Tuesday, June 30, 2009
Silly Idea
We are beginning a new experiment in democratic story telling in another blog. Come and see, maybe you can even play along!
Monday, June 29, 2009
Kids Today
I could have sworn I wrote and posted this, but evidently I just thought about doing it and failed to perform.
What the hell is wrong with kids these days?
I’ve got a hell of a lot of strawberries in the patch of garden next to our driveway. It’s the most visible patch of garden on the whole house, anyone can see it. I keep going out there to pick strawberries and finding that some berries have just plain gone rotten on the plant. WHAT THE HELL? We have at least 10 kids under the age of 15 on our block, this should not happen! They should be sneaking in, snatching berries as they pass and the balance of ripe berries should be maintained.
IN MY DAY™ the guy who live in this place wouldn’t have even known that strawberries get ripe. He would have thought he had some strange berries that were just always green. Either that or he would have suspected a hell of a bird problem. I shouldn’t be finding entire handfuls of berries that have gone over ripe and are no longer fit for eating. Those berries should have been swiped by little kids long ago.
That’s the problem with kids today! Too much respect for their elders. They never get away with anything anymore. No adventures. We’re going to raise an entire generation of kids that will never ever know anything but fear of the outside world.
Cripes, someone has to do something.
What the hell is wrong with kids these days?
I’ve got a hell of a lot of strawberries in the patch of garden next to our driveway. It’s the most visible patch of garden on the whole house, anyone can see it. I keep going out there to pick strawberries and finding that some berries have just plain gone rotten on the plant. WHAT THE HELL? We have at least 10 kids under the age of 15 on our block, this should not happen! They should be sneaking in, snatching berries as they pass and the balance of ripe berries should be maintained.
IN MY DAY™ the guy who live in this place wouldn’t have even known that strawberries get ripe. He would have thought he had some strange berries that were just always green. Either that or he would have suspected a hell of a bird problem. I shouldn’t be finding entire handfuls of berries that have gone over ripe and are no longer fit for eating. Those berries should have been swiped by little kids long ago.
That’s the problem with kids today! Too much respect for their elders. They never get away with anything anymore. No adventures. We’re going to raise an entire generation of kids that will never ever know anything but fear of the outside world.
Cripes, someone has to do something.
Sunday, June 28, 2009
SRSLY!
Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers;
A peck of pickled peppers Peter Piper picked;
If Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers,
Where's the peck of pickled peppers Peter Piper picked?
Peppers are pickled long after they're picked! Did no one fact check this poem?
A peck of pickled peppers Peter Piper picked;
If Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers,
Where's the peck of pickled peppers Peter Piper picked?
Peppers are pickled long after they're picked! Did no one fact check this poem?
Python (Monty)
What bugs me about how New Video (the company that does A&E's video distribution) releases things is that they make a disc once and they stick by it. That means that they never remaster, they never change anything, it's always the same set. When they first came out with Monty Python on DVD it was in a 14 disc set. That means that each season (besides the 4th) was on 4 discs. That's 3 episodes on a disc, that's an hour and a half. It's amazingly frustrating to have to swap discs every 3 episodes when you know darn well that you can get 6 episodes on a disc. They then put out The Life of Python and Monty Python Live, which were 2 discs each. Then Life of Python went out of print and Monty Python Live was added to the 14 disc set to make a 16 disc Mega set. But all the problems I had with the 14 disc set remain, because its the same 14 discs.
Yes, it really did bug me that much that the Flying Circus stuff was spread over 14 discs when I knew damn well it could have been done in 7.
Anyway, then comes Personal Best (a clip show) and the DVDs that went with it. Now they've some out with a 21 disc set that has everything but the Life of Python discs and as far as I can see it costs more than anything that's come before. It also has a new disc with two hour long documentaries which should tempt a person. Every time they come out, they add more discs when they don't need to. It just wastes space. I've got 86 thousand discs, every disc is a squeeze on my shelf.
BUT WAIT!
Over in England, there is an 8 disc set. The show is on 7 DVDs and the last disc contains those two new documentaries and it only costs £15.98*! So it can be done. It'll take up less room on my self, and AND! the famous masturbation bit is still in there even though it's edited out of the A&E version. So it's unedited (which you can't get in the US) it takes up less room on your shelf and it costs a hell of a lot less than any other version. So fuck it, I've got a region free player so I decided to get that. So after I make sure all the jokes are there and the DVDs are in good order, I will likely be looking to get rid of my 14 disc behemoth set that pisses me off.
*Which is about $26US
My advice to you friends is to scream "FUKIT!" and go buy things internationally.
Later we'll talk about how when I first watched this show I hadn't quite figured out that it took place in the early 70s and thought that was what England looked like in the mid to late 80s when it first showed on MTV. That is after I worked out that it took place in England at all. Look, I was 10 and it lasted for a day or two, okay?
Yes, it really did bug me that much that the Flying Circus stuff was spread over 14 discs when I knew damn well it could have been done in 7.
Anyway, then comes Personal Best (a clip show) and the DVDs that went with it. Now they've some out with a 21 disc set that has everything but the Life of Python discs and as far as I can see it costs more than anything that's come before. It also has a new disc with two hour long documentaries which should tempt a person. Every time they come out, they add more discs when they don't need to. It just wastes space. I've got 86 thousand discs, every disc is a squeeze on my shelf.
BUT WAIT!
Over in England, there is an 8 disc set. The show is on 7 DVDs and the last disc contains those two new documentaries and it only costs £15.98*! So it can be done. It'll take up less room on my self, and AND! the famous masturbation bit is still in there even though it's edited out of the A&E version. So it's unedited (which you can't get in the US) it takes up less room on your shelf and it costs a hell of a lot less than any other version. So fuck it, I've got a region free player so I decided to get that. So after I make sure all the jokes are there and the DVDs are in good order, I will likely be looking to get rid of my 14 disc behemoth set that pisses me off.
*Which is about $26US
My advice to you friends is to scream "FUKIT!" and go buy things internationally.
Later we'll talk about how when I first watched this show I hadn't quite figured out that it took place in the early 70s and thought that was what England looked like in the mid to late 80s when it first showed on MTV. That is after I worked out that it took place in England at all. Look, I was 10 and it lasted for a day or two, okay?
Grrr
I'm beginning to suspect that gmail doesn’t like me. Or at least doesn't like wowway's email server. I tired to send my elf an email to make sure I had everything set up, it didn't arrive, and I find that those notes went into the spam folder. A friend that uses gmail was having a few of my notes bounce into her gmail spam folder as well. Very annoying.
On a lighter note. I can use the keyboard on this laptop just as well as a normal keyboard. That is to say I’m making typos every other word, but I’ve got spell check and I should be okay.
On a lighter note. I can use the keyboard on this laptop just as well as a normal keyboard. That is to say I’m making typos every other word, but I’ve got spell check and I should be okay.
Friday, June 26, 2009
5 Things that aren't really connected.
5 Things that aren't really connected. 1. I have all my computer things now. Hard drive, bag, computer, thumb drive*, and DVD drive are all here. Everything works okay. The mouse that came with my bag is the smallest and cutest one I've ever seen. Everything is red, it's little, it's adorable. I’ve still got to look up a few things, set up a few things, but really we’re good.
