New Contender for World-Ending Apocalypse! Vegas Oddsmakers Scramble to React

If I were you, I'd do a little research on the interwebs and then call your bookie, because yet another avenue to Armageddon has reared its ugly head, and once again, it wears a thick pair of spectacles and sports a pocket protector. Indeed, it looks like science still might find a way to kill us all and bring an abrupt end to God's creation, skewing the odds on my personal favorites: robot apocalypse, zombie apocalypse, and Menudo reunion tour. Behold the awesome majesty of the Large Hadron Collider, or LHC:

Apparently, a pair of concerned citizens are filing suit against the parties responsible for this particle collision machine to put the project on hold, granting additional time for what they claim are much needed safety considerations. What sort of considerations, you ask? The fear-monger responsible for giving me insomnia lists the following gems: creating a series of microscopic black holes that could combine together to form a much larger gravity well and, I imagine, collapse the whole planet in on itself; magnetic monopoles, which I surmise have something to do with magnets and possessing only one pole (like a fire station?); and my personal favorite, strangelets. Now if you're anything like me, you'll assume strangelets are a new breath freshener designed to lodge themselves in your throat, or perhaps a sexy bevy of background singers and dancers who promise to choke the life out of you. As it turns out, "strangelets" are subatomic particles that could theoretically transform anything they touch into similar kinds of matter in a kind of Midas affect that I can only assume would gradually turn our entire planet into a big grapefruit or something. Rest easy, though, because an expert retorts, "We see no evidence of this bizarre theory." Helpfully, he continues: "Once in a while we trot it out to scare the pants off people. But it's not serious." Thanks, asshole.

Now, normally I'm not one to help spread paranoia, but is it me, or does that HLC thing look a whole helluva lot like the inside of the Death Star?

No? Maybe if you close an eye or huff some paint? I don't know. I've had a long week. But if one moment you're sitting at home screaming at Tyra on America's Next Top Model (as one does) and the next you're in line at the pearly gates, be secure in your knowledge that it's the fault of some scientists working on particle collision deep underneath the French-Swiss border who have accidentally done the equivalent of crossing the streams. And if this doesn't obliterate us all in a flash but rather tears a hole in space time and allows Zuul to finally reach our plane, remember: If someone asks you if you're a god, you say 'yes.'

I Welcome Our New Canine Overlords

As every single one of you probably already knows, the role of supreme overlord in my household is one of the many prizes at stake in an ongoing, savagely fought contest between my wife and our dog. While my wife is a fierce combatant and prone to vicious sucker punching without warning, there are times when it seems the plucky contender without his testicles and a habit of licking the carpet until lather coats his chin (not me, in case you're wondering) seems to grasp the upperhand. I keep up on these things because I will be directly affected by the outcome, but my agency in the matter is limited to merely praying that my new dictator will be a relatively gentle one.

Or so I thought. Apparently my dog is part of a larger conspiracy to overthrow human government as we know it, one bent on raising a master race of canine autocrats to the highest seats of power in the land. Should we try to resume our place in those lofty seats, we will undoubtedly be firmly told we're not allowed on the furniture, hit in the head with a rolled up newspaper, and perhaps menaced with a squirt bottle.

My thanks to Oghrim for the tip regarding ObeythePureBreed, a site which is desperately attempting to uncover this budding coup d'etat before it's too late. The brave souls there have smuggled certain sensitive drafts of insidious doggy propaganda to prove their point, propaganda I feel compelled to share with you in a desperate gesture of resistance. May God have mercy on us all, for our canine overlords shall not.

And most sinister of all:

Spread the Good News: Catholic Church Declares All New Ways to Commit Sin!

In honor of St. Patrick's Day, I wanted to share with you some information all good Irish Catholics should already know, namely that the Vatican has announced brand new ways for you to ensure your soul languishes in the unquenchable flames of Hell for all eternity. If you ask me, this is long overdue. As an Irishman myself, I find that I have far too few avenues through which to channel my innate self-destructive tendencies. Sure, I'm slowly drinking myself to death, and I remain an emotional cripple, but on the spiritual front my near-pathological sense of Catholic guilt keeps me from enjoying the truly heinous sins that are every independent soul's right, the kind of stuff that makes God level your entire city or flood the planet. Old Testament wrath, angels of death, flaming swords, pillars of salt--you know, the kinds of stuff that, when shared with your children at an appropriately impressionable age, can effectively keep them from masturbating for at least two to three years after discovering what touching their no no spot can produce.

