Relationships... bile... and relationships... again...

I wrote this back in June, but given my current level of solidarity it seems most appropriate to publish it now.

There is no more noble or terrible thing than unrequited love.  

Initially, it gives one a sense of hope, an exhilaration of finding one's self, that feeling that you could be with another person for the rest of your life and never be happier.

Then, when it becomes obvious that the other party doesn't review one's relationship that way,  one begins to believe that over time the other person may notice and love the qualities that one possesses, and that this observation might one day develop into attraction.

But given enough time, unrequited love will drive people to near insanity.  It erodes their self-esteem, puts them in a near-unshakable state of denial, which finally culminates in some sort of emotional disconnect or even physical violence.

I've seen it happen time and time again, whether it be religious zealotry, sports fanaticism, company loyalty, or even (gasp) the love between two people.   I've experienced it a few times in my life - I make no excuses, though, most of the anxiety and angst I've felt in pursuit of love stems from my fear of rejection and introverted shyness.  Yes, I am shy - I have reason to be:

-I'm at least sixty pounds overweight.

-I'm nearly entirely bald

-I'm nearsighted

-I'm ugly (it is scientifically proven that people with symmetrical faces are more attractive, and mine kind of curves to one side thanks to a childhood injury)

-I'm short (only 5'6")

Now, despite these physical setbacks, which are time-proven things that I cannot overcome (I did lose the weight once at the cost of being tired, sore, and hungry for about six months and I just couldn't continue on like that), I could make up for it with wealth and personality, except:

-I'm poor (I've averaged only $8000 a year since I was sixteen - that's 19 years!) with no foreseeable hope of improving my fiduciary standing 

-I'm stupid, despite what the I.Q. tests say

-I'm short-tempered and impatient

-My upbringing has made me base and crude

Even discounting that there are women out there desperate enough to date someone with these faults, my faults continue when you consider there are women that I won't date, which unsurprisingly are exactly the kind of women you would expect to have low standards:

-Chain smokers (via my dad, I lived with smoke my entire childhood, and I'll not be subjected to it again!)

-The severely overweight (I need someone who won't be too tired to go for walks or bike rides)

-Vegans (vegetarians are kind of a gray area, but vegans irritate me to no end)

-Red heads (I don't want to offend, but my mom, several aunts, and a sister are red-heads, and it's very hard for me to deal with this from a familiarity point of view.  I am averse to severe freckles as well.  This is just my taste)

-Asians  (don't get me wrong, this isn't a racial thing - there are women of Asian descent that I find very attractive, but I have no attraction to (any) race, just individuals.  I use Asians as an example because they are often the object of weird fetishes that give me the willies)

-Single mothers (I just don't think that I'm ready to be a father; or at least, I need the time to prepare myself mentally)

It's also fairly well-known that I am an atheist, though I'm not militant about it.  I understand that most people want to be part of a group and accepted, but I cannot condone the insane mythology that almost every religion promotes.  I studied mythology extensively in my younger years.  I desperately wanted "magical miracles" to be real... but they're not.  Get over it and try to make the world a better place yourself instead of waiting for the flying spaghetti monster to make it better for you.  I believe that Jehovah is a myth and that Jesus is an invention by the first Christians, and I have to believe it.  The only other explanation is that Jehovah is either ignorant of our existence or is a vindictive attention-starved child, and neither of those thoughts bring me peace at night.  Ignoring the metaphysical, religion is just an outmoded control system designed to steal time, resources, and inspiration from people capable of creating miracles on their own so that the congregation can take all the credit.  I admire what they profess that they try to do, but I have no love for how they do it.  Yeah, I try to avoid Christians too.

Thus, I have systematically eliminated every woman of every creed.  There are ones who won't have me, and the rest I don't want.

So, I'll be alone, here, slowly cutting my ties to human relationships one by one until there's nothing left except a miserable shell of a person waiting for the inevitable end.  Is this what I want?  Yes.  No.  I don't know what I want.  I have never known what I want, because everything in the world is just out of my reach, and irrational thoughts and phobias keep me from that.

Anyway, if you stayed around for the whole thing, thanks for reading!

Eh.

The Secret

Over the weekend, I developed a method of watching movies at home that makes nearly any current Hollywood stink-bomb a veritable pleasure to watch.  Now, I could just write a self-help book and start a seminar to show people how to get enjoyment out of ANY movie from the last twenty years, but I feel it is my duty to humanity to promote this message without financial gain.  Nobel committee judges, please take note!

