9/11, Never FOrget@!!!1!derf!!!
How can anyone possibly forget. It gets crammed down our throats on a yearly basis. Buy why shouldn't it be. The news outlets deserve a free day (freedom day?) for rehashing the past for quick and painless ratings galore. And there's still plenty of money to be milked out of a decade-old tragedy. T-shirts, flag stickers, freedom burgers, etc... And surely nothing you do on a daily basis can prove that you are American or "patriotic" quite like rekindling an "us vs them" tragedy. It unifies, after all. Much in the same way being a fan of a particular sports team unifies you against all those other people who like that other sports team. Life is so much easier to digest when simplified down to the most basic components of black and white or good and evil.
Never Forget. Because obviously anyone who was cognizant during that time is going to forget that event having transpired. NOBODY is going to forget where they were or what they were doing on that day. I understand that it's a catchy little piece of sloganeering, but it's akin to telling somebody to never forget they got raped once. You don't tell rape victims to remember they got raped on a yearly basis do you? If you do, maybe you should stop doing that.
Do we really have it that easy in the U.S. these days that we have to commemorate 9/11 on a yearly basis while natural disasters wipe out tens of thousands in other countries on a yearly basis? Most other countries would have paid their repects, rebuilt and moved on long ago. I guess if the most strife you have to endure on a daily basis is getting the occasional parking ticket or catching a cold every now and again, then 9/11 is a wound that is worth constantly reopening. Because not forgetting 9/11 is obviously making us safer and/or assuring that it won't happen again.
The thing is, it WILL happen again in some form or another, whether you remember 9/11 or not. This isn't Peter Pan, where believing (or remembering) hard enough will result in some desired effect occurring or not occurring. As long as people in positions of power in this country screw over and engage in shady dealings (i.e. selling weapons) with other countries, other countries will have reason to get even. (Other than obviously hating our freedom of course.) Unfortunately it's the citizens who end up paying, and not the people in positions of power. Your being groped at the airport isn't doing much to delay the inevitable. The root of the problem isn't addressed, and so the cycle continues unfortunately.
I also like when people play the perseverance/overcoming adversity card. You are still dwelling on the event 10 years later and haven't moved on with your life. How exactly is that persevering? You live in fear and have had your way of life altered. Persevering would have been taking the necessary time (9 years at most) to grieve and clean up, then going about your life like the terrorist attacks were nothing more than a minor inconvenience. A small group of individuals affected your life in such a way that you need to revisit it on a yearly occasion. You also need to have your penis and/or bewbs 3D rendered before boarding a plane. In effect, you haven't persevered by any definition of the word. You're acting like a 15-year-old who broke up with a girlfriend and is still dwelling on it instead of finding someone new. On top of it all, you were indefinitely grounded by your parents for something you didn't even do.
In conclusion. Let's shoot off some fireworks for the milestone we've all worked so hard to reach by not letting someone else win at something completely intangible and abstract that they may or may not have actually won at, and bury it once and for all. Let's not have any 11th year festivities. There doesn't need to be a 25th year silver anniversary edtion. Put the political agendas aside and get the rest of the troops out of the Middle East. Don't try to screw them over on the benefits while you're at it. Then let's get to work on cleaning up the mess that's right here in the now.
And also, if you can put aside the nationalistic self-absorption for a while, how's about not forgetting all these other people who have died since 2001. It takes the same 14 seconds to remember that you're putting in right now. I know not all of them are the same color as you, or speak the same language, but are people nonetheless.
Jan '01 Indian earthquake - 20,000 people RIP.
Aug '03 European heatwave - 40,000 people RIP.
Dec '03 Iranian earthquake - 26,000 people RIP.
Dec '04 Indian Ocean earthquake - 250,000 people RIP.
May '06 Indonesian earthquake - 6000 people RIP.
May '08 Burmese cyclone - 22,000 people RIP.
May '08 Chinese earthquake - 70,000 people RIP.
Jan '10 Haiti earthquake - 316,000 people RIP.
Mar '11 Japanese tsunami - 16,000 people RIP.
(That's 3/4 of a million people you could also be never forgetting)
FREE BONUS PARAGRAPH!
Hey there! This paragraph didn't quite fit the flow of this educational bulletin, and perhaps wasn't that well composed, but here it is anyways, because I didn't have the heart to destroy it like the terrorist tried to destroy our freedom. Enjoy!
