Movie Review: “The Mist”

I saw a couple of trailers for The Mist, based on the Stephen King novel of the same title, and I was wandering through the bookstore a few months ago and thought that I’d give it a read. I found it gripping, interesting, and ultimately satisfying, as I find many of King’s novels.

Since I’m a firm believer in the ancient principle that a movie will always be worse than the book it is based on, I wasn’t expecting much when today I rented The Mist. But I wasn’t quite prepared for just how bad it is.

For the first three-quarters of this two-hour (two-hour!) movie, the plot sticks very close to the plot of the novel: a strange mist descends on a town, trapping a bunch of terrified people in a grocery store. Horrible things come out of the mist and do horrible things to the people. Classic Stephen King.

Given that the plot is interesting and psychological — two things you don’t see in movies these days — you might wonder how it would be possible to screw it up. Let me give you a list of good ways, although I might make director Frank Darabont angry, since he’s really the one that came up with these:

• Atrocious dialogue. At times, it was so clumsy that I actually cringed. They took some directly from the novel, but not all of it, and the clash between the dialogue written by King and the dialogue added by the filmmakers is painfully obvious.
• Flat characters. They should be moving. They should be sympathetic. They should be interesting. But they’re not. They feel like, to use an old phrase, cardboard cutouts, which makes it especially jarring when, in a rare moment of good acting, they express genuine-looking emotion.
• They explain the mist. This is a mistake that most modern horror films make: either they explain who created the monster and how, or they tell you what’s making the zombies crazy, or something like that. The only two horror films I’ve seen where that’s been pulled off competently are 28 Days Later and I am Legend. One of the keys to the creepiness of King’s book was that they gave vague hints as to what happened, but they never actually told you. That’s always way creepier than actually coming out and saying it, which The Mist does with the same habitual clumsiness with which it does things.
• The ending is incredibly depressing. I’ll try not to ruin it for you (anyway, Darabont already did that for me), but suffice to say that, even though it’s mean to seem bleak, gritty, real, and painful, it comes across as needlessly cruel, sadistic, and depressing. So, so depressing. Now, I’ll give Darabont credit where credit is due for creating an ending that is something we haven’t often seen before, but there is a point at which a depressing ending will puke all over the entertainment value of the rest of the movie. Darabont reaches that point, pays no heed, and keeps going, until he reaches the point known only as “Mass suicide in the movie theater.”

Now, I do have more than bilious hatred to spew about The Mist. I do enjoy tearing a bad movie to shreds, but I can’t do that with every aspect of the film. For one thing, the special effects are as incredible as anything you’ll see today. The mist feels real, and the filmmakers know when to use computer-generated mist and when to use an actual fog machine. The creatures are not only fairly faithful to King’s description, but they’re also suitably creepy. Even some of the scenes they made up and threw in there are fairly grotesque in a good way, the kind of good way that makes people want to watch horror films. As I said above, the ending, while depressing, is at least fairly daring. And Darabont, some of the time, keeps very close to King’s original idea.

But that last point actually becomes a problem at times. Nobody expects any film based on a book to stay close to the original storyline and dialogue. At least not as close as Darabont stays. I’ve been hoping for a long time to see a movie that was really just a visual version of a book, but now I see the error of my ways. If every book-direct-to-movie adaptation is as contrived and clumsy as this, then I’d rather see the director change what needs to be changed.

And even though he stays painfully close to the original story sometimes, at other times, he deviates shamelessly, wandering off into irrelevant or story-crippling (see bullet point #3 above) tangents, adding things that needn’t be added (gratuitous unnecessary gore, and in all the wrong places, too), and subtracting things that he probably should have kept (that hazy, panic-induced, shocked sex scene between the main character and the girl comes to mind). But probably the most painful loss is the feeling of panic, the feeling of dread, and that sense that everybody is slowly starting to break down and go mad. King does this very well. Darabont doesn’t do it at all until very near the end, when suddenly it was as though someone slapped him on the back of the head.

One final note. In the book, Mrs. Carmody, the religious lunatic, was more of a shriveled old bat, a hag with little more to do than play with her stuffed raccoons, read tabloids, and babble about the state of the world. But in the film, she’s about thirty years old, and delivers all of her lines with a kind of sickening melodrama not seen since the Wicked Witch of the West menaced Dorothy.

All in all, a bad movie. It has its good moments, but in the end, it’s far too clumsily-executed to be interesting, and long enough to make you feel like you’ve wasted a good chunk of your life. If you’ve read the book, don’t bother seeing the movie. And if you’ve seen the movie, I’m sorry, but Frank Darabont has already ruined the book for you.

Final Judgment:

* ` ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ (1.5/10 asterisks)

Yahoo and Google: Uh-Oh…

I’m sure there aren’t many nerds out there who haven’t heard about Microsoft’s many attempts to buy Google in a bid to break into the search-engine market. Fortunately, up until now, Yahoo has refused, but this time, they’ve only gone as far as saying the business equivalent of “no comment.”

I’ve lamented these kinds of unholy unions before (for example, when Google bought Youtube), and in my (somewhat limited) experience, they never turn out well. When one company buys another, it usually has something very sinister in mind, and I’ve learned that that goes doubly so for Microsoft.

Not that I give a damn about Yahoo. I’ve been a member of the “cult of Google” for some years now. But, still, if Microsoft and Yahoo get together, who knows what kind of market-gobbling, grotesquely-deformed progeny might result? What next, will Microsoft be working busily to make Yahoo Search harder and harder to use, all the while being secretive and difficult and overcharging for everything? Will they try to get their hands on Google, too?

I’m aware that this is rather paranoid, but I assure you, that I am not (literally or metaphorically) wearing a foil helmet as I type this. I believe that there is a legitimate concern to be had in the monopolization of such a large horizontal slice of the information-technology market by one juggernaut corporation. If they get their fingers in too many pies (that’s a very odd expression, if you think about it), it seems that Microsoft wouldn’t have too much trouble subduing or at least delaying the open-source revolution so many of us tech-nerds have been dreaming of for so long. And what’s more, in a monopolized market, there is the obvious fact that the monopolist can charge exorbitant prices for crappy products.

Those are my thoughts. Take from them what you will. (That was my melodrama; do with it what you like).

Advertising Schizophrenia

Another odd title, I know, but it suits my subject.

You see, over the past year or so, I’ve noticed a very worrying trend in advertising. It isn’t as insidious as the ultrasonic “sound spotlights” (which can beam adverts at you that only you can hear (!)), or as dangerous as all the political advertising that’s going to be plaguing us in a few months, but it is still worrying: all the advertisers have gone insane.

I first began to notice this in car commercials. Then, it was restaurant ads. Now, it’s spread through most of the advertising community. It seems that the advertisers have gotten so good at manipulating us that they think they no longer need to design ads that actually make sense. Perhaps it’s some sort of attempt to bypass our reality filters and inject the “Buy our crap” message directly into our cerebral corticies, but either way, it’s damned annoying.

An example: the other day, I was sitting down with my parents to watch some television, when an advertisement for Kentucky Fried Chicken came on. It showed a bunch of jovial, racially-diverse young people sitting down and biting into Photoshop-enhanced chicken wings (that would probably rate as beauty queens, as far as fried poultry goes, and that, incidentally, look nothing like the real thing; but I guess I should be used to that by now), then, they acted surprised (incidentally, where do they get these commercial actors these days? It must be the suburbs, because only a white suburbanite is so good at dripping with insincerity), and said something like “Wow, I wasn’t expecting that!” Apparently, it was an advert for KFC’s new “Sauceless Hot Wing.” I wasn’t sure I’d heard that right, but I’ve seen the ad a few times since then, and that was, indeed, what I was seeing. What the hell!? Is this what the advertisers expect us to see as “innovation”? “Hey, look, we’ve got a hot wing without any sauce! Buy our crap!” And before someone counters, “Well, it’ll be nice not to get all that sauce on your hands,” allow me to provide a blistering rebuttal: No it won’t. The messiness of hot wings is part of their charm! It’s part of the experience! And people who really like hot wings don’t mind the sauce, anyway.

But this rant isn’t just about fat-fried poultry. Car ads, too, are getting worse and worse. None of them make any sense, or if they do, their messages are painfully obvious. So, apparently they think we’ve become so simpleminded that all it’ll take for us to buy a new car is a bunch of loud music, pretty people, and nice graphics. Well, actually, now that I think about it…that probably is all it’ll take to get most people to buy a car. Sorry, I forgot I was dealing with Americans here.