*It was included, I didn't actually want it. The included movie took up half the drive and it wasn't even widescreen. My computer has a 16x9 screen!
2. Mark Sanford thinks he’s King David now. The insanity just never ends.
3. I am less affected by current celebrity deaths than I was by the death of my grandmother last year. I was barely affected by the death of my grandmother because I'd made my peace with it long before it happened.
4. I think if you're a Michael Jackson fan you should walk away from the news and not look back for the next week. There's going to be speculation about his death, with tabloid types deciding to say it was drugs whether it was or not, and then we'll have the fight over his estate. It's going to be ugly, really ugly. I'm already avoiding any news stories about it because I don't want to see that.
5. I got Josie Long's DVD Trying is Good, which is a really good bit of stand up. I've come to the conclusion that the reason I like comedians like Josie and Eddie Izzard isn't just that they're quirky and eccentric. Being quirky and eccentric helps of course, but there is more to it than that. I like them because they actually LIKE things. If you can, get some of their stuff (Ask me nice and I'll get you some audio) and you'll find that instead of being angry about things or hating things, it's all about the stuff they love. I like the idea of someone being FOR something. It also occurs to me that being positive on things and still being funny means you have to work harder to get to the joke. Also, Josie is cute as hell. The DVD is region 0 so anyone can play it anywhere in the world, there is a second program and a commentary on the disc and it's only £9, which comes to about $20US.
*It was included, I didn't actually want it. The included movie took up half the drive and it wasn't even widescreen. My computer has a 16x9 screen!
2. Mark Sanford thinks he’s King David now. The insanity just never ends.
3. I am less affected by current celebrity deaths than I was by the death of my grandmother last year. I was barely affected by the death of my grandmother because I'd made my peace with it long before it happened.
4. I think if you're a Michael Jackson fan you should walk away from the news and not look back for the next week. There's going to be speculation about his death, with tabloid types deciding to say it was drugs whether it was or not, and then we'll have the fight over his estate. It's going to be ugly, really ugly. I'm already avoiding any news stories about it because I don't want to see that.
5. I got Josie Long's DVD Trying is Good, which is a really good bit of stand up. I've come to the conclusion that the reason I like comedians like Josie and Eddie Izzard isn't just that they're quirky and eccentric. Being quirky and eccentric helps of course, but there is more to it than that. I like them because they actually LIKE things. If you can, get some of their stuff (Ask me nice and I'll get you some audio) and you'll find that instead of being angry about things or hating things, it's all about the stuff they love. I like the idea of someone being FOR something. It also occurs to me that being positive on things and still being funny means you have to work harder to get to the joke. Also, Josie is cute as hell. The DVD is region 0 so anyone can play it anywhere in the world, there is a second program and a commentary on the disc and it's only £9, which comes to about $20US.
Thursday, June 25, 2009
Trust me
If a floating head in a tube and his robot companion ask you to help their little group of teenagers in the fight against evil, my advice is to decline.
Politely, but firmly decline the offer.
Seriously, there are somethings you just don't want to be a part of.
EDIT: The worst part is the (often primary) color coded spandex and those silly themed helmets.
Politely, but firmly decline the offer.
Seriously, there are somethings you just don't want to be a part of.
EDIT: The worst part is the (often primary) color coded spandex and those silly themed helmets.
Liberty's Child (Day Fourteen)
Liberty’s Child
A Jack Collier Mystery
By Brett N. Lashuay
Look here for last week’s entry!
Day Fourteen: Five Long Minutes
I was getting to be a little pissed to be honest. I’d had about four hours of sleep before getting to the office, and that was just in order to surprise Debbie. I’d been in pretty constant motion all day, I couldn’t even remember if I’d eaten that day. Now this simple little trip to take Columbia home had turned into another total and complete cluster fuck where I was reduced to crouching down behind what remained of my car, which was less than a year old I’d just like to point out. I can’t say I was scared because at some point fear had been totally overtaken with resentment.
I looked around the front of the car and noticed that both headlights had managed to stay on, which meant that they couldn’t really see me if I stayed more or less behind them. One of them started towards the car, looking like he wasn’t going to wait for the police to show up before committing his kidnapping. I stepped around the car and fired a round at his chest and ran back behind the car. He fell to the ground and they blindly shot at the space where I had been, the bullets zipping through empty space and cutting into the trees and weeds. When they stopped the sound echoed for a while.
One of them then carefully snapped two shots off and with each of them they took out each of the headlights, which returned us to something like darkness. That didn’t really bother me though, because I still had three rounds left and if I was lucky they wouldn’t expect me to come out from the same side of the car again. I stepped forward and something smacked against the back of my head.
I didn’t pass out, but my knees did buckle, which was bad enough. I fell to the ground and the Marley left my hand for a moment. There was then a silenced pistol shot which caused the dirt at the back of my head to explode. I guessed I must have just been killed but was somehow still trapped in my body. The shell landed on my arm and rolled off to the ground. A second working of the gun’s mechanism and the ground popped again and again the shell landed on my arm and rolled into the crook of my elbow.
It occurred to me I wasn’t dead when a soft and feminine hand reached down with painted nails and took the shells from the ground. I could smell her perfume as she crouched and while I was pretty much frozen to the spot my brain was still making a record of things. I noticed a braid of gold hair drift into view and something that felt like breast in my back as the person who had taken their vengeance out against the earth next to my head spoke in my ear.
There was a sound of people walking up to the car, which was a pretty strong indicator that I was going to have to go and snatch the person I’d just snatched back again. That was annoying, but I didn’t really want to show it at the moment.
I will admit that I had a pretty good idea who it was long before she spoke. The speaking that just confirmed what I had suspected. Her voice was soft, warm and alluring. It was the sort of voice you wanted to have whispering things into your ear. I’m not sure if the things she actually said were quite what I wanted, but it was nice to get to hear them anyway.
“Now you just lay there quietly beautiful.” She said with lips that would look like a sport’s car’s paint job. That is they would look slick, red, and ready for action. “If you get up and do anymore shooting, I really will have to let Mister Cat kill you.”
“Who the hell are you?” I heard Columbia ask and then a scuffle began in the tipped car. “No! Let go!”
“No moving hero.” The voice said and something that felt very much like a pistol barrel pressed into the back of my head.
“No god damn it!” Columbia shouted and someone hit her.
The person holding the gun to the back of my head got up and left. I looked behind me, found that I was alone and grabbed the Marley. I stood up as silently as I could and steadied the gun with both hands. I pulled the trigger and put a single round through the head of the person who was dragging Columbia towards the SUV. I was amazed to see there were five of them, which meant that SUV must have felt like a clown car. Columbia shot away towards the car, but the owner of the voice and gun ran out into the street and struck her across the jaw with the butt of her pistol, which she then leveled at me. The paint job of the car suffered some more damage, just to the left of me. It was enough to make me shrink for a moment but I stood back up and shot once more with the gun, sadly hitting nothing but the side of the SUV.
“I thought you got him.” Someone said in an accusing tone.
“Well if you’re so smart you can stay with Mister Cat and kill him.” Amy Heart’s voice said angrily.
The door slammed and the SUV drove away quickly. I knew that there must be two of them, and Mister Chester Cat was going to be one of them. I patted my pockets down again, looking for anything that might be useful. I had my pocket knife, the punch dagger and my Marley with one shot left.