If 3000 people had been killed in a natural disaster on that day, we would have moved on long ago. About 2/3 as many people died from Hurricane Katrina, yet that tragedy doesn't get rehashed on nearly the scale 9/11 does. Maybe we really haven't progressed all that much from the 1800's, and in our reality, each person who died during Katrina is only equivalent to 3/5 of each person who died during 9/11. By that count only a little over 1000 people died in Katrina. That number still seems a little too high though. Since most were poor and not Gucci-wearing, Latte-sipping Americans like the rest of us, lets knock off another 2/5 per person. So... it appears only 367.2 people died. That doesn't seem so bad. Surely not worth dwelling on. They weren't even taken out by a plane. Michael Bay couldn't even make a movie about that. Nothing to see here, let's move on.
Sunday, September 11, 2011
Sunday, July 31, 2011
Oakland = Castlevania II
So I was thinking. Oakland is kind of like Castlevania II: Simon's Quest. During the day, you just go about your business, and there are people out an about to interact with. They usually don't say anything worth listening to, but you have the option to talk to them if you so choose. There are also zombies and other monsters as well, but being that it's the day, they are easy to dispatch of. Ignore them, jump over them, throw a stake/coins at them, etc. When nighttime comes however, it's a different story. All the townsfolk go away, and until the sun rises, you have to deal with the super zombies and werewolves and whatnot. In Oakland, these creatures tend to take the form of prostitutes, drug dealers, and muggers. They take a lot more effort to avoid and/or dispatch of during the times of darkness. What a horrible night to have a curse, indeed.
Tuesday, May 17, 2011
Haiku #1
I don't know if anyone has noticed yet, but I'm somewhat terrible at keeping the ball rolling on things. I tend to start creative ventures with the intention of putting a lot of time and effort into them, only to fizzle out when factors such as work, school and other responsibilities factor into the equation. The fact that I've only been posting about once a month illustrates this point quite well. I'd legitimately like to be posting something about once a week on here.
I'd really like to start working on a series of posts about recording school and embed clips of the progress I'm making on songs, but that's something I would only post it if I felt like it was entertaining or informative in some way. So we'll see how that goes.
As for right now however, I'm probably gonna start posting haiku occasionally. Sounds exciting, huh? Hear me out though. Back when I was in college, after learning HTML in my spare time while doing terribly in the C++ and programming I was supposed to be learning, I started a website or two. I used to post my shitty amateur protoshop artwork, post a ridiculous drunken blog about my many awkward situations involving my roommate at the time, and post a ton of haiku. I think of had over 300 haiku posted on that site. I wish I had backed a lot of that material up before the sites expired and I inevitably lost all the data years ago.
The point being that I enjoyed seeing what kind of ridiculous haiku I could come up with. It's almost like coming up with a clever status update on facebook, but fitting it into a 5-7-5 format. They don't even need to rhyme, but if you can pull them off with some type of rhyme scheme, it's even more satisfying. I feel that they are both more fun to write than traditional poems, and more entertaining. But I might be incorrect. The thing about haiku though, is that they are an aquired taste. Some people find them entertaining and others completely don't care for the whole concept. I like them personally, because you can come up with them quickly, and don't need to spend a substantial amount of time sitting down to work on them. Most things I post on here I start working on, only to have to abandon them for a while, then come back a week or two later to finish when I'm in the right state of mind to work on them again.
Hence this post and the following haiku. Hopefully it'll help me break the once-a-month posting habit and get into the mind-frame of writing more often. I'll start off with a few I wrote for some videos I planned to do for youtube. They were all somewhat medieval-themed and meant to be done in a faux British-accent. The first three ended up in the first video, but it came out terribly so I never did a follow up video with the other haiku. This shall be their new home.
Yonder street urchin
Why doth thou asketh for coins
Seek thee employment
Man upon transit
Thou doth reeketh of urine
Seek thee fresh linens
My heart doth acheth
As I long for days of yore
Fetch me my Zoloft
Come forth fair maiden
and I shall layeth my sword
betwixt thine goblets
Off to the ren faire
Virginity eternal
Is the prize we seek
I do not drink mead
For I haveth the straight edge
Fetch me a cider
Hark! Stop that strumpet
She hath snatched mine pantaloons
I shant pay her fee
Let us go yonder
On a quest to the ren faire
To cast lightning bolts
Thou art rapscallion
Thou art a haggard heathen
I love thee father
Greetings fair maiden
Will thou come and LARP with me?
Wait, why doth thou run?
I'd really like to start working on a series of posts about recording school and embed clips of the progress I'm making on songs, but that's something I would only post it if I felt like it was entertaining or informative in some way. So we'll see how that goes.
