I think my optic nerves are strained

Due to excessive eyerolling, of course. But how can something like this be met with anything else? Not to say Andy's post is eyeroll-worthy, but the topic at hand is a further plummet into ridiculousness plaguing the shelves of school and public libraries, and more to the point, why am I being asked to take seriously a study on profanity conducted by Brigham Young University?

Are we going to pretend now that BYU has some sort of objectivity when it comes to a subject like this? Even if the academics who conducted the study aren't church members, they're still under pressure to present data and conclusions which jibe with BYU's goals and image (and which fall within the parameters of the school's position on academic freedom). Of course they're going to suggest that books (books, of all things) should be rated. Think of the children!

(Speaking of the children, here is my teenage LDS experience: reading curse words in books and hearing curse words in music, films, and from real live humans did not make me any more inclined to swear. Indeed I was nigh on terrified of profanity coming out of my mouth. Hell, I still live in fear of letting an F-bomb slip out in front of my mother. Once upon a time in high school my mom critiqued a short story I had written, and her major complaint was that a character took the Lord's name in vain. One of my good friends likes to tell the story of the first time she heard me curse--according to her I blushed like a fire hydrant. By the way, I was nineteen by this point. Surely everyone recalls the horrible things I read as a kid? They must have had a delayed effect.)

Rating children's, middle grade, and YA fiction would provide yet another excuse for parents to not be parents and yet more ways for libraries to be bullied into pulling books off shelves regardless of their buying and evaluation policies. But come on, if you're not policing your kid's reading (or listening, or viewing), no one else should be expected to do it for you. The role of librarians is to provide the most comprehensive array of media possible for patrons and to help patrons select media suitable to their tastes and needs. That is NOT the same as collating a list of all perceivable offenses for each book in the system. As Andy indicates in his post linked above, stickering books with a rating system provides a shortcut for people to be preemptively offended--if the book is OBVIOUSLY bad news, why bother to read and evaluate it? There is no such thing as a rating system that fits everyone and is completely objective, nor should there be. This whole business smacks of the continual underestimation of youth patrons and the increasing bent to fob parental and personal responsibility off on someone else, not to mention the whole distrusting-children angle. Yeah, I don't have kids, yeah, I don't want to have kids, but I was a kid once and one of my very favorite growing-up memories is the knowledge that my mother trusted me and let me use my library card as I saw fit.

And if books were rated by some outside body (a literary version of the MPAA or whatnot), guess what? That would be a barrier to purchase for both the general buying public and libraries. I'm waiting for publishers to scream about this, and hoping they do so. The bottom line for me is that there is no integrity to this study and godfuckingdammit I am annoyed that anyone should have to act like there is. I'm annoyed that this idea of rating YA books has been put into people's minds by an institutional body interested chiefly in backing up its religious overseers. I'm annoyed at the mere thought of giving more opportunities for the willfully ignorant to boil down books (or music or TV or film) to X number of curse words, context-free and inanely reductive. Let's be clear--I detest both the MPAA and the RIAA's Parental Advisory Labels, and I really do not want to see literature be subjected to these kinds of archaic, effectively meaningless systems.

New shoes

Presumably you fine folks have heard about the DC universe reboot. You can probably also guess how this makes me feel inside.

Yeah, pretty much like that, where Batman is Geoff Johns Dan DiDio Diane Nelson Jim Lee Bob Harras THE MAN and I am, well, I'm Diana. Especially since apparently the Super-Marriage is getting nixed and Clark Kent+Diana Prince is a go (gag me with a forklift). Despite DC's trumpeting of diversity, the Batwoman title I've been waiting for since the zero issue in FEBRUARY has yet to launch, and the new!Justice League core line-up looks oddly like every other incarnation: WW, Supes, Bats, GL, Flash, and look, Cyborg! Newness! Diversity! And collars!

Color me, as it were, extremely unexcite.

ETA: THIS JUST IN--Batgirl/Nightwing rebooted. Oh HELL NO, DC. If this turns out to be true, I don't even know.

To be blunt

So, there's this. I have to say, Matthew Vaughn: a catchy (maybe? Never heard it) song is not topping my list of reasons I want to see X-Men: First Class. Here are a few things that ARE topping that list:

• 
  
  
  Michael Fassbender and Kevin Bacon, being fine pieces of villainous ass.



• 
  
  
  The inclusion of Emma Frost, my favorite Marvel lady.



• 
  
  
  It's a goddamn X-Men film. I saw X-Men 3: The Last Stand at midnight opening night and it was a steaming pile of garbage and I didn't particularly care because it was a goddamn X-Men film.



• 
  
  
  The Sixties setting is intriguing.



• 
  
  
  I'm into self-abuse (the literal kind, and sometimes the metaphoric kind if I'm looking at Michael Fassbender), and I neeeeeed to know if this film is going to suck, based on its jacked-to-shit lack of continuity, even movie continuity, and its bizarro lineup.

