Beware the Rise of the Idiots

I saw Idiocracy a long time ago and actually enjoyed it. At the time, I had already grown passed fart jokes and laughing at random unnecessary vulgarities, but Idiocracy actually had a message and was a funny satire on our culture. I mean of course they had the random vulgarity, but it was warning us that we may be okay with that. For example, we would never think to see a restaurant named ButtFuckers, but in the 50's, we never thought we'd see two people in the same bed in movies, much less having sex! We are becoming more and more okay with things and we have to decide where to draw the line.
That's only one point though. The biggest point of the movie was to be funny and I definitely thought it was. The idea that the worlds population was dying from famine because a gatorade type company monopolized all the fluids of the world is hysterical. The idea that this world has slowly grown to not be able to take care of itself is not too dissimilar to what Pixar's Wall-E did. The people in that world all became fat and lazy, not knowing anything but what they saw on their computer screen. Probably one of the funniest ideas was that a person from our world, who has an average IQ and an average job could be considered the smartest man on earth. Seeing the world through his eyes was interesting. They put it nicely when they had the conversation about Einstein. They wondered if he walked around thinking everyone was a dumb-shit. Now, I didn't walk away from this movie thinking it was deep and metaphorical, raising plenty of questions about the way I live my life. I just thought it was a funny satire on our lifestyle and a fair warning of where we might be heading. Dr. Strangelove did the same thing, showing us what would happen if we accidentally went to nuclear war that we programmed to be unstoppable, thus causing the end of the world.

Idiocracy could be easily compared to Dr. Strangelove. If you don't see the satire and the intentional bizzare factor, you won't understand any of it at all and just think it's stupid.
Although, if opinions mattered, I'd say Dr. Strangelove is the better movie/satire.

Itty Bitty Living Space

Yeah, I just made an Aladdin reference before talking about The Haunted Vagina. Everything about this story was weird and surreal. The first half was probably the most explicit thing I've ever read. At times, I figured that it was purposefully trying to weird or gross me out because it's a bizarro fiction. The entire scene with the skeleton crawling from her vagina had my head cocked and my eyebrow raised. Then I almost wanted to vomit when the main character orgasmed deep in her throat. There are just some things I don't want to read and that's one of them. But it definitely had the effect of the bizarre on me. It was so disgusting but I was so intrigued as to where this skeleton came from and what it meant that I just HAD to continue reading.
The novel took a weird turn after he actually climbed into her vagina which turned out to shrink living things down into a micro-universe. The way he described the world was almost like watching a crappy Sy-Fy Channel movie. All the props seemed fake and cheap. All the characters there were literally bad CGI. He specifically comments on it, saying "She steps back away from me, her footsteps weightless, her shadow looks all wrong. No, she's exactly like a CGI character. She's like Jar Jar Binks." I kept thinking to myself that this would be impossible to portray through film without looking cheap, no matter how exact you get it to the book. It's MEANT to look and feel cheap which is interesting.
Then, out of absolutely no where, the main character tries to explain this world through science and rational thought. He explains how these people evolved to live within the womb of a woman and never die because they feed off of her body and they don't take mush to stay alive.
This story was definitely bizarre and was definitely a page turner. It seemed to tackle multiple genre's at once. From sexual, to fantasy to science fiction, and with a hint of horror with the idea of ghosts and attacking skeletons.

Cyber-kinesis

I thought I'd give a shot at blogging about one of the films. I saw Akira a long time ago and even now I'm still not sure i understand the plot, but at the same time I love it. I am a huge fan of telekinesis and the film and graphic novel capture it perfectly. Also, what I love is the idea that this power can be obtained through technology. It was as if the tech was evolving or becoming part of our biological selves.
And of course the motorcycles... Those motorcycles are awesome and they definitely spell out cyberpunk. Everything about a punk motorcycle gang in a futuristic/post-apocalyptic Tokyo, Japan screams cyberpunk. They acted like they were from the 80's wearing leather jackets and running around just being rebels, but they rode these bikes that were comparable to the light cycles from Tron.
The city itself can also be an example of cyberpunk. It's very futuristic feeling but at the same time very grimy and run down. I could see this being the Tokyo in Bladerunner. It just had a very cyberpunk feel to it.
The ending was confusing to me. I mean, I understood that Akira was more of an idea, but the giant baby creature was confusing. Obviously Tetsuo's power was cybernetic because when he touched the stone, blocky cyber extensions or roots grew out of him. But the giant baby thing seemed too organic. I wasn't very sure where they were going with it.

