Hollywood's Book of Virtues

One of the great things about TV and the media is that they can make anything into a virtue. Anything at all. You can say something like

"One of the greatest things about this guy is that he never took no for an answer. Once he set his mind on something, he did whatever it took to get the job done."

This might be an admirable quality in, say, a firefighter, or a general. Not so much, though, when you're talking about a serial killer, or a terrorist, or a stalker. And besides, in my experience at least, someone "not taking no for an answer" is really annoying.

I mean, I don't know that there's a lot to recommend the career choice of street hooker. Unless you're Julia Roberts in "Pretty Woman". How romantic. Boy-Meets-Girl, Boy-Pays-For-Girl, Boy-Marries-Girl.

Here's an opposing viewpoint:

I loved "Pretty Woman"! It was about hope and love and finding the right person!

So, then, Julia Roberts wasn't a hooker? I mean, are there hookers in the world who aren't bitter, mean, and cynical?

What about "The Sopranos"? Don't they, like, kill people? A lot? Sure they have family values like loyalty and all, I mean, unless your family gets you mad. Then it's ok to kill them, too.

Apparently, on TV, you can be a Vampire spawn of hell, a hooker, or a hitman, and it's ok. Because you can still be a nice person, and a hero, and someone to be looked up to and emulated.

Does a hired killer have a work ethic? Probably. Can a hooker be kind and help people? Sure. But I guess there comes a point where your career choice says more about you than either of those things. I may be close-minded and judgemental, but I don't think it's ok to kill people or sell your body, and I kind of wonder about stories that seem to say it is.

You could make anything seem ok, really. There's always something good to say about someone. Charles Manson "had a single-minded devotion to duty". Adolph Hitler was "charasmatic and persuasive". That guy who smuggled a bomb onto a plane in his shoe was "innovative" and "thought outside the box".

It works the other way, too, if you think about it. You could make the case that James Bond was a misogynist, or that Captain Kirk was just a big ol' redneck.

I just think there comes a point when it's just stupid to try to say something nice about someone.

The Chicken Hawk Prophecies

I read recently that a group of scientists somewhere are working on cloning human tissue. Not entire humans, just organs like livers and kidneys and hearts, and eventually maybe even entire limbs like arms and legs.

I know that this would represent the absolute pinnacle of the biological sciences, and I should have a more humanitarian and compassionate reaction, but my first thought on reading about this was that it could potentially revolutionize the chicken wing industry.

I'm not sure why, but at some point in the recent past someone decided to cook and sell chicken wings. Just wings. Arguably the most fatty, least tasty, and smallest part of the chicken. To acheive this marketing miracle, whoever this guy was smothered the chicken wings in a sauce so hot that you couldn't taste the chicken anyway. And now, there are entire restaurant chains dedicated just to chicken wings.

Before the chicken wing phenomenon began, it's likely that the wings were laregely discarded as undesirable; so, I don't really wonder where the rest of the chicken is going. The wings were already there; an industry sprang up to create a demand for them. You could always go into a grocery store and buy drumsticks and chicken breasts.

This is similar to the present demand for chicken livers, in that there really is none. Well, except for here in the South, where they bread and deep-fry them. If you think breading and deep-frying liver sounds unusual, then you are most likely not from the South. And not just because they bread and deep-fry livers, but because they bread and deep-fry anything they can get their hands on. Crickets, frog legs, entire rabbits head and all, and even things that have been breaded and deep-fried once, they'll bread and deep-fry again. Anyway, the point is, demand for chicken livers is considerably less than demand for the rest of the chicken. This is how God intended it, and it's why the livers are so small.

Like most things in nature, though, man has managed to upset this delicate balance: It's forseeable that if the chicken wing phenomenon continues on its present course that there will come a time when the demand for chicken wings far exceeds the demand for the rest of the chicken. What then?

Well, they could just genetically engineer a chicken with bigger wings. I'm reminded for some reason of one of those 70's horror movies about poison ants and killer bees and roaches that eat human flesh. I mean, it sounds harmless enough to create a chicken with bigger wings, except that these science guys are probably going to create these huge predatory chickens that live in colonies like bees and swarm through populated areas, devastating entire cities in their wake.

I don't know what the answer is. I shudder to think it.