Well, since I’m already railing against advertising, I thought I might as well rail against something more serious: pre-movie advertising. A week or two ago, I went to see Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem (the disastrous result of which can be found here). Before the movie, there was the standard parade of random advertising. This parade has been getting longer and longer, to the point where it has approximately the same length as an actual parade, and is just about as boring. Then, an ad that was recognizably one of the new (schizophrenic) ads came on. It was loud, it was fast, and it was terrifying. The noise and the flashing lights drowned out my thoughts, and I got the extraordinarily unsettling feeling that somebody was trying to crowbar their way into my brain. So, since they haven’t figured out how to actually manipulate our minds (yet), they’ve done the next best thing and figured out how to make it impossible to think. Wonderful. Before long, I’m sure we’ll be seeing ads promoting Ingsoc and reminding us that Big Brother is watching.

Those are my (disjointed) thoughts.

Review: “Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem”

Having seen the previous Aliens vs. Predator, I walked into the theater not expecting much of the sequel (pseudo-creatively titled Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem). Every now and then, I’ll walk into a theater not expecting much, and come out pleasantly surprised. (This happened with I Am Legend) This, unfortunately, was not one of those times.

The movie starts off from the last film’s shamelessly sequel-friendly ending. From there, it takes off, and never even considers landing. This might sound like a complement, but I assure you that it is not. By “takes off,” I mean in the manner that a hummingbird might take off after some mischievous birdwatcher filled a birdfeeder with amphetamines. The movie’s attention span about matches that of it’s intended audience. Once again, this is not a complement, since it would appear that its intended audience is indeed a bunch amphetamine-addled hummingbirds. I can’t remember a single scene — and this (unlike my previous descriptions) is not an exaggeration — that lasted more than about five minutes. The cuts were so jarring and furious that what little plot there was was completely obscured.

(Warning: Spoilers ahead!)

Merry Something, Happy Something Else, etc.

Around this time of year, my cynicism tends to get a big boost. After all, what feeds cynicism better than the commercialization of a holiday that was originally — I think — supposed to be about goodwill towards your fellow humans and stopping your gluttonous hoarding for a moment to help your neighbors. Exacerbating this flaw is the endless stream of political correctness that makes any mention of the holidays that fall around December 25th about as clumsy as me on a unicycle. Add to this the endlessly repetitive Christmas soundtrack, and not only am I cynical, but I also have the urge to stick a long needle in both of my eardrums.

In case you couldn’t tell, I’m gearing up for a rather serious rant, so if you’re not in the mood — and you’re probably not, given the fact that every other cynic on the planet is ranting right about now — then you’d best get out while you still can.

If you’re reading this, then you’re still here. I can’t understand why, but then again, I also can’t understand what’s so attractive about watching golf on television, so I won’t criticize. Anyway, the big rant:

• As I get very tired of being a typical sarcastic cynic sometimes, I thought I’d put this rant at the very top of the list: I’m absolutely exhausted with all of the cynical people ranting about the holidays (holidays with a lowercase H). I mean, a time of year with so much money and corporate power behind it is not likely to go away soon, and history has proven that we cynics have little power to change the status quo. There are probably more productive and less hypertension-promoting uses of your time. After all, the only thing worse than actually having to listen to “White Christmas” is hearing somebody bitch about it for an hour and a half. That said, I’m going to be a good little cynic and contradict myself in the next bullet point, so that I can get some good ranting done.
• It is obligatory for any cynic to complain about the music around this time of year. Supposedly, “White Christmas” was the song that made Irving Berlin great. To me, it’s the song that makes him an evil bastard with an aversion to other peoples’ continuing sanity. It’s gotten to the point where I’m no longer dreaming of a white Christmas, I’m having sweat-soaked incontinent Christmas nightmares. I know that’s a bit extreme, but anybody who’s heard “White Christmas” for the thirtieth time knows exactly what I mean.
• The aforementioned political correctness is the next item on my ideological hit list. I’m so tired of hearing and reading the word “Holiday” and the phrase “Happy Holidays” that I would actually prefer someone to come up to me and say “Have a very crappy winter. I hope you die of exposure on a street corner.” While I think equality should be one of humanity’s foremost goals, I think that whoever is responsible for promoting equality really needs to learn to pick their battles. After all, as a quasi-Buddhist semi-atheist former Christian, I don’t think I’d honestly be offended if a Jewish person came up to me and wished me a happy Chaunukkah (forgive me if I misspelled that), or if someone wished me a happy Kwanzaa. I think that any excuse that we can find to wish each other a happy anything should be seen as valuable, and not nullified by trying to wish people a happy everything. And what’s worse, wishing someone “Happy Holidays” bears the stink of an attempt to broaden one’s holiday marketing demographic.
• If I see one more suburban white family with a Doppelg­änger family of decorations on their front lawn, I may not be able to override my instinct towards destruction of property. Now, I should point out that I’m not (yet) so cynical as to be opposed to any Christmas (”Holiday”) decorations. I’m really very fond of a tasteful string of multicolored lights. It’s nice to occasionally mark a special day by doing something really peculiar like draping a bunch of tiny lightbulbs on your house. However, it seems that people (especially the aforementioned white suburbanites) are incapable of stopping there. Therefore, we end up with nativity scenes complete with full-size wise men, Santa Claus and reindeer, inflatable snowmen, little spinning things, animatronic wireframe reindeer, and whatever other random shiny blinky things the family can come up with. I — and I get the feeling I’m not alone in this regard — immediately begin wondering how much napalm I could make without attracting attention the moment I see a lawn so hideously decorated.

Environmental “Protection” Agency

Since I was young, I’ve always been something of an environmentalist. I haven’t been a passionate environmentalist for years, and here’s why: I gave up. I eventually realized that a government will enact environmental legislation only when it serves them to do so, and that they’ll ignore it when whatever crisis they were protecting themselves against has passed.

It’s a lucky thing I’m not passionate anymore, because if I were, then I would be up in arms right now, yelling in the streets. And nobody wants that.

Here’s what’s gotten under my skin lately: very recently, California attempted to pass environmental regulations much tougher than those mandated nationwide. As California is one of the most polluted states and, paradoxically, one of the most environmentally-conscious — they were the ones, after all, who mandated a quota of zero-emissions (electric) vehicles, before the industry shut them down — this would seem rather logical. And, of course, logic and government don’t mix well, so something went wrong.

I suppose I should learn to expect such things, in this age of do-nothing, get-out-before-the-ship-sinks government, but what happened surprised even cynical old me: the EPA overruled California. Yes, that’s right, I said the EPA. Those letters used to stand for “Environmental Protection Agency.” Given their recent actions, I would recommend we change their meaning to something more appropriate, preferably with a couple of expletives in there. My suggestion is “Excessively Petty Assholes.”

Many will no doubt think this judgment too harsh, but my sordid tale is not finished. California’s regulations were put in place because Californians complain that global warming threatens their water supplies, their agricultures, and — given the increased incidence of forest fires that warming brings — their population. The EPA’s response? “Not on your life!” The EPA actually attempted to claim that there was not a credible threat to justify such harsh local environmental regulations. What!?!? California, as a coastal state, will probably be one of the first states to face a credible threat from global warming. Hell, they’ve already faced a credible threat from global warming! Didn’t they have a terrible fire a few weeks ago?!

It gets worse. The EPA also said that global warming regulations should be nationwide, not local. Right. Because those nationwide regulations were getting passed in a real damned hurry. To me, this looks suspiciously like the current do-nothing administration just buying time until they can inflate their golden parachutes. I just hope that when the forests star to slowly burn away, the coastlines flood and erode as the icecaps melt, the North Atlantic current breaks down, freezing Britain under an ice-age glacier, and the water-shortage wars in Africa and the Middle East spread worldwide, that the fifty years of environmentally-ignorant politicians we’ve suffered through are mostly still alive, so that with whatever breath the toxic atmosphere will allow us, we can all point and laugh at them.

Hm…that was a bit cynical even for me. Note to self: don’t write any more posts early in the morning.

Beware of The Ministries

It’s a common theme in dystopian fiction, from Orwell’s 1984 (and probably before that) to the present day (for example, the Half-Life series): in a terrible future (or present), society is controlled by an interlocking network of “Ministries,” and in some instances, a single omniscient Ministry. This Ministry (or Ministries) are responsible for the provision of all food, entertainment, news, et cetera. The citizens are so utterly dependent on these Ministries, and so blindly trusting of them, that they are completely and utterly unable to operate without them, which is why it inevitably requires a grizzled action hero to rouse them from their mental slumber.

By this point, readers are probably wondering what the point of all this is. Well, here it is. You think all these Ministry-based plots are fiction? Think again.

