On the Island

The world is full of great things.  Full of terrible things.  Mostly it seems to be full of things I know nothing about.  I like a lot of different things: movies, television, comics, art, books, trees, toys, video games, the outside in general, travel, music, good beer, somewhat good beer, and of course delicious food.  It would seem like I'm fairly diverse in the things I like, but it's becoming increasingly apparent that for every interest I have there are glaring blind spots.  Someone will tell me about a television show or album that they enjoy and I wonder how is it that something like that has escaped me?  Maybe it's become easier and easier in today's world to customize our lives to the things we like.  You go to a webpage and tell it your interests and it will start building you a feed of information.  The better ones will help you discover new things, but most of them really just let you reinforce the wall of our own tastes.

I'm not saying it's bad to like what you like.  It's more that it feels a bit overwhelming when there is so much content out there.  How is one expected to keep up?  Maybe we're not supposed to.  Maybe it's alright to miss out on that one thing that you'd probably love, but just don't have space for in your life.  How do you know when that's OK though?  How do you know if you're spending too much of your time on the old standby when there are so many other options out there?

Like music?  You could listen to new music every day for a year and not hear the same song repeated, if you didn't feel that compulsion to re-listen to old favorites.  Hey I like Zeppelin as much as the next person, but seriously it's been forty year.  Maybe it's OK to see how music has grown and changed since then.  You never know, you may find something you like that was made after 1973.  It's got me wondering how it happens.  At one point the world was full of new and wonderful things.  Everything felt fresh and exciting.  Then we find something we like and say to ourselves "This is it.  My search is over."  This also leads to that feeling that certain things are now sacred and anyone or anything that attempts to build upon that is seen as an affront to the original.  The problem with this is that most of the world is a remix.  Everything is an iteration and for the generation that creates it, it feels like the source.  My daughter is going to grow up in a world where Ninja Turtles and Transformers are these loud, garish, obnoxious movies of explosions and silliness, whereas I grew up with them being something completely different, while still being fairly annoying to my parents.  It took me awhile, but I've gotten to a point where it's OK for the next generation to have their versions of stuff.  It doesn't take away from my version.  The remakes are made for me.  They don't care about me or my old ass opinion, even though the property was originated when I was their target audience.

The whole thing has me wondering about the things I like.  Do I like them because they are still interesting to me?  Or do I like them because for as long as I can remember I have liked them?  It's OK to ask yourself why you're interesting in something.  It could be the previous version of yourself found it compelling, but the current version of you doesn't get the same thrill as you used to.  For me it's caused me to reconsider how I spend my time because it's becoming increasingly valuable to me.  Sometimes that means picking up something I put down years ago and seeing it with different eyes.  Sometimes that means putting something on a shelf because it doesn't provide the same value it had in the past.  Maybe by doing that I'll be able to open myself up to being able to see the new things out there that could blow my mind and make me ask myself how I've lived this long without knowing about them.

On Batman

Another one of those times when I'm thinking way too much about something totally trivial.  Maybe it's good to let my mind wander on silly things for a minute.

Batman is seventy five years old.  That means most living Americans have spent their whole lives with him as a character.  After all that time, he is still insanely popular, even though he's becoming more and more antiquated as a character.  Everyone knows the story about how his parents were murdered and from that day forward he vowed to fight against crime.  Depending on the story, his parents' murderer may or may not be found, leaving even the greatest detective a mystery that cannot be solved.  I actually kind of prefer the time when it's not part of some greater conspiracy and is instead a random act of senseless violence that shook the city to its core.  The murderer was some sad, desperate person who resorted to murder more out of fear than anything else.  Then they were gone into the night, not realizing the thing they unleashed.

Gotham is supposed to be a stand in for the city of New York, although it's apparently a darker version of it, whereas Metropolis is the shining beacon of hope that shows what the world could be.  Never mind that they have Superman, who can solve most problems before they become problems.  The basic idea about Gotham is that the city has become so corrupt that its rotten to the core.  Every story talks about how organized crime really runs things and the police are all on the take.  If it's really a stand in for New York, that's basically saying that in a city of eight million people there are only two kinds of people; criminals and victims.  Somehow criminals have taken over ever facet of the city and anyone who opposes them is corrupted or destroyed.  Even before Batman arrives there is really only one police officer who is willing to stand up to the corruption and do the right thing.  So in what would likely be the biggest police force in America, out of over thirty thousand police officers, there is only one guy attempting to stem the tide of evil?

So Bruce Wayne dedicates his life to becoming the perfect instrument to fight against crime.  He does this by traveling the world and learning to become a ninja, because that's the most reasonable way to counter corruption in your home.  After a decade away, learning untold secrets that will help him on his crusade against injustice, he comes back to Gotham and teams up with his butler to start his one-man attack against the concept of crime.  Using the icon of something that scared him as a child, he dresses up as a bat and calls himself Batman, which may be a little on the nose if you think about it.

His real power comes from his willingness to do whatever it takes to fight against crime, except for using a gun or committing murder himself.  I get that if your parents were murdered by a gun, then you'll probably have an aversion to them, however, throwing razorbladed metal bats at people's faces, using explosives, and breaking bones with your bare hands probably isn't much better than shooting a small piece of metal at high velocity into someone in order to stop them.  Regardless of his method of choice, he's still one man fighting a fight, he knows he'll never win.  The stories keep making sure to point out that Bruce Wayne is a billionaire and uses his vast fortune to supplement his war on crime.  It seems like a drastic misuse of resources to have an armored car outfitted to look like a bat, a super computer that only he gets to use, and various pieces of tech that are necessary as the story requires.  He has the money and influence of Elon Musk and uses that to put on a cape, drop down into alleyways and punch out bad guys.  That's his war on crime.  It's like fighting cancer with aspirin.  Bruce Wayne could probably do more good with his money as a humanitarian than as a crime fighter.  At the very least he could use the money to make organized crime irrelevant by buying them out or creating opportunities for people that would mean crime would seem like the more risky option than the legitimate one.

Most of the time Batman is defined by his villains.  He lives in a city that has been driven so insane that it creates literal monsters.  It could be that his very existence helped create them.  It's almost as though he showed Gotham that it's OK to dress up like a lunatic and do whatever you wanted.  If you don't want to be just another widget in the system of criminals and victims then dust off that purple suit and name yourself after a playing card.  At least that way you'll stand out from the crowd.  Those crazies aren't even the real threat, they're just the most colorful.  The Joker is going to release a hot air balloon of poisonous gas on the city and only Batman can stop him?  What about the Gotham police force, the National Guard, the FBI, or the NSA?  That would be an act of terrorism and they're able to stop a lot of those plots long before they start filling up the balloon.  Try checking the abandoned fairgrounds on the edge of town.  That would leave Batman the ability to fight actual corruption.

I get that he's a fictional comic book character.  After seventy five years though, you'd think there would be a way to make him relevant to today's world, instead of constantly rehashing the same story over and over again.  What would someone with his willpower and resources really be able to do if he stopped and rethought his strategy on fighting crime.  That's probably where most people get lost and realize that it's a lot more complicated of an issue.  There isn't some evil Court of Owls that secretly controls the whole city.  Instead it's just people doing whatever they think they can get away with.  Since that would require a lot more nuance, we go back to the well of having a man dressed as a bat showing how bad ass he is by breaking the face of that would-be rapist.

On Groundhog Day

One of my first real jobs in high school was working at a video store.  I was the runner, which meant that I would take the newly returned movies and place them back on the shelves.  I ended up having a lot of downtime while still technically being at work.  One of the perks of working there was that we were able to watch movies the whole time.  Well not so much watch them as exist in the same general area as they were playing.  Still given a long enough timeline you were bound to see one of the movies in its entirety.  It could just happen over the course of a week.  Since this was a family place there were only so many movies you could really play without offending someone.  One of these movies was Groundhog Day, which may be close to a perfect movie and one of the last Bill Murray movies where he was still in 'original' Murray mode, like he was in Ghostbusters and Scrooged.

This is a movie that is a bit surreal to watch in bits and pieces because you may not always know where he is at any given point since so many of the repeated scenes have only slight differences.  Over the years though I've seen this movie countless times and it's one that if it comes on I'll probably be fine watching it, even if I catch it somewhere in the middle.  Being the movie nerd that I am I started to really think about some of the implications of what's going on in this movie.  Sure I could take the movie at face value, but that'd make for a really short post and that's now how I think so let's get started.

First off, either Phil Connors is an incredibly slow learner or the universe is mercilessly cruel.  It took him several years to make it through that one day.  Years to learn all the things that needed to be done right so that he'd be the kind of man that Rita would want.  There has been a lot of speculation on exactly how much time passed since he started repeating the day, but a safe assumption is that it's more than ten years and likely less than fifty.  Think about all the things that happen in a single day and he was somehow required to do them in a specific way.  Plus he's still just a person so he may not remember what happened three and a half years ago when he tried this one thing.  He had no way of knowing which combination of deeds and actions would lead him out of the maze that had become February 2nd.  It was a lot of trial and error, which we saw as he kept behaving as his old self.

