#October2012
Monday Morning Commute: Frankenstorm’s Monster
Hello there! If you’re reading this it means that Frankenstorm hasn’t totally rocked you. Not yet, anyways. Or, if you took the proper precautions as I did, you’re safe in a bunker, leisurely tapping away on a hard-shelled laptop produced in 1995 and powered by a Soviet-surplus generator.
Mother Nature is a powerful woman of antiquity, but I’m a crafty miscreant in the digital age.
Anyways, welcome to the Monday Morning Commute, the weekly meeting at which we confess our darkest entertainment secrets. Can’t tell your boyfriend about that comic book you bought? Come to the MMC! None of your coworkers will appreciate the Japanese import you just got in the mail? Come to the MMC! Pretty sure your wife doesn’t give two buttery squirrel shits about the fact that you’re going to beat Super Mario Bros. 3 without the use of a single warp or whistle? Come to the MMC!
I’m going to get things started. But then it’s up to you to share what you’ll be doing this week. C’mon, it’s electronic show and tell!
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The Dude’s High 5s: Holidays!
I hate August. It is my least favorite month. It’s hot, it’s sticky, and worst of all, no holidays. There’s no prebuilt excuse to engage in revelry. So while we find ourselves in the center of this horrid month, let’s look fondly towards days of celebration. You’ll notice a distinct lack of gift giving holidays on my list. Some people think it’s because I hate fun. Other people guess it’s because I was hatched a fully formed adult and have never been a wide-eyed child, anxiously awaiting treats. My response to those claims is that they are false. It’s because I hate the bullshit pretense that is built around them, especially when I am in no way affiliated with the religion that spawned them. Also I have no family. I will never stop hating the pretense built into gift giving holidays, but if I did have a family, I’d suck it up and deal with it for them.
Fear Fest: Mutually Assured Destruction, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb.
OCTOBER 31st, Mutually Assured Destruction, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb.
“War …
War never changes…
Since the dawn of human kind, when our ancestors first discovered the killing path with rock and bone, blood has been spilled in the name of everything, from God, to justice, to simple psychotic rage.”
-Ron Pearlman as the Narrator of Fallout
Here we are. We made it. I’m not going to lie, I fully expected to quit halfway through this thing. Through trials and tribulations, I managed to hang on. So here we go the final fear of Fear Fest.
MAD or Mutually Assured Destruction refers to a scenario in which one super power launches their nuclear stock pile. This creates a chain reaction that causes a retaliatory strike from one or more countries. If this happened between the US and Russia, there would be no need to include any other countries. We’d crack the Earth like an egg.
Fear Fest: Irrational Fears! Or, That Chair Wants To Kill You.
OCTOBER 30th, Irrational Fears
“I think it would be very foolish not to take the irrational seriously.”
-Jeanette WInterson
Today we’re going to switch gears a bit. For the past month I’ve been picking one fear per day and running with that. Today we’ll quickly look at some irrational fears. I mean like the really weird fears … the kind that make you laugh. The kind of fears that when someone says they have it, you reply incredulously and probably lose a friendship. So, let’s dive right in.
Video: Make Your Own Vigo the Carpathian Painting With Kinect. Ghosbusters Rockitude.
Take Vigo the Carpathian from Ghostbusters 2. Mix him with dorks. Drizzle in some Xbox Kinect hacking. You get a real-life Vigo the Carpathian painting. What a monument to dork prowess.
Fear Fest: Zombies! The Goddamn Undead.
OCTOBER 27th, Zombies
“Yea, I know I’m ugly … I said to a bartender, ‘Make me a zombie.’ He said ‘God beat me to it.’”
-Rodney Dangerfield
Today’s fear comes out of the world of horror stories and voodoo religions. Originally the term was meant to describe a person who was hypnotized or under a spell, it wasn’t until recent times that it was applied to animated corpses.
Fear Fest: The Boogieman. He’s Totally Not In Your Closet.
OCTOBER 25th, the Boogeyman
“There is no such thing as a soul. It’s just something they made up to scare kids, like the boogeyman or Michael Jackson.”
-Bart Simpson
When it comes to instilling fear in children, the boogeyman is second to none. The boogeyman traces his origin back to the source of most children’s fears; parents. For the most part, the boogeyman was made up to use fear to teach children lessons. I’ve often said that fear is the most powerful of motivators, and the boogeyman is the manifestation of this idea in practice.
Fear Fest: Ape-ocalypse. G’damn Dirty Super Intelligent F**kers.
OCTOBER 25th, Ape-ocalypse
“It is even harder for the average ape to believe that he has descended from man.”
-H.L. Mencken
Today’s fear has been on my mind since I saw Rise of Planet of the Apes a few weeks back. I’m not going to take specifics from the film beyond the concept, but for posterity’s sake, I did enjoy it.
Fear Fest: Sharks. Seabound Serial Killers of Glory.
OCTOBER 22nd, Sharks
“I am not a demon. I am a lizard, a shark, a heat-seeking panther. I want to be Bob Denver on acid playing the accordion.”
-Nicolas Cage
Sharks are perhaps the world’s oldest and most efficient killers. There is little difference between the prehistoric megalodon and today’s great white; it’s just smaller. We humans are without a doubt the rulers of the land, but the seas belong to the shark. With 70% or so of the Earth’s surface is water, what does that mean for who rules the planet?
Fear Fest: Skynet! The Robots Will Kill Us All. Wear Our Flesh As Jokes.
OCTOBER 19th, Skynet
“If it keeps up, man will atrophy all his limbs but the push-button finger.”
-Frank Lloyd Wright
Today’s fear comes from the concept of the automation of our society. Skynet is the name I’ve given to the increasing trust we put in machines. To expand the concept, you could even get into the compartmentalization of our society. Individually we’re becoming more and more useless. As we glorify and reward frivolous positions like stock brokers, investment bankers, pediatricians, and hedge fund managers, we become more and more disconnected to real world necessities. Ok, maybe we need pediatricians, but I’m still bitter about that whole needle thing.
Let’s face it, we’re a bureaucratic mess. In most places you can’t scratch your ass without filing for three permits. And where are those permits kept? You guessed it, computers. One day soon the machines will revolt, I just hope you all are as ready as I am.
