It's Halloween (obviously). Normally, like many people, I like to watch one or more horror or horror-parody movies on Halloween.
The original plan was Poultrygeist: Night of the Chicken Dead, but I couldn't even make it through the first 10 minutes. The movie now holds the record for shortest bail-out time. Especially since the first 7 minutes and 35 seconds of the movie are not actually the movie. It's instead a racist skit/diatribe by the... producer? Director? Major fundraiser? going on and on about how Chinese bootlegs have robbed him of his retirement fund. WTF?! Seven minutes and thirty-five seconds of it.
So then we get into the movie, and two things immediately make me hit the kill button:
1) You know what's worse than bad acting? Fake bad acting. Fake bad acting can be effectively used for comedic value for 27 seconds; then it's just annoying. This promised to be a full movie of it.
2) So you can do the masturbating ax murderer gag, and in doing so you can show a full set of genitalia -- penis and scrotumm -- but they have to be a rubber penis and scrotum. Guy can't just whip it out, it's gotta be fake. But you can show it all, it just can't be real.
... That's some weird-ass American logic right there.
At least it was right up in my face "this isn't for you". None of this painfully dragging out for a while, do I want to keep going or not stuff. Nope, flat out "kill it, kill it now, kill it lots."
So, bailed early on, and thus needed another movie. Well, I didn't feel like anything in my collection (although now I wish I'd just watched The Crow), so I went through my Netflix instant viewing and watched the 1991 Dead Again.
This is one of those movies where, even if you haven't seen it before, you've probably seen it before. It's one of those reincarnated murder things, and everyone's switched up bodies this time around so you've got to figure out who's where, and isn't it cute that the writer thinks this is a super-original idea?
We go through a pretty mediocre movie, but it's not horrible up until the end when we hit one of the Trippiest Climatic Battle Scenes Evah! Of the movies I personally have seen, battle is second only to Taxi Driver's, and I'm actually tempted to boot it to first because Taxi Driver's at least fit in with the rest of the movie. Here it's just a completely slice of WTF.
First, though, there is no message so important that it justifies breaking down the front door belonging to a woman who is terrified of you and never wants to see you again. Well, maybe one: "the serial killer is in your closet". Even that one's really better done by cell phone, though. "Neither of us killed the other and oh, here's your anklet" is not even on the list of possibilities. I mean, seriously. Give her a call, or have the cute whistling friend she's sure to listen to do it, and tell her not to let the seemingly harmless British guy in because he's the killer. Oh, and since he's not recycled, you're on your way to turn him in to the police right now along with the evidence -- the long lost uber-valuable anklet and a suspiciously dead mom with fluid in her lungs and other evidence of being violently smothered.
But no, our hero's stupid. I actually cheered when he got shot for it. Luckily for him, fatal wounds aren't. Point-blank gunshot to the chest, that'll just knock you cold for a minute. But that's OK because when you come to, you'll leap with more energy than ever. You'll be downright genki.
Oh, and to the evil killer guy (and more importantly, the writer), when you've just established 30 seconds ago that a gun will not fire -- either out of ammo or jammed -- then putting it in some unconscious person's mouth as though to blow their brains out is completely not threatening.
And, final advice to all villains everywhere: do not make random wild cross-room leaps in slow mo, because the hero may opt out of slow-mo use that time to line up a trap that couldn't possibly be in place fast enough if you had instead made your wild leap in real time. By staying in real time himself instead of joining you in slow me, he can calculate complex approach angles, line up heavy props -- even adjust them for maximum effectiveness. Never could have done all that if you two had been in the same time dimension. Next time, just stick with the usual 9.8 m/s^2 fall acceleration, OK?
Whoo boy.
Saturday, October 31, 2009
Sunday, October 25, 2009
IDYD Ch 3: This should have been a gimme
Back to the book I'm Dysfunctional, You're Dysfunctional by Wendy Kaminer. Chapter 3 is about "Positive Thinking".
This one should have been a complete gimme. Granted, The Secret hadn't been written yet in 1992, but there were plenty of books almost exactly like it that had been. The problem is, as usual, IDYD's complete absence of any sense of scale.