That brings me to the next thing.  It's implied at the end that Phil has finally become a better person and saw people as being generally good if you give them a chance.  He realizes that maybe Punskatanee isn't such a bad place.  We assume that he's escaped the repetition that was Groundhog Day and will live the rest of his non-repeating days with Rita.  This is all very wonderful for the sake of a two hour movie.  What if though the next morning when he wakes up he's now trapped in February 3rd and has to go through that day over and over until he figures out how to move onto the next day.  Wouldn't this be the equivalent of being trapped in Hell?

Speaking of which, if it happened to Phil, could it happen to other people?  I mean are they living in a universe where bad people (or at least people who behave like jerks) are punished by having to relive a day over and over again until they become a better person?  What's the criteria for this?  Is it just mean weathermen or would say the African warlord, who is slaughtering children be on the list as well?  Maybe it's just happening in that tiny town, but would that mean Phil is the only one to experience it, or just the first?  Plus there doesn't seem to be any real rules as to what's the 'correct' way to proceed through a day.  We saw at the end Phil helped a ton of people in a single day and was loved by anyone who came across him.  That would mean though before the last day he saved the guy from choking and changed the tire of the old ladies.  Alone those things weren't enough for him to escape, but together they added up to enough through some invisible tally system that Phil didn't know about until he woke up.

And while we're on the subject of him waking up, what's is happening to all those other realities that Phil keeps resetting?  Those are people with lives and souls and with only one exception, that world seems to cease to exist once Phil kills himself.  Are those worlds continuing on with all the mistakes that Phil made?  Is the world where Phil stole the groundhog and drove it and himself off a cliff into a fiery explosion still going on, trying to make sense of what just happened?  What are those people's lives like in the aftermath of that?  It seems either several lives were traumatized for the sake of teaching one jerk a lesson on humanity or they were snuffed out once Phil died.  Either one is kind of terrible.  If those realities continue on, what happened to the countless ones where Phil didn't kill himself?  Are they just floating out there, wondering what happened to him now that he's vanished after going to sleep?

Finally, in this world or worlds, are there any people with free will?  Phil had to do everything right to progress to the next day.  He was beaten down until he finally submitted to how the Universe told him that a day was supposed to happen.  If this is happening to other people then it's likely that you have people who aren't like Phil, in that they learned something, but rather they finally figured out what was necessary to get to the next day or were broke to the point that they just gave in to whatever the whims of the Universe dictated at that moment.  Never mind the poor souls who just couldn't get their day right, no matter how many times they tried.  They're off living the same day over and over for all of eternity.

In the end Phil may have been forced to become a better person.  It was a valuable lesson I'm sure.  One that took him possibly decades to learn.  He's now like someone who was just released from prison.  He only knows the routine of Groundhog Day.  How is he going to cope with living in a reality where he doesn't know exactly what's going to happen next?  Plus he's mentally aged by at least ten years, maybe more.  That will likely have shifted his perspective quite a lot.  Granted the new and improved Phil Connors may now see the world entirely differently and be thankful for his extended time trapped in a single day.  Betterment through attrition is still betterment right?

On Fallen Heroes

When I was very little I loved Picture Pages.  They were lots of fun with my crayons and my pencils.  I also loved watching Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids.  I was known to eat a pudding pop or two in my time.  Now that we know what we know about the man, it makes me wonder if a large portion of my childhood has been tainted.  Sure his personal life never encroached on any of the things I saw while growing up, but now I know that for all of my life I was laughing and learning with a serial rapist.  That kind of revelation makes one wonder if we're looking up to the wrong people.  And even worse for me is that it makes me more cynical.  Now when I see someone doing something wonderful or heroic there is a small scratch of a voice in the back of my mind that asks 'What horrible secret are they hiding?'  It doesn't help that we can't go very long without some famous person or hero to many making it onto the news and letting us down.  A man who overcame cancer and won the Tour de France several times becoming an inspiration for millions, showing that with hard work and determination you could kick cancer in the balls.  Except that we find out it was hard work, determination, and literally swapping his blood out while aggressively attacking anyone who dared question if he ever cheated.

There were plenty of people who felt some strange bit of satisfaction when that story came to light.  Finally that man who seemed super human in his physical ability was brought back down to our level.  It seems as though there are people who secretly want heroes to fail so that they don't feel as small compared to them, but wouldn't wanting that make them both petty and small?  I see the flip side though and wonder how it affects the people who look up to these heroes.  Imagine having someone you look to for inspiration turn out to be something of a monster.  Does that mean you weren't smart enough to see it?  Were you a fool for ever having hope in someone else?  Maybe it means we're looking up to the wrong people.  Or maybe we're putting too much onto a single person because in the end, they are just people.  It could be that the person started out wanting to do and be good, but eventually the pressure to constantly serve as a hero to the masses meant pushing to win at any cost, including ruining other people's lives.  There was a specific story that had to be maintained.  You know, for the greater good.  And of course money.

It could be that the person in question wasn't always a terrifying monster.  They began as anyone else, with a sense of right and wrong that was mostly in tact.  Then as time went on they started to believe their own hype and listened to all those people saying how great they were and how there weren't limits for a person like them.  The money and the fame warping all semblance of a moral compass.  I mean was the Subway guy always into exploiting children or did that come because he had the money and means to do what he wanted because no one expected him to be anything other than a hero?  Being given endless amount of praise for simply being you probably messes with anyone's morals because there isn't any context for what's not acceptable.  Look at that small Asian nation, lead by a fat little man who is so delusional with power that he has decided to great his own time zone.  That's the epitome of corrupted by power.

We have this constant need for things to be fair.  It's a concept we learn at a very young age.  Share your toys.  Make sure everyone gets a turn.  Don't take more than your fair share.  When someone does something wrong there is supposed to be justice that keeps things fair.  Strangely enough though we also want that same sense of fairness for people who seem to be 'better' than us or have more than us.  Never mind the circumstances that got the rich or famous person to their place in the world.  I want that too.  How come they get to have it and I don't?  Thoughts like that lead back to that secret want.  That hope that one day we'll get to watch them fall.  That they deserve to be knocked down because they had so much and we didn't.  Is it part of our nature to feel this way?  To want to make sure that everyone is humbled enough that no one feels like they're lesser than someone else?

Then again maybe we should stop treating athletes and celebrities as though they're heroes.  Sure that guy is an incredible golfer, but being good at one thing shouldn't necessarily mean that we look to them as an inspiration for life.  It could by why fictional heroes are so popular right now.  We need someone to look up to.  Someone who won't let us down because the story won't allow it.  There is very little chance we're going to find out that Han Solo was actually a child molester or that Captain America was a white supremacist.  How come it's not doctors or scientists or people pushing for social improvements in quality that are being hoisted up as heroes?  Maybe the real heroes are the ones who are left alone to do the actual good work and not be corrupted by the very people who look up to them.

On Superman

The thing I find most interesting about Superman isn't so much his fantastic powers, but more what he chooses to do with them.  I suppose it's fairly common to fantasize about what you would do if you could have super powers.  Now there are probably people out there who would immediately try to find a way to make these powers benefit themselves, because what's the point of being super if there isn't some kind of payoff?  So maybe using these powers to get a lot of money or a lot of sex or even more power aren't out of the realm of possibility as far as top on the lists for most people.  On the other hand there would be people like Superman, who would see these powers as a sort of responsibility to do more than just fly around and be rich.  Everyone knows what Superman is all about.  He's there to save the day when the day needs saving.  Helicopter about to fall onto that field trip of little kids with puppies from the shelter.  Superman will swoop in and protect them.  Bank robbery where the goons have robotic weapons attached to their bodies and are about to take hostages.  Superman will put a stop to it and make it look easy doing so.  It's a comic book world so the stories have to be fantastical to keep our attention.  Here's a question though.  Is what Superman does every day really a good thing?

Sure saving those kids from becoming street pizza is hard to argue against.  And bank robbers should probably be stopped, even if there is FDIC.  Still what if the person he saved today was someone that wasn't supposed to be saved?  Without getting too far along into the Final Destination scenarios, what if that person was supposed to die?  Their time was up and while it would have been sad for those who knew them, it was part of the natural order of things.  Instead you have this alien wearing a cape with a God complex coming into the situation like a red and blue monkey wrench and changing everything.  Sure you could argue that if they were meant to die then they would have.  Still someone or better yet, something, like Superman changes the rules for everyone and everything around him.  He's an anomaly.  On his own planet he's just like us.  Fragile and susceptible to the world around him.  On our planet thought he's a super man.  He can barely be hurt.  He defies the laws of physics.  And if you believe some of the stories, he may in fact be immortal.  A being like that stepping in to save someone from a runaway train is like us diverting the course of a river to save a few insects from getting washed away.  A chain of events were set in motion and possibly had a purpose and was then interrupted by a huge X factor.

