Friday, June 22, 2012

List of Awesomeness: Part Two



Just to make sure you guys get the appropriate dose of awesome I’ve decided to let you in on next part of the list.  Let’s continue in no particular order or demarcation of importance.


1. Sriracha
A gift directly from the spice goddess.  It’s probably the perfect blend of heat and flavor.  Like getting kissed by a spicy angel.  It can elevate bland crappy food above acceptable.
This spicy wonder was invented by David Tran a man who emigrated to America from Vietnam in the late seventies.  Asia has probably never forgiven us for making a better hot sauce.  One of the cool things is the business I entirely family ran and shockingly it’s “never advertised its products, relying instead on word of mouth, the phone number listed on its products, and its website.”



2. Zorro
He was wealthy playboy Alejandro De La Vega carousing with the oppressors of the common men and women of a predominantly Spanish California (back when California was more Mexico than United States).  He then donned the mask and alter ego of Zorro to fight the very men he gained trust from.  So he used his wealth and status to undermine those of his own social caste to fight for equality.  Kind of like the Scarlet Pimpernel but with a better name and a Latin flavor.  But most importantly without Zorro there wouldn’t be Batman.  And thanks to Zorro the world got to see Catherina Zeta Jones before she was Michael Douglas’ed.

3. The Goddamn Batman
The.  Goddamn.  Batman.

4. Teddy Roosevelt
Bully for you!  Rounding out part of the badass Presidents wing is this man.  A man who punched childhood sickness in the face then went out into the wilderness to hunt something.  Although Teddy was at times weaponless, on rare occasions, (I think he may have slept with a shotgun under his pillow and a small cannon under the mattress) he was never unarmed.  The man was a true Chuck Norris joke.  Undeniably a great man he is also one of only three Presidents with a Noble Peace prize (however, the whole Nobel Peace prize can be called into question when you think about the fact that Gandhi never got one). 

5. Uppercuts
There are four pretty basic punches in boxing; a jab; a cross; a hook; and a uppercut.  I like to think of the jab, cross, hook as rocks, paper, scissors and the uppercut as magnum revolver.  It’s a thing a beauty in the right hands.  It’s probably one of the few things both Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat got right.

6. Caffeine
The savior of the workday.  It enlivens your brain and speeds you up without the jitters of the uppers.  Without caffeine coffee, one of my good friends, would be muddy water and that's only good if you're a  famous blues musician.

7. Rags
Rags was a war hero, an inspiration and a very good boy.  Abandoned on the street of France he was saved by a American soldier.  A dog’s dog, Rags helped run vital messages from the front line.  He was able to predict incoming shells or rather his canine sense alerted the humans with less fine tuned senses of the incoming shells.  He saved countless lives and was able to retire home after the war. Though he was in the thick of trench warfare he managed to survive being gassed and hit by shrapnel to be able to eventually get smuggled to America.  He died at age 20 and was buried with full military honors.  Oh, and he learned how to salute as well.  Which is both badass and completely adorable.


8. Whiskey
Whiskey is a Gaelic word meaning "water of life."  It’s the drink of cowboys and manly men.  You can drink expensive or sophisticated or exhaust fume like brands such as Old Granddad.  It may very well put hair on your chest.

9. Bill Murray
The man has been in some of the greatest comedies of all time.  His immensely quotable performance in Caddyshack was only over the course of four days and was predominantly ad libbed.  The only more quotable movie: Ghostbusters (if you say Airplane so help me Kyle I will punch you, I will punch you with the fury of the internet and the net is fifty percent seething geek rage).  Also Zombieland synched his awesomeness.   While Garfield the movie is inexcusable he actually thought it was written by one of the Coen brothers not Joel Cohen (who did write it).  In my dreams Bill Murray gives advice to the Dalia Llama not the other way around.

10. Nikola Tesla
The man has invented, against foes of progress and science, much of the wonder of the past century.  Without some of the setbacks that have occurred he may well have discovered unlimited energy and other reasonably helpful advances.  The man was like a portal into insanity and scientific revelation.  Also he was portrayed by David Bowie in a movie and that can only help.  I’m pretty sure if you stand over his grave you get free wifi and your electronics are powered.

It’s also possible the man probably just faked his death because he was sick of dealing with people like Edison or any of the other wealthy assholes who ruining the gifts he would have brought to the world.  Sadly we treat our geniuses rather poorly for the most part.  He was crazy enough to do it.

Ben

Friday, June 8, 2012

The Problem with Zombies


Lately zombies have been the answer to every medium; inserting themselves as the antagonists in books like Max Brook’s World War Z, or television shows like The Walking Dead, or comic books like…  The Walking Dead, or films like any of George Romero’s films (and remakes), or video games like Resident Evil 1-6, Dead Rising 1 and 2, Dead Island, Dead Space 1 and2.  That list is just the beginning of the overuse heaped upon the shambling undead.  Zombies are now an overused, over thought trope.  We have brought the extreme attitude (fuck you the 90’s, sincerely everyone )to zombies with pieces like 28 days Later where we super charged the slow moving and stumbling corpses into speedy versions of hungry hungry hippos just with, you know, people instead of marbles.  But besides getting a does of Tony Horton the main concept hasn’t changed much.  The back story has changed here and there with genetic modification, voodoo, evil spirits, ancient civilizations, various scientific issues, and other possibilities but honestly zombies don’t need back story I’d actually prefer it if we as an audience never knew the cause.  The unknown has and always will be the staple of good horror.  It’s why the first Night of Living Dead worked when it did.  It was a new enough concept at the time.

