Untitled Life

My husband had just gotten back from Afghanistan, and he heard about this couple’s thing where we could go visit a local castle and got a free lunch, but we had to do a seminar on relationships first. Of course, luck would have it that we get called to the front of the room to demonstrate a typical argument that might be held in our house.

Spouse: *comes home*

Me: I’ve had the worst day ever. The least you could do is help out around here!

Spouse: ...

Me: (being coached by the instructor) I’ve got laundry up to my ears, the dishwasher is broken and...

Spouse: So... What you’re saying is, dinner isn’t ready yet?

Audience: *laughs*

For the past few months, I’ve been hearing about nothing so much as the controversy over the newest Ghostbusters movie. It didn’t really bother me one way or another because I have no strong feelings on the original. It wasn’t a bad movie by any means, but it didn’t leave a lasting impression on me. So I decided to check out the trailer as someone who wouldn’t be a whiny, butthurt fanboy. What I got was... about what I expected.

Keep in mind, I’m talking about this first trailer. See Here

There have been hundreds, if not thousands, of reviews, blog posts, and comments on what makes this a bad trailer. I’m not going to beat that particular dead horse. Instead, I’m going to focus on the people metaphorically screaming about the “haters” and how they are actually shitting all over feminism in their bid to be progressive.

In recent years, having a cause to rally behind (usually on the internet) has become the height of good manners and taste. That said, there are people who hate the idea of women in a “man’s” role, but that’s not who I’m talking about here.

No, I’m talking about a more insidious type of person, or in this particular case, persons. I’m talking about the company that tries to shift the blame of a crappy movie from the director (male) to the cast (female) while calling us, the viewing public, antifeminists. The men behind this movie want so badly to believe that they did nothing wrong, that it’s because they had the balls to cast an all female group, that they twist the facts to fit their needs. 

The truth is, Sony Pictures Entertainment is blaming the wrong group, not that they’ll ever admit that. Sony, if you want to know what really went wrong, you’ll have to analyse the movie trailers on your own. Anyone who takes any sort of cinema appreciation course in college knows the director is the one with the most power in a film, and the actors have the least. If you’re going to have the balls to cast an all female Ghostbusters movie, then have the balls to own up to the fact that this backlash isn’t about feminism. That Ghostbusters is just a shitty reboot in a sea of shitty reboots, and by shifting the blame from the director to the actors, from the man to the women, you are guilty of the very same crime of which you accused the viewing public.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying the director is horrible. I’m not qualified to make those kinds of judgments. Beyond that he is at least competent in the art of filmmaking. Paul Feig (the director) is not a terrible person. I can’t say if he’s nice, as I’ve never met the man before. I also can’t say he’s bad at his job. I don’t particularly enjoy the style of comedy he produces, but that is entirely personal taste. Audiences didn’t universally loath Spy, and, from what I remember, they loved Bridesmaids (again, not my taste in film), both of which he directed. Until he contacts me directly to say that by blaming him I’m actually against women, I’m going to guess that he has nothing to do with this outcry against public tastes. And I’m sorry to the lovely ladies that star in the new Ghostbusters movies. We all wish it could have been better.

CAVEAT:

Around Christmas time, as she herded her first period class in for their mandatory lesson on how not to die by cooking, some little shit grabbed the dry erase marker and wrote “Ho Ho" on the board. The bell rang before he could finish, though. So my mom, being all fresh and innocent, wrote the last “Ho” on the board. 

Before she could say a single word, the kid stood up from the back of the class, pointed his finger at the white board and shouted at the top of his lungs:

“THAT’S IT! THAT'S WHAT I WAS TALKING ABOUT! THE THREE HOS AT THE FRONT OF THE CLASSROOM!”

And these three pretty (and bitchy) girls turned around to glare at him.

Just cause a plant doesn't have a face doesn't mean it doesn’t live and breath and bleed. Plants can live as long as it has enough water to sustain it. So that crisp salad you just ate? That was still alive.

Other girls be like:

I’m over here like:

If you are like me, you've seen some pretty creative ways parents punish kids being posted to the internet. Today, I ran across something that was shaming parents for shaming kids. Why?

Yes, some of the punishments were for absurd things. I would like to remind people, though, that parents have very little recourse. If you want to raise a good kid, occasionally you are going to have to discipline them when they do wrong. It’s not that parents want to make their kids feel bad, or that most of them want to beat them within an inch of their little-infant-lives, it’s because if there is no effective punishment, kids become unholy hell-monster adults with no concept of right and wrong. Punishment is a necessary tool to teach, and not just children. What do you think jail is, if not the adult version of ‘go sit in the corner and thing about what you have done’? 

Except, parents can’t lock their kids in a room with nothing but four walls and some preapproved books. Parents can’t even spank an unruly child. We seem to find the concept of punishing a child, no matter what the circumstances, to be unacceptable in modern society.

Now, I don’t have children of my own. The last time I had contact with a child for more than a smile-and-say-hi to the kid in the cart in front of me at the grocery store was months ago, and she’s a very well behaved child. Before her, though, I worked in a preschool for the special needs children. I’ve seen abused kids, I know that parents can go too far in “punishments”. The special needs preschool doesn't just handle the autistic kids (though I’ve met them, too, in that job). I’ve worked with children who grew up with violence, and I know what is ‘too harsh’. Shaming your kid for going against house rules isn’t that. These kids don’t go out and kick a teacher’s knees out for refusing to give them a sticker in class when they don’t do the work.

Oh, I hear you say, but there are other punishments. You could take away their Xbox, or TV, or whatever they hold dear. Tell me, friend. Did that ever stop you? I was a book nerd in school. If I didn’t clean my room, my mother TRIED to take away my books. I just found creative ways around it. I would hide books, or pretend I needed them for homework, or write my own. My husband was a gamer, and he could convince his parents he hadn’t been up all night playing Golden Eye till four in the morning. These methods just don’t work, and because a few assholes beat a kid to stupidity for little things, no one is allowed to hit a kid anymore. What options do we have left? 

Came back to tumblr yesterday, and I had one follower called MAJOR STALKER.

Now, I'm aware this is the internet, and that means not to take things so seriously. But, then I remember getting an email last month from LinkedIn about some person called Stalker. I start to check all over the web, and this Stalker fellow actually is everywhere I am! Hell in a hand grenade, that's creepy as fuck!

I finally get around to checking fictionpress.net... And I realized I'm an idiot.

A while ago I did some beta work for an author there. We both use gmail, so gmail is constantly telling us we know each other just because we emailed a few times.

And that is the story of how technology got an innocent guy who's last name just happens to be Stalker to accidentally scare a chick into believing that she's literally being stalked by a stalker named Stalker.

My spell check does not recognize "twerk" as a word. This makes me happy.

From the mind of a whack-a-doodle that licks popcorn bags.

There is still electricity. Water is running through the taps, you can hear that darned leaky faucet still drip-drip-dripping away just to annoy you. Still, something doesn't seem quite right. But what?

What is wrong? Couldn't be school. Tomorrow is Sunday. It's not family issues. The whole house is deathly silent. 

That's the moment the realization hits, the one you never think about. The one you are too scared to think about. Why the silence is so threatening, and why you don't want to sleep. This place isn't real. None of it.

In reality, you are on a slave ship being sold to America. You can't accept your life, so you have created this world. With your infinite power, you have brought everything you know into being and imagined a world that is both so very different and yet so terribly similar to what you left behind. Hold tight to this dream. If you wake up, this will all be destroyed. When you wake up, everyone here in this dream world will die.

Stay.