Most Peculiar

so, i was browsing through various webpages, when i noticed that my gmail tab had transformed into my blog tab. i don't know why. there was, as far as i can see, no reason it should have done that.

that was pretty much it.

this line popped in my head the other day: the revolution will not be televised. i feel like i've heard this line everywhere from the time i was little and such. i did a google search of it, and such is not the case. every reference to this line is something that i know nothing about. and yet, it's something i feel confident in saying we all know. apparently it was some poem/song by a guy in the 70s, who was probably a dirty hippy, and that was probably the only thing he said of any cleverness. it was also the name of a documentary about a revolt in bolivia or something. a movie made for hipsters and faux hippies to watch, and then feel good about themselves because they know something about world events, and now they can feel superior about it without actually doing anything. not that i'm any different, but let's be honest: documentaries suck. they're god awful boring (at least the ones that get put in theaters), and the only real reason to watch them is so that you can feel superior to those that choose to spend their money watching things that are actually fun to watch.

i can actually understand, however, why this guy would say this. it makes sense. TV is the grand addiction of americans. it's probably replaced God as the opiate of the people. it drives me nuts. not because i actually think TV is evil. at least not directly. but because people who watch it religiously won't shut the hell up about it. same with people who attend church religiously, or attack church religiously, or really, do anything religiously. i get it. monk, and baseball, and the news, and the cheerleader. fantastic.

anyways, i guess i just wanted to say that the revolution will not be blogged.

The End of Blogging?

So, today is my wedding day. I kind of feel like I should say something about that, but at the same time, what would I say to both the people that check this blog who aren't spam? Chances are, they already know. I kind of feel like that dropping in here to let you know I'll be gone is like receiving a chain letter from someone you haven't talked to in awhile. Retarded.

At any rate, that's the score. In four hours, all my freedoms are belong to her.

A word on blogging: for awhile I did it, and I really enjoyed it, and I did it a lot. One of the big reasons is that I felt like I had things that I wanted to say. Really, it was conversations that I wanted to engage in, and had they been engaged in the real world, I wouldn't have turned to the virtual one. So, when people quit commenting and the conversation I sought dies away, I really don't want to keep doing. More importantly, I met my Shannon, and I'm engaging in all the conversations I wanted to engage in, plus a few that I hadn't thought of. That's one of the big reasons why I snatched her up so quickly. Girls are everywhere. Smart girls are rare. But a smart girl that you can have good conversations with (who aren't taken)? It's rare enough that you're a fool not to take it.

I certainly hope my wedding goes better than my bachelor party. Let me show you those stats:
15 people invited (excluding dad and brother, who were going to be there regardless)
6 people showed
1 person stayed after dinner
2 people actually contacted me and told me why they couldn't come. Also, that 15 was the number of invited who said they'd come.
In percents:
100% invited
40% showed
.0625% stayed after dinner
.125% had a good excuse

So, that's that. I don't know if I'll continue blogging anymore/ever. If I do, I'll probably start on a different blog.

Why Evolution Doesn't Make Sense

So, I don't necessarily understand some things about evolution. Mostly, it seems as though “hardcore” evolutionists turn a blind eye to a lot of stuff that seem to be “go to jail” cards. Things that kind of deliver the proverbial baseball bat to the proverbial skater's knee. Not to say that Christians, or religious people in general for that matter don't also do this, but I'm not talking about them. And many of them actively struggle with the things they don't get.

My first problem is that we suck in small groups. In small groups, we'd be doomed. Which means that in order for men to have any hope of getting out of the wild, a whole damn bunch of us would have had to appear at once, which is unlikely because:

Male primates are known to eat their young. Eat them for any variety of reason. Because they're hungry and the kid's weak, because they suspect it's not theirs, because it looks foreign. How then do we anticipate that a larval human (or half human) sliding out of a woman monkey wouldn't get eaten? It seems unlikely that enough male primates would let a freak of nature like this freakish tale less-thing walk around for very long.

I had a boss defend evolution saying that the reason man had risen to the top was because of our intellect and technology. The problem with this is that those two things take lots of time to cultivate. Mostly, humankind is kind of characterized by a whole bunch of pigs eating in a slop tank, and once a generation, if we're lucky, one or two will happen to look up, and then receive a revelation of some kind. Unfortunately for us human folk, intellect and revelation are semi-sparse for us. So, in order for man to have conquered animals using his intellect, that means he would have had to have come furnished with an intellect, and enough other man animals to be able to use that intellect properly. Sure, one man could make a sling and a spear, but he uses it on a monkey, all he's done is piss that monkey off, which pisses other monkeys off, now he's monkey dinner.