Can we all agree that there's quite a bit of distance between clinically proven cognitive-behavioral techniques, and The Secret-styled "just think your self rich, famous, and happy" self-brainwashing? That there is a difference between visualization of a specific procedure as a mental rehearsal in addition to physical practice (a technique which has been empirically shown to improve performance over physical practice alone), and the idea that if you just sit on your butt and "visualize" what you want hard enough, it will come to you with no other work on your part whatsoever (let me know how that works for you)?
Well, this book can't tell the difference. In fact, it denies that techniques which have been shown to work actually do so if the author doesn't like where they've come from. For instance, when you were in school were you advised to have a dedicated study area and a specific time when you sat down and studied? I was, and I found it did indeed make studying easier. I didn't get distracted by other shiny activities because this was when I always studied. It was habit. But Kaminer insists that suggestion is bullshit that only a fool would try because it's "Pavlovian".
Um, I'm sorry, but humans do respond to stimuli and we do form patterns and get into habits. Have you ever been driving along a route you take often but this time actually have to take an unusual turn-off for an errand, and you just kind of zone out and miss your turn-off and then have to curse a lot and turn around, because you were on autopilot?
Of course you haven't! That's Pavlovian! Only a fool would do a thing like that!
Mostly, though, this chapter is dedicated to complaining about unbelievably out of date sources and throwing the reader wildly at conclusions. For instance:
"Don't worry, be happy. If it is difficult to imagine many people successfully obeying Peale's orders, it is frightening to consider what might happen if they did. If conflict avoidance is a primary goal, democracy itself is a secondary one, not to mention the justice that sometimes follows conflict resolution."
Whoa, throw on the brakes here. How in the world did we get from "don't worry" to "avoid conflict at all costs, even that of democracy and justice itself"? Non sequitor much? God, when the Lion King came out two years later, her head must have just exploded. Hakuna matata, everyone!
Actually, the Lion King is a good example of my argument about this book's tendency to take an extreme majority opinion as though it were an extreme minority one. I'm sure Kaminer was all "oh noes! Look at how the Recovery Monster has invaded even children's movies with it's 'no responsibility ever, just be brainwashed' life message." But what does Simba, and by extension the cute little kiddies in the audience, really learn? "No worries" is fine on your average no-major-crises day and can even get you through hard situations that are beyond your control (because seriously, what exactly is a 20-lb cub supposed to do against a 400-lb beta male and a pack of hyenas?), but you can't live that way forever. Eventually you've got to pony up and take some responsibility and do the hard crap. Ultimately the message is not Kaminer's fantasy society's "The 'recovery movement' is right; just give up your initiative and go along with what you're told and everything will be OK", but rather actual society's "that 'recovery' stuff is crap. You gotta grab the initiative and yank yourself up by your bootstraps."
Back to the book, though, it seems in this chapter that Kaminer does not know the definition of worry. Early she complains: "To suggest that some personal, political, or social problems might be worth worrying about misses Peale's point." Um, I would argue that there is not much at all worth worrying about. There's plenty to be concerned about and to do something about. But worrying is neither action nor planning. "Worrying" is sitting there spinning your mental wheels, going over something over and over in your mind without actually addressing it or even logically considering how to address it. There is nothing worth only worrying about. If it's worth worrying about, it's worth instead using that energy and time to actually do something about or really consider what can be done. If on the other hand, something isn't worth that useful physical or mental energy, it's certainly not worth the competely useless activity of just worrying about it.
By the way, the "Peale" she's railing about will be Norman Vincent Peale, and in particular his famous 1952 work, The Power of Positive Thinking. She spends page after page, I'd guess at least a full third of the chapter, ripping this book apart.
Let me say that publication date again: 1952. She's railing against a book that, at the time of her own publication, was 40 years old. Let's look at the state of science in the 1950s: smoking was good for you -- especially if you were pregnant, because you wanted that baby to be as small as possible when it was born; condoms could be washed out and reused; and Disney was shoving lemmings off cliffs and calling it educational. (Lemmings don't actually commit mass suicide.) On a psychological level, Freud's theories were in the early stages of falling out of favor, but more effective forms of pyschological therapy were 20 or more years off.
The Power of Positive Thinking may deserve a good shredding, but it's hardly an immediate problem. Picking apart a 40-year-old book on positive thinking is a bit like picking apart one of those old medical recommendations for women to smoke while pregnant to reduce birth weight. It's bad advice in a vacuum, but most people realize now how dated it is. (She also fails to mention that it was considered pretty darn nutty when it was published, and Preacher Peale's professional psychologist partner started going "I am so not with him. I didn't have anything to do with that POS" when it came out.)