Here is all you have to do, and bear in mind that after doing this, you WILL LOVE Star Wars Episode 1: The Phantom Menace, Jurassic Park II: the Lost World,  and their subsequent sequels:

Step 1: Watch Hudson Hawk, the 1991 "film" starring Bruce Willis, Danny Aiello, and Andie MacDowell.  Please note that it may take awhile for your body to build up a tolerance to it. 

Step 2:  Now, watch literally any other movie released in the last twenty years.  It doesn't matter what it is, it will seem immediately better.  If the movie starts to irritate you, put Hudson Hawk back in for a refresher.

Step 3:  If the movie seems slightly better but still doesn't seem watchable, put aside about half a day and watch Hudson Hawk repeatedly until you can't wait to watch any other movie!

Step 4: Repeat as necessary.

This method is effective one hundred percent of the time in lab tests, and there are virtually no side effects!*

*SIDE EFFECTS OF HUDSON HAWK MAY INCLUDE (BUT ARE NOT LIMITED TO): VOMITING, IRRITABILITY, CONFUSION, DEMENTIA, SEIZURES, PERMANENT BRAIN DAMAGE, SUICIDAL THOUGHTS, PARANOIA, AND CANCER OF THE COLON.  A COMPONENT OF HUDSON HAWK, ANDIE MACDOWELL, HAS BEEN SHOWN TO CAUSE BLEEDING IN THE EARS OF LAB RATS.  IF YOU EXPERIENCE ANY OF THESE SYMPTOMS, STOP WATCHING HUDSON HAWK IMMEDIATELY AND SEEK MEDICAL ATTENTION.

Bait and switch.

So, last week (when I was still employed) I was in The Exchange store on McKnight road when I saw that they had reduced the prices of all of their HD DVDs to around $5 each.  Being one of the few people in existence to actually own an HD DVD player, but not quite having the money to buy a huge variety of media for it, I decided to get just one to add to my admittedly small collection while the discs were still available.  The movie I decided on was Payback starring Mel Gibson.

For those not in the know, Payback is a 1999 crime drama/black comedy starring Gibson as the antihero who is only ever referred to as "Porter."  It's basically about the character's betrayal by those closest to him, and his survival and revenge as he seeks to get back the money that he views as rightfully his.  It's dark, but still manages to be funny and intense.  All around it was a pretty good movie, a complete package.  I was looking forward to sharing it with my friends, and it wasn't until I got it home until I noticed the words "Straight Up: the Director's Cut" on the box.

I thought, "What could they possibly change?  This probably adds additional footage, ala The Lord of the Rings, and that was awesome!"  Now, It had been years since I last saw the theatrical version, so I didn't really even notice any changes until about halfway through the movie, but upon reflection they had changed the beginning too.  There is no explanation as to how Porter survived being shot in the back in this version, and there is no voice-over to walk the audience through the setup.  It's pretty straightforward anyway, but the Mel Gibson narration in the original saved the characters from having to explain the obvious to each other during the film, which was curiously put back in; it just seems forced.  The Porter in this version of the film is a much less likable guy too, as director Brian Helgeland filmed a rather wincing scene of spousal abuse (though admittedly, Porter's wife had it coming) that was thankfully absent in the theatrical version.  I didn't mind its inclusion so much, I expected extra scenes.  What I didn't expect though was the completely different ending to the film.  Fans of the original might be surprised to discover that the original "Director's Cut" of the film didn't score well with audiences, but Helgeland, in trying to remain true to the inspiration for the movie (the book The Hunter by Donal Westlake) refused to make any changes, and then left the production (as shown in the "special features" of this disk), and John Myhre and Mel Gibson took over the film and made it watchable.

Now, I'm not some film elitist (I personally think that 2001: A Space Odyssey was the one of the dullest and at the same time most confusing films I've ever seen, and I encourage people not to watch it), but neither do I like when a movie is just the equivalent of Hollywood masturbating (Lethal Weapons 3 and 4 fall into that category, for you Gibson fans).  Payback was a romp in film noir in the style of 30s gangster action at a time when everyone else was trying to emulate Quentin Tarentino (don't get me wrong, I like Tarentino too, but only Tarentino is Tarentino).  The point here is that it was really kind of an homage, but kind of original in its own right.  The original director's version though, is the kind of snobbish artistic crime drama that equates to "If you don't like it, it's because you don't understand it" crap that's found in too many independent films nowadays, and has very little business being in a studio production.

