Jihad on Hollywood

Jihad on James Joyce

I was reading a thread at Marginal Revolution on the most overrated novel which devolved into the typical Joyce discussion of his unreadability versus his brilliance. I will not claim to be the forefront of Joyce detractors, but I have become tired of every debate constructed by Joyce supporters who mistake inaccessibility as intellectuality and complexity. For every overeducated Joyce defender, for every literary conversation ruined by the zealotry of Joycians, and for the orthodoxy of rigid literary aesthetics I say, Jihad on James Joyce! May his various prose remain unread while the seagulls flock to Dan Brown island!

Fatwa Friday: Jihad on Me

This is the first installment of Fatwa Friday. After successes on declaring jihad on numerous subjects — Natasha Mitra, American society — we decided to make this a weekly affair. From now on, we will be calling out everyone left and right. Prepare to be jihaded.

As much I hate to do this, I have to call the first Fatwa Friday jihad on myself. A couple of nights ago, I was working out at the gym. There’s a flat screen television in the middle which members of the gym can watch, and at the particular time it happened to be on TBS during a two-hour block of Everybody Loves Raymond. So I’m thinking “great, I have to watch this while I sculpt my body into a Greek God”, because I’m not going to step on the toes of the 50 year old pumping 5 pound weights who’s watching this. Sadly enough, something truly pathetic happened.

I laughed.

No, seriously, I laughed at an Everybody Loves Raymond joke. That’s not even the worst part: the gag was that he was visiting his brothers apartment that was filled with beautiful girls, and in the midst of reporting his findings to his wife, he said ‘breast’ instead of ‘best’. I laughed at that fucking joke. I may have just turned 24, but I am not to be trusted from now on. JIHAD ON ME!

PS. This is what I looked like at the time: