Strangest Sequel Name Ever

So another sequel to "The Fast and the Furious" is apparently coming out soon, and it's called "Fast and Furious." No subtitle, no number -- all the did was take out the "the"s. Amazing.

This is unprecedented in the field of "sequel names that sound too much like the original." The previous champion in this category was "Aliens," the sequel to "Alien." That one was plenty annoying, because you always had to add extra explanation whenever you referred to it, as in "I liked 'Alien,' but didn't care for 'AlienSSSS,' you know, the second one."

"Fast and Furious" easily beats that. Not only will no one understand which movie you're talking about (there will be a lot of "oh, you mean the ones that's in theaters now, gotcha"), but also no one will be able to say "you know, the fourth one" because no one will actually care enough about this crappy franchise to recall whether this is the fourth one or the third or the twentieth. I only know it's the fourth one because I just looked it up on IMDB. The second one was "2 Fast 2 Furious" (dumb name, but accomplishes the basic task of connecting it to the original while communicating that it is a sequel) and the third one was "The Fast and the Furious: Cars Go Vroom!" (No, not really, and in fact, I just gave away the whole plot. Sorry.) The third one was "The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift," which I think was about driving sideways or something?

Of course, I've never seen any of these movies, and I'm sure I never will. I'm pretty sure the basic idea is this:

Vin Diesel: My penis is very large.
Some Other Guy: My penis is larger.
Hot Chick: I will have sex with whoever's penis is larger.
Vin Diesel: I will demonstrate my superior penis size by driving very fast.
Some Other Guy: I will also.
(Cars go vroom.)

So I'm using brain space on this whole thing only because of my singular passion for movie sequel names. I wish that were my job, just making up movie sequel names all day, every day. Here are some other suggestions for the fourth "The Fast and the Furious" film:

"The Fast and the Furious: Faster and Furiouser"
"The Fast 4 the Furious 4: Fastin' 4 Furiosity"
"The Fast and the Furious: Zoom! Bang! Boobies! More Zoom!"
"Fasty McFurious: Dublin Drift"
"Grandmaster Fast and the Furious Four" (That one's for the old-school rap fans in the house)
"Fast. Furious. The. And. The."
"Excessively Fast and Gratutitously Furious"
"'I'm Furious at How Fast Those Cars Are!' That's What Lame Dudes Say"

Any of those would have been superior to just "Fast and Furious." It ain't that hard, folks. 

Things I Hate: TV Ads that Try to Make It Touching to Work Instead of Being with Family

That's a long title, and requires a bit of unpacking. So I feel like I'm always seeing TV ads that depict some wonderful technology that allows career-obsessed businesspeople to "connect" with their children and work at their white-collar jobs at the same time. The "connect" in there does not have a sufficient number of ironic quotation marks. Let's try it again: ""connect"". Maybe ""connect?!?!?"" (and I'm also doing air quotes at the same time, but you can't see them).

My point is that these ads are always meant to be touching and they always depress the hell out of me. Most involve some guy on a business trip sitting at some faceless hotel and then linking up his Microsoft brand QualityTimeWithJohnny microprocessor so that he can wish happy birthday to his kid. That's plenty depressing on its own. One recent one was even more brazen though: Some dude's showing his boss some building plans through some InterWebconference-inar-i-doo, and then the camera pans up, and hey! It's an adorable kid on the beach! Hi, Junior! The guy's at the beach with his kid! Isn't it adorable! 

No, it's not, not at all. Its deeply offensive, in fact. You're at the fucking beach with your family and you're still working at your dumb-ass job? That qualifies you for the Worst Father of the Year Award. Why not get some sales calls done during your kid's graduation ceremony? Hey, you could squeeze in a board meeting at the hospital while your child is being born! You can have it all, and simultaneously!

These ads always have voiceovers about "now you can make time for those who are truly important." But you know what? If your family was truly important to you, you wouldn't be at a sales conference in Yuma while your kid has a birthday party. You wouldn't be looking at schematics rather than helping your kid build sand castles. You would be with your kid, accomplishing nothing but being with your kid.

I know, some people have demanding jobs. My point is, quit those jobs. Take something lesser. If your family is truly important to you, work less hours so you can spend more time with them. If that means less money, so be it. If that means sacrificing your all-important Career, fuck your career. Careers are for the selfish. Real people have jobs. 

