A Small Selection of Rants

Rabid Lit Major
Mood - tired and sore but pretty happy...damn you, Liz! (Liz would be my friend who coaches me through workouts...my legs hate me and I hate her.) (Not really.)

Reading - "A Study in Scarlet" by Arthur Conan Doyle
Excerpt - "I have noticed such a dreamy, vacant expression in his eyes, that I might have suspected him of being addicted to the use of some narcotic, had not the temperance and cleanliness of his whole life forbidden such a notion" (Anyone who knows anything about Sherlock Holmes will enjoy the irony of this line.)

Ok, that's enough of that. Today, I wanted to look productive but also felt like being lazy. My solution is to put up two posts, one consisting purely of rants and the other an original piece that I already have saved on my computer.

To clarify really quick - An editorial is an opinion piece, usually for the news media (making it written by an "editor", hence the name.) A rant is the same thing, but without the pretension of being a legitimate piece of news and therefore holds more freedom to be generally angry and fewer requirements to justify the opinions. Lack of an employer breathing down my neck also means that my rants can be as long or as short as I like.

However, as with all editorials, I will preface these with a disclaimer.

Disclaimer:
These rants are works of opinion and do not reflect the views of everyone here at "Rabid Lit Major" (Some of the voices in my head disagree. And yes, I know I'm crazy, but some of the voices don't so keep it down, ok?) If you are offended by anything said in this rant, or if you wish to agree/disagree, feel free to write in the comments box. I do ask, however, that profanity be kept to a minimum because my blog is open to the public and not flagged for offensive material.

"Cool" language
Here is something that has always bothered me: why is it "cool" to sound like an idiot? I went to school in white-and-wealthy suburbia. 98% of the student body fell in the upper-middle class range. Our school was ranked one of the best public schools in the state. So why in the world did so many kids speak in rough slang and with terrible grammar? My brother goes there now and even he will pretend not to understand me when I use words exceeding three syllables and will ignore me until I rephrase the sentence in smaller words. (I know for a fact he knows what the larger words mean.) I think back to high school and I remember standing in the lunch line every day listening to some kid behind me saying things like "It ain't a big deal so I wish she'd get off my a** and sh** because I don't give f*** what she thinks 'cause she don't know what it's like" and all I can think is "Your dad is a lawyer and you are in a school that offers college-level English courses...who do you think you are fooling?"

And while we're on the subject...
Whose bright idea was it to use "gay" as synonymous with "stupid"? If I alienate readers with this post then they are the the kind of readers I want as far away from my blog as is virtually possible. As you will see from my later post, I think discrimination based on sexuality is one of the most misguided prejudices in the universe. As for the use of "gay" as an insulting term to describe something completely unrelated to sexuality as stupid...beyond exposing yourself as pathetically small-minded, you are also wasting an opportunity to use one of many much more kickass insults. I am a fan of "troglodyte", personally.

Speaking of gay...

I have this theory that the song "I Think We're Alone Now" is about a homosexual couple. If you are more familiar with the Tiffany cover from the 80s, you should know that it was originally released in 1967 by Tommy James and the Shondells and was written by a man. Now the song talks about how the two people in question are allowed to be friends but a romantic relationship would be forbidden. A close listener would also notice that no gender-markers are used in the song. In the sixties, who would be allowed to be friends but not lovers? A bi-racial couple probably wouldn't be allowed to be friends in the first place. If the parents/friends/etc cared enough about differing social classes to ban a relationship a friendship would likely be banned as well. Two boys being friends? Not a big deal. Just saying.

And while we're on the subject of music...

As you all know, I'm a big fan of clever lyrics in songs. However, a song does not have to have a deeper meaning to be good. Nor does it need to have exemplary musical technique or be avant-garde or...whatever. Sometimes a song can simply be fun. This is ok and is not something that is to be looked down on. This applies to movies as well. Just because I think a movie is stupid doesn't mean I didn't enjoy it. Did I think "Predators" was a clever movie? Considering that I predicted the order the characters would die in based on their race and personality within five minutes of being introduced to them, the short answer is "no." Did I enjoy two hours of mindless violence and explosions and drooling a bit over Adrian Brody, who I think is very attractive? Absolutely.

How did I do it?

There are eight characters in "Predators" (not counting the Predators and the Laurence Fishburne cameo). Boiling them down to racist profiling, they are as follows: Hispanic guy, Black guy, Russian guy, White-trash-convict guy, Japanese Guy, Doctor guy, Love interest, and Protagonist. This is, by the way, the order they die in. Do I consider this a spoiler? No. Why? I told my brother that would be the order they died in the moment they were all introduced...five minutes into the film. When he asked me after the film how I managed to predict it so exactly, I told him this:
Action movies are typically very racist...mostly because nobody cares enough to take them to task about it. Unless the token black man is the protagonist, he will die first. The only exception to this rule is if there's an Hispanic guy, especially a non-comedic one. Therefore, the first two deaths are Hispanic-guy followed by Black-guy. Protagonist must either survive or die last. Love-interest must either survive or die right before Protagonist in order to make him angry. Doctor-guy is the only truly "nice" guy of the group and seems harmless...so he has to turn out to be more evil than the rest and turn on them in the climax. He has to die right at the end for the full impact...probably by attacking Love-Interest. That makes the last three to die Doctor-guy, Love-Interest, Protagonist. This leaves us Russian-guy, White-trash-convict-guy and Japanese-guy. Of these, Japanese guy has to die last because he will probably find a samurai sword at some point and have an awesome sword fight that needs to be highlighted. Between Russian and Convict, convict had to die later because he was unarmed and it would make no sense for him to survive so long. By action-film law he therefore has to survive a stupid amount of time. I had all of this pegged in five minutes. It all happened. Even the finding of the random samurai sword.

Oh Japan...

Don't get me wrong, I kind of enjoy anime and manga. I have a huge respect for all styles of comic-books and will defy anyone who tries to claim they are not a valid form of literature. What throws me off is when otherwise-American authors create manga-versions of their work. Did the sequel to "Avalon High" really need to be a Japanese-style comic, Meg Cabot? How does that make sense? Maybe if the story had been in any way Japan-related...such as when Kill Bill took a break from live-action to give O-Ren's backstory in anime-style...but it isn't. More and more authors are jumping on this bandwagon and it's simply puzzling to me.

Speaking of novels I've seen adapted to manga...

Here's the thing Twilight-fans: I didn't hate the first book. I read it with an open-mind, having been told how excellent it was, and came away with the general opinion that it was ok. Was it mechanically well-written? No. Was it original? No. Did the story change my life? No. Did the characters inspire empathy or lust in me? No. On the other hand... Was I particularly bothered that general vampire-lore was ignored? Not really. Did I find it to be a decently cute young-adult romance? Absolutely. The first spark of dislike that Twilight inspired in me was mid-way through the second book when I realized that Bella was totally serious when she thought it was worth the risk of dying in a horrific way to hear the voice of the boyfriend that left her. Seriously? Your boyfriend leaves you, you have a delusion that you can hear his voice telling you not to hurt yourself whenever you do something dangerous, so you decide to ride down a street as fast as you can on a motorcycle without a helmet? When I realized she wasn't going to run into a tree and die a mangled bloody mess, as would have served her right, I put the book down and did not feel a hint of regret for not picking it up again. Bella is a boring, weak and pathetic character who is inspiring an entire generation of girls to hang all of their self-worth on their boyfriends and find over-protectiveness and stalking to be appealing traits in a romantic partner.

So there you go. Rants. Enjoy.