Why It Sucks to be a Teacher

I like school a lot but few share my feelings. That's okay, they can feel how ever they want about the subject. But one thing that irritates me is that students generally hate their teachers. And they expect everyone to follow along. If a class demands more than what they are willing to shell out, these students automatically assume the teacher's an asshole or they're out to get them or some other retarded fantasy.

Sometimes, hating a teacher can be a good ice-breaker when you first start a class and don't know anyone. That's okay, so long as the hatred is only used as an ice-breaker and no real feelings of malice exist. But after the first couple weeks the, "Man, Mr. Teacher is so lame! What does he expect? I mean this is only a Gen-Ed," conversations should stop entirely. We should be adults and I can't stress should enough because from what I've seen around campus, I'd swear I was dropped off at a playground.

Maybe people just don't know how to form friendships where the basis isn't mutual hatred. Maybe they are still in "high school mode" where a collective disdain for another group of people is really the only glue that holds them together.

Well I don't disdain teachers. I dain them.

And God help you if you like the class and/or teacher. Those people are even more hated than the teacher! It goes beyond being a teacher's pet, which can be pretty annoying. They feel like you betray them, the other students. You commit high treason when you "take the teacher's side". If you don't take up arms to an eight page paper, you are fighting for the wrong cause. It makes me sick.

These people are here to be educated and they want everything but that. I think people forget why they are in college sometimes. It pisses me off because I genuinely like class and being educated and all those sour fucks ruin it for me because I can't be myself around them in fear of being burned at the proverbial stake.

So it sucks to be a teacher because odds are, your students will hate you and for no good reason other than it being the trendy thing to do.

The Saw/Applebee's Mystique

Whenever I think of the Saw movies, I think of Applebees. It's just the whole "Capitalism at it's best" idea. And just let me put it out there, I have nothing against the whole torture porn movement in cinema. Hell, I'm a horror junkie myself, and I embraced the movement back during the days of Videodrome. But I hate the Saw movies so much for the same reason I hate Applebees.

I'm sure Applebees started out as a nice little neighborhood bar and grill in some small quaint Midwestern town, as all soon-to-be-fucked-up-psychologically things do. And I'm almost positive that there food was pretty good. So good in fact that after a couple years, Grandpa and Grandma Applebee opened another Applebees in the town over. And then there were five Applebees. And then ten. Then a hundred. Then a thousand. Now there are over eighteen-hundred Applebees choking our collective arteries. And if everything goes to plan, there should be three thousand Applebees by the year 2020. Awesome! Wait no, Applebees sucks, nevermind. The reason Applebees sucks, and the reason why all franchise/chain restaurants suck, is because they cut corners on the things that matter.

When a company expanse like that, they have to save money by using sub-par ingredients and storage devices and so on. So how does this relate to Saw? It's the same process.

The first Saw movie was okay, not unlike the first Applebees. It had an interesting premise but the novelty of it wore thin, on me at least, especially from the horrendous acting. But it made a lot of money, so they made more. A lot more. And just like Applebees, the quality diminishes as the franchise grows and reason is because they cut corners on things to save money. It would be more expensive to actually hire a guy write a "plot"and "characters" for the Saw movies. So they just said to hell with that and just thought up really elaborate ways to torture, maim, and kill human beings. Congratu-fucking-lations.

But this is only "Capitalism at it's BEST". Imagine "Capitalism RUN RAMPANT". You'd have Saw resturants and theme parks. You'd have a Saw-Ville, with spurious torture devices placed in every home. Oh the money to be had! The best though, would be a Saw holiday where people would be guilt-tripped into buying torture devices for friends and families, like during Christmas. Everyone would gather around the "Face-Ripper-Off-er" that's lit with little lights and they'd sing made-up songs of flogging and pain and everything would be right with the world. Everything except for the whole sanctioning of torture and death part.

How the EMOs Stole Christmas

Well it's Halloween and the studios have decided to re-release The Nightmare Before Christmas in 3-D. They've done this before, last year I think, but this year I saw something online that I did not before. This movie is the only one that I can think of that people hate solely based on the nature of the fanbase. On IMDb, the site I love so much, has a thread on the movie entitled, "Emo kids ruin everything...". Apparently this guy hates this movie solely because of the emo kids who obsess over it. And he's got followers too, he's not alone.
But that just made me think. I thought of all the stupid fanboys in the world and I realized that I can't really say that they make me hate whatever medium they devote thier lives too. Trekkies and Star Wars fanatics were the first ones to come to mind. And while they are equally annoying, I can't really pull myself to hate Star Trek or Star Wars because of them. Moreover, even including my hatred for George Lucas, I still like the Star Wars franchise.
And this once again proves my theory that most people on IMDb are morons.