Then there's the physical limitations. Humans suck donkey nuts in comparison to almost every other animal. Are claws are tiny and fragile, our fangs break easily, we can't run that fast, or swim, we can't see that well, or hear stuff, we're not that strong (at least practically), and our piss is weak. No animal would be afraid of our wee wee.

I had a friend say that the only reason I could claim we were so weak was because I'd never seen a person in the wild, where they could shine. I don't care. You can take our best fighter and place it against the most humdrum of baboons or laziest of gazelles, and we still lose in fisticuffs. Muhammad Ali vs. a tiger, Bruce Lee vs. a chimp. No matter what, we just lose. We suck. Our hardware is not up to par with the most average of predators.

Along the lines of hardware is the fact that we lost things that would have been wicked handy. Apart from the sense of smell, fangs, and claws, we also have tales, feet thumbs, and the longer forearms that allow us to lope if we want to. It makes no sense that our ancestors at any point would have quit using things like that. At no point do they cease becoming useful. You would make shoes to accommodate your feet, sheathes to keep your tail warm. Or better yet, fur has served every other mammal just fine for thousands of years, why would prehistoric man buck tradition like that? Why would we ever have lost our fur? It's a complete non sequitur.

And it's not like I feel like I have a complete image of what God is. I don't. I used to feel like I did, but the more I learn, the less I know, but the more I feel convinced that it has to be God (or whatever that ultimate reality is). Evolution just seems like such hope in folly.

A Few Movies I Done Saw

So, mostly, I just wanted to talk about a few movies I'd seen as of late in lieu of real substantial material, of which I've the substantialest of materials planned. But not yet. First...

Oh. And as always, when I talk about movies, I'll assume you've seen it, so there may be spoilers. Sounds like a personal problem.

Charlotte's Web – The live action one. First, let me state that I've never read the book. I've had it read to me, but probably not for 13 years or more. Every year, the teacher would cry when Charlotte died, which left me thinking, “didn't you see this one coming? I did.” I watched the cartoon like a fiend when I was a kid, but I've not been exposed to others in some time. Having said that, the live action one wasn't too bad. Really, my complaints with it are few.

First, I thought they would try to make it all relevant, which blows. Relevant things suck ass. When you take something that's timeless and classic and memorable (Wizard of Oz, Chicken Little, all the Dr. Seuss books) and make them hip and relevant (The Tin Man, Chicken Little, all the Dr. Seuss abominations), you completely sterilize the source material making it lose not only its original charm, but making it uninteresting in general. That's what I thought would happen, through and through, but it only happened in small amounts. Too much focus on Templeton's antics (which were a very small part of the book and the cartoon) and his wisecracking responses. The geese are now wisecracking black stereotypes, and the sheep are now self aware of what a sheep is, and concepts of following, instead of just being a cranky old sheep like in the book. I don't understand why they put self aware self expounding characters in stuff that's targeted for kids. Kids certainly miss it, and adults might only enjoy it as a novelty.

Second, because it's so incredibly not cartoony (which is such a detriment to cartoons), Charlotte is actually a little bit scary in her bulbous eight legged glory. She's gross. Doesn't at all look whimsical like cartoon Charlotte. She was cute. I would like to have her back, k? Thx, bai.

I understand that it's a children's book and such, and a pig makes a much more attractive protagonist than some stupid fly, but the flagrant double standard has always always bugged me.

The last thing is really more a criticism of book, cartoon, and movie. It's something I've never liked and always kind of balked at (yes, even as a small tater Cuyler), and that's the fact that Fern, who is very much the initiating protagonist (she might not be the ultimate protagonist or the heroine, but she gets the whole ball rolling) protests the killing of Wilbur because it's wrong. It's wrong to kill him just because he's small. Then later, it's wrong to kill him and eat him for all of his sweet pork meats (pork is gross. No me gusta), but then later, when Wilbur freaks out because Charlotte eats the fly, he gets scolded saying, “That's just the way things are. You live, and then you die.” The double standard in the book's philosophy has always bugged me. In farm life, the farmer would have been doing the runt pig a mercy. Sure, it's not pretty, and it's not nice, but it's better than letting him slowly starve to death, and then later, of course the farmer will want to kill the pig. That's the whole purpose for having pigs: food. But it's wrong for Wilbur to die because, well, Fern likes him. But flies? Fuck flies. No one cares about them. Also, no one gives a damn about all the other pigs that we can assume got slaughtered, or sold and then slaughtered.