The other problem with Superman stepping in to save someone from a fatal situations is that once he's done it enough times people will start to expect it.  At first people will continue to take every precaution that they normally would.  Wearing a seat belt.  Putting on a helmet.  Not juggling that running chainsaw while riding a unicycle blind folded in busy traffic.  When Superman comes along to save them from an accident it will be kismet.  He was supposed to be there to save them from harm.  Eventually though the expectation that Superman will be there to protect them will override other safety precautions.  The construction worker doesn't bother to tie himself to the support beam because if he falls Superman will swoop in and save him from falling to his death.  At this point Superman becomes like a parent who is there to catch their child before they fall.  In this way people will never know any sense of danger.  Sure they may be scared at the time, but in the back of their mind would they just assume that Superman is coming at any minute?

No matter how fast or strong or well-intentioned Superman is, he's still just one man.  He can't be everywhere at every time.  Even if he were running at 99% efficiency when it comes to saving people there would still be people falling (literally) through the cracks.  So how would someone like that have time to have a relationship with someone or hold a day job as a journalist?  I don't know much about journalism, but I do know that when they write things, they tend to have to do some kind of research beforehand.  That takes time.  Superman is going to allow that burning building to continue destroying lives while he gets the quote from the mayor about the upcoming budget talks?  How would he even be able to take off the costume if there is something happening every minute of the day?  Maybe he just focuses on Metropolis and only gets involved in the really big events that are worldwide?  The guy can fly around the globe in minutes so for him knowing something terrible is happening across the country or the world would be like looking across the street and seeing your neighbors house on fire and thinking it's too far away for you to do anything about.  Everyone he doesn't save would either be a conscious choice or a failing on his part.  It could be he'd have to start doing triage in his head.  If I save this commuter train from derailing then I save 250 people, but if I save them then the 45 miners caught in a cave in will die.  Does it become a numbers game for him?  And would he start having to make judgement calls on who he saves and why?  Would it be women and children first and maybe people who are known to be assets to the human race?  At this point isn't he essentially playing God?

At this point wouldn't he have so disrupted the natural order of things that everything would be contingent on where he was and what he was doing at any given moment?  The things he would be changing are based entirely on what he chooses.  Would mankind still be in charge of their own destiny with someone like him around?  Granted Lex Luthor is a megalomaniac, but his point about Superman isn't wrong.  Having a god-like alien around stops us from achieving our own fate, for good or bad.  We are often defined by our failures, sometimes more than by our successes.  Only after we've seen the error of our ways or have lost something do we really understand our potential to overcome.  Constantly being protected is comforting like a security blanket, but in the end it starts to do more harm than good.  I'm not saying that I wouldn't love to have a real life Superman around, if only for the sake of knowing that someone like that could exist, no I'm saying that we should be our own superman and work on being more than we currently are.  Capes are optional.

On Missing the Point

I enjoy a lot of different things. In some cases though I enjoy the idea of something more than the actual implementation of it. For me I can see the potential of an idea and how for me it's fallen short of what it could have been. With things like movies and books the ultimate purpose is to make money. Sure it's also to tell a story, but without money being made it's unlikely anyone would be able to maintain telling them for very long. So I've decided to write down some of the things I wish had been done with various ideas out there. If you're not a fan of movies or comic books most of this entry will seem fairly pointless to you (it may seem pointless even if you do like those things), but it's my site and I get to decide what I randomly write about. With that, let's begin:

Darth Vader/Anakin Skywalker
When we were first introduced to Darth Vader we were shown evil personified. He was ruthless and powerful. Those around him were afraid of him because he had mythical abilities that allowed him to kill with a thought. As the story went on we learned that he was the tip of the sword for the Emperor, who may have been the only person more evil than Vader. In the end though we're shown that even the most lost soul has a chance at redemption. Granted Vader killed hundreds, probably thousands during his time as the Emperor's enforcer and a last minute attempt at salvation kind of mimics that of Christianity where as long as you ask for forgiveness then everything will be OK. The story of this character could have ended there, but instead we're thrown back in time so we can see what Vader was like before. Now when this is done it's generally a good idea to have a reason to show what someone was like before and how life turned them into a monster. With the prequels this was done with all the subtly of a sledgehammer through a plate glass window. Based on what Kenobi said in the very first film we got the impression that Anakin was a good person and was killed by Vader. At this point it hadn't really been established that Anakin and Vader were one person and that's fine. If you think about it they really should be considered two different people.

Instead of a whiny, reckless ingrate of a character, Anakin should have been more in line with what the young Kenobi was like. In addition to this Kenobi should have been more like Qui-Gon, a sort of loose cannon, who after a great failure becomes much more reserved and filled with guilt. Which means you could have done away completely with the actual Qui-Gon character as he wouldn't have been needed. So Anakin is young and inexperienced, but very powerful in the ways of the Force. By his very nature he is a good person who is trying to do the right thing. Incidentally there is no great prophecy about bringing balance to the Force. A single character doesn't need to be more mythical at every point in their life. This isn't Jesus we're talking about. Anakin should have been just a Jedi, granted a very good one, but nothing extra special about him that would have had the entire universe holding their breath to see what he did next. Kenobi tried his best to teach Anakin the ways of the Force in his own way, but it was Kenobi's recklessness that lead to situations where Anakin was ill-equipped to deal with the slow creep of the dark influence that was growing. There are points in everyone's life where we're given opportunities to do something selfish or just plain wrong. Our parents can only hope that they've taught us well enough that we make the right choice. It doesn't always happen and unfortunately for some once the wrong decision is made there is no recovery. Sometimes in life we're only given one chance to learn a lesson and if we fail then we only serve as warning to others. This is how it should have been with Anakin because unlike us he would have the added pressure of the dark side of the Force urging him along. I equate the usage of the dark side to be like a drug. Once it's used you're forever left with the knowledge of how it felt. Like a heroin user they're forever chasing that experience. Anakin being young and trained by someone who tended to cut corners only made him more likely to chase that feeling. It's true this could be seen as making Vader essentially a drug addict, but it would explain how the dark side took hold of his soul and twisted it so much that he ceased to exist as Anakin and become a creature who's only purpose was to travel further into the darkness.

Instead we were given a crybaby who was easily tricked into murdering children in some vague hope that he could stop those he loved from dying. It makes no sense because he killed or tried to kill everyone he cared about and the Emperor, who made the promise in the first place, never actually came through with his part of the deal. As far as we know they weren't spending their off hours reading books titled "Stopping Death: The Power In All of Us". No, they were busy crushing star systems and mind-choking people. At no point in all of what we are shown was it indicated that Anakin was stupid. Sure he was an idiot about most things, but surprisingly not dumb. So once he realized that he was duped into killing everything he cared about he should have taken out the Emperor. At some point during the twenty years he was wearing the mask he would have put two and two together. Besides at that point what's the worst thing that could happen if he failed? He was already burned and limbless. His wife was dead. His best friend was exiled and the Jedi order was completely destroyed. Vader became like a battered spouse who returned back his abuser because he couldn't break away. It kind of takes away the impact to the scourge of the universe.

Hellraiser
In the original Hellbound Heart novella we're shown the cenobites. They are these otherworldly creatures who blur the lines between pleasure and pain. In fact the whole point of the Lamentation Configuration is that it's found by those who seek the extreme in experience, good or bad. With the Hellraiser movie we're shown these mutilated humanoids who delight in torturing people for eternity. It's a horror movie so we're supposed to be horrified and all the blood and pain. There is a key element missing though and that's of pleasure. We've all laughed so hard it hurts. If you're lucky you've experienced such pleasure that it's bordered on painful. Hell in some cases a little pain just adds to the pleasure. Now take that concept and multiply it a million times to a point where pleasure and pain become a singular experience. I've heard of people who are suspended from hooks eventually transcend the pain and reach a whole other state. So it's possible to start on either spectrum and get to the other side. The thing is those people who are hanging from hooks in their flesh aren't torn apart because that's really just the pain side of things.

When we're young and we get our first taste of something sweet we want more of it. As we grow older our tongue's ability to perceive flavors diminishes so what was once sweet loses a little bit of its burst in our mouths. So we have to move onto something with a little more kick. Or to go into the gutter a bit, someone could pick up a magazine with pictures of naked people. Maybe that's all they need, but in some cases they take the next step. They want to see those naked people having sex. Then the sex gets more graphic. Sure the pictures of naked people are nice, but we've become desensitized to its impact and could need the more extreme images to achieve the same level of arousal as before. With those in the Hellraiser world they have spent a lifetime slowly ratcheting up what they need. They've seen and done everything in the worlds pleasure and pain. These creatures from another dimension would show a person a world where there is no in between. The experiences would last forever and given enough time a person would lose themselves to it completely. In the movie it's treated as hell because instead of lakes of fire people are flayed with hooks and knives endlessly. It's supposed to be this place of eternal torment and therefor might as well be hell. Instead it should have focused on how those who became trapped there no longer thought of themselves as trapped. They wanted and even needed those experiences. Plus the individuals who called the Cenobites weren't your every day person who drinks beer on the weekends and watches porn. These are the kind of people who have tasted human flesh. They've pushed their bodies to every limit they could think of. In a way this world has nothing left to offer them. The Cenobites would take them to the next level, whether they wanted to go or not. Hellraiser should be a story about the depths man goes to in order experience everything and not just another horror flick where a sadistic bad man slices people up so that we squirm in our seats at the sight of all that blood.

