Uncertainty Principles and the Failed Quest for the Worst Movie Ever

When I first started watching Mystery Science Theater 3000 on the Sci-Fi Channel back in 1997, after several black and white movies and a few color ones, all of a sudden episode featuring the film called "The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies" sprang up and caught me by surprise.  Sure, the movies before this one were quite laughable, but this one clearly stood out.  I instantly thought it was the worst film I had ever seen and that I ever would see.  But then a few months later "The Horror of Party Beach" shows up.  I still thought Incredibly Strange Creatures was worse, but Party Beach was a major contender.

Over the years I was exposed to more MST3K movies, particularly from earlier seasons, and man there were some bad ones.  I kept looking for one that was clearly the worst.  And titles like "The Wild, Wild World of Batwoman" were pretty much on par with Incredibly Strange Creatures.  Then years later Rifftrax comes along and boy, they really found out how to scrape the very bottom of the barrel.  Santa and the Ice Cream Bunny might have actually been worse than Incredibly Strange Creatures.  And of course later we start seeing titles like Rollergator and Birdemic, and more recently stuff like Suburban Sasquatch and The Amazing Bulk.  This stuff is utter trash.  So much of it could really claim to be tied for first place as the worst movie ever.  But the one that made me truly give up my quest for the worst movie ever in earnest was Fun in Balloonland.

Does that mean Fun in Balloonland is the worst movie ever?  Not really.  My exposure to it simply establishes that finding a movie that's definitively the worst ever is too vague of a question.  IS Fun in Balloonland even a movie?  It's slightly shorter than a full length feature, the credits seem to be limited or non-existent, and half of the movie is clearly just parade footage with no story whatsoever.  Fun in Balloonland is borderline a home video.  So can a home video even qualify as the worst movie ever?  I mean, it's not a real movie in that case.  The worst movie ever is not a movie at all.  So definitions start to break down.  It's like the uncertainty principle in physics.  You try to know momentum and you can't know position, and you try to know position and you can't know momentum.  At least that's how my untrained mind understands the principle.  

And with Balloonland, it's like you try to measure its quality and you sacrifice measuring how close it is to an actual movie, and you try to measure how close it is to an actual movie and you sacrifice how you can measure its quality.  Because you'd judge the quality of home movies differently than you'd judge the quality of regular movies.  At least I'd think you would.

For years I tried to put this uncertainty principle for bad movies into more mathematical terms, proving that attempting one type of measurement always disrupts the other, but have failed in my attempts to do so.  So I guess I've given up proving that there can be no worst movie ever, just like I gave up actively looking for the worst movie ever.  This is what Fun in Balloonland did to me.

Strange Bean Novels From 20 Years Ago

When I first read Alice's Adventures in Wonderland I absolutely loved it.  It was wonderfully goofy and weird, and I thought it would be fun to try to write something like that myself.  So I did.  I wrote the weirdest, goofiest thing I could think of.  Long, long ago.  But I didn't actually post it online until fairly recently.  I guess I delayed it because I thought I'd eventually try to clean it up more and make it better and try to market it again.  But I got too busy with other things and decided I probably wasn't going to work on it anymore and to just leave it as it is.  Especially since the likelihood of publication was slim to none, leaning far more towards none.  

But I had a lot of fun writing it and a lot of fun re-reading it even though it has its flaws.  Hopefully I uploaded it with no sections missing and all the sections in order.

I called this unpublished book Boomo the Bean Visits Confusion Country, and a link to it is here:

https://confusioncountry.blogspot.com/

But after I wrote that one I also wrote a crazy sequel, Boomo the Bean Sees Through the Hourglass, and the link to it is right here:

https://boomohourglass.blogspot.com/

Also, if you click on my blog profile, you'll find the links there as well.  I put illustrations in the books too and that was a big part of the fun.

