Theory

[icycalm]

http://insomnia.ac/commentary/guide_to_ ... /prologue/

This is the thread where people can suggest sites for future columns. Like I said: one suggestion per person until I have covered it. It goes without saying that for most sites I'll be spending at most a paragraph of two, with the occasional exception -- I will most certainly not be writing 20 fucking pages for a random shitty blog.

Note that discussion on my comments on the various sites should not take place in this thread, but in each site's respective thread in the games sub-forum. Comments on Postback, for example, go in this thread:

http://forum.insomnia.ac/viewtopic.php?t=2290

[Peter]

I would like to see your evaluation of The Escapist.

[Pegote]

Found a typo:

Let no one be so stupid then as to view the scholar's decision to limit himself to a single field as reprehensible -- it as as little reprehensible as an athlete's decision to limit himself to a single sport -- for what other way is there of becoming a champion?

[icycalm]

Fixed, thanks.

[Choking]

Another typo:

There's nothing bad then about lists per se -- only about bad lists, and about pseudo-scholars who are shameless or naive enough to think they can waltz in out of fucking nowhere, grab a Wii and a Wii Fit board, play ten minutes of Wii Masturbation or Wii Sleeping, and then pretend to solve all the greatest problems of the field that people like me and Recap have been working on (mostly uncosciously at first, of course) ever since childhood.

[icycalm]

A perfect example of film scholarship. Note the importance of lists.

Frank Gilbreth was a real man, and the original book was co-written by two of his children. He was, they explained, a Time and Motion Expert, who broke down every task into its essential elements and then studied them to see how they could be done more quickly and easily. At work, he improved assembly lines. At home, he applied his theories to his family, believing that 12 children were as easy to raise as two, if you analyzed the daily family routine and assigned part of it to every kid -- even very small parts for very small kids. The unspoken assumption was that the father was the center of authority, he knew best, and his wife was his loyal co-pilot.

We know now that this model is a case of sexist chauvinism. Gilbreth's view of fathers is long out of date, and American men survive in the movies only as examples of incompetence, unrealistic ambition and foolish pride. Gene Siskel once started a list of movies with fathers in them, to demonstrate that Hollywood preferred whenever possible to have single mothers and avoid fathers altogether. If there had to be a father, he was (a) in a comedy, the butt of the joke, and (b) in a drama, a child abuser, an alcoholic, an adulterer, an abandoner of families, or preferably, all of the above. At some point during a half century of Hollywood fathering, "father knows best" was replaced by "shut your pie hole."

Cheaper by the Dozen review on rogerbert.com

[icycalm]

Note also how the scholar, though his research is impeccable, and his results speak for themselves, STILL manages to MISINTERPRET THEM (in his assumption, which he puts forward and accepts without any reasoning whatsoever, that the old model of fatherhood was worse than the new one).

He basically needs a philosopher to come in, TAKE HIS RESEARCH AWAY FROM HIM, throw his RETARDED CONCLUSIONS IN THE TRASH, and draw the correct ones.