I had no choice. My health insurance wouldn't pay for anyone else.

My doctor recently diagnosed me with Terminator: Salvation induced post-traumatic fanboy stress disorder (TSIPTFSD–if it’s not in the DSM yet, it will be soon). The treatment regimen consists of repeatedly watching Terminator and Terminator 2 until the names “McG” and “Sam Worthington” no longer send me into an apoplectic rage.

So far it’s going OK (the apoplectic rage that resulted from me typing those words only lasted five minutes this time), but one of the unfortunate side effects of this treatment is that I’m starting to nitpick the hell out of these movies, more so than they probably deserve (see also: motto of this site). Take, for instance, the famous ”hasta la vista, baby” scene from Terminator 2 in which Ahnuld shoots the frozen T-1000 and shatters him into a million pieces.

This seems like a poor tactical decision. Sarah Connor and Ahnuld are both injured. John isn’t much good in a fight. Their adversary is frozen pretty damn solid and isn’t going anywhere. Why don’t they run away, fix themselves up, and fight later?

Instead, he shoots the frozen T-1000 and shatters it into pieces. Okay, I know he needed to deliver a catchy one-liner, but look what happens. Moments later, the T-1000 quickly thaws out and reconstitutes itself.

Shouldn’t Ahnuld have known that the T-1000 would thaw out faster when shattered?

Here’s a better idea: why not take the frozen T-1000, pick it up, and just dunk it into the nearest convenient molten steel vat? It’s frozen. It’s not going anywhere. Its’s completely vulnerable.

A terrible plan.

Spoilers for 2012 follow. Although I’m not sure giving away the plot to a special effects pornstravaganza constitutes “spoiling” it. It’s a lot like revealing the plot to an actual porn movie–that’s not really why you rented it in the first place.

Roland Emmerich loves to destroy the earth. 2012 is his third disaster epic, after Independence Day and The Day After Tomorrow. But there’s one crucial difference this time around, and it’s not just the lack of the word “day” in the film’s title. In 2012, the leaders of the world know about the impending apocalypse. They have years to plan. But the plan they come up with is mystifying stupid. Basically, they keep the news very quiet while they construct a bunch of giant boats high in the Himalayas. This is largely financed by charging the richest people in the world one billion euros for tickets.

Deep breath…

1. Why not just tell everyone? Evil bureaucrat Oliver Platt explains that there would be complete chaos if the truth got out. The important thing is to preserve the human species, and if everyone knows they are going to die in three years, there’s no way they can pull off the logistics of building and stocking giant-ass boats. There’s a certain logic to that. But I also think that if everyone knows they’re going to die in three years, then everyone would work really, really hard to prevent that. Think about how many giant boats could be built if everyone in the world was spending every waking moment welding? Not to mention, the extreme secrecy means that 99.99% of the world’s smartest scientists never even knew about the problem, much less get a chance to solve it. I’m not saying anyone could have stopped the earth’s crust from collapsing. But they could have tried, or at least corrected some of the dumber parts of the ark plan. For instance…

You're GODDAMNED RIGHT I ordered the Code Red, and it was delicious!

Galloway (Demi Moore): This past February you received a cautionary memo from the Commander-in-Chief of the Atlantic Fleet, warning that the practice of enlisted men disciplining their own wasn’t to be condoned by officers.

Jessep (Jack Nicholson): Well, I submit to you that whoever wrote that memo has never faced the working end of a Soviet-made Cuban AK-47 assault rifle.

This is A Few Good Men in a nutshell. Colonel Jessep feels that the rules do not apply to him, because of the extraordinary danger his soldiers face.

But do you want the truth? Can you HANDLE the truth?

As far as I can tell, no Cuban soldier has attacked an American soldier in more than 50 years. In fact, Guantanamo Naval Base is considered so safe that families are allowed to live there. According to the Navy’s website, Gitmo has a child development center, a youth center, two schools, a Sunday school, a Boy Scout camp, and a Girl Scout camp. It’s probably a much safer place to raise a kid than my neighborhood.