Spider-Man
I think it's pretty safe to assume everyone more or less knows the story of Spider-Man's origins. He's bit by a radioactive (or genetically modified) spider and gets spider-like abilities. At first he does what a lot of us would do and tries to use these new powers to get ahead. This quickly becomes a heavy-handed lesson on responsibility because in a moment of selfishness Peter Parker lets some random robber escape. Of course this being New York City that same exact robber makes his ways from Manhattan to Queens and just so happens to kill Peter's uncle. Oh if only he had used his powers for good then his Uncle Ben wouldn't have been shot. Driven by guilt Peter vows to never again be so irresponsible and makes it his mission to fight crime. Fast forward fifty years (yes it's been that long) and the character is still driven by that same event. Now each of us has moments in our lives that change us. There are choices we've made that we regret. Hopefully not too many of them result in the death of someone we care about, but still there are things that haunt us all. Let's face it though, few of us are defined by a single event. I'm not saying it's impossible, but our lives are a complex series of events that are constantly shaping us. Things that were once earth-shattering eventually fade and become just another memory. They are just another aspect of who we've become. It's not our only defining characteristic though, unless we choose to let it be.

Somehow though the writers of Spider-Man keep circling back over and over to the same general theme. No matter what great things may be for Spider-Man, he has to be knocked back down. It's all a variation on that first story where he's punished for not being a saint. I know it's a comic book, but it's a terrible message to be pushing onto people. Yes, he can stick to walls and has super strength. He's using the abilities that were given to him. Is that really any different from how each of us are born? People like to say "All men are created equal", but it's just not true. Some people are better at physical activities. Some people are smarter. Some people are born with money and opportunities. We take what we're given and make the most of our lives. You can't blame someone who has 160 IQ from going out and becoming rich by using their mind. Just like you can't blame someone for using their natural abilities in sports to make a living at playing a game. Now you might say that Peter was given his powers through an accident, but really that's how each of us gets our own abilities. We didn't get to chose to be smart or strong or a sexual dynamo. It was given to us. So why are readers constantly shown that any time something good happens to Spider-Man that it must be immediately followed up with him being shoved back to where he started?

The reason readers liked the character is that he felt somewhat real. They could relate to how a regular guy dealt with sudden power. We all like to believe that if we had his powers that we would suddenly be able to do so much more with our lives. The comic showed that while the powers were great, they also brought their own unique problems with them. Peter had all the same kinds of problems we had at his age, but he also had to worry about balancing his secret life with his normal one. The secret identity is a staple for the super hero genre. There is a constant struggle to hide who they are from everyone. They don't tell their friends because it could put them in danger. They don't tell their enemies for the same reason. So the main character is hiding from everyone. Some writers decide to get it out of the way and move onto other types of stories. They may gloss over the fact that the rich billionaire dresses up in a cape and prowls the city at night and no one seems to notice the bags under his eyes in the day. Or they may just come right out and reveal who they are. The main argument for a secret identity is that if an enemy ever found out they could attack a loved one. Yes that could happen, but police and government officials operate without secret identities. There is an element of danger from those who would be desperate enough to attack family. It doesn't stop police from doing their job though. Not every criminal is going to kill an FBI agent's family if given the opportunity so why would every super criminal automatically go attack Aunt May's house if they figured out Peter Parker is Spider-Man?

In a bold move Marvel actually had Peter Parker reveal himself to the world as Spider-Man. Sure he was attacked and general mayhem ensued, but no more than was expected for Spider-Man, who already was hounded by perpetual bad luck. At the time it seemed like an interesting new direction for the character. Like with many things in the comic book world, it was short-lived. Not only did they reverse his reveal to the general public, they made sure no one anywhere knew who he was. The genie was back in the bottle and the character was right back to where he was before. It's an endless loop of worrying about Aunt May, trying to sell pictures of Spider-Man, and hiding his secret identity. The writers keep returning to these basic ideas because they feel that by doing so it keeps the character accessible to readers both old and new. The thing is that Spider-Man is basically Archie. He never grows beyond his original incarnation and it's no surprise that most readers eventually grow tired of this predictable trend and go off to read something else, safe in the knowledge that they could not read a Spider-Man comic for years without really missing all that much. Imagine if television or movies were like that. By the end of the story you're right back at the beginning, meaning everything in between was pointless. It's an episode of Gilligan's Island, but in comic book form.

On the Quantity of Life

The other day I was out eating fast food and I started to think about the sheer numbers that are involved when we consume. I was thinking about how many potatoes have to be grown so that a place like McDonald's has enough to supply fries at all their locations for just a single day. That's just one food chain. There are hundreds of other companies that use potatoes in the same way. Think of all the chickens that have to be slaughtered so that we have that delicious meat whenever we want it. It's almost hard to imagine just how much we're talking about because we've gotten to a point where if you want something all you have to do is go get it. Food is a phone call away. The thing is though that it's not just food that we devour in large quantities. Try and count the number of trees that must be cut down each day so that we can have buildings and furniture. Now don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that we shouldn't use them because let's face it, we're on this planet and have as much right as any other species to make our way through the world. There are over 6.5 billion people on this planet, with over 300 million in the US alone. It's staggering the resources that we have to go through on any given day.

Our nation has been fairly fortunate throughout its history that we don't have a lot of experience with a lack of resources. Sure there were times when people were out of work or food wasn't as plentiful as it was in the past, but our continent has an abundance of natural resources and so far we've been able to recover given enough time. Looking back to the 1930s we could see what things could be like if something broke down. The dust bowl was something that happened over a relatively small period of time in a relatively small area. Sure it was almost a decade and a hundred million acres of land, but considering the size of this nation, it actually was somewhat small in scope. Still that "small" patch of land had a ripple effect on the surrounding areas for decades after the initial problem. Even with that time where many were fighting for their survival, there were many who were more than fine. And the same is true today, sometimes even more so. How can it be that our nation is faced with a rising crisis of obesity and yet there are people who go without? It's strange that we can have people essentially dying from having to much while down the road we have people dying from not having enough.

It's very likely that no matter where you live, there are those that are homeless. Your interaction with them may be limited and in some cases you may not even know they exist. Most of us go along with our own lives and pass right on by them without a second thought. It's almost become expected that somewhere someone is going to be without. I've often wondered what the circumstances were that caused various people to live on the fringes of society. While they may get help from shelters or other organizations, there is the question of if they can ever fully recover and rejoin "civilized" society.

First off, our society is built in a way that's very precarious. It wouldn't take much for things to topple over in a way that could be nearly impossible to recover from. Three missed meals is usually enough to break down any semblance of order pretty quickly. If the lights went out or the food stopped moving it wouldn't take very long for society as we know it to drastically shift its nature. Everything we have can easily be taken away from us. Hopefully though it's not something that we're forced to experience and because we've lived in a relatively good period it's easy to take a lot of things for granted. Sure the economy isn't great, but it's nothing compared to what this country faced in the Great Depression or what other countries experience every day. Now don't get me wrong, some people have had it much worse in recent years and for them the recession we're in may as well be called a depression because as far as they're concerned it is. Still, as a whole, the country is in recovery and there seems to be a faint glimmer of light at the end of the tunnel. I think in a lot of cases there are two main schools of thought for situations like this. Either things will get better after time because they always have in the past. The other is that even if things get better in the short term, we're due for a lasting era of depression. It's only a matter of time. I guess I can see both ideas having merit because most things are cyclical given a long enough timeline.

For the individual though it may only take something in the short term to shatter their hold on society. A lost job, an illness, a death, or significant loss of money are all things that can cause people to enter into a downward spiral from which they can't recover. If you're really fortunate you have a network of friends and family that can help support you in the event that something drastic and life-altering comes along. Some people either have no one or choose not to use them and end up in a free fall. For them their resource options are gone and they experience what it is to really have to survive. In a strange way I think that's why post-apocalyptic stories are so popular. It presents us with a time where things aren't certain. Most people are able to know where their next meal is coming from. There are any number of things we take for granted that will be there. Those stories show us a potential future where life returns to how it may have been a long time ago when something as simple as finding a drink of water was something to be concerned with.

There is an assumption that everything will last for as long as we need it. It could be that there will be a time when things simply run out. Will we be prepared for something like that happening? I find myself thinking about how things we believe to be important would become frivolous in that situation. I love movies and video games, but those are products of a wealthy society. Celebrities are showered with attention and money because we choose to pay attention to them. We decide to pay ticket prices for sporting events, driving up the salaries of the athletes. It's a strange world we live in where someone who puts on makeup and plays make-believe or hits a ball with a stick is paid in six figure salaries, while those who are responsible for teaching our children are sometimes forced to take a second job just so they can pay for food in the summer. In a way it's a sign of how well our society is doing. There wouldn't be a lot of need for a movie producer or football player in a society that could barely feed itself.