She then ups that ante by spending several more pages instead complaining about Napoleon Hills Think and Get Rich, written in 1936.
::blinkblink:: Honestly! This is the best she can do?! She can't at least grab one of the McWilliams' books co-credited to infamous cult leader and nutjob John-Roger that were published in the late 80s/early 90s (and loved by Oprah, so she'd even get to tie in to the previous chapter), if not one of the even nuttier books I know were out there. She honestly couldn't find anything more recent and topical than 40 to 55 years old?!?! Geez!
Yeah, she's convincing me this "Recovery Movement" thing of hers is a new, modern, and immediately pressing problem. ::eye roll::
So, finally, last third of the book is dedicated to talking about est. WTF is est? est was a series of expensive "New Age awareness training seminars" which went defunct in 1984.
1984.
IDYD was written in 1992. Again, she can't find anything more topical than a series of training seminars that could only be afforded by a small elite group and had been defunct for 8 years?
The most frustating thing about IDYD, though, is that she does have a few good points, but they're so buried under the BS. For instance, she does point out the Big Problem with positive thinking: "There is no such thing as luck (positive thinkers don't generally believe in luck), which means that there are no hapless victims, only assholes who invite their own abuse." Yes. That's what a lot of us are on about with crap like The Secret; the dark side of "your thoughts literally rather than just perceptually create your reality" is that means that those in dire straits have brought it on themselves. However, she talks about the 1952 The Power of Positive Thinking for seven straight pages, the 1936 Think and Get Rich for five pages, the defunct est program for 4 pages, and this actual real problem for 2 paragraphs. (Hint: Good writing would be to put this argument about the dark side of Positive Thinking at the beginning of the chapter, and then relate all later source-shredding back to it. Bad writing would be... what we got.)
Next chapter: Support groups: evil incarnate or just whiny?
This one should have been a complete gimme. Granted, The Secret hadn't been written yet in 1992, but there were plenty of books almost exactly like it that had been. The problem is, as usual, IDYD's complete absence of any sense of scale.
Can we all agree that there's quite a bit of distance between clinically proven cognitive-behavioral techniques, and The Secret-styled "just think your self rich, famous, and happy" self-brainwashing? That there is a difference between visualization of a specific procedure as a mental rehearsal in addition to physical practice (a technique which has been empirically shown to improve performance over physical practice alone), and the idea that if you just sit on your butt and "visualize" what you want hard enough, it will come to you with no other work on your part whatsoever (let me know how that works for you)?
Well, this book can't tell the difference. In fact, it denies that techniques which have been shown to work actually do so if the author doesn't like where they've come from. For instance, when you were in school were you advised to have a dedicated study area and a specific time when you sat down and studied? I was, and I found it did indeed make studying easier. I didn't get distracted by other shiny activities because this was when I always studied. It was habit. But Kaminer insists that suggestion is bullshit that only a fool would try because it's "Pavlovian".
Um, I'm sorry, but humans do respond to stimuli and we do form patterns and get into habits. Have you ever been driving along a route you take often but this time actually have to take an unusual turn-off for an errand, and you just kind of zone out and miss your turn-off and then have to curse a lot and turn around, because you were on autopilot?
Of course you haven't! That's Pavlovian! Only a fool would do a thing like that!
Mostly, though, this chapter is dedicated to complaining about unbelievably out of date sources and throwing the reader wildly at conclusions. For instance:
"Don't worry, be happy. If it is difficult to imagine many people successfully obeying Peale's orders, it is frightening to consider what might happen if they did. If conflict avoidance is a primary goal, democracy itself is a secondary one, not to mention the justice that sometimes follows conflict resolution."
Whoa, throw on the brakes here. How in the world did we get from "don't worry" to "avoid conflict at all costs, even that of democracy and justice itself"? Non sequitor much? God, when the Lion King came out two years later, her head must have just exploded. Hakuna matata, everyone!