Matthew Vaughn, Matthew Vaughn. Sir. Get real! There will be PLENTY of women seeing your film! Have you not been following the recent ridiculous conversation about female nerds? WE EXIST. And we don't need a fucking love theme to get us into the theatre. Jesus fucking Christ.

Running on empty

Blogger frands, I have so very much nothing to say. There's a post in me that could be interesting, even scintillating and brilliant, and I can't seem to coax it out.

Time to refuel. Time to go read my library books.

Fuck gods, give me my goddess

So there my manfriend and I were, comparing the Greg Rucka Wonder Woman to the Gail Simone Wonder Woman in a state post-coital laziness, and I had a Thinky Thawt: Thor is effectively the same character as Wonder Woman. So why does he get the big-budget summer blockbuster and she gets David "E for Egregious Asshat" Kelley and a failed NBC pilot?

Seriously, think about it. Both Wonder Woman and Thor are the children of gods and gods themselves. Both have one foot in their strange homeworlds (Themyscira and Asgard) and one in the world of humans. Both are stronger than the strongest human. Both use arcane weapons. Both have homelands, adversaries, and stories based in mythology. In some versions, Thor is even a peacekeeper type. The only difference that anyone cares about is that one has a dick and the other has a vagina.

I'm not stupid. I know the reason that there's a Thor movie at all is that there will soon be an Avengers movie and the Marvel studios like to make as much money as possible. But I also know that there is an entire section of Wonder Woman's Wikipedia page devoted to "undeveloped projects". That section contains three failed television projects and four movie scripts (including a Justice League script that I would KILL to see) that never saw the light of day. WW is arguably the most popular and and certainly the most iconic superheroine in comics. What's the problem, DC? What's the problem, Hollywood? When are we going to see this? I don't know who created the image below (I found it via DC Women Kicking Ass), but that is pretty much what my heaven looks like. Supes and the Bat need not even be there; I just want to see Diana on the big screen.

How I learned to love the Ultimates

Ok, not quite love. "Appreciate" is maybe even too strong of a word. "Understand," not quite. "Accept" might be the best term here.

Wait, what the fuck am I babbling about? The Ultimates and The Ultimates 2 by Mark Millar and Bryan Hitch (and whatever idiot did the lettering, because damn son, learn how to use commas). I have some issues with this book. Let me tell you them--indeed, let me tell YOU them, because for certain my manfriend is sick of arguing about this with me. This comes a little late in the game, since the arcs I'm talking about were published in 2002, but I read one or two about five years ago, didn't bother to read the rest, and didn't think about them until last week, when Manfriend said, Hey, you should read The Ultimates.

So I did. At first I was like, Hmm! Look! Hank and Janet are, like, in love and stuff, they get along, they're both wildly smart, this is awesome! I'm so glad we're in an alternate universe where Jan gets to have two Ph.Ds instead of a biweekly beatdown from her bastard husband! Then I was like, SADFACE. Because everything went to shit. A little background--The Ultimates takes place outside mainstream Marvel continuity, so Mark Millar really had free license to do whatever the hell he wanted with the characters. According to Manfriend, the characters are reworked in interesting ways. Not having much interest to begin with in Captain America or Iron Man and only a passing knowledge of the historical Avengers team (Cap, Iron Man, Thor, Hulk, Wasp, Giant Man), my reactions to The Ultimates are only based on these stories in themselves. I don't have anything to compare them to. So maybe my reactions are the "wrong" reactions, but if a story can't stand up by itself without a relative newcomer having read a bunch of backstory, ur doin it rong.

So what exactly are my issues? My issues can really be boiled down into one thing: poor writing. This encompasses a TON of stuff that I don't like about this book--that the dialogue is in places really odd, that there are strange, seemingly pointless inclusions of real-world celebrities and politicians, that the female characters are sexist, hollow stereotypes, and that the male characters (save Thor, which I will get to in a minute) are ALSO sexist, hollow stereotypes. The art, I must say, is fantastic, and the plotting is really quite good; the storylines major and minor are interesting, the pacing is great, and overall the plot is solid and worthy of its cast. But a comic can't run on plot alone and it really needs substantial characters to move it along. The Ultimates, to my mind, does not deliver on this score. The "Ultimates" team in this universe consists of the historical founding members of the Avengers: Captain America, the Wasp, Giant Man, the Incredible Hulk, Thor, and Iron Man, with Nick Fury of S.H.I.E.L.D. heading the whole shebang up. Other characters are recruited from various locations--Quicksilver and the Scarlet Witch from the X-Verse, Hawkeye and Black Widow from government black ops. All in all, it should have been an exciting ride with a lot of interesting characters. Instead, Millar's "reimagining" falls pretty flat. Captain America's patriotism is revved up to hysterically jingoist levels; Tony Stark, despite a brain tumor which he claims has made him rethink his life and an engagement to Natasha Romanoff, is even drunker and more womanizing than ever; Hank Pym and Bruce Banner take their towering inferiority complexes out on the women in their lives, and said women--Jan Pym and Betty Ross--are cyphers with little power and even less plot presence. Natasha as the Black Widow has a bit more kick in the plot (she betrays the Ultimates to their enemies), but the reveal of her betrayal occurs, of course, when she is naked and fucking Tony Stark. It is not even really feminist to expect well-rounded, interesting female characters, unless the bar is even lower than I thought. It sucks to read a story that's supposed to be a completely new take on established characters and see the same old bullshit.

