C-Movies, Make it Happen

I wonder how many modern-day B-movies start out production with people actually taking the movie seriously, before someone on the production team realizes that the premise is incredibly dumb and that making real horror movies is too hard. Making horror parodies, on the other hand, is incredibly easy. All you've have to do is make the threat over the top and have everyone swear every other word. Y'know, for humor value.*

"We've got a great idea for a movie!"
"What kind of movie?"
"A horror movie!"
"About...?"
"Snakes!"
"Anaconda?"
"No, they're on a plane this time!"
"And what do you want to call it?"
"Okay, okay...Ready? Snakes...wait for it...on a PLANE!"**
"That sounds...stupid."
"Oh..."
"Can we make it a parody?"
"Is Samuel L Jackson available?"
"I have a swimming pool made of money."
"Great, let's make a movie."

And then they spent millions of dollars on it. AND IT WAS AWESOME.

*See: Grindhouse, Evil Dead, etc. Notice that I'm not saying that any of these movies are bad.
**RELEVANT SATIRE

Seven Billion Dollar Man

I'm still waiting for the day when they start implanting iPods into our brains. I know for a fact that a whole bunch of super-naturalists are going to get pissy about it and say that we're allowing technology to overtake our lives and stuff like that, but you know what? I'm down to turn into a cyborg. As long as I get to keep all of my brain functions, and the robot implants are just there to make my body more awesome, I'm all for it. Specifically, I'd really be interested in getting some sort of robotic eye. Y'know, one that has zoom and can take pictures and stuff. And it better look awesome. I don't even care if it can shoot lasers, I just want my robot eye. Once they invent those, I'm going to move to Canada and stab one of my eyes out, so I can get one for free. That's exactly how healthcare works, right?

Of course, the REAL problem will be keeping the hardware constantly upgraded. I mean, let's say you just got a nice 3G router implanted in your skull that displays web pages through your robot eye.* And then a week later, they come out with a FASTER one that can also download music directly into your brain. Well NOW you gotta go out and get surgery again. It'll be just like getting a new iPod every few years, except you have to go under the knife every time. Sounds like a hassle, but then again, you're a cyborg. That's awesome enough to make up for pretty much anything.

I don't know, is it possible to run electronics off of the energy of the human body? If it is, we're going to have to start producing a lot more food, so we'll have the energy to run our brain computers. Also, I want rockets in my legs. Just cause.

*Cheating on tests will never be the same.

Cheaper Than Acid

It's a weird experience to feel guilty about something you did in a dream. Do you ever do that? Like, you dream that you drank a whole bottle of scotch and threw up all over your friend's couch? And when you wake up, you know that it wasn't real, but you still feel bad for doing it. Sometimes I feel like I should apologize to my friend for it. That's what sort of scares me about dreams. Sure, you always know that they didn't really happen once they're over, but some of them are just so damn VIVID. I think the worst is when you dream about something that you really want, and then you fight to stay asleep, because you don't want it to go away. That happened to me last night, and I woke up depressed, because I realized that things were the same as they were the day before. That always sucks.

Or how about when you dream about your friend doing something really not-cool, and then you feel kinda pissed at them the next day? Then again, if you're having dreams about your friend doing crappy things, that might say something about your opinion of them. I'm not sure, because I'm still working on trying to decide how much of the "dream symbolism" idea I believe.

Also, lucid dreaming doesn't make sense. You know you're in a dream, and simultaneously know that that is perfectly reasonable and that the dream world is making sense, even if you're flying on a winged sheep through the Canadian mountains. Dreams are too confusing. I should just stop sleeping.

Kids Are Sexist

When I was a little kid, I watched a lot of TV. But since I was stupid and lazy, I pretty much watched the same two or three channels every day, and would therefore see the same sort of programming and the same sort of commercials all the time. Now, when I was a kid, I hated advertising just as much as I do now, so you can imagine that I would come up with all sorts of complaints for the commercials that I thought I was being forced to watch every day.

