03 Oct 08 All the Reasons why (new) Metallica Sucks
I bought a car recently. I traded in my ’05 Kia Sorrento with $550 monthly payments and 17MPG for a much cheaper ’08 Hyundai Accent with $400 monthly payments (after financing what was left in payments on my Kia) and 34ishMPG to save money. Yes, the average American’s financial belts are tightening… but that is a different post.
My car came with three months free XM Satellite Radio service. I have never used their service so I spent the first few days of car ownership messing around with the XM-Radio more than the car itself. I came across a channel dedicated to Metallica and it plays nothing but their music. At first I was giddy, but then I realized that a station that plays nothing but Metallica music is going to play a *wide variety* of their songs, and I hate anything new they have done. Let me explain…
I was 14 years old in 1988 when Metallica released “…And Justice for All”. Before that time I still had not “decided” the kind of music I really liked. But after listening to this band called Metallica, and hearing what they could do with some distortion and excellent drumming, I found my genre. So, being the metal-head I was I had to get everything Metallica: Kill ‘em All, Ride the Lightning, Master of Puppets, Garage Days. That mixed with my learning the guitar and discovering other legendary bands like Led Zepplin, Pink Floyd, and some marginally decent bands like Megadeth, AC/DC, etc. really made me appreciate the skill that those 4 members of Metallica really had.
Then came the beggining of the end … 1991′s release of “The Black Album”. Up until that time there was really only 1 Metallica song I didn’t really like: “The Thing That Should Not Be” (mostly because it was entirely too repetitive). But with the release of “The Black Album” I had several songs to choose from. I really tried hard to like them all, but I just found some of them hokey or just stupid lyrically if not musically. There was still plenty to like, but it was about 50/50 with this new album. That is about my normal “likeability rating” for other albums, not Metallica. What were these guys thinking? And then I started hearing every preppy in high school and the neighboring college blaring the latetest Metallica songs out of their BMWs and it hit me: My band had sold out. This wasn’t a mistake by them, this was a shift to get them mainstream.
As heartbroken as I was, I was still willing to give them another chance. And did they know ever how to disappoint. Load came out in ’96 and I have to say it was aptly named: it was a load, a load of $%&^!. Metallica reached new lows even in the cover art:
The cover of Load was created by Andres Serrano, and was called Blood and Semen III. Serrano pressed a mixture of his own semen and bovine blood between sheets of plexiglass. [source]
Metallica's "Load" Album
In aquiring XM-Satelite Radio service I decided to give Metallica another shot. Perhaps I had been too judgmental, perhaps I just didn’t get where the band was going at the time, perhaps I had needed 10 years to clear my head and give them another shot. Perhaps I was right the first time…
Metallica has decided to replicate all the things that were detrimental in the Black Album. There it seems that James Hetfield thought he was an honest to goodness singer instead of a heavy metal “singer”. His constant attempts to carry a melody are precisely why his vocals don’t work anymore. His bizarre lyrics haven’t improved since his “Of Wolf And Man” days where yelling “Shape Shift” as a chorus was apparently acceptable. Kirk Hammet still hides behind the Wah Pedal he found during the Black Album and he hasn’t let go of that security blanket. I can hear the bassist now, which is good, but despite Cliff Burton’s writing strengths Metallica never really had strong bass riffs in their music. Lars’ drumming might be the only thing left that is worth anything, but really, who wants to listen to a drummer when you have to put up with all of the other crap Metallica does in their songs?
XM, you can blame Metallica for not being able to snag just one more member. I just might have been willing to shell out the monthly cash if Metallica were still a real heavy metal band. As it is, I guess its back to the iPod for me after my trial subscription runs out.
27 Jul 06 9 year old argues with his mother on a Xbox Live Clan Match over Chocolate Milk.
09 Mar 06 Pesky Left
Most who know me know my political and social beliefs, but for the sake of those who don’t, and this posting, I will keep my views of the example subject matter to myself.
Tolerance: There is a word (or rather some of its derivatives) that I have heard spoken (and in my opinion misused) quite often; generally in the social arena, and generally by those of the left leaning political spectrum. I don’t mean to bash the left or its goals or ideals, I just have an issue with hypocritical statements and ways of thinking.
