acitore

Carrie Prejean said she thinks that marriage should be between a man and a woman, and meant no offense because that’s just how she was raised. We can’t help who we are, right? Then she said in later interviews that she wouldn’t change what she said, she’s glad she stuck up for her beliefs because now she can tell kids to stick up for what they believe in, too.

I mean, I understand that Prejean is a heterosexist breeder, and that’s fine, but I wouldn’t want someone like that teaching my kids. It’s just creepy, you know? Their whole lifestyle is a little weird. But it’s fine for them, I just don’t want them, you know, flaunting it.

See, I grew up in a big city, with lots of different kinds of people, and heterosexist breeders kept to them selves; they didn’t flaunt it. My parents taught me that as long as there’s love in a household, it’s a family, no matter what gender your parents are. I know heterosexist breeders think marriage has more to do with contracts and churches and rules and procreation, and they can think that, but I just don’t want to know about it, okay? They should have their own neighborhoods, or maybe even their own city.

Prejean probably can’t help it; she’s from that big state out West where they believe in Global Warming and have that European actor guy as a governor. They’re just weird, out there, so maybe something during Prejean’s childhood made her the way she is. All intolerant and scared of anything new – she even said, “that’s how I was raised,” and she was almost apologetic, so you can kind of understand. Like, you know, it isn’t her fault she’s a heterosexist breeder.

Miss Nacirema is supposed to be a sort of sex symbol too, you know? She’s supposed to stand for all the sexualities, not just one. I don’t want our country represented by someone who thinks heterosexist breederism is – well, normal, because it’s not.

Because they all secretly want that, you know. They want all of us to be just like them. They want a country full of heterosexist breeders. Then where would we be? There’d be no love left. Besides, no one’s born that way. God doesn’t make people that way. I guess we should pray for her.

I mean, it doesn’t surprise me. We almost elected a woman vice president who was a heterosexist breeder. These people! I mean, they’re everywhere nowadays, flaunting it.

I don’t want heterosexist breeders as Miss Nacirema, or vice president. They can do whatever they want, behind closed doors, that’s their business. But not out in the open. And I’m so tired of them trying to change things!

I love the world just the way it is.

I'm American, proud to be, and love all the slogans juxtaposed with their beautiful, somehow simple-but-moving, elegant graphics:

"Never forget."


"These colors don't run."


In fact I love this particular TRAIT of American culture; our so-called "short" attention spans, coupled with our intelligence. It's how we invented things like "apps," and the reason why, in a single text message, we're able to move emotional mountains: "I love you, too" coupled with a clip-art heart read on your phone as you shoulder your purse or tac bag while struggling to get out the door with enough time left to grab a coffee before you have to be at work has transcended the need for paper, pen, stamps, and given us the time we'd have spent fumbling with them to do other things.
Contemporary homo-sapien is able to answer to her emotions, quickly, effectively, genuinely, in any number of ways, and the technology to do it started right here in the United States of America.
That's something to be incredibly proud of.

How we failed to answer to our emotions in the aftermath of September 11, 2001's events is not. I'm not saying we should be mad at ourselves - the very LAST thing any of us needs is more negative emotion surrounding that day. Rather, I'm just starting here with a point: the same short attention span and knee-jerk emotional reactions we're typically used to dealing with, day-in, day-out, on a minute by minute basis, this time worked against us. We're used to capturing massive quantities of vital data in an instant: Weather on your phone while brushing your teeth is faster than the television or radio, and has you mentally dressed before you open a drawer. Facebook/Marketwatch for ten minutes while the pasta cooks before dinner lets you know how your friends and your retirement fund are doing, and whether or you can call your old college room mate during lunch tomorrow or whether you ought really spend some time tweaking your portfolio.

In dealing with the mental and emotional turmoil of 9-11, I find the slogans and the pictures just aren't enough. The "apps" in this case aren't working for me.
I'm not a victim, I know personally no one who died, I'm in no way trying to claim any kind of suffering resultant from that day - I wouldn't dare belittle how much so many lost. I wasn't in New York City, or anywhere near Washington, D.C. I was in a small corporate box of a building in New Jersey, cold-calling businesses for ad space. It's the distance from the event, emotionally and physically, that leaves me so bothered.
I tend to think about how terrified the victims felt. I find myself obsessing, over what it must have felt like to watch men kill people, just to get people under control. I can't stop contemplating how incredibly scared the people on those planes must have been, and the phenomenal, impossible act of bravery it was to hijack the plane back. "Let's roll" has become an American slogan, bordering on proverb. Say what you will about us (I've said and written plenty of it): we're corporate slaves, political conformists, material-obsessed capitalists, emotionally detached, blah blah, on and on. The chips are down? Americans push and fight back. Unlike our European brothers and sisters, who (and I'm NOT judging) have dealt with barbaric "terrorism" for too many hundreds of years and perhaps as a result accept it a tad too willingly, Americans don't sit down for it, period. Which is why we almost immediately took the military actions for which we were criticized, but that's an essay for another day.

