Monday, June 15, 2009

nerd hypocrisy, annoyances.

before we get going, i just had an observation about something that's going on with my life. i get annoyed by things. i mean, really, really annoyed by things. like, annoyed to the point that if i didn't have people to rant to about it i might go postal because i'm utterly out of my wits regarding the general idiocy of people and the nonsense they're up to. i have ridiculous bouts of road rage, and don't even want to know what kind of old man i'm going to be. i'm pretty damn grouchy already, let alone when i'm 70, all 70 year olds are grumpy.. what are 70 year olds like when they were grouchy as hell at age 25? anyway, the point of this rant was that there's this character i see at the rec literally every time i go, and he is fucking infuriating. i literally have to try my hardest not to strangle him. does this happen to anyone else or is this unique to me? he's this smallish (probably 5'8 or so) persian looking fellow who somehow is there literally EVERY SINGLE time i'm there, he wears a white polo with the collar popped (he must have 15 of them) and doesn't do anything but walk around aimlessly. i just look at his stupid face with incredulity.. utterly astounded at whatever the hell he's up to. i mean honestly, a white polo at the gym, with the collar popped. i just want to grab him and find out what the hell he's up to. and maybe hold him under water for 5 minutes or so, just until he stops thrashing.

first... one general complaint about the world and the way it is. true or false, when you are sitting inside of your car, you are required by law to be wearing a seatbelt? (true) True or false, your car weighs between 1,200 and 2,000 pounds? (unless you're an SUV/pickup driving asshole, also true) True or false, riding a motorcycle offers significantly less protection than does riding inside of a car? So ok. with these basic facts laid down, why in the name of everything holy are you allowed to ride motorcycles without helmets if i have to wear a seatbelt under threat of ticket? i drove from the 419 to the 513 today, spending significant time on I-75, and was (once again) blown away by the ridiculousness of the current state of affairs. if the justification for requiring seatbelts is safety, then how in the hell are you allowed to ride a motorcycle period, let alone without a helmet? it makes no fucking sense. unless you're wearing iron man's suit, if you get into a wreck on a motorcycle, you're getting fucked up (ask roethlisberger), but you are nevertheless still permitted to do it. meanwhile, i can't run an errand down the street without worrying about whether or not i'm going to get ticketed by johnny law, despite the fact that i'm sitting inside of a 1200 pound metal beast and haven't been involved in a wreck in a decade. what the fuck? if that situation makes sense to you, contact mr. bernard madoff regarding some incredibly valuable commodities.

now. onto the subject of nerd hypocrisy. those nerds are a fickle bunch, they really are, and there's really no predicting what they're going to love and what they're going to hate. lets take two films that came out this summer, both nerd-centric in aim and scope. i'm talking about star trek and terminator: salvation. both solid films.. is star trek better? absolutely, but it's not out of this world better or anything. as i've said before, i give terminator a 7.9 and star trek an 8.8. read the reviews online... everyone's acting like star trek is the essence of christ himself devoted to celluloid, and that terminator is the largest pile of shit since gigli. why is this you ask? well. several reasons. first, the dude who directed terminator is named McG. yes, you read that right. his name is joe mcginty nichol, and he goes by mcg. like mclovin, only not as cool. clown? absolutely, but is that REALLY a reason to hate somebody and just rip everything they do to shit without even going in with an open mind? i mean, the guy who we elected president's name is Barack Obama. if that's not fucking clown by mid-american standards, i don't know what is. coupled with this McG hatred is christian bale backlash. once the nerd god who could do no wrong, the dark knight has been showing a few chinks in his armor as of late. first with the mom/sister assault thing, then the infamous "are you professional or not?!" outburst of the spring. it's too the point where i've actually heard people rip his performance of bruce wayne/batman (particularly the "batman voice", completely ignoring the fact that he just stole that from Michael Keaton). you don't believe me that terminator is actually decent? just look at the worldwide box office. terminator has made twice as much money overseas as it has domestically. think about it, in europe they actually like people with weird names like mcg. that should tell you that the movie is actually pretty damn good. so while terminator is experiencing a perfect nerd storm of sorts destined to cause a nerd backlash, star trek is directed by the new nerd wunderkid of the moment, jj "i had a bad acid trip and helped think up lost" abrams. like i said before, star trek IS better than terminator, it's just not 10X better. and i'm ok with nerds ripping it, i'm just not ok with HOW they're ripping it. nerds go find criticisms that are present in every fucking work of fiction and run wild with them when they want to deadpan something. look, we're talking about a movie that's set in 2018, when robots have wiped out most of humanity and north america is a post-apocalyptic nuclear wasteland. sorry if everything doesn't make perfect logical sense. let's talk about some widely beloved movies and some plotholes. the dark knight and star trek. first, in the dark knight.. how in the fuck does the joker accomplish his ridiculously intricate criminal conspiracy? apparently all he ever did personally was look menacing and carry around a potato peeler, putting smiles on faces and such. but we're somehow supposed to believe this whackjob is single-handedly bringing gotham to its knees? how about some exposition there chris? next, star trek. lets talk about the ridiculous shit that happens in star trek. first, people re-enter vulcan's atmosphere wearing only space-suits. did you hear about what happened to the space shuttle a few years back when it was missing some tiles? you can't just fly any old device into a planet's atmosphere... it will burn the fuck up. you'd have to be using some sort of heat shield, a cone or something if you will. second... ships fly through BLACK HOLES multiple times in the film. maybe jj or someone should have read a physics book. black holes destroy matter at the atomic level, even light cannot escape, but somehow eric bana's ship is just chilling amongst an open singularity and he's BROADCASTING OUT of it? and the enterprise manages to escape when glass is cracking and shit? if fanboys think that's ok, but the fact that there was a plothole or two in terminator, maybe they should have watched nova in their youth. i'm not even going to address the shit about time travel, the fact that that shit is ridiculous isn't even worth mentioning.
- Now, don't get me wrong, i enjoy all of these films, my point is simply that EVERY film set in the future or involving super heroes (batman is realistic? really? let me tell you what would happen if batman really existed - he'd get shot 35 times with an AK on the third night he was out and fucking die. no ninja can dodge bullets) is going to have ridiculous plot holes that strain credibility because THAT SHIT ISN'T REAL. so to rip one work to hell while giving another one a free pass is just absurd. how do you look yourself in the mirror fanboys? shame on you.

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