You see, we’re currently facing a dreadful trifecta of Ministries that is soon to fulfill all of our basic needs, leaving us so brain-dead and utterly dependent that we’re incapable of independent action or thought. They are:

• The Ministry of Truth (yes, I’m quoting Orwell again. Deal with it): Google and Wikipedia seem to have pretty much cornered the market on knowledge, as far as your average Internet consumer is concerned. My Science and Society professor just yesterday referenced Wikipedia (a notoriously un-neutral and inaccurate source for something calling itself an “encyclopedia”) in a lecture about the mind-body problem. The mind-body problem! A spiritual topic that is just about as hotly- and angrily-debated as whether evolution should be taught in public schools. And he trusted Wikipedia, of all sources, to be his unbiased provider of information. The encyclopedia that anyone, including (especially) angry zealots (on both sides of the issue) can edit! Now, I must admit that I myself am not innocent in this regard: Google is essentially a sort of personal Deity. I’m not even certain that I know how to find information any other way any more, and when Google the Omniscient fails to provide the answers I’m looking for, I’m about as helpless as an overturned tortoise with Krazy Glue on its back.
• The Ministry of Plenty: When was the last time you were in a grocery store that didn’t sell every product imaginable? Last week, I went to Target to buy a sweater, and later complained to someone that I’d forgotten to buy some vital food item or other at the grocer’s. This person then gleefully informed me that they do in fact carry that item at Target. I went back later, and, sure enough, Target has a grocery section! Okay. So, in addition to not knowing how to find reasonably unbiased information any more, now I have no idea where to get food, clothing, and novelty erotic items if they’re not all housed in the same store. Terrific.
• The Ministry of Love: I struggled to find an Orwellian correlate to the ministry in 1984 responsible for torture, but I’m such a committed 1984 freak that I actually found a way. Now, I was going to lump the rapidly-condensing news media into the aforementioned Ministry of Truth, but given the fact that I’ve actually seen contemporary television, I’m convinced that it’s no longer intended for entertainment, but for the torture of people who enjoy independent films and occasional treks off the couch. After all, how many reality shows have cropped up (or spawned like the deformed, demonic, parasitic insects that they are) in the last year or so? I can’t count them, mainly because that would require keeping up with them, which would almost certainly sap my rapidly-waning will to live. And network news? Well, actually, its proper title is “network news crappy hackneyed sob-stories pregnant with thinly-disguised political agendas.” And when I say pregnant, I mean pregnant. Okay, well, maybe services like the BBC, CNN, and NPR are only “a little bit pregnant,” but an outlet like, say, Fox news, is about as pregnant as that enormous and disgusting insect queen, distended with writhing larvae, that the sci-fi hero has to defeat with a grenade, producing suitably disgusting splattery results. I know that’s a long simile, but I take every opportunity to make peculiar and often repulsive cultural references. Anyway, Fox is pregnant with agendas. It’s annoying. Annoying rapidly becomes torture when the reporters actually pretend to be sincere about what they’re saying. I mean, come on! I’m not that bright — the Internet and television have seen to that — but I’m not that stupid (at least not yet; not until I start watching American Idol).

So, we basically have all the non-life-affirming Ministries of 1984, and there is no doubt a Big Brother figure soon to emerge as the “beneficient”, omniscient ruler of them all. But that remains to be seen. In the meantime, we are rapidly becoming (if we’re not already) the dependent Ministry-junkies that are featured in every aforementioned dystopian tale. And I know that I brought quite a lot of sardonic humor to the above descriptions, but I stand by them as serious warnings, too. Think about it. Don’t get dependent. The only thing that will save you is independent thought. Use a real (paper) encyclopedia occasionally (if you can find one). Search with another search engine. And for Google’s sake, don’t find that other search engine by Googling “search engine”!!! Or, even worse, go to a library. You remember libraries, right? Well, you will if you were born before 1988.

More food for thought, as always.

Ranting & Raving: Episode 1

In view of my tendency to spend most of my blog posts ranting about different things, I’ve decided to collect and condense all of my rants, that’s right, all into a single series of posts. From now on, readers will be able to tell right away when a major whine is about to begin, and get out before it’s too late.

So, I bring you: Ranting & Raving!

AT&T: The Evil Empire

Since earlier this year, the telecommunications company AT&T has been expanding at an alarming rate. First, they absorbed Bell South. Next, they assimilated Cingular. Now, they hold the exclusive rights to the iPhone’s network. And yet, even though I listen to enough liberal radio to kill a horse, I haven’t heard a single outcry about this. Somebody has to say something. I guess that’s me, now.

Now, I don’t know just how far AT&T is planning to take this, and perhaps I’m just being paranoid, but it certainly seems that “The Evil Empire” — as I call it — is heading very quickly for monopoly territory. This makes me quite nervous.

First of all, in a monopoly, there is no competition, so there is no reason to set prices at a competitive rate. After all. in a monopoly situation, there is no competition. And since the only viable telecom network is the one that covers a majority of the service area, even if AT&T doesn’t take over every other provider, they’ll still have an effective monopoly, being the only ones that can provide broad-ranging coverage.

Secondly, if AT&T goes monopolistic, then there will be no reason for them to maintain any standard of quality. After all, with no real competition, they have no reason to spare the expense. Who else could their customers go to?

But perhaps the most frightening — and admittedly most paranoid — of the possibilities, should AT&T consume the whole market, is the potential for the abuse of democracy. The Internet is one of the most democratic media of exchange on Earth, and has been since its inception. However, who’s to say how this might change if one company has control over all the Internet access routes? I myself access the Web through a DSL modem now run by AT&T (it wasn’t my idea; when I signed up it was still Bell South). Suppose they didn’t like what I was writing about them. “Oops, Mr. Asymptote, it looks like your phone line has suffered some sort of inexplicable catastrophic failure.”

Think about it.

Products I Won’t Buy/Shows and Movies I Won’t Watch/Miscellaneous things I Won’t Be Associated With Because of the Odiousness of their Advertising

Long title, I know. Sorry. That was, believe it or not, the most concise way I could think of putting it.

This list has been festering in the back of my mind for a while. I thought it’d be a good time to air it out; it was starting to stink up up my hindbrain. So, here it is:

• Dr. Scholl’s: An irritating series of forced rhymes does not an amusing advert make.
• Zwinky: I don’t know what it is, but I’ve seen enough banner ads for it to hate it with all my heart.
• Jack in the Box food: Just because you say every other fast food chain sucks does not make it true. Also, that angus-anus thing was kind of transparent. Better luck next time.
• The Transformers Movie: Flooding all channels with hyped-up ads only annoys me, it has never gotten me to see a movie.
• Chevrolet automobiles: Their poor fuel-efficiency notwithstanding, the fact that they’ve formed an evil union with the above movie has made me hate them. Also, when you go Toyota, you don’t go back. (I know, that doesn’t rhyme…I’m not very good at such witticisms.)
• Skechers shoes: Sure, life is easier when you ignore the world’s problems and concentrate on shoes, but that doesn’t make for a very satisfying life.
• Old Navy: First came the irritating ads, then the nonsensical ads, and now it seems the age of the irritating ads has returned.
• Suzuki automobiles/motorcycles: A woman in a leather jacket only entices the more simple-minded members of my gender (which happen to be the majority, but still).
• That patty melt sandwich: I didn’t even want to risk seeing it again, so I didn’t bother finding out who made it. Sexist advertising is not the wave of the future, but apparently they still think it works.
• Diet Pepsi: Fifty-six percent is not that much greater than fifty percent. This is not an election. Get a sharp pin and deflate your ego.
• VisionWorks eyeglasses: I don’t know what you think you’re accomplishing with twitchy, strangely composed animations.
• The iPhone: I must admit, general hype made me jaded, but the ads, with their plinky, pretty music, did not help.
• AT&T: Okay, since they seem to be moving to take over the entire world, I may have trouble avoiding them, but the fact that they seemed to have formed an evil conglomerate, then advertised it widely, kind of turned me off. Try a striptease next time. (Only kidding. All the members of the Evil Conglomerate are fifty-year-old, fat, rich, white men who don’t get enough sun).
• Reality Television: Okay, you know what, I’m gonna need an entire separate post for this one. More on this later.
• That free-text-messaging phone: Whichever advertiser created that irritating “IDK my BFF Jill” commercial should be beaten into a coma, allowed to recover, and beaten into a coma again. I repeat, and for the last time: media saturation does not a successful/good product make!
• Welch’s Grape Juice: Getting creepy, annoying, Dakota-fanning-esque little girls to say canned lines without a hint of real sincerity is just creepy. It’s like that scene in the horror movie where you see the former sidekick standing up and waving, but you know it’s just the alien tentacles shoved up his rectum and into his brain making him do it. (Hmm…my similes seem to be rather peculiar today).
• Glomobi: Who the hell wants a crying baby ringtone for a cell phone? Odds are, in the same restaurant as the twerp with the loud phone will be a real crying baby. And get an announcer with a less annoying voice while you’re at it.
• Subway sandwiches: Okay, I still eat there, but only because the sandwiches are good. Next time, though, take a hint: nobody wants to see a grossly overweight man or the pale, skinny corporate sock puppet he evolved into. And why must you always follow up “Subway” with “Restaurants”? Everybody knows it’s a restaurant! Subway might be one of the most easily-recognizable restaurant names on the planet!
• McDonalds: Not only does their food have a tendency to make me ill, and not only does it tend to contain more than the FDA’s legal maximum concentration of livestock excrement, but trying to make a really shitty chain of restaurants sound glamorous while continuing to serve up low-quality, high-fat, dangerous food is not a good idea. Also, everybody can tell that you have produced one set of adverts to attract white people, and a totally separate set for black people. Neither group is so stupid as not to notice that.

