OK. You guys will have to excuse me. Please. No access to AAD during the week, busy doing up my flat to sell during the weekend. Hence, no drunken rantings. Please, no, I mean please... feel my pain.
So all I can do is leave you with an email from my American ex-wife. You see, I'm not up to even considering trying to match those blipverts of CJ, which seem to spontaneously erupt (now there's a word) from her brain. My only good tale to date went down with the good ship AAD I, and so I all I have to offer you is second-hand American fodder.
Please, do not judge me for being a part-time member. I miss you guys like you don't know how. And I would so very much like to contribute to your intellectual phantasmagoria... And didn't you hate it when your English teacher told you you should never start a sentence with 'and'? Well, bollocks to her!
While walking down the street one day a senator is tragically hit by a truck and dies. His soul arrives in heaven and is met by St. Peter at the entrance. "Welcome to Heaven," says St. Peter. "Before you settle in, it seems there is a problem. We seldom see a high official around these parts, you see, so we're not sure what to do with you."
"No problem, just let me in," says the now former senator.
"Well, I'd like to but I have orders from higher up. What we'll do is have you spend one day in Hell and one in Heaven. Then you can choose where to spend eternity." "Really, I've made up my mind. I want to be in Heaven," says the senator.
"I'm sorry but we have our rules.." And with that, St. Peter escorts him to the elevator and he goes down, down, down to Hell. The doors open and he finds himself in the middle of a green golf course. In the distance is the club house and standing in front of it are all his friends and other politicians who had worked with him, everyone is very happy and in evening dress.
They run to greet him, hug him, and reminisce about the good times they had while getting rich at the expense of the people. They play a friendly game of golf and then dine on lobster and caviar. Also present is the Devil, who really is a very friendly guy who has a good time dancing and telling jokes.
They are having such a good time that, before he realizes it, it is time to go. Everyone gives him a big hug and waves while the elevator rises. The elevator goes up, up, up and the door reopens on Heaven where St. Peter is waiting for him.
"Now it's time to visit Heaven." So 24 hours pass with the senator joining a group of contented souls moving from cloud to cloud, playing the harp and singing. They have a good time and, before he realizes it, the 24 hours have gone by and St. Peter returns.
"Well, then, you've spent a day in Hell and another in Heaven. Now choose your eternity."
He reflects for a minute, then the senator answers: "Well, I would never have said it, I mean Heaven has been delightful, but I think I would be better off in Hell." So Saint Peter escorts him, to the elevator and he goes down, down, down to Hell.
Now the doors of the elevator open and he is in the middle of a barren land covered with waste and garbage. He sees all his friends, dressed
in rags, picking up the trash and putting it in black bags. The Devil comes over to him and lays his arm on his neck.
"I don't understand," stammers the senator. "Yesterday I was here and there was a golf course and club and we ate lobster and caviar and danced and had a great time. Now all there is a wasteland full of garbage and my friends look miserable.
The Devil looks at him, smiles and says, "Yesterday we were campaigning. Today you voted for us!"
― Pooster (pooster), Friday, 13 June 2003 22:34 (twenty-two years ago)
Entropy! Entropy!! Entropy!!!
Oh yes. The inevitable and steady deterioration of a system or society.
Okay? Ya'll want a rant? Well, I'll give you a rant. I hope it's going to be gritty. Not fluffy-gritty, like CJ's little bubbles of hard-won wisdom about what not to do before/during/after getting pissed. But gritty in a way that will piss off grown sci-fi enthusiasts and make them dribble. At the mouth.
I don't know how bluntly I can put this, but I don't think I can put up with all this futtbucking Matrix shit any longer. Has the movie-going world gone mad? I hate to be the Cassandra in the ointment, but there is a ridiculous non-equation going on in the very heart of the The Matrix plot (and, I would presume, that of Matrix Reloaded, though evidently I have not experienced an impulsion to go see it). And no-one I have ever encountered who expressed an opinion about the film appeared to have been struck by it... not even the pasty-faced cybergeeks who ought to have seen through it at every frame. Shame on you. Shame! Shame! Shame!