IMDb: The Scum of the Internet finds a Graceland

I love movies so much. People sometimes get irriated with me because of my love for film. I remember watching Straw Dogs with someone and asking them questions about it. I was just trying to spark a conversation using the old Socratic method. They didn't really care about it but I wanted them to. I'd seen that movie so many times and it means a lot to me but they just said it was "wierd". Whatever, it's okay, I'm just not like other people.
So being a cinephile, I browse IMDb until the wee hours of the night. And one thing that I'm drawn to by some mysterious force is the message boards. Sometimes, there can be rich discussion to be had among the users of IMDb. But most of the time, you run into hate-filled anti-movie people. Cinephobes. They hate movies. Everything that spews out of thier rotten mouths is only in reference to why they hated something or why something was a horrible movie.
That's fine. I don't expect everyone to love every movie they see, I know I don't. But when I watch a movie and don't like it, I think of the reasons why I don't like it. Then I think of examples of those reasons. This may seem like the most logical thought process to use when discussing anything really. You have an opinion, you support it. Well that little fantasy doesn't exist on IMDb. You need only state that a movie sucks and you are immediately more knowledgable or sophisticated in filmmaking. And it works in vice-versa. People to go on and on about how great a movie is can't explain why. And it pisses me off.
And so the vast majority of IMDb consists of those individuals yelling about how a movie sucked or about how a movie was the best ever. They are so absolute. They're like those fanatic religious fundamentalists who strap ten pounds of plastique to themselves.
So discussions about movies are reduced to shouting matches and name calling and stupid pointless banter that makes me want to stick my head in front of a subway train.

A Fine Look at Fascism

Disgusted is the only word I can use to describe what I saw on CNN.com yesterday. Anyone who is reading this blog, which probably is no one, I just want you to look at the picture to the right. The young man being accosted is Andrew Meyer, a 21-year-old journalism student from the University of Florida. Campus police are arresting him. And yes, that's a book in his hand. Not a gun or a knife or a bomb. A goddamn book. After they arrested him, they tasered him. In any other case, that would have made me laugh but again, I'm filled with nothing but contempt and disgust having seen what happened.

It all started in Florida a few days ago when Senator John Kerry was having one of his "town hall meetings". At the end, Andrew stepped up to the mic for the Q&A session. After a quick precursor to his question, Andrew asked Kerry about reports of disenfranchised black voters and fraudulent voting machines during the 2004 election. He was then told his time was up after about 30 seconds. Then his mic was cut. Then he wanted to know why his mic was cut. Then he was arrested. Why the fuck was he arrested? Seriously there was no reason. He wasn't a threat to anyone. He had a legitamate question, albeit on the abrasive side, but he a had a solid question none the less. And he resisted arrest, which I can't quite condone, but I do believe in fighting against fascism which is what I think he was doing. They were arresting him for asking a question. That's fucked up beyond words. So after he resisted arrest, he was pinned to the ground and tasered. And he screamed in agonizing pain and it was one of the most shocking things I've ever witnessed. A young man, voicing his opinion, and being arrested and tasered for it. And everyone in the room is yelling, "Why are you doing that! Stop!" It was horrifying.

And the Fox News reports stressed Andrew as being a "prankster" like that matters. Like a young man brandishing a book instead of a firearm can be tasered and that is justified because he "likes to pulls pranks". Are you fucking kidding me, Fox News?

And Meyer's lawyers are worried that the video of this kid being taser will inevitabley hurt his case because, in a juror's eyes, "the kid had it coming". Are you fucking serious? So next time I ask a question about the integrity of a political leader, I should watch my ass from getting tasered. And the police are trying to charge the kid with disrupting the public. Now that is interesting because I guarantee you if the cops hadn't arrested him, there wouldn't have been a disturbance. The kid would have asked the question and Kerry would have answered. OH MY FUCKING CHRIST IT WOULD HAVE BEEN CHAOS!!!!

The lack of civil liberties being displayed here staggers me.

The Controversial Abortion Entry

Don't worry, I'm still going to talk about idiots on the internet. I just watched like ten videos on youtube about abortion, both pro-life and pro-choice. I'm not even going to tell you what I think of the issue because, well, to be honest I don't even have one. I'm a guy so I could never make the decision. So two of the videos that really stood out, see the issue from both sides. The first you'll get that right away but it is ineffective, which I'll explain later, and the other appears to be something else until the very end.

The first video is from Rosary Films and is frankly titled, "Medical Science Abortion is Killing of Human Beings". Grammar aside, the video really is inept in proving anything. The video poses the question, "Is this a human being?" as it shows various stages of pregnacy. After each stage, the question is posed and the answer, "Yes, this is a human being". Thanks for that well-researched, articulated, and elaborate analysis and explaination. Praise Allah. This is another sad attempt to guilt trip people into not getting abortions. Though they forget that guilt is the last thing on the mind of a rape victim. The truth of the matter is, that question is of theological nature and can never be answered using empirical evidence because there is no evidence. No one really "knows" when life starts because for life to "start", that means it has to not exist and life is constantly in existance. The cells involved in the fertilization process are alive, so does that mean every time I jack off, am I killing thousands of possible babies?

Here's the link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7PPamlX4HQ0

The second video is pro-choice and has a "cool, ironic, witty, way to prove to conservatives that liberals are smarter then them". But in reality, the guy who shot this was an idiot and made the pro-life protestors look like saints. Basically, this guy walks around a protest and interviews people, asking them what the punishment should be if abortions were made illegal. To this, they all said that they didn't know. They didn't know what the punishment should be. They know that abortion should be illegal and why but they didn't know what the punishment should be. Many said that there shouldn't really be a punishment because either a) they didn't know the judicial system adequately, or b) it was between them and God. So the guy at the very end asks, "Well why should it be illegal if there should be no punishment?" and "What crime is illegal that doesn't have a punishment?"