Just so I don’t offend any particular group (like I really care if I offend you) let me first state that every group, organization, community, sect, cult, government, etc. etc. etc. is guilty of some kind of hypocritical jargon. Since at the core of those and every organization are human beings, and I think we can all agree that in the grand scheme of things, humans have a hard time seeing other points of view, the “big picture”, and admitting that they could be wrong on certain topics. So we see hypocrites in Church, Hypocrites in government, hypocrites in the news, hypocrites at our grocery store or at work.
But the core of my “rant” is this: It seems like a rather large “chink” in the left’s political armor to label others as intolerant or judgmental. Why? For the very reasons I detailed above. The left is not immune from judgmental thoughts and processes. They just pretend like they are. And that is a hypocritical stance. For example, a common lament for those who don’t go to church is that they have tried it, and hated that the church was filled with judgmental intolerant people. Hello!! Of course it is, the church has humans in it doesn’t it? What did you expect, heaven on earth? I don’t see that excuse stopping you from going to bars, work, grocery stores, social gatherings, etc. All those places too are filled with intolerant judgmental people. Secondly, how judgmental is it of you to then label the vast majority of church goers in one fell swoop? How “intolerant” does that make you?
And that to me is the weakness with the left’s pursuit of social justice. The left has to judge those it deems judgmental, thereby becoming what they would rid the world of.
In addition to that chink in their armor, I find their “hijacking” of the word intolerant to be amusing. It amuses me to the point of frustrated hilarity because they are using it in situations where the definition would not apply. In short, they don’t know what they are talking about. Again, (I suppose) an example is in order… Gays and “gay rights” is a major tenant of the left’s social justice ideals. And those that do not agree with their philosophies are labeled “intolerant” and ignorant. But the left doesn’t seem to know what the definition of tolerance is, and is therefore hard pressed to use its antonym accurately. “Tolerate: To put up with something or somebody unpleasant.” You cannot “tolerate” that which does not bother you. You do not “tolerate” the fact that you have a good paying job. You don’t “tolerate” having a million dollars in the bank. You don’t “tolerate” a fun evening out with your friends or your spouse. You have to not agree with it or be bothered by it to “tolerate” it. Therefore when the left calls a pastor who is speaking out about a gay lifestyle “intolerant”, they have to assume that because he does not agree with the gay lifestyle and its ramifications, that he himself discriminates against gays at every opportunity. By making that assumption the left has just pre-judged the pastor and become judgmental and intolerant of those speaking their minds.
Conversely, the left is not a tolerant political or social harbor. It is filled with humans just like the right side is. They do not “tolerate” the gay lifestyle, thereby getting to claim that they are tolerant. The gay life style does not bother them, therefore it is impossible for them (by definition of the word) to be tolerant of gays.
At the root of all of this is the problem with politically correct behavior or the attempt to enforce it. In order to setup “rules” of correct behavior or thought, you have to define bad behavior and thought; in doing so you take on the role of a judge, and must become judgmental in order to enforce those social moorings that you are attempting to create. Now I believe that humans (under certain circumstances) should be judgmental. We should prejudge at certain times. But that is not the claim of the left. They claim that we should never prejudge or become judgmental. In doing so they became hypocrites (just like everybody else).
-Z
06 Mar 06 Your Mac Sucks
Your Mac sucks just as badly as my windows PC. The only 2 differences are that:
- I know it and you don’t
- I have more compatible software at my disposal because Apple has no market share.
-Z
09 Aug 05 Learn how to drive
Highway driving is different from city driving. Just because you are good at one doesn’t mean you are good at the other. Highway driving is more about courtesy and standards; city driving is more about making sure someone doesn’t do something stupid that will cause an accident near you. I fancy myself a pretty good highway driver, so I expect the same level of courtesy that I show others when I am driving at 70+ MPH. That said; let’s get some of the rules-of-the-road down.
- Even if you are going a million miles an hour, if you are not passing anyone (and you are not in a five lane highway in the city where lots of people are using the onramp) you get your muffler into the right lane after you are done passing.