Over the past few weeks, I’ve been trying to enjoy the new Fox show “Glee,” but as I’ve mentioned on multiple times in the podcast, the show’s frequent trips towards absurdity often try my sense of suspension of disbelief.

One incident in particular stands out to me as an exceptional offense. In episode 4, the song “Single Ladies” inspires the hapless football team to find its groove, but more specifically, it allows Kurt, the over-the-top gay member of the glee club, to kick the game winning extra point.

Today marks the 25th anniversary of Ghostbusters. We celebrate, as we sometimes do here, with Ghostbusters Week, dedicated to overthinking various aspects of the beloved film.

Try to imagine all life as you know it stopping instantaneously and every molecule in your body exploding at the speed of light.

—Egon Spengler, Ghostbusters

Okay, Egon, let’s imagine it. Everybody you’ve ever loved, gone. Everybody you’ve ever met, gone. All the cute girls you’ve ever had a crush on, vaporized. All the cute little babies, exploded. Say so long to your favorite celebrities: George Clooney, Barack Obama, Thom Yorke, all gone. And not just humans. You like pandas? Too bad.

Now tell me, is this an outcome any sane person would risk in order to run a small business?

Of course, it’s possible that Egon is lying about total protonic reversal. Maybe he has no idea what will happen if they cross the streams, so he’s playing it safe. Or maybe what will actually happen is that the proton packs will short out, necessitating a trip to Radio Shack and a long night of repairs. But Egon’s a gadget freak–he wants people to treat his creations with respect. So when Venkman snidely asks him to “define bad,” Egon thinks of the most over-the-top bad thing he can. Sort of like telling a kid that if she keeps making that face, it’ll stay that way.

Weapon of extremely mass destruction.

I like this theory. But for purposes of this post, let’s assume that Egon’s telling the truth. In that case, it seems to me that capturing ghosts, no matter how careful you are, carries far too great a risk. The odds of accidentally crossing streams seems pretty high–the process basically requires the Ghostbusters to all be aiming at the same spot. If Venkman and Stanz were responsible adults, the second Egon told them how dangerous the proton packs are, they would have turned around, gone back to the station, and smashed their equipment to bits with a sledgehammer (although that might be dangerous too).

But what about the moment that they decide to cross the streams on purpose? It’s nothing short of a crime against humanity.

Yes, I realize they were doing it to stop Gozer. But Egon only gives them a “very slim chance” of survival. How small is “very slim,” anyway? 5%? 1%? Doesn’t matter. Even if the odds were flipped, and there was only a 1% chance all life would end, I’d still say the Ghostbusters had no goddamn right to roll the dice like that. They simply can’t gamble all life on Earth on some spur of the moment, back of the envelope hunch. Not unless they were certain that the consequences of not acting were every bit as dire.

It seems to me that it’s only morally permissible to cross the streams if you know, for a fact, that every living thing on earth is about to perish. In that case, your actions at best give people a chance at survival, and at worst offer them a painless death. So if, let’s say, the asteroid from Armageddon is heading towards Earth (“Not even plankton would survive”) and crossing the streams somehow gives you a “very slim” chance of preventing it, in that case it might be the ethical thing to do.

Is the Gozer situation that dire? Not even close.

What is keeping Ariel upright?

Unless you have hung out with a little girl during the past ten years, you may not be aware of the Disney Princess phenomenon. Sure, Disney’s had princesses for years, and generations of girls have wanted to be them. But it wasn’t until 2001 that the company got around to creating an official Disney Princess brand, selling apparel, toys, videos and pretty much everything else that they could slap a picture of a princess onto. The New York Times reported that there are 25,000 products in all, and the franchise grosses over $3 billion a year. And that article is three years old.

There’s a lot of be disturbed about here. Some of the older Disney films are pretty retrograde to begin with—Sleeping Beauty meets the prince on her 16th birthday, and marries him pretty much the next day. The newer heroines are better role models, but in the context of the Disney Princess brand, they’re presented as pretty little flowers, not women of action.  And I don’t need to point out that all of them make Nicole Richie look fat.

