TV and film SF has, besides a few exceptions, always been dumb. You want intelligent SF you’ve got to read. It’s the genre that may be the most difficult to translate successfully and they usually just pare it down to tropes. It’s often successfully heckled on TV however.

So we’re just going to continue to devalue the word genius? Insane may be accurate though. “Man, Convinced of His Own Cleverness, Embarks on Colossal Waste of Time & Energy.” His mom claims to be impressed however.

Your wife sounds like a Carlin fan.

Yeah that sounds great, really humane but 6 kids by 28, dead broke (and the article says these women are intelligent), no prospects, a little outrage seems appropriate. 

Damn, beat me to it! I’m willing to bet that lily-livered sack of shit is plenty afraid, of all kinds of smaller things besides.

This guy’s off the rails for sure but I think he’s responding to a narrative he’s probably experienced, the “white devil” narrative (which he obviously projected on you). Many whites are decent, loving human beings who recoil at ideas that condemn the race as evil, and even have a hard time accepting historical…

I’ve been accused of being a lover of minutia so I guess at first close reading of text was right up my alley, and trying to tease out layers of meaning that even the author themselves may have been oblivious too was fascinating. Don’t get me wrong I’m no expert literary analyst but I’ve delved. It’s just, after a…

Well, you’d be in a delightful minority for admitting as such. Before the IMDB message boards were taken down, one of the major battles on nerd movie boards was the comic book fan vs the movie fan. Unfortunately most of the posters taking the movie fan side (not all of course) were mean spirited trolls who dismissed…

I totally identify with your anecdote. I might add though, on a personal level I’ve come to find postmodern, poststructuralist analysis itself rather empty and unsatisfying, but that discussion leads down a rabbit hole I’m not sure I’m ready to fall into just yet (no alternative worthy of replacing and can’t return to…

Good point.

Yeah, but it seems a bit silly to get grouchy about RPO (which I haven’t seen) when it was pretty clear to everyone what they were going to get. I mean you can personally prefer your pop culture references be used with a bit more subtlety and restraint but this was never going to be that, and it was never pretending…

Ironically, there’s another story thread under this one about watching a show hit it’s stride. The author and many of the commenters are pretty certain these shows are already failures, but one of my biggest gripes with the networks the last few years is how quickly they ax new shows. I challenge people to watch the…

Maybe it’s because there are usually a dearth of those type of interactions in my life, I’m usually eager for intelligent, knowledgeable discourse. I live a blue collar life, surrounded mostly by people who think books should have stopped at the Bible. I’m also pretty close to a misanthrope, so most other interaction…

For people with so much “faith” they certainly come across as severely insecure. An insecurity I’m sure they’re trying very hard to suppress internally, unfortunately it can’t help but leak out. I’ve questioned their beliefs in face to face confrontations and been screamed at, and even assaulted. The vitriol they spew…

Most gangsta rap still empty, self-serving, nihilistic male braggadocio, more at 11.

Only if they plan on judging you or belittling you. If it’s to start a lively book discussion with another bibliomane I’m down.

Well, you obviously didn’t learn anything from it. Sorry, I couldn’t resist.

I moved from the midwest to the deep south in the 90's and my first job was as a hotel clerk, 3rd shift. I was fired for reading Heinlein’s “Number of the Beast”, and not for bad literary taste.

If it’s your book, dog-ear every page if you want to. If it’s my book you dog-ear, you’re a f’n barbarian.

Ah, Michigan the Belize of the Midwest. Well, that info. took the wind out of my sails anyway. I stand by calling you out for a statement claiming everyone in WI is stupid though, (it’s 90 % dumb at best) ha ha.