With this new announcement, though, certain everyday behaviors of mine are suddenly steeped in delicious new layers of depravity, finally granting me that spiritual bad boy image I've craved for so long. For instance, cloning is now officially a sin, as is drug abuse and destroying the environment. While I've always suspected that smoking crack was tacitly frowned upon by my parish priest, the other two have completely caught me by surprise. Now, when I routinely fly down to South America with an army of clones, order them all to ingest suicidal amounts of PCP, and then see how much tropical rain forest they can chop down before their hearts explode in their soulless chests, I'm suddenly committing a sin. Eternity of gruesome yet ironic torment, here I come!

Other additions seem somewhat beside the point. Sure, when you clone yourself or your neighbor's super hot teenage daughter, you're playing God and thus I can see the sin angle. Ironically, actually donning a flowing robe and a fake white beard to indeed play God is somewhat hazy ground, at least according to the Church Fathers. Less hazy ground is donning said outfit and then standing on the side of the road and swirling around every time someone honks their horn at you, like a nice gentleman habitually does on my drive home. That goofy bastard is gonna burn. But I digress. Ignoring social injustice when one has the financial means to do otherwise (that seductively easy sin of inaction) is apparently a sin now, which I'm fine with. The funny thing, though, is that one article I read interpreted this sin as "being filthy rich." I think this writer is missing the point, though, because if I have obscene amounts of money, it'll be a sin because I'm snorting coke off the back of prostitutes and hunting homeless people on my own private island, not simply because I have a large amount of money in my offshore accounts from the clone logging operation I have running out of Brazil.

In the end, though, I tend to look at sin like cancer: pretty much anything you do causes cancer one way or another, and pretty much anything you do could be construed as a sin, if only from a certain perspective. Well, at least everything I do, though I still maintain telling strangers "That was a stupid thing to say and you're a stupid person for saying it" is neutral ground. And while this point may be overly macabre, I'd still like to think this has a little something to do with why the Irish have such a good sense of humor: when you're damned if you do and damned if you don't, you might as well have a pint and a laugh in the process. And if you're lucky, maybe you can convince St. Peter that it's the guy behind you in line (who happens to look exactly like you) who tinkered with the human genome, clubbed a seal, and did all that meth. Hell, it's worth a shot, isn't it?

Slainte.

Simian Alcohol Abuse, or, Why I Now Hate Ryan Condal

Recently cheered by the prospect of elected officials and prostitution rings, I decided to see what the industries actually designed to provide entertainment had in store, seeing as how state government was doing such a bang-up job all its own. And that's when I found this gem over at Aint' It Cool News (be sure to note the writer's gift for understatement with "tweaks and bends"):

An indie production entity called The Film Department has acquired the rights to GALAHAD, Ryan Condal's spec script which tweaks and bends the King Arthur legend. "Galahad" retells the classic story by portraying King Arthur as an aging coward whose young, ambitious Queen Guinevere murders him, then blames the crime on Sir Galahad. Galahad must escape near-certain death, vanquish the forces of evil and return Camelot to its rightful glory.

Oh dear God no. You can't see me right now, but I assure you that my head is in my hands. What is it with revisionist takes on Arthurian legend? Why do people insist on brutalizing this one mythos so egregiously while leaving everything else relatively intact? Well, come to think of it, Troy was about as much like The Illiad and The Odyssey as a kick to the teeth is like a ham sandwich. Maybe there's some sort of implicit cutoff where if your subject matter is set before, say, 1500, historical or literary accuracy becomes utterly unnecessary. It's not like you'll see Hollywood producing a film about Hitler during the height of Nazi Germany, except that Hitler is a gay florist with a live-in partner, and together the two plan to free the Jews using an army of Persian kittens.