So what does this guy accomplish: two things. First, that pro-life individuals are not crazy Bible totting hypocrits who think that any woman who gets an abortion be hanged. Instead, he reveals these people to be genuinely compassionate towards these women who recieve abortions. The second thing he accomplishes is that these people are dedicated to the protest. They really only care about these babies that are being killed, as they say. It really enlightened me to the whole situation. These people just care about life. Who gives a shit if they don't know what should happen to the women if abortions were illegal. The guy wanted to make them out to be idiots, like they didn't really know what they were doing out there, but really he made them out to be saints.

Here's the link to this callous nit-wit: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uk6t_tdOkwo

Why I hate Carlos Mencia

First of all, I don't think he's funny. So tonight, I put away my personal feelings toward him and tried to watch the show.

I couldn't do it.

A lot of people think that he's a racist and just pulls the race card (which he does) but I don't think he's a full-fledged hate monger. I mean, he tells jokes that are controverisal but I don't think he thinks that hispanics are superior to other races. But he does pull the race card, in fact, 99% of his jokes are about race. The other 1% of his jokes are divided between midgets and old people. Mind of Mencia is the most uncreative and banal TV program on the air.

This is how the show works, which looks like it's being made up as they go along. First they start out with a sketch, which is not funny, about something stupid. The episode I tortured myself through was about two penguins that he takes care of, one of which has sex with a duck. The sketch inspired no response from me. I just sat there.

And as the show continues, they eventually run out of "good" ideas and hit the streets where Carlos performs numberous stereotypes. After that, they head back to the studio for more stereotypes. And that's it. END OF SHOW.

Now if some aspect of race was enlightened or he said something insightful, you know, point out an irony or something, I would accept that and appreciate the show even if it was still just as unfunny as it is now. But it doesn't. He just presents the stereotypes. This is my impression:

BLACK PEOPLE LIKE FRIED CHICKEN! OMG YOU"RE FUCKING HILARIOUS!

WHITE PEOPLE CAN NOT DANCE!! OMG LET"S GIVE YOU YOUR OWN SHOW!

CHINESE PEOPLE CAN NOT DRIVE AUTOMOBILES!! OMG LETS MAKE A 50 FT STATUE OF YOU OUT OF PLATINUM AND FORCE PEOPLE TO PRAY TO IT!

ARAB PEOPLE ARE NOT ALL TERRORISTS BUT WE PEG THEM AS SUCH!! OMG I WANT TO SUCK YOUR DICK!

There is no redeeming quality to Carlos Mencia or his goddamn show. I've seen sketches from YouTube comedy troupes that are wildly funnier than him and they don't get his bloated paychecks. It just boggles my mind how one could find anything he does funny.

In short, I hate Carlos Mencia because he reduces comedy to just stating over-generalizations of entire peoples.

Zombies: A History of Allegory and Kick-assery

Zombies are never bigger than the movie. They are too humble and modest for that. At least the filmmakers and authors who know what they are doing know this. Because let's face it: zombies themselves are not scary. It's what they do to us that's scary. And no, I'm not talking about turning us into undead, for the most part at least. No, I'm talking about something much more complex. For this entry I'm going to dig deeper into this cultural icon known as the modern zombie and perhaps enlighten those who simply see this creature as a reanimated corpse fuel by instinct.

I'm going to begin with my second favorite zombie franchise, Resident Evil. Like I said, good zombie flicks never place the undead as the forefront of the movie. Resident Evil is about a huge pharmaceutical corporation, called Umbrella, whose main profit comes from viral weaponry and defense research. Umbrella is so focused on military implications of their products that they even have an elite security force whose job requires them to "clean up the mess". So Umbrella synthesizes an agent called the T-Virus which under certain conditions reanimates dead tissue ie makes zombies! And the fictional mid-western metropolis of Raccoon City soon becomes choked with an army of undead. I think this is a great idea. Whenever I think about Resident Evil, I think of like Microsoft or like GlaxoSmithKline doing the same shit Umbrella does. Like there are paramilitary soldiers with a "GSK" patch on their flack jackets running down some street to cover up a mess that they made. Or the Microsoft Special Forces gunning down a witness in cold blood and burning the body in a dumpster in Hell's Kitchen. Resident Evil affects me so much because it could actually, if it hasn't already, come to that. The dominant ideology must be kept safe and that is that these corporations actually care about us. They can't let us know that while we are buying anti-depressants and birth control and band-aids from them that they are also making nuclear warheads and viral weaponry and pills that will make your head explode. And the video games and movies and books have always been about people against the corporate machine, not against the zombies. Sure the zombies are in their way and they have to fight them off but the plot is never, "We have to kill every zombie here before they infect us all".