Well, it certainly feels good to get all that off my chest! More ranting later!

The Generation Incapable of Seriuosness

For years, there have been warning signs that the younger generations are slowly losing their capacity for taking the world seriously. As time marches on, the media decays, and social discourse degenerates into a discussion of which cell phone is the best, which pop star is the most attractive, and which television show is more entertaining, the young are losing their ability to connect with or take seriously anything in their world.

I began to notice this a few years back, when I was in high school. As I rose through the ranks, from freshman, to sophomore, to junior, to senior, I gained the ability to “look back” as it were, at the younger students, to see just what the new generation of freshmen were like. I was appalled.

Something went wrong somewhere between my generation and the one three or four years younger. While I don’t claim that my generation had many noble qualities, it certainly seems that, on average, the younger one is much worse. For one thing, they all think so highly of themselves. Their egos are more inflated even than some of the athletes and pop artists that they idolize. They stride around in faddish, popular, and ludicrously expensive clothes, as if somehow their participation in mainstream consumer culture has given them the right to whatever they ask for.

The second thing I noticed about these young whippersnappers was the increasing proportion of “class clown” types among them. These are young people who not only can take a joke, but can take it so well that they don’t seem to be capable of anything else. Nothing they say can be taken seriously, and they walk around talking jokingly about everything, in their annoyingly sarcastic and matter-of-fact tones of voice.

Now, normally, I’d welcome such levity; I think that my generation and the older ones are, on the whole, in serious need of such levity. I’d welcome the refreshing lack of gravity in everything they talk about, if it did not betray such a rapidly degrading society. These youngsters don’t take anything seriously because everything is a fantasy to them. They’ve bought into, in a big way, the delusion that if they fix their hair properly, buy the perfect clothes, drive the best car, and date the most popular person, that their life will gain meaning and purpose immediately, and that everything will work out. While many in my generation have been permeated for much of their lives by the lies and false promises of the media, these younger folks have been basted in it for their entire lives. Not one waking moment has been spent without a talking box in the room challenging independent thought. Not one waking moment has been spent asking the question “Does the media really portray the world as it is?” Not one moment. This is not innocent capitalism. This is indoctrination.

Take a look at your average television commercial. Look at its gauzy, glossy, rococco illusions. Watch unrealistically proportioned, silicone-fortified, cosmetically-enhanced, over-dressed, superficial drones milling around, promoting low-quality, overpriced garbage that nobody would buy if the artificial need were not created. Look at how many of them are trying to create a need for products that nobody wants, nobody needs, and that are actually often dangerous. With all this in mind, consider this horrifying idea: the young people just a generation behind me see these commercials, and believe in them. They believe that the world should actually be like this: superficial and meaningless, based on transient consumer commodities with no real value. It’s no wonder they don’t take anything seriously.

More Movie Land

In Movie Land…

• … somehow, somewhere, the tables will turn, no matter how implausible this is.
• … the hero will either be: a cold and distant “damaged” sort, an introvert with a heart of gold, or an extremely “cool cat.”
• … the heroine will either be: cold and distant, continually mourning her dead husband, or a sex object.
• … somebody will own a motorcycle.
• … everybody is a grade-A marksman.
• … even the most clichéd one-liners are treated as profound statements.
• … if there is glass, somebody will be thrown through it, fall through it, shoot through it, or explode it. No exceptions.
• … a long series of pans across a lovely, bustling city guarantees its destruction.
• … a happy exterior masks a dark secret.
• … in a war, one side’s soldiers are human, and the other side’s soldiers are disposable, inhuman drones commanded by someone who doesn’t care about them.
• … fire leads to explosion. No exceptions.
• … even supposed “human-level” robots are nowhere near human level, and despite recent advances in artificial intelligence, we’re apparently still supposed to believe that they are totally logical and emotionless.
• … someone with brain damage is never cognitively impaired. In fact, they often gain a special talent.
• … despite the laws of physics, you can hear everything in space.
• … stars and planets are much larger and closer together than they should be.
• … all stars are roiling balls of activity. Solar flares are constant. This is especially true of stars around which orbit “habitable” planets.
• … some saccharine life-saving gesture will be repaid heartwarmingly later. No exceptions.
• … nine times out of ten, somebody, usually female, will say “Do you think you can handle it?”
• … people have no convictions about having a conversation whilst shooting high-powered weapons. Actually, the danger lurking all around them seems to make them even witter than usual.
• … vampires are young, attractive, and overwhelmingly female. No exceptions.
• … wizards are old men. No exceptions.
• … if a large structure is depicted from the ground, at some point in the movie, that same structure will probably be seen collapsing in slow motion.
• … when the above structure collapses, no matter what had been stored there, it will all explode or go up in flames.
• … the climax of the movie is always an explosion. Even if the movie is underwater, in space, or in another such environment not conducive to explosions.
• … the pyrotechnics guy is a pyromaniac. Thus, fire will be used wherever possible, especially if explosives are not available.
• … if there is a puddle of gasoline, it will be ignited somehow.
• … a small town is dangerous in some way.
• … an abandoned small town is a deathtrap.
• … a young, happy couple shown early in the movie and who never undergo any character development are about to meet a very grisly demise. You can usually bet that they will be eaten by something.
• … an asteroid will be stopped at the last minute, no matter how unlikely.
• … no matter how bad the apocalypse, a post-apocalyptic movie will always feature at least one really well-organized faction.
• … no matter the circumstances, if a female character demonstrates a proficiency with any sort of weapon, the hero will be amazed.
• … most heroes are sexist misogynistic “love ‘em and leave ‘em” types.
• … as the heroes are leaving after the loving, they will either look mournfully to the right side of the screen or deliver a witty one-liner.
• … the villain always, through sheer stupidity, or out of a desire to taunt the hero, leaves a trail of clues that can be followed using sufficient logic. No information is ever missing or misleading. Ever.
• … one plot twist is the legal maximum. Offenders are labeled “indie” films and shelved at the back of the store.
• … either everybody is who they seem to be, or nobody is.
• … if you are persistent enough, you can defeat any number of enemies, as long as you are rugged, good-looking, and the enemies have a tendency to stand near explosive barrels, or under flimsy catwalks.
• … if a character is above a vat of some lethal chemical, he or she will fall in somehow, unless he or she is the hero, in which case he or she will toss a lot of other people in.
• … truckers tend to fall asleep just as a protagonist’s car is coming around the corner in the opposite lane. They also tend to swerve the moment they nod off.
• … if a tractor-trailer crashes, it will fall off a cliff. Even if there are no cliffs nearby.
• … if you can only see the “dead” villain’s hand, it will twitch, signifying that he or she is alive.
• … the battle between hero and villain goes like this: hero fights villain. They’re equal for a while. Villain deploys clever trick. Hero is nearly defeated but fights back. Villain downs hero. Hero appears dead. Hero gets up triumphantly, calls on the power of The Force (or some other such generic “inner strength”), and defeats the villain in a single blow. Optional: the villain’s hand twitches and he or she stands, possibly killing someone the hero loves. The anger give the hero the strength to kill the villain.
• … a woman with a British accent is always tall, blonde, and attractive. A man with a British accent is either a “cool cat,” or a grizzled, sarcastic, sardonic supporting character.
• … the protagonist never has an accent, unless that accent is British.
• … all the scientists are late-middle-aged white males, unless they are suspiciously young, blonde supermodel types.
• … the Doomsday Machine is always powerful and impressive, never subtle and hard-to-find.
• … you can get very close to a nuclear reactor with no ill effects.
• … if a building collapses on the hero, he or she will emerge just after everybody writes them off. They will be dusty, but otherwise unhurt. They usually emerge from a fortuitously-placed piece of debris.
• … hiding in a closet only guarantees that the Evil Henchman will have to circle the room a few times before dramatically plunging his or her fists through the wall. It doesn’t provide any actual shelter.
• … all closets are equipped with slat doors to look through. No exceptions.
• … the crack under any normal door is always big enough for dramatic shadows to flit across it. The illumination is, of course, always suitable to allow this.
• … if the heroes are worn down after a long firefight, one of them will eventually glance over the top of a chunk of debris, drop down suddenly, and say some variation of “There’s way too many! We can’t go in there.” The protagonist will then proceed to go in there.
• … the hero owns a motorcycle. Or, if he/she doesn’t, they will steal one, no matter how many other vehicles are available.
• … heroes and villains have a tendency to steal cellular phones from men in business suits who are crossing the street. These men then proceed to point ineffectually, shake their fists, and yell “Hey! That’s my phone!” They then proceed to stand there, not doing anything about it.
• … the Final Confrontation always takes place in an area free of civilians who might get underfoot.
• … the Doomsday Device can always be stopped and started from one single button/key/etc.
• … the head of a multi-national corporation is always evil.
• … the little guy is always better than the big guy.
• … if you dive screaming into a horde of enemies, the universe graciously goes into slow motion so others can watch in awe.
• … nobody ever sees the body being put into the body bag. You either see the bag being zipped up, or you see it once it’s already been closed.
• … though they have a tendency to peek under the bloodstained white sheet at a grisly murder, no detective ever yells “Oh my God! That’s disgusting!” and vomits.
• … somebody who has an outlandish theory (usually about a coming disaster or something about that nature) and is ridiculed for it by his colleagues will be vindicated in the end. No exceptions.
• … a hero’s companion who has supposedly been converted to the dark side, will always come back in the end, usually right before sacrificing themselves to free the hero.
• … the hero is almost invariably a very acrobatic person. They usually also have martial-arts training.
• … despite the obvious disadvantages, the hero always matches the villain’s weapon: even if a gun is available, the hero will keep fighting with that trusty sword. And win. No matter what.