Then there's the situation of the supporting characters from other teams. The Maximoff siblings, Wanda/Scarlet Witch and Pietro/Quicksilver, are portrayed as limp-wristed, incestuous Europeans who would prefer to pole through Venice reading Shakespeare than actually fight. The "Defenders" team, which Hank Pym joins briefly after being booted from the Ultimates post-wife-beating, is made up of various Marvel characters at their worst: Valkyrie is a yellow-belt karate student in a Red Sonja outfit; Luke Cage is a musclehead sans shirt; Nighthawk is a wussy who gets his ass beat by some gang kids; and Hellcat and Son of Satan aren't even worth mentioning. If the Defenders team was supposed to be played for laughs, it didn't trip my giggle gland. Sorry.

Oh, I mustn't forget to address the matter of the villains! "The Liberators," as they call themselves, encapsulate the white-bread American fear of brown people, yellow people, European people, and basically everyone who isn't a white-bread American. Abdul al-Rahman leads them, a Muslim native of Azerbaijan who watched as the Ultimates team invaded his country; the rest are foreign versions of the Ultimates themselves, from a Chinese Hulk (Abomination) and Iron Man (Crimson Dynamo) to a Russian Thor (Perun) and Syrian Wasp (Swarm). Black Widow, Loki, and to a lesser extent Hank Pym work with this group. They are portrayed as attempting to invade the U.S. and break its grip on national politics, trade, and warfare. In other words, they are the white Republican's worst nightmare.

Character-wise, Thor is another matter entirely. In this 'verse, Thor is either a messiah or a delusional schizophrenic, and he is downright compelling at times, whether he's destroying his evil brother Loki or speechifying about the military-industrial complex. It reads as though Millar poured his all into Thor and every other major character got the leftovers. Clint Barton (Hawkeye) is another oddity; a reasonable, down-to-earth dude with a girlfriend and three kids, who makes coffee for his bodyguards and generally gets shit done (his entire family is slaughtered, of course). Thor and Hawkeye were the real stand-out characters for me, the only ones which I cared about, was interested in, or respected.

The only way in which The Ultimates is palatable is if I read it as a parody of U.S. culture, specifically under President Bush. Everything in this story is so heightened, from the over-the-top characters to the scenes in which Tony Stark flies with Shannon Elizabeth on the space shuttle, Betty Ross dates Freddie Prinze, Jr., and the team sits around casting themselves in a Hollywood blockbuster (it's no accident that Samuel L. Jackson is playing Nick Fury in the current crop of Marvel films. Ultimate Nick Fury is BASED ON Samuel L. Jackson, which makes the scene in which Nick Fury casts Samuel L. Jackson as the man to play him in a movie a mind-bending ourobouros of self-referential meta garbage). The tone of the story often feels as though Millar is winking at himself for being so damn clever. Cuteness is something I can rarely stomach in comics. HOWEVER, if Millar was indeed writing this book as a commentary on the state of global politicking, pre-emptive strikes, and other fucked-up-ness in the U.S. generally and specifically under Bush and since, then I applaud him for being the greatest troll comic writing has ever seen. I prefer to read The Ultimates in this mode...otherwise it's just too depressing for words.

Geek girls exist?

So. Everyone and their mom is talking about that idiot New York Times review about A Game of Thrones. I am not linking to it; I'm sure you know what I mean; and if you don't, well, whip out your Google fu and hop to it.

I just feel the need to add my voice to the chorus of geek girls out there saying O HAI GINIA BELLAFANTE WE DO EXIST. Because yes--I don't like A Game of Thrones. But that's not because I'm a woman and women don't like fantasy. It's because I am not real huge on fantasy epics that don't end. And here is what I do like:

Star Wars

Doctor Who

The Lord of the Rings (books and films) and The Silmarillion (and o let me tell you how very alone I am in that)

Stories about King Arthur--remember how I have "the once and future king" TATTOOED ON MY SHOULDER?