- If you are in the left lane passing someone in the right lane, but you are only going about a mile or two an hour faster, and you notice that there is a slower vehicle up ahead step on the gas so as not to box in the person on the right.
- Use cruise control at every opportunity, slowing down and speeding up only when the immediate situation demands it.
So here is what started all of this. I have a buddy from Tucson that is visiting his relatives in Missouri. Well the city he is in is a 4 hour drive away, and it has been 7-8 months since I have seen him, so I decide I am going to leave from work on Friday and start driving there so I can hang for a while. My first hour on the highway was one of the most frustrating times I have had driving. I do a fair bit of highway driving. I hate to fly, have roots in central Illinois and Tucson Arizona, and so I have done the trip back and forth a few times. I have a routine to highway driving and I think I know how to do it well. Turns out that young girls, talking on cell phones, and driving Ford F-150s don’t really know how to drive on the highway that well. Now when it comes down to it, her real issue is that she didn’t use cruise control. If she had, all of my frustrations probably would have been abated, but she didn’t. Instead she decided that she would speed up past me, and then make me pass her when my cruise control speed was faster then her foot pedal speed. Then she would speed back up again either while I was passing, or sometime later. If it was at a later time she would do it by passing only a few miles an hour faster then I was going, and only when there was a big semi in front of me so that I was boxed in and would have to break, get into the left lane, hit cruise control, and end up passing her again. This happened over and over and over during that first hour.
I don’t attribute her driving skills (or lack thereof) to being malicious. I don’t think she knew that she was pissing me off or intending to do it purposefully. I attribute her lame driving skills to the following attributes:
- She is a female (we know they can’t drive anyway)
- She is young (we know they can’t drive anyway)
- She was on a cell phone (duh! You’re already stupid from being young and a girl, must you compound the lack of IQ points with cell phone emissions?)
- She was driving a bigger vehicle then her little arms could control. (A man could of handled it though!)
Ahhh, thinking of all the people I just pissed of with the last paragraph brings a smile to my face.
-Z
19 Jul 05 Most men need to learn urinal etiquette
Women might not get this post, but I think every man has experienced the following urinally etiquette challenged guy (and may even be that guy!).
- Whips it out, arches his back, and goes “AAaahhhh!”.
- Excuse me?! Are you having sex right next to me in a public bathroom?! That is gross! I don’t need to hear you moan, yell, ooohh, or ahhh. This is not like you are a lost guy in a desert drinking his first glass of ice cold water. If that last sentence applies to you, then by all means, moan and groan about how damn good that water is, just don’t do it standing next to me in the bathroom.
- Spits in the urinal and then whips it out and pees.
- Are you dog marking his spot with that saliva? Is there some biological need I am not aware of that activates your bladder only after expectorating? Really man, that is just bizarre. Do it in a spittoon, outside, or after drinking curdled milk.
- Flushes constantly while urinating.
- Again with the “my bladder won’t work unless I perform some ritual first” thing. This reminds me of the needless circling a dog does when trying to lay down. Are we really that base of an organism that we need to resort to some mindless (and useless) ritual in order to go to the bathroom? Just pee already!
- Farts, passes gas, and just plain smells.
- Look fella, I know we are in a bathroom, and that if you have to fart somewhere the bathroom would be the place to do it, but do you have to do it right next to me? Its not like I want to smell what you have been eating any more then those not in the bathroom do.
C’mon guys, let me piss in peace!