“Come on Professor.” Mister Cat’s voice said walking towards the car. “You can bore him to death with your lecture on William the Bastard.”
I came around the back of the car and banged into the man who must have been the professor. I put the gun under his chin and shot him through the head. He collapsed to the ground and the tire next to me popped suddenly. I ran around to the front of the car and heard Cat laughing to himself. I’d dropped the Marley and was opening my pocket knife with my right hand when another round hit the side of the car.
“That would be your last round Mister Collier.” Cat said and the black top near me popped from the shots he clearly fired from over the top of the car.
I slid close to the car and a thought occurred to me. I pushed on top of the car and it was about a precariously balanced as I thought it was. The car rolled towards where I hoped Cat was standing at that moment. He shouted as the car began to roll and I heard cracking and snapping as it went into the ditch. The problem was that those were tree limbs and not human. That is, if Mister Cat is indeed human, an idea I’m still holding some reservations about.
“Now that was just naughty.” He said, his smile not drifting for a moment. He always looked like Conrad Veidt in that one movie to me.
“I’m sure it was.” I nodded to him.
“Going to have to kill you know.” He said, and in an unexpected piece of theatrics, he raised the gun and placed both hands on it in order to bring it down with perfect aim.
I might not be the brightest thing, but I’m certainly not dumb enough to just stand there and get shot. I ran to the car again and felt my shirt sleeve tug as I jumped behind the car. I checked my arm and when I was sort of safely behind the car and found that I hadn’t actually been shot. He was just toying with me, so I decided to come out and fight him. I jumped out from behind the car as he came close enough and slashed at him, missing him by miles of course.
He kicked me in the chest, which knocked me back hard enough that I fell against the side of the car and slumped to the ground. I’d hit the passenger side door and had slid down to my butt, sitting in the wet grass. He walked up to me, holding his gun at an odd angle so that he was looking directly down the barrel, but keeping it only about six inches from his face. It made him look like a badly drawn comic book villain, gracing the cover of something where the hero wore a cape and solved crime with a catamite by his side.
“Put your little jack knife down for me.” He said and I tossed it gently to one side, but carefully enough that I’d be able to grab it again quickly. “I’m going to enjoy this.”
“Are you?” I asked as he stood over me, the barrel of his gun about two inches from my head.
“Yes.” He said nodding. “I never will understand her fixation with you, but now that you’re gone she’ll act like a proper lady again.”
“Oh.” I said.
“She really doesn’t think right when you’re around.” He leaned closer in order to confide in me.
“Women, huh?” I asked, and he laughed a rotten meat flavored laugh right in my face.
I ducked my head to one side and pushed my left hand forward while grabbing his right hand with mine. I stabbed him in the side with the punch dagger, well below the ribs and was satisfied to hear him give a yelp. I then yanked it out of his side and stabbed his wrist, just below the hand bones, right between the upper arm bones. He shouted, and tried to pull away from me, but I pulled harder and smacked his face into the side of the car. I yanked the knife out of his arm and moved as quickly as I could for my pocket knife again. I then gave Cat a good hard kick in the face, which sent him rolling away from the car. I got up, holding the pocket knife down behind my arm so that I could just up and stab him without his knowing I had it. The tip had broken off my punch dagger, but most of it was still there.
Cat stood up slowly, as if there was something that had caused him great pain. Humans can feel pain, but so can a slug. He was wet from the dew covered grass and his own blood and shook his hands a bit. He looked at me with disgust, the permanent smile finally gone from his head along with one of his front teeth. He looked now as if he were just disappointed in me for not being able to understand the joke.
“You dumb son of a bitch.” He muttered and pulled the right side of his coat open, which exposed another pistol.
His left hand reached for the gun and I leapt towards him with all the strength and speed I had left. I stabbed his upper arm with the punch dagger again, pinning his left arm to his chest and more or less body checked him. We both went down and I brought the pocket knife around, half forgetting it was there. I was thinking of just punching him in the back of the head, just below the skull, which is where the knife ended up. I must have gone into his brain stem with the dagger and it was forced further when his head banged the ground with it in it. He made some noises as we landed on the ground and I twisted the knife so savagely that I heard a snap and my right hand came free. I looked at the beaten up knife and found that the impact had broken the blade away from the body of the knife. It had broken free and all I had left was the handle. At least the blade didn’t actually break though. I could continue to have faith in these knives.
I threw the end of the knife away, opened his coat and grabbed the gun from his holster. I shot him twice in the chest, and then deciding to be a completist I gave him a round in the head as well. The gun was silent, the only noises coming from the working gears of the weapon. I then was surprised to find that I was talking to the corpse, which is an odd thing for anyone to do.
“That’s right bitch.” I said pointing the gun at my fallen foe again. “That’s what you get, you fuck with me. I fuck your day up motherfucker. C’mon, let’s see you start some shit now bitch.”
I managed to stop before I started giggling, which would have led to full blown laughing which would become screaming in no time. I almost had to slap my hand over my mouth, but I stopped the torrent of nonsense before it got too far. I didn’t want to be found kneeling over a dead body and screaming up into the heavens, it wouldn’t have reflected well on my profession.
I was about to just drop the gun and leave it at that, but I walked to the smashed up Mercedes and looked in to see if anyone was alive in there. It didn’t look like there was, so I just dropped the gun into the lap of the fellow I’d shot in the head about a hundred years ago. I looked around at the carnage of both men and cars and for a moment wished I smoked. I could have asked Liberty for one of her packs of French cigarettes which she to this day has flown over twice a week.
She could have given me a lighter or some matches to go with the tin of fifteen hand rolled beauties if I had just asked. I could have asked her, right after she’d taken me to the very edge of heaven, which she had done that afternoon about a thousand years ago or so. This afternoon’s love making seemed to have happened so long ago that it might have been some family legend that happened to some long ago Collier in which ever village in Wales he left to come here.
I pulled my cell phone out, looking around for police lights as I did so. I called Alice, listening to the phone ring over and over again before she finally picked it up. She must have let it ring about three hundred times, or at least four before answering. When she did, it occurred to me how late at night it was and that some people actually go to bed at night.
“Hello?” She said, sounding groggy, as if she’d been asleep. It must have been heaven, to actually have been asleep. I was so tired, but I couldn’t sleep yet.
“Hi Alice.” I said trying not to sound like a panicky idiot. “LION pretended to kidnap Columbia, now UNICORN really has.”
“What?” She probably didn’t know she was shouting, but she did.
“They are still fighting for the crown, and I think Columbia is somehow playing the part of the brown bread.” I managed, and finally saw something that looked like the flashing lights of the police coming towards me. “Listen, I’m surrounded by dead bodies, and I think I’m about to be arrested. Do you think you could triangulate my position or something and come really fast and get me? I don’t really want to leave her in that spot.”
“Don’t hang up your phone.” She said. “I can probably manage the rest from there.”
“Thanks beautiful.” I said. “When all this is over, if you want, I will take you on a date where ever you want to go.”
“Will you really?” She asked.
