Stupid Linguistic Sexism, Plus! Person of Interest: Not Interesting
Why are all the really great and expressive wossits for women, and not men? By wossits I mean... mean things to call people, but I can't remember for that right now. Perjoratives?
Anyway, like, if I want to say something mean about a girl, I have: hag, nag, cow, harridan, wench, witch, bitch, whore, hussy, shrew, viper, she-wolf, scold, biddy, beldam, crone, fishwife, harpy, fusspot, the ol' battle-ax-to name but a few.
But if I want to call a guy something mean, what do I have? Bastard, son of a bitch (both of which imply something mean about his mother), jerk, ass, idiot-these things are not really gender specific, nor do they express my dissatisfaction with this hypothetical man insofar as he fails to live up to my expectations vis-à-vis men. And epithets-ah, that's my word-along the lines of dudebro are really context dependent, and male-oriented ones like dickstain are just kind of gross and don't seem as insulting as calling a woman promiscuous, ugly, fat, annoying, or burdensome. It's so unfair.
Hey English language, start coming up with some words for men who suck. This is the 21st century: we may not have flying cars, but we sure as hell have sucky men. I need something to call them besides "the GOP".
Haha, kidding.
No, I'm not.
But that's not why I need some good insults.
In other news, I tried really hard to like Person of Interest. I did. I wanted to, 'cause it's kind of near-future science fiction, and I try to support sci-fi shows, even sucky ones, but it's just so blah. And I confess, I hate CBS dramas; CBS makes the worst dramas ever. They're all so generic and not at all funny, and I love funny things. Funny things, and Law & Order. I would happily watch a channel that was all L&O, all the time. (Between USA, TNT, Chiller, ION, Cloo, and Oxygen, TV practically is all L&O, all the time, anyway. Except for the painful NCIS marathons-let's not talk about Donald Bellisario, his vendetta against happy endings, and his love for, shockingly, CBS.) And PoI had such an interesting premise, because it's all happening right now and we should totally be terrified.
Yeah, except that if this is even close to an accurate representation of the crap the government has to work with, I am so not scared. At all. I mean, you come up with a magic algorithm that predicts that some people are going to be in trouble based on communications and behavioral patterns, but for some reason, it can't give you a clue? I mean, it makes those assessments based on data points, and what, it can't take five minutes and print you out a copy of the data points that got that person flagged as potential trouble? Apparently not, because it's like, magic, so it can predict problems, but it can't say why it thinks they are problems. Come on computer, show your damn work. Even third graders know how to show their work.
Basically, this algorithm isn't even sophisticated enough to do long division.
And that means the protagonists have to spend a lot of time investigating to find out what kind of trouble is going to happen. Which fills time, but is boring, because neither of these guys is Lenny Briscoe. Or even Ed Green. Or even Cyrus Lupo. I'm not asking for a lot here. Some personality, maybe. One-liners that are actually funny. But no. CBS is made for old people who have never heard of the internets, and they might die if someone cracked a smile.
Whatever, CBS. I am so over you. Except for The Mentalist and only because Simon Baker is fit.
Bastards.
Anyway, like, if I want to say something mean about a girl, I have: hag, nag, cow, harridan, wench, witch, bitch, whore, hussy, shrew, viper, she-wolf, scold, biddy, beldam, crone, fishwife, harpy, fusspot, the ol' battle-ax-to name but a few.
But if I want to call a guy something mean, what do I have? Bastard, son of a bitch (both of which imply something mean about his mother), jerk, ass, idiot-these things are not really gender specific, nor do they express my dissatisfaction with this hypothetical man insofar as he fails to live up to my expectations vis-à-vis men. And epithets-ah, that's my word-along the lines of dudebro are really context dependent, and male-oriented ones like dickstain are just kind of gross and don't seem as insulting as calling a woman promiscuous, ugly, fat, annoying, or burdensome. It's so unfair.
Hey English language, start coming up with some words for men who suck. This is the 21st century: we may not have flying cars, but we sure as hell have sucky men. I need something to call them besides "the GOP".
Haha, kidding.
No, I'm not.
But that's not why I need some good insults.
In other news, I tried really hard to like Person of Interest. I did. I wanted to, 'cause it's kind of near-future science fiction, and I try to support sci-fi shows, even sucky ones, but it's just so blah. And I confess, I hate CBS dramas; CBS makes the worst dramas ever. They're all so generic and not at all funny, and I love funny things. Funny things, and Law & Order. I would happily watch a channel that was all L&O, all the time. (Between USA, TNT, Chiller, ION, Cloo, and Oxygen, TV practically is all L&O, all the time, anyway. Except for the painful NCIS marathons-let's not talk about Donald Bellisario, his vendetta against happy endings, and his love for, shockingly, CBS.) And PoI had such an interesting premise, because it's all happening right now and we should totally be terrified.
Yeah, except that if this is even close to an accurate representation of the crap the government has to work with, I am so not scared. At all. I mean, you come up with a magic algorithm that predicts that some people are going to be in trouble based on communications and behavioral patterns, but for some reason, it can't give you a clue? I mean, it makes those assessments based on data points, and what, it can't take five minutes and print you out a copy of the data points that got that person flagged as potential trouble? Apparently not, because it's like, magic, so it can predict problems, but it can't say why it thinks they are problems. Come on computer, show your damn work. Even third graders know how to show their work.
Basically, this algorithm isn't even sophisticated enough to do long division.
And that means the protagonists have to spend a lot of time investigating to find out what kind of trouble is going to happen. Which fills time, but is boring, because neither of these guys is Lenny Briscoe. Or even Ed Green. Or even Cyrus Lupo. I'm not asking for a lot here. Some personality, maybe. One-liners that are actually funny. But no. CBS is made for old people who have never heard of the internets, and they might die if someone cracked a smile.
Whatever, CBS. I am so over you. Except for The Mentalist and only because Simon Baker is fit.
Bastards.