Although it brings up the question of if our society is doing so well then shouldn't we be on the cusp of something greater? How long can we plod along watching television and spending our money on shiny new toys before we start looking at moving beyond the material world? Now I know these things come in small increments, but it feels like we're due for advances beyond that of how to bring 3D to our living rooms. Everything in this world uses something else for fuel. Basically everything uses something else in order to take that next step forward. It's just how things have to be. What would life be like though if we didn't need to eat? What if there was some way to break out of the old consumption paradigm in such a way that we would be free of it forever? What could we accomplish if we weren't held down by something as simple as what we're going to eat next? Maybe the next step in evolution and technology could answer those questions and the limits that are in front of us would disappear.

On Tape

As I was driving into work today I heard a song being sung by someone who I swear sang for the Garfield Halloween special. Most people may not even remember that cartoon and I'm not sure if they even still play it, but at that moment I wanted to watch it again, even if it wasn't as good as I remembered. That got me thinking about how a long time ago I used to have it on videotape. In some strange way I miss VHS tapes. Now I like DVDs as much as the next person and I haven't totally embraced the whole BluRay format yet, simply because I'm not entirely convinced that it's necessary. It was only about ten years ago that DVDs became the standard and all those VHS tapes became yesterday's technology. Now while I suppose the DVD is better than the VHS, I don't know that it's had the same impact that tapes had. At least not for me.

A long time ago in a frontier far, far away we only had a couple television channels and weirdly enough, HBO. So the only way to watch a movie back then was if it happened to come onto one of the three channels we had. Then one day we heard about this magical invention called the VCR. My parents bought one and were immediately presented with the fact that we owned no movies to actually watch. Our next door neighbor came over and dumped out a box of movies on the couch. It was like movie Christmas. Apparently all those movies that were broadcast at random intervals on the various stations had been captured on video cassette and could be watched whenever you wanted. Also seemingly overnight there were things called video stores just up the road. I remember going with my dad out on a trek to find something to watch. Back then the selection was still somewhat small and guarded. Eventually we found something to watch and headed home to view it. It was an amazing thing. Not only could you watch the movie whenever you wanted, you weren't bound to your seat for the entire thing. You could rewind, fast forward, or even pause the action at any point. For me it was as an huge moment in movies, rivaling what it must have been like when The Beatles arrived in America for music lovers.

The appeal of watching movies whenever you wanted never really wore off, but the video tape uses started to change from simply having a set movie on it. There were blank tapes out there that let you record your own movies. Now camcorders had been around for awhile in different forms. It was never really a technology that my family embraced. We were more of a standard camera crowd and as such I'm fairly certain that there are no home movies of my childhood sitting in a box somewhere. There are a ton of pictures though. Both my mom and I realized fairly quickly that while it was great to watch the latest movie on VHS, there were things still on television that we wanted to watch a second time. Things that weren't always available on tape. Today you can find nearly any television series on DVD. Even those shows that were cancelled usually have enough fans that the studio puts out the entire thing in a nice package so you can enjoy it one more time. So in addition to owning our favorite movies we started buying blank tapes so that we could record whatever we wanted.

I come from a cold, dark place and a majority of the year it's not very fun to be outside. So it was necessary to make your own fun and if you couldn't make fun, then you needed to be entertained. We had a large selection of movies to choose from and an even bigger selection of randomly recorded shows. Looking back I have fond memories of opening up the bottom drawer under the television and scrounging around looking for a tape that had a show I remember recording. Sure they were labeled, but after awhile things got recorded over and mixed up. My mom had nearly every episode of the PBS Sherlock Holmes series and to this day watching it is like comfort food. With time the VCR got to be more complex and allowed you to set timers and pause for commercials, but I still remember watching a television show with my hand on the remote control, just waiting for the commercial to come so I could press pause. Watching those tapes later you could see when someone wasn't quite ready for the show's return and the action came back with a hard cut. Those video tapes were a lot like vinyl records, each one had its own pops and scratches that just added to the music. Today's DVDs are so crisp and detailed that it's great for preserving the actual movie, but often doesn't have the same amount of personality that a recorded VHS tape would have.

As I got older I went to work for the local video store. My first job there was to clean the shelves and rearrange the movies. Most people would think this was tedious work, but it was great for me. I literally touched every single movie in the store. I saw every piece of cover art. Read the back description of even the lowest budget B movie out there. I was in charge of all the movies on the shelf, even if I wasn't the manager. VHS movies were a big deal in my town. As I mentioned, it was cold a lot of the time so people didn't have a whole lot of options when it came to their entertainment. When new movies would come out there would be people waiting at the door so they would be the first to rent them. Come Friday afternoon it was something of a mob scene as people tried to get the new releases before anyone else. On the weekend my primary job was to restock the movies on the shelves. People would return the movies, we'd check them in, and they'd get stacked up behind the counter. It was my job to take that stack of movies and put them back out for people to rent. Imagine carrying about fifteen movies with both hands and having people surround you trying to not only read the titles you're carrying, but also pull from the stack. Many times there would be a waiting list for the most popular movies and those wouldn't even make it back to the shelf until after the weekend.

I love my DVD player. I love my Netflix instant queue even more. As I said before, most everything that's ever been broadcast is on disc somewhere, but there are a few things out there that can't be found, no matter how much you dig. Thankfully the internet can be a wonderful thing and there are people out there who not only recorded things, but managed to keep them all these years. With the help of YouTube those long lost videos are now watchable again. Now I know that there are DVR units that let you record your favorite shows and movies. Most of the time though these are rented or leased from the cable company and when you move you have to return them. So you never really get to keep what you recorded the same way you did with those old VHS tapes. It's only now that they're starting to release hard drives that not only let you record from your DVR, but let's you save it in a way that means it's yours. It's funny that it took them over twenty years to replicate what could be done on VHS from the start.

On Movies

I love movies. I love going to the theater to see some new story being told. I love sitting at home watching a familiar movie, knowing all the lines and what comes next and somehow still manage to be entertained. It's hard for me to remember a time when I didn't love movies, if such a time ever existed. My love for movies comes from a long time ago so let's go back to the beginning.

Going to the movies was kind of a special occasion. It also had to do with the fact that the town I lived in only had one theater and that theater only had two screens. So if you wanted to go to the movies then your choices were A or B. Today you can type your address into a website and it will not only tell you all the theaters within a hundred miles, but you can also see all their showtimes. Back then you looked in the newspaper and saw the showtimes for whatever you wanted to see. That was pretty much the only option. Now I can only remember seeing a few different movies at the theater while it had just the two screens. Also there wasn't any form of pre-show entertainment like there is now. You went in and found your seat and sat in a dimly lit theater staring at that golden curtain for what seemed like forever until the movie started.

One of my favorite parts was the previews that came on before the movie started. Today there are few surprises anymore with a movie's release. At least not for me. Unless you're living under a rock, it's hard to escape the barrage of information that's out there. There are already trailers for movies not slated to be released until winter of next year. In that year there will be multiple trailers, each one showing the same stuff, only edited slightly differently to make sure they have our attention. There will be behind the scenes pictures and interviews with the director and cast. While the movie won't exactly be old news by the time it comes out, the market will have been saturated. The marketing people hope that the hype will put us into a frenzy so that we don't mind dropping $10 for a movie ticket about giant robots or a talking dog. Anyway back then a movie preview was how most people got to see what was coming out. There weren't a dozen movie sites that spent their every waking moment trying to gather as much information as possible. So the preview would be something of a surprise because in most cases you didn't see it coming. In some cases the previews for upcoming movies were as exciting as the movie you paid to see.

I honestly don't remember what the first movie I saw in the theater was. I'd like to believe it was The Empire Strikes Back, but I would have been too young to remember any of that. I do remember though my father took me to see The Fox and the Hound. It's hard to remember what prompted the whole thing, but it was just my dad and me that went to see it. For a long time that movie was my favorite Disney movie simply for the fact that my dad took me to see it in the theater. Another one of those back then things. When a movie left the theater it went into some sort of limbo because you couldn't just add it to your Netflix queue or download a copy directly to your computer. Plus with Disney movies they had a tendency to put them in what they called the Vault. I watched that movie one time in probably twenty years so all I had was the memory. A couple years after that my mom and I were riding the bus home and she dropped the bomb that we would be going to see Return of the Jedi. I nearly went out of my mind with excitement and I remember chattering away about how great it was going to be all the way home. For some reason I was told to keep it quiet from my dad. More special torture from the parents. When the time came to actually see the movie I remember being hooked from the start. I really believed that Luke was in serious trouble when he was about to walk the plank. When he flipped over the bad guy and grabbed his lightsaber I think my brain short circuited a little bit. I would be hard pressed to tell you other significant memories from that year, but that time in the theater with my mom has stayed with me for nearly thirty years. Recently I made a point to go watch the live action GI Joe movie with my brother. I knew it would be awful. He knew it would be awful. We knew this and yet we paid ticket price because we wanted to sit in the theater together and revel in its awfulness. I couldn't tell you what the plot was, but I will remember staring at the screen and groaning at the sheer stupidity of it all and enjoying it because my brother was next to me.