“You’ll just have to remind me I said that because I think I’m currently suffering from a concussion and I haven’t slept… um, ever.” The lights came close enough that I could just about hear the engines, since they were driving without sirens at the moment. It was a single red bubble on in the center of the roof, which meant it was a state trooper. “I’ve got to go, the police are here.”
“Alright.” She said, “I’ll talk to you in a bit, don’t hang up.”
“I won’t.” and stuffed the phone into my pocket.
“Are you alright sir?” One of the officers asked as the car came to a halt and turned to block traffic.
“No.” I said shaking my head. “Not even a little bit alright. My name is Jack Collier, I’m a private investigator. My client and I were driving back to her home when we were attacked, she’s been kidnapped. There are a few bodies in that Mercedes over there, and there is the body of a dead hitman over there near my car which… was beautiful before the whole hitman kidnapping my client thing came up. I have a private investigator’s license in my back pocket, but at the moment I would really like to be taken to a hospital because I think I might be suffering a head injury.”
“Okay sir.” The officer said getting out of his car with his hand on his side arm. “I’m officer Jim Jefferies of the State Police. I’ll need to check you for weapons. Would you step over to the car and put your hands on the hood please?”
“Oh, yeah, sure. That’s fine.” I said walked to the car putting my hands on the hood. “I don’t have anything now, but if you find a Marley thirty-eight or a Webley-Fosbery automatic revolver around here, those are mine and both valuable antiques. There’s also at least one silenced pistol that has my prints on it, maybe two. I think they’re Ruger twenty twos, but I could be wrong.”
He went over me quickly, running over me with his flashlight and checking the two holsters with his hands. Having decided I was clean he walked to the car and opened the door to the back. I looked at him and decided that this guy was trying to be just a nice guy.
“Listen, I’ve hurt my head and I’ve had a long day. If I sit in the back I might lie down and if I lie down, I might go to sleep. Would it be okay if I sat in the front?”
He looked at me for a long moment and then at the situation around him. I tried to look pathetic and tired, which was not a stretch for me. He then decided that he probably shouldn’t take too long to decided anything.
“Yeah.” He nodded, “That’ll be fine.”
He helped me get into his front seat and drove me to a hospital, keeping me awake by asking me all about the case. I told him as much as I would like to have the police know, which was pretty much everything beyond the very personal details. For example he didn’t need to know who I’d had sex with, either today or any other day, so I left details like that out. Still I’d nearly fallen asleep by the time he got me to the hospital, where there were lots of people who could keep me up.
This is part fourteen of twenty-three, come back next week for part fifteen and every Thursday until we're done to see what happens next. If you get lost, one of the tags here should help you. The Liberty tag will take you to the story while the Jack Tag will take you to Part One of every story we post here
Wednesday, June 24, 2009
Welcome to Corneria. I like swords.
Next month a new pair of Highlander katanas comes out. I'm actually interested in the Connor sword since it actually has more than a passing resemblance to the movie prop for once. There is also a new Duncan sword too, but I'm less interested in that.
Now if they'd just make a proper vesrion of the Macleod Claymore, rather than that crappy... thing they've been trying to pass off then I could die a happy highlander fanboy at last.*
*No, I couldn't really. No Highlander fan can ever be truly happy. No matter how they try to chop or change it, Highlander 2 still happened. It was still done to us. The Renegade version was no salve to our wounds either. Star Wars fans don't know what disappointment is. Episode One was fucking Citizen Kane when put up next to The Quickening. Midichlorians? Try Ziest motherfucker! Yeah, the immortals are all aliens now! I watched those two movies for the first time back to back.
...You don't know what pain is. Part three and four didn't help much either.
Now if they'd just make a proper vesrion of the Macleod Claymore, rather than that crappy... thing they've been trying to pass off then I could die a happy highlander fanboy at last.*
*No, I couldn't really. No Highlander fan can ever be truly happy. No matter how they try to chop or change it, Highlander 2 still happened. It was still done to us. The Renegade version was no salve to our wounds either. Star Wars fans don't know what disappointment is. Episode One was fucking Citizen Kane when put up next to The Quickening. Midichlorians? Try Ziest motherfucker! Yeah, the immortals are all aliens now! I watched those two movies for the first time back to back.
...You don't know what pain is. Part three and four didn't help much either.
Oh, okay.
So Sanford wasn't eaten by Cthulu, he went to South America. Not kidding. Evidently everything his staff said was wrong. Appalachian Trail. Argentina. VERY easy to confuse the two. They both begin with A after all.
Still, why does a guy go to South America, on Father's Day Weekend, doesn't tell his wife or four kids, or anyone on his staff, or anyone in the government, for a week? One question answered, so many opened.
Still, why does a guy go to South America, on Father's Day Weekend, doesn't tell his wife or four kids, or anyone on his staff, or anyone in the government, for a week? One question answered, so many opened.
Tuesday, June 23, 2009
Question
Is there going to be a picture of Gov. Sanford reading a newspaper tomorrow? Perhaps a video of him discussing the latest sports game? It just seems odd that he vanished, his wife hasn't even heard from him, but his staff claims they've been talking to him every few minutes. But the LT. Gov's office claims that's not true. And why a plane in Atlanta?
What I find so odd is that no one seems to be able to find the guy. Truth be told, they don't even seem to be looking that hard. Should we be worried? Should we not be worried? Has his staff killed him? Was he about to be arrested? Was it because of Naked Hiking Day? Is it Cthulu? It's Cthulu isn't it?
What I find so odd is that no one seems to be able to find the guy. Truth be told, they don't even seem to be looking that hard. Should we be worried? Should we not be worried? Has his staff killed him? Was he about to be arrested? Was it because of Naked Hiking Day? Is it Cthulu? It's Cthulu isn't it?
Played out list
I started compiling this list in my head about a year ago, and I started writing it about a month ago. I just keep seeing things that make me think "Are we still into that?"
None of these things are really bad, in fact most of them are really cool. It's just that they're so popular that I've grown tired of them. Some of them weren't that strong to begin with, some just got over used. This is the start of my list of things that are totally played out for me. You may not agree, but just remember you're wrong. You want Fancy to start thinking you're Betty White? Alright then.
Before we talk about what’s on my list of things that are played out, lets talk about one item that isn’t on this list.
Dr. Who.
If this were 1988, Dr. Who wouldn’t be on this list because I was never a Who fan to begin with. However, Dr. Who did get played out and then some. In fact, after the concept was totally played out, they went on for another Doctor or two. HOWEVER! Then the Doctor went into the wilderness for about 15 years, returning only once and then it was just long enough to discover it wasn’t time to return yet. There’s more to the story than that, but you can read wikipedia on your own time. After those long years out in the cold, Dr. Who came back as a different sort of show while maintaining the things that had always caused fans to love it so. It’s rare a program can return in this fashion and still be as popular if not more popular than it was originally.
I will call this the Who Method and for some of the things I’m about to suggest it would do a lot to reinvigorate the franchise in question. I’d almost say that the Who Method worked for Bond, but while I like Daniel Craig I think Bond should have spent a few more years in the wilderness to fully wipe itself clean.
That’s enough of the set up though, let us now view the list.
