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A man came round to childproof our house against our increasingly curious and reckless child. It meant putting up a few gates and fixing magnets or little catches to some of the drawers and cupboards containing sharp or hazardous materials. To be fair every item in the world provides a tiny but possible threat to this tiny treasure that I have been put in charge of and she’s so adventurous that it’s going to be hard to keep her safe. But you know, locking away knives and bleach is probably a good start.
Our cutlery drawer now has an annoying little catch at the side. Without wanting to give the game away to any toddlers reading, the trick to opening it is to just reach in and release the catch as you open the drawer. But it’s a bit fiddly and quite annoying, because my brain is so used to just being able to pull the drawer and get it open that it constantly forgets about this new system, instructing me to open the drawer as normal and then every fucking time being caught off guard and surprised by the non-opening nature. And I mean every time. Even if only seconds have elapsed since the last time I opened it. I wonder how long it will take me to relearn this and to immediately go for the latch rather than expecting the drawer to open. I think it will be 174 times. This is Herring’s Constant: the exact number of times it will take anyone to learn about a childproof lock on their cutlery drawer. Now we have that constant I think a lot of mathematical equations will finally be solvable. The Herring Constant is more useful than pi.
Tonight we watched Ghostbusters. Not the new dickless aberration. I hate women and change and like things to always be the way they were when I was a child (or actually a grown man, but let’s not let that get in the way) and also it’s very important that all the major characters in a movie have a penis or at least trying to have sex with a penis. We were watching the full on cock-filled 1980s movie where all the women were either sexy ghosts, scary ghosts, receptionists, maids or musicians who get turned into dogs and are thus no longer able to play musical instruments any more. I can understand why I and a lot of other men who are definitely not misogynist, but just hate women, are up in arms about anyone daring to remake this film. It is a work of art, perfect in every degree and must never be sullied with the removal of even one penis.
It was fun to watch Ghostbusters again (I am actually going to see the new one on Sunday - but I am deliberately not going to enjoy it). It’s a lot of fun, but carried by the energy and wit of Bill Murray. In the bit where he is accusing the guy from the mayor’s office as dickless (even then the first film was subtly railing against the future remake with vaginas in it), Murray’s best line is just a throwaway “That’s what I heard” which I assume he ad-libbed as there’s no way it should be funny on paper, but he is just such a funny man. This is basically a really excellent kids’ film (and well done to Ackroyd and Ramis for this groundbreaking and brilliant idea - and for allowing Bill Murray all the best jokes) with the added frisson of Murray behaving inappropriately (though in hindsight and viewing him through today’s ludicrous veil of feminist PC madness he is a bit of a sex pest). It’s a great fun film, although the last third when it turns into mainly action (with pretty poor special affects) is a bit boring (though I was tired and really wanted to go to bed so that might have been me). It’s a shame that every copy of this film will be destroyed and only the new one, (which even though my wife, who has seen it already, says is so brilliant that she wants to see it again is clearly awful) will be shown now. But that’s what we get for living in this politically correct world where dissenting voices are drowned out and not allowed to speak, apart from during Brexit and the Trump campaign and daily on public transport if anyone dares to exist with a different sex, race or sexuality to the norm of white, hetero, ghost-hating, mildly-sex-pesty men.
I expect in the new version the Ghostbusters aren’t allowed to capture ghosts and have to love them and try to understand them and give them jobs and housing that isn’t giving to living people. I am utterly furious about the film that I am imagining in my head. I saw the trailer and it completely vindicated all the stuff I was saying before I had seen anything at all, by not having Bill Murray trying to trick any women into bed with him by pretending they had ESP.
If comedy is any good then it should totally be able to turn round the opinion of someone who is determined to hate it and not find it funny in 2 minutes. And the Ghostbusters trailer failed to do that. So QED. Me and Milo from the Tweenies who is also furious about this, win.