I'm overstating the case, per usual -- people should be able to pursue jobs that challenge and interest them. But this attitude of "having it all" really gets to me. There's a very sick and very American idea that everyone should be able to work extremely hard while also being the greatest parents ever. In reality, it's always one or the other. 

And what exactly does this career obsession get people? Nicer houses that then collapse in value? It's not like we're in a developing country where you have to work like a dog just to survive. There are plenty of blue-collar folks who might not be well-off but survive just fine, thank you, on 40-hour-a-week jobs. Of course, there are also plenty of blue-collar folks who have to work three jobs to support their family, but that's a different story with a whole different set of issues. We're taking about the upwardly mobile, who work prestigious, crazy-hour business jobs and do it by choice, completely for their own selfish reasons, regardless of what they tell themselves.

And I can hardly object to someone wanting to torture themselves with insane jobs if they're the only ones who suffer. It's the same reason I believe in legalizing drugs: Hey, if you want to kill yourself, be my guest. If you have such an urge, the world would probably be better off without you. Just don't take innocents down with you. 

Kids would qualify as innocents here. Kids don't need "quality time," which implies trying to maximize the efficiency of time spent with your kids so as to pack in as much fun as possible, like he or she is some kind of cog in an assembly line that needs specific amounts of caring each day. Kids need "quantity time." They need parents who sit around with them and do a lot of unstructured nothing. That's how you truly develop bonds with children. You can't manufacture or manage these kinds of things. They just happen with time.

Maybe in the current economy this seems like a crazy notion, to actually try to work less, when so many people are not working at all. But this is more of a core American concept, this Work Uber Alles, that all work is good and there is no limit to how much work you should be wiling to do, that has always baffled me. It's not necessary to undergo this to have a high standard of living -- in fact, people in most developed countries take it much easier than we do. Any European in August is not looking at schematics, I'll tell you that. 

I've been beating up on the businesspeople, but the core of the problem is American institutions themselves, and the expectations they have. For example, most large law firms expect their new hires to work 70 hours a week. Why? What's the point of putting them through that kind of hazing? To make them lose their families so they can devote themselves fully to making money for you?

I saw an article saying that old crusty lawyers were actually complaining about how the new crop isn't willing to put in those kind of hours. Good for the new crop, I say. Fuck you, old man. I deserve to have a job I like and also be able to sleep and eat and know other human beings. 

This Work Uber Alles attitude in America is perpetuated by macho bullshit about being tough and working hard, but it actually has its roots in Puritanism. (This is the part where you fall asleep, if you haven't already.) A guy named Max Weber, a founder of sociology, wrote all about it in a great book called "The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism." Basically, in the olden days, when people were even dumber than they are now, all people cared about was whether you were making it to heaven. John Calvin, however, thought that heaven was predestined for some people, and you couldn't buy your way in, as the Catholics thought. So a bunch of people believed Calvin, and they became Calvinists.

Maybe Calvin was trying to get people to chill out and stop worrying about heaven. It's sort of like telling who a kid who won't shut up about going to Chuck E. Cheese's "we'll go when we can. Now go play." But just as that won't work, Calvin's brainstorm didn't work either. People instead started looking for outward manifestations of some inner "chosen"ness. One way to tell if you were destined to be heaven-bound is if you're well-off. This really appealed to people who were well-off, particularly merchants who weren't really accepted in higher society: Hey you know all this money that I squeezed out of weak suckers and don't really need? Turns it out it makes me a saint! I dig this religion!

Meanwhile Catholics still believed poverty was a virtue, and thus let monks go live in a distant hillside and try it out while they amassed wealth. But still, it was an ethic, and wealth was not necessarily a sign of being good.

In America, though, as the Calvinists, including Puritans, swarmed across the land, they brought this idea that greed is heavenly and set it as a firm belief. But they exercised it in sort of a pious way, not making a show of their wealth and fetishizing work instead of conspicuous consumption. Weber quotes Benjamin Franklin saying that every moment of the day should be spent working in some way, always adding to your revenues while minimizing costs. That quote really made me hate Benjamin Franklin for a long time until I learned that he retired at 40 and then spent the rest of the time being a celebrity, going to an occasional Constitutional Convention and then spending the rest of his time snorting blow off of hookers' girdles as he sped down the cobblestone roads in his Porsche. He was kind of a Bill Clinton, really. 