Batman
Started: With the 1989 movie. (unless you’re actually a comic book reader and then it started with Dark Knight Returns a few years earlier)
Since the Tim Burton Movie, Batman has been a permanent fixture. There has always been a movie on the horizon, a TV show, some major event in the comic books, or even a new video game that is ready to assault the faithful and make them remember who their favorite goth-emo lunatic is. That’s part of the problem though, Batman never goes away and his character traits have basically narrowed down to a guy who hangs out in a basement wearing tights with young boys. Frank Miller’s Goddamn Batman is almost the culmination of everything Batman has become in the last 20 years. I haven’t seen anything new or interesting said about the idea of Batman in some time. The closest thing to a new idea was the whole Az-Bat thing. Do you want to go back to those days again? Even when you see what looks like a new idea, it probably isn’t. It’s just been this is the first time it’s been said in one of the movies, or this is the first time it’s been in a cartoon, but Batman hasn’t had anything new to add for a while now.
Solution: Batman needs the Who Method I think. A few years away, let him relax for a while, and then bring in some people with a sense of humor to write him. I’m just asking for a change before he gets into cutting and crying that no one understands him to his LiveJournal. He already wears all that black eye make up.
Wolverine (and by extension the X-Men in general)
Started: The early to mid-Eighties.
It began in the eighties, but it exploded in the nineties. Wolverine has been a joke for a long time among those who aren’t smitten with the shorter than average mutant. Those who don’t love him have seen his popularity rise and fall, but he’s been pretty much on the rise ever since the X-Men movies got going. One could argue that the whole X-Men thing, mutants, X-Books… all of it is played out. They almost were destroyed by the great comic book crash of the nineties, but they managed to survive and reach popular fame instead of just cult status. However, Wolverine is just boring. Okay, he’s got the attitudes of an animal, he’s a loner and he’s got them claws of his. That’s about all everything, right? Oh, the memory thing, forgot about that. Actually, the popularity of the character is one of the major things that ruined him. He was in every issue of every book Marvel published for a while there, I got sick of looking at him. The hints and teasing of his origins just bored me because I knew they’d never tell it, since mystery is so much better, and when they did tell the backstory, it sucked.
Solution: I was never that interested in Wolverine, so I don’t know if some time in the wilderness would help. Besides, he spends all his free time in the wilderness already.
Final Fantasy 7
Started: In 1997 on the Sony Playstation.
Let’s get the first joke out of the way. If it’s a final fantasy, how can there be so many of them? If it’s the final fantasy of this world, WHY WON’T IT END? Seven wasn’t even that good a game. The graphics sucked the characters were cardboard cut outs, the story was bland and you only get a chubby for Sephiroth because he popped your “interesting bad guy” cherry. Allow me to let you in on a little secret, your first is rarely your best. Move on. And don’t get me started on how the gravity of that world must be about half what it is on earth to allow them to carry those stupid swords. Seriously, compensate much? It has a movie, some sequels, remakes, comic books, and every time I get tricked into seeing a Dear Friends concert the entire audience wets themselves when they play One Winged Angel at the end. I can’t believe how strong the smell of urine suddenly got when all these guys saw a picture of a video game character on a screen in a concert hall.
Solution: Nothing can help this. It must be destroyed. Purged from the earth with fire LOVERLY FIRE!
Spider-Man
Started: It didn’t really get going hardcore until the movie, but it started long before that.
Spider-Man is a personal favorite of mine, and he’s been played out for a while really. I felt he was played out before the movie came along top be honest, what with him being shoe horned into every book Wolverine wasn’t in that week. They’d put him in other books just in the hopes of boosting sales of crappy titles they knew were going no where. He was always one of the toys when Marvel felt like pimping their line to a toy company. For about 15 years, there have always been Spider-Man toys on sale and Spidey’s branded merch has been chocking K-Marts for at least as long as Batman has. There were also a handful of cartoons, but I didn’t watch any of them so I can’t really comment. Spider-Man has been almost as ubiquitous as Batman has for a good long time, but he lacked the one ting Batman had because the Spider-Man movie… had a history. But when Sam Raimi came along and said he didn’t know the meaning of the word Widowmaker and was a little hazy on what viscosity meant too, then Spider-Man exploded in a way that was really impressive seeing as the marketing shrapnel had pretty much scattered all over the area already. And then there was One More Day, but we don’t want to talk about that right now. We don’t want to talk about what the bad man did to Spidey and we don’t want to show on the doll where he hurt us, we just want the evil man gone and we want Mary Jane back. Krusty is coming, Krusty is coming, Krusty is coming…
Solution: Fire Quesada. Retcon One More Day out of existence. Let Spidey rest for a while, he could use the rest.
Princesses
Started: Tricky. Princesses have been around for sometime.
The whole concept of princesses just pisses me off. Every girl in fantasy is a princess, every girl in sci-fi manages to be a princess, every fairy tale has a princess and we’re all supposed to tell our daughters that they're pretty princesses who will get to ride ponies who are also princesses if they’re very good and eat their broccoli… which is also a princess. It’s not that I have something against royalty, I just think they should be lined up against a wall and shot. It’s that I get annoyed when it’s always a princess and never a normal girl. Oh sure, you can point out the ONE movie where it wasn’t a princess, but I can then point out a dozen movies where it was. More often than not, the princess isn’t even really a person in the stories. She’s an object to be bartered, won, stolen or otherwise exchanged. Even when she is sort of proactive, you know deep down she’s just going to be a submissive royal person when the adventure is done, and then you marry (read: dominate) her to your mighty will. You’ll get to marry her and live like her parasitic relatives sucking off the labor of the working classes like a leech attached to a man’s leg all the while crushing the vibrant spirit that first attracted you. Until one night, drunk on whisky and the virtue of some peasant woman who only sleeps with you to prevent you from selling her children into slavery, but of course you couldn’t get it up because you’re such a pathetic drunk, you beat the princess to death with an arm chair, proving you never ever saw her as a person in the first place but only another possession. Some great hero you turned out to be. You disgust me. I don’t have unresolved issues! YOU have unresolved issues. I’m fine!
Solution: Stop with the princesses. No. Really. Stop. Just have a girl doing well for herself who isn’t of royal personage. Drop the royalty angle all together and quit social climbing because the tofts will never accept you anyway. Just become democratic and let the normal girls in on the extraordinary adventures. And start writing some decent parts for women. SRSLY!
Zombies
Started: Well, let’s say with Night of the Living Dead
I love a good zombie movie, and I love a good zombie game. Night, Dawn and Day of the dead are some fine movies. Dead Rising (Otis not withstanding*) is a hell of a lot of fun to play. You see what I did there though? I left out about 900 movies and 87 games, because a lot of zombie stuff is just plain old bad. Even stuff with a big budget can be bad, though the advertising budgets ensure someone will get wrapped up in the hype and claim it’s the best thing since Wayne Newton. Zombies have been getting a lot of attention the last few years and that means they’re getting played out pretty badly. What I find odd though is that it’s only in movies and games that I feel this way. Zombie Walks? Still sound like a good idea and a lot of fun, even if they don’t have the same impact that they did a few years ago.
*Seriously! Can I take your call later Otis? I’m not being rude, there’s just a zombie trying to eat my face at the moment.
Solution: Give it three to five years and the whole zombie thing will probably shuffle back to the grave for a few years on its own. Zombies have been played out before, they went to the wilderness, they’re smarted than you think.
There are probably other things, but these are all I can think of right now.