More later.

Movie Land

In the same vein as my “TV Land” post, here is the world described in Hollywood films. In Movie Land…

• … if a black person is present, he or she will inevitably die first.
• … in the absence of a black person, or after they have departed, any person with glasses will die immediately.
• … if the room is dark and silent, somebody is going to die.
• … if a silence is followed by an absentminded moment of relief, somebody is going to die.
• … a shadow dropping from the ceiling is a surefire predictor of death.
• … fire leads immediately to explosion. No exceptions.
• … at least one car will explode at some time during the movie.
• … the female companion of the villain will, somehow, some way, defect to the hero’s side.
• … the hero will survive. Even if he is tossed out into the void of space, somehow, he or she will survive.
• … somebody who coughs has a terrible disease, and will be dead within minutes.
• … anybody who discovers an ancient artifact will immediately investigate it. They will subsequently die.
• … the person who makes clever quips throughout the beginning of the movie will either be killed heartbreakingly, or become the comic relief.
• … if the two focal characters are of opposite sexes, they will have at least one make-out scene, and probably a sex scene.
• … a projectile depicted in slow motion always finds its mark.
• … a one-liner is always a precursor to victory. No exceptions.
• … the more risky a driver you are, the less chance anything bad will actually happen to you.
• … if a spacecraft is punctured, a low-ranking person will be ejected into space.
• … an ominous but seemingly empty planet contains some sort of bizarre killer being that’s been waiting for 2,000 years. Always.
• … an evil villain who pretends to spare some poor weakling will kill him in short order.
• … a religious person who has lost their faith will regain it by the end of the film.
• … a cold, introverted, uncaring sort’s heart will be melted by the end of the film.
• … a cold woman will defrost by the end of the film, in a big way. She usually ends up having a love scene with the hero.
• … children are never killed, but are instead used to inspire fear and suspense that they might be killed.
• … if a police officer catches up with the hero (or villain) during a chase, that officer will be killed before pursuing legal action. Heroes and villains do not get speeding tickets.
• … if the camera is focused on the starter as someone turns the key, a car bomb is about to explode.
• … a person admitted into the hospital in critical condition either recovers remarkably quickly (their eyes usually snap open at the end of the film), or they flatline while the hero is present.
• … CPR either drags out endlessly or saves the recipient at the last possible moment.
• … zombies cannot use weapons. No exceptions.
• … alien creatures either speak English (often unaccented), or they speak in primal, indecipherable growls.
• … anybody who goes to “check anything out,” will be dead quickly.
• … a savant-ish person will either find a great use for their talent or they will become sociable by the end of the film.
• … if it’s unlikely, if it’s foolish, if it makes no sense, if it’s implausible, if it has no bearing on the plot, it is certain to happen at least once.

More on this later…movies are definitely a more fertile ground for this than TV.

First Youtube; Wikipedia’s Next

The other day, I found a need to measure the distance between Japan and California, as part of a story I’m writing. For this purpose, I employed Google Earth (which is, in my opinion, one of the most impressive pieces of software that Google has ever produced). After I’d gotten the measurement, I amused myself for a few minutes scrolling around, having a look at tiny Arctic islands and such, when I began to notice a smattering of little Wikipedia icons all over the map. I clicked on one of them, and was taken to a Wikipedia article about that particular island. This inspired in me a dreadful concern for the future of Wikipedia. Will the beloved “peoples’ encyclopedia” soon succumb to the same fate as Youtube?

Regular readers will recall that my dire predictions of the fate of Youtube’s free content after Google acquired the site largely came true. Now, with Google cuddling up to Wikipedia as well, does the same thing lie in Wikipedia’s future? Now, I’ve got nothing against Google as an idea, Google as an entity, but Google is a corporation, and is thus bound by the corporate constraints of intellectual property and copyrights. Should my paranoias be borne out, what will become of Wikipedia’s open and free content? That’s always been a fear of mine on some level, that Wikipedia could be corrupted by some corporation, and reduced to nothing more than a standard e-Encyclopedia.

As usual, just more food for thought…and I really hope this particular concern proves to be unfounded…

TV Land

I’m sure somebody, probably more than one person, has done this before, but I felt it was my duty to contribute my sarcastic observations about the world constructed by television producers. What would this world be like? Well, here are some things I’ve observed:

In TV Land…

• …a car bomb never, never renders the car unrecognizable.
• …a gunshot wound to the head is always fatal.
• …pretty much everybody is dating all the time.
• …all teenagers are either disturbed and angsty or completely well-adjusted.
• …the crime scene investigators always figure out exactly what happened in some crime.
• …any illness can be treated, as long as you figure out what it is before the patient dies.
• …a dead body is always a crime victim; nobody ever just dies of natural causes in the street.
• …somebody enjoying a relaxing day of recreation is guaranteed to either be killed, fall ill, witness a crime, or get some really bad news.
• …if someone appears to be ill, it’s the person sitting next to them who actually is.
• …there’s always a miracle drug that just came onto the market for any illness.
• …all awkward, intelligent people have great looks.
• …explosions do very little damage to their surroundings.
• …if someone has an accent, they’re probably the villain.
• …the homeless can always be bribed.
• …the mentally ill are always very mentally ill.
• …large sums of money are always transferred in impressive silver suitcases.
• …nuclear weapons will always be disarmed.
• …if a disaster is about to take place, then some heroic soul will attempt to stop it, even if it’s a volcano or an earthquake.
• …the criminal is never slick enough not to run the second somebody gets suspicious of them.
• …if it’s a crime show, the person first interviewed usually ends up being the villain.
• …the human body contains about ten gallons of blood.
• …dying people always have some very poignant last words.
• …dying people always close their eyes slowly just before they die.
• …there will be somebody in the cast, guaranteed, with hand-to-hand combat skills.
• …the above person will usually be a nerdy sort.
• …the news is accurate and unbiased.

I’ll add to this as soon as I can think of some others. Also, look forward to “In Movie Land”…

Insurance: The Silent Evil

Often in this humble blog, I complain about the manipulative evils of various industries: the pharmaceutical industry, the petroleum industry, and a number of others. An industry I hadn’t considered — until recently, that is — is the insurance industry. And in terms of the amount of human suffering they cause, insurers may be the worst industry I’ve ever ranted about. Insurance is not an inherently bad idea. Among the various methods of paying for healthcare, it’s one of the better ones. The problem is greed and corruption. Of late, the insurance companies have been hiking their premiums excessively, making insurance very difficult for many people to afford. So, straight away, insurers cut out anybody who can’t afford their prices. These people, however, happen to be those who would probably most benefit from health insurance: African Americans (who, it is believed, are more prone to heart disease and diabetes), the poor, and the homeless.