Again, for me, the slogans aren't enough. It's not enough for me to be upset, grieve for the victims and "never forget." History has too often proven we forget very, very quickly. I want to know WHY it happened in the first place. I have finally accepted that my explanation, my "why" separates me from most folks - sometimes harshly. My "why" invites all sorts of criticism and accusation, from "You're selfish and don't have any reason to complain" to "you're ignoring the whole point of the day."
Really? There was a POINT to that day? There was a valid, logical and good lesson for humanity to learn at the deaths of thousands of innocent people? Tell me, what POINT did those religious-extremist terrorists want to make that I've 'missed?'

Sorry. Didn't mean to holler at you. Moving on. MY point is this:
In order to "never forget" we ought fully remember, and know, why the events of September 11, 2001 occurred in the first place. The slogans aren't enough, and in this case it is my belief that we'll all feel a lot better if we fully face, analyze, and accept why it happened; why so many of our brothers, sisters, loved ones, are dead at the hands of religious extremists.
The men who chose that day to fly airplanes into our buildings were responsible for their own actions. Less so, perhaps, for their own beliefs; inoculated with a version of "religion" so horrible, violent and terrible their choices, while their own, became quite limited.
Before I go any further, and before you accuse me of removing their responsibility (or worse, being "liberal") let me make this as clear as I can. I'll say it again:

The men who chose that day to fly airplanes into our buildings were responsible for their own actions.

Did you just read, "...but, because of the way they were raised, they had a good excuse?" That's not what I wrote. I wrote:

The men who chose that day to fly airplanes into our buildings were responsible for their own actions.

Several of them were in bars the night before, drinking pints of American beer, being served by waitresses. Despite not being 'allowed' to drink alcohol according to their 'religion,' they were doing so. Despite having to be 'served' by men according to their 'religion,' they accepted alcoholic beverages from waitresses. They used American currency, drove American cars, learned how to fly airplanes in American private classrooms. They were living here, with the same access you and I have to the the news, the cars, the Starbucks, the Budweiser, the people, the libraries, the friendliness, the traffic jams and the rest of it, and still (STILL?!) despite the waitress' smile and the taste of the Budweiser and the laughter of the other people drinking and the magazines on the shelves of the convenience stores they bought their hot dogs in (oh, wait - maybe not? They're not supposed to eat pork either, the losers...), they still chose to fly airplanes into our buildings.
They could have chosen to change their lives, the same way you did when you picked a different major your sophomore year. Or when you quit smoking, or got divorced, or made any one of the difficult, important decisions that changed your life.
Hence: one mo' time, fo' da cheap seats:

The men who chose that day to fly airplanes into our buildings were responsible for their own actions.
And I, like you, am glad they're dead.

However...
It is my belief that a straight line can be drawn between the obnoxious, violent, intolerant, hate-filled, misogynistic, homophobic, ascetic, illogical, and just plain STUPID, worthless and dumb mental garbage the majority of traditional religion stuffs into people's heads and the terrorist acts of September 11, 2001.

That is my belief, and my thesis. Because those men believed they'd get 72 virgins when they died in their jihad, they flew planes into our buildings. (Actually, in whatever halfway evolved between this era and the next language the Koran was originally written in, the first text supposedly promised 72 golden raisins to men who died in Holy Wars. 3,000 years ago in the middle eastern deserts when water was scarce and fruit impossible, 72 raisins may have been worth the delusion. Now, SunMaid puts together a nice box of golden raisins. Somewhere along the line, the raisins were mistranslated into virgins or someone in Sales realized they had to up the ante.) Because these men, from the time before they could speak, think or walk were told America is The Great Satan and that human life is just an ethereal commodity, they believed it - and so flew planes into buildings.