None of these things are really bad, in fact most of them are really cool. It's just that they're so popular that I've grown tired of them. Some of them weren't that strong to begin with, some just got over used. This is the start of my list of things that are totally played out for me. You may not agree, but just remember you're wrong. You want Fancy to start thinking you're Betty White? Alright then.
Before we talk about what’s on my list of things that are played out, lets talk about one item that isn’t on this list.
Dr. Who.
If this were 1988, Dr. Who wouldn’t be on this list because I was never a Who fan to begin with. However, Dr. Who did get played out and then some. In fact, after the concept was totally played out, they went on for another Doctor or two. HOWEVER! Then the Doctor went into the wilderness for about 15 years, returning only once and then it was just long enough to discover it wasn’t time to return yet. There’s more to the story than that, but you can read wikipedia on your own time. After those long years out in the cold, Dr. Who came back as a different sort of show while maintaining the things that had always caused fans to love it so. It’s rare a program can return in this fashion and still be as popular if not more popular than it was originally.
I will call this the Who Method and for some of the things I’m about to suggest it would do a lot to reinvigorate the franchise in question. I’d almost say that the Who Method worked for Bond, but while I like Daniel Craig I think Bond should have spent a few more years in the wilderness to fully wipe itself clean.
That’s enough of the set up though, let us now view the list.
Batman
Started: With the 1989 movie. (unless you’re actually a comic book reader and then it started with Dark Knight Returns a few years earlier)
Since the Tim Burton Movie, Batman has been a permanent fixture. There has always been a movie on the horizon, a TV show, some major event in the comic books, or even a new video game that is ready to assault the faithful and make them remember who their favorite goth-emo lunatic is. That’s part of the problem though, Batman never goes away and his character traits have basically narrowed down to a guy who hangs out in a basement wearing tights with young boys. Frank Miller’s Goddamn Batman is almost the culmination of everything Batman has become in the last 20 years. I haven’t seen anything new or interesting said about the idea of Batman in some time. The closest thing to a new idea was the whole Az-Bat thing. Do you want to go back to those days again? Even when you see what looks like a new idea, it probably isn’t. It’s just been this is the first time it’s been said in one of the movies, or this is the first time it’s been in a cartoon, but Batman hasn’t had anything new to add for a while now.
Solution: Batman needs the Who Method I think. A few years away, let him relax for a while, and then bring in some people with a sense of humor to write him. I’m just asking for a change before he gets into cutting and crying that no one understands him to his LiveJournal. He already wears all that black eye make up.
Wolverine (and by extension the X-Men in general)
Started: The early to mid-Eighties.
It began in the eighties, but it exploded in the nineties. Wolverine has been a joke for a long time among those who aren’t smitten with the shorter than average mutant. Those who don’t love him have seen his popularity rise and fall, but he’s been pretty much on the rise ever since the X-Men movies got going. One could argue that the whole X-Men thing, mutants, X-Books… all of it is played out. They almost were destroyed by the great comic book crash of the nineties, but they managed to survive and reach popular fame instead of just cult status. However, Wolverine is just boring. Okay, he’s got the attitudes of an animal, he’s a loner and he’s got them claws of his. That’s about all everything, right? Oh, the memory thing, forgot about that. Actually, the popularity of the character is one of the major things that ruined him. He was in every issue of every book Marvel published for a while there, I got sick of looking at him. The hints and teasing of his origins just bored me because I knew they’d never tell it, since mystery is so much better, and when they did tell the backstory, it sucked.
Solution: I was never that interested in Wolverine, so I don’t know if some time in the wilderness would help. Besides, he spends all his free time in the wilderness already.
Final Fantasy 7
Started: In 1997 on the Sony Playstation.
Let’s get the first joke out of the way. If it’s a final fantasy, how can there be so many of them? If it’s the final fantasy of this world, WHY WON’T IT END? Seven wasn’t even that good a game. The graphics sucked the characters were cardboard cut outs, the story was bland and you only get a chubby for Sephiroth because he popped your “interesting bad guy” cherry. Allow me to let you in on a little secret, your first is rarely your best. Move on. And don’t get me started on how the gravity of that world must be about half what it is on earth to allow them to carry those stupid swords. Seriously, compensate much? It has a movie, some sequels, remakes, comic books, and every time I get tricked into seeing a Dear Friends concert the entire audience wets themselves when they play One Winged Angel at the end. I can’t believe how strong the smell of urine suddenly got when all these guys saw a picture of a video game character on a screen in a concert hall.
Solution: Nothing can help this. It must be destroyed. Purged from the earth with fire LOVERLY FIRE!
Spider-Man
Started: It didn’t really get going hardcore until the movie, but it started long before that.
Spider-Man is a personal favorite of mine, and he’s been played out for a while really. I felt he was played out before the movie came along top be honest, what with him being shoe horned into every book Wolverine wasn’t in that week. They’d put him in other books just in the hopes of boosting sales of crappy titles they knew were going no where. He was always one of the toys when Marvel felt like pimping their line to a toy company. For about 15 years, there have always been Spider-Man toys on sale and Spidey’s branded merch has been chocking K-Marts for at least as long as Batman has. There were also a handful of cartoons, but I didn’t watch any of them so I can’t really comment. Spider-Man has been almost as ubiquitous as Batman has for a good long time, but he lacked the one ting Batman had because the Spider-Man movie… had a history. But when Sam Raimi came along and said he didn’t know the meaning of the word Widowmaker and was a little hazy on what viscosity meant too, then Spider-Man exploded in a way that was really impressive seeing as the marketing shrapnel had pretty much scattered all over the area already. And then there was One More Day, but we don’t want to talk about that right now. We don’t want to talk about what the bad man did to Spidey and we don’t want to show on the doll where he hurt us, we just want the evil man gone and we want Mary Jane back. Krusty is coming, Krusty is coming, Krusty is coming…
Solution: Fire Quesada. Retcon One More Day out of existence. Let Spidey rest for a while, he could use the rest.
Princesses
Started: Tricky. Princesses have been around for sometime.
The whole concept of princesses just pisses me off. Every girl in fantasy is a princess, every girl in sci-fi manages to be a princess, every fairy tale has a princess and we’re all supposed to tell our daughters that they're pretty princesses who will get to ride ponies who are also princesses if they’re very good and eat their broccoli… which is also a princess. It’s not that I have something against royalty, I just think they should be lined up against a wall and shot. It’s that I get annoyed when it’s always a princess and never a normal girl. Oh sure, you can point out the ONE movie where it wasn’t a princess, but I can then point out a dozen movies where it was. More often than not, the princess isn’t even really a person in the stories. She’s an object to be bartered, won, stolen or otherwise exchanged. Even when she is sort of proactive, you know deep down she’s just going to be a submissive royal person when the adventure is done, and then you marry (read: dominate) her to your mighty will. You’ll get to marry her and live like her parasitic relatives sucking off the labor of the working classes like a leech attached to a man’s leg all the while crushing the vibrant spirit that first attracted you. Until one night, drunk on whisky and the virtue of some peasant woman who only sleeps with you to prevent you from selling her children into slavery, but of course you couldn’t get it up because you’re such a pathetic drunk, you beat the princess to death with an arm chair, proving you never ever saw her as a person in the first place but only another possession. Some great hero you turned out to be. You disgust me. I don’t have unresolved issues! YOU have unresolved issues. I’m fine!