Now I'm going to get into my favorite zombie franchise, the one that started it all: Romero's Dead series. The great thing about Romero's movies are that they are each about something different. Some aspect of culture or society is dismantled, examined, and eventually reproached. In NIGHT, violence was examined and shown to be destructive even to those dealing it out. In DAWN, consumerism fetishes reflected the rotting corpses that filled the world in the zombie apocalypse. DAY showed us that when in a crisis, logic becomes skewed. And finally LAND said that money can only give illusions of class and power. But the common bond in all of his films, the thing that really sets it apart from other horror films, is the nature of the zombies. The zombies in the Dead series are not the antagonist. They aren't the monsters. And it's strange to think, two of the greatest horror films to ever be release came out in the same year, 1978. Those films are Halloween and Dawn of the Dead. Both films were remarkable in their portrayal of the antagonist. Halloween's antagonist is Michael Myers, of course, but he was different because he was completely vapid and emotionless. There was nothing there. He was simply put - an autonomous killing machine. He nearly isn't even human. And it's all in the mask too - plain, white, unremarkable. Nothingness is the only way I can describe it and that's why I think he's so terrifying. He represents a void. So if this is true, then Romero's Dead series does the opposite. If Michael Meyers represented a hollow nothingness devoid of humanity, Romero's zombies represented a strangely human entity yet so very unhuman. Like Peter from Dawn of the Dead says, "They're us, that's all." Night and Dawn and the rest of the Dead series changed the face of antagonists by making the human characters the villains whilst surrounded by creatures that could have easily been handed that role. It's so easy to make a zombie a villain because it wants to eat people. Romero completely subverted the horror genre because now instead of being afraid of the monster, we are afraid of the people around us.

The strange thing is, this subversion of the genre almost nulls it. Dawn of the Dead isn't really a horror film. It's more of a dark comedy/human drama. The psychological subplot takes precedence over the main plot. The crux of the film is about a group of people losing their humanity to a stale life of luxury, not zombies.

This analysis only applies to traditional Romero zombies who walk. The running zombies is a whole new can of worms. Running zombies present a bigger threat than walking zombies and therefore are usually given the role of antagonist. And let's face it, running zombies are pretty fucking scary. And those movies are good but I think they serve to slake the appetite of MTV-addicted, onanist, Ritalin- fueled thirteen year old males across the country.

Why Godzilla is a Bad Movie

I am a student of film but I'm no god. I don't know everything. I don't know what good acting is or good special effects or any of that stuff. All thats important but I usually don't consider those things when determining if I did in fact like the movie. So having said that, when I continue this little diatribe about Godzilla (1998), know that I'm not going to discuss any of those things. I am going to talk about the plot and what the movie says about people as a culture or species or however you'd like to classify us.

The plot is weak. A group of scientists and soldiers must kill the monster before it destroys the city, multiply, and take over the world. This may seem all well and good but my problem with it is, "Who is the antagonist/protagonist"? If you think that Godzilla is the antagonist, you have to ask yourself, "Is Godzilla trying to stop the protagonist"? That's what an antagonist does, they try to stop the protagonist from accomplishing thier goal.

So what's the protagonists' goal? First, who's the protagonist? Let's just say it's Nik Tatopolous played by Matthew Broderick. So what's his goal? He wants to stop Godzilla, or better, he wants to kill it because if he doesn't, it will multiply and take over the world. Okay. But that means that the way Godzilla is trying to stop Nik from accomplishing his goal is by...uh...not being killed.

Well that's not very compelling! Of course it doesn't want to die. It's stupid. But if you think about it even more, you ask yourself, "What side should I be rooting for"? And this leads to what I really wanted to talk about - what does this movie say about us? What's it say about our values and culture?

Well, it's not good. In the beginning of the film, we are shown nukes going off in French Polynesia and various reptiles being exposed to the radioactive fallout which turns Godzilla from mild-mannered komodo dragon to gigantic lizard. And as the movie progresses, people get scared and decide that this thing poses a threat to mankind and it must be destroyed. And we destroy it. We destory it and it's kids. Nice. Now this thing did considerable damage to NYC but that's the only thing it did that prompted the military to be involved. It wasn't malicious, that's the point.

So this is what I got out of it: competition must always be destroyed, even if it doesn't pose an immediate threat. And what's worse is the fact that we created the thing from the nuclear bombs. I think Godzilla should have won. We created the monster, its only fitting that it destroy the creator. That idea is a classic literary and cinematic technique. But the ending they had just summed up humans this way - we destroy. And the only thing that comes from our destruction are horrific monstrosities that, should punish us for our destructive ways, but instead, they too are destroyed.

My ending would have been hundreds of Godzillas roaming some grassland in Africa in harmony with the other animals. In the foreground, a band of humans hide behind some bushes wielding spears. The world would have been returned to a simplier place thanks to the Godzillas. That ending would have been poetic justice served to people for creating nuclear weapons.

But no, nothing is learned from this film. No insights gained, nothing can be taken from this film other than reinforcement for our collective appetite for destruction.

To Kill a Celebrity

A scary thought is that any person that I know could, potentially, become a celebrity. They walk among us, everyday, donning civilian clothes and attemping to fit in. You could be in line at the bank or a grocery store and a celebrity could be just behind you buying milk, eggs, and maybe even cereal. It's a scary thought. But there is hope. We need not live in fear. No longer must we constantly be looking over our collective shoulder, thanks to Us Weekly.

Yes that supermarket tabloid we've all come to know and love has saved humanity. There is a section of the magazine entitled, "Celebrities: They're just like us!", where paparazzi take photos of celebs doing everyday things like walking, yawning, putting in eye drops, and other banal activities to prove their humanity.