So now King Arthur is an aging coward murdered by his treacherous wife Guinevere. And who gets blamed for it? Galahad, the knight renowned for his purity who ultimately realizes the Grail quest. Yeah, good choice. I've actually got a script about Mother Theresa murdering orphans in Calcutta, so it's good to see there's a studio that'll pick my work up, too. Honestly, who the fuck is this Ryan Condal son of a bitch and why hasn't someone shoved a rusted butter knife up his urethra yet to keep this kind of shit from happening?

Have you ever heard that meditation on probability that says an infinite number of chimps at an infinite number of typewriters would eventually crank out the complete works of William Shakespeare? Well I give "Galahad" three chimps (that's including Mr. Condal), a bottle of Jack, and fifty two minutes. And I'm willing to bet you the other two chimps, drunk on whiskey though they might be, would at least have the common fucking decency to feel dirty after writing that script.

Also, I Can Kill You With My Brain*

I'll admit it: technology frightens me. I'm a bit of a luddite. Though to clarify, it only really scares me because it's so expensive. Should I shamble past a 50" flat screen plasma TV at your local electronic store, I look in the dull reflection of its black screen and see my penury. I see myself huddled in rags, accidentally kicking a new window/doggie door in the west wing of my cardboard mansion as I feverishly clutch my huge television to myself, promising it that we will one day find a tolerant people who will not scoff at our glorious love. Sadly, I'm at a stage in my life where, economically speaking, I could probably afford a refrigerator magnet if I saved up for a few months. That said, I'm no Mr. Wizard, but I'm pretty sure this thing is a smidge beyond magnetism and liquid crystal displays:

This product...it just plain scares me. Not because I'm convinced it'll fry my brain when I don it triumphantly (it will) or because I'm concerned it'll tell me to do strange things like lather the light fixtures in strawberry preserves (it will) should I find myself alone in a room with it. Rather, it's simply unsettling to learn that they actually have technology that can essentially read your brainwaves, and more disturbing still, that this technology is commonplace enough that they're about to mass market it to the troglodytes who routinely set their toaster beside the bath since, golly, sometimes you just want a hot buttered English muffin while neck deep in Mr. Bubble.

As it turns out, this little dish--the EPOC Neuroheadset--will come with (among other things) a game "styled in ancient Chinese mythos," which I can only imagine means Chow Yun Fat will be jumping on tree tops in it. The sky/environment will change appearance depending on the wearer's mood and focus, and will contain such challenges as manipulating objects within the game solely through concentration. The reveiwer actually wrote "The process felt similar to what we might imagine The Force might be like. Simply willing the stone to rise didn't work, nor did focusing too heavily on the object. Rather, it was more a singular thought of envisioning movement, that, when sustained, exacted change in the game." Finally! A definitive way to prove to friends and family that I am a Force sensitive. Cause I'm telling you, wearing a brown bathrobe and reminding my wife that "The Force is strong with this one" just hasn't been cutting it these past few years.

I know. It's a mystery to me, too. Chicks dig Jedi.


*A bright shiney quarter goes to whomever can tell me what I took the title of this post from.

Fight with the Dance, and not Your Overwhelming Socio-economic Advantages

So I capped off Valentine's Day last night by taking my wife to see Step Up 2: The Streets. I did so because she was a dancer and very much wanted to see the film, and not because I think it's the most romantic movie of all time. Obviously The Goonies holds that honor. Oh Sloth...will your forbidden love with Chunk ever again walk boldly in the sun, as it did that fateful day One-Eyed Willie's hidden pirate ship pierced the swells of the might Pacific once more?