As for right now however, I'm probably gonna start posting haiku occasionally. Sounds exciting, huh? Hear me out though. Back when I was in college, after learning HTML in my spare time while doing terribly in the C++ and programming I was supposed to be learning, I started a website or two. I used to post my shitty amateur protoshop artwork, post a ridiculous drunken blog about my many awkward situations involving my roommate at the time, and post a ton of haiku. I think of had over 300 haiku posted on that site. I wish I had backed a lot of that material up before the sites expired and I inevitably lost all the data years ago.
The point being that I enjoyed seeing what kind of ridiculous haiku I could come up with. It's almost like coming up with a clever status update on facebook, but fitting it into a 5-7-5 format. They don't even need to rhyme, but if you can pull them off with some type of rhyme scheme, it's even more satisfying. I feel that they are both more fun to write than traditional poems, and more entertaining. But I might be incorrect. The thing about haiku though, is that they are an aquired taste. Some people find them entertaining and others completely don't care for the whole concept. I like them personally, because you can come up with them quickly, and don't need to spend a substantial amount of time sitting down to work on them. Most things I post on here I start working on, only to have to abandon them for a while, then come back a week or two later to finish when I'm in the right state of mind to work on them again.
Hence this post and the following haiku. Hopefully it'll help me break the once-a-month posting habit and get into the mind-frame of writing more often. I'll start off with a few I wrote for some videos I planned to do for youtube. They were all somewhat medieval-themed and meant to be done in a faux British-accent. The first three ended up in the first video, but it came out terribly so I never did a follow up video with the other haiku. This shall be their new home.
Yonder street urchin
Why doth thou asketh for coins
Seek thee employment
Man upon transit
Thou doth reeketh of urine
Seek thee fresh linens
My heart doth acheth
As I long for days of yore
Fetch me my Zoloft
Come forth fair maiden
and I shall layeth my sword
betwixt thine goblets
Off to the ren faire
Virginity eternal
Is the prize we seek
I do not drink mead
For I haveth the straight edge
Fetch me a cider
Hark! Stop that strumpet
She hath snatched mine pantaloons
I shant pay her fee
Let us go yonder
On a quest to the ren faire
To cast lightning bolts
Thou art rapscallion
Thou art a haggard heathen
I love thee father
Greetings fair maiden
Will thou come and LARP with me?
Wait, why doth thou run?
Sunday, May 8, 2011
New Bible Stories
I've often wondered... what is there to stop me from writing new bible stories? Certainly not fact and logic. The Bible is public domain, as are all the stories contained within. Somebody obviously put in the time and effort to create these stories long ago. Perhaps we need some fresh new stories for the kids (and some adults) involving physically and logically impossible happenings. Why read the same stale stories over and over all the time. That gets boring.
Perhaps some of these stories came about from something factual happening long ago, then miscommunication taking place as they were passed along, until the next thing you know, people are turning into salt poles and talking snakes are trying to get you to eat 2-4 servings of fruit a day. Much like that game where you pass along a phrase from ear to ear until it gets to the last person, at which point it makes absolutely no sense. Perhaps people purposely changed the stories around because it made things more interesting. That game is always more fun when you pass on "My left buttcheek is Vietnamese" after you hear "I like the color blue".
Maybe one day we'll be able to use time travel to go back and see that Lot's wife mearly got sick because she was allergic to malt, and that she in fact was never turned into salt. Maybe Noah built a cart and not an ark. Because it was getting drizzly and he needed to harvest 2 of each of his vegetables to make a nice gumbo. Maybe Jesus wasn't crucified. Maybe the cheeses were pasteurized. Some 1800 years before Louis Pasteur no less. That is truly a miracle. One more miracle and somebody has a sainthood in their future. Or is it two more? Is the Easter Bunny a genetic slicing of a human and a rabbit? Does any of this really matter? No. Moving on.
New Bible Story Idea #1:
A race of futuristic beings comes from another planet to destroy man and test his faith. They obviously didn't come from another planet, because God only made the one. Earth. Duh. They are actually harbingers of evil created by the devil (ever notice that the word "evil" is in "devil", and God is one "o" away from "good"?), who lives in Earth's core. Not the outer core mind you, seeing as that is composed of liquid and hell isn't an ocean of magma. That would just be ridiculous. He lives in the inner core, which is solid Iron. How badass would it be to have a lair made of solid iron? Way more badass than clouds. Anyhow... humans eventually help some of the beings obtain a cube called the "All Spark" and then the beings leave Earth, but not before Bumblebee is killed which is sad.