Causes, Effects, and Natural Selection

Science is about causes happening and effects stemming from those causes.  Goal setting is about changing causes to reach desired effects.  In goal setting you are not observing effects as in science.  You are dictating them.  

Natural selection appears to be a goal to sustain life.  Strict cause and effect should have no goals.  I am not arguing that natural selection is false here.  But I certainly don't mind asserting that nature has intended goals.  There's a term already in existence for this assertion - teleology.  And there's also a term for its counterargument - teleonomy.  

When I asked Copilot AI about teleology, it suggested an argument based in teleonomy that variations in species occur randomly, and environments filter out the variations so that only the successful variations survive.  Sure seems to be more of a deterministic argument than a free will argument.  

But I believe that the striving we experience in life goes far beyond unintentional programming.  Can't prove it of course.  But I can assert it vehemently.    

Obligation vs. Preference

It should seem clear that obligation is not determined by preference.  Certainly not at the individual level because it can potentially erase accountability.  But then we have to think, is obligation determined by collective preference?  I would imagine not.  Otherwise books like Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds never would have been written, and peer pressure wouldn't have a negative connotation.  

Why Does EVERYONE Say Their Parents Were Bad?

I don't know if I visit the most representative locations on the internet as far as statistical samples go by frequenting Yahoo news articles and political Youtube videos and such, but I swear, in almost every forum or comment section, for every one person I see complimenting their parents and calling them a blessing, I see about 20 or 30 talking about how toxic their parents were.  And we're not talking about teenagers that are still in the middle of maturing and dealing with discipline issues.  These are people in their 30's and 40's who've had ample time to look back.  

My question is, why the dissatisfaction?  Are there really THAT many bad parents out there abusing and neglecting their kids?  Is there just too much expectation regarding parental roles where they have to be absolutely perfect to even be considered decent?  I mean, WHY do so many people have problems with their parents?  I had awesome parents, so it boggles my mind that so many people apparently did not.  

I can't stress enough that I have NO problems with my parents and what they did in my upbringing whatsoever.  They were good people that tried their very best and did WAY more than they ever should have for me.  Were they flawed human beings?  Of course.  Who isn't.  But once I grew up, and possibly even before then, I could certainly tell that they clearly had my best interests at heart and put in SO much effort and sacrifice for my own wellbeing - particularly my mom.  

This realization is not dampered when I look back and think how scared I was when my mom yelled at me or how mad I was at my dad for using the belt when I got really out of line.  They did these things because I needed correction.  Not because they were on some power trip or thought it was fun.  Because they darn sure didn't seem to have fun correcting me.  Not to mention they bought me more toys than I could even count over those 17 or so years.  And they didn't cheat on each other or spend all night at the bar.  

Are parents like mine really so rare?  If so, I guess I can see why the divorce rate is so high.  But it still boggles my mind that so many parents would be problematic enough to not even be considered decent, much less good.  

Even if I classified mine as phenomenal, that could still potentially be an understatement.  The fact is they deserve more love and respect than I could ever give them.  Thank you mom and dad.  Regardless of how your peers behaved, you were shining examples of a traditional family structure.

Exploring Oppression's Limits... On the Weak End

I wonder, how oppressed would Cinderella consider herself to be if her stepmother and stepsisters still held household authority over her, but forced her to do little or no chores, and she spent most of her time playing on a computer all day.  I imagine if they continued to verbally torment her, that would still be oppressive (or at least abusive).  But I'd think it would take more to claim she was genuinely oppressed besides her not be the one in charge making the decisions.

I think to be a true oppressor, one has to exercise enough authority that they transfer most of the shared workload to the one they're oppressing, and not carry it themselves.  But I'm not sure how much distinction we make between terms like jerk, bully, oppressor, and abuser on a daily basis, and that may factor into this thought exercise here.  Those terms probably each emphasize slightly different negative characteristics.

Mr. Friend

My son's favorite stuffed animal growing up was a frog he called Mr. Friend.  It was hard not to like Mr. Friend.