Anyway, this new fetishization of work turned out well for us, because industrialization came along and Americans saw an opportunity to really amass some big, big, big wealth and thus get into Super-Duper Heaven (which has better waterslides). Meanwhile, Europe was still busy wearing painful clothes and then taking out their uncomfortableness on each other in the form of bloody wars, and America came out on top. That's all of human history for ya. You're welcome.

Point is, our American worship of work has deep roots and probably isn't going anywhere, as your society, our religious life, and our economy were all largely founded on it.  So why am I even bothering to fight it? I don't know. I'm tired now. I'm taking the rest of the day off. 

Things that Smart, Cool People Think Are Great but Really Aren't, At All: Joss Whedon

This is a difficult topic for me to discuss openly. This is something that I feel very strongly about but that directly contradicts the deeply held beliefs of many of the people whom I love the most in this world. These are people whose perspectives and sensibilities are typically impeccably attuned with mine, whose opinions I usually hold in the utmost regard. My wife, my sisters, my brother-in-law: all love Joss Whedon with all of their hearts and souls. And boy oh boy I really can't stand him.

Even academics in the humanities, whose only real job is to have good taste in stuff and then yak about it, talk rapturously about his work and teach entire classes about him. Something is awry here -- I'm fundamentally out of sync with my people. I have to try to work this out. I don't like feeling this alone. 

For those who don't know, Joss Whedon is the creator of "Buffy the Vampire Slayer," "Angel," "Firefly," and now "Dollhouse," the last of which I just tried unsuccessfully to sit through tonight with my wife. And I really tried. My wife had talked it up like it was the new best show ever. I hope I didn't hurt her feelings, but halfway through I had to turn away and play on the computer. It was just that painful.

No mediocre show would ever be this painful. Any show that doesn't even try to be original or interesting  (for example's sake, let's say "Two and Half Men,") would just wash over me in a numbing haze, after which I'd sit up and say, "Wait, that sucked!" But at least it wouldn't jab me in the gut while it was going on. Well, maybe it would. "The Housewives of Orange County" does, and it isn't anything but bad, bad, bad.

But "The Housewives of Orange County" hurts me in a more crass and obvious way, because it blatantly offends my values -- Joss Whedon shows are much more subtle, reaching deeper into my gut and offending values I didn't know I had.

OK, there are many good things about Joss Whedon shows. They often have very creative plots, for example. The high-concept episodes can be very inspired. Hair and makeup seems adequate. But the fundamental problem is the dialogue. It's always dreadful in a very unique way, a way I have trouble describing. In the spectrum of terrible dialogue, it's on the opposite end of the kind you'd find in any "Mystery Science Theater 3000"-type movie, in which the dialogue is contrived to serve the plot or is ridiculously melodramatic or just generally shows the signs of being written by dumb people with a tin ear for how real people really talk. In Joss Whedon shows, it's smart people, who are probably very nice in real life, writing smarty-pants dialogue that shows they have a tin ear for how real people really talk.

An example is in order. I can't find the exact quote I'm thinking of from tonight's episode -- hopefully I soon will and I'll revise this later. This exchange will do in the meantime.

OK, so the guy who created this ace of assassins or whatever (Boyd) hands a gun to Eliza Dushku (Echo), who is one of the assassin people. 

Boyd (handing Echo a gun): Do you know how to use this?

Echo: Four brothers. None of them Democrats.

OK, on the surface, students, this could possibly be a funny concept. Democrats don't have guns. This is probably something that "The Simpsons" has used to good effect at some point.

But this exchange takes that concept and delivers it such a ham-handed, look-at-me-aren't-I-clever way that it completely kills it. It's as if some blundering chunkhead got ahold of all "The Simpsons"' joke topics, ate them, and then puked all over an action film. 

But I don't know if that's even Simpsons-worthy, actually. I'm tempted to believe that the line above is a result of someone going to an irony mine that has long ago been tapped, dredging up some sludge, taking it home and calling it gold. 

