Since TBS is wont to overplay films to death - and I mean to death - it was once again a weekend in which I watched As Good As It Gets not once, but twice. I have seen this film so many times now, that I could probably quote large sections of it verbatim. This isn't a statement of pride, just one of observation. It's not a bad film, I just wish TBS would get a larger roster of films to play so they stop showing things three, four, five, six or more times in a month, then two months later doing the same damned thing over again.

Yesterday something popped out at me that I hadn't really considered before, but which I now realise really irritates me. There's a scene in the film where Jack Nicholson's character has the dog held up about faceheight, he's talking to it on the street, simpering, talking baby talk to it, and a woman passing by says, "Aww, I'd like to be treated like that." She wants to be treated like a pet, like a coddled infant, cooed and petted, simpered over, talked to like a child, pampered like a fondled animal? If she meant treated nicely in general I wish they'd made that more clear, because otherwise this woman's never going to have a healthy relationship with a man - without years of therapy - if this is how she expects and wants to be treated.

I think the only reason it stands out to me so much, is because I find it repugnant to be treated like that - coddled, simpered over, pampered like I haven't two braincells to rub together. I don't care for people who attempt to make me feel helpless or dependant. Also, I have very little patience for people who require that level of petting and attention, and who are always looking for people to cater to them, to stroke their egos, fawn over them, feed the fantasy or pad a weakened sense of selfesteem.

They say you only dislike in others what you most dislike in yourself. I don't generally believe that, but in this case there's some sense to it. It's not that I dislike these behaviours in myself - because they aren't there to dislike - it's that I never want to be that weak or helpless or needy of someone else's attention - and I certainly wouldn't want anyone else to see me as that weak, obsequious, servile, or brainless. The mere thought of being that way gives me the heebies.

Well that's enough complaining for today.