I reject the notion that the terrorists "distorted" or "misinterpreted Islam's true message," anymore than The Crusade's generals "misinterpreted Christianity." Religion is a traditionally expressed collection of pure junk; some of it benign and entirely too much of it malicious. It's time we read the bible (not just the parts we like) in all of its contradictory, uselessly repetitive, often hateful and spiteful, unglory. The parts where people almost kill their children for god, the parts in which a father offers his daughters as sex slaves to marauding hordes, the parts where Jesus tells people to burn down cities that don't believe in him, the parts were entire villages of innocent people are destroyed by god and a single woman - overcome with grief? just curious? we'll never know 'cause she gets - turned into a pillar of salt just for looking back, the parts where Jesus gives detailed instructions on how to discipline slaves.
And (perhaps more important?) the parts that just don't make any narrative sense. Rather than the worst episode of The Jersey Shore which is at least edited into a logically flowing, forward-moving excuse for a plot, so much of the bible repeats itself, meanders, says nothing with hundreds of words and is, quite frankly, purely horrible writing.
The Koran (excuse me...'Q'Ran') isn't any better, though I haven't dove into it as I have the Bible. Probably because I was "raised" Catholic.
There isn't a way to misinterpret garbage; there's not a better reading of sexist creation myths, no rearranging violent instruction to maul and/or murder anyone who disagrees with your own delusions. There's no reconciling modern science with religious nonsense - none.

The men who chose that day to fly airplanes into our buildings were responsible for their own actions, and chose their actions because of their perfect religious faith.
I won't repeat Hitchens' quote, or give you the actual definition of faith, or any bible quotes. I would strongly encourage you to go find them all on your own, they're very worth the read.

The world will be a better place when we evolve past our need for religion, when we can do good simply for doing good. Period.
In the meantime, there's another possibility. There's an excellent chance people will always want things they don't need - luxury cars, expensive coffee, gourmet cookies, to believe an omnipotent power controls everything. All are luxuries most of us can't afford.

And I'm not saying 'I'm an atheist, but..' I AM saying I'm an atheist, sharing the planet with lots of people who do believe in god.
I know plenty of Christians, as well as a few Muslims. I don't know anyone who has killed or even hurt anyone else in the name of God. I did meet Randall Terry once, am convinced he's psychotic, and distance myself from folks who behave in ways I judge to be harmful to others. The majority of religious folks I know have good ethics and truly do believe that "God is love," and are more than willing to share the love with me - whether or not I'm willing to call it god.

I - we - atheists are asking (no, actually, we're legitimately BEGGING given the crisis of 'faith' the human race faces) theists to recognize that their morals, ethics, and healthy attitudes might come from the talks they have with God (we can't disprove it anymore than we can disprove The Flying Spaghetti Monster's role in keeping our houses safe from burglars at night) but they certainly DO NOT come from traditional religious texts or the violent so-called 'role models' their religions offer.
We're saying: Your Bible and Koran make no sense, to the point of being dangerous. YOU seem like a good person, and this stuff you're telling me - God is love, Jesus accepts everyone, love your neighbor - does make some sense. It's 2012, and you're Christian, and God is talking to you and telling you things even I agree with. ... PICK UP A PEN AND START WRITING IT DOWN, ALREADY! Why just Noah? Why just Abraham? Why aren't YOU, neighbor who I've borrowed Maple Syrup from who fed my cats the day I had to work late, worthy of creating new texts?
I think you'd be better off without your delusion, I do. I think you'd find a freedom you can scarcely imagine; I think your heart would soar the first time you look at a tree and realize there's no God to have put it there...but that's me, and I've no business telling you how to live your life. And if you want to believe in God, I've no right to stop you.
I DO have a right, and an obligation, to stop you from flying planes into buildings. What? You don't want to do that? You say God doesn't REALLY tell people to do such things?
Then prove it. Show me this difference you claim, between fundamentalists religions fanatics and 'good Muslims/Christians/etc.' whom I can obviously borrow sugar from, and trust my cats with.

Because I'm tired, of crying over my fellow humans' dying at the hands of people who say God told them to do it.

We all are.

"A Girl's Nude Photo, and Altered Lives," headline the New York Times story involving Margarite and Isaiah, two eighth grade students in Washington state. She posed naked for a photo and sent it to him, who forwarded it on to someone else, who captioned the photo with something about being a "ho" before forwarding it to someone else.

The Times' writer expresses best what happened next: "In short order, students would be handcuffed and humiliated, parents mortified and lessons learned at a harsh cost. Only then would the community try to turn the fiasco into an opportunity to educate."

