Moments when a piece of entertainment completely lost you.

[CatharzGodfoot]

Phillip Pullman on what's wrong with Narnia

MTV tldr version

You're telling me that an asspained atheist who has claimed that he is "trying to undermine the basis of Christian belief" is going to be critical of Lewis's religious propaganda? I, for one, am shocked.

I doubt that Pullman's critique was written purely with 'surprising Psychic Robot' in mind.

[Starmaker]

Speaking of nerdrage induced by good series having 'bad' endings, could someone explain to me in long words why the Chronicles of Narnia inspired hatred and woe across the world?

It's not a good series. It's a dated book with dated morals and an incomprehensible plot which is somehow a classic.

For that matter, Pullman multiplied it by -1 and the result was "meh". Blah blah blah religion is bad. Kids are pretty perceptive, they don't need long and boring moralizing. (Also, the parallel world trope makes the whole "God is evil" business kinda toothless.)

Also, you don't kill the Christian meme with "God is evil" even if it was fresh and novel. Fans of Tolkien's books who root for Sauron are still fans. Avatar: TLA is more anti-Christian than this uninspired drivel, and it manages to be modern, serious and entertaining.

I had a pretty weird upbringing by modern standards, what with unrestricted access to adult entertainment and all the fun stuff in original fairy tales (dismemberment and such). I even owned a set of cards with nude women on them, and it never occurred to me that the women are behaving improperly and that I was supposed to be shocked upon seeing a guy pierced with a rusty pipe.

Good children's entertainment is done by applying "seen through a child's eyes" photoshop effect to serious issues. Not by ignoring them completely, not by showing them explicitly and certainly not by AynRandesque rants. Genocide (or whatever universal evil the author chooses to address) is inherently and obviously bad, and if a story relies on rants to explain why, it failed, like a movie fails when it's written as a radio drama (where is "I have to overtake the train" pic when I need it?).

[Count Arioch the 28th]

I saw a show on cable the other day called "You're Cut off!"

It lost me real quick. I don't want to see rich girls being "rehabilitated" by being given jobs that pay more than I can get with education, experience, and licensing, be given more money than I can even imagine when they fail the tasks given to them, and bitching the whole long while.

[Lago PARANOIA]

Avatar: TLA is more anti-Christian than this uninspired drivel,

What?

[Kaelik]

Avatar: TLA is more anti-Christian than this uninspired drivel,

What?

I believe his point is that Avatar, by being good, and making people actually think about a world in which "God" plays no part, does more to hurt Christianity than a shitty book about how the Catholic Church are a bunch of assholes that implicitly accepts many of the premises of Christianity as true, and therefore doesn't challenge their world view as much.

God is evil is less thought provoking than God does not exist.

Personally, I think he's totally wrong about the quality of Pullman's books, but that's just me.

[Maj]

I saw a show on cable the other day called "You're Cut off!"

It lost me real quick. I don't want to see rich girls being "rehabilitated" by being given jobs that pay more than I can get with education, experience, and licensing, be given more money than I can even imagine when they fail the tasks given to them, and bitching the whole long while.

Are you kidding? These are women who spend $70,000 each year on their hair and make-up alone. Paying them $10 an hour for a single day is absolute horror for them.

Just because I wouldn't mind making $70 sorting shoes for a day doesn't make their pain and anguish any less funny. In fact, it makes it more so. I love watching them cry all over themselves.

[Crissa]

Well, as pointed out in another thread... Minimum wage in one region isn't the same as in another. You could get the jobs sorting shoes for $10, but you'd have to live somewhere less affordable.

-Crissa

[violence in the media]

Are you kidding? These are women who spend $70,000 each year on their hair and make-up alone. Paying them $10 an hour for a single day is absolute horror for them.

Just because I wouldn't mind making $70 sorting shoes for a day doesn't make their pain and anguish any less funny. In fact, it makes it more so. I love watching them cry all over themselves.

Pain and anguish by working menial jobs? How do you figure? Don't these women go back to being fabulously wealthy at the end of the day/series?

[Count Arioch the 28th]

Just because I wouldn't mind making $70 sorting shoes for a day doesn't make their pain and anguish any less funny. In fact, it makes it more so. I love watching them cry all over themselves.