-Z
18 Jul 05 Six Flags and how I hate to leave my comfortable little bubble
My wife, Son, and I went to Six Flags (in St. Louis) this Saturday. Now the tale I am about to regale you with is going to display some problems that probably could have been avoided if we would have thought about them. Let me answer that accusation from my dear reader (NEUs) by stating a few things: Hindsight is 20/20, Part of the reason I don’t leave my “bubble of comfort” is so that I don’t have to waste the vast amount of IQ points I posses on things that are obvious to everyone else, one annoying thing I can put up with, multiple annoying things are just annoying, and I don’t like you. I don’t know what that last one has to do with anything, but it sounds good and I plan on using it someday in an argument with someone. Now onto my tale …
We leave at nine’ish in the morning and get to Six Flags at about twelve thirty. Here starts the painful twisting of the nipple by the Six Flags establishment for every dime you might own. It costs ten bucks to park here. Can we enumerate any other businesses that actually charge you to spend money in their establishment? I can’t think of any off the top of my head, but I would love to daydream about it. Let’s see what that would look like if a movie theater charged for parking. You want to go to the move, and not only is the popcorn six dollars, the ticket eight dollars, but they get you for parking there to begin with, that will be a total of twenty-four dollars for one person to see a movie with some popcorn. (You know all that salt will make you thirsty, but we will pretend that you have some will-power and will opt for the water fountain. Speaking of which, do you think that water fountain water is purposefully made to taste like crap so that you will buy a drink instead?) What about a bank? Banks suck anyway. They charge you to take out your own money from some other bank’s ATM or they charge you thirty dollars for a bounced check. Like it really costs them thirty dollars to process a bad check. What a bunch of bloodsuckers! Anyway, I digress. You want to go to the bank and open a checking account with five hundred dollars in it. That will be ten dollars to park, twenty five dollars for your first set of checks, thirty dollars for the first check you bounce with your new account, and a two dollar fee to withdraw YOUR OWN MONEY from someone else’s ATM on top of the fee that first bank charged you! Congratulations, your new five hundred dollar account now has four hundred and thirty.
So we pay the fee to Anthony the “family man” parking lot attendant and his knee-cap breaking assistant Guido. We drive trough a confusing mess of makeshift signs, orange cones, and traffic so that we can park a hundred miles away from the gate. As we are walking up I notice a sign that says “No Firearms allowed”. I hail from Arizona where anyone can carry an unconcealed firearm with them wherever they go. There are some notable exceptions to that, and one of them is any place that posts a “no weapons” or “no firearms” sign. So in my head I am thinking, “that is weird, does Missouri allow firearms to be carried publicly?” I would not expect that from a state so close to Illinois, the fascist “we only believe in the free speech part of the 1st amendment state”. Then sure enough, my thoughts are confirmed by a second sign that mentions something about the conceal-carry law allowing businesses to ban the carrying of firearms onto their property. Now I am thinking “Sweet! I like Missouri. Too bad I live in a fascist Chicago-ruled state”. The next sign I see as we are walking closer to the front gate is “metal detectors in use”. Now I am thinking “What the hell? That is kinda weird. We are going to an amusement park not an airport. Are they really that paranoid about terrorists hijacking the Farris wheel and using it to crash into something?” So we get to the line that will start all lines, we wait to get scanned by metal detectors. Now I hate these things. I get paranoid walking through those weird detectors at retail stores. I am always afraid that I am going to set them off, and in the case of metal detectors, I always seem to be their target. So as I am pulling all the metal crap out of my pockets, I realize that I have my pocket knife with me. Now I am thinking “It will be a bloody miracle if they let me in now”. (And as a side-note, yes, I did think that with my best English accent since I used the word “bloody” as a curse.) Sure enough, I get the “Sir, I can’t let you take this in. You either have to return it to your car, or I can keep it and throw it away.” (Like he would throw it away. He probably keeps all this stuff and sells it on eBay.) Well crap! I am not about to give up my pocket knife, so I walk back the 100 miles to the car so I can put it away. All the while there I am thinking “I am glad I live in that fascist state called Illinois. They are not this damn paranoid (unless it comes to guns, freedom of religion, light taxes, or good roads. But there I go digressing…)”. Really, what I am going to do, Hijack the Batman roller coaster and kill everyone on board while we are doing loop-to-loops because my demand that it take me to Los Angeles is not being met?