Maybe a great actor could actually turn that shit into gold. Meryl Streep could say a line like that and make it seem like it's a joke for the sake of the other characters, one that might actually make sense within the narrative, instead of just seeming a wink and a nod at the audience. 

The problem is that in all Joss Whedon shows, all parts are performed by third-rate actors who aren't up the challenge. They don't ever seem like people who could ever come with a quip of any kind, good or bad, on the spot. As a result, all the dialogue seems so "written" that it keeps pulling you out of the action.

And a key problem is the context of these lines: in Joss Whedon shows, these kind of overwritten arch-clevernesses are usually in the midst of some hard-boiled moment, as in the above scene of being handed a gun. I guess it's supposed to be funnier, or cooler, or something, that these characters are able to quip "witticisms" while in the midst of some tense, tough-guy situation. Maybe it's supposed to make them seem even tougher. For me, it just ruins everything and makes them seem like annoying, showy pricks. I'm thinking "OK, yeah, you're hilarious, just take the damn gun." And then here comes a giant, slobbering, ugly monster -- nothing wrong with that -- but then you get a cloying, smart-ass quip that some good guy tries unsuccessfully to toss off -- "Someone needs a good spa treatment!" -- and all the tension it shot straight to hell, as if the screenwriter popped his fool head out from the machine and says "Hey, wasn't that hilarious! Ha ha! Aren't I clever! OK, now back to the action."

Also, Joss apparently gets a big woody when it's tiny, young, attractive women delivering these unfunny quips in the midst of action sequences. And I'm all for it in principle. I'm a strong believer in feminism and fundamentally believe that women should be whatever they want to be. I defend to the death their right to do it, even if I feel it's extremely disappointing to see that what they would want to be is action heroes delivering lame quips. Action heroes delivering lame quips suck. Action heroes delivering lame quips are just men with inadequacy issues who are so intimidated by life's complexities that they can't deal with them in any way besides pretending they can punch and shoot and quip their way through them. Ladies, don't buy into that bullshit! You're accepting the oppressors' flawed and violent worldview. You're being as prickish as the pricks from whom you're freeing yourselves. You've got Stockholm syndrome, embracing the ways of your captors. It's as if black people, once freed from slavery, decided to dress up as plantation owners and go to cotillions. 

OK, maybe I went WAAAAY too far there. But that's a side issue -- the fact that these characters are women really isn't anywhere near the core of the problem. The core of the problem is that it's all comic-book shit dressed up in a good budget and competent plots. It's unrelateable characters spewing trite dialogue while doing macho wish-fulfillment things, thus inspiring hero worship and panting fanboys and etc.

I'm no psychologist. And I haven't ever learned much about Joss Whedon. But I predict that his formative years went something like this:

1. Youth and adolescence spent reading comic books. That was about it.

2. In college, his eyes were opened to women. Maybe he took a few Women's Studies courses and really dug it. He gained an appreciation for women as they really are, as opposed to the horny, lonely male's conception that he'd seen in comic books. Good so far, right? The kid's growing up.

3. Here's where he went wrong: He couldn't get away from the comic books. He awkwardly shoved the Women's Studies stuff into the world of comic books. Granted, that's a world that could probably use it. When your vision of womankind is an amazon wearing a bustier, maybe a little feminism could help.

And it does make for an improvement, I'll grant that. But, at the risk of being repetitive, that's basically just painting shit gold. The basic problem is that comic books suck. They really, really do. They are all oversimplified tropes and cookie-cutter characters with farcically clear-cut conflicts and ridiculously bulging muscles and no discernible human characteristics. And this is all so sucky that anything with a foundation in comic books, no matter how modernized, will suck too.

OK, fine, there are great comic books out there. I've read graphic novels that I found to be terrific. But those are drastic departures from the main comic book theme of simple-minded wish fulfillment, of power porn for the powerless. Maybe they're great for teenagers who really do need porn and are pretty powerless -- I don't know. I have a feeling that Superman is just the male version of Barbie: a culturally constructed ideal form that is never truly attainable and only serves to foster deep-seated feelings of inadequacy. Maybe.

But anyway. Despite all apparent evidence to the contrary, I really don't have that much animus towards comic books. Fine, comic book fans, go your own way, wave your freak flag high, I don't care. We all have escapes -- mine is fantasy baseball, which is just as stupid in different ways. 