There was one specific thing that always bothered me when I would watch these commercials, and it's a cliche that still doesn't really make a whole lot of sense to me. See, there would be a whole bunch of commercials for traditionally "boy" type toys or campaigns. Y'know race cars and crap like that. Now, these commercials would often have a gag at the end where, in some sort of ridiculous competition involving the toys, some girl would show up and kick all those boys' asses. This baffled me as a child. Not because I was sexist, although like every other 8-year-old boy, I probably was.* However, I DID know that at that age, boys HATE that sort of thing, because again, we were all raging, sexist bastards. Some of us just didn't grow out of it.

And so I wondered. If these advertisers wanted to target young boys, why would they do that? Of course now, I know exactly why. It's because adults can't remember what being a kid was like. I'm going to try to hold on to that as long as I can, but I know that eventually, I'm going to become hopelessly ignorant too.

*Except that one kid who had almost all girl friends and a really girly voice. Every elementary school had one of those, and by 5th grade, when everyone learned what a "fag" was, we all just assumed he was gay.

Computers Are Serious Business

So I've realized recently just how little I care about the Mac vs. PC "war". I mean, I know that most people could not care less, and wishes everyone would just shut the hell up about it, but I becoming more and more aware of the fact that I just don't have enough energy to participate in stupid arguments like that. It seems kind of ridiculous that we have grown men who argue about this sort of thing. That's kind of embarassing, in a way. Like, come on guys, I'm sure there's just gotta be something else to argue about that's a bit less retarded.

Here's the way I see it. Everyone is going to have their own opinions on things, and personal preferences. In this sort of argument, nobody is EVER going to prove anyone else wrong, because it's all a matter of opinion. You're not going to change anyone's mind, and you really should not care about it that much in the first place. It's a matter of opinion. It's personal preference. Who cares?

And yes, Apple's Mac vs. PC commercials are incredibly stupid an pretentious. I don't think you need me to point that out.

Also It Is a Stupid Name

So I'm like...three or four years late on this one, but I would just like to point out right now that Blu-Ray is stupid. Blu-Ray is basically DVD, except it costs about fifty times more to even get a machine that will play them and it's a pain in the ass to even find movies on it. And you know what? It doesn't look that good. It looks exactly the goddamn same as DVDs, an if you care that much about image quality on your movies, then you're a tool.*

Now, I thought for awhile that I was being incredibly ignorant about this. "Oh sure, I'm sure everyone was complaining about the same sort of things when the transfer to DVDs was just starting." But you know what? DVDs have a number of things that actually make them better than VHS. Special features, more storage space, all that good stuff. But what does Blu-Ray have over DVD besides "It looks a little better almost kinda maybe"? Not a whole lot.

So maybe I am being a bit naive, I'm not really sure, but I think it's sort of a moot point anyway. Physical copies of movies are becoming obsolete now that we have all that fancy digital download stuff. So now we get to bitch about DRM and hard-drive malfunctions wipin out your whole collection instead. Yay future!

*Everyone love blanket statements.

We'll Get There Eventually

You know, the people who are crusading against gay marriage are really, really wasting their time and money. Now, that sounds really obvious, but when you think about it, it's pretty ridiculous. Whether you approve of it or not, it's kind of blatant at this point that gay marriage legalization laws are inevtiable at this point. The concept is becoming so pervasive, there's just no way around it. And when you think about it, it's hard to see what these anti-gay people are fighting for. These laws are GOING to happen eventually. I can guarantee that. All these people are doing is delaying the inevitable. And they're
wasting a lot of money on it.

Can you imagine how much more money they'd have for more not-stupid (you know, relatively) goals if they just quit with their anti-gay crap? I mean, I realize that it's "against their principles" and all, but you'd think there'd be at least one super right-wing guy saying "You know guys, I hate them too, but I don't think we're going to win this one." Then again, maybe that already happened, and all the sensible people went off to try and actually accomplish things.

That's the main problem, I guess. The liberals (and by "the liberals", I mean me) HAVE to keep wasting their time fighting for gay marriage, because the bigots on the other side won't just drop the damn issue. It's going to happen eventually, but it sucks that we have to spend so much time on it instead of working on stuff that ISN'T a fundamentally stupid thing to argue about. Should we give everyone equal rights? Yes. It's in the Constitution. Case closed.