Jo Walton books (fantasy, speculative fiction, alternate history)

Tamora Pierce books (medieval-style fantasy)

Robin McKinley books (paranormal fiction, fairy tale retellings, fantasy)

Sharon Shinn books (fantasy, science fiction)

Margaret Fucking Atwood, people

Firefly, Buffy, Angel, and Dollhouse

Karen Healey books (fantasy)

Dianne Sylvan books (paranormal fiction)

Alien

Rosemary Sutcliff books (historical fantasy)

Garth Nix books (medieval-style fantasy)

Terry Pratchett books (spastic fantasy)

Scott Westerfeld books (dystopia, alternate history, speculative fiction)

Octavia Butler books (speculative fiction, historical science fiction)

Ursula K. Le Guin books (high fantasy, science fiction)

Philip Pullman books (alternate history, speculative fiction, fantasy)

Neil Gaiman books (fantasy, fantastic graphic novels and comics)

Patricia Wrede books (fantasy)

N.K. Jemisin books (fantasy)

Inception

Frank Herbert books (science fiction)

A whole stinking array of comic books, including but not limited to Batman+Batfamily, Wonder Woman, The Sandman, Deadpool, X-Men, White Tiger, Gotham Central, Gotham City Sirens, Justice League, Ultimates, &cetera

A whole stinking array of cartoons and anime, including but not limited to DuckTales, Batman: The Animated Series, Batman Beyond, Justice League of America/Unlimited, Claymore, pretty much every DC animated movie, Marvel Knights: Black Panther, Baki the Grappler, Miyazaki films, Avatar: The Last Airbender, &cetera

Terminator films, barring the newest one

and a whole fucking lot more "dude stuff" that guess what, plenty of people with vaginas enjoy. Fuck you, Ginia Bellafante. Learn to a) read b) fact-check OR c) skim the Internet for the obvious.

On Wicked Pretty Things

I don't normally cross-link this blog and my so-called professional portfolio blog, but this morning I posted on the other blog about the Wicked Pretty Things anthology and how it relates to libraries' collection development.

...yeah. So. It's a set of interlinking topics that I think are really important. So I thought it (and The Sparkle Project's broader coverage) deserved a plug.

What a totally awesome story, can I hear it again?

So last night I was washing dishes and Manfriend's like, When did you make pie and did you eat all of it? Because I was washing a pie plate. I said, Nah, I cooked chicken in this for dinner.

True, if exceptionally dull, story. See, I have a multi-purpose pie plate, a glass one. I only have one casserole dish and that's about the extent of my baking apparatus, because I like to keep my cookie sheets in good condition. So if I'm using the casserole to cook something, and I need to cook something else, pie plate ahoy! If it can fit in that pie plate, into the oven it goes. Things usually turn out fine, though I am sure that if I do this whilst my mother and g-ma are visiting next month, they will turn pale with horror and then order me out of my kitchen.

Such is life.

THIS IS WHAT I HAVE COME TO, DEAR READERS. I have nothing to write about, because my days consist of working, making dinner, maaaaaybe some laundry if I'm feeling spicy, and falling asleep.

BAH.

MEH I SAY

I'm in intense need of dude movies. I STILL haven't seen Tron: Legacy, True Grit, or The Fighter.

I are sad panda. Like so.

Blarg

Yes, I have some version of the blarg. I suspect posting will be slim this week as I will be spending the bulk of my time at work trying not to fall asleep and my time at home indulging in my favorite cardinal sin.

In happier news, I have just learned that I've won a signed copy of Queen of Shadows! Suddenly my day is much brighter. Awesome and sauce.

HALP

Dammit, I am empty. I have nothing to write about, nothing to say. After this weekend I'll have thoughts on the new Potter film, but until then, is there anything my dear readers would like to see me blog about?

It ain't hard to define

Well, it's been kinda bleak around these parts lately. Time for some fun! And what's more fun than blaming Rick Springfield for things?

My point: the word "moot".

I don't know who to blame for the degeneration of this word's meaning in the English language, so I am blaming its most visible user. In the inimitable (unless you're Cory Monteith) "Jessie's Girl" (the title of that being a WHOLE nother post), Springfield sings the line "I wanna tell her that I love her/But the point is probably moot".

And linguists everywhere cringed. In all likelihood, the origin of this meaning of the term is much older than the 1980s, but I hate this line of "Jessie's Girl" so much that I just can't stand it. THAT ISN'T WHAT IT MEANS, RICK. I understand that there are not many rhymes for "cute", and that the 90s-popular pronunciation of "slut" as "sloot" hadn't happened yet, but come on. "Moot" stems from the Old English (or Old Frankish, depending on who you're talking to) mot and its related term gemot, meaning "meeting". You can see this word in its real function in the term "witenagemot" and J.K. Rowling's awesome appropriation, Wizengamot!

(you can trust me. I read Beowulf in the Old English!)

So when did the word "moot" stop meaning "a point to be discussed" and start meaning "a point not worth discussion"? You are welcome to chase after its etymology. Per usual, I am content to just blame a poofy 80s pop singer.

In the event that this wasn't QUITE fun enough for you, check out DR SHE BLOGGO's awesome and very scientific infographic and have an excellent weekend.