Joss Whedon shows, on the other hand, tear at my soul, and I'm still left wondering exactly what values of mine they so offend. Perhaps it's not actually a matter of values being offended. Perhaps it's more about what I started this with, about seeing everyone else put it in the pantheon of Things Smart, Cool People Love, along with "The Simpsons" and "Seinfeld" and all of these other great cultural achievements (and I don't mean that sarcastically) that I totally get, a hundred percent. And I can feel a deep kinship with all the Smart People through these common touchstones ... but then it comes to Joss Whedon shows and I'm like, "Hold on, what? Really? That leaden line delivered horribly didn't bug you? OK, yeah, sure it had the exterior trappings of Simpsonian or Seinfeldian cleverness, but it wasn't clever, not at all; it was un-clever in a freakish, perverse way, like a puppy that should be cute and is indeed fuzzy and small and happy but then has only one eye in the middle of its forehead. Can't you see that it only has one eye? Am I the only one who feels this way? Am I the freak here? Do I have no one?"

OK, that's a bit dramatic. It's just a show, and everyone has different opinions. And maybe I put too much stock in opinions about trivial things like TV shows as far as gauging deep kinship. But it's just very rare for me to be so at odds with everyone I know and love. And I don't like it. I like peace and togetherness. I want to be with you all. But somehow I can't.

"Man, get this guy a dry rag and shrink pronto, kemo sabe!"

Ha ha, yeah, that's hilarious, Joss. Fuck you, Joss Whedon. Fuck you. 

My Grand Organization Plan

1. This country needs the metric system. When they tried to roll it out in the late '70s, Americans behaved like little children who didn't want to go to the first day of kindergarten. They pouted, refused to use it, shot bulletholes in KPH signs on the highway (seriously, they did) - come on, you babies! Every other developed country has been a big boy and accepted it. We need to do the same. Plus, it would have the added benefit of making Sammy Hagar's song "I Can't Drive 55" sound ridiculous. Well, more ridiculous.

2. Make all months 28 days. Then everyone could keep calendars in their heads. Everyone would know that the 27th is a Friday and the 1st is a Sunday, etc. (And we would make sure that the 13th happened on a Thursday or something, which would prevent any more "Friday the 13th" movies from ever being made.) Then for all the leftover days get stuck at the end in a new month called Rocktober! (The exclamation point is part of the word.) At Rocktober!, all we do is rock. I think that part will sell this idea. 

3. No more time zones. Fuck it. It's too complicated and annoying. I spend half my time trying to figure out if people are a few hours ahead of me or a few hours behind. (This might be my own mental block, but I didn't say these things would make things simpler for everyone -- I'm more concerned with making life simpler for me.) Everybody will have the same time simultaneously. For people in some countries, that means eating lunch at midday, which is 3 a.m. For others, it means "Lost" comes on at 12 noon, after they've finished a hard day's work. They're just arbitrary numbers anyway. Again, people will get used to it. 

4. Along the same lines, we have to rename either "east" or "west." I always get them confused. I'm always on the highway unsure if I need 94 East and 94 West. I'm sure it's just my mental block, but all the more reason to change it for everyone. I think the words are too similar. Let's call "west" something that's easier to separate from "east," like "flibadeefloo." It would also entertain the kids, because it's a silly word. And it would never, ever get old.

5. No more kitchen cupboards. Everyone gets two dishwashers. When one dishwasher is full of clean dishes, you take the dishes directly from that and use them. When they're dirty you put them in the other dishwasher.  When the other dishwasher is full, you run it, and then it becomes the dishwasher that stores clean dishes. Saves time and effort by cutting out the middleman of cupboards. Oh, and dishwashers will probably need big readouts saying "CLEAN" or "DIRTY" that come up automatically so you don't get confused. And some people may need more than two dishwashers, I guess, if they have big families. Most people could use fewer dishes though, in my opinion. At our house, we have different, specialized cups for juice, coffee, water, beer, wine, champagne, and martinis. That's too many glasses. Maybe we keep coffee mugs (it's really gross to drink coffee out of a glass -- I've tried) and standard glasses. That's plenty. 