For me many movies are a kind of marker for my memories. I remember going to see the live action Flintstones movies with friends in high school. The reason I remember that movie is because before leaving for the theater I had asked a girl that I liked if she wanted to come along. She could meet us there if she wanted and my friends and I headed out. Along the way we changed the movie time and went to a different showing. It didn't even occur to me that I was essentially standing her up. When we finally went on our first date I remember the movie we went to see and bought it on DVD because it reminds me of that moment in time.

Movies are all about imagination. Sure movies are made to make money and hopefully entertain, but if they had to choose, it seems like they'll go with the former rather than the latter. Not every movie can be Citizen Kane. When I was in high school I worked at the local video store and got to see just how many terrible movies were put out on a weekly basis. For a long time I wondered why this was allowed. Why spend millions of dollars on a movie that's going to wind up on the bottom shelf of Action/Adventure section? Then I realized that the people involved in those movies are just like us. They need to work. If you're working in your dream job then count yourself lucky. Most people are willing to accept whatever work helps pays the bills. If you're really fortunate you'll find a job that you can be passionate about. Most of the time though you accept the role in the movie Transmorphers 3: Revenge of the Changebots, just so you can say you're a working actor. They star in those movies in hopes that someone will notice them. It happened on the set of Leprechaun for one actress and she's gotten pretty famous since that terrible low budget movie. So while I still won't watch most of the movies that are released, I at least understand why they're being made.

Right now things are in kind of a transition period for movies. Much like what happened with music, it's becoming easier for people to get things directly rather than having to go out and find them. If you wanted to hear a new song by a band you liked, you listened to the radio or you bought their album. Sure someone could make a tape for you, but that was about it. These days you could ask ten people when they bought their last CD and a good portion of them would probably say they don't remember. That doesn't mean their music listening has gone down in anyway. They're just finding other ways to get to what they want without going the traditional route. Movies are starting to get into that realm as well. Today there are instant queues. There are movies being released to On-Demand services the same day they come out to theaters. Plus if you wanted you could go to your favorite torrent website and search for just about anything. Don't get me wrong, I like that we can watch trailers on our computers. We can get nearly anything on DVD. You don't even need to go to the theater anymore. You can watch everything on your computer, sometimes before it's even left the theater. For me though going to the theater is part of the experience. While I like watching a movie on my computer, it's not even close to the same feeling I get from going to the theater to see something for the first time. For me that's something I don't want to give up for the convenience of staying home.

On Pirates

Ok let's start with the most obvious thing first. Pirates of the Caribbean was not a documentary. Most of the "pirates" in that movie were pirates in name alone. In most cases the worst thing they did was steal something that was already stolen by someone else or make a mean face towards the hero. It was sort of like watching a movie about cannibals who never actually eat a person. Don't get me wrong, the movies and more importantly, the rides at Disney are a lot of fun. Still celebrating pirates is a lot like building a ride around a group of terrorists and killers, which is what they were. Disney could probably make anything fun looking though. I'm still waiting for them to make a love story about two adorable scorpions.

We'll back it up a bit. Piracy is a pretty simple concept, which is basically robbery and/or violence at sea by a private party not affiliated with any government. Notice the last part about the government. If you acted on your own then you were a pirate. If the government sponsored your violence then you were just a privateer. Granted this was normally allowed during wartime because some nations didn't have a navy, including our own fledgling nation at one point. In a lot of cases sailors became pirates out of necessity and not out of some strange love for adventure. It's very similar to modern times where if your choice is to work forty hours for minimum wage or join a crew of people who can make ten times that in a fraction of the time, one might consider taking the more direct route to earning money.

It's pretty much assumed that for as long as there have been boats in the water there have been pirates of some sort. I'm sure that shortly after the invention of the wheel someone got the brainwave to use it to aid them in stealing from someone else. Admiring pirates also isn't a new thing, although it's recently become more popular thanks to both the movies and internet. During his time, Bartholomew Roberts was considered a hero by some and when he died it signified the end of the Golden Age of Piracy. While he was one of the most successful pirates of that era, he was still considered an outlaw by various governments. Roberts primary focus was capturing ships and disrupting sea trade, which was a big deal back then. It would be kind of like highwaymen hijacking shipping trucks along the freeways. Essentially it would grind commerce to a halt. You mess with people's money and they get really mean really fast. That dashing buccaneer doesn't look so great once you realize that he's just stolen the shipment of supplies that were meant for you and your colony. People find comfort in the laws of a civilized society and when they're tossed out the window the results can be explosive.

Strangely enough though many pirate vessels of that time adopted a democratic form of rule on board. The captain and quartermaster were elected by the crew, and the crew were appointed by ship's officers. This created a set of checks and balances very similar to our own government. Based on rank each member of the crew would receive a share of the captured bounty. This is also how modern fishing boats tend to divide up the profit from a haul. The whole idea makes me wonder if maybe it's not a bad form of dispensing compensation. We like to think that pirates stole treasure and buried it on some hidden island, but more often than not that treasure was just food, alcohol, weapons, or clothing. Sure they stole money when they could, but not all the ships in the ocean had a treasure chest of jewels in their hold. So pirates took what they needed, which could also include the ship that they just attacked, simply because it was better than what they were currently using. For a bunch of guys who were operating outside the law, they tended to create order of their own.

There is also this idea that pirates were bloodthirsty. Some of the raiders were probably more murderous than others and nearly all pirates were dangerous, with the exception of those from Penzance. Even still pirates tended to kill few people aboard the ships they captured. If the crew surrendered there was a good chance no one would be killed, at least not during the taking of the ship. Again this wasn't because of some sense of honor, but more about practicality. If it became known that pirates took no prisoners, then those being attacked would fight to the last man because they knew if they didn't, they would be murdered anyway. The whole thing would make victory very difficult and possibly not worth the cost in lives. The same tends to hold true today, where less than 10% of pirate attacks result in murder. Not being killed by pirates doesn't make the whole experience any less dangerous, just like being present during a robbery today could go either way based on the situation. Most pirates were and are more concerned with making a profit from the attack. If they kidnap the crew for ransom and kill them regardless of payment, then no one will pay, instead they'll just hunt them down with the intent to kill.

We like to think of pirates as these adventurous and clever rogues who make their own destinies. While there may be some out there that fit that description, a pirate vessel is more likely filled with a bunch of people who have come to the conclusion that it's more beneficial to steal from others than try to find so-called legitimate work on the rivers and oceans. Just like bank robbers and car thieves it may seem somewhat glamorous to live like Robin Hood. The reality is that it only seems cool until you notice the fact that their chosen profession is actually more work and more dangerous than that 9-5 job you've got, where you're safe in your cubicle. Plus there probably haven't been as many reported cases of scurvy. I'm not saying pirates are lame. They're mostly overrated, as many things tend to be when they become really popular.

On Villains

Villains are a tricky lot. A lot of times in writing the villain is around to just serve as an obstacle that the protagonist is meant to overcome. They are put in place to create conflict for dramatic tension. The story may have less of an impact if there wasn't someone working against the hero. In our every day lives we tend to not have villains. Sure it may feel like there are people who are actively working against us, but more often than not, it's just someone going about their life and their method happens to conflict with ours. So the conflict in our life comes from other sources, usually in the form of situations that are possibly beyond our control. While stories about those types of situations are compelling, adding a antagonistic human element to the mix can make things even more interesting. I've talked about how perception shapes what is constituted as evil. For the most part we believe what we're doing is right and if not right, at least acceptable to us for whatever reasons we come up with. We could easily become the villain in someone's story and not even know it.

Sherlock Holmes was written as a brilliant, but flawed detective that always figured out what or who was behind the mystery at hand. This type of character is very interesting to read at first, but like with many characters they begin to take on an almost superhuman ability to overcome everything put in front of them. If the hero always wins then it's hard to create tension because the audience knows the hero will win somehow. The same thing has been a problem for Superman in the comics. His abilities have made him god-like and if he can do anything then how do you create a situation that would seem even remotely threatening? With Sherlock Holmes it was decided to end his adventures by going up against essentially an evil version of himself. Professor Moriarty appears in The Final Problem and is revealed to be the mastermind behind several of the cases that Holmes had taken on. Up until that point each of the mysteries could be taken as independent of each other and having no real connection. With the creation of Moriarty it was shown that many of the problems Holmes solved were originally part of a larger issue constructed by Moriarty. Many people now consider Professor Moriarty to be the archenemy of Sherlock Holmes, even though he only appears in two stories and is briefly mentioned in a few others.

