The Green-Eyed Monster

Most monsters have at least one redeeming quality. King Kong had a weakness for dames. Vampires are hipster fashionistas. Even those funster Zombies forever enjoy cinematic popularity despite their BO. But the Green-Eyed Monster is unmitigated awful.

The fact that Hollywood and Burbank haven't found a way to popularize the Jealousy Beast tells us how bad it is. Every story arc needs a slice of hope; but this....this thing has none.

Aside:

I hadn't heard jealousy referred to as "the green-eyed monster" until I dated one. I was chatting to a female colleague/friend at a party when this ex dragged me away and demanded an explanation. After she cooled it, that's the terminology she used to self-describe. This episode struck me as completely weird, and was a crystal-clear harbinger which I ignored. To my cost.

End Aside. 

Jealousy - at least the romantic kind - is tied up with self-esteem, trust, security, honesty, sexuality and faithfulness in one giant ganglia of hot blood and mean tricks. The dictionary keyword here is 'resentment', a telling description if ever.


We like to think we can intellectualize any human behaviour...at least I do. But jealousy is one of the few emotions for which there is no logical back-door. It's visceral, animal, and therefore almost uncontrollable. And it speaks entirely to the emoter, not the emoter's target.



Bottoms Up, Reactors.

Friday Fluffer - Sporting Douchebags.

Integrity is considered an old-fashioned word in today's "progressive" culture. Finding the easy way out, lying, taking the money, choosing personal satisfaction over doing the right thing; these are the pathways to a thoroughly modern style of unapologetic fame-fueled douchebaggery.

There are plenty of bloodless narcissistic zombie heroes to go around. Today's is Lance Armstrong. No-one gives a shit about him, but I think of his children, and all the children who look up to all the celebrity zeroes who take what they can. The example set by famous people, in the way they treat their children, wives and husbands, affects us all, because famous people are the culture. Armstrong made you and me part of something smaller. What I cannot understand is how he can look into his kids' eyes. Does he not see a monster reflected?

And so we return to the pile of putrid dog vomit that is the Tiger Woods tale. The Mail Online has this story, claiming that Tiger and his ex-wife Elin are on the verge of reconciliation. She'll have him back in exchange for a $350 million no-cheating clause.

Yeah. There you go. The bedrock of any good home for a young family is created from a cash-backed good-behaviour bond. Not, say, from refraining from boffing any groupie who wandered along, instead spending the time in his hotel suite writing stories for his children, or otherwise doing something worthwhile. No, because now he's different, and has the collateral to prove it.



Bottoms Up, Culture Warriors.