There is another slice of the population that the insurance companies toss in the garbage (metaphorically speaking): the chronically ill. The aim of insurance is to help people pay for the ridiculously expensive medical treatments they require, right? Not if you’re chronically sick. If you have cancer or diabetes or heart disease, good luck trying to find any kind of health insurance. Insurance companies simply don’t want to take on the “risk” of people who are in need of frequent, and often expensive, healthcare. So, once again, they cut out another segment of the population who could most benefit from their services.

Do you notice a pattern emerging? It would seem that insurance companies only want to insure those that would cost them the least: middle- and upper-class citizens with little prior history of health problems and little genetic predisposition to them, so that they can take as much of their premiums as possible for themselves. Almost makes the oil companies look tame in comparison.

But wait, there’s more! With the advent of the Human Genome Project, and the ability to predict genetic disease, the Insurers will at last be able to cut out the remaining group that steals their income away from them: the people who even have a chance of getting sick. Imagine: the year is around 2015, and genetic testing is becoming more and more accurate. Suppose you’re a twenty-something woman from a middle-class background who wants to buy some health insurance. Well, you’d better hope that you don’t have any genetic predisposition to disease! And you’d really better hope that the insurance company doesn’t have the legal clout to force you to get tested for genetic diseases! “I’m afraid you’re un-insurable, Ms. Doe, as you have a ten percent risk of developing ovarian cancer within the next thirty years.”

You can probably see why this would be a problem: the insurance companies appear to be moving in the direction of insuring people who rarely or never get sick. Wait a minute! These are the people who need insurance the least! You can see where problems would arise, and how your friendly Insurer might seem just a bit immoral, or at the least, shortsighted.

Think about that the next time you’re feeling under the weather: how sick can you really afford to get?

“Send me Something I Can Agree With”

Okay, I normally do my best to avoid railing against America’s current president, because, frankly, that’s been done to death. But he has forced me to break my own rule, through a spasm of what appears to be either complete foolishness or complete totalitarianism.

Here’s the problem: America is currently engaging in a war. Democrats don’t want America to be in that war any longer. Republicans want America to stay in the war for a while. But, since the Democrats are now in control of the American congress, they have promoted a bill which they hoped would continue keeping the military well-funded enough so that they don’t have to go to war shirtless, but that also demands that the war be ended by a 2008 deadline. No dice. President Bush decided that he didn’t like this idea.

Now that’s nothing especially new. He often decides that he doesn’t like other peoples’ ideas. But what truly baffled me was the way in which he chose to express this dislike. He said, and I quote, “I hope that the Congress can send me something I can sign.” What? I thought the purpose of the congress was to make laws that were best for the people, not laws that were best for the president. In my mind, the whole affair goes something like this:

Congress: We don’t like the war any longer. We think you should stop.

Mister President: No.

Congress: We’ll pass a bill to make you stop.

Mister President: I’ll veto it.

Congress: What about a compromise?

Mister President: As long as the compromise is the same as my plan.

And please don’t think that I’m attacking the President here. Well, I am, but not exclusively. I’m also trying to figure out how the new Democratic majority managed to make itself so completely ineffective. I guess I’d just never seen a divided congress before…

The Downfall of Great Cinema

I’ve noticed a very disturbing trend: movies are getting more and more cliché, with less and less substance, all the time. I know that this isn’t a particularly original observation, and that people have probably been saying the same thing since the 1940’s. But unlike many of the aforementioned whiners, I am prepared to do something about it. So, I present to the world my Big List of Suggestions:

1. People usually die with their eyes open, and are usually too busy dying to deliver some heartbreaking final line, or some witty quip.
2. If your movie contains something that is so overused that even the parodies of it are cliché, you need to rethink it (I’m talking especially to those movies that emulated The Matrix’s slow-motion effects. That was only good once.)
3. The rugged, downtrodden, emotionless female character who doesn’t care about anybody became a stupid idea the second time it was done (such a character who’s heart immediately melts when she meets the right guy was never a good idea).
4. The rugged downtrodden emotionless hero has the same problem.
5. If you have two characters start making out suddenly in the middle of, say, a battlefield, tear up your screenplay and set the bits on fire.
6. Extraterrestrials are not likely to be shaped like us, and I very much doubt that they’d have the equipment to learn or understand our language.
7. Sometimes, despite their best efforts, the hero gets killed anyway.
8. A muscle-bound, oily man in nothing but a loincloth does not mix with large swords or heavy weaponry.
9. If a villain manages to lose grip on the hero because he was busy delivering some pithy, “I’m-about-to-kill-you” remark, throw your screenplay in the garbage.
10. Unless sex is some part of the plot, there’s no need for a sex scene.
11. If you have more than one needless sex scene, you are a pornographer.
12. To the directors who think they can get away with gratuitous sexualization: just because a woman character is supposedly intelligent doesn’t mean she can still wear an “almost-nude” tanktop, and nobody will think it’s cheap. This tactic is not fooling the feminists (who probably have a right to be pissed in this case), it’s only fooling you.
13. In reference to #12: if you actually knew any scientific types, you’d know that few of them are willing to jump into bed with the hunky hero at the slightest provocation.
14. If two people are having sex and they knock all the junk off a table, crumple up your screenplay and eat it.
15. Very few people can actually walk after being shot in the leg/chest/stomach/neck.
16. This is a long one: If you have a character who was wronged by some villain, who delivered a “witty” line as they wronged the character, it is not cool to have that character say the exact same line as they wrong the villain back. Even if people existed that could remember such things with such great ease, they aren’t usually in a position to get wronged by villains very often.
17. If you throw in a lot of science jargon, you must remember: some in the audience (I humbly point to myself as an example) actually know a bit about science, and will realize that the “science” in your movie is a load of crap. From my own experience, I can tell you that this will dramatically lower their opinion of the film (I’m talking especially to the makers of 28 Days Later: great plot and great characters, but there is no infectious agent that starts causing symptoms after thirty seconds of exposure).
18. Most explosions are more dirt than fire. Those rare ones that are as fiery as the movie blasts generally don’t allow people to walk away after being caught in them (which invariably happens in movies).
19. Getting shot in the head is not always fatal. Just because you don’t know how to deal with a subject as deep as a mentally disabled character doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try.
20. The time of superhero movies has gone. Please try to live with this.
21. The villain who is “pure evil” was a cliché even back in the fifties, when it became popular.
22. It is possible for Artificial Intelligences to experience emotions. Their brains are designed after ours, and the goal of most AI research is to make them as human as possible. H.A.L. (2001) was as good as I’ve seen thus far.
23. Since I mentioned HAL: it is not, I repeat with great vehemence NOT necessary for every single acronym in your movie to spell something. Look at DARPA, AWACS, and HTML.
24. And while I’m still going on about robots: if you’re going to have human-level intelligence robots, then why not make one of them a character (and I’m not talking in the butler-like, vaguely amusing manner of C-3PO here)? To my knowledge, that’s still a fairly fresh idea. After all, an entity with human intelligence would probably damn sure want to be treated like a human being.
25. When something gets cut, it falls apart immediately. Whoever imported the concept of the “ooh-cool-delayed-slash-effect” thing from Japanese anime was a fool, and should stop doing that. (and by the way, if I were going to rant about anime, I think I’d need to split it into two posts; talk about cliché (well, most of it that I’ve seen)).
26. A plot twist doesn’t work it it is any of these things: stupid/unbelievable/unrealistic/crappy/pithy/saccharine/clichéd/impossible/done for the sake of doing it.
27. Some plot elements do not need to be explained; I’m talking especially to the directors of the Saw series here: the one thing that made John really creepy is that he didn’t move until the end of the first movie. You didn’t actually need to tell us how he did it.
28. If you make a sequel just for the hell of it, we will know. Some movies are standalones. (I’m talking to the Saw guys again).
29. Human bodies generally only contain about six liters of blood. Use a damned measuring cup next time!
30. In reference to the above: most people die after losing the first four or so of those liters.
31. Gratuitous gore was only the “edgy” thing to do the first couple of times it was done. Now it just looks stupid and unnecessary.
32. ATTENTION TO ALL MAKERS OF SPACE MOVIES: SOUND DOES NOT, I REPEAT DOES NOT CARRY IN SPACE!!!
33. Gasoline tankers only rarely explode.
34. Gasoline pumps only rarely explode.
35. Cars almost never explode. If your screenplay contains an exploding car, tear it up and flush it down the toilet.
36. Unless they have some sort of congenital insensitivity to pain, very few people could actually make their own tourniquet and tie it up after losing their leg.
37. Limbs do not slice off nearly as neatly as you seem to think.
38. I don’t know what kind of fire you’re experienced with, but very few fires spread as fast as you seem to think.