We make it into the park, finally!! Now here comes the fun part (or so I am told). I don’t really like rides, rollercoasters, crowds, people, crappy food, or loud noises. (Yes, I was born a cranky old man. Now leave me alone!) I am really here for the family, and I have resigned myself to not have too much fun since Six Flags has an abundance of all the things I hate. But as the day progresses I realize that Anthony the “family man” and his assistant Guido have other nipple-twisting-until-you-have-no-money-left associates here in the park. $3.00 for a bottle of water on a hot day. $5.00 for a pretzel with too much salt and too little cheese. I spent $13.50 for a soda, and Icee, and a single slice of pizza. And to top that off, it says plainly on the soda dispenser that refills are NOT free. Holy crap! Forget the mob, those guys are crooks but they will give you a break from time to time, if for no other reason so that you can forget you’re being bent over for a while. These guys put the mob to shame! So at 8PM we have had it, and decide to go eat dinner and get a hotel room.
Dinner was good. We ate at Denny’s and it was a well served meal, with friendly staff and good atmosphere. Ok, that last sentence just proves that I am an old man in a young guy’s body. Can’t wait to see the partying I do on my 50th birthday. I might have to go to the library and pickup chicks. Now onto the fun of finding a room.
There must have been a convention and a game and a visiting rock star, because we could not find a room ANYWHERE near Six Flags. In fact if you know where Six Flags is in relation to St. Louis you will realize that it is like 15-20 miles out of the city. We stopped at every hotel we could find from Six Flags to the northern part of St. Louis. Let me say that again. EVEN THE HOTELS 40 MILES AWAY IN THE NORTHERN PART OF THE CITY HAD NO VACANIES. So now I am pissed. I have been standing in the hot sun all day long, I have spent tons of money for crappy food and a crappy parking space, and the one thing that I wanted to spend lots of money on is unavailable! Arrgggg! (That is my pirate growl for those of you who know me as the pirate!) So I make the command decision to go all the way back to Springfield Illinois to find a room. But of course you know that once I made it to Springfield I had calmed down some, and I just couldn’t justify a hotel when my house was an hour away in Peoria. So I drove all the way back.
Give me back my bubble, I like it in there!
P.S. every time I typed out the words “Six Flags” for this post my hands would actually type “sex fags” and I would have to go back and change it. What is that about? Was that more information then you needed? Here is my challenge to you. Let’s see you type “Six Flags” over and over and see if at least one of those words gets typed like I was doing it.
-Z
06 Jul 05 All the reasons why “War of the Worlds” sucks
The premise that these Martians have been planning this attack for eons is flawed. (We are lead to assume these are Martians, although this is never explicitly declared.) There are several problems with setting this up to be a long standing / long planned attack against Earth / the inhabitants of Earth. There is a line spoken that “they have been planning this for a million years”. Now this character is made out to be crazy, so I took that line as a figure of speech. But it is obvious that the Martians have been planning this for thousands of years. (For sake of argument let us assume 1-10 thousand years, actual time within that range being next to irrelevant.) This time (or even more) is required because the Martians planted their vehicles here under the earth. In order for us to have not noticed that, we would have had to have few people on earth to notice, with little technological advancement, OR they would have had to have planted these vehicles here before man walked the planet.
So let’s enumerate all the issues of a long standing feud / war with earth:
- If man hasn’t shown up on the planet yet, why not just take the earth then?
- If the reason is because they really wanted humans for a food supply (there is reason to believe that later in the movie), then how could they have known that a species like man would have evolved on such a planet, unless they seeded the planet with humans as well?
- If they did seed the planet with humans, why hide from us? Why not just setup a colony that is responsible for harvesting us? If that is how we were “raised”, and kept as “happy” prisoners (such as is done in “The Time Machine” between the “Morlocks” and “Upper-man”.) we would have known no life any different then what they would have setup for us to live.
- Since man isn’t here yet, how could they have known where all of his major metropolises would be? (so as to deposit their vehicles in the immediate area) Sure, you can assume coastal areas being more fully developed, but to positively identify where New York, New York would be, thousands to “a million” years ago? I don’t think so.
- How do you bury your vehicles so as to never have been discovered? Even assuming non-technological mankind was roaming about, there are geologic and other such natural catastrophes. How could you positively identify for thousands of years, where erosion, floods, earthquakes, mudslides, landslides, sinkholes, etc. would be? If your answer is your bury them deep, you still face the risk (albeit less) of accidental discovery due to natural disasters, and the movie doesn’t really show these things as being miles below. I would argue 100 yards deep at best based on what it looks like when they come out of the ground.