New Bible Story Idea #2:
A man is framed for a crime he didn't commit, and is sent to prison. Through the power of faith, he spends 20 years digging a tunnel out of his cell with a communion spoon. He hides this hole behind a large poster of Moses. To pass the time, he reads scriptures, prays, and carves non-false idols out of stone. Another convict comes forward as the perpetrator of the crime, but is killed by the minions of Satan before he can confess. Eventually, on a night when God is bowling, and thusly creating thunder from the heavens, the man is able to escape to Valhalla to meet up with his new friend Muhammad.
New Bible Story Idea #3:
A young boy breaks his arm, but through the powers of a miracle, his arm heals in a manner that gives him messiah-like powers. He realizes that he is able to throw a Jesus-orb with great velocity towards the heavens. Using this power, he makes a great deal of money in organized sports to help pull his destitute, yet pious family out of poverty. Through the powers of Satan, the young boy loses his gift, but is still able to win the final game against the Boston Heathens by "floating it", a miracle technique taught to him by his mother. After winning the game he dies, then is canonized as a saint due to being involved with two separate miracles which aren't able to be tainted by the witchcraft of modern science.
Perhaps some of these stories came about from something factual happening long ago, then miscommunication taking place as they were passed along, until the next thing you know, people are turning into salt poles and talking snakes are trying to get you to eat 2-4 servings of fruit a day. Much like that game where you pass along a phrase from ear to ear until it gets to the last person, at which point it makes absolutely no sense. Perhaps people purposely changed the stories around because it made things more interesting. That game is always more fun when you pass on "My left buttcheek is Vietnamese" after you hear "I like the color blue".
Maybe one day we'll be able to use time travel to go back and see that Lot's wife mearly got sick because she was allergic to malt, and that she in fact was never turned into salt. Maybe Noah built a cart and not an ark. Because it was getting drizzly and he needed to harvest 2 of each of his vegetables to make a nice gumbo. Maybe Jesus wasn't crucified. Maybe the cheeses were pasteurized. Some 1800 years before Louis Pasteur no less. That is truly a miracle. One more miracle and somebody has a sainthood in their future. Or is it two more? Is the Easter Bunny a genetic slicing of a human and a rabbit? Does any of this really matter? No. Moving on.
New Bible Story Idea #1:
A race of futuristic beings comes from another planet to destroy man and test his faith. They obviously didn't come from another planet, because God only made the one. Earth. Duh. They are actually harbingers of evil created by the devil (ever notice that the word "evil" is in "devil", and God is one "o" away from "good"?), who lives in Earth's core. Not the outer core mind you, seeing as that is composed of liquid and hell isn't an ocean of magma. That would just be ridiculous. He lives in the inner core, which is solid Iron. How badass would it be to have a lair made of solid iron? Way more badass than clouds. Anyhow... humans eventually help some of the beings obtain a cube called the "All Spark" and then the beings leave Earth, but not before Bumblebee is killed which is sad.
New Bible Story Idea #2:
A man is framed for a crime he didn't commit, and is sent to prison. Through the power of faith, he spends 20 years digging a tunnel out of his cell with a communion spoon. He hides this hole behind a large poster of Moses. To pass the time, he reads scriptures, prays, and carves non-false idols out of stone. Another convict comes forward as the perpetrator of the crime, but is killed by the minions of Satan before he can confess. Eventually, on a night when God is bowling, and thusly creating thunder from the heavens, the man is able to escape to Valhalla to meet up with his new friend Muhammad.
New Bible Story Idea #3:
A young boy breaks his arm, but through the powers of a miracle, his arm heals in a manner that gives him messiah-like powers. He realizes that he is able to throw a Jesus-orb with great velocity towards the heavens. Using this power, he makes a great deal of money in organized sports to help pull his destitute, yet pious family out of poverty. Through the powers of Satan, the young boy loses his gift, but is still able to win the final game against the Boston Heathens by "floating it", a miracle technique taught to him by his mother. After winning the game he dies, then is canonized as a saint due to being involved with two separate miracles which aren't able to be tainted by the witchcraft of modern science.
Sunday, March 20, 2011
I've Created The Successor To Twitter
Ah yes... Twitter. A site that years later, I still don't really see the necessity for. Perhaps it's not for me to "get" though. After all, I actually did quite well in English throughout school, and even took an AP english class in 12th grade with the rest of the nerds. I'm capable for formulating ideas that stretch beyond the scope of 140 characters. If anything, I would find it frustrating to try to condense what I'm trying to say down to such a small scope. You can't really fit anything very profound into 140 characters. But then again, nothing profound has ever been said on twitter, so it works out quite well I reckon.