That leads to some of the problems that come with villains. The first is too much exposure. In the story Red Dragon there is a brief appearance by a character named Hannibal Lecter. He wasn't the focus of the story and was really used as a way to help the main character track down the real villain, The Tooth Fairy. Hannibal has always seemed to be just another spin on the Moriarty-type villain. Brilliant, but twisted in a way that makes them fascinating. Because Hannibal worked so well in the first novel, he was used in very much the same in the second one, which most people know, Silence of the Lambs. His role is almost exactly the same as it was in Red Dragon, except it's expanded a bit. Then it was taken too far. Harris wrote a third novel which focused entirely on Hannibal and sucked away all the mystery surrounding the character. In order to cash in before it was too late, even a prequel was made to further explain what made Hannibal into the man we knew him to be. It's a fine line with villains. You want them to be more than a one note act, but you can't go too far in the other direction and explain too much because the villain can lose his impact.

As I mentioned, we often don't have full on villains in our lives. Instead we just have people doing their thing. Now in war we have an enemy. We may know who our enemy is, but we may not really know who our enemy is. In World War II America knew that Germany was causing serious problems in Europe, but that was Europe's problem. When the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor the war came home. Japan, and Germany because they were allies, became our enemy. I'm guessing most soldiers didn't know a lot about the Japanese or German people and probably didn't want to know about them. There were no longer people. They were the enemy. The enemy becomes this almost faceless idea that must be fought against, not related to. It's only when soldiers on both sides came face to face with each other did they realize that the enemy is just another person. Knowing that may not change the outcome or desire to win, but it stops being an abstract at that point. With a villain the same thing is true. They start off as this idea. They are the negative counterpoint in the conflict, but only because we've been introduced to the hero as the hero. In theory the story could be told from a different vantage point in such a way that the hero is the antagonist. It's not easy to do because villains tend to do villainous things that many people couldn't relate to. Superman stands for truth, justice, and the American way (whatever that is). Lex Luthor stands pretty much for himself. His belief is that mankind will never achieve greatness with someone like Superman standing watch. Maybe he's right, but the part that he's not telling most people is that he himself wants to be the one that leads mankind into greatness.

There have been books and movies that follow something of an anti-hero through an adventure. This could be a reluctant hero or even a straight up villain himself. The tendency is to set them up against something worse. Riddick goes up against space monsters. Danny Ocean steals from the ruthless Benedict. So we end up rooting for them because given the situation, they are the hero and what they're up against is the villain. In most other circumstances you wouldn't want to run up against those types of "heroes". Predator hunts humans and takes their skulls as trophies. It seems a bit cruel because humans are clearly outmatched in nearly every way. Predators are larger, faster, stronger, and more technologically advanced than humans and it almost seems unsporting for them to be hunting people. If deer could make movies then humans would be the horrifying creature that not only kills, but skins its victims and mounts pieces of them as trophies.

Speaking of which, monsters are easy villains because you don't have to explain their motivations. The reason they do what they do is hidden behind the fact that they're monstrous. As I've mentioned, not all monsters need to be literal monsters. More often than not the monster is just a person. In the movie Se7en Somerset warned Mills that labeling John Doe as crazy was comfortable. John Doe was twisted, but he believed what he was doing was righteous. In his mind the victims were the villains of society and needed to be punished as a warning to everyone else like them. In the end though that's all the explanation we need from him. Anything more would have watered down the character. We understood that he is just a person who has taken extreme measures to create a world that he believes is correct. In the grand scheme of things his crimes were an isolated event that impacted only those in his immediate area.

That leads to the other problem with villains. In addition to being overexposed, they can often be given far too much credit. Moriarty is a prime example. He went from being a brilliant criminal mastermind to someone that was involved in nearly everything Holmes went up against. Villains suffer from the same problem that heroes do. While Superman has an array of powers that make it difficult to create situations where anyone can truly be worried about the outcome, villains too have to constantly increase their threat level to make sure they're still relevant. In the early Spider-Man comics there was a somewhat goofy character named the Green Goblin. At first he was just another throw away bad guy meant to be flashy and colorful. Then he started to be a mastermind leading several criminal gangs and became more of a threat. It was revealed that the Green Goblin was actually the father to Peter Parker's best friend Harry. This really created conflict because even if the hero won, he would still lose. Eventually the Green Goblin kidnapped and killed Peter's girlfriend, Gwen Stacy. This lead to a final fight between Spider-Man and Green Goblin that resulted in the Goblin being impaled by his own glider. That should have been it. A great villain had a lasting impact on Spider-Man from that point on. Twenty years later the Green Goblin not only returns from the dead, but reveals that he has been responsible for manipulating things from behind the scenes. The Green Goblin, and more directly, Norman Osborn became an arch-nemesis to Spider-Man in a way that no other character had done before. It wasn't enough to simply have him be an especially smart and threatening villain, it was decided that he would be responsible for so many of the problems plaguing Spider-Man. Sounds a bit like the Moriarty-Effect at work here.

Villains can be very interesting because they not only represent conflict personified, but can show the flip side of humanity. An effective villain doesn't have to be one that we identify with or even fully understand. They only need to have fully realized motivations for what they do in order to make them believable. By doing that the villain becomes a very real threat.

On Ninjas

Ok let's start off right off the bat with the fact that ninjas were not cool. They were actually dicks. The ninja was actually just a thief or assassin, not some whirling dervish of terror that slipped through a hail of arrows unseen. Now granted they did use subterfuge and guile to get what they wanted, but at the time it was considered unsavory. Then again during the Revolutionary War the colonists were considered to be barbaric because they were shooting at officers. Just another matter where what is unheard of at one point eventually becomes common place after a time. Ninjas weren't as cool as movies from the 1970's made them out to be. A lot like how the life of a hired killer doesn't mean you walk through life with wind blowing through your hair while beautiful women seduce you, only to try and kill you later, all with an electronica soundtrack playing subtly in the background. Ninjas at the time were closer to mercenaries or even terrorists for hire. So when people are celebrating ninjas they're really getting excited about a group of people who killed for money, stole for money, or blew shit up for money. That's a little bit like celebrating the guy who breaks into your house to steal your television, slit your throat, and ultimately burn the place down because your neighbor has a grudge against you over that tree that's 3/4ths of the way into his yard.

So where did all this love for these raiders come from? Like most things, it probably started from a story that was mildly exaggerated in order to convince the listener that what was happening was really important. A guy dressed in black was hiding and jumped out to stab someone with a dagger and then ran away afterwards. Now I'm not saying the guy in black didn't have training or wasn't really good at his chosen profession of hurting people. There could have even been a whole group of these guys hanging around a clubhouse exchanging stories about how they stabbed someone without them knowing. The point is that a lot of the story was based on speculation. Maybe earlier someone else had been stabbed in a similar way and it was assumed that since the method was similar then they must be connected. While the two events could be connected, it's also very possible that someone realized the best way to stab someone wasn't to just walk up to them, but rather to hide and attack while they're expecting it. It makes me wonder why more attacks don't happen while someone is sitting on the toilet. Usually when you're there you're thinking about one thing and it's not if someone is going to come busting in and stab you in the face. Well maybe now it is, but that's only because I planted the seed of doubt that sitting on the toilet isn't exactly safe. So the story grew from a guy getting stabbed to a guy getting stabbed by an assassin. That became a group of assassins. That itself grew because let's face it, back there it was a time of folklore and superstition. When you think about it, today is pretty much the same, we just like to think that we're more enlightened. The legend grew and pieces were taken from reality and tweaked to suit the story being told. Kind of like how a movie based on a true story may not resemble the truth by the time the credits roll.

Speaking of movies, I have a feeling that's where a lot of our obsession started. Someone heard about the story of a guy dressed in black who stabbed a guy and decided that he would run with it. With movies it's usually about the visuals. A guy dressed in black may be practical, but not exactly interesting to look at. Being the 1970's and well Asian, there were probably some liberties taken for the sake of making things more compelling. The visual representation of a ninja was widely accepted as being their true form. Much like how Coca Cola essentially cemented the visual of Santa Claus as we know him today, even though they weren't the first to use that image. From that point on people just used that representation when they thought of ninjas. There is a slight problem with this though. If you know what a ninja looks like then it's very likely you know what to avoid. That guy in the black pajamas, yeah you should probably cross the street. Like most assassins, they try to not reveal themselves by wearing a shirt that says "Killer" on it. So I would imagine there was no real official outerwear for ninja clans (if there were such things). If the whole point was to be secretive, then you probably wouldn't know them to be ninjas as they walked past you. Much like how you couldn't tell an insurgent from a civilian until they start shooting at you. Ninjas used all kinds of disguises to get close to their target, including dressing like women and old people. It's not glamorous and flashy. It was practical. Their physical training probably wasn't all that different from their disguises. They were taught to use whatever methods achieved the best results. Think of soldiers today and their training. They are taught what is hopefully the best suited for their task. Why do a flying bird kick after flipping backwards from a wall when a straight sharp punch to the solar plexus accomplishes the same thing? I have a feeling that ninja training would be closer to Krav Maga, which only purpose is to win the fight.

Now I'm not saying ninjas didn't exist or weren't badass. It's just that most likely they were just people who happened to be good at stealing and killing. There are people in South Boston who have those same skills and society doesn't gasp with delight at the idea of them. In fact like with many things, it's the idea of something that is more appealing than the actual thing itself.