Actually, the Lion King is a good example of my argument about this book's tendency to take an extreme majority opinion as though it were an extreme minority one. I'm sure Kaminer was all "oh noes! Look at how the Recovery Monster has invaded even children's movies with it's 'no responsibility ever, just be brainwashed' life message." But what does Simba, and by extension the cute little kiddies in the audience, really learn? "No worries" is fine on your average no-major-crises day and can even get you through hard situations that are beyond your control (because seriously, what exactly is a 20-lb cub supposed to do against a 400-lb beta male and a pack of hyenas?), but you can't live that way forever. Eventually you've got to pony up and take some responsibility and do the hard crap. Ultimately the message is not Kaminer's fantasy society's "The 'recovery movement' is right; just give up your initiative and go along with what you're told and everything will be OK", but rather actual society's "that 'recovery' stuff is crap. You gotta grab the initiative and yank yourself up by your bootstraps."
Back to the book, though, it seems in this chapter that Kaminer does not know the definition of worry. Early she complains: "To suggest that some personal, political, or social problems might be worth worrying about misses Peale's point." Um, I would argue that there is not much at all worth worrying about. There's plenty to be concerned about and to do something about. But worrying is neither action nor planning. "Worrying" is sitting there spinning your mental wheels, going over something over and over in your mind without actually addressing it or even logically considering how to address it. There is nothing worth only worrying about. If it's worth worrying about, it's worth instead using that energy and time to actually do something about or really consider what can be done. If on the other hand, something isn't worth that useful physical or mental energy, it's certainly not worth the competely useless activity of just worrying about it.
By the way, the "Peale" she's railing about will be Norman Vincent Peale, and in particular his famous 1952 work, The Power of Positive Thinking. She spends page after page, I'd guess at least a full third of the chapter, ripping this book apart.
Let me say that publication date again: 1952. She's railing against a book that, at the time of her own publication, was 40 years old. Let's look at the state of science in the 1950s: smoking was good for you -- especially if you were pregnant, because you wanted that baby to be as small as possible when it was born; condoms could be washed out and reused; and Disney was shoving lemmings off cliffs and calling it educational. (Lemmings don't actually commit mass suicide.) On a psychological level, Freud's theories were in the early stages of falling out of favor, but more effective forms of pyschological therapy were 20 or more years off.
The Power of Positive Thinking may deserve a good shredding, but it's hardly an immediate problem. Picking apart a 40-year-old book on positive thinking is a bit like picking apart one of those old medical recommendations for women to smoke while pregnant to reduce birth weight. It's bad advice in a vacuum, but most people realize now how dated it is. (She also fails to mention that it was considered pretty darn nutty when it was published, and Preacher Peale's professional psychologist partner started going "I am so not with him. I didn't have anything to do with that POS" when it came out.)
She then ups that ante by spending several more pages instead complaining about Napoleon Hills Think and Get Rich, written in 1936.
::blinkblink:: Honestly! This is the best she can do?! She can't at least grab one of the McWilliams' books co-credited to infamous cult leader and nutjob John-Roger that were published in the late 80s/early 90s (and loved by Oprah, so she'd even get to tie in to the previous chapter), if not one of the even nuttier books I know were out there. She honestly couldn't find anything more recent and topical than 40 to 55 years old?!?! Geez!
Yeah, she's convincing me this "Recovery Movement" thing of hers is a new, modern, and immediately pressing problem. ::eye roll::
So, finally, last third of the book is dedicated to talking about est. WTF is est? est was a series of expensive "New Age awareness training seminars" which went defunct in 1984.
1984.
IDYD was written in 1992. Again, she can't find anything more topical than a series of training seminars that could only be afforded by a small elite group and had been defunct for 8 years?
The most frustating thing about IDYD, though, is that she does have a few good points, but they're so buried under the BS. For instance, she does point out the Big Problem with positive thinking: "There is no such thing as luck (positive thinkers don't generally believe in luck), which means that there are no hapless victims, only assholes who invite their own abuse." Yes. That's what a lot of us are on about with crap like The Secret; the dark side of "your thoughts literally rather than just perceptually create your reality" is that means that those in dire straits have brought it on themselves. However, she talks about the 1952 The Power of Positive Thinking for seven straight pages, the 1936 Think and Get Rich for five pages, the defunct est program for 4 pages, and this actual real problem for 2 paragraphs. (Hint: Good writing would be to put this argument about the dark side of Positive Thinking at the beginning of the chapter, and then relate all later source-shredding back to it. Bad writing would be... what we got.)