As with anything in our society though, there will always be the next "big thing" or the spiritual successor to whatever it is all the hip young kids are into. I have already laid the framework for this next big thing and I'm going to let you in on exactly what it is. You are welcome.
I call it "Durr". It's like Twitter, but instead of 140 characters, you only have a box to post five words. Sure, kids nowadays can manage 140 characters, albeit using atrocious grammer and substituting numbers for words, but what about the next generation? With the way the education system is going, we'll be lucky if kids graduating high school in a decade can communicate without needing to point and grunt. As it stands, a lot of them can't formulate a sentence without needing to pad it with the word "like" half a dozen times. A half a dozen words is one too many for Durr.
Imagine this if you will: You sit down to your computer and log into http://www.durr.uhm/. A box pops up on your screen. There are 5 underscored blanks for you to fill up with your infinite wisdom. What will you post? Let's say you just got finished eating a fine nutritious meal from McDonald's(tm). You could type out something along the lines of "that hambergur waz the shit". All your friends will be so jealous. Now let's imagine for a second that you just got back from seeing the Grammy-nominated Transformers 3. Perhaps you could post: "tranzformARS epic win 4 realz". Michael Bay will appreciate the kind sentiment.
In this hustle and bustle world of today, who has the time to formulate and fully flesh out ideas? People who are dorks and don't have better things to do. That's who. But for the rest of us, there are innovative technologies like Durr to help us accomplish our goals while saving precious time. Thank you for yours. Your time I mean.
Any interested movie studios looking to make a bio pic about Durr can contact me at epicwinz(at)durr(dot)uhm.
Any actors looking to play me in said film adaptation can contact me at epicwinz(at)durr(dot)uhm.
As with anything in our society though, there will always be the next "big thing" or the spiritual successor to whatever it is all the hip young kids are into. I have already laid the framework for this next big thing and I'm going to let you in on exactly what it is. You are welcome.
I call it "Durr". It's like Twitter, but instead of 140 characters, you only have a box to post five words. Sure, kids nowadays can manage 140 characters, albeit using atrocious grammer and substituting numbers for words, but what about the next generation? With the way the education system is going, we'll be lucky if kids graduating high school in a decade can communicate without needing to point and grunt. As it stands, a lot of them can't formulate a sentence without needing to pad it with the word "like" half a dozen times. A half a dozen words is one too many for Durr.
Imagine this if you will: You sit down to your computer and log into http://www.durr.uhm/. A box pops up on your screen. There are 5 underscored blanks for you to fill up with your infinite wisdom. What will you post? Let's say you just got finished eating a fine nutritious meal from McDonald's(tm). You could type out something along the lines of "that hambergur waz the shit". All your friends will be so jealous. Now let's imagine for a second that you just got back from seeing the Grammy-nominated Transformers 3. Perhaps you could post: "tranzformARS epic win 4 realz". Michael Bay will appreciate the kind sentiment.
In this hustle and bustle world of today, who has the time to formulate and fully flesh out ideas? People who are dorks and don't have better things to do. That's who. But for the rest of us, there are innovative technologies like Durr to help us accomplish our goals while saving precious time. Thank you for yours. Your time I mean.
Any interested movie studios looking to make a bio pic about Durr can contact me at epicwinz(at)durr(dot)uhm.
Any actors looking to play me in said film adaptation can contact me at epicwinz(at)durr(dot)uhm.
Sunday, February 27, 2011
Dibble Dip
I need to stop being so lazy, and start writing BlogZ more often. I also won't be doing a second part to the movie reviews one. Seeing as I did all the bigger movies in one go, doing all the smaller obscure movies would be kind of anti-climactic. I will still bitch about Peter Travers's incompetence as a movie reviewer at some point though. But for now, things are gonna take a wide turn into different territory, and I'm gonna ramble on about religion/science/philosophy etc. Just for now though. Until I make another wide turn into something else completely different.
I've never written about the science/religion theme to disprove somebody else's beliefs. I merely do it to point out things you find when you actually look deeper into certain principals and avoid simply believing something because someone layed it out all nice-like on a table in front of you. If everyone believed everything they were told, and never questioned anything, society wouldn't have progressed to where it is now. We'd still be in the middle ages. Burning people for witchcraft and massacring people for heresy. Luckily we adapt and learn from our mistakes and tend to make progress. For the most part.