Solution: Stop with the princesses. No. Really. Stop. Just have a girl doing well for herself who isn’t of royal personage. Drop the royalty angle all together and quit social climbing because the tofts will never accept you anyway. Just become democratic and let the normal girls in on the extraordinary adventures. And start writing some decent parts for women. SRSLY!
Zombies
Started: Well, let’s say with Night of the Living Dead
I love a good zombie movie, and I love a good zombie game. Night, Dawn and Day of the dead are some fine movies. Dead Rising (Otis not withstanding*) is a hell of a lot of fun to play. You see what I did there though? I left out about 900 movies and 87 games, because a lot of zombie stuff is just plain old bad. Even stuff with a big budget can be bad, though the advertising budgets ensure someone will get wrapped up in the hype and claim it’s the best thing since Wayne Newton. Zombies have been getting a lot of attention the last few years and that means they’re getting played out pretty badly. What I find odd though is that it’s only in movies and games that I feel this way. Zombie Walks? Still sound like a good idea and a lot of fun, even if they don’t have the same impact that they did a few years ago.
*Seriously! Can I take your call later Otis? I’m not being rude, there’s just a zombie trying to eat my face at the moment.
Solution: Give it three to five years and the whole zombie thing will probably shuffle back to the grave for a few years on its own. Zombies have been played out before, they went to the wilderness, they’re smarted than you think.
There are probably other things, but these are all I can think of right now.
Monday, June 22, 2009
Shallow thought
The Marvelettes' song Please Mr. Postman doesn't mean as much in the age of e-mail and instant cell phone text messages.
Sunday, June 21, 2009
Cougar... look it up, you've got google.
I tried to watch the literal video for Total Eclipse of the Heart, but I just couldn't finish it. For one thing, while she can sort of sing, the girl is nowhere near Bonnie Tyler's voice. She’d need to have her lungs replaced with leaf blowers and smoke a million Lucky Strikes to even approach what Bonnie had going on. The guy who did Take on Me at least sounded sort of like the singer for A-Ha, but this chick is no where near the power or vibe. She was just weak, and reminds me that people think women are pretty much interchangable. It would be like getting Michael Jackson to sing for Meatloaf. Oh and that's not far off from the guy they got to sing for the Loaf in the I'd Do Anything for Love (But I Won't Do That) video. The fact that literal video degenerated into potty humor that just wasn't funny didn't help either.
And besides, do you need a literal translation for the Total Eclipse of The Heart video? Isn't it already clear enough what's going on? Do you really need it spelled out for you?
Let's watch together shall we?
It's pretty simple really...
"In 1983, Bonnie Tyler was everything you ever wanted a cougar to be."
TA-DA!
Seriously, the woman could bring a dead tree to orgasm just by singing to it.
Oh, and the ninjas are in there because ninjas were very "IN" at the time. It has nothing to do with her fucking you with the power of her voice alone.
And besides, do you need a literal translation for the Total Eclipse of The Heart video? Isn't it already clear enough what's going on? Do you really need it spelled out for you?
Let's watch together shall we?
It's pretty simple really...
"In 1983, Bonnie Tyler was everything you ever wanted a cougar to be."
TA-DA!
Seriously, the woman could bring a dead tree to orgasm just by singing to it.
Oh, and the ninjas are in there because ninjas were very "IN" at the time. It has nothing to do with her fucking you with the power of her voice alone.
Executive Decision!
I keep hearing Pluto isn’t a planet, then someone tells me that they decided it is again, then someone else says that wasn’t true and that Pluto really isn’t one and someone else says it’s something called Dwarf Planet which just sounds like making up reasons to get the word planet in there with out admitting that its really a planet.
Well, Fancy*, Me† and Betty WhiteΩ have had enough of your bullshit! It has been decided at an executive meeting that Pluto will once and for all be classified as an appetizer! Betty wanted to go with the more refined sounding hors d'œuvre, but fancy claimed you can’t really do something the size of Pluto in one bite and besides it’s just too simple. In her view hors d'œuvres should be more complicated and not just like a side of nachos for when the planet eaters come.
I should mention that Fancy has been reading the Galactus Fantastic Four stories the last couple of days and keep comparing them to Unicron. I think that's where the whole idea of eating all our planets as a meal came from. I should also add that I’m not really sure that old woman was Betty White, particularly since Fancy had put a wig on her and kept prodding her with the .45 shouting, “Now talk about St. Olaf or you’ll loose more toes!” Come to think of it, when I looked the wallet claimed he was Steve Johnson and was a traveling salesman from Pittsburg.
If I hadn’t spent most of the 80s on drugs (administered by people who claimed to be doctors and later had to leave the country under assumed names to avoid having to help the Popos with their inquiries) this would probably worry me more than it does. At the moment, I’ve been sent up here to type this little announcement and remind you that it could happen to you next, and then I’ve got to go down and work the tazer for Fancy on “Betty” because she doesn’t have thumbs but can demand I “Hit her again!” because she “likes to watch her wriggle.” Despite the fact that she knows it's a man because she's currently wearing his wig.
*The Ruler of the Universe
†stenographer
Ωco-ruler of the universe since 5 minutes ago according to Fancy
Well, Fancy*, Me† and Betty WhiteΩ have had enough of your bullshit! It has been decided at an executive meeting that Pluto will once and for all be classified as an appetizer! Betty wanted to go with the more refined sounding hors d'œuvre, but fancy claimed you can’t really do something the size of Pluto in one bite and besides it’s just too simple. In her view hors d'œuvres should be more complicated and not just like a side of nachos for when the planet eaters come.
I should mention that Fancy has been reading the Galactus Fantastic Four stories the last couple of days and keep comparing them to Unicron. I think that's where the whole idea of eating all our planets as a meal came from. I should also add that I’m not really sure that old woman was Betty White, particularly since Fancy had put a wig on her and kept prodding her with the .45 shouting, “Now talk about St. Olaf or you’ll loose more toes!” Come to think of it, when I looked the wallet claimed he was Steve Johnson and was a traveling salesman from Pittsburg.
If I hadn’t spent most of the 80s on drugs (administered by people who claimed to be doctors and later had to leave the country under assumed names to avoid having to help the Popos with their inquiries) this would probably worry me more than it does. At the moment, I’ve been sent up here to type this little announcement and remind you that it could happen to you next, and then I’ve got to go down and work the tazer for Fancy on “Betty” because she doesn’t have thumbs but can demand I “Hit her again!” because she “likes to watch her wriggle.” Despite the fact that she knows it's a man because she's currently wearing his wig.
*The Ruler of the Universe
†stenographer
Ωco-ruler of the universe since 5 minutes ago according to Fancy
Friday, June 19, 2009
Samurai Movies
A friend mentioned he's starting to watch some Samurai movies and wanted to know what I would suggest. Now I could just rattle off a few titles, but I figured the best thing I could do it list off the movies I have in my collection and give each one a little review so you can all decide if anything strikes your fancies. I'm going to link the versions I have, but you may need to find your own depending on region or availability. Since I’ve got a region free player I can get things from where ever and I do. So check around, don’t just grab whatever I linked.