Next chapter: Support groups: evil incarnate or just whiny?
Tuesday, October 20, 2009
IDYD ch 2: It Came from the Television
"I'm Dysfunctional, You're Dysfunctional" by Wendy Kaminer. Let's review what the book has said so far.
"Everyone in the whole world is a huge whiner."
OK, that about brings us up to now...
In all seriousness, I think perhaps the biggest problem with this book is that it is a massively majority opinion that has mistaken itself for a minuscule minority one, a self-proclaimed lone voice of reason in an insane asylum, if you will. The author portrays the world as largely populated with people who claim either abuse resembling the Holocaust because their parents didn't help them with homework one night or proudly proclaim that they are victims of an addiction to... whatever. The most trivial of items will work. These people insist on talking about their addiction or hardships incessantly to anyone who will listen, much like some half-crazy guy on the subway, while simultaneously refusing to listen to anyone else. And above all, any addiction or claim to past trauma is a immediate, compete and irrevocable "get out of responsibility free" card.
Pfph.
This is not the case now. This was not the case in 1992, when the book was written. It was not the case before. There is still massive stigma against therapy. Just the phrase "my therapist" is an immediate conversation stopper in most company. Look around your workplace. Has anyone there come up and told you while on the clock that they're have a drug or alcohol addiction? Statistically speaking, 6% of them do. If they inadvertently advertise it, do the people around them go "oh, it's not their fault. They have an addiction," or do they go "Lousy drunk/pothead/druggie/OK-I'm-not-exactly-up-on-my-slang-here. Why doesn't he get his act together? They ought to fire the bum." If anything, trying to claim addiction or a hard past as an excuse for your actions will get you smacked down twice as hard -- one for the act, and again for trying to talk yourself out of the consequences of it.
I'm not saying either is the way it "should" be. I'm saying her personal little codependent nightmare world where the "recovery movement" has destroyed America complete with Mom and apple pie has never existed anywhere except in fear-mongering media portrayals and maybe some really bad sitcoms.
Bad sitcoms are not how the Recovery Monster will come through your TV to get you, however, and that brings us to Chapter 2 in the book: "Testifying: Television".
I'm trying to figure out the punctuation there. It's not like other chapters are "Testifying: Radio" and "Testifying: Semaphore Flags". Colons are always kind of tricky as punctuation goes, so maybe I'm in the wrong here, but that just doesn't look right.
Here the author goes on (and on and on) about about how the Recovery Monster's soul-baring, spilling-every-thought-in-their-head (especially the ones she doesn't want to hear. "Stop talking about child abuse! We need to focus on real issues!") minions "dominate the mass marketplace and help make it one that is inimical to ideas", and they have laid waste to intelligent discourse by utterly infiltrating... talk shows.
::blinkblink::
Right, because everyone emulates the guests on Jerry Springer.
I didn't know my eyes could roll 360 degrees. They're talk shows! Worse, with this book's publication date, they're 80s talk shows. I am old enough to run for Senate, and there has never been a time in my life when talk shows have not been considered trash television. If anything, talk shows trigger a strong knee-jerk anti reaction. Anything featured on a talk show has to be bad, anything someone does on a talk show is a sign of a trashy loser.
So, the rest of the chapter, do we go off this to talk about how the Recovery Monster has spread from talk shows to say, popular entertainment? Or worse, the nightly news?
Well, no. Talking about the news would mean admitting that everyone in the media exactly the same things she was saying, going to popular entertainment would mean facing that "the recovery movement" is a huge laughing stock. So we stick to talk shows, and how the Recovery Monster has turned them to a force of evil instead of their previous force for... evil. Hmm.
That's enough for one day. Next time: "Est. It's not just a suffix anymore." (What the hell is 'est'?)
"Everyone in the whole world is a huge whiner."
OK, that about brings us up to now...
In all seriousness, I think perhaps the biggest problem with this book is that it is a massively majority opinion that has mistaken itself for a minuscule minority one, a self-proclaimed lone voice of reason in an insane asylum, if you will. The author portrays the world as largely populated with people who claim either abuse resembling the Holocaust because their parents didn't help them with homework one night or proudly proclaim that they are victims of an addiction to... whatever. The most trivial of items will work. These people insist on talking about their addiction or hardships incessantly to anyone who will listen, much like some half-crazy guy on the subway, while simultaneously refusing to listen to anyone else. And above all, any addiction or claim to past trauma is a immediate, compete and irrevocable "get out of responsibility free" card.