Everytime I see those articles, I think of the movie Reign of Fire with Matthew McConnehey and Christian Bale. When Van Zant and his team of ruffians come to London, he tells Quinn about the true nature of the dragons. "They're made of flesh and blood! They got a heart, liver, and mind. You take out one of them, you bring down the beast!" I love that speech just because McConnehey is bald, bearded, and ripped to shreds and is almost always crying tears of absolute passion in every scene. But when ever I watch that movie, I always think of Us Weekly and the reminders they give us about how "normal" celebrities are. I guess some people think you have to decapitate celebrites Highlander style or shoot them with silver bullets to bring down.

This is why I would never want to be famous and/or a celebrity: you lose your humanity and you spend the rest of your life trying to get it back. This is probably why so many celebrities form charities and foundations, so they look like they care. I'm sure they do, too. I don't think all celebrities are shallow and callous and full of hate. I don't think they think of themselves as gods on Olympus. But we do. That's how we see them. I know this because there is a section in Us Weekly called "Celebrities: They're Just Like Us!". If we thought celebrities were just normal Joe Schmos then that article would never exist. But I guess in the long run, that section is good. People shouldn't think of celebrities as superpowerful uber-people and the article definate brings them down from that stature. I just think it's silly that we NEED that article to do so.

Internshit and Actors Welcome

If there is one thing that I can pull from my internship it's that work can never always be fun. And by work, I mean work at a career, not at some stupid summer job or an hourly gig. I mean like what you want to do when you "grow up" or whatever. Luckily, it's worse when you just start out but sadly, that's where I am right now. Mind-numbing is the only word to describe the work I did today. Absolutely mind-fucking-numbing. I had to log footage from interviews for a Towson University promotional video. That was a complete fuck.

But it was actually kind of funny. The people they interviewed didn't know what to say. They couldn't make the school look good. They talked a lot without saying anything. Oddly enough, one of them was a political science major and I think that skill will definately come in handy for him at some point.

Anyway, so they are just going on and on with countless "um's" and "uh's" that I actually have to type. But the best part came at the end where the interviewers asked them to do a little plug in about the school's tour. They basically asked them to act which I think was asking too much of them. They asked the interviewees to be energetic and spontaeous and to "just have fun". Well the only fun to be had was at thier expense with all of the nonsense that spew out of thier mouths.

The first guy just started screaming. But he was a political science major so he didn't want to pull a Howard Dean and so he threw in some big words with the screaming to off-set the ridiculousness. He said, "OH MY GOD IT'S AWESOME! IT'S....STUPENDOUS!!!!"

What?

He continued by saying if we don't go on the tour, a part of him will die.

BUT WHAT PART WILL IT BE!?!?!?!

The next guy was pretty calm but he just went off on one of the wilder tangents I've heard. He starts talking about Stephan's Hall:
"Oh man, Stephan's hall is like...so old! Oh my God, it's crazy how old it is. And then you go over to the other side of campus on the other side and it's like the 70s and you're like, "Wow, did I just step into a time warp or something?" you know. It's awesome".

I don't think I need to comment.

They were just saying the stupidest shit. I almost thought it was better than the internet but I didn't want to get ahead of myself. I wanted them to completely go off the deep end and say like, "If you don't go on the tour then your mom will get AIDS and your dog will be raped by a homeless man!" That's the sort of incentive our youth needs to get them motivated! I just hope that they say in the beginning "Not an actor" when they're picture pops up in the video. Although, I don't think that will be necessary.

Wikipedia: The Cracked-Out Human Brain on the Internet

The internet sucks. There are too many idiots on it who think they know what the hell they are talking about. But I know better. It seems like anyone can create a website, write something, and feel important. This all started back in high school when we were taught how to identify "credible sources". My disdain for the internet only grew as the years passed. I now have three websites that I visit everyday (excluding Google) and two of them are the essentially the same. They are: Rottentomatoes, IMDb, and Wikipedia.

Having said that, you're probably thinking that I am a huge hypocrite. And I am to some degree, I won't deny that. Those who need help understanding why I am a hypocrite need only visit Wikipedia.org once. Wikipedia is an online encyclopedia that is compiled by everyday websurfers. What makes this interesting is that, while you can cite it, articles can be added by ANYONE. Wikipedia is not reliable by any means but that is not why I enjoy it. No, there is a more primal, instinctual appreciation.

Wikipedia is set up with a variety of links on every page. These links are usually related to the current page but some go off on tangents both great and small. I prefer the bigger tangents though because they will transport me to a page that I would not have visited otherwise. One can be looking up cooking tips and be transported to Pro-Pedophilic Activism in a matter of seconds. Once I was "researching" chloroplasts for my biology class last semester and, through no fault of my own, I was taken to a page dedicated to the "Art of Murder". Coincidentally, just as I had clicked the link my roommate walked in on me looking at a page called "Art of Murder" and asked what exactly it was I was doing. And the great thing was I didn't have an answer. The only thing I could mutter out was, "Dude, it's wikipedia."

And that's what I want to talk about really. The techo-psychological correlation between wikipedia and a phenomoeon called stream of consciousness.

We all do it. When we are alone or walking to class or whatever, we think about the most random shit. And the topics vary from somewhat related to completely off-the-fucking-wall. A good example of this is in the film THE WEATHER MAN with Nicolas Cage during the scene where he goes to get tartar sauce. We think of something and, for one reason or another, we begin to think of something else.