All right, I seem to have reached the legal maximum number of rants in one post. To any film directors who read this: think about these things, they might do you good. And if you want an example of a really good, emotional, goosebump-making movie, look at Children of Men. Or go to Mexico. Alfonso Cuarón and Guillermo del Toro know what they’re doing.

Sports Metaphors and Politics

I don’t intend to get into a full-fledged rant against sports-themed metaphors in general; I don’t have that kind of time or space to work with here. But I would like to address, in brief, the strange propensity of politicians to use these metaphors, often in rather inappropriate ways.

Take for example the phrase “political football,” which seems to be especially favored by members of the current administration. Now, while this one is fairly understandable (the “opposition” essentially takes their idea and runs the other way with it), I’d like some clarification. After all, there are many things you can do with a football. You can run the other way with it. You can throw it down on the ground for no particular reason. You can throw it to somebody else. You can trip and fall on it, and have a guy throw a little political bean-bag flag at you.

Most of the clarity ends there. What about “The ball’s in his court”? What is he actually supposed to do with it? It’s not always clear whether he’s supposed to shoot or pass or whatever else you do in basketball. Most of the time, people with balls in their court just stand there dribbling them stupidly anyway (that was not, I repeat NOT a double-entendre).

And what about “Home run”? This term is thrown about so freely that it’s lost all semblance of meaning. In politics, sometimes it’s not a good idea to go on bashing everything out of the ballpark. “Ballpark” is another one. Have any of these politicians actually seen a ballpark? Pretty damn large, it turns out. Actually, considering the level of accuracy we’ve learned to expect from modern government, “ballpark” might be pretty apt…

English and I Don’t Get Along

I may have mentioned this before, but I have a problem with the English language. Ever since I was a child in elementary school, I’ve had in the back of my mind a list of contradictions and problems with the language. I was always harshly criticized by my friends and teachers when I attempted to fit the irregular verbs into the regular framework, and as a result, I was forcibly taught the language properly. But my discontent at its irregularities, contradictions, and problems remained, and to this day, they still annoy me.

These thoughts were forced back to the forefront when I began taking German in high school. So much of German made sense, all fitting into the established grammatical rules, that I began to see English the way non-native speakers see it: an overly complicated and contrived bundle of words and makeshift, jury-rigged rules. And having seen this in English, I began to see it in German as well. German may be much more sensible than English, but it, too, has its irregular verbs, verbs that don’t conjugate properly, for whatever reason. So my search for a less-confusing language continued.

I then learned of Esperanto, and after perusing some introductory material on the Internet, began an attempt to teach it to myself. This attempt turned into a whole series, each one punctuated by my losing interest for a few months, forgetting what I’d learned, and then going back and having to re-do the online course.

At some point during all this, I learned of Lojban. Lojban is now, in my mind, the best artificial language on the planet. It may be the best overall. It is, from the material I’ve read and from what little experience I’ve had with it, completely unambiguous, logical, and sensible. The only downside is that, after many years of English, my brain is apparently quite averse to a language that makes perfect sense. I simply have trouble wrapping my head around it. That (coupled, probably, with my utter impatience) has made Lojban the most difficult language I’ve yet tried to learn. But, if nothing distracts me, perhaps I’ll be able to give it another go.

I have just one more thing to say. To the English language: Curse you English, curse you.

Our State

Now, when most Americans think about corrupt states, I doubt that North Carolina would be the first one to come to their minds. I, however, beg to differ. This, it has always seemed to me, is one of the most socially and economically backwards states in the union. Let me explain why.

This state houses the city of Charlotte, where I was born, and where I currently take up residence. Charlotte has been a rat’s nest of problems for at least the last decade, and possibly longer (since I wasn’t paying attention to all of it until about a decade ago). First, there’s the ongoing, painfully slow road construction. It never seems to finish, making an already-congested city clog up even worse. And what’s more, they do all the road construction on the best roads. It seems to me that they should do something about the roads where the pavement has had to be replaced so many times that the asphalt has become three-colored. Or the roads that have had all their lane markings worn off. Or the ones that are so warped that driving on them is reminiscent of being in a small boat in a hurricane.

Next comes the arena scandal. Many years ago, a select group of high-powered executives decided that they wanted a basketball arena. The only problem was, the people voted it down. So the city council lumped the arena into a package with Discovery Place, a cool childrens’ science museum (trips to which were the highlights of my youth), so that we couldn’t vote down the arena without voting down funding for Discovery Place. So, in a nutshell, this is what happened. They wanted an arena. The citizens didn’t want it. So they built an arena…

And finally, in ascending order of severity, comes the current scandal. It seems that some of North Carolina’s corruption has leaked across the border into South Carolina. There, Duke Power (the Haliburton or Blackwater of the North Carolina power industry), asked for funding to build a new nuclear power plant. That’s all well and good; I’m not terribly fond of nuclear power, but at least they didn’t get the coal power stations they wanted. But then comes the corruption. Apparently, in order to “protect their financial interests”, they’d like to be able to recover $125,000,000 in planning money if the project doesn’t go forward. Where is that recovery money going to come from? They want to take it out of the taxpayers’ hides! They actually want the people to pay them for something they didn’t build. The main problem (one of many, of course): the government funds the plant, but the people pay for not building it. It’s been called “An open-ended nuclear spending account.” How stupid does Duke Power really think we are?

And to my fellow North Carolinians who may be reading this: move now! Save yourself while you still can!

Contractually Obligated

Ever since 2001, the United States has been spoiling for a fight. Granted, back then, we had a perfectly good reason. But now, six years later, our reasoning is beginning to fall into question. We’ve got a war going in the Middle East that has outlasted almost every other modern war (including World War Two), and several other wars threatening to take hold in Korea and Iran. In light of all this conflict, the phrase “military contractors” has become something of a buzzword among American political pundits. This did not seem, at the beginning of the war, to be much of a problem. It was actually quite nice that there were civilians willing to help out the war effort. But that was then. Now, trouble is brewing.

Let’s go first to New Orleans, which was smashed in 2005 by Hurricane Katrina (a name that anybody who listens to the news even occasionally will be tired of hearing). Since the government relief efforts were, shall we say “lackluster,” there was a desperate need for aid, any kind of aid. The military contractor known as Blackwater stepped up and sent people to New Orleans to help in the repair and recovery operations. This was all well and good, until they billed the government for several hundred million dollars. Still, for a great humanitarian effort like the rescue of New Orleans, they certainly deserved some pay. But problems arise when you look at just how the money was broken down. Blackwater billed the government for $950 per person per day. The problem is, the actual contractors who went into New Orleans only reported being paid $650 per person per day. Somewhere along the way, almost a third of the money is unaccounted for. It is not difficult to go from the missing money to foul play on Blackwater’s part.

The problems do not end there, by any stretch of the imagination. The contractors often refuse to release documents to Congress, claiming that they are classified. But aren’t they working as employees of the government? And aren’t most employees obliged to disclose information on the request of the employer? It gets worse still: there have been several reported cases of privatized military forces disobeying congress’s orders. This is a very dangerous situation, exacerbated by the fact that, when they cause or get caught up in a problem, they refuse to abide by, or find legal loopholes in the contracts they have with their employees.

By now, I’m sure, the little alarm bells will be ringing madly in some of my readers’ heads. They ring in mine, too, and here’s why: we have private armies entering war zones and disaster areas, where they have a tendency to get killed, or perhaps to exacerbate an already-serious situation. They then refuse to release the documents concerning these affairs, even to Congress. This has all the makings of an embryonic coup.

Now, perhaps I’m being dismal and paranoid. I’m sure my more conservative readers will agree with this, but I see a truly frightening scenario:

The military contractors refuse to withhold from the government vital documents concerning incidents in which they are involved, thus creating a sphere of deniability. They use some of the money that they report to have spent on their employees in order to buy equipment and train more employees. Before long, the number of members of the United States military is overtaken by the number of soldiers employed by military contractors. We have, at this point, a force capable of overtaking the military forces of the U.S. government. This would make a coup, should the idea cross their minds, relatively easy to execute. Now, I’m sure there are some radical individuals who would like to see the government overthrown, and in any other case, I might agree with them; the only problem in this case is that the contractors are already known for lying, denying, and abusing their power. Were they to get control over the government (that is, assuming they don’t already have it), what kind of totalitarian state could they build?