Pfph.
This is not the case now. This was not the case in 1992, when the book was written. It was not the case before. There is still massive stigma against therapy. Just the phrase "my therapist" is an immediate conversation stopper in most company. Look around your workplace. Has anyone there come up and told you while on the clock that they're have a drug or alcohol addiction? Statistically speaking, 6% of them do. If they inadvertently advertise it, do the people around them go "oh, it's not their fault. They have an addiction," or do they go "Lousy drunk/pothead/druggie/OK-I'm-not-exactly-up-on-my-slang-here. Why doesn't he get his act together? They ought to fire the bum." If anything, trying to claim addiction or a hard past as an excuse for your actions will get you smacked down twice as hard -- one for the act, and again for trying to talk yourself out of the consequences of it.
I'm not saying either is the way it "should" be. I'm saying her personal little codependent nightmare world where the "recovery movement" has destroyed America complete with Mom and apple pie has never existed anywhere except in fear-mongering media portrayals and maybe some really bad sitcoms.
Bad sitcoms are not how the Recovery Monster will come through your TV to get you, however, and that brings us to Chapter 2 in the book: "Testifying: Television".
I'm trying to figure out the punctuation there. It's not like other chapters are "Testifying: Radio" and "Testifying: Semaphore Flags". Colons are always kind of tricky as punctuation goes, so maybe I'm in the wrong here, but that just doesn't look right.
Here the author goes on (and on and on) about about how the Recovery Monster's soul-baring, spilling-every-thought-in-their-head (especially the ones she doesn't want to hear. "Stop talking about child abuse! We need to focus on real issues!") minions "dominate the mass marketplace and help make it one that is inimical to ideas", and they have laid waste to intelligent discourse by utterly infiltrating... talk shows.
::blinkblink::
Right, because everyone emulates the guests on Jerry Springer.
I didn't know my eyes could roll 360 degrees. They're talk shows! Worse, with this book's publication date, they're 80s talk shows. I am old enough to run for Senate, and there has never been a time in my life when talk shows have not been considered trash television. If anything, talk shows trigger a strong knee-jerk anti reaction. Anything featured on a talk show has to be bad, anything someone does on a talk show is a sign of a trashy loser.
So, the rest of the chapter, do we go off this to talk about how the Recovery Monster has spread from talk shows to say, popular entertainment? Or worse, the nightly news?
Well, no. Talking about the news would mean admitting that everyone in the media exactly the same things she was saying, going to popular entertainment would mean facing that "the recovery movement" is a huge laughing stock. So we stick to talk shows, and how the Recovery Monster has turned them to a force of evil instead of their previous force for... evil. Hmm.
That's enough for one day. Next time: "Est. It's not just a suffix anymore." (What the hell is 'est'?)
Monday, October 19, 2009
OK, this book needs a blow-by-blow commentary.
Someone suggested that I read "I'm Dysfunctional, You're Dysfunctional: The Recovery Movement and Other Self-Help Fashions", and I cannot for the life of me figure out why.
From the title, I thought it would have potential. I do grow tired of people who mistake imperfect families for dysfunctional. Being made of human beings, no family is perfect, and somewhere in the 80s we got the idea that if you weren't the Huxtables, your family was dysfunctional. If you can make the joke "my family put the fun in dysfunctional", odds are your family isn't. There's nothing at all fun about a dysfunctional family.
The author of IDYD is railing against "the recovery movement". What is "the recovery movement"? Damned if I know. It's this vague half-fictional entity that's destroying society. As near as I can tell, anything that isn't yanking yourself up by your bootstraps is this evil society-destroying entity. Of course, virtually no one needs any bootstrap yanking because the only form of abuse is violent incest. If you were not raped by your parents, you were not abused. Point blank.
This is actually a good place to jump into the blow-by-blow, I think. I am currently half-way through chapter 3 of 7 + a conclusion. The first ones may get mooshed together, and I don't know how much detail I'll go into the later ones. Hell, I very well may bail at any moment. But this book deserves a good ripping as long as I can handle it.