6. Greetings will be simplified. "Hello" and then down to business. "Good-bye" and then I'm gone. No more "How are things," "Good to see you," "How's the cat,"  etc. on the front end and then "Thanks for having us," "Have a good weekend," "Good luck with the disposable enema," etc. on the back end. Takes too damn long. Especially when leaving a place after a small get-together -- you're stuck in limbo for a few minutes, because you're likely standing there with everyone else, who were all waiting for someone to be the first to think of a good excuse to leave, and you all have to get your coats on, and stand for a while as everyone does their various good-bye rituals, and oh, someone forgot their scarf, and ... bah. 

7. No more subjects in sentences. Only short, declarative sentences. "Like pizza." "Type silly crap." No more articles, either. Went to car. Drove to store. Picked up disposable enema. Used it. Fun.

8. We need a supreme ruler. A benevolent dictator, like Peter the Great. Someone who always has the best interests of the most people at heart and gets things done quickly. It's agonizing to elect a great, smart guy (Barack Obama) and then watch his plans slandered by Republicans who are just trying to confuse voters and score points, and then watching Congress dicker endlessly about this and that. I say, whatever the supreme ruler says, goes. Why has no one tried this before? It seems foolproof to me. 

9. While we're on the subject of politics, since when does everything have to have 60 votes to pass through Congress? It is supposed to be a simple majority, right? But then the people in the minority can say the word "filibuster" and we're supposed to let that shut everything down? I say, call them on their bluff. Make Mitch McConnell actually filibuster. I'd love to see him read the phone book 24/7. Put that on the news and see how many people get angry at McConnell for wasting everyone's time. Unless that would make everyone sympathetic, like he's making some kind of bold "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington"-esque stand or something. Hm, maybe I should pass this idea through committee first. Then I could build grass-roots support, go across the country promoting it, build alliances in the Senate, promise to support subsidies for whiskey-drinking racehorses to get McConnell's vote (joke explanation: He's the senator from Kentucky), make compromises that water it down to a proposal to maybe think about possibly making any filibuster-er read the phone book to themselves on their own time with a nice glass of scotch ... eh, never mind.

10. No more facial hair allowed on men. I'm sorry, but men have proven they can't handle it. I'm seeing more and more soul patches every day. We will have to get rid of some cool full beards in the process, but you can't make an omelet without breaking eggs. What we do is, we make all men go through electrolysis or whatever it's called to zap all those follicles to death. We could do it when they're young and make it sort of a rite of passage to manhood. You can get away with lots of horrible things if you call it a rite of passage to manhood.

11. We need more rites of passage to manhood. Not sure what exactly, but something that turns men into soulful, quiet, strong types instead of allowing to go through the late teen and early-20s period of douchebaggery, in which they wear fitted baseball caps backwards and drink lots of Budweiser and go "woo!" and think Dane Cook is hilarious. Maybe we could just outlaw Dane Cook. But that would only attack the symptom instead of the problem.  

12. Only one child per family. And everyone has to wear the exact same clothes, drive the exact same cars, and say the exact same things at the exact same times. And then Rod Serling has to pop out of nowhere and say "Man, this is the worst episode we ever did. We're not even trying any more ... in the Twilight Zone." 

Things Joe Finds Irksome: Being Told We Have Eight Planets Instead of Nine

Pluto is a planet. There. I said it. Come on after me, scientific community - I dare you. Your "logic" and your "classificatory consistency" and "your" "reasoned consensus" don't scare me"."

Seriously, though, I think it's fine to call Pluto a planet, even if it's barely bigger than its own moon; even if there are bigger things in the solar system that we don't call planets. If it's in the Oort cloud, it doesn't count in my book.

How come? Because I grew up with Pluto as a planet, and I'm comfortable with it as a planet, and we already have the mnemonic device with it as a planet in place (see previous Joe post). Basically, it feels like a planet to me.

To which you might respond: "Hey, Joe - where're you goin' with that gun in your hand?" And you smirk, because you're sure you're the first person ever to ask me that. Oh you are a clever one, aren't you? Well, guess what - I've heard that one about eighty-five thousand times. And you know what? Sometimes, it's actually funny. Depends on the delivery.