On Halloween

There was a time when I loved Halloween almost as much as Christmas. It seems that the holiday was made for children, even if its origin had nothing to do with handing out treats. Most of my Halloween memories have faded away. Like most things it's become a blur of childhood.

When I was really young my favorite part wasn't getting the candy, although if you were to ask me that as I was going door to door my tiny little brain would have been hard pressed to find something I loved more. My favorite part was picking out my costume. At that age it seemed almost if by magic how the stores went from mundane to filled with Halloween decorations and costumes. As I've mentioned, back then I had a difficult time with making a decision because I tended to get overwhelmed by the sheer number of choices. My mind would try to visualize myself in each costume. As a kid I wasn't very inventive when it came to my costume. I tended to like something already pre-made. So I would be the kid dressed in the plastic He-Man outfit with the mask that didn't quite fit. Plus I grew up in a place where by the time October rolled around, it was already very cold with snow on the ground. That meant no matter what costume you picked, you had to wear your winter jacket over it. Sure I would complain that it would ruin the illusion my costume, but about five seconds outside of the car and I would be begging for it. That's another thing, we lived in a somewhat rural neighborhood so you couldn't just walk door to door. You had to be driven from place to place. A typical run would be sitting in the car, waiting for mom or dad to get us to the next place. My mask would be up on my head or off as I tried to make sure it still looked like Yoda or a Gremlin. We'd pull up to the house and I'd throw on my mask. I had to make sure my mittens were on and my jacket could be unzipped easily when asked what I was dressed as. Back then everyone was dressed as the cold weather version of their costume. Arctic Barbie. Winter Barbarian He-Man. All Weather Voltron.

You know what happens to plastic when it gets really cold? It cracks. Those costumes were made with the cheapest possible material and I doubt they had been weather tested to -20. It didn't matter because parents were determined to help their kids experience Halloween. My memories of Halloween are of headlights in the dead of night and children bundled up like Eskimos running from door to door. Occasionally when we got to a more populated neighborhood we would see other people long enough that you could admire their costume, or loathe them for having picked the same one as you.

I guess there was a time when kids went trick or treating and could come home and eat their candy directly. I've never known a time like that. We've all heard the stories about how some psycho stuck a razor blade into a caramel apple or injected poison into a Tootsie Roll. That meant while we were having fun going door to door begging for candy, our parents were cautiously watching everything that was given to us. Some houses had full sized candy bars and we loved those people. Others had the usual "fun size" candy and we took as much as we could as filler. Then there were those people who went out of their way to make treats. Caramel apples or popcorn balls. Looking back I feel bad for them. They put a lot of effort into making that stuff, in hopes that children would enjoy them as much as the store bought candy. Problem was those types of treats were the first things thrown away once we got home. There was that inherent fear that something could be wrong with them and no chances were being taken. I would like to imagine that most of the people who handed those things out had no bad intentions. The real crazies were the people who gave out toothpaste. Those were the people that kids couldn't wrap their heads around. We had to say thank you and smile, but inside we were wondering if they were aware that it was Halloween and not National Dentistry Night.

When I was really young I remember going to a costume party with my mother. The exact details of the event are probably lost, but I have images here and there. She was dressed up as a black cat and I was in some kind of costume. We didn't drive straight there so at some point we had to walk. I remember that walk being one of the scariest in my short life. It was cold and dark, but there were street lights here and there. That scattering of light actually made things worse. I would catch glimpses of monsters lumbering along, off to go eat children. I was at an age where everything was still being taken at face value. So if I saw someone dressed as a gorilla that meant it had somehow escaped from the zoo, which we didn't have, and was running loose. It wasn't until Mr. Gorilla actually took off his mask and revealed that it was someone I knew. Halloween for children must be almost overwhelmingly exhilarating.

As I got older Halloween became less and less important. It wasn't until my brother got to an age where we would take him trick or treating that I started to appreciate it again. There was one final year before I left for college that I got to drive him on my own. Being the typical big brother, I took every advantage of scaring the crap out of him. When he would get out of the car I would drive up the block to where he'd eventually end up if he went to every house. The poor kid was terrified and with good reason. A lot of those streets had no street lamps and tended to be very dark. It was my way of making him get over his fear for the sake of candy. I sometimes wonder what his Halloweens were like after I went off to college. By then he was reaching that age were it wasn't cool to dress up.

Now that I'm older I look back at Halloween as something I knew was fun, even if I can't remember specifics. Most of the Halloweens for the past decade have been so uneventful that I nearly forget that it's October 31st. Part of me is sad that we let ourselves dismiss things like that. Instead we go about our every day. I suppose it's easy to do when you don't have children. It becomes just another night, but with more knocks on the door. Why do we allow the magic to drain away on things that we loved as children? What are we replacing it with? It seems in a lot of cases we prefer the mundane because it's easier to deal with. Maybe the whole point of Halloween night is to break out of the ordinary and become something we're not. In the morning we can go back to our jobs and lives, but for that brief amount of time while the sun is down we let ourselves be children again.

On Monsters

What makes a monster monstrous? Sure it can be something overt like tentacles coming out of its mouth or an extra set of eyes that seem to stare straight into your soul. The thing is both of those traits can describe several species of animals, which are nothing close to monsters when you really look at them. They're just different. Sesame Street and Pixar both have shown us that monsters may not be as horrible as they first appear. Like a the Solifugae, it may look strange at first, but in the end it's just an arachnid that does what arachnids do to survive. For us it may seem strange for something with multiple legs and eyes building a web or paralyzing its victim with venom before devouring it alive. Yes, that may seem strange, but is that really worse than a species that keeps animals trapped in cages their entire lives, only letting them out so they can be slaughtered and turned into tasty treats we often can't finish and ultimately throw away? Who is the monster then? Much like the whole discussion on evil, maybe a monster is just a matter of perception.

I like the idea of monsters though. With it being that time of year, I've started thinking about what it is that makes some monsters frightening while others just seem boring. I guess it comes down to what scares you. It's been said that one of the scariest things out there is simply the unknown. Or as FDR said "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself." That could be taken to mean that fear is somewhat self-generating and perpetually building upon itself. So it could be argued that the scariest monster is the one you never fully see because your mind is going to fill in the gaps and scare you more than anything else lurking out there.

In that idea there are some monsters that are scarier because they're small rather than because they're knocking over a skyscraper. Some people have an irrational fear of spiders or other various bugs. Sure if Cthulhu showed up in Time's Square they would be frightened, but it's the little things that freak them out. With a giant lizard or butterfly attacking it's necessary for it to show of its strength by smashing something. Now if you happen to live in the apartment building next door then that's a pretty good display of power and is probably frightening because most people don't want a build to land on their head. After that initial display of power though you kind of know what to expect and can really plan the rest of your day. Chicago is in ruins so don't go into the city today. Avoiding large monsters is theoretically easier for those not directly under foot. With the little monsters like bugs or viruses you can't always see them, but you know they're nearby. If a giant cockroach attacked New York City most people would get the hell out of there or at least know a general direction to head away from. Now if billions of mutated regular-sized cockroaches started feeding on people's faces where could they go? Let's face it, even though they've cleaned up the city quite a bit, there are cockroaches all over. They will probably outlive us in the event that we get into a nuclear exchange with North Korea. So there are millions of monsters hiding just behind the wall and no matter where you go, they are there.

Of course that's not to take away from the big guys out there. We live in a time where the largest land animal is the elephant. As far as I know elephants pretty much eat fruits and vegetables and like to play in the water. There haven't been too many reports of herds going on a rampage and attacking villages in Africa or India. Now in the ocean that's a different story. I love the water and feel very comfortable near and in it. Still I understand that most things in the water would love nothing more than to eat you, or at the very least bite off a piece of you before deciding if they're going to eat you. The largest creatures in the water are whales, who seem to be pretty content to eat some of the smallest things around. I suppose to krill a blue whale would be Godzilla, but to us we like them so much that there are CDs of whale songs out there. Anyway my point is that we have no concept of something large wandering around that treats us as food. The dinosaurs are long gone and are probably the basis for a lot of the large monster stories we have today. T-Rex was probably something you didn't want to see racing towards you. We know a lot about him now though. Remember what I said about the unknown. The more you know about something, the less frightening it seems (well in theory in anyway). So we know more than ever before about what dinosaurs did when they were walking the Earth. Ultimately they are just animals. Granted they were really large animals. With that knowledge we take it to the next step. What is T-Rex was bigger? What if he never died? What if he got exponentially smarter to the point that he could operate a rocket launcher?

We take the things we know and add our own imagination to it to create something that scares us. It makes me wonder if monsters are required for us as a species. We need the idea of them out there for some reason. The problem is that we have plenty of monsters that wear human faces and it makes me wonder if maybe we use monsters as a way to consolidate our fears into something we know isn't real. There are plenty of things out in the world that we should be afraid of. A monster is a fun way to get scared. In that regard maybe monsters aren't so bad after all.