Spiritual envy? Not really

So, whilst reading Will Unwound's 'Sunday Meditations' post, I was very appreciative of most of the comments--nearly all of them, up until someone named Wayne Hanway decided to spit on atheists and agnostics everywhere. I didn't want to bring any arguments to Will's thread, so I decided to hash it out here. Anyway, this is what he said:

"With God, creation is a marvellous place, and not the least of the marvels is the powerful love and goodness that can be found even in the midst of strife and natural disasters.

Without God, creation is a fearsome place, and life in it is lonely, mean-spirited, and ultimately pointless."

Well, Mr. Hanway, I'm sorry you have such a narrow view of things. I am sorry that the human spirit isn't enough for you; that you must seek companionship, love, and security in otherworldly things which may or may not exist. We who are sans "God", you must forgive us for enjoying our time on the planet and indeed, marveling in the whole of the world, artwork and food and music and sex and ugly-cute dogs and travel and napping and and and--and not giving a shit whether some demiurge is wandering about the firmament, whether that Bearded Sky Daddy made this for humans, whether he is watching us masturbate and eat curly fries and talk about Adorno.

Mr. Hanway seems to be the quintessential embodiment of a Regina Spektor lyric that I have always found rather bleak: "He stumbled into faith and thought, God, this is all there is."

I rephrase Mr. Hanway's comments--

"With God, creation is a hideous place, and not the least of that hideousness is the powerful hate and terror that can be found in every country on the planet and which is often excused by statements of "we are doing God's work".

Without God, creation is a truer place, and life in it is full and meaningful, with limitless thought and expression, ultimately free."

I do not believe in a god. I was raised to believe in God, who made the world and its creatures, who created the laws of the universe, who now seems to me to be a damned lunatic and a bullying asshole to boot. In my journey away from the religion of my youth I have discovered many kinder deities and many beautiful religions, but at this time I do not feel an urge to "join" any of them, though I do worship in my own way (which mostly involves not-quite-successful cooking experiments and desperate attempts to keep my houseplants alive). I can't say who Mr. Hanway's god is, since he didn't elaborate; perhaps his is a gentle god, but demiurges are not often of this type. Perhaps his god loves everyone, those pesky gays and blacks and Hispanics included. Perhaps his god is really a goddess. Perhaps his god is himself. But any way you slice it, his remarks are condescending and narrow-minded, and my experience has been that those who look so snottily on atheists do not look any more kindly on people who worship deities other than the Bearded Sky Daddy. My dearest mate is fond of saying that the truest civilization is one without religion--by which he means, I think, not that religions should be forcibly eradicated, but that a continual state of spiritual and mental evolution will eventually lead to a society in which either all forms of religious belief are TOTALLY accepted or a society in which the people have literally outgrown religion.

Either society sounds good to me. Far be it from me to tell people how to worship or whether to worship, and it is always worth noting that some religious paths allow for worship without belief. But I must be afforded the same respect. You may keep your god, Mr. Hanway, and I will keep my enjoyment and appreciation of human endeavors and creations. God didn't write The Return of the Native or compose "Temples of Gold" or paint Guernica. Humans did and I will laud them for it until I pass into oblivion.

Now for the television portion of my commentary! So, everyone knows I love Glee. Mostly I care about the music--like last week's "Brittany/Britney" episode, I was willing and able to set aside the monstrous plot machinations and character weaving to enjoy the bombass musical numbers. Usually my ability to suspend belief and just listen to the tunes is pretty solid. This week, not so much. For the non-Gleeful types out there, "Grilled Cheesus" was the Very Special Religion episode! Just kill me now. Network TV just needs to stop trying to be socially responsible or whatever and make entertaining viewing. Was anyone out there really jonesing for an after-school special about how atheists and religious people can be friends? ANYONE?

So basically, Kurt the gay kid's dad has a heart attack (or something) and slips into a coma and of course Kurt is broken up about it, but instead of sitting with him in the hospital or taking him to a movie or buying him ice cream or letting him cry on their shoulders, most of his fellow glee clubbers try to make him go to church and shame him for not believing in god. Like literally, one of them says, after Kurt states that he doesn't believe in god, "We shouldn't be talking like this. It isn't right" (and please do keep in mind that this character is one who, had it been revealed that SHE is an atheist, I am pretty sure no one in the audience would've said boo. Her character arc WAS heading in interesting directions...).

O.O

The upshot of the episode was that atheists and agnostics are bitter and jealous of those who have faith. SURE RYAN MURPHY BRAD FALCHUCK THAT'S IT EXACTLY. Also, apparently everyone who doesn't believe in god go that way after praying really hard and then not getting any answers. SURE RYAN MURPHY BRAD FALCHUCK THAT'S IT EXACTLY. Sweet hofucking Darwin. Here's my weirdo confession--after I ditched my religion, I went around with the idea that everyone around me, unless they indicated otherwise, was at the least agnostic. I thought that the default was NOT believing in anything in particular. Maybe that's so and maybe it isn't, but I have yet to meet someone who's really broken up about their lack of belief. And if such people do exist, all I can say to them is: find a god who doesn't hate you. Find a deity who loves everyone, who stands for what you believe. THEY ARE OUT THERE. Create your own if you have to, if you have such a burning need for belief. I am pretty sure that there is a god out there for everyone who feels the need for one. Just look a little harder. Hint: it's probably not Jehovah.