But it's hard to study or analyze stream of consciousness because a) You're not really thinking about whatever it is you're thinking about. It's a lot like staring, just because you're looking at something doesn't mean you know what you're looking at. Unfortunately this gets guys in trouble with the ladies on many occasions. And b) It's nearly impossible to backtrack your thoughts because of point A. You're not thinking about it, so you can't recall why you ended up on a thought that made you think, "Why the hell am I thinking about this!?!?!"

But with wikipedia, this is possible. If you find yourself in a daze and browsing through wikipedia and you end up on "Gay Male Pornstars of the 80s" when you started on particle acceleration, you can simply click the "back" button on the browser and see how you came to your current page.

The main difference between stream of consciousness and wikipedia is reassurance - reassurance that you are not insane. If you start thinking about one thing and end up on something horrific and/or taboo, you can start doubting yourself or your mental health. But on wikipedia it's okay because you can simply retrace your steps and go back to where you started. If you choose to do this, you can at least lie to yourself that you are not out of your mind or a goddamn psychopath.

Stupid Old Man

Today in my biology class, we watched a video on psychological evolution. The scientists set up this experiment to test olfactory senses. The experiment called for a group of young men to wear the same white t-shirt for several days without washing it. As the days past, their unique biological "musk" was infused into the shirt. Then, a bunch of ladies were asked to smell the shirts and see which one they found more appealing. As it turns out, ladies found shirts from young men with opposite biological genes more appealing. This means many different things including ethnicity. But they found them more appealing because when people with different genes mate the offspring are more diversified and therefore "stronger" than the parents. The smaller the difference in genes, the weaker the offspring's genes will be. This explains why children whose parents are different races are healthier and, to some degree, more attractive than those from the parents of the same race. So the women are smelling a mate who would provide the strongest offspring. And while the appeal is subconscious, it is strong and convincing nontheless. This isn't a case for "opposites attract" though because this is based around science while that idea is based around nonsense.

Anyway, after watching the video all I could think about was that stupid old man from those eHarmony commercials. You know the guy. He stresses "compatibility" in relationships. Some degree of me believes him but I still see him as a stupid old man who profits off of love, which to me seems terribly morbid.

But it's funny. Our culture does stress compatibility in relationships yet nature stresses difference. Subconsciously we may find someone appealing from either sight, smell, touch, or taste, yet our brain is telling us that another person is better because said person is more like ourselves. Perhaps this is why everyone is so fucked up. We are being pulled in so many goddamn directions we just don't know what to do. Thanks, life.

Required Reading

I work at Fridays and as a result I must interact with the scum of society. After 10pm, the IQs of the customers coming in drops a solid 50 points and I'm left to translate what they think they are reading on the menu. I don't even know what reading level a menu is but it can't be higher than a 3rd grader's. And now I'm sad because so many of these people seriously cannot read a fucking menu. Christ.

Here are two examples from tongiht that made me doubt the future of our species:

Scene 1
Customer: "Gimme that Toucan (as in the tropical bird) Chicken Sandwich"

Me: "You mean Tuscan (as in the place in Italy) chicken sandwich?"

Customer: "WHAT?!?!!"

Scene 2
Customer: Gimme that Chedder (as in the cheese) Salmon Pasta."

Me: You mean cedar (as in the wood) salmon pasta?

customer: WHAT?!?!??!

And I have to correct them not so that I look superior to them, but simply to set expectations. They guy who wanted the Toucan Chicken Sandwich might actually expect a fucking jungle bird in between a two buns. As ludicris as that sounds, I just don't want to disappoint people. And if they get it and it's not a toucan they are eating, they will get upset. And then I have to explain to my boss why they didn't want it. "Oh, yeah, he thought it was Toucan and it's not Toucan. i don't think Perdue sells Toucan meat."

What would be even wierder is if the guy actually could taste the difference between Toucan meat and regular chicken meat. Like if I just didn't want to get into a fight with the guy and he's like, "Is this toucan?" I'm like, "Yeah. It's toucan meat alright." And then he bites into it and is like, 'This is very low quality Toucan meat". That would blow my mind. If that happened I would just admit to the guy that it's not toucan meat and that I was lying simply because he knew the difference or had at least tasted high quality toucan meat.

But it is embarrassing. These words are not to difficult to spell. The cheddar one really gets me. I know english is hard sometimes. Like when does a "c" sound like a "k" or an "s"? But come on. "Ch" makes the "ch" sounds. That's it. There is no "h" in cedar. I'm so accepting of that ambiguous "c" sounding rule that if they said "Keeder" I wouldn't correct them. But again, I can't let them think that they are going to get a pasta with cheddar cheese on it because when they don't they will get upset and then I have to explain to my boss that they don't have to pay for thier meal because they can't read.

Also, it should be noted somewhere (I suppose this will do) that if you're working at Fridays and someone orders a Strawberry Lemonade Slush, it should be assumed that they will NOT tip you.

The Bush Mystique

This article is not about the president or the plant. No this article is about the band with that English guy. I was listening to Bush today and thought to myself, "They are pretty good". But I've never met someone one who told me that Bush was thier favorite band. Why is that? What's wrong with them? What surrounds Bush to attract fans only to a certain point. That point being the "They're good" or the "Yeah, I like 'em" point. They're music can be defined as art-rock but they aren't as pretenious as Genesis or Yes. This is probably because Gavin Rossdale isn't that good of a singer. So they are technically grunge but really they stem from those art-house rock bands of the 70s.