It would take more to elicit feelings of schadenfreude for me.

[Psychic Robot]

I saw a show on cable the other day called "You're Cut off!"

It lost me real quick. I don't want to see rich girls being "rehabilitated" by being given jobs that pay more than I can get with education, experience, and licensing, be given more money than I can even imagine when they fail the tasks given to them, and bitching the whole long while.

That sounds like an awesome show.

[Count Arioch the 28th]

If you want to watch it, it's on VH-1. I won't stop you. Not sure what time though.

[Maj]

Pain and anguish by working menial jobs? How do you figure?

The chicks on this show are so self-important and ignorant about life that they

• Don't know how to turn on a laptop or type.
• Mop refrigerators and ponds.
• Think that if it doesn't have a designer tag on it, it's worthless.
• Think that if they don't wear make-up they're ugly.
• Don't know how to cook or clean (and would rather drink alcohol than learn).
• Don't know what a ghetto is.
• Don't know how to make a bed.
• Don't want to change their kids' diapers or feed them.
• Are afraid to buy chicken at the store because it's diseased.

These girls seriously have no clue about the world. They don't understand the concept of reality - other cultures, other lifestyles... Just shopping and spending money on themselves. They have no education (One is supposedly in "law school," but she's dumber than Reese Witherspoon in Legally Blonde), they have no skills. They are just vapid moochers who feel like it's their birthright to vapidly mooch.

Watching them move to a cute house in the suburbs (that I wouldn't mind living in), having to do their own chores to make enough money to buy food (they each get paid $25 if they do their chores daily - like making beds), having to write a resume and get a job, be nice to other people, take off their make-up and be photographed, get out of bed on time, get rid of half their belongings...

It's straight up culture shock in the extreme. It's traumatic. Gaining a sense of accomplishment and self-worth was never so difficult! Or funny to watch.

Don't these women go back to being fabulously wealthy at the end of the day/series?

In theory, no. There's supposedly a ceremony in which the families of the girls decide whether or not the girls have done well enough to be taken back.

In reality... I have no idea. I would just guess yes.

[Count Arioch the 28th]

Maj, I guess that's what's different. They're still being given more than most people will ever achieve after working their ass off every goddamn day. It's not seeing them freak out that's not doing it for me, it's them being given opportunities that 99% of us will never have and them throwing fits because they are slightly less well-off than they were before.

[CatharzGodfoot]

Maj, I guess that's what's different. They're still being given more than most people will ever achieve after working their ass off every goddamn day. It's not seeing them freak out that's not doing it for me, it's them being given opportunities that 99% of us will never have and them throwing fits because they are slightly less well-off than they were before.

Right. What's that sound? Oh, it's our American Capitalist Dream being shattered.

[Crissa]

No, here's the American dream being crushed.

-Crissa

[CatharzGodfoot]

No, here's the American dream being crushed.

-Crissa

I don't think that working at Wal*Mart is the American Dream.
Here's the actual article rather than just the partial copy on the Huffington Post.

Also: http://www.alternet.org/story/147433/wa ... ts'_rights (the broken BBcode parser won't allow a normal link).

[Cynic]

It's late and I'm kinda annoyed and vaguely pissed off.

So I'm a huge Dylan fan. I am also very much into hendrix, Zep, Floyd, and metal from the '80s and 'early '90s and I also like grunge, and pretty much anything that's not country (except Willie nelson, Cash, and some of the older singers.)



Now going back to my Dylan.

I understand that the man cannot sing if somebody helld a gun to his harmonica or told him that they would take away all his drugs and pills (well before he became a christian.) But his voice works for me. And he has some of the best lyrics out there. Simple and awesome.

But his voice works on certain songs. And it obviously doesn't work on most of his other songs. That's why Hendrix and Peter, Paul, and Mary and the Byrds used his song well.

All this is fine. But when Hendrix has his awesome guitar going but completely butchers "LIke a Rolling Stone" to make it almost spoken worrd like, it makes me want to cry and want to resurrect the man from teh dead and get him to play me music (the resurrection and music playing is all based on the vague "what if" that I believe in the peace that death offers a person/soul)

So what the fuck, Hendrix? WHAT THE FUCK?

I mean you rocked "All along the watchtower" and pretty much most of your other songs. But "Like a rolling stone" had to be butchered?