I guess it could've been worse; Kurt could've had a marvelous inspiring conversion by the ending number, but he didn't. Still, that doesn't make up for his friends treating him like his feelings don't matter. My major bone to pick with stringent, usually Christian religious people is that in times of crisis, what their religion tells them to do supersedes what you and your family want. They're like Prince, they will pray 4 u no matter how much you ask them not to. Kurt says at the end to his father (after three of his friends have snuck into his dad's hospital room...to pray), "Them praying wasn't about me. It was about you." Kurt, I love you and you're the nicest person on the show and the best singer and your rendition of "I Wanna Hold Your Hand" knocked me dead, but you are wrong. It is not about you OR your dad. It is about making the person praying feel better. They say their prayers, they've done their Christian duty, they can feel good and holy and get a gold star next to their names and not have to actually DO anything at all--not donate money for cancer research, not hold your hand and shut up, not drive you to a park so you can meditate, nothing. Kurt's friends aren't on his side in this episode, and for some reason they're lionized for it. Know what else is FUCKED UP? The only member of the club who does seem to be on Kurt's side is Artie...who happens to be in a wheelchair. Yes, Ryan Murphy Brad Falchuck. That's it. The only people who are atheists are gays and cripples and everyone else who got fucked by the Almighty.

Furthermore, what if Kurt had said, "Well, I'm a member of the local Santeria congregation and we're going to do a ritual animal sacrifice for my father's health tonight. Would you guys like to come?" WHAT THEN RYAN MURPHY BRAD FALCHUCK WHAT THEN. You can pretend to be hip with your socially responsible discussion of atheism, Glee, but you're not. Currently, you're no different from any other dramcom on the air. Was this episode supposed to be heartwarming? It wasn't; it was grating and superior and at times literally made my teeth grind. Was this episode supposed to be socially aware? Well, just like that damned Pew questionnaire, it wasn't. As ever, the Big Serious Religion Discussion boils down to "people who worship Jesus" and "people who tried to worship Jesus but he never showed up and they got pissed off and took their toys and went home".

This apatheist is here to tell you that not all atheists are sad that they can't worship god like everyone else. I am willing to bet that most people who don't attend a church DON'T THINK ABOUT IT. It's not like I wake up in the morning and go out on my porch and say, WOW that sunrise is awesome. If only I could appreciate it, but I can't because I DON'T BELIEVE IN GOD. It's more like, WOW that sunrise is awesome. It's going to be a beautiful day.

Late author's note: as DR SHE BLOGGO has informed me, Brad Falchuck, not Ryan Murphy, wrote this episode. You're taking leaves from the wrong book, Brad.

Rocktober, and the end of BBW

Happy October, dear readers! I love October. "Fall" is my favorite season, although here in Florida we really just have summer and winter--candy corn, cider, sweaters and boots, being able to walk outside without breaking into a sweat. Excellent! Halloween is great too; this year, if my hunt for a pinstriped suit of clothing fails, I'll be dressing up as Delirium of the Endless.

Speaking of my favorite comic book author, Neil Gaiman is as good a place as any to wind down Banned Books Week. His Sandman tops Huffington Post's list of the most frequently challenged graphic novels (no I am not going to link it; I don't really like the Huffington Post. If you want to read it, seek Lord Google's aid), for reasons of sexuality, violence, and blah blah blah. Most of the entries on the list have the same reasoning (including Maus, for crying out loud. For those not familiar with Art Spiegelman, Maus being challenged is akin to Huckleberry Finn or The Upstairs Room being challenged. Remember where Americans don't like thinking about the icky parts of history?)--including the very funny "not suitable for age group".

Oh, you infernal morons. This right here is proof beyond proof that the people placing challenges against books never bother to actually read them. Every one of the titles on HuffPo's list is NOT suitable for children, but GUESS WHAT? Comics =/= children's material, fuckaducks. Something having pictures and less text than the average short novel doesn't mean it's for KIDS. Watchmen IS NOT FOR KIDS. Sandman IS NOT FOR KIDS. The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen IS NOT FOR KIDS. GODDAMMIT. Yeah, if you catch your 10-year-old reading Watchmen, you may have a problem--but it's YOUR problem. YOUR issue for not having read the spine label, 'cause guess what? No librarian in her right mind is going to put a Juvenile sticker on the spine of Sandman, Watchmen, Maus, or most other graphic novels.

(In what universe is this for children?)