What lesson has been learned, at wash harsh cost?

The Times goes on: "Around the country, law enforcement officials and educators are struggling with how to confront minors who “sext,” an imprecise term that refers to sending sexual photos, videos or texts from one cellphone to another."

Around the country, law enforcement officials and educators have always struggled with how to confront and educate minors concerning "sex," an imprecise term that refers to whatever sexual behavior has become more popular - and taboo - as of late.

Sexting is new. Never before have teenagers had ready access to this sort of technology. Indeed, never before has anyone had ready access to this kind of technology because it didn't exist. Clandestine CIA agents may have had some uniquely small photography tools at their disposal as early as the mid 1980's - and that was it. At a party in Hoboken, New Jersey myself and half a dozen friends laughed hysterically (and yes, the alcohol helped) when a pal named Jen, inebriated, attempted to take a photo with her cordless phone. For the rest of the night the girls pretended to answer their small, portable cameras every time the phone rang.
Ha-ha. Welcome to 2011. Mobile phones are in the hands of a majority of high school students, and I don't think there's a mobile phone on the market incapable of taking pictures.
Add to the mix adolescents, who are not only inexperienced in life's human interactive adventures - erotic, romantic, platonic and everything in between - but still trying to figure out who they are in relation to the other humans. Just for intellectual kicks, let's consider the stifling, often violent conformity that exists in public schools and remember how hard we all (parents, teachers, kids) work at ignoring the incivility.

In an attempt to curb the rapidly ascending teen pregnancy rates during the 1970's public schools started "teaching" sex education with the same attention to detail, craftsmanship and awareness with which public schools teach everything.
Yes, we are amazed teen pregnancy went down. And it continues to decline! Did the classes help? Sure they did. The rise of euphemistic courses like Family Living and Good Social Choices (they all could have been named 1,001 Ways To Just Say No) either had an impact on the rate of teen pregnancy or correlated with it so closely we didn't care. I argue they had an impact. If nothing else (and I'd argue nothing else) they allowed parents and offspring to vaguely communicate about sex.
Other things helped. The rise of AIDS and its misuse as a politico-sexual fear inducer got the brightest of high school and college students falsely believing anyone with a bloodstream was at risk, and that contracting the virus meant certain death.*
After the free-for-all of the 1970's and 1980's people were afraid in general, too. Global Warming Hysteria hit its peak in the 2000's, now fading under the guise of Global Climate Change (really, can anyone argue that the weather changes?).
Teen pregnancy rates aren't rising. Teenagers are still Just Saying No to an incredibly specific type of sexual expression: physical copulation. The debate behind so-called Abstinence Only sex education wasn't ever that loud and disappeared with a conservative presidential administration.
Why? Because 1,001 Ways To Just Say No and Abstinence Only are incredibly similar.

Hence, our new problem. Again: teen pregnancy isn't on the rise. Sexting won't get anyone pregnant, and certainly won't give teens AIDS.
Which is why they do it.

We've taught them to do nothing but Just Say No. Information on armies of birth control and all the Really Good Reasons To Wait don't answer the essential problem a 16 year old girl or boy faces when alone with someone they are sexually attracted to and desperately desire to spend time with. Fine, fine; they both agree: We won't have sexual intercourse until we're married. But we can kiss (really deeply) in the movie theatre for a few hours before your Dad picks us up, then we can go home and text until they sun comes up...and if you're really nice to me, I'll send you a picture of me half naked because I know you respect me and I like you, too.
Yes, that scenario exists in a perfect world. Come on, do I really need to point out that my example is basic and alterable?
The same scenario used to surround sexual intercourse, remember? In addition to worrying about pregnancy Suzy worried what Tommy would tell his friends - the latter still being a risk of gay and lesbian teens.

Sexting at first glance looks and feels safer to teens. They haven't tried to apply for jobs, their sense of social responsibility begins and ends in high school and their communities. Later, they realize damaged reputations and destroyed social environments.

Teens sexT to avoid having sex. Since we've refused to tell them about anything about sex (romance, desire, friendship, lust, privacy, willingness, consent, kissing, arousal, spirituality...) yet haven't found a way to chemically neuter their central nervous systems (a bit too permanent? c'mon they could still have kids...) they keep seeking erotic expressions alternate to the One they know they can't have.

Perhaps one day we'll broaden sexual education to include something on sex that's educational. Mayhap we'll explain that first they'll have to decide what it is they're abstaining from before they decide to abstain.

