Hypocrisy

There are two things that tend to bug me when I read blogs. The first is people condemning out of hand something they haven't actually read or watched, from whim, prejudice or not wanting to take part in anything too popular.

Now I don't mean say, you don't want to watch a Jackie Chan movie because you haven't liked the martial arts films you've seen in the past. In that case, you've tried martial arts movies, and it's entirely reasonable that you wouldn't want to see something that falls in that category. However, if you happen to like martial arts movies but have never seen a Jackie Chan movie, I might find your proclaiming the suckiness of Jackie Chan and all of his works kind of annoying.

The second thing that irritates me is people explaining at length why they aren't going to take part in the latest thing, with the not too subtle subtext of "unlike the rest of you sheep." I mean, this October, I didn't feel the need to write about how I wasn't going to observe the Jewish holidays because Judaism as a religion just doesn't speak to me. So if you don't want to read the latest Harry Potter book, watch Dr Horrible or celebrate Valentine's Day, just don't do it. And don't ruin the fun of those of us who are.

Again, there are certainly exceptions. If you're such a Harry Potter fan that you wrote your doctoral dissertation on the first six books, it's certainly noteworthy that you wouldn't read the seventh. And if you want to take part in whatever event or holiday is coming up and can't, you're certainly justified in complaining about it.

I'm explaining all of this by way of leading up to saying that I haven't read the Twilight series, probably won't and probably won't see the movie either. But I'm only sharing this because I find the story of why somewhat amusing:

I had asked B about the series since he had read the first book, and while he didn't find it very good, he was being a bit more judicious than most in saying why. He had started by saying that Meyer has a different conception of vampires, and as he said what it was, I was thinking that I don't have a problem with different ideas of vampires. Just as long as she doesn't conceive them to be, say, sparkly fairies, I have a pretty open mind-

-just as B was saying, "And vampires sparkle when they're in the sunlight."

So yes, while it's no doubt hypocritical, I don't think I'm going to be partaking in Twilight, except maybe to see how bad it is. Because really, actually sparkly fairies?