Bush has a few songs that are near-classics like "Glycerine" or "Machinehead". They are songs readily identifiable but no one really knows the words or really cares what they mean. They always seem in the shadow of bigger acts like Red Hot Chili Peppers, Three Doors Down, or Everclear. They associate themselves as being the "British version of that one band". In a sense, Bush is popular for being unpopular which could give rise to a whole new definition of cool. Maybe those parents who think they are cool because they try not to be cool are, in fact, cool. Maybe they are cooler than thier kids according to the Bush Mystique.

A little side thought: What would happen if Rose McGowan and Gavin Rossdale got married? I think the world would end. Thier names are too similar. It would be a media frenzy. I'm sure some paparazzi is sitting by some super-clock with a massive erection counting down the days to when the two celebs get hitched. And it is certainly possible, the two are of equal celebrity standing. And McGowan has actually dated a rock star already so the change wouldn't be that drastic. But if they got married, I just couldn't handle everyone saying Rosa McGowan and Gavin Rossdale. I swear those names are anagrams or something wierd.

"Oh my God, you're so funny."

I just watched an SNL Digital Short on Youtube. It was fucking hilarious. It was so good in fact that it turned my views on SNL around. I thought that it had lost it's spark since Will Ferrell left the show. But they got some pretty funny guys on there now who could bring it back. At least for me. So I watched about ten videos and as I was scrolling for more, I saw that there are a bunch of copycat videos, which the authors call "parodies". They aren't parodises so much as they are blatant rip-offs. That "Lazy Sunday" skit was "parodied" about twenty times in the same exact way by twenty different people. Another recent skit, "Dear Sister" was parodied the same amount and that premiered last weekend.

Why are people doing this? You are not funny. You are not clever. It's dumb and pathetic. Please stop it, you're flooding the internet with something that it already has too much of: stupid shit. That's all I have to say.

SuperMovie

If you asked a group of people, fifteen years ago if they liked Spiderman, you'd probably hear a room full of crickets. Now though the tables have turned and comics in general are in the mainstream. It is no more a social gaffe to know that Logan is really James Hackett and that he was subjected to the Weapon X experiments during World War II thus creating the animalistic adamantium-laced superhero known as Wolverine. Since X-Men came out in 2000, people and filmmakers have turned thier attention to the box office phenomenon. Because not only do superhero movies make big returns for studios, but they are also very thoughtful and well made films, well at least some are. Here is a short list of some of the major superhero films made as of 2000:

1. X-Men
2. X-Men 2
3. Daredevil
4. Eleckra
5. Hulk
6. Spiderman
7. Spiderman 2
8. Blade 2
9. Blade Trinity
10. Fantastic Four
11. V For Vendetta
12. League of Extraordinary Gentlemen
13. X-Men 3
14. Ghostrider
15. Batman Begins
16. Superman Returns
17. The Punisher
18. Constantine
19. 300
20. Catwoman

I added 300, Constantine, LXG, and V for Vendetta even though they aren't traditional comics rather they were adapted from graphic novels. But they have superpowers (John Constantine could see demons, V had super strength. Leonidas didn't have any real super powers other than being a complete and total bad-ass.) I added Catwoman because, even though it was said to be a heaping pile of wasted celluloid, it is still about a superhero.

What I think is great about superhero movies, is that they take away the apparent juvenescence of comics and injected a new maturity to them. These characters are no longer just beings with incredible powers but they have mulitple dimensions with doubts and conflicts. But the thing is, these comics had all of these before. Filmmakers didn't just make all that up for the movies, those qualities have been there since the beginning. Unfortunately, for one reason or another, the majority of people either, couldn't or didn't want to, see that.

I just read an interview with Robert Downey, Jr about his research into Tony Stark aka Iron Man. He said that this character was going to be different because of the core character that Stark is: a womanizing alcoholic who dons a protective armored suit to stay alive after he is mortally wounded. Stark sounds like an anti-hero and the first of it's kind in a mainstream superhero film. Blade could be defined as an anti-hero but that film is and forever shall be under the radar (sadly) of films like X-Men or Spiderman. But Iron Man will be the Hud of superhero films and I personally can't wait to see it.

That Wierd Kid on the Internet

If you don't know already, Daxflame is, and forever will be, the greatest thing on the internet. He's a 15-year-old kid named Bernice Juach but his handle is Daxflame because "it sounds cool". You can see Daxflame on Youtube. He posts video diaries and "motion pictures" on his site. The diaries are full of emotion, teenage angst, and all sorts of digestable material. It really is a symphony to watch one of his meltdowns. The crux of the show, as I like to call it, is his dealings with Sojax-an amalgamation of a kid named Jacob and his would-be-girlfriend Sophia. His goal is to become friends with Jacob and to get jiggy with Sophia so that they can "rule the school".

What I love about this little social experiment is that Daxflame, even if he does seem like the epitome of wierd, reflects a side of all of us when we were in high school. All we wanted to do was to have friends, be popular, and be the big wolf on campus. That's all that matters in high school. We don't have to worry about jobs or money because we are dependent on our parents. And our grades are subordinate to our social lives because being smart only hurts you in that department.