But is the problem with zombies the lack of creativity of the overuse?  Or is it because everyone and their brother uses the archetype that there isn’t enough quality control?  But content is only consumed if there is a an audience for it.  And oddly enough the audience mindlessly craves and consumes.  There is an obsession with the faithful, an over analysis and delight in the possibility of a true occurance.  People have devoted time to building zombie survival teams.  And not just like a few minutes of fancy.  Whole discussions and serious periods of thought.  Well… maybe not serious concerning the subject matter.  But taken far too seriously.  Discussing the ins and outs of rules and keys to survival.  Because obviously in the zombie apocalypse with fires raging, family members dying and/or infected, society fallen, energy failing, food sources scarce, a foe that doesn’t sleep or stop, some idiot who’s watched a couple of movies won’t crack under pressure.  They will obviously triumph and with their equally brave cohorts triumph and restore society.  These heroes chose teams of people based on some merits of awesomeness and violence.  Not really on true merits like perhaps having a doctor, or a scientist, or probably most helpful a farmer.  Everyone forgets about starvation.  It does mildly concern me how people truly get excited over the thought of a zombie apocalypse happening and all the fun they might have.  It’s like they see the collapse of modern society as okay and these murderous truly scary and gruesome foes as nothing but way to vent violent fantasy.  But perhaps I am looking too deeply here.

So what would happen in a zombie outbreak.  If we assume that zombies are slowly rotting bodies the zombie outbreak would just kill itself.  The human body isn’t really meant to work once you’re dead just don’t tell Mary Shelly; she wanted humanity to be the bad guys anyway.  Regular humans being the really bad guys is a common theme in many survival horror plots, especially those by Stephen King.  Watch The Mist.  Or better yet don’t.  It doesn’t *spoiler* end so happily. *end spoiler*

Zombies just dying off and falling apart would be logical but this is a reanimated body come back to kill mindlessly.   It’s hard to interject too much logic here.  So assuming the body won’t degrade to much either due to magic or some other explanation humanity will not do so well.  If there was an outbreak and it didn’t fizzle out we’d pretty much be fucked as a species.  Don’t take my word for it.  Trust the power of math.


Yeah, someone actually spent the time to figure out the math behind the spread of the infection and humanity’s chance for survival.  Also remember a handful of people surviving does not guarantee humanity survival in fact it guarantees the very opposite.  Having only a few hundred people essentially means a stagnant gene pool and well that is not so good for humanity.

The one good thing about the rules and codification of zombies (rule as evidenced by Zombieland) is that it gives a stable and well defined set of guidelines for the world of the story.  The problem with a lot of terrible writing is we, as audience are completely unaware of the rule in the world presented to us.  If we feel like things are constantly being revealed to us and we’re like “the fuck is that?  The fuck is this?  I don’t get it?” that generally means the author is bad person.  Take that dreadful dragon series that turned into a single movie “Eragon”.  You know why I can believe it was written by a teenager?  Because it sucked.  If you shoot someone in the head they should generally die.  You can’t casually introduce new rules, like only a direct shot to the heart kills a warlock (or whatever the fuck the bad guy was), especially to a person who lives in that world.  That’s why so many stories have that fish out of water who gets introduced to the weird stuff to help us the audience understand so the other characters, the ones who know what’s going on, have a good reason to explain things and give exposition.  It’s why there is always that new recruit or student or what have you.  Otherwise if one character was lecturing another about why Cyclops has to eat a sheep every week to live and the other character would logically say “Yeah, I know that fucktard; I feed him.  Why are telling me that?  Am I some sort of audience member new to this story… oh, right.”

These well defined rules are part of the reason why everyone is an expert on zombies, a made up creature that exists only in fiction.  There are so many armchair zombie survival experts it boggles the mind.  Hell, I’m complaining about this and I know far too much about zombies.

But hey zombies are really just an expression of mindless consumerism (mindless eating machines that crowd together), a reaction against communism (they never attack each other and ‘convert’ those they fight – this is especially prevent in movies with pod people in place of zombies), and a reaction against single minded acceptance of the norm.  You look at these stories and it usually a small group against a horde of the same.   It’s also often an allegory for racism and warning about cultural hegemony (that means a disparate group can be controlled by a single entity of subgroup).  But heck sometimes it’s really more about gratuitous violence and we tend to accept a greater level of violence those circumstances.

But either way you look at you should totally have me on your zombie survival team.

Ben