Reading into Books

I was thinking about this story I read in high school about a soldier who drops a flask or something and then his group starts taking fire. So, someone has to get the flask, I think it was water and they were running low or something. Nobody wants to do it and he convinces himself to do it. Halfway through his slog towards that flask, with enemies firing at him, he realizes... well, actually, it depends on the reader's interpretation. One way to read it is that he realizes there are no heroes, a hero is really just a regular person doing something that has to be done. I thought that was a boring and pessimistic idea but that was not my reading of it. What I think actually happened was he realized that heroes are something that seem so far beyond the norm that a regular person could never think of themselves as a hero and yet he was one.

The latter interpretation was one that resonated with me, though I only realized it when I thought about it a few days ago. First off, I always lived with the mentality that I don't want to belong to a club that would have me as a member. While that's always going to be a funny quote, it's actually really harmful thinking. I think a person has to be someone they'd want to hang out with before other people are going to want to hang out with them. Maybe I worded that poorly but the simpler way of saying that is you have to like yourself before others will like you. Getting back to the story, it's a story of someone who realizes they are doing something that is considered beyond the scope of a normal person's ability but he is a normal person and he's doing it. So, in other words, anyone can be a hero. If anyone can do it, is it really so extraordinary?

I bounce back and forth between answers. If life is so simple that everyone should end up with their little Maslow pyramids filled up, why is it  hard for people who seem so capable to succeed? Why does it always feel like I am just smart enough to realize how stupid I really am? I guess it's my own fault for having unrealistic expectations and for being frustrated at having to start over in a lot of aspects in life. It was actually a nice memory, that old story. It made me think that maybe if I examined what I really have done and what I really do have, maybe I'm actually currently living an extraordinary life but it's become so run-of-the mill that I long to do something greater and that never being satisfied is a good thing. Maybe every step in life is like every step that the soldier in the story took and we never realize how far we've come until we're already there.

I really wish I could remember what that story was called.

Syence Fyction Channel: Metal Hurlant Chronicles

A while back, I wrote about watching a movie so bad that it was just bad. It wasn't bad merely because the story, acting and makeup were bad, it was bad because it had this silly self-awareness that made it annoying. It was someone trying to laugh at themselves while simultaneously nudge the viewer and assuring them it wasn't actually as bad as it seemed. All that does is come off as disingenuous. That's why I'm glad the SyFy channel still exists, despite it's ridiculous name.

The SyFy channel is the type of place that probably would run Mystery Science Theater 3000 and then, without a trace of irony, show the movie that got made fun of the next day. This is a channel where 90% of the shows have "strong female characters" so that anybody who criticizes the show can immediately be rebuffed for discouraging gender equality and any nerd who is into the show can cross the fingers for a Maxim spread popping up with that particular character. It's giving us-well, here is where I should separate myself because I'm going to make a lot of generalizations- it gives me things I want to see occasionally, while providing a steady stream of things it thinks I want to see. I imagine there are several giant wheels, each with random words like "disaster", "robots", "aliens", "vampires", etc. and someone justs spins them and comes up with the next SyFy original movie/series/video game tie in. It's a problem because for each 5 horrible Dinosaur vs. Giant Squid movies they make, they make one accidentally funny Sharknado movie. Even rarer is the actually good SyFy production. Usually, the stuff they make that is good is just them buying the rights to something someone else made. So, it was with a mix of genuine interest and concern that I waited for the Metal Hurlant Chronicles.

Metal Hurlant Chronicles turns out to be a couple of years old; it is a science fiction anthology show based on old stories from Heavy Metal magazine. Anthology shows in general are usually good just because each one is self contained so if you don't like it, there's always next week. Heavy Metal is probably a little harder to justify liking since it's seen as mostly pinup scifi porn but I genuinely liked a lot of stories from the magazine. It was always so much grittier and darker than the mainstream comics and even though I only read it regularly when I was in my early 20s, it always gave off a dangerous vibe, like I shouldn't be reading it. I guess it could be nostalgia for the comics and for a show like Outer Limits that made me think that this was going to be something worth watching.

I guess I shouldn't have been surprised that it's not very good. If it was produced a few years ago, it would have been picked up in some sort of syndication by now. Maybe that's not fair to say but this show is nonsensical garbage. Between the thick accents of nearly every actor and the lack of actual acting skill, not to mention the horrible dialogue, each episode feels like watching some weird, alien experiment. Every aspect, from direction to sound to editing is just seemingly random in it's quality and application. Every episode has a twist ending but if they're ever not completely obvious, they're out of nowhere and make no sense. Yet, the reviews for the series are actually generally positive. I can not wrap my head around this fact.

The best part is, I really think a lot of people involved in this series were really into it. There's no tongue in cheek nonsense, everything is delivered pretty straight forward, including the line "Good night, little Adolph." Like I said, the best part of anthology series' are that if you don't like one episode, you might like the next. Well, I can't remember actually genuinely liking any episodes but I can remember some being funnier than others. Some episodes were an absolute slog to sit through and I couldn't tell you a single thing about them. One of them, probably the most memorable for me, had most of the audio from the last scene obscured by a hideous and obnoxiously loud sucking sound because VAMPIRES. I would have watched it again to try to make out what the guys is saying(in signature broken English) but the sucking sound that I pray no human ever actually made was too much for me. I think I will rewatch the series and give a couple short updates with highlights and spoilers just for the heck of it. So I guess look forward to that? I'm not really sure if that's a statement I'm comfortable making.

I guess SyFy wins again.

Something Appropriately Dramatic

I'm going to start writing here again. I really mean it. I've put off a lot of things I should be doing in favor of not doing anything. It's really easy to do and in the mean time, I've done things that feel like they need to be done but in doing them, I've ignored what I really need to do. I started a dream journal that has one entry from about two months ago. It's mostly gibberish written in chicken scratch about collecting debts and polygamy. I don't even know what was happening.

So, the problem with writing is that if I want to write about a subject, I should believe myself an expert and I don't really have any expertise. If I want to write about myself, I should live a life worth commenting on and I don't really believe I do. I guess I could fake expertise. I suppose there's a third option, which is making the commentary about the mundane things seem more interesting. Instead of "washed dishes so my girlfriend didn't have to" I could say "I performed a selfless deed in defense of a fair maiden" but that doesn't sound more interesting, that sounds dorkier.

I guess the situation is that interaction in Arkansas is still weird for me. The people here are completely different from what I'm used to and I have trouble connecting with them in general. Well, that might not be true; it might be that people in general are weird and I got really lucky earlier in life to find the people that I found but now I'm not around them, I'm here and I have to learn to adapt. I worry so much about being understood that I think I'm harder to understand because of it. I guess that's probably a good well to draw from as far as writing is concerned.

I'm cutting this short because I need to go buy some soder at a discounted price but rest assured that if you have been waiting desperately for me to update this blog, your wait is over and the updates should be more frequent(less than a year between them, at least). If you're just reading this blog for the first time, hello and thanks. Then I guess this is where I would put a winking smiley if that was the kind of person I was and I would say something like "See ya real soon kids".

Wait, that's kind of dark. How about "Until next time, fare thee well." No, that's dorkier. How about "Peace." Yeah, that's so cool. Pretend I said that instead of anything else after that stuff about winking smileys. Thanks. Peace.