- If man was on the planet, you still have the issues as indicated above, such as the future knowledge of metropolitan areas, and natural disasters.
- Alien defenses are entirely inadequate for a long planned invasion by an intelligent race
- If we were going to plan a war, and had a thousand years to do it, wouldn’t we come up with other defenses then just the shield against missiles, bullets, grenades and the like? Wouldn’t we worry about things like biological warfare? And if so, wouldn’t that take care of the “oh my gosh, germs killed the Martians for us” issue?
- These pods are shown to be swimming underwater. Am I wrong in assuming that if your vehicle is water tight, it is likely not going to let germs and viruses in as well?
- These aliens are actually shown leaving their vehicles to explore a basement and drink water that has pooled there. Doesn’t that seem a bit permissive of the Martian commanders? I mean, they haven’t wiped us out yet, they have planned this for a thousand years, but go ahead, take a break, relax, ‘cause we (as Martians) have nothing better to do? I don’t think so.
- What are the Martians doing here? Are they here for the planet or are they here for us? Let’s make up our mind shall we?
- The Martians are shown vaporizing humans left and right and leveling city blocks at the start of the invasion. Later, they are show collecting us, putting us into baskets, and then eating us (maybe). So which is it? If it is the latter then why kill us in large numbers to begin with? If it is the former why collect us later on in the battle?
- Tom Cruse’s stolen mini-van must have had an invisible plow in front of it.
- It is amazing how many places you can go in a mini-van. Because of these Electro-Magnetic Pulses (EMP) (that the Martians used) anything that used electricity (within the vicinity of course) stopped working. This includes thousands of cars on the highway. Yet everywhere he drives, everyone else was nice enough to push their vehicles to the side of the road. Heck, even when a plane crashes 100 feet away from where his car is parked, there is a nice little path for the mini-van to fit through. How do I get the invisible plow package installed on my car?
- Let’s talk about that EMP shall we? I have never studied the effects of an EMP. All of my knowledge about the subject could be considered 3rd hand, in that I either got it from a movie, or people talking about the effects of a nuclear blast. So, just to give my little disclosure, “I am not an expert, I just play one on TV” (or the Internet as it were).
- The Martians activate / teleport to their vehicles using “lighting bolts” that repeatedly hit the spot where the vehicles are buried. These bolts produce EMP waves that disable all electrical devices (and according to the movie actually overload and short out vehicles) in the area. I’m ok with that, except that they show someone using a handheld camcorder to record this Martian vehicle rising out of the ground. Hmmmm. That must be one of those “hardened” camcorders that are built to withstand a nuclear blast that I have been hearing about. I have to get me one of those so that I can document the end of the world when it happens. Later a film crew shows a tape to Tom Cruse of these same bolts hitting another spot. So again, how was it that the news camera worked when nothing electrical was able to work?
At this point, I am just tired of coming up with all the illogical problems with the movie. I understand it is “War of the Worlds” and that the Martians are going to have to die from infection from our germs and viruses. If this was painted as a “spur of the moment” blitzkrieg from the Martian home world, I could have forgiven their shoddy planning, but to paint this is a thousand year war, with a technologically advanced race, just doesn’t cut it.
There is more wrong with this movie then just the illogical constructs created by the writers. This movie gets unnecessarily dark in my opinion. In any movie you have to ask how this scene adds to the story development. There are several scenes that I think should have stayed on the cutting room floor. I won’t really get into them here as I have gotten bored with this rant, but I just didn’t really like this movie. I give it a 3 out of 10.
-Z
06 Jun 05 Down with the sickness
Memorial Day weekend was fun. I’m not really going to detail here out of laziness, but I had a good time. Then, on Tuesday, I show up to work, do my thing for the first half of the day and drive home for lunch. On the drive home a wave of nausea hits me, and I start thinking, wow, maybe I was hungrier then I thought! By the time I get home I realize it is something else, and there is no way I can eat anything….(but decide to drink a glass of milk). I am starting to wonder at this point if I should even go back to work, but I don’t want to appear like a cry-baby over a stomach ache, so I tell my wife that I am going back to work to tough it out.