Maybe one day we'll admit that there's more to 'sex' than Marriage and Just Say no.

The United States of America - same one I'm in.

No other nation on earth offers the unique set of advantages, disadvantages, lack of identity, opportunity, and almost childlike innocence (mistakenly seen by the rest of the jaded, stubborn world as stupidity) as does the U.S. of A.

Do we have our problems? Oh, goodness for heaven's sake YES we have our problems. An awful public education system (about which I actually sat down to write this afternoon) a version of capitalism which consistently threatens to erase our humanity, and an insistence on falsely dividing the world into 'bad guys' and 'good guys.' Because of our success we often choose to ignore our failures, also, blaming the underprivileged for their lack of privilege.

However, in the 1960's we decided (and we were the first nation on earth to do this) that the color of a person's skin, their gender, their religious beliefs etc. were not qualities by which people may be denied work, or food, or housing, or anything else.
America also has the strictest anti-censorship laws of any industrialized nation. That might sound backwards, so I'll try it another way: America's free speech is the most liberal and most protected of any country.

It doesn't always happen, but:

America has made law the idea that every person is free.

Legos! LEGOS! Legos!

Little perfect-fitting bricks of color which didn't require the mathematics of those AP-geek kids to play with; I could make cars and space ships and massive abstract sculptures or, when the ADHD wasn't too bad I'd follow the directions and make the car or space ship or building on the box.

We had a gigantic box of legos that just kept getting added to. Obsessed with space flight from an early age, my father and I would build space ships together and the inklings of intentional design would surface - in response to my questions my Dad would with a fingernail point to a sliver of blue or gray and tell me, "this is the space ship's cafeteria," or, "this is where the engines are housed."

The flat ones always managed to sift to the bottom of the box. There were never enough flat smooth ones to create finished surfaces, and the ones with the gears really added an industrial look to certain projects.

I love Legos because you can create without planning or plan without creating. I played with that box of legos until my Mom at some point said, "I think you're getting a little too old." I got a little too old for plastic models, too, but have re-discovered them in my middle age - at some point I plan on re discovering Legos, also, but the coolest kits cost the world - anyone price the Millennium Falcon? You could buy a ride in airplane for that much moneyh!

Still in all, Legos are the coolest toy. Ever. Let go my Legos!

By insisting passengers keep nothing on their laps during the last hour of commercial flights, the Transportation Security Administration has ensured:

- Nothing will be on passengers' laps during the last hour of commercial flights.

- People will want to fly LESS, thus ensuring the further downward spiral of an already ailing (but necessary) industry in an ailing (and far from recovering) economy.

- We'll put more in-flight security responsibility into less capable hands. I.E. flight attendants, whose training is in hospitality (they were once registered nurses, but that era has long passed and the intention wasn't security but safety) and the purple-gloved 20-somethings known as Transportation Security Officers.

- Religious Nut Cases (terrorists) will become more confident that their backgrounds won't matter as they step aboard U.S. bound flights; all they need do is keep imagining new and more terrible ways to bring explosive devices aboard airplanes. (Nitro glycerine can be combined with beeswax, the resultant product similar in consistency to Chap Stick. Or shampoo, or liquid soap or...Lest we forget, things can be swallowed and suppositoried...)

One more time, for the cheap seats: One soldier, one automatic submachine gun, in a locked cabin between the cockpit and the passenger cabin, trained and instructed to kill everyone on board the aircraft if necessary. If this sounds like something Archie Bunker might suggest, the ignoramousness is on YOU: Israel has been doing this very thing for years.
Of course, Israel doesn't have the information technology infrastructure we have, so they aren't quite as capable of requiring a driver's license and/or social security number submitted in order to be allowed to fly.

Good thing Americans do have such an information technology infrastructure. Just look at all we do with it! Soul-less, dead from the heart outward, Americans followed the advice given during the 70's and 80', namely to comply with the terrorists. Don't be a hero, just do whatever these masked jihadists asked and everyone ought be all right. What better advice could have been given to deal with machine-gun toting self-professed martyrs eager to die in the name of the Lord?
In 2001 the Religious Nut Cases (terrorists) capitalized on our asinine eagerness to cower before bullies and the attacks of September 11 were quite successful, despite the warnings of numerous government workers tapped into the aforementioned information technology network. We just ignored THEM.

