unreleased rant diluted by ennui; nuts at work; H. back in town

[fflo]

Started this week already behind here at work---and that may be part of the reason I haven't gotten around to raging against the piece-o'-crap Super Size Me. Though even by the end of the film Sunday night my pique had already largely subsided. It did most everything fat-phobic I'd feared it would do (and a little I hadn't anticipated), plus its "experiment" was badly executed (and sans even pseudo-scientific control). But I'd have had a personal antipathy for the guy even if he hadn't pissed me off with the moviemaking, just from his classic redneck moustache style and proudly-displayed fraternity paddle. So maybe I'll spare ya'll the invective about the dozens of decapitated "anonymous" bodies demonstrating fatness, and the horrid sequence surrounding one guy's stomach-mutilation surgery, and other vile bile of that ilk.

Had a phone message from H., who is back in town. Of course that comes during a crazy busy week for me.

Comments

[queerbychoice.livejournal.com]

I really wish I had seen this about three hours before you posted it, because recently I had added someone to my friends list only to be appalled when the first entry he posted after I did so indicated that he had just come home from seeing Super Size Me and was now overwhelmed with the revelation of just how thoroughy "fast food is disgusting and obesity is disgusting." I commented, in an extraordinarily polite an unemphatic manner actually, that I could agree with the fast food part but not the latter. He then threw a ten-paragraphs-long fit saying how dare I as a random stranger come invade his journal and make condescending remarks to him (despite the fact that he was the one being severely condescending and all I had said was a single two-sentence comment indicating that I wished he would find a better way of phrasing himself than "obesity is disgusting"). Then some other friend of his replied to me in a largely more reasonable-sounding tone, saying that yes, it would probably be more useful to discuss health issues without insulting people's appearances, but that he thought the movie Super Size Me had done a good job of this. I said I hadn't seen the movie and was therefore not qualified to comment upon it, so I would take his word for it. And then I saw your entry.

And now I can't reply to the post anymore because the original "obesity is disgusting" guy has suddenly made his entire journal friends-only all the way back to his first entry in 2002, apparently all because of me and a simple two-sentence polite recommendation that he could find a better way of phrasing himself. I cannot believe that anything I said could possibly have been worthy of any of this melodrama. My faith in humanity has just dropped two notches.

[fflo.livejournal.com]

Part of my ultimate motivation in going was to be able to speak with some authority about whether the thing was part of the mass cultural demonization of fat, regardless of whatever else it may or may not turn out to be. Plus I did have some hope it might not go the way I feared.

Now you just gotta let go of that now-dead-to-you conversation over in that lj person's la-la-land of a life, right?

P.S.

[fflo.livejournal.com]

In recent years I have found it to be in my better interest to give up faith in humanity. Seriously! I am not out, yet, of hope for humanity, and I'm rooting for us---I really am---but I don't have much faith in human nature. We are just animals trying to get by in the world, after all, and any higher motivation is pure gravy. There are so many opportunities for us to be fucked up by our surroundings, one way or another, that I'm surprised sometimes how well we do.

I bet if we didn't live in the most privileged country in the world, we'd do a lot less well at some of it, too.