Say it with me, folks: comic books are not always for children. In fact, comic books are not USUALLY for children. This erroneous association needs to stop. Comics aren't cartoons. Graphic novels aren't always comics. Superheroes are not typically good role models, and superheroines wear tight clothing. Blankets is about sex--what did the title make you think it was about? The Watchmen film was rated R, people. Didn't that tip anyone off? But, as ever, it's the library's fault. Librarians are supposed to be babysitters and keep every brat in the building from seeing things Mommy doesn't want them to see. Librarians are supposed to be eagle-eyed policepeople who look at every book as it's checked out to make sure it's suitable for the person checking it out. Guess what, clearly-not-reading-public? Many, soon to be most, public libraries no longer HAVE people checking the books out for you. Self-check-out with machines is the way of the future. Guess you're going to have to police your kid's books your own self now. This parenting thing is hard, isn't it?

HART attack

Bad puns, hooray!

Anyway. Around this time last year, my dear faithful Honda Civic hatchback (vintange 1990) finally gave up and died on me. At the time my bank account was drained on account of some unfortunate dental occurrences (don't forget to floss, kids! OTHERWISE YOU WILL HAVE A ROOT CANAL), and I don't have any credit cards, so I consigned myself to riding the bus until I could save up for a used car.

This meant two things: the University of South Florida's shuttle system, which has reasonable reach (it goes off-campus to Walmart, the mall, and a few other plazas), and the Hillsborough County Regional Transit's bus system, which goes throughout Tampa Bay and surrounding suburbs. The HART buses cover a ton of area, which is good, but are HIDEOUSLY underbudgeted and my conclusion after using HART for nearly a year is that Hillsborough County hates poor people.

Duh, Diana! you say. EVERYONE hates poor people! True. But experiencing it is a whole 'nother ball of wax. HART has over 30 mainstream bus lines; count in the flex routes and paratransit and it edges close to 60. (I think) there are 6 main transfer centers where the routes connect, as well as 4 Park-N-Ride centers throughout the county. 16 of these routes provide late-night service. There are some really good things about HART--free or reduced fares for students with valid ID, bilingual services, a variety of passes (1-day, 5-day, month-long, etc.), but the simple fact that on the bulk of the lines, a bus comes along ONCE EVERY HOUR mostly cancels out the good. If you miss that bus, you're screwed (and not in the I-want-to-hear-you-UPBEAT! "WE'RE SCREWED!" way). If you had a connecting bus to catch, you're doubly screwed. Might as well walk, because you're going to be late anyway.

So basically, in my year of public transportation use (which I admit is not a long time), I grew convinced that the people in charge of our public transit really do hate the poor. "Poor" in this case means "anyone without a car". And I realize that this attitude is really an American one at large, not just a Tampon one ("Tampons" are what citizens of Tampa are called. "Tramps" is also used)--you're walking? you're waiting at a bus stop? YOU MUST BE POOR YOU POOR PERSON WITHOUT A CAR. 'Cause you know, walking is for hobos. Public transportation is for plebes. GAH. Spare me. Maybe in the big American cities this is not the attitude (surely NYC and San Francisco, Seattle, Portland, etc. smile kindly upon those who wish to remain carless), but we are in the parochial hell that is Florida. Here, walking along a street means you are a) homeless or b) a hooker. Dig if you will an image of me sitting at the neighborhood bus stop sometime in May:

Diana: *reads, checks watch*

Dude in car: Hey, let me give you a ride.

Diana: Actually, I'm waiting for the bus.

Dude: So let me give you a ride.

Diana: Are you a BUS? NO? NO RIDE THEN RUN ALONG

I mean really. I got more catcalls, yelling and whistling, rude remarks, and slowing-your-car-to-pace-me when I was walking everywhere and waiting for buses than in the last four years of college.

Know what else bites? The stops themselves. I will hazard a guess that between my home stop and my work stop, there were roughly forty bus stop locations going one way. Out of that, perhaps one quarter were covered. Maybe half were stone or wooden benches rather than plastic ones. PLASTIC BENCHES, people. PLASTIC. IN FLORIDA. You will fry your ass off sitting on one of those. Also, this is Florida...As Eve would say, We have weather. A non-covered stop is a bitch during the rainy season (which, hello? February through October). But come on--only poor people use the bus system! Who cares if they get wet? Their clothes are crappy anyway! Who cares if they get sunburned and develop skin cancer? They're going to die of heart failure by the time they're thirty anyway! Poor people and their terrible eating habits!

Ok, that is another post entirely.

Something else that grates my cheese is that lots of lovely suburbanites in Carrollwood and New Tampa are trying to get rid of the light-rail initiative in our area. That's right, rich white people who've never used public transportation in their sorry lives. What use have they for light rail? Why should the county pour money into something THEY'LL never use? And other whitepeopleproblems.

White superheroes, assemble!

I promised a friend that I would post something coherent about the Avengers cast listing, so here it is.