My personal belief on religions is that they exist on an anthropological basis. If you believe in that whole "evolution" thing, which I do, religion comes into the picture when humans became cognizant enough to start questioning the world around them and wondering why all these things around them were happening. Why does it rain? What is lightning? Why are we here? The first two of those questions, once being explained through religion, are now factually known due to our understanding of the fundamental processes of nature. The third one is a philosophical question that science won't be able to explain, and thusly will always require some sort of faith to come to terms with.
I always loved the argument that a god must exist because "look how perfect everything works". Why is there a moon orbiting us and why do tides just happen? Why are there seasons that occur like clockwork? If you were to do a google search, the results you get back were found by an algorithm being performed. There isn't sombody sending the results to you on an individual basis everytime you do a search. Physics is like this in a way. There are laws of physics at work in the universe and they apply everywhere. There isn't a guy who planned to have a moon orbiting Earth which in turn creates tides. If there is another planet out there with water on the surface and a body orbiting it, it too will have high and low tides. The physics in this are universal. They weren't hand tailored for our planet. This will become more apparent on the day another "Earth" is found. If someone or something created all of this, then they created the physics that govern everything. The way our planet functions is only a result of these physics taking place. If you leave a piece of bread out, it grows mold. You didn't create that mold however. You set in motion the circumstanced that allowed the mold to be created.
There are people who are fearful that science exists to disprove their beliefs. Science exists to help us understand the world around us. It exists to explain why it rains, why there is lightning, and how magnets work. Science will never disprove a god, because untimately the questions of why we are here, and where we go (soul wise) after we die can never be explained by science. They will always remain philosophical questions. Questions that rely on having faith, whether that faith is in a particular religion or against it.
Postscript: I wrote this weeks ago and given my fickle nature, I was already too over it when I came back to actually elaborate on it any. So forgive the half-formulated, not quite finished nature contained within. Have a good day!
I've never written about the science/religion theme to disprove somebody else's beliefs. I merely do it to point out things you find when you actually look deeper into certain principals and avoid simply believing something because someone layed it out all nice-like on a table in front of you. If everyone believed everything they were told, and never questioned anything, society wouldn't have progressed to where it is now. We'd still be in the middle ages. Burning people for witchcraft and massacring people for heresy. Luckily we adapt and learn from our mistakes and tend to make progress. For the most part.
My personal belief on religions is that they exist on an anthropological basis. If you believe in that whole "evolution" thing, which I do, religion comes into the picture when humans became cognizant enough to start questioning the world around them and wondering why all these things around them were happening. Why does it rain? What is lightning? Why are we here? The first two of those questions, once being explained through religion, are now factually known due to our understanding of the fundamental processes of nature. The third one is a philosophical question that science won't be able to explain, and thusly will always require some sort of faith to come to terms with.
I always loved the argument that a god must exist because "look how perfect everything works". Why is there a moon orbiting us and why do tides just happen? Why are there seasons that occur like clockwork? If you were to do a google search, the results you get back were found by an algorithm being performed. There isn't sombody sending the results to you on an individual basis everytime you do a search. Physics is like this in a way. There are laws of physics at work in the universe and they apply everywhere. There isn't a guy who planned to have a moon orbiting Earth which in turn creates tides. If there is another planet out there with water on the surface and a body orbiting it, it too will have high and low tides. The physics in this are universal. They weren't hand tailored for our planet. This will become more apparent on the day another "Earth" is found. If someone or something created all of this, then they created the physics that govern everything. The way our planet functions is only a result of these physics taking place. If you leave a piece of bread out, it grows mold. You didn't create that mold however. You set in motion the circumstanced that allowed the mold to be created.
There are people who are fearful that science exists to disprove their beliefs. Science exists to help us understand the world around us. It exists to explain why it rains, why there is lightning, and how magnets work. Science will never disprove a god, because untimately the questions of why we are here, and where we go (soul wise) after we die can never be explained by science. They will always remain philosophical questions. Questions that rely on having faith, whether that faith is in a particular religion or against it.
Postscript: I wrote this weeks ago and given my fickle nature, I was already too over it when I came back to actually elaborate on it any. So forgive the half-formulated, not quite finished nature contained within. Have a good day!
Sunday, January 16, 2011
Movie Reviews 2010: Part One
I don't really go to the movies that often. Perhaps it's because I don't want to pay $10 to see a movie. Perhaps it's because I don't want to pay $10 to see a shitty movie. I do however have parents whom I visit twice a year who have 459 satellite movie channels. Using my somewhat passable math skills, I figure that by just waiting until one of my visits to catch up on all the hot new releases, I end up saving over $200 on movie tickets. During this last visit I saw 23 movies, and I'm gonna review a few of them now. Sounds like a pretty boring blog. At least you don't have to pay for it.
