The Zombieslayer

I don’t own a t.v. I gave ours away to a fellow blogger about a year ago.

I’m not missing much. None of the Desperate Housewives look pretty to me and I missed Britney’s big comeback. Big deal.

The only thing I watch anyways are the Packers games. It’s nice watching them at a sports bar so I don’t have to hear the sound. I’m tired of hearing about erectile dysfunction, the most recent gas guzzling model that’s causing American car makers to fall further behind the Japanese, and the new wonder drug that allows you to run through the fields and pick flowers but might give you liver disease and anal leakage.

The commercial I really hate is that dumb cholesterol commercial that has the slowly spinning people. That annoys me to no end. Or toenail fungus. If I were running the show, all drug ads, especially toenail fungus, would be off the air. Politicians keep screaming “say no to drugs,” yet how much of America is on some drug that they don’t really need?

One of my co-workers has a serious shopping problem. She gets depressed, then she goes out and spends several hundred dollars on clothes. Then the next day, she gets more depressed because she realizes that’s money she should be using on her retirement. You know why? It’s because television ads do their job. They brainwash the masses into thinking you NEED something that you really don’t.

The news is no better than regular t.v. In fact, it’s worse. You can read a 60-minute news broadcast in five minutes without all the commercials. The news is horribly slanted too. One thing Michael Moore understands is that it really is a safe country we live in, it’s just the sensationalist news has us convinced that it’s dangerous. This sensationalist media is keeping neighbors from trusting other neighbors and further bringing us apart, when we should be together.

I remember when I was younger, we never locked the doors. We had neighbors over all the time, and we were at their houses all the time. Now everyone’s scared of their neighbors. Have neighbors all turned evil within the last thirty years? No, but if you watch too much news, you might think so.

So I’m not missing anything. If I really want to watch a movie, I’ll bring it over to someone’s house with some popcorn. The Packers play at the sports bar. And other than that, well, I’ll pass.

This was something I was going to send the other Pretentious Critics, but decided to post it here instead.  I’ll let someone else do the review of Beowulf (2007). 

Well, I completely lost any desire to see the movie Beowulf now.  Looked cool, until I read that Peter Travers of Rolling Stone loved that movie.

First off, you know how much I hate Rolling Stone magazine.  America puts out a lot of crappy magazines, but that one takes the cake.  I’d rather read Socialist Worker than that crap.  That’s how I feel about the journalistic quality of an average Rolling Stone article.

Of all the tripe they put out, Peter Travers takes the cake.  The guy has never seen a movie he didn’t like.  Anytime there’s an explosion, Peter Travers goes all googlie-eyed and ga-gahs like a three-year-old who just spotted Barney at the supermarket.

He’s known as the “most quoted critic.”  Well, no shit.  Hollywood loves Peter Travers because the guy’s the biggest kiss ass who ever lived.  Any big budget director out there could film himself taking a dump and Peter Travers would exclaim “Genius! This director has done things no other has directed before! With explosive action, hard-hitting dialog, and drama that would leave you on the edge of your seats! Do not miss!”

So if any other pretentious critic wants to take this one, feel free.  Even knowing Angelina Jolie struts around sans clothing is not enough incentive to get me to see this movie.  If Peter Travers likes it, it’s probably tripe, except with big explosions.

“Jonas” is a very intelligent man. He’s well-read, cultured, is a top-notch teacher, and has a wonderful sense of humor. Unfortunately, he has an irrational fear of firearms, a common side effect of being white, suburban, and middle class.

Jonas’ irrational fear of firearms has led more than once to arguments between he and I, and because of his irrationality, most of the stupidity has come from his side of the argument.

One such offense is one day, he spat out how could I love guns so much considering how pro-Native American I am. I quickly corrected him and exposed the absurdity of that statement.

Jonas and I are both historians. Jonas should know better. It wasn’t guns that lost the Americans to the white settlers. It was numbers, and more importantly, disease.

We will never know the numbers of Native Americans killed by European diseases, mainly smallpox. Smallpox raced ahead of white settlers. Keep in mind, Native peoples traded heavily among other tribes and peoples, carrying the diseases further. All we have now are estimates, and many estimates are saying that in some of the hardest hit areas, over 90% of the populations were killed by smallpox before white settlers even built permanent settlements. Some estimates even put the smallpox epidemic in the New World as bigger than the Black Death of the 14th Century, which killed 2/3rds of Europe.

Back to firearms, by the time of the mid-1700s, Native Americans had firearms, because the English, the French, and the Dutch were all fighting each other at various times and disposing muskets and ammo to their respective Native allies. If you read history, battle by battle, the whites didn’t always win, and often lost. Sometimes, the whites got absolutely slaughtered.

The Natives were bad ass warriors, and could cover ground much better than the whites. They lost because of numbers. By 1790, there were already four million Americans. That number grew steadily, and with a fast population growth, Americans continued moving West, displacing Native peoples.

That statement about firearms and Native Americans is an insult to these brave warriors, who to this day, military historians still study their tactics. I also do some Apache workout tricks, like sprint up hills with water in my mouth. Do that once a week and you’ll have stronger lungs than a swimmer.

In the 20th century and beyond, Native Americans have served this country wonderfully in our armed forces. I can’t say enough good about how brave these men and women are, and Jonas’ crap was a low blow.

If you’re curious and you want to read more about bad ass Native Americans, pick up histories of Geronimo, Tecumseh, Captain Jack (if I’m not mistaken, the only time an American General was killed in battle), Sitting Bull, or Blue Jacket. There are plenty of others, those are just some names I thought of off the top of my head.

Fellow pretentious critic Badman and I have a saying that you’ll either love or loathe a good movie. If you just say “eh, it was okay,” it’s not a good movie.

I saw this one in the theatre and the kids next to us cheered during parts, and a pair of hypersensitive yuppie “men” in back of us got all butt hurt and offended by it. That’s a good sign for Frank Darabont.

Stephen King is a storyteller. Darabont does his best to mimic King’s storytelling ability, focusing mainly on his head character, artist David Drayton. Following a nasty storm, Drayton takes his son and his asshole lawyer neighbor into town, leaving behind his wife.

They soon get stranded in a supermarket, learning that those who venture into the mist die horrible deaths. One by one, the survivors get plucked off by the things in the mist, and sometimes they die at faster rates when someone has the bright idea they can make it out there as a group.

Darabont’s characters are one dimensional and predictable. I was able to guess their time of deaths and even method of death more times than not. However, like I said, King is a storyteller and despite the lack of character depth, the story keeps the viewer wondering if Drayton and his son will survive.

Throw in a schizophrenic wannabe Biblical prophet, military experiments gone wrong, a state shooting champion, and a neat assortment of oversized bugs, the Mist is a fun movie. The ending has a nice twist that I won’t give away, but the moral of the story is clear. The twist alone makes the movie worth watching. 7 dead zombies for a fun to watch horror/thriller.

In Saudi Arabia last Tuesday, a 19-year-old victim of a gang rape was sentenced to six months in jail and 200 lashes, only because she was with an unrelated male when she was gang raped.

Imagine that. Here’s a young woman who had just been gang raped and she gets jail time and 200 lashes. Her crime? Being in a car with a man who wasn’t her relative.

The full story was, she was in a car with a man who was not her relative, got carjacked by two other men, then they took her to a secluded area and seven men total raped her. Her friend was also raped by these thugs.

The international outcry so far has been strong. Yes, Saudi Arabia has officially not left the Middle Ages, while the rest of the world has somewhat advanced. The day after Thanksgiving, I’ll have to add one more thing on the list to be thankful for - that I don’t live in Saudi Arabia.

Full story on BBC here.