I Am Legend – I've never read the book. My lovely fiancé has, and from what I've heard, it sounds a. gay, b. ridiculous, and c. like they performed a better adaptation of the idea in the movie... mostly.

Let me start off by saying that I Am Legend was a good time. I feel like I got what I paid for. I feel like I saw what I was expecting to see.

Next, let me say that CG “vampires” (really, these things were much more like zombies) look dumb. Why do studios insist on using CG when it looks fake and cartoon like in comparison to real life, when makeup is so much cheaper, convincing, and unsettling to look at. The movie was genuinely scary when I just saw small snippets and hints of zombies. When the random zombie through itself at a speeding car, or you knew they were there because you could hear their breathing. As soon as I saw the actual zombies, the movie just quit being scary.

Second, I hate when people take mysterious things and try to completely explain them scientifically. It goes a long way in cutting short the fantastic, whether that fantastic be wonderful or terrifying. In this movie, the “vampires” (again, wouldn't have guessed they were vampires if someone hadn't told me. I would have said “zombies”) are the product of a cancer cure gone wrong, and they end up developing rabies gone wrong symptoms: fear of water, deadly reaction to sunlight, and of course, they want brains. Er, blood. I meant blood (brains). They are complete animals, just running around snorting, snarling, scratching, biting, want food eat now fire bad. This guy has completely killed all the wonder of vampires by making them this thing. Gone are the legends about virgins, and allowed entry, and garlic, and mirrors. No. They're just animals. Somehow this virus abrogates reason completely, and they just run around like naked wild children.

So, the movie opens up with Will Smith having lived in this dilly of a pickle for three years, which raises a lot of questions in my mind. Since these zombies are essentially just feral people, they show absolutely no recognition of things like conservation of food or storing or agriculture. They just hide during the day, and then eat during the night. They wouldn't last three years. They would have eaten all the brains that were available, human and otherwise, and then been left with the option of eat each other or just die. That doesn't happen. I suppose I should mention that when you become a zombie, you become the owner of superior strength, agility, and speed, despite the fact that you are undoubtedly under nourished.

Another thing is that they're metabolism runs at speeds that shoot through the roof. All the time. Will Smith heavily heavily heavily sedates one of the zombies, and she still breathes as if she just ran a 100 yard dash. If the body is essentially human, just modified by a crazy virus, they wouldn't be able to live like that. Their bodies would have crapped out either from stroke or heart attack, and the zombie problem would be gone.

I guess I just hate how we innately know, whether we believe in such things or not, that things like vampires are supposed to be these supernatural entities, and then when someone tries to curtail it like this author has, it bugs me. It bugs me even more when he doesn't complete the curtailing and take into account common sense things like food and over exertion.

Apparently, in the book, the virus evolves and the “vampires” become intelligent and try to strategically take down Willy. Well, rather, they send one girl to do it. That strikes me as gay on ice. The book sounds so stupid.

So that's pretty much it. I didn't care for the part when the girl showed up, because it became an entirely different movie. Instead of “ol' Willy tries to save humans from vampires,” it becomes (out of left field), “ol' Willy has to rediscover his faith in God, and then things will fix themselves.” Really jarring. Just as jarring as seeing cartoon zombies.

I read somewhere that in one of the initial drafts, Willy comes to the realization that the antidote he's looking for can only come from himself. Some homogenization of vampire blood and regular dude blood. But, he must inject himself with the cure and then allow himself to be ingested by the zombie folk, and then the anti virus spreads in reverse fashion of the initial virus. That sounds bitchin. That's creepy, visceral, and gross. The kind of stuff I would pay to see in a horror/thriller movie. But, wait, it's PG13. Weak.

So, before I move on to the substantialest material, I wanted to talk about The Transformers, finally (despite being 6 months late) and Sweeny Todd. But I'll do that next time. I need to do productive things now.