A Blog Named Sue

What do you do when all your enemies are friends

I've long wondered what would happen when conservatives realized that Israel, a nation made of awesome thanks to God's special awesomeness, practices socialized medicine. I mean, if Israel does it, it can't be bad, right? We're always supposed to do things the way those tough-minded, clear-eyed Israelis do it, right?

Um, maybe not. (Oh, yeah, that woman who yelled "Heil Hitler" to an Israeli citizen is, in fact, wearing and Israeli Defense Forces t-shirt. Your eyes are not deceiving you.)

In case there are any foreigners who haven't figured it out yet: when it comes to money, American conservatives will shit on you. Now and forever. More specifically, they will shit on you to defend some billionaire's money. What's even sadder is that they will never see a penny of that billionaire's money or gain any real material benefit for all of their shitting.

Look what they did to Great Britain. They've slandered the government of of one of our closest allies, implying that the National Health Service would let one of Britain's most prominent and respected citizens die because he would have been too expensive to care for. A few years ago, Great Britain was the one nation that "got it," that stood by the United States when Bush began his disastrous adventure in Iraq. To this day Britons continue to fight and die alongside our troops.

It all means nothing to them. Their outrage du jour demands that Great Britain be a nation goverened by heartless bureaucrats to whom human life means little or nothing. 

I'm glad they believe in a philosophy of radical self-reliance because at this rate they're going to run out of friends pretty quickly.

A program note

Just a heads up: from now on, whenever I think of Glenn Beck, I will picture him dressed like Pugsley Addams.

Nothing else to add to that, really. Carry on.

A scrub is a guy that can't get no love from me

One more thing about the new Sherlock Holmes movie: his love interest, predictably, is Irene Adler, the only woman who ever outwitted Sherlock Holmes. Conseqently, it's implied that Holmes is infatuated with her from then on. All well and good, but what I've never understood is why so many fans and pastiche writers think Adler was infatuated with Holmes. Fan fictions of romantic adventures between the two abound, and one Holmes scholar put forth the idea that Rex Stout's Nero Wolfe was Holmes' and Adler's bastard son!

I don't get it. She beat him! Why would she be infatuated with him? I ask any woman reading this: have you ever been into a man you thought was dumber than you? This is a woman who, before her marriage, was wooed by kings and princes. By comparison, Sherlock Holmes is not a fun date, unless eccentric emotional cripples fascinated by crime and murder turn you on. (You know when I put it that way I make him sound like potential school shooter.)

At least they've got Rachel McAdams in the part, though one wonders how she will ever surpass Morgan Fairchild's defining take on the role. (Um, yeah, that's snark.)

You can't afford the ticket back from Suffragette City

Much has been made of Guy Ritchie's decision to emphasize Sherlock Holmes martial arts prowess in his upcoming film based on the character. Purists seem to be outraged. They usually are. I don't have a dog in that fight, except to say that I've long thought previous film adaptations didn't emphasize Holmes' martial aspect enough - so much so that in one particularly dreadful adaptation featuring Charlton Heston as Holmes, the detective laments the need to have a body at all and expresses his longing to be a mind freed of all physical limitations. As awesome as it would be to have a movie about a floating brain in a deerstalker cap (perhaps with a dangling spinal cord, just for laughs) drifting about Victorian London solving crimes, I just can't see Sherlock Holmes expressing that sentiment.

Ostensibly, Sherlock Holmes practiced (among other manly arts) baritsu, which many scholars have long dismissed as a nonsense term coined by Arthur Conan Doyle. It was, most likely, a typo: at the time in England there was a popular martial art called bartitsu, developed by an Englishman named Edward Barton-Wright. Barton-Wright travelled to Japan to work on a railroad project; while there, he studied jiu-jitsu to stay in shape. He was extremely impressed with the art - so much so that he brought some top jiu-jitsu students back to England and promoted them as prize-fighters to great success. He also took what he learned in the jiu-jistu dojo and synthesized it with European boxing, kick-boxing, and stick-fighting to create a unique art he named after himself: bartitsu. Barton-Wright's approach, it goes without saying, predated Bruce Lee's "take what is useful" approach and today's "mixed martial art" movements by nearly a century.

Barton-Wright is a fascinating character, worthy of a movie of his own. In addition to martial arts his school seems to have been an epicenter of all kinds of Victorian madness, such as "electro-therapy," and physical therapies involving heat, light, and radiation. I have no idea if it worked, but it sure looks cool:

But Barton-Wright's contributions to western culture did not end with martial arts and awesome-looking gizmos I need to have in my living room. He was also an early supporter of women's rights, and made it a point to teach his art and jiu-jitsu to suffragettes, so they could defend themselves against thugs, state-sanctioned and otherwise, who tried to bully them out of their right to vote:

Like I said, a fascinating character. I'm told Robert Downey Jr. is practicing "proper" bartitsu in the movie - whatever that means. If nothing else, I'll be glad to see Sherlock Holmes portrayed as more than walking brain - I think we could use a hero these days who demonstrates that stupidity is not a necessary component of strength.

*beep* *beep* *beeeeeeeeeep* CLEAR! [WHUMP!]

Oh, don't mind me, I'm just trying to pump some life back into this blog. Now stand back!

[WHUMP!]

I have literally never been so busy in my life as I have been over the past few weeks - but they were a profitable few weeks so I'm not complaining. Consequently, I haven't been able to follow the tortured health care debate as closely as I would have like to, but I'm almost up to speed and will have sanctimonious preachings on the subject shortly. In the meantime, trivia!