But I’m not going to discuss the feminist implications of this marketing juggernaut. (If that’s what you want, the Times article above does a good job.) Instead, look at this photo of the Princess lineup. Four of the girls are princesses by birth (Sleeping Beauty, Jasmine, Snow White, and Ariel). One of them marries a prince to become a princess (Cinderella).

That leaves Belle, who I’m not sure really qualifies.

It has been a rough week for Kanye West.  First, South Park eviscerated him by skewering his egocentrism (and excessive use of autotune), then he went and proved them right by emptying his soul on his blog about his hurt feelings and sincere desire to be a better person.   Although I don’t usually like to kick a guy while he is down, the whole series of events reminded me of a lingering complaint that I have had ever since Kanye’s most recent album, 808s and Heartbreaks, dropped back in November:  I am fairly certain that Kanye West has never ever seen any of the three RoboCop movies, even though one of the songs on the album is named after the film franchise’s titular character.

The day after the game, when our “Superbowl” podcast hit the site, I noticed that our editor had chosen to spell it in one word, as opposed to the standard “Super Bowl.” At first I thought nothing of it; I just attributed the variance to his self-professed ignorance of all things football.

But then I noticed the “Superbowl” spelling popping up all over the internets, from Cinematical to the Belfast Telegraph. Even the Wall Street Journal got in on the act.

Fear began to overcome me. If the all-powerful media, with its copy checkers and style guides, was getting it wrong, what, then, of the general public?

Google Trends (an infallible source of knowledge) confirmed my worst fears: as a search term, “Superbowl” has pulled ahead of “Super Bowl.” America officially can’t spell.

(Note: The above charts use Google Trends from the US only to minimize the impact of non-English speakers sullying the results.)

Yes, I realize this is teh inturwebz, where mangling the English language is par for the course. But I had faith that Americans would at least take the time to spell “SUPER BOWL,” that most sacred of all American days, properly. I was wrong.

Readers, what do you think? Is this a new American Spelling Crisis, just another case of language evolving, or somethingmuchworse?

“Human,” the lead single from The Killer’s latest album Day and Age, poses a baffling question:

“Are we human, or are we dancer?”

Many were quick to point out that, although not all humans are dancers, most dancers are, in fact, humans. The two are not mutually exclusive, as this handy Venn diagram illustrates:

Honestly, I've never known a Venn diagram to be anything but handy.

“Human or Dancer” is only one example of the many false dichotomies found in pop music. More logical fallacies, after the jump.

[This post begins Back To The Future Week. Fasten your seat belt... where we're going, we don't need roads. —Ed.]

Back to the Future was on last night, so of course I watched it.  It’s a genius movie.  Not only is the script super-tight, but every single scene is famous.  In that respect, it’s like Casablanca.  But with Christopher Lloyd.  Score one BTTF.

I know it’s probably ridiculous to nitpick Back to the Future – after all, this movie presupposes that time travel is possible and that Deloreans are cool – but this is Overthinking It ™, so I’m going to do it anyway.

The problem I’m having is with the famous photograph.  In case you don’t remember, the plot is that Marty McFly goes back in time to the 1950s but ends up screwing up his own life.  When his own mother (Lorraine) falls in lust with him, it means that she doesn’t end up with Marty’s father (George, aka “McFLYYY”).  That means that Marty and his brother and sister won’t be born unless Marty can get his mom and dad back together.  Marty’s photograph of him, his brother, and his sister in 1985 is his link to the future.  If his image disappears from the photo, it means he was unable to set up his parents and thus, in this new timeline, he was never born.

But the photograph makes no sense!  The first time Christopher Lloyd (Doc Brown) realizes that Marty might have changed the timeline, he looks at the photograph and sees that Marty’s brother is disappearing from it.  The photo still has Marty and his sister, and it – weirdly – includes Marty’s brother’s torso, arms, and legs.  The only thing that’s lacking is Marty’s brother’s head.

The movie wants us to think that Marty’s siblings are slowly disappearing from the future, and audiences usually buy it.  But I don’t.  What the photograph actually means is that Marty changed the future so that his brother was indeed born—just without a head.