Just something to think about…

Daylight “Savings” Time

Since I was a little kid, I’ve always been mystified by the practice of Daylight Savings Time. It’s always struck me as one of humanity’s most illogical practices, and considering what humanity is like, that’s saying a lot.

The very idea of Daylight Savings Time annoys me to no end.

Mister Government: Okay, remember to set your clocks ahead so that your internal clock will be confused all day!

Humanity: But why? It doesn’t help anybody!

Mister Government: It’s so the farmers can have an extra hour to work in the fields!

Humanity: But most farming these days is done by machines, many of which are computerized, and many farms are becoming part of large corporations.

Mister Government: Do it because I say so!

Humanity: Okay…

Mister Government: You didn’t say “Simon Says.”

But the final insult: the government has decided this year to arbitrarily move this already-arbitrary event a couple of months earlier than usual! And the justification for this idiotic move? To save energy. Now, perhaps in other circumstances, perhaps with different people in government, this might not seem like such an insane decision. But we’re talking about the administration that gives tax breaks for people buying gas-guzzling Hummers. The same administration that actively discouraged almost every type of energy-efficient vehicle that ever came down the line.

Can you tell that I’m pissed about this?

A Quick Note

As I usually do around once a day, I logged into my blog yesterday to check my stats. Obviously this is something less than the most prestigious blog in the world, and I’m usually fairly pleased when my number of views reaches my all-time world record of…14 views. So, it was much to my surprise when I logged in yesterday and found a whopping (and yes, it is whopping. Hey, I don’t try to dictate your reality, don’t dictate mine) 38 views. So I enjoyed my little fifteen seconds of minuscule fame, until I scrolled down the stats page to see just what those 38 people had Googled in order to find me. The answer was a bit of a letdown.

It turns out that people were searching for information about the Toyota Yaris, the car which I wrote about as a candidate to replace my old one. And while many people in my position would simply be happy to get this many views, I have some problems with this:

1. With this blog, I’ve always tried to be a throwback to that bring back the sixties, fight the system, the Man is keeping us down, the corporate machine is ruining the world sort of information-dispersal-campaign rebellion. And what did I do? I managed to inadvertently associate myself with a massive, wealthy corporate venture. And not only that, I’ve now also become associated with a name under the umbrella of the ALMIGHTY ©.
2. Out of all the posts I’ve written, the puny little one about the new car I was considering hardly merits a thorough reading. And yet that lousy post has now gotten more publicity than all of my good posts combined. (I mean, look at the post. It’s hardly a stunning treatise. I guess people really go for pictures…)
3. Now, I do understand somebody Googling the Yaris, especially if they were considering buying one. What I don’t understand is why somebody would read a blog post of all things about it, and what’s more, a post in a blog called “The Life of a Math Major.” Do math majors really have that much social authority? I mean, I know we have a sexy celebrity air about us (shut up, you know it’s true…), I just didn’t realize just how much people sought our opinions (I can hear you giggling. Stop it!)

The Standardized Brain

What are the most important things for our children to learn? Most parents will say things like “Life skills,” “Math and science,” “How to succeed in the world,” and other such mighty philosophical goals.

Then, I have a question for these parents: “If you want your children to think, then why are you programming them to become complete drones???“

This heated rant was triggered by a segment on the standardized-test-producing No Child Left Behind Act, that I heard on NPR. But, it’s been bubbling in my mind since some time in third grade.

You see, in third grade, for the first time in my life, I took a standardized test. I had no idea what the whole thing was about. Before me, I saw a whole grid of little bubbles. I had been taught extensively the proper technique for filling in these bubbles, and I complied to it. After I answered the questions for a while according to the correct answers. Then, I got bored. I stopped caring whether or not my answers were correct. So what did I do? I filled in the bubbles so that they formed an aesthetically-pleasing zigzag pattern. That may well have been the last twitch of my high-level creative muscles before the horror that followed caused them to atrophy almost out of existence.

What followed was a Ministry-of Love-style inquisition, never-ending, never-relenting, and intellectually paralyzing. No longer did my classes challenge or entertain me. No longer was I expected to think up my own solutions to problems. From that moment forward, I was instructed, directly or indirectly, to do my best to come up with the answers the test-maker was looking for. How, exactly, is this good for developing minds? Well, it’s not. But it’s very good for the newly-minted American Totalitarian State, which has finally cracked the age-old secret of how to create the perfect race of conformist drones who do not question government and don’t dare think outside the box: test them into submission.

As the grades went by, I didn’t notice the subtle change in my own psyche. I didn’t feel my sense of wonder at the world slipping away; I didn’t notice it when my drive to succeed academically began to falter; I didn’t take note when I began to become more and more resentful of school and everything it symbolized. But these things happened, and they brought me to where I am today. And that is not necessarily such a good place. I have, no matter how hard I tried to fight, part drone myself. Every now and then, I’ll catch myself watching television, even when the program in question is a wretched, sex-obsessed, moronic wad of drivel, with which I wouldn’t wipe my own rectum. I find myself surfing the internet without reason, even when I don’t have any information in particular to look for.

Why did this happen? Why did a kid who adored science more than anything else in the world, who loved his teachers, who enjoyed going to school (most of the time), become a struggling, flailing student in an undistinguished university, living the American nightmare? School. It’s always been school that got me down, school that broke me, school that got me to stand up on the podium, in front of millions of followers loyal to the system, and, in an Orwellian fashion, denounce myself for my crimes against the Party. Were this 1984, I might have said something like this: “I am a traitor. An enemy of the party. I have failed tests. I have attempted to think differently. I have resisted the beneficient forces of monotonization and conformization. I have attempted to break the mold. I deserve no mercy. I deserve death.” My true crimes, though, go in the opposite direction: I have allowed tests to depress me. I have obsessed about their results. I have allowed myself to partake in the continuous review so that we can get better and better grades on them. I deserve no mercy. I deserve death.

This only got worse with the enactment of No Child Left Behind. This horrendous act, which created a set of benchmarks, to which all schools must comply or face death, is solely responsible for killing the American soul. No Child Left Behind is, by itself, a good reason to despise the current Administration. Even if you ignore American errors, mistakes, horrors, and deceptions, No Child Left Behind stands as a beacon of insanity, a ray of darkness in a sea of light.

I’m sure some of my readers will not be clear on what this Act actually does, especially those fortunate enough to be in Europe, Asia, or one of the other Americas. The meat of the act is simple: it requires a near-constant battery of tests with which it judges the performance of schools. On paper, like Marxism, it may seem like a good idea: it’s (supposedly) a way to see which schools are doing so dismally that they might be hurting the children. (Of course, this assumes that NCLB has no dark ulterior motives, which I doubt) In practice, it does no such thing. Having experienced its effects throughout high school, here’s what it does:

• Provides accountability. Translation: requires students to take test after test, so many, in fact, that teachers begin teaching mostly material that will be covered on the test, to the exclusion of all other facts. The focus of education shifts from understanding to rote memorization, and curiosity is ultimately stifled.
• Judges schools based on their performance. Translation: attacks poor and minority students, despite pretending to help them, by closing down their neighborhood schools and filling them with self-doubt about their own academic prowess.
• Helps academically-troubled students catch up. Translation: Pulls academically gifted students down to the “normal” level. Gone are the special programs for children who think differently. In their places, the gifted ones get the same crap as the non-gifted ones. It’s like taking the people who are fortunate enough to eat full, healthy meals, and then feeding them the same things as the poor, starving indigents lurking on the street.
• Prepares students to become competitive in the global arena. Translation: seeks out and destroys creativity, turns unorthodoxy into “deviance,” and warps the minds of its victims, making sure that not a single one of their thoughts strays out of the assigned box, making certain that they live according to rules, schedules, and prescribed plans.

Having finally written all of this down, and finally given it some thought, I’m beginning to feel quite robbed. I don’t have the same analytical mind as a mathematician would have had years ago. I don’t have the curiosity I used to have. I feel as though my soul has been hollowed out with some sort of spiritual melon-baller. The most I can do now is hope to save as many of the younger generation as I can.

So here’s a message for all you young people who are reading this: never, never, NEVER, NEVER let the system get to you. Disobey. Argue with your teachers when you know they’re wrong. Bend the rules. Think differently. Act differently. The moment you start thinking it’s a good idea to be more like everybody else, smack yourself in the face and do something outrageously individual. Don’t learn to the test: seek out more information about things that interest you. Think about your future, because life has no multiple-choice questions. Stop thinking about studying and memorizing and facts. Start working with ideas, and start understanding. Don’t try to save me; I’m pretty sure I’m too far gone. But save yourself while there’s still time! Hurry!