So I'd like to talk for the next minute and 11 seconds on why the entire film is a wasteland, a hole in the psyche of film, a half-human abortion tied up with ribbons and delivered by a leather-clad George Francis* to a moron's birthday party
Now don't get me wrong. I don't mind far-fetched films. I even cried, as an eight- or nine-year-old, at Silent Running. But The Matrix is just derivative pseudo-religious wish-fulfillment bollocks. (A propos of nothing, I liked this quote from someone on ye Internette: "What lessons does the film teach? That you, the computer geek who doesn't leave the house really are special. That attractive, sexually experienced women will fall for you. That the world really does revolve around you and can't exist without you. That you can learn kung-fu without all of that intensive labor and pain. And that it's OK to blow away anyone who gets in your way, because they're either tools of the machine or less important than you are. It's very powerful, it's very primal, and no wonder people bought into it.")
The theme of humanity at the bottom of the food chain is not new: Soylent Green proposed something similar; Jonathan Swift did so too in 'A Modest Proposal' a few years earlier. Shit, we even saw the People in Pods theme in as unsophisticated a vehicle as 'V' (remember that?)
So I have to wonder why it is not only 14-year-old kids who are marvelling at this supposedly mind-blowing concept, but thirty-somethings. And it's not just geeks; some of the biggest fans of this pile horse exhaust are girls! (And what the hell are girls doing watching films like this in the first place?! Isn't Oprah appearing in anything righteous at the moment?)
According to any blurb that I have read that purports to be even one billionth authoritative, it seems that our crew of jelly-minded, melanin-deficient battery-folk are fed entirely on an intravenous mulched-up squash of their dead comdiddlypatriots:
"These chrysalises provide the power plants with the small electrical charge originating from human bodies that initiates the reaction for the machines [sic] new form of fusion."
Okay. So shoot me if I'm being stupid here... but why do you need a small electrical charge from pupa-people if you have nuclear fusion going on? Would it hurt to syphon off a couple of Volts here or there to keep the process running? And what's all this about using dead people as a foodstuff for the living? However clever those computers are in creating virtual reality, they sure are dumb for inventing the nutritional equivalent of a pyramid selling scam.
Even assuming that this diet came from algae or similar simple plants, why don't the machines just use the biomass of the algae? It would beat the palaver they opted for in creating a parallel virtual existence for humans, a nice high-rise pod farm to keep them in, and a suitably balanced and sustainable liquid diet for said guests.
All that to draw a trickle of juice back out of them!
I want to know why the computers would even consider using humans as fuel when it would obviously be easier to nuke them all and carry on with geothermal energy, or wind and wave power to provide this spurious fusion ignition thing.
This is the bit that gets me: it takes 100 kilocaries of vegetation for an animal to derive 10kcal of energy from it. The bottom line is that it takes more energy to support a human than it produces.
Whatever the humans ingest, the machines would be better off just incinerating it.
Any road up, since all these people are born into plugged-in-ness, why didn't the computer just simulate a medieval feudal system - that way they would never have gotten any disobedient sod hacking into the system or shooting off ordnance while running around in sunglasses. In fact, do the humans' minds even need to be occupied? A brain-dead vegetable surely generates as much bio-electricity as a slack-knickered Swansea hairdresser...?
Come to think of it, why not just use cows for power? You'd get more juice for your money, and let's face it, it's far easier to simulate a green field and a blue sky than it is a large city.
The script writers obviously never thought about the terminal entropy of their human-powered cycle for a second, and that is why I have no patience whatsoever with the film. How can you put so fundamentally fucked-up a premise to the back of your mind? It's not a question of suspension of disbelief; this little loophole invalidates the entire existence of the movie!
To those people who are occupying a pod of ignorance and unrealised irony, having been duped by the stultifying dream machine that is Hollywood, I can only say: you are all twats; wake up and smell the reality.
* (that ladyboy off Robot Wars)
― Pooster (pooster), Sunday, 22 June 2003 00:30 (twenty-two years ago)