I have now had the pleasure of watching both Step Up movies, and it seems that some fundamental details undergird this universe. The female protagonist of this latest iteration, Andie West, is another orphaned white kid who is rebelling through that dangerous, sinister medium known as contemporary dance, going so far as to actually stage choreographed dances on subway cars with her "crew," a heinous act that rightfully receives the media's full ire during the opening minutes of the film. Remember, kids: when you hip-hop dance in public, the terrorists win. Anyway, since the main character of the first movie, Tyler Gage, was also an orphaned white kid in foster care, I finally realized what these films are trying to say: having parents and even a moderately happy childhood denies you the passion to truly dance. No wonder I'm so inept on the dance floor, despite how much "Humpty Dance" might pull my heart strings. Indeed, as everyone knows, Fred Astaire was locked in the basement of an orphange and fed fish heads until he was 27, and let's just say Mikhail Baryshnikov's childhood makes the Saw movies looks like a paternal reprimand on Leave it to Beaver. Poor bastards.

The movie centers around these dancing "crews," who go to work on the dance floor and leave their inhibitions at the...you get the idea. And since the movie is all about choreographed teams of dancers, the actual dancing is much more entertaining this time around. Indeed, I would go so far as to classify this movie as "dance porn," because, much like that more traditional variety of porn we all know and love, this movie has just enough plot and dialogue to limp to the next performance setpiece. And I'm fine with that. If I want snappy dialogue, I'll watch something by Joss Whedon. I'd show you the trailer, but it doesn't do justice to the movie's dancing, mainly because it focuses so much on the film's protagonist. As my wife observed, young Andie is probably the best actress of the bunch and certainly the worst dancer. However, I have attached a mash up of sorts, one focusing (almost) entirely on the dancing alone and not paying undue attention to the film's young punky brewster:



The important thing to remember here, of course, is the movie's message. Follow your heart, give it your all, and even a ragtag crew of extremely priveleged misfits from one of the nation's most prestigious arts schools can take "it" back to the streets and soundly defeat (and embarrass!) the non-white, economically disadvantaged hoods who thought this kind of dancing was their purview alone. Hey, don't hate the choreographer, yo, hate the game. That's just what the Streets is all about.

Miticlorians be Damned!

I believe I may have, in some sort of poetic rapture from the recent past, described the more recent Star Wars trilogy of prequels as something akin to watching a parent savagely beat their child with, say, a tire iron. Lucas's treatment of his own rich Star Wars mythology was so brutally inept that extensive reconstructive surgery would be needed to return it to even a fraction of its former self. Ironically, come to think of it, that's not unlike what happened to Mark Hamill's face after his car accident between Episodes IV and V, and thus the 11th hour addition of the snow beast clawing his face on Hoth. Point being, apart from the fact that knowing this bit of trivia exposes me as a super big nerd, one can't help but wonder why any parent would brutalize their own creation like that.

Nevertheless, I remain attached to the mythology in general, warts and all. That's why I'm always so optimistic when anyone other than Lucas gets their hands on the material. After all, Empire and Jedi were both helmed by directors other than the silver bearded owner of Marin County, and when people debate which is the best Star Wars movie, only those who have to wear helmets in the back of the bus even consider Episode IV. For instance, there was an animated series of sorts--more like two shortened seasons--set between the second and third prequels, airing on Cartoon Network and detailing the opening and middle years of the Clone Wars. It was quite well done, and appropriately well received by critics and fans alike. Georgie boy had nothing to do with it.

As it turns out, there is more forthcoming from the Star Wars universe, blessedly devoid of Lucas's pudgy touch, save for the green light anything from his mythos needs before it sees the light of day. The project is named The Clone Wars, and while I think they could have allowed themselves a dash more creative latitude with the name, if they want to name their pet rock "Rock," so be it. The piece is entirely computer animated, though not in the same sense the actors' performances from the prequels were. I'd make a joke that a CG character would at least have a shot at delivering Lucas's lines with a straight face, but even a soulless collection of digital pixels can't say "Anakin, you're breaking my heart!" without dying inside. Self awareness would blossom just in time to be ruthlessly snuffed out. But I digress; Lucas isn't penning a single goddamn word of this one, so the concern is purely academic.

Aesthetically, it seems to be a combination of Pixar and the animated clone wars series. This is a good thing, I believe. I can't exactly tell you why, much like I can't actually put into words why babies are cute or why panda meat is so delicious. But why take my word for it (about the CG movie...leave the pandas alone)? Glance below, and if the light burns, know that it makes your tears of joy glisten all the more.