Anyhow, after all that, you stop smirking, and instead raise your eyebrow knowingly, and say, "Well, what about before they found Pluto? Those people grew up without Pluto as a planet, and they seemed to get through life just fine, thank you very much." And I agree with you, sirrah. However, those people are all either dead or like a hundred years old, so I don't care about them.

What I'm trying to say, and the thrust of this post, is this: there's all kinds of scientific truth that we as a society toss out the window in favor of stuff that we're familiar with, and that's okay. In fact, it's necessary.

I'm not talking about creationists, or the global warming naysayers, or the dumb people who think the Earth is flat (the round Earth is a well-funded conspiracy of the globe-building industry, you know.) I'm talking about the received, cultural-literacy-level scientific-mathematic knowledge of educated people. Much of which is wrong.

To wit: parallel lines never meet. Okay. But out in the universe, parallel lines meet all the time, or fan out in different directions. Because the universe is not a neatly-gridded cube. So Euclid gave it a good shot, but didn't quite get it right. And we've known this for well over a century now. Non-Euclidean geometry is a familiar subject for advanced mathematicians. But in fifth grade (or whenever geometry happens), what do we tell kids? Parallel lines don't meet. It's true, more or less, for most Earth-scale calculations, and with things like lines of latitude on a globe. (Another globe-manufacturer conspiracy, perhaps?) So it's a useful thing to be taught.

Or the atom. I'm not sure, but I bet they still teach kids about the parts of the atom: electrons, neutrons, and protons. And they show that nice little model of the little globes going around the big globe in the midd...hey! maybe there really is a giant globe-industry thing going on here! Anyhow, I'm pretty sure that they're not talking about string theory in middle school - that's my point.

The other half of which is, that's okay. Every field of specialty has its body of knowledge. Only a relative few people actually know what's going on in each field, and are actively discovering things and refining previous knowledge in that field. The rest of us don't need to know any of that, unless we're curious about it.

So give us our parallel lines, our centrifugal force, our atomic masses, yearning to quantum leap. And please, let us keep Pluto. I'll let you keep believing that Law & Order is a totally accurate picture of the legal system. Do we have a deal?

Things I Hate: Emotions

So I was watching "The Real Housewives of New York City" the other day, because that's something you do when you're married, and it's not as bad as you think. "The Real Housewives of Orange County" is too painful to watch, but the New York City chicks at least have some modicums of personality -- some of them anyway. 

Point is, there's a real-life countess on the show, and one of the ongoing fights was about an incident in which she insisted on being called "Mrs. De Money" or whatever her name is instead of "Luann" when speaking to their limo driver. "Why does it matter?" everyone asked quite reasonably. The argument went on very well for a while until Countess Luann DeSnootypants said "Well, it just makes me feel uncomfortable." And the other New York chick, who would normally stay on the attack until her opponent was crying in the corner and flagellating herself with barbed wire, suddenly let up. I was disgusted.

And I hated being disgusted because I hate emotions. What they ever done for us? Why do people get angry and start wars? Emotions. Why do people watch and enjoy "According to Jim"? Emotions. Why do people fall in love, get married, and have fulfilling lives? Emotions. Blech.

But seriously, I do think emotions are sort of a low-level, oversimplified program for connecting observations with actions. Like, when we were all lizards (in the 1980s, during the time of the TV mini-series "V"), we operated entirely by emotions. Thing moves past us quickly. Scared! We jump and run away. Thing looks edible. Happy! We eat it. 

But what if that thing moving past us was a hot female (or male, depending on your lizard-y sexual orientation), and we just blew our chances at some hot lizard sex? If we had an intellect, we could stop ourselves from overreacting and say "Well, hold on. The last ten million times I ran away, nothing chased after me, not even a little. Maybe this is a hot lizard of the sex I am predisposed to want to mate with. Is this the case, indeterminate fast-moving thing?" And then the fast-moving thing stops and says "Duh! 'Bout time you noticed -- I've run past you real fast ten million times already! What's it take to get a man around here?" And then "Let's Get It On" comes on the soundtrack and the lizard lovin' begins. 

Instead, without an intellect, we'd keep running away and die childless, and then wait for the slow march of evolution to create a genetic mutation that would tell lizards to stop and look at fast things before running away like a punk. Bah. I ain't got that kind of time -- I want hot lizard sex now. 

