Whitewash
The rest of this week’s posts will be a little different to usual, but before we get to them there’s something I wanted to mention here.
I don’t write about politics much on the Journal. The count in the column over there on the right tells me there’s 12 posts tagged under that heading, but even then they’re only broadly political and not really about any particular incident or headline. And that’s a deliberate decision on my part. Out in Meat Space you can’t shut me up about politics, certainly not after a couple of beers.
That’s reason one. I know what I get like. If the new Batman cartoon gets me all frothy about the brain, imagine what important things do to me. The Journal is meant to be an enjoyable diversion, for both myself and for you good folks out there. Losing my shit about the latest fuck-knows-what every single day would get pretty depressing pretty fast.
Reason two is that I’m acutely aware that not everything that makes it to your screens is the most thought-out, carefully-worded and insightful passage in the history of the language. Shocking, I know. Now, if I occasionally write something batshit crazy at four in the morning about toy robots, its actual influence on the rest of my life is negligable to say the least. For the moment, let’s put aside the ever-increasing likelihood of a hypothetical potential future employer googling me and then deciding that maybe the guy who gets all het up about the fate of the Tyrannosaur in Jurassic Park III isn’t the competent team-player they’re looking for. An ill-thought-out screed that you don’t really mean about a hot-button political issue, on the other hand, has the potential to seriously screw up your life. And I don’t need that pressure at four in the morning.
Does that mean I don’t think it’s important to have political views? Or to engage in political debate? Of course not. I don’t think a lot of the debate that happens online is always particularly useful, but that doesn’t mean it’s always unimportant. I just don’t really think that’s what the Journal’s for, and believe me if I thought there was something important that I just couldn’t shut up about, I’d bring it up.
Two things have seriously pissed me off recently. I’m not sure I’m able to articulate appropriately why they irritated me so much, but I don’t really want to let them slide without a remark.
The first I found out about via two posts by David Brothers over at 4thletter!, and was also covered in a post by Jonathan Bernhardt at Funnybook Babylon. I have nothing to add but a deep-felt conviction that there are times when the sheer fucking ignorance of my fellow human beings makes me long for the day when the Martians turn up and blow us all the fuck away.
And then the second was the recent rumour that Jake Gyllenhaal will soon be playing the Prince of Persia.
Wow. What great casting.
Perhaps they can black him up for the role. Perhaps he can put on a comedy Asian accent. Perhaps the production company is anticipating that there will be no kind of outcry from the country currently occupying the bit of the world historically known as Persia because they never ever fall out with the Americans, do they?
This is fucking insane. Who thinks this is a good idea? Does anyone not realise that a clue to the ethnicity of the main character is right there in the pissing title?
Bring on the Martian death rays, I say.