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
Where to start with this one? I thought it was a very well acted and directed movie, but I also couldn't shake the feeling that I was watching Forrest Gump 2 the entire time. It's the same premise of someone being born different from the normal standards, yet having a life that is way more interesting than your own. In this case however, Benjamin Button is born looking old instead of being retarded. They should have made him old and retarded. It would have won more awards, but it would have caused F Scott Fitzgerald to roll in his grave. Tough decision indeed. It's also one of those movies where the plot moves along so quickly that if you get up to go take a whiz, you end up missing some important plot event. So have an empty bottle on hand when you watch it.
The Watchmen
I enjoyed this movie way more than I thought I would. I was expecting another visually impressive, yet emotionally vacant superhero movie in the vein of practically every other superhero movie ever made. This one actually had an interesting story and characters you could give a shit about. It also happens to be a fairly gritty movie, having more in common with the dark tone present in the Batman films. (Excluding that atrocious one.) Part of the reason I didn't think I'd enjoy it was that all I heard about it were remarks pertaining to blue penises. Indeed this movie does have glowing blues penises in it, and I'm still not quite sure why it needed them. It didn't advance the plot at all that I know of.
Avatar
Here is another movie that I though I wouldn't care for, but ended up really enjoying. I had preconceived notions of it being a live-action version of Fern Gully, or some other light Disney fare, but it was actually a surprisingly deep movie, dealing with themes of science, spirituality, and inter-planetary domination. It coincidently also involves glowing blue people. It most reminded me of Star Wars in its scope of creating a fully fleshed-out sci-fi universe, complete with it's own unique flora and fauna. It's one of those movies that harkens back to the days of seeing a film as a kid and wanting to be one of the characters played out on screen. After seeing this movie, I wanted to be a 10-foot-tall blue thing riding dragons around a 1000-foot tree and messing around with all sorts of cool glowing shit. I'm actually looking forward to the obligatory sequels. Don't screw it up, Cameron.
Inception
People were fairly divided on this one it seems. Some people raved about it, and others called it overrated. I personally felt that it was a really great, thought-provoking movie as far as sci-fi thrillers go. I think your opinions on the movie hinge solely on your interest and experiences with the concept of dreams and the subconscious. If you can relate to the concepts presented, due to your own experiences with your own dreams, then you'll get more out of the movie. If you can't relate to these themes, or have no interest in them, there's really no reason for you to see this movie. If you've ever had a dream within a dream and dealt with the confusion upon waking up, or had that falling sensation that wakes you up, or had a dream about waterfalls, only to wake up needing to go to the bathroom, this movie will be intriguing to you on some level. You can tell Christopher Nolan has had these experiences, otherwise he could never have written this script. In fact, I wish he'd stick to movies like this and ditch the overrated Batman fare.
Inglorious Basterds
This is very much a Quentin Tarantino film. That is, it exhibits the same influences his other movies have, all the while retaining the same characteristics he's known for. It's one part wordy dialogue-driven narrative, one part exploitation flick. It's essentially a historical rewrite about a plot leading to the slaughter of a bunch of Nazi higher-ups. Kind of like if you took the movie Valkyrie, but threw out the historical accuracy and threw in some Jewish vengeance. The dialogue-driven parts are often very tense, leaving you on the edge of your seat/couch/floor wondering what the outcome will be. The exploitation parts are all gritty gory excitement at the Nazi's expense. This is the kind of movie that works because Tarantino is first and foremost a film buff and great at taking the good parts of his favorite films and mashing them up into new hybrids.
The Social Network
Out of the six movies listed here, this is the only one that I felt was truly overrated. It has been called "Revolutionary", "A once in a generation movie", and one reviewer even said "It gets no better than this". Really? How many movies have you watched? This is the best you've ever seen? Peter Travers called it "An American landmark", but Peter Travers is an idiot. So much so that I'll have an entire blog entry about his idiocy in the near future. Movie reviewers in general are over-sensationalizing idiots though, so no offence Mr Travers.
What this movie boiled down to to me was a biopic about a website. A website that is widely used, but no more important than any other huge site like Google or Amazon or Myspace. The circumstances behind the creation of the site aren't even all that exciting. The same back-stabbing and double-crossing evident in any other multi-billion dollar company. Plenty of socially awkward guys create plenty of successful websites each year. Why does this one warrant it's own movie? Don't get me wrong... it's a good movie, only it's not really worthy of all the praise. It's not a movie you walk away from with any kind of deeper internal discourse being bounced around in your head over. It's just an entertaining 2 hours. Nothing more.