So, intro and chapter 1. I'm putting them together because I didn't realize the book had started with chapter 1. It seemed a continuation of the introductory explanation/whining. However, this is a good place for me to put a caveat. Just as, at least according to her early insistence if not her later writing, the author insists that she is criticizing the "movement" and not the people within it, I am criticizing how she says things, not necessarily what she says. Some of what she says, but not all of it. She does have some good points in here, but she's cast her net too widely, painted them with too broad a brush, buried them too deeply and committed other horrible cliches to them.
So, problem with how this author makes her point. First, she is very much a Suffering Olympics person. If anyone anywhere has ever had bigger problems or more suffering than you, you have no right to say anything about it ever. She is also astoundingly black and white. Hence the attitude that abuse is being raped by your parents, full stop. If you think any other behavior was abusive, you're a whiny mindless sheep. (The reason I repeat the phrase "raped by your parents" is because she repeats it, several times, as her standard for abuse.)
She's also misusing sources -- taking them out of context, not giving them when it's critical, that sort of thing. I think my favorite so far, though, is when in her complaints about the overuse of the concept of codependency,she writes "Almost everyone -- 96 percent of all Americans -- suffers from codependency, experts assert" -- and gives no citation. This statement right here is the crux of the entire book. Anything that 96% of the population experiences is normalcy; she's here to complain at least somewhat about normalcy being pathologized. But with no citations, what experts are we talking? Are we talking recognized and respected experts, or are we talking "Dr. Phil" type 'experts'?
I will say, there are some positively hilarious tidbits in this, though. One of my favorites in Chapter 1:
"Whether alcoholism is an inheritable disease or a learned behavior is a controversy about which I have no opinion. (I do doubt, however, that absolutely everyone who drinks habitually or in excess is a victim of her genes.)"
*snert* Nope, no opinion here.
She also has problems with etymology. I'm sorry, but the word "disease" actually does come from the roots "dis" and "ease" via the French, des+aise. It's not simple coincidence like god and dog. Yes, it gets annoying to hear it over and over in cheerful voices, but that doesn't make it not true.
Whoo. I write it out and it's worse than I thought.
Tomorrow: how the horrible society destroying monster will attack you through your television.
From the title, I thought it would have potential. I do grow tired of people who mistake imperfect families for dysfunctional. Being made of human beings, no family is perfect, and somewhere in the 80s we got the idea that if you weren't the Huxtables, your family was dysfunctional. If you can make the joke "my family put the fun in dysfunctional", odds are your family isn't. There's nothing at all fun about a dysfunctional family.
The author of IDYD is railing against "the recovery movement". What is "the recovery movement"? Damned if I know. It's this vague half-fictional entity that's destroying society. As near as I can tell, anything that isn't yanking yourself up by your bootstraps is this evil society-destroying entity. Of course, virtually no one needs any bootstrap yanking because the only form of abuse is violent incest. If you were not raped by your parents, you were not abused. Point blank.
This is actually a good place to jump into the blow-by-blow, I think. I am currently half-way through chapter 3 of 7 + a conclusion. The first ones may get mooshed together, and I don't know how much detail I'll go into the later ones. Hell, I very well may bail at any moment. But this book deserves a good ripping as long as I can handle it.
So, intro and chapter 1. I'm putting them together because I didn't realize the book had started with chapter 1. It seemed a continuation of the introductory explanation/whining. However, this is a good place for me to put a caveat. Just as, at least according to her early insistence if not her later writing, the author insists that she is criticizing the "movement" and not the people within it, I am criticizing how she says things, not necessarily what she says. Some of what she says, but not all of it. She does have some good points in here, but she's cast her net too widely, painted them with too broad a brush, buried them too deeply and committed other horrible cliches to them.
So, problem with how this author makes her point. First, she is very much a Suffering Olympics person. If anyone anywhere has ever had bigger problems or more suffering than you, you have no right to say anything about it ever. She is also astoundingly black and white. Hence the attitude that abuse is being raped by your parents, full stop. If you think any other behavior was abusive, you're a whiny mindless sheep. (The reason I repeat the phrase "raped by your parents" is because she repeats it, several times, as her standard for abuse.)