I’m not back at work for one hour when I just can’t take it anymore. I am dizzy, and nauseas, and in pain. I have to go home, but I don’t think I can drive my self. I’m starting to think about calling my wife to pick me up when the wave of dizziness leaves me for a bit and I figure that I can drive my self. This has to be about the longest 10 minute drive back home I have ever had. I started getting ready to pull over at any moment so I could puke my guts out. I think this was the beginning of my prayers to God to just strike me dead right there right now.
I make it home! Whew! Just in time to grab and empty trash can from our bathroom (toilets are gross, I’d rather puke in the tub) and give it a few gallons of whatever the heck was in my stomach. Now I am exaggerating of course about 2 gallons worth of stomach contents, but I am telling you…I could have an entire conversation about how amazed I am at the carrying capacity of my stomach. I don’t know if it is typical or not, but I looked at how much was in the trash can and I can’t believe I don’t have a pot belly every time I have food or drink. Where does it all go!?
Ok, a small little blurb here. Remember when I said I have a glass of milk for lunch? That stuff came up tasting like nasty cheese. I don’t think I can eat pizza for a while now. ‘nuff said!
So the rest of Tuesday is spent in this cycle: increasing nausea, prayers to God for instant death, puking like crazy, amazement over stomach capacities, relief, hunger, and then nausea again. I had no food, and next to no water. I think I spent 3 days with nothing to eat. I wish I would have weighed myself, I would have like to have known just how much I lost.
Wednesday was better (no puking), but the nausea and headaches wouldn’t let me go back to work. I still couldn’t eat, but at least I was able to drink again.
Well now that I have ruined your lunch, I think I will go have some of my own. And yes, I will be looking at my plate going “I can’t believe all that fits in there? Where does it all go!?”
16 Feb 05 Movies Cont.
I was thinking about this earlier, and have decided that at least part of this blog can be about how Hollywood just really shoots themselves in the foot when it comes to sequels. Particularly my issues with Hollywood sequels. Lets take some of my favorite movies growing up: Aliens and Predator.
Aliens: ok, ok, ok, you got me. Aliens is really a sequel to Alien, but I was too young to see it in theaters. Aliens was the first sampling I had from that movie vein, so in my mind, it came first. (Hey, this is my mind, I’ll remember incorrect timelines whenever I want thank you very much!) However, that said, Alien was a great movie too. You know what, this actually goes with my rant so I will use it. Lets start with Alien instead. (Hey, this is my blog, so I’ll change my format whenever I want to. You just keep in mind you are a NEU and have no say in this!) So back to what I was saying…
Alien: End of movie – Sigourney Weaver (Ripley), Blows the hell out of her ship and takes off in an escape pod. (Where she later blows the hell out of the alien [out the airlock] that was taking a nap there.) Segue way to next movie Aliens where she is found after 50 or 60 something years of floating through space. Now I am ok with this kind of a bridge between movies. After all that was one hell of an explosion in the first movie, maybe it knocked the life raft off course? More likely though is that the life raft is meant to bare-bones save your ass and doesn’t have high-speed engines like the Nostromo did. (Did I spell that right?) In any case, we are all good. No issues with how the move Alien becomes the movie Aliens. Fin.