But I know, I know, we couldn't get rid of emotions entirely, or we'd have no motivation to do anything, ever. We'd just sit around coming to conclusions, most of which would be, "yeah, but why bother?" We need the emotions, but we also need the intellect to tell us when the emotions should shut the hell up. 

Which gets me back to Countess Luann De Pretentious. When she said it made her feel uncomfortable, the argument was over. Instead, the response should have been "Well, that emotion is wrong. Get over it." 

The way I look at it, emotions are a big lumbering lug who comes into a party and says "Eat!" "Fuck!" "Punch!" The intellect is, ideally, standing behind him, leading him on a leash and whispering in his ears, "OK, you can eat, but no fucking or punching. Understood?" 

Don't get me wrong -- I'm a namby-pamby liberal pants-wetting type who does believe in acknowledging emotions and crying and shit like that. But I think too many people feel all emotions are legitimate and should be acted on or at least expressed. Actually, a lot of emotions are stupid and should be ignored or changed. 

If you feel icky about gay people, that's an emotion you could get past, and not use it to fuel an insane paranoia about the evil gay agenda to turn everyone gay and abort all babies and abolish all pickup trucks and drink only cosmos and etc.  

Maybe it's all about judgment, knowing which emotions to act on and which ones to try to ignore. And I acknowledge that judgement is a very hard thing to get right. 

Example: When my dad left home and was trying to express emotion for the first time in his life, he would express everything, regardless of what effect it would have on others. I would answer the phone and say "hey" and then he would berate me for not sounding excited enough to hear from him. I would be thinking "hm, well, you just left home and shacked up with someone else, shattering mom's psyche and breaking our family apart,  and also you lied about where you were living for six months ... and I'm supposed to answer the phone and be like, 'Yo, what up, my nigga!!!!'?" But, see, I felt that, and didn't say it -- instead I said "Oh, of course I'm happy to hear from you, but I'm tired from thinking all day about how great you are ..." etc.

My point there is that I'm glad my dad was learning how to express emotions at the time, but he hadn't learned yet that it's not an all or nothing proposition. Some you express, some you don't, and the ones you don't express you should probably try to get over in other ways. You can change your emotions, too, by the way. It's very hard, usually requiring a lot of thought and self-reflection, but it's necessary to grow up as a person. I guess that's what therapy is right? Hm. I'll have to think about that. Rationally, that is. Not with my emotions. I hate my emotions!!!!!!!!! KILL!!!

Things Joe Finds Irksome: Mnemonic Devices

You know what I'm talking about, right? When people had to remember a list of something for a test, they'd come up with some clever sentence where the first letter of each word in the sentence corresponded to the first letter of each item in the list they wanted to recall. The ones I remember people using were for the planets and for the classifications of life. You remember that one, don't you?


King Philip Came Over And Ordered A Pizza For Lunch With Sauce.


Which, as we all know, stands for Kingdom, Phylum, Carnivore, Ostriches, Aphorisms, Oxygen, A'a, Phylum (part II), Foxtrot, Lunch, Wolfram, Species. Couldn't be simpler or more straightforward.

I always had more trouble remembering the mnemonic devices than I did whatever they were supposed to be mnemoning. Like the planets. When people were like, oh, you should just use the mnemonic device, I'd be like, okay, let's see - My Very Something Mother....um...alright, I know it's some kind of mother, so, hmm, what's a good adjective that could stand for Earth...? The whole point of the device was lost on me, because I was forced to use reverse mnemonification to reconstruct it.

I think that was largely because the devices always seemed so random. I mean, who's King Philip? Why was he coming over again? And what in the world does that have to do with genuses? If you're going to take the time to memorize something, why not just remember what you actually need to know, instead of going through the rigmarole of constructing some nonsense sentence that you then need to take the time to deconstruct for its first letters. Seems like a waste of time, especially in a test taking environment. No wonder our schools are doing so poorly. There's just not enough time to mnemonicize. All these kids, sitting there at test time, going, "Okay....My...Very...Elegant...Mothe..." Sorry, kid, time's up. Pencils down.

An educational system based on the mnemonic device is doomed to fail. It's time to demnemonicize our children.