It's not that the film's original ending is bad, mind you, it's just that the changes to the end will leave the viewer extremely unsatisfied in that "crime does not pay" sort of way.  You want Porter to succeed, but even the studio realized that he needed something worth fighting for.  In the original film the driving point was the principal of the situation: at one point in the movie he needed closure not just to the money that was owed to him by Val Resnick and the Outfit, but also to protect Rosie, the (cliche even by Hollywood standards) "prostitute with a heart of gold."  In this director's cut of the film, I found myself questioning why Rosie was even with Porter at the end.  The theatrical release's "boss" villain, Bronson, was played by Kris Kristofferson, but was originally supposed to be a faceless woman's voice on the phone.  You are never explicitly shown her, though porter is undone by a woman in the end, which most audiences will naturally assume to be Bronson.  The while omission of Kristofferson is obvious given the change in tone of the film, there is a criminal misuse of James Coburn - he's still in the movie, but his role is reduced to simply calling the Bronson character.

The theatrical version of Payback had a very satisfying ending, with the "bad" criminals of the film getting their comeuppance through their own machinations; Porter gets his money, gets the girl, and only gets maimed for his trouble.  The director's cut version is far less so; Porter's scheme ends in a far more realistic way, but the ending still manages to be ambiguous.  It leaves you feeling empty as the tone of the second act of the film regresses into an action-less, humorless, shell of a third act.  I'm sure that film students all over will praise it for it's thoughtful foreshadowing and metaphor, while the rest of us just scratch our heads and wonder how a movie studio that produces regularly produces films like Transformers Revenge of the Fallen and Hotel For Dogs can make a movie more enjoyable than the guy who wrote Man on Fire and directed A Knight's Tale (all right, so I like that movie, but I'm not alone!).

Payback Straight Up: The Director's Cut is simply the most disappointing director's cut I've ever seen, right after Blade Runner.  Please, please, if you have fond memories of the original, skip this watered down and ill-conceived version.

Just a test.

I'm blogging from my phone! In a bathroom no less! But not on company time!

Seriously though - I'm just testing it to see if it works.

Later, y'all!

An inconvenient truth

Let us petition the United States Government to rename Columbus Day as National Inconvenience Day. The reasons for doing so are numerous:

1.) It is a well-known scientific and historical fact that Christopher Columbus did NOT discover the American continent. The Vikings discovered it and attempted to colonize it almost 400 years earlier. Columbus himself died thinking that he had found India, and he never even set foot on the mainland. From the evidence we have, it seems Columbus was lucky his ships didn't sink and his entire crew drowned the moment they left the dock. The man was an idiot; brave, but stupid.

2.) Who gets Columbus Day off? Postal workers and bank employees (i.e., no one that you or I know). Like every other stupid fly-by-night holiday, the only ones who benefit from time off are the ones who handle your money and deliver your post. The only thing this accomplishes is that I can't mail letters or get coins to do laundry. Granted, this is becoming less of a problem in the electronic age, but it still annoys the piss out of me.

3.) Who benefits from Columbus Day? The only people I can think of are people who are thinking about buying furniture and people who are re-flooring their kitchen. I haven't even seen ads this year for a J.C. Penny Columbus Day sale, which makes me think that they've given up (I mean, who has time to shop there when we're all at work?).

So to sum up, we're celebrating the non-discovery of a continent via Caribbean islands by a jackass who didn't even know where he was, and we do this by closing our financial and money-handling businesses while we still shuffle ourselves to work thereby handicapping our ability to get things done and making it harder to get money to buy the furniture that we don't need that's on sale.

What was the point of this holiday again?  If you're going to declare a holiday just for the sake of having one, at least give everyone else the day off (firemen and policemen not withstanding) instead of giving it to a few services that the rest of us rely upon to get through our day (if everyone had it off, there'd be no need for those services anyway).  All it does otherwise is to seed unrest, like the mockery Labor Day has become (you know what I'm talking about: how managers and executives get Labor Day off but the peons that it was created to celebrate still have to work so that these high-paid a-holes can still go shopping and eating out on their day off).

Sack up, America!

Darwin's Darkest Hour

I just watched this "very special movie presentation" on PBS which was produced by Nova and National Geographic and called Darwin's Darkest Hour.  It dealt with Charles Darwin and his struggle to get his ideas published as original while being austricised by the still very church-centric public.  Darwin never claimed that there was no God, he just believed Christianity to be the wrong path, and this gave the media at the time enough fodder to demonize him.

Despite the drama involved, I only came away with one thought...

This is Charles Darwin when the film takes place:

This is the actor they hired to play Darwin, Henry Ian Cusick :

 

Notice a difference?

Being a bald, ugly (though admittedly not as smart) man like Charles Darwin, I take exception to this representation.  You can't tell me they couldn't have hired a bald actor or (heaven forbid) shaved Cusick's head for some semblance of historical accuracy.

I know that bald isn't sexy, but WE'RE TALKING ABOUT CHARLES FREAKIN' DARWIN HERE!  Sexy shouldn't factor into it!