Now, in order to protect our 'freedom' we're searching suitcases, shoes, socks, bags, telling people to keep everything off their laps during the last hour of flights and considering using 360-degree scanning machines to look past our clothing into our bones. Sure, that makes sense.
It wouldn't be more efficient to run background checks on these people - no, not at all. Especially given that this last Religious Nut Case's (terrorist) FATHER warned the US Government's folks tapped into the aforementioned information technology infrastructure that his son was a Religious Nut Case.

I suppose its easier to put airline travel security into the hands of folks trained to get us dinner - oh, that's right, most airlines don't serve food anymore in an effort to save money. Well, then, the purple-gloved 20-somethings ought know what they're doing - oh, that's right, one of them recently cursed out a fellow who brought American currency onto a flight (How suspicious!) and was later reprimanded for it.

We could always board planes naked! Yes, that ought work - issue everyone a sanitized robe after they pass through a CAT scan onto the plane. We could add a body cavity search to it, and I say we let the purple-gloved 20-somethings do it. They're not trained in law enforcement, either, but that's pretty much what they're asked to do.

Yes. Full body cavity searches and boarding planes naked would ensure our freedom and protect our civil liberties in ways that simple, computer-run background checks just couldn't.

Wake up, America!

Security isn't about finding new ways to disallow but finding safe ways to allow.

GOOGLE REMOVED ITS IMAGES OF A MONKEY HEAD off its image results for Michelle OBama, even after its disclaimer which went something like this: We are not politically correct, as we are not a political organization. We are an objective search engine and our allegiance is to this objectivity. We apologize for naturally, scientifically produced results having offended anyone.

First, let me say this: I voted for Obama, have the utmost respect for him, and his family.

Now, let me say this: Google shouldn't have removed the image. By doing so, they've made it clear their allegiance is NOT to truth, or market-driven results, but they too can be persuaded by political correctness. That's dangerous for any democracy, especially one which claims to value free speech.

LADA GAGA WAS SEEN BY MYSELF in an interview on television, and she didn't say much. A self-professed high school pariah-turned-superstar whose lyrics could be accused of containing some edginess took the high road, revealing nothing about herself or her 'art.' I'm sure her managers are managing her well; after the the brainless Brittney Spears made such a mess of this sort of superstardom, no doubt producers are playing it safe.

Still. The lyrics in Bad Romance and Poker Face, coupled with her vocal range and her self-authored material warrants something more than generic glitz and boring interview answers. Come on, Stef, can't you give us more than this?

Today on the Today Show, Tareq Salahi and Michaele Salahi say they absolutely, positively did NOT crash the white house. Instead, they were invited.

They also said they were 'devastated' when they read the headlines on Thursday morning. Working closely with the Secret Service and their internal investigation, there are things they are not permitted to say.

Yeah. The Secret Service remains quiet, allowing the Salahis to make complete fools of themselves. First they brag about crashing the White House function on facebook, then they deny doing so. All they seem to want is attention, so let's give it to them: put them in jail and they'll get all the attention they can handle.

It's not that I disagree with New York Times' Manhola Dargis - it's that all too often, she simply doesn't write anything to be agreed or disagreed with. Even when we agree, it’s on movies we don’t like. I’m puzzled as to how the high-priced drivel she writes came to be considered 'outspoken' or remotely 'intellectual' while Camille Paglia's stream-of-conscience Chthonian-Worship gets written off as brain candy.
Not that Dargis' writes the only nonsense packaged as Literary Criticism - she's just the worst movie critic I've ever read. At least A.O. Scott of the same newspaper makes sense, his lens always focused on the liberal politic though it may be.

Movie critics generally share a narrow mindedness, an inability to see cinematic pieces as they are.

Perhaps I’m complicating a matter no more difficult than the Chinese proverb, “In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities. In the expert’s mind, there are few.” My father, in trying to explain why certain people worship specific sports teams even when they play badly draws a distinction between a ‘fan’ of a sports team rather than a ‘student’ of sports. Typically, I find movie critics ‘fans’ trying to cover their narrow-mindedness with PhDs in fine arts.

I don’t find fault with Dargis’ adoring a narrow bandwidth of films with big, expensive words and panning the rest with rambling, pseudo-intellectual diatribe. I’d prefer labeling her adoration a collection of big, expensive words and rambling, pseudo-intellectual diatribe dribble rather than ‘criticism.’ For a student of film she isn’t, as a student wouldn’t completely miss so much of what they watch, whether noted via the archaic theory of authorial intent or new, hipper, more cryptically useless literary theory. (Ironic, isn’t it? That critics throw out ‘old’ tools but still can’t qualitatively assess a piece without a hundred years of hindsight?)

