Steven Harper's Blog, page 81

Why I Won't See Alien:Covenant

My husband Darwin likes horror movies.  As a rule, I don't.  I do like SF movies, though, and here we have ALIEN: COVENANT, which combines the two genres.  This, I thought, would be a perfect date movie!  Horror for Darwin, SF for me.

Then I learned it has a gay couple in it.  A married gay couple.

You might think this would engender happiness.  Joy.  Even a certain amount a giddiness.  Instead, my metaphorical ears went back and my hackles went up.  I spent a few minutes looking up spoilers and discovered my hackles were justified.

I will not see this movie.  I will not rent the DVD.  I will not support this movie.  And I urge you to do the same.

SPOILERS (you are warned)

According to various on-line sources, the sins of the same-sex relationship portrayal are the standard ones we've come to expect.  First, although there were several initial shots to the contrary, there is little or no indication of a marriage--or any kind of relationship--between the two men throughout the film.  They don't touch.  They don't exchange endearments.  There was apparently a brief moment of hugging between them in a preview, but that scene has been cut from the film, and that preview has been removed from the Internet.  In other words, gay people are still invisible.  No LGBT characters are actually in the spotlight.  No LGBT protagonists.  Just a couple of background guys who may or may not be in a relationship.

But the worst sin comes early in the movie.  Hallett, one of the men, becomes infected with the alien infection, and a baby alien bursts out of his face.  (Not his chest, like in the other movies, but out of his freakin' face.  He's gay, so we have to up the nastiness.)  While the ship's captain leans in to murmur quiet apologies, Hallett's husband Lope whispers, "I love you" and then is forced to walk away.

One more time, we have the tragic gay.  Gay men continue to be the objects of tragedy and disgust and ridicule.  We're only interesting or worthy if we watch our partners die.  No happy relationships for the gay guy.  In fact, we're going to get an alien burst out of our faces, just to super-compound the tragedy.  Because, you know, just dying of an alien tearing out of your chest isn't bad enough for the gays.  Let's make it worse.

No.

I will not spend a dime for that movie.  I urge you to avoid it as well.

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Endless Surveys

Am I the only one who’s tired of the surveys?

Every I do business with sends me a “customer satisfaction survey.”  The plumber installs a new faucet, and the next day I get an email.  “How did we do?  Click here!”  I pay the electric bill, and a side window pops up.  “What did you think of our service?”  I order something online, and I get redirected to a new site.  “Do you like us?”  I pay for groceries, and the cashier hands me the receipt with a gentle demand to fill out an on-line survey.   “I get a bonus if you like my job,” she says with earnest puppy eyes.

My insurance company is the worst.  I get an email from them that cheerfully asks, “Would you mind completing a short survey?  It’ll only take five minutes.”  I delete it.  Two days later, another arrives.  “Hey, bro!  We haven’t heard from you about that survey.   Can you hit us up?”  I ignore it.  Another couple of days go by, and yet another shows up.  “ ‘Sup, brah?  Uh . . . kinda twisting in the wind here.  Haven’t heard from you.  Just wondering if you’re still interested in me.  Us.  But you know, whatevs.  Uh . . . fill out the survey when you get a sec, ‘kay?  Or not.  But let me know so I can move on.  It’s okay.”  And a few days later: “So you don’t like me, is that it?  You’re a real self-centered jerk, and I’m going to tell all the other insurance companies about you.  You freak!  You—oh, god, I didn’t mean any of that.  I’m such a mess.  Please, please, please fill out the survey.  I promise it’ll just take a second.”

Delete.

“Tell us what you think!”  “Rate us!”  “Grade us!”  Every company wants feedback, feedback, feedback.  It’s as if they’ve suddenly developed an inferiority complex. My money and continued custom isn’t enough—they need praise.

They’re mining data, too.  They already know where I live and how old I am and a bunch of other information about me.  Now they want to cross-index it with my responses.  On MY time.  No thanks.

But . . . but . . . PRIZES!  We’ll give you a gift card!  Well, a chance to win a gift card.  Well, a chance to enter a drawing to win a gift card.  Have you ever heard of anyone who filled out a customer satisfaction survey and then actually won something worthwhile?  Me, neither.  I did hear a rumor that my second cousin’s neighbor’s best friend’s wife got a fifty cent coupon for grooming after she said she liked the way the pet place stroked her shi-tzu, but don’t quote me on that.  I think the grocery cashier is in the same boat.  The store holds out a promise of a bonus if enough people give her a thumbs-up, but sets the bar so impossibly high that no one actually gets one.  When did any corporation give its minimum wage workers a real bonus?

We all want praise, I know, and as a society, we don’t hand it out often enough.  When the guys at my regular sushi hangout produced some exceptional sushi one evening, I paused on my way out the door and said across the bar to them, “You guys were =on= tonight!  Delicious stuff!”  And one of the waitresses thought I was the nicest guy ever.   Another time, my ex and I were having a bad day and we stopped for dinner at a restaurant, where the staff seemed to go out of their way to be extra nice to us, and we felt rather better for it.  I wrote them a letter of thanks and later learned the manager framed it.  Maybe if we said such things more often, companies wouldn’t feel the need to bombard us with surveys.

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Lost Morels

Morel mushrooms are a great delicacy, and they grow in Michigan in the wild. (When you saute them, they taste like steak!) You have to hunt for them, partly because morels are secretive, and partly because they get harvested by morel-sniffing Michiganders.

Most Michiganders who are into morels have a super-sekrit spot only they know of. They don't tell anyone where it is, and sneak out to that spot, often after dark, to harvest the tasty, rare morels. (I'm not kidding about the after dark part.)

Here's my secret: morels grow like crazy on my front lawn. Dozens of them. Every year. I walk out my front door and there they are. They don't grow on anyone else's lawn in the neighborhood--just ours. I don't have an explanation for it. Just my good fortune.

However . . .

My husband, whom I love more than life itself, contracted a lawn fertilizer company to goosh our grass. They came out a couple weeks ago. So this week, when I found this:




Are they safe to eat?  It rained a LOT in the two weeks between the times the lawn got gooshed and the time this year's crop sprouted.  Hmmm . . .

The question here is, do I love my husband more than I love morels?




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