Language

Reading Babel 17 was fairly interesting, but also hard to understand at times. I found that the entire idea of understanding languages was explored by actually reading it. For example, the one character, Brass, who could never use the letter P and said "Ca'tain Wong" or "A one-tri' grou' can be a hell of a 'roblem to disci'line." Then there was an entire scene where all the sentences seemed to be cut short. I actually thought I had a bad copy of the story and looked it up online, but no. There was meant to be a scene with uncompleted thoughts. For example, they would say, "Her ease infected him; and either she reached playfully to take his hand or he amazed
himself by taking hers, and the apparition as real beneath his fingers with skin as smooth
as." I kept thinking, smooth as what? It was interesting that the language would make me think this way. Also, another aspect of the book I found interesting was the scattered way it describes things. Sometimes, descriptions are perfect. I felt that I knew exactly what Captain Wong looked like, but i had almost no idea what Brass looked like. I couldn't decide if he was an animal or a human.
Probably the biggest part that caught me off guard even though it shouldn't have was the scene where they were trying to correct the space ships course. They were stumped and needed to find a way out, but Wong discovered the answer through the language she's trying to decipher, Babel 17. The entire scene left my brain a mess as they were explaining these seemingly complex equations and ideas that somehow fixed their problem. I figured a scene like that would happen considering it's a sci-fi novel, but I was completely lost. But, that interestingly falls into the language barrier that the book is trying to convey.
I thought the concept behind the story was great and I do like stories about a ship with a captain. In that sense, it reminded me of star trek only with crazy body-mod'ed crew members.

Colors and Magic

Wow, I have to say I was impressed by the way Warbreaker handled magic. I never thought of it being portrayed that way and I loved it. It made me imagine a world resembling a painting. Where, when magic is used, the colors close by change, either getting brighter and dimmer. The importance of color in this world is extremely interesting to me. I really like that they have to think about the color clothes they wear or the color of the architecture so that the Awakeners, people who use the color to bring objects to life couldn't use it. It makes me wonder what this world would look like if it were real and tangible. Color is only additive in this multi layered magic, which is even cooler! They use Breath, which is almost like a life essence that everyone is born with, as their source of magic. This is what causes the disagreement between the two cities and to the inevitable war. I love fantasy realms and war games. I used to play Warhammer fantasy which is a table top war game. I've slightly grown out of it, but when I'm in the mood I can still get pretty excited about it. So, the genre of fantasy and wars is all too familiar to me and I do enjoy it.
My favorite character is most likely Vasher. He reminds me of other wizard type characters I've read about in recent books like The Dresden Files. He seems laid back a lot of the time but can also be badass when he wants to be. The other characters were more interesting than I expected, but I'm never really that partial to the princesses in the story. I'm a Zelda fanboy... Princesses are to be rescued. Not that they can't help every once and a while. What really surprised me is that Vasher had barely any time in the story at all. He was such a cool character yet he really only appeared near the end and in the prologue. I WANT MORE VASHER!

Spiders!!!

I'm not sure why I didn't catch it for the longest time, but I didn't even realize that I knew the story of Anansi until I started reading. I had completely forgotten about it. I remember watching a crappy animation in grade school in my library class. It was interesting to me how Neil Gaimen could turn that simple little story that felt like a bed time story or something into The Anansi Boys. It made the magical elements make more sense knowing that it was almost a modern mythology type book. I guess something akin to Percy Jackson and the Olympians, only with an African folk tale.
I liked Spider's character and I found it really interesting that he turned out to be Charlie. It was almost like the dark side of him. I can think of so many nerdy references that have a “dark character” like Scott Pilgrim, which is itself a reference to other stories that have one.
I also liked the type of story it was. Of course it was a fantasy and they had the fantasy-like plot points, such as Tiger wanting to seek revenge on Spider for what his father did, but it also had realistic plot points that dealt with fraud in Charilie's business and even murder. It's a nice mesh of the fantasy world and the real world.
Another interesting note is that I'm not very used to all the main characters being black. Not as a prejudice, I'm just not used to the idea of assuming every character introduced in the story is a black person, not a white person. But, I soon got used to it. The Anansi story is an African tale after all, so it's not random or anything.

Fantasy Worlds, Go!

I was born and raised Catholic Christian. During my high school years in or around freshman year, I distinctly remember my private catholic school religion teacher getting upset and speaking against the Golden Compass and the film when it came out. I always wanted to know why. I knew the church was against the Da Vinci code because it claims things that, if true, would destroy the church's doctrines and teachings. I was always so curious what the Golden Compass had in it that was freaking out the church so much. All I knew was that God was “portrayed” in the last book of the series as a crippled old man that is killed by the main characters. As interesting as that is, I was still in the dark about what was in the Golden Compass that was so bad that Catholics basically boycotted the film.
The story was very interesting to me. I liked the idea of having your spirit be represented by an animal or, what the book calls, a deamon that follows you around and I really liked that Lyra's deamon didn't have a specific form yet because of her spiritual immaturity. I did notice that the Magisterium named in the book is supposed to be the Catholic Church and they're portrayed as the villains. But for me, it was a fantasy world where your spirit had a physical manifestation. It is obviously a work of fiction. Regardless of it's stabs at the church I couldn't let myself get hung up on it. Instead, I was more interested in the story about Lyra finding her friend and the importance of the Dust. I did also and watch the film The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe based on C. S. Lewis's book of the same name, which I read when in grade school. I can definitely see the parallels and differences between the two. The film was definitely an allegory to christianity (though I later found out Lewis didn't intend for it). This story was about forgiveness and finding yourself and has a happy ending. Compass, on the other hand, is kind of brutal. The friend Lyra was fighting for the entire time dies at the end! Children are being ripped from their souls and dying for a source of power to do experiments. I think it was a good story, although it was thematically dark at times. Even as a somewhat Catholic Christian, I still enjoyed the story for what it is.