I’m not sure if Dargis saw 2012 though I’m sure she sat in the theatre, viewed it, and certainly wrote some junk on it. I don’t expect the hordes of action mongers and sci-fi geeks who go see it (like me and my buddy Joe, respectively) to really see it either, but we’re not getting paid to really see it. We’re paying to be entertained, and if that were 2012’s only job, it does it extremely well.
It’s easy to read 2012 as another unreal, mindless piece of garbage with zero scientific accuracy and even less artistic merit, especially if 10,000 B.C. was as bad as critics said it was. (Having not seen it, I’m now wondering.)
I’d like to offer another reading: I think 2012 aspires to satirize the endless Great Apocalypse story, a tale as old as time most of us are sick of hearing.
Satire, you ask? As in, the authors are poking fun at end-of-the-world scenarios? Well, no, not exactly. But close.
Likely, the word satire sounds alien to a generation told by critics that Michael Clayton was a cinematic masterpiece and He’s Just Not That Into You contained even trace amounts of either romance or comedy (a film Dargis and I both agree stunk though she used more and bigger words to say it), but satire was once used by King and Court Jester alike, not only to incite laughter but riots. Satire needn’t be funny. Caustic, insulting and revealing also make for good satire.
In 2012 Emmerich and Kloser satirize the end-of-the-world scenario told by religious nuts, socio-political doomsayers, scientists and all at once. “Who would have thought that the religious nuts with the cardboard signs had it right?” asks Oliver Platt. Well, other than the religious nuts with the cardboard signs (and million dollar churches, Holy Bibles with sterling silver covers and giant precious metal challises) no one would have. Many of us prefer to think of ourselves as scientific, and a majority of scientists have had the human race extinct twice in the last hundred years, once via the contamination of the human gene pool according to the pseudo-science of eugenics, and more recently via the slow boil of our planet due to the pseudo-science of global warming er, excuse me, global climate change. Eugenics got swept under the rug and Sherman tank treads of the Nazis who became its face during World War II. Luckily, Global It’s Too Hot We’re All Going To Die is meeting with no small amount of disagreement, and there seems some dialogue going on.
Really, what would The End look like if the Global Warming hysterics are correct? Would the oceans boil, would civilization get swallowed by tornadoes and hurricanes? Maybe. Emmerich and Kloser take a crack at it, and I’m inclined to agree: the earth would simply flood. This exact scenario probably happened before, according to anthropologists who study religions from all over the world. They have discovered flood ‘myths’ common to many religious texts, and the occurrences in bands of humanity roughly circular to specific global points. I.E. these myths are more than likely based on a real event. At that point in pre-recorded history, each group of humans believed their 20 kilometer radius The World. And sure, another flood could happen – probably not due to Global Atmospheric Microwaving Because of Big SUV’s, but more than likely something completely outside our control or predictive ability – meteor, massive tectonic pate shift, etc.
As the world ends in 2012 the human delusions of control and predictive ability are absolute cannon fodder for 2012. The film’s ‘action sequences’ are hilarious; detailed and impossible and visually dazzling, we get to watch the world end in showers of glass and rivers of lava as a guy with a couple of flying lessons lifts a twin turbo prop airplane from a runway crumbling into the earth. The message is at once so subtle and completely counter-intuitive as to be easily missed: We do not have reserved ringside seats to the end of the world, contrary to what the preachers, scientists and political doomsayers tell us.
Everyone believes they have been Chosen to survive The Apocalypse resulting from I Told You So. For religious nuts, it’s easy: believe and ye shall be saved. Over and over again in 2012 the religious profess a lack of worry, for they are saved. The President of The United States tells the world it’s over, and when he begins to pray the television signal promptly dies.
Political extremism remains a bit more complex, but conspiracy theorists have that figured out, too. The Government and The Rich can (and do) lie about anything and everything. “First it’ll be the stock market, then the economy,” blathers Woody Harrelson’s left-wingnut as though he’s reading a Wall Street Journal headline. Since so much of the wealthy elite and government have lied about so much as of late, is it really far-fetched to believe their lies cohesive, and purposeful? And the stock market/economic crash resultant of planetary alignment? Or maybe the elite decided that since they knew it was all over, what the heck, let ‘em eat cake. Sure, makes sense. 2012 gives its audience these mass conspiracy theories and more on a silver platter with popcorn, if you like. Everyone’s been buying tickets aboard ‘space ships’ for $1 billion a pop – they’re saved because they’re really, really wealthy. So the religious nuts are saved because they were right in the first place and The Lord has chosen them for the next life, the rich will perpetuate greed and lies here on earth because they can, and the environmental hysterics were right all along. It reads to me like satire because none of 2012’s ends are loose – it lacks inconsistencies or contradictions.
“Nature,” says Chiwetel Ejiofor to the President’s daughter, “will make its own choice, as it always has.” His ensuing speech about the survival of a pulp novel written by the movie’s main character strongly alludes to chaos theory. But it simply alludes. Like the film’s anti-religious messages, such as the same character’s assertion that “our culture is our soul,” it’s all carefully hidden and coded, buried inside the Junky Action Film Dargis and others went to see.
When the world floods in 2012 Noah’s Ark has been constructed of steel, stands roughly the height of The World Trade center and length of Manhattan island and sails with five twins. Yes, there is a character named Noah on one of the massive, Chinese-built Arks and if you blink, you’ll miss him. In the event of massive ice cap meltdown, gigantic ships would be the only possible way to save the human race, and these $1 billion Euros a seat arks are 2012’s one tipped hat to any semblance of reality. Cinematically, they are beautiful – big, unbelievable, impossible structures somehow captained militarily but shared by heads of state.
Even 2012’s campy, cheesy, impossibly heroic ending could be interpreted as satire. The hero saves the day and the arks join to sail into the sunset.
Short on character development or is this how Emmerich and Kloser see us, the earthlings – self absorbed and rather too shallow most of the time? The film’s craftsmanship leads one to believe the latter. Maybe that’s why Dargis didn’t like it; indeed she starts by asking what the filmmakers have against ‘us.’
Nothing, I would say. It’s the way we act too much of the time that Emmerich and Kloser are insulting. “What story will you tell your children?” Ejiofor says, “what will they tell theirs?” he pleads to the captains of the other arks as people fall to their deaths trying to get onboard before the flood. 2012 may challenge us to see ourselves for what we are.
The again, it may be just a cheap, junky action movie which to enjoy you have to ‘shut your brain off’ as one fan on yahoo put it. I wouldn’t know, I don’t have a PhD in fine arts.