(you can insert my dance of rage here if you like. It includes the pounding of fists against the wall, stomping on the ground in my Doc Martens, hissing and spitting, and curse words in a variety of languages)

Point #1: The Avengers already has a ridiculously full line-up--Captain America, Thor, Hulk, Black Widow, Iron Man, plus Nick Fury and whatever villains they're using...there's no room for more superpeople.

Rebutttal #1: Actualy, this is a fair point. I can't argue with it in principle. I dislike overcrowded superhero movies (Spider-Man 3 comes to mind, and Iron Man 2 just barely squeaked into the crowded-but-still-good range).

Point #2: Don't be bitching about no women, you angry man-hating feminist! Black Widow is RIGHT THERE.

Rebuttal #2: Yes, Black Widow IS right there. Black Widow also has no business in a team-origin Avengers movie, since she wasn't a member of the original team and--that we know of--she is not acting in a villainous capacity. The only REASON Black Widow is right there is because she was already established in Iron Man 2. Why was she in Iron Man 2? Because Natasha Romanoff is sexy, and so is Scarlett Johansson, and the film needed eye candy. As it played out, "Black Widow" could have been anyone--there was very little about her character in that movie which screamed BLACK WIDOW, which is too bad, because I like Natasha a lot; any superheroine, according to the Powers That Be, can pose and beat people up in a few scenes and wear tight clothing and make Tony Stark salivate.

Point #3: No one likes the Wasp anyway. She's airheaded and shallow and has boring powers.

Rebuttal #3: This is a matter of personal preference, but I also feel that it's sort of a shallow argument. Yes, Janet van Dyne is airheaded and shallow and has boring powers, but her character undergoes significant development over the course of various storylines. Also, if we're going to be shallow, Tony Stark is a womanizing drunk asshole. As far as powers go, she doesn't JUST shrink to wasp-size--she has her energy blasts, and can also grow to several hundred feet tall and gain superhuman strength at that size.

Point #4: What did the Wasp even DO on the Avengers, besides flirt with all the male members?

Rebuttal #4: Uh, she named the team. She also served as its leader on various occasions and was a seasoned strategist. In the Ultimate universe she held two Ph.Ds and was about as far from flighty as possible.

Point #5: You've seen both Iron Man films, the new Hulk film, and you're going to see Thor and Captain America. You knew all along why these particular movies were being made, and what they were leading up to: The Avengers. So why are you pissed off about it now?

Rebuttal #5: Well, it is worth noting that I am not a fan of either Captain America OR Thor, and I don't think the Thor film looks very good. Ok, that isn't an answer. I don't HAVE a good answer. Yes, in the back of my mind as I was watching the Marvel movies and talking about them with my boyfriend, I knew that Avengers was going to be a film of epic bro proportions. But somehow now that it's officially all tied together, it's just rage-inducing. The why of it we will get to in a moment.

Point #6: Edgar Wright is making an Ant-Man film and the Wasp will more than likely be in it. Will that shut you up?

Rebuttal #6: Nope, and here's why. It isn't just about the Wasp's absence from a film about her team. It isn't just about the general absence of superheroines and villainesses from the mainstream comic book movies (because, hello? Marvel might be sucking at this, but DC is too). It's about the fact that BOTH of the biggie comic franchises have really great characters who are female, black, Asian, Native American, gay and lesbian, aliens, robots, and everything in between, but neither Marvel nor DC is putting anything but white men on the big screen. The subtext is still, Only white straight male manly-men sell action films. And there's too much diversity, generally in Marvel and specifically in team line-ups like the Avengers and X-Men, to be anything but outraged when female characters and characters of color are ignored again and again. What will it take to see Heroes for Hire done--or is that line-up a bit too rich for American stomachs (oh noes, not one but TWO black people! One of them's a WOMAN!)? Is it too much to hope for that the Iron Fist movie will have Luke Cage or Misty Knight in it? Would another Avengers line-up, perhaps with Luke Cage, Ronin, and Spider-Woman, have been completely unappealing to the movie-going public? Another target for my ire is the rehashing of the origin story. EVERY MARVEL MOVIE WE HAVE SEEN SO FAR HAS BEEN AN ORIGIN STORY (except for the second Iron Man and that's just because it was a sequel). Why is this still compelling? What would be so wrong with creating a film about a team at the top of its game? If you really just HAD to have some origin in there, what's wrong with a flashback? Do moviemakers really think the audience is so stupid that if a movie opened with the Avengers already assembled, we would be confused? If we were, it would be the fault of bad writing, not because we hadn't seen HOW they assembled.

The tl;dr version of Things Diana Is Sick OF:

+minority characters being shunted to the side

+origin stories

+complete lack of pushing the envelope

+filmmakers catering to the lowest common denominator

+nerd rage only being ok if it comes from fanboys--the opinions of fangirls are automatically invalid, particularly if they are mad about so few female characters getting the spotlight