She's also misusing sources -- taking them out of context, not giving them when it's critical, that sort of thing. I think my favorite so far, though, is when in her complaints about the overuse of the concept of codependency,she writes "Almost everyone -- 96 percent of all Americans -- suffers from codependency, experts assert" -- and gives no citation. This statement right here is the crux of the entire book. Anything that 96% of the population experiences is normalcy; she's here to complain at least somewhat about normalcy being pathologized. But with no citations, what experts are we talking? Are we talking recognized and respected experts, or are we talking "Dr. Phil" type 'experts'?
I will say, there are some positively hilarious tidbits in this, though. One of my favorites in Chapter 1:
"Whether alcoholism is an inheritable disease or a learned behavior is a controversy about which I have no opinion. (I do doubt, however, that absolutely everyone who drinks habitually or in excess is a victim of her genes.)"
*snert* Nope, no opinion here.
She also has problems with etymology. I'm sorry, but the word "disease" actually does come from the roots "dis" and "ease" via the French, des+aise. It's not simple coincidence like god and dog. Yes, it gets annoying to hear it over and over in cheerful voices, but that doesn't make it not true.
Whoo. I write it out and it's worse than I thought.
Tomorrow: how the horrible society destroying monster will attack you through your television.
Saturday, October 17, 2009
Movie: Underworld (Heavy spoilers)
Underworld: What happens when your GM can't decide between Vampire: The Masquerade and Werewolf: the Apocalypse, and then watches The Matrix. And for this reason, White Wolf sued. The Wachowski brothers, on the other hand, just shook their heads. And maybe snickered.
What to say about Underworld. Oh, I know. BWAHAHAHA! *points and guffaws* I mean, the leather bodysuits and trench coats, and the corsets, and the Hot Topic goth-wannabe wear. And just the name "Kraven" on your cowardly villain. No. Just no. Bad writer, bad. You were supposed to search/replace that before sending it to print. And the genetic bullshit. And going out of our way to wake up Viktor so he'll be around for the "he's evil" reveal when it could have just been written that way straight up to begin with. And none of these battles really mean anything at all because there's absolutely no reason to root for either side. And then Michael turning into this thing that's supposed to be a werewolf/vampire hybrid but looks more like a half man/half spotted newt. And the guy going into Super Standoff Mode and pulling out weapons and all the while he doesn't realize that half his head's been cut off. And the "oh poopie" look when he does realize it. Bwa ha ha!
At least as funny as 300. I can't believe there isn't a Rifftrax for this thing. How is that even possible?
One thing I will give Underworld credit for (OK, the only thing) is the gender swap on the usual stereotype. I mean, usually when you have a chosen one that's being fought over and chased and captured and uncaptured and recaptured and who doesn't really do much, but who has a lover who is constantly bailing them out and doing really kick-ass things to do it, usually the chosen one is female and the ass-kicking lover is male. This was a fairly nice change of pace. Except that the movie's awful.
End conclusion on Underworld: hilariously horrible.
What to say about Underworld. Oh, I know. BWAHAHAHA! *points and guffaws* I mean, the leather bodysuits and trench coats, and the corsets, and the Hot Topic goth-wannabe wear. And just the name "Kraven" on your cowardly villain. No. Just no. Bad writer, bad. You were supposed to search/replace that before sending it to print. And the genetic bullshit. And going out of our way to wake up Viktor so he'll be around for the "he's evil" reveal when it could have just been written that way straight up to begin with. And none of these battles really mean anything at all because there's absolutely no reason to root for either side. And then Michael turning into this thing that's supposed to be a werewolf/vampire hybrid but looks more like a half man/half spotted newt. And the guy going into Super Standoff Mode and pulling out weapons and all the while he doesn't realize that half his head's been cut off. And the "oh poopie" look when he does realize it. Bwa ha ha!
At least as funny as 300. I can't believe there isn't a Rifftrax for this thing. How is that even possible?
One thing I will give Underworld credit for (OK, the only thing) is the gender swap on the usual stereotype. I mean, usually when you have a chosen one that's being fought over and chased and captured and uncaptured and recaptured and who doesn't really do much, but who has a lover who is constantly bailing them out and doing really kick-ass things to do it, usually the chosen one is female and the ass-kicking lover is male. This was a fairly nice change of pace. Except that the movie's awful.
End conclusion on Underworld: hilariously horrible.
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