Either way, it’s worth the watch.

The Bunny Rabbit and I are waiting for a table in a popular local breakfast place, and I pick up the local paper. In the editorial column a fellow pontificates (not dissimilarly to certain pompous bloggers) about The Imminent Depression. He and his friends were sitting on their porch on a fine Virginia summer evening, sipping white wine - no doubt something oaky, buttery and from California - talking about the false signs of recovery, all in agreement depression lies around the next corner. After all, the experts were wrong and the government lied, right? And those of us here on the ground with our BA's in English and MA's in Business Administration have a much better grasp of what's going on, especially as we sip mediocre Chardonnay on our front porch.
Aside from the satirical pretense - a bunch of wealthy suburban breeders drinking wine talking about the imminence of financial collapse - I find this tendency towards depression strange. I'm not sure what causes it, other than a certain kind of mind's inability to think for itself; always reverting to scenarios which have already happened as its cognition remains incapable of original analysis.
For while This Great Recession bears marginal historical resemblance to other economic down periods ranging from the crash in the 1870's to the Carter era, it least resembles anything which happened prior to The Great Depression. Whatever happens this time hasn't happened before. To my double-major English/Psychology BA'd self, this looks more like bloodless revolution, caused by the upper echelons of the socioeconomic ladder flat-out lying to the peasants, taking the money and running.
I'm sure I'm wrong. I'm naive. I trust the government more than banks, and think that as long as we sip white wine on our porches and patronize one another with theses of The End, we needn't participate in anything useful.
Examples. My wife and I refuse to use commercial banks, because the few we did use lied to us. Incessantly. I served as a Marine for five years and while the Federal government's competency can more often than not be called seriously into question (trust me, you don't know the half of it) by some minor act of Zeus, people in government tend to have their hearts in the right place.
Yeah, go ahead. I'm young and foolish, probably not old enough to share in yoru Chadonnay.
Truth: I'm in my mid-thirties, allergic to ethanol alcohol and recently got a check for $758.00 from the IRS. After submitting a return which had me owing them almost six hundred. They apologized for having taken so long, pointed out the error, and mailed me my check.
Go drink more wine.