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
Where to start with this one? I thought it was a very well acted and directed movie, but I also couldn't shake the feeling that I was watching Forrest Gump 2 the entire time. It's the same premise of someone being born different from the normal standards, yet having a life that is way more interesting than your own. In this case however, Benjamin Button is born looking old instead of being retarded. They should have made him old and retarded. It would have won more awards, but it would have caused F Scott Fitzgerald to roll in his grave. Tough decision indeed. It's also one of those movies where the plot moves along so quickly that if you get up to go take a whiz, you end up missing some important plot event. So have an empty bottle on hand when you watch it.
The Watchmen
I enjoyed this movie way more than I thought I would. I was expecting another visually impressive, yet emotionally vacant superhero movie in the vein of practically every other superhero movie ever made. This one actually had an interesting story and characters you could give a shit about. It also happens to be a fairly gritty movie, having more in common with the dark tone present in the Batman films. (Excluding that atrocious one.) Part of the reason I didn't think I'd enjoy it was that all I heard about it were remarks pertaining to blue penises. Indeed this movie does have glowing blues penises in it, and I'm still not quite sure why it needed them. It didn't advance the plot at all that I know of.
Avatar
Here is another movie that I though I wouldn't care for, but ended up really enjoying. I had preconceived notions of it being a live-action version of Fern Gully, or some other light Disney fare, but it was actually a surprisingly deep movie, dealing with themes of science, spirituality, and inter-planetary domination. It coincidently also involves glowing blue people. It most reminded me of Star Wars in its scope of creating a fully fleshed-out sci-fi universe, complete with it's own unique flora and fauna. It's one of those movies that harkens back to the days of seeing a film as a kid and wanting to be one of the characters played out on screen. After seeing this movie, I wanted to be a 10-foot-tall blue thing riding dragons around a 1000-foot tree and messing around with all sorts of cool glowing shit. I'm actually looking forward to the obligatory sequels. Don't screw it up, Cameron.
Inception
People were fairly divided on this one it seems. Some people raved about it, and others called it overrated. I personally felt that it was a really great, thought-provoking movie as far as sci-fi thrillers go. I think your opinions on the movie hinge solely on your interest and experiences with the concept of dreams and the subconscious. If you can relate to the concepts presented, due to your own experiences with your own dreams, then you'll get more out of the movie. If you can't relate to these themes, or have no interest in them, there's really no reason for you to see this movie. If you've ever had a dream within a dream and dealt with the confusion upon waking up, or had that falling sensation that wakes you up, or had a dream about waterfalls, only to wake up needing to go to the bathroom, this movie will be intriguing to you on some level. You can tell Christopher Nolan has had these experiences, otherwise he could never have written this script. In fact, I wish he'd stick to movies like this and ditch the overrated Batman fare.
Inglorious Basterds
This is very much a Quentin Tarantino film. That is, it exhibits the same influences his other movies have, all the while retaining the same characteristics he's known for. It's one part wordy dialogue-driven narrative, one part exploitation flick. It's essentially a historical rewrite about a plot leading to the slaughter of a bunch of Nazi higher-ups. Kind of like if you took the movie Valkyrie, but threw out the historical accuracy and threw in some Jewish vengeance. The dialogue-driven parts are often very tense, leaving you on the edge of your seat/couch/floor wondering what the outcome will be. The exploitation parts are all gritty gory excitement at the Nazi's expense. This is the kind of movie that works because Tarantino is first and foremost a film buff and great at taking the good parts of his favorite films and mashing them up into new hybrids.
The Social Network
Out of the six movies listed here, this is the only one that I felt was truly overrated. It has been called "Revolutionary", "A once in a generation movie", and one reviewer even said "It gets no better than this". Really? How many movies have you watched? This is the best you've ever seen? Peter Travers called it "An American landmark", but Peter Travers is an idiot. So much so that I'll have an entire blog entry about his idiocy in the near future. Movie reviewers in general are over-sensationalizing idiots though, so no offence Mr Travers.
What this movie boiled down to to me was a biopic about a website. A website that is widely used, but no more important than any other huge site like Google or Amazon or Myspace. The circumstances behind the creation of the site aren't even all that exciting. The same back-stabbing and double-crossing evident in any other multi-billion dollar company. Plenty of socially awkward guys create plenty of successful websites each year. Why does this one warrant it's own movie? Don't get me wrong... it's a good movie, only it's not really worthy of all the praise. It's not a movie you walk away from with any kind of deeper internal discourse being bounced around in your head over. It's just an entertaining 2 hours. Nothing more.
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