Aliens: End of movie – Sigourney Weaver (Ripley), Blows the hell out of Mamma Queen Alien by busting her out an airlock. (sounds familiar no?) and gets everyone ready for hyper sleep or whatever the heck it is. Segue way to next movie Alien3 where all of a sudden (2?) face hugger eggs appear and one breaks into a survivor’s sleeping chamber. Then there is some unexplained fire (maybe it was just lamely explained) that causes the onboard computer to “jettison” the survivors in an escape pod which crash lands on a penal colony. (whew, that was a mouthful) Ok, where do I start with this lame plot? First, where did the Alien eggs come from? obviously it had to be laid by the queen, but its not like she can just poop these things out is it? After all we saw in Aliens and AVP that she needs that tube / penis looking thing to lay eggs. So where did they come from? She can’t just “infect” places that she goes to with her brood. In short, couldn’t have happened. Which totally kills everything that happens after, Like Ripley getting impregnated, and the fire, and the crash, and etc. etc. etc. And did you notice that James Cameron was in no way associated with this movie? I find that a clue that it would suck. If he backs away from what he made great, you know its gonna blow. Back to the merits (or lack thereof) to the movie. Let’s just “say” that the Alien Queen can poop these things out at will. So what? Alien3 still sucks. Why? Because why kill off Hicks and Newt? I have my answers to it. If Hicks lived 2 things would happen. 1) They would have to pay another known actor some actual dollars. 2) It would lend credibility to Ripley that this alien thing exists, and they wanted everyone on the small forgotten penal colony to think she was crazy. Now this seems like a very bad reason to kill off a major and well liked character. Kill him if you have to, but not over something as stupid as that. Why Kill Newt? 1 reason, the actor had aged, and the character had not. A little difficult to overcome. Let’s continue with this lame little movie… Why all of a sudden does the alien look like a dog? And why do I see the black matting that they use when something really isn’t there? (Like in Star Wars: Episode VI – Return of the Jedi when Luke is fighting the Rancor) I’ll tell you why, ’cause Stan Winston the best special effects guy ever didn’t want anything to do with this stupid movie either. Oh wait, remember all the ads for the movie have Ripley being bald, and your just asking yourself “why?, what could have happened?” What was their reason? Wasn’t it a real bad infestation of head lice on the planet? HELLO! We can create cybernetic organisms so sophisticated that we can’t tell them apart from real people, but we can’t cure head lice? That was their reason? Talk about just stupid. I am done with this movie.
Alien3: End of movie – Sigourney Weaver (Ripley), blows the hell out of herself by throwing herself into the fiery depths of a molten metal processing plant. (or some such “this will look cool” facility that does something “productive” with melting metal) Actually, in an ironic moment it is actually the alien living inside Ripley that blows the hell out of her when it bursts out her chest as she is throwing herself to her own doom. Was that a really lame scene or what? Kinda anti-climactic. In any case, Ripley is dead, and we get to see another android of Bishop (“I prefer the term ‘artificial person’ myself.”) Why do I say it is another android and not the actual human maker of the Bishop series, as this android imposter suggests he is? Because of Aliens Vs. Predator. In that movie we get “Charles Bishop Weyland” as the (what?) great, great, great, great grandfather of the robotics industry as we know it in Alien and Aliens. Just to confuse the hell out of everybody even the movie makers don’t know who is who. So where was I? Aaahh Yes, now segue way to Aliens4 where several hundred years later, Ripley is alive and well. (And considering she is now like 400 years old, looking pretty damn good.) Wait, how is she alive and well? Didn’t she kill herself / get killed in the 3rd move? Ha! Well not to bog down the film makers with things like believability or movie history, she has been cloned from whatever blood was left at that scene in the 3rd movie all those years ago. (Was that site like a shrine or something that nothing happened to destroy any possible DNA samples hanging about? Don’t they ever clean that place!?) Now, why would anyone want to clone Ripley? Well, for biological warfare reasons of course! (this whole alien as a biological weapon thing goes back to the first movie, and I’m thinking the movie makers really should have paid someone for a fresh idea.) As it turns out (gee, I didn’t know this, but I hear it’s true) if you clone someone who happens to have a parasite living in them (in this case an alien), you also get the parasite too! Wow, what a bonus! Let’s see, I clone someone who just had an alien burst out of them, and the alien gets cloned too? I don’t think so. This is as stupid an idea as all those movies where the cloned being has all the memories of the original up to the point where the DNA sample was first taken. I am not a biologist, or anything near that in education, but this whole plot just sucks. Apparently Sigourney needed the money.
I am done with the lame AlienX movies, and will continue with the Predator and AVP movies later on.
Just to clarify – Alien (loved it), Aliens (loved it more), Alien3 (sucked), Aliens4 (sucked even more)
-Z