But Daxflame is a cultural phenomenon, which is why I consider to be the greatest thing on the internet. There is a discrepancy as to the authenticity of Daxflame. Many consider him to be acting and that his exploits with Jacob and his stories are all contrived. This causes a lot of people to be Daxflame-haters. While others on the other hand think that he is genuine and sincere and that he really is crying those tears of loneliness and depression. To be honest, I don't know what to think of him. I know I love his show. See, for me, it doesn't matter if he's faking it or not, if it's all a spectacle and he's acting. I don't care about that. I watch movies all the time and I never think of movies that way. I never say, "Oh well that's just Tom Cruise, he's acting, he could never jump off a building like that." I suspend my disbelief for Tom Cruise and I can do the same for Daxflame. But why can't others do this? What makes Daxflame different from anything else? Is it the way in which he presents his show, like a diary? Perhaps people feel duped because Daxflame's program is shown as a real-life documentary but they someone see through it as an artifice. This manipulation of reality that Daxflame's show deals with, I find fascinating.

What ever the case may be, Daxflame proves that perhaps, people aren't ready for reality.

Happy New Year

I suppose I'm a nice guy, whatever that means. Some people have told me that, although others have told me I'm an idiot. Today I went to Panera Bread with Emily and as I was leaving the parking lot to enter the street, I saw a homeless man there. He had a piece of cardboard that said, "Waiting" which I thought was both strange and ironic as I was on my way to my job at T.G.I Friday's.

So anyway, like I said, I suppose I'm a nice guy and I roll down my window. I give the old guy two dollars and say, "Take care of yourself." I thought that would be the end of it but he wanted to talk and he got my attention with the first thing he said. This was our conversation:

"Happy New Year!", said the homeless man.
"I think you're off by a few months, buddy," I say.
"Oh yeah, it's Easter, isn't it?"
"Yeah."
"Jail can make you go crazy."
(Among other things)
"You were in jail?"
"Yeah, these cops around here, they put me away for no reason!"
"Just for standing out here?"
"Yeah, they put me away because they can't catch the real criminals."
"Right."
"And them real criminals pay them off."
"Really?"
"Yeah, they been doing it for a thousand years."

He then went on a long diatribe about corruption and conspiracies in the judicial system.

The old homeless man then, in that moment, made my day. You see, all the homeless people I've ever met (which is quite a few considering my time at Happy Helpers for the Homeless) I've never met a crazy, conspiracy theorist, stereotypical homeless person. Sure I've met some crazy ones, like the crazy bag lady who dances in front of traffic in Severna Park, but none that could actually justify their craziness. They were homeless because they were crazy, not crazy because they were homeless. This guy, for example, was a product of government corruption and conspiracy. While it's probably all in his head, he thinks it's true and that makes it so exciting. This guy was really fucking crazy.

Most homeless people are just a bunch of sad-sacks who mope around asking for spare change, but not this guy. This guy was always looking over his shoulder. He was ever-watchful of the Man trying to bring him down. This guy had secrets, or at least he thought he had secrets.

Anyway, it was the most entertaining moment of the day and it's all thanks to my reasonable generosity and love for the homeless.

The End of John McClane?

So there is this new action movie coming out this summer called Live Free or Die Hard. This is the fourth installment of the Die Hard series, a series which seriously altered the way we look at action heroes.

John McClane was a different type of action hero. Unlike Schwarzenegger and Stallone, when he got shot or punched or whatever, he got hurt. He ran out of bullets. He made bad decisions which lead to innocent people getting killed. Though he didn't want it to happen, they did. He made mistakes. But he rose above and defeated the bad guys in the end. And he usually did it with a sarcastic smirk on his face.



But like I said earlier, McClane was a different kind of action hero. He wasn't muscle bound and invincible. He wasn't specially trained to kill. He wasn't a cyborg or a genetically altered super-human. He was a wise-ass cop from New York. That's it. And we loved him for it.

John McClane also did something that I think is significant, considering the times and the type of movie it was. This little action was probably shrugged off by the causal viewer but for me it really stuck out. At the end, when he hugs the black cop (the dad from Family Matters). That's it. That hug. Never in an action movie in the 80s, a time of uber-masculinity (thanks to Schwarzenegger and Stallone) and homophobia (thanks to society), would two dudes embrace. Ever. Especially if they just defeated a group of German terrorists. Not even then.

This is where my problem with the new Die Hard comes in. I saw the preview and I see that the idea of John McClane was thrown away. This new John McClane is blown out into the realm of stylized action super-men. McClane can be seen performing fantastic feats of strength and dexterity like swinging onto a platform from a bar like some Russian gymnist. Also from the trailer, he can be seen climbing all over an F-15 to which he leaps about fifty-plus feet to a destroyed free way. I really hope I'm wrong but judging from the trailer, I'm right and it's a sad thing to behold. It looks like Hollywood raped the idea of a revolutionary character in order to please the over-sensitived, onanist teenage minds of America.

The First of Few

Okay so I'm in the library right now and I felt like ripping some famous guy off. And to prove my pretentiousness and the fact that I think I know more than others, I'll give $100 to anyone who can tell me where the title of my blog comes from. Okay, I took it from Ginsberg. No one would have gotten it. Except for Ginsberg enthusiasts but how many of those are there?

Also I just want to say that this blog will be absolutely pointless. There will never be any blogs of significance and for some reason I take pride in that. Perhaps it stems from my incredible desire for mediocrity, my hell-bent crusade to rid myself of anything substantial. Or maybe I'm just lazy.