/rant

~

[Orion]

Huffington Post, seriously? Huffington Fucking Post?

[Psychic Robot]

No, here's the American dream being crushed.

-Crissa

Open window, see HuffPo, close window.

Here's the actual article rather than just the partial copy on the Huffington Post.

Ah, an actual source. What they are fighting here is the potential for legal precedence. Interesting. And I will agree that Walmart is probably not at fault for fat white trash trampling some poor guy to death.

The solution, my good fellows, is violence. Forty lashes minus one for everyone who was at the Walmart when the man was trampled. Strip the flesh from their backs and teach them to be human beings again. Slice their skin to show them that their greed is not welcome here. Flay them hard so they won't forget that they killed a man.

[CatharzGodfoot]

The solution, my good fellows, is violence. Forty lashes minus one for everyone who was at the Walmart when the man was trampled. Strip the flesh from their backs and teach them to be human beings again. Slice their skin to show them that their greed is not welcome here. Flay them hard so they won't forget that they killed a man.

Yeah, I've been wondering whether that might be a good solution to our overfull prisons.

[Psychic Robot]

I once wrote a paper supporting the reinstatement of flogging. It was an end-of-the-semester thing, so I never got to see his response.

[K]

I think Haven has lost me.

It's a new show from Scy-Fy. It's your basic "small town that has supernaturals in it", so it's just like The Gates(also a show that's lost me).

Now, I know that sci-fi production values must be kept low, but I'm kinda sick of shows trying to make small towns interesting. They aren't. Eureka is a small town with super-geniuses and no one even pretends to be normal, and that works. Small towns pretending to be small towns are kinda boring.

Haven tries too hard to be clever with the dialogue, but they don't have the chops of shows like Buffy or Veronica Mars. The characters all seem to have the same sense of humor so their lines could be interchangeable, which is kinda annoying above and beyond the lines themselves not being very funny.

Hopefully, Haven is like Buffy in that the first few episodes are pretty lame and then the writers get into the good stuff. Considering that SyFy has had some success with Wharehouse 13, Eureka and some other shows, we'll keep our hopes up.

[Prak]

on rewatching the PotC sequels...

Elizabeth and Will.


Seriously, why the fuck does she stay loyal and devoted to the man who actually seems to be less trustworthy and more sociopathic than Jack? I seriously get lost trying to keep up with who he using at any given moment, and to be sure, that's all he does, is use people. Jack is at least charming, Will's just an asshole.


edit: ok, I was just lost by something even more bizarre and unintelligible...

Gundam.

a friend wants me to make a gundam setting for D&D, so she starts rattling facts off that, honestly have no bearing on making a d20 setting while I write up a reasonable basic mech I wouldn't mind handing to a low level character.

Then I find out that what she sees as a basic mech, a Zaku, is fucking 52 feet tall... and a "gargantuan" mech by gundam size categories is the Quin Martha, 126'.

and it's crewable by one person. Ok, so that's vaguely possible...

then she says it has like 60 unmanned suits that are carried by it and crewed by the same person, no ai or programming...

...yeah... no. not by any damn human, and not by the mary sue newtypes unless they're psychotic.

"oh, it wasn't a newtype. It was a Cyber Newtype"

...wut

seriously, I never saw any Gundam... so, I don't know, did these people pull things out of their ass as needed or does this shit actually have some kind of explanation?

[Lago PARANOIA]

Because the Pirates of the Carribean sequels are complete fucking shit. They completely wrecked everyone's character except (arguably) Jack's. Anyone else who had a character like Barbossa, Davy Jones, Norrington, Elizabeth, and especially Will got totally fucking assassinated. It's almost as bad as Naruto's, I'm not kidding.

Not to mention that the first movie earned my total ire by opening it to a bunch of cargo cult cannibal natives where the Black Pearl's dark-skinned crewmen stabbed the white crewmen right in the fucking back and suffered a karmic death. And a filler opening scene in the second movie.

The third movie managed to be even worse, but I consider the whole affair to be like Reloaded/Revolutions. No one should be that surprised or shocked at how the third movie turned out after how the second one went.

[Jilocasin]

Most people disagree with me but I really think that 0083 was the best Gundam series.