know a thing or two about them) or "We don't know nothin' 'bout no health department" which is a triple negative and I don't even want to start trying to figure out what it means because I have no desire to become fluent in Moron. I find it difficult to believe that when researchers say they want broad opinions and random samples of the population that they are really talking about you. There are always kids screaming in the background and everyone sounds like they come from a trailer park in Arkansas, which is weird because this is Canada. Like, how do you all manage to sound so stereotypically white trash? Is there a class you go to at the adult learning centre which is mandatory for anyone finishing their high school diploma at age 25 because they were too busy getting stoned and having teenage pregnancies to pass math class? You make me believe more strongly than ever that we desperately need to re-open the issue of selected human sterilization.

4. Eighteen-year-old girls who take forever on the phone because they drag everything out with uuummmmmmm and liiiiiike . Or, similarly, eighteen-year-old boys who dunno what their opinion is about anything or whether tomato juice counts as a serving of fruit juice, "Since, you know, it's not fruit, right? And juice is made from fruits. So what's tomato juice then?" Do any of you realize what kind of impression you make on people? Perhaps I'm being harsh, but I know that I was nothing like that as a teenager. I was too busy trying to decipher the meaning behind The Fountainhead. P.S. A tomato is totally a fruit. It ripens off the vine. Fruit just rots. Schooled.

I wish desperately for floods and forest fires in your vicinities, and hold out everyday for the one-in-thousands opportunity I get to converse with intelligent, witty, category-defying and original members of the general population.

Backing up my previous claims with a citation

Egon, you lovable dork, you.

Wondering

Why Egon in Ghostbusters continues to hold immense sexual appeal for me.


I think the answer lies in the fact that I can't help but be attracted to unbelievable nerds and have a . . . thing, I guess, for Jewish guys. Maybe it's the fact that I was raised Catholic and any guy who went to Hebrew school just feels so badass.

You can cross the streams with me any day, Harold Ramis.

It's perfectly normal

For me to create Sims versions of myself and S. and force social interactions upon them until they fall completely in love and can't stop themselves from having sex in the hot tub.

And then play The Sims 3 incessantly when S. goes away for a few days on a ski trip.

Completely realistic and not at all crazy.