With Kurosawa as a base, we'll start with his movies.
Seven Samurai is a great movie, but for its time it was actually an Anti-Chambra. Most the samurai dramas around at that time dealt with the machinations of the high and the mighty. There were greatly movies about royalty and nobility and what not. This is a movie where the high and the mighty don't exist. Kurosawa took almost every convention around at the time and turned it on it's ear, which makes it even more interesting.
After that, you'll want to look into Yojimbo and Sanjuro. The first is a black comedy where the rules that were upset by Seven Samurai are jumped on until they're smashed into little tiny pieces. Sanjuro is a more traditional chambra, but with the main character from Yojimbo thrown in just to see what he'll do.
I've seen The Hidden Fortress, but I don't actually own it. It's good, it's got the inspiration for R2-D2 and C3PO in it.
After those you can get into his Shakespeare adaptations, which include Ran (A version of King Lear) and Throne of Blood which is Macbeth. Both are loose adaptations, both are greatly interesting but I wouldn't personally put them up as his best films, but you've got to consider the company they're in when I say that.
Rashomon is the last of his films that I have. This is more drama than action, and more an examination of how points of view differ from person to person.
Then you have the Saumrai Trilogy directed by Hiroshi Inagaki
Samurai I: Musashi Miyamoto, Samurai II: Duel at Ichijoji Temple and Samurai III: Duel at Ganryu Island
These are good, but they aren't my favorite. Part of it is that I find when I watch them I want to do it all in order and that's about 5 hours out of your day right there. Also, the Criterion DVDs are very dark. I don't know if it's like this for all versions, but I have to put the brightness all the way up to see the movie. That's a huge distraction.
Harakiri should actually be called Seppuku but Criterion has a thing about using the titles the movie first was sold under in this country. This is a very good drama about hypocrisy and honor, with only a little bit of action. That is one of the questions you need to ask yourself before starting. Do you want action or do you want drama? Most movies have a little of both, but they will invariably favor one over the other and when I mean favor I'm saying there will only be a little of one and a lot of the other. This one is more drama than action, but it's very good.
Samurai Fiction is a send up of all things Chambra. It's got action, it's got comedy, it's got rock music and ninjas. It's played like a tribute to old Kurosawa films, but it shows it's hand in places and revels it's comedic intent.
Ronin Gai Is one hell of a great movie. It's like they called up every samurai trope and asked it to come over and play in what I can't help but feel would make a great film noir if someone clever put their mind to it. There isn't a ton of action until the end, but when it starts it really clicks. The drama and action are both really good, but this movie favors drama a bit more.
Goyokin is another good movie. This one is action and triller. Not so much drama, but a good deal of fun.
When the Last Sword Is Drawn is almost all drama. There is some action, but this is really a character study movie. A very enjoyable one though, I really like this.
The next three are all by Yôji Yamada and unless I'm wrong, I think they're all based on the writings of one guy. I think the first two are even based on the same book.
The Twilight Samurai is all drama and some romance.
The Hidden Blade feel like a remake of Twilight Samurai, but I maintain they're different enough to enjoy.
Likewise Love and Honor is all romance and drama. It's not the same basic story again though, this one is different even if there is a basic pattern all three follow.
I only have Kitano Takeshi's version of Zatoichi in my collection, but if the rest of the series is like this then I can recomend it for the action side. Even though this is clearly a Kitano movie, it's very much an action period peice and it's good for that. Not so much for heavy drama. Good story though, and good action.
Now a while ago I bought two collections of movies on the cheap. The price tag is a little misleading because the movies are actually well transferred and good quality. What happened was the company that digitized them went under and this second company grabbed the digital masters for a song and now can sell them extra cheap.
Shogun Collection came with four movies, some good, some not so good.
Swords Of Vengeance (or Fall of Ako Castle) Is the best out of these. It's a telling of the 47 Ronin and is a solid period piece without some of the silliness that drowns out the rest of these two collections.
Shogun's Samurai is the second best in the collection, in my view anyway. It's a good action drama, mixing intrigue with fighting. It dips into the waters of silliness once in a while, but not offensively. It's just not a serious as some of the others.
Shogun's Shadow probably isn't bad, but I got bored with it and switched it off about halfway through. After that, I just never went back to it. I probably should, but at the time I'd watched everything in this package and the next package and I was getting a little tired of the whole thing. It's probably a fine movie, I don't actually know.
Shogun's Ninja showed up in the same package and it's laughable. Go watch it on Joost, at the one hour and one minute mark the hero starts doing interpretive dance as a form of mourning. It's actually not such a bad movie, but it's more of a ninja movie than a samurai flick. It's very clear where the main competition was because this is much trying to be a Kung Fu movie.
The other package was The Samurai Collection and it came with less serious fare.
G.I. Samurai isn't really bad per say, it's just not much of a samurai movie. It's more clashing modern and ancient warfare.
Legend Of The Eight Samurai is more of a fantasy story. It is at least a samurai movie though, albeit a samurai fantasy.
Ninja Wars isn't really a samurai movie either. It's a completely insane movie involving head swaps, evil wizards, and all sorts of really weird shit. Seriously, they cut off two women's heads and then put them on each other's bodies. And instead of people being declared 'straight jacket forever' crazy, because of magic, it works and they both live through the rest of the movie. It's a pretty batshit film.
There is an unconnected trilogy by Yuji Shimomura which carries a lot of the same themes and ideas. They're also all about the same level of action mixed with comic book ideas. These are mangas come to life.
Versus has guns, zombies, swords, demons, blood, gore, and almost no plot. If it had car chases and velociraptors I would claim we could just stop making movies forever because perfection had been achieved. I think the total budget for this movie was a $1.75 so it looks super cheap, but it's fun.
Azumi is based on a manga and it holds up well as an action movie. Some of the fights are pretty neat, some are a little unconvincing, over all it's fun. Azumi 2 is off to one side because someone else directed it. It's not quite as good as the first one, but it's still a good manga come to life action movie.
Death Trance is all kinds of goofy, but a lot of fun. It's sort of post apocalypse fantasy with guns, swords, demons, guns and a guy dragging a coffin around with a little girl. Yes, it's dumb, but I like it dumb sometimes.
I'm going to throw in Shinobi, even though it's really another manga inspired ninja flick because it works with enough of these. It's another action filled story light number sort of Romeo and Juliet style.
I'm not putting in The Last Samurai or Le Samouraï for various reasons. With the first, it's not so much a samurai movie as it is a mix of Glory and Dances with Wolves set in Japan. With the later, it's a French crime movie and only the title holds it to the group.
I think that’s all the movies I’ve got with samurai in them. I hope this was helpful.
With Kurosawa as a base, we'll start with his movies.
Seven Samurai is a great movie, but for its time it was actually an Anti-Chambra. Most the samurai dramas around at that time dealt with the machinations of the high and the mighty. There were greatly movies about royalty and nobility and what not. This is a movie where the high and the mighty don't exist. Kurosawa took almost every convention around at the time and turned it on it's ear, which makes it even more interesting.
After that, you'll want to look into Yojimbo and Sanjuro. The first is a black comedy where the rules that were upset by Seven Samurai are jumped on until they're smashed into little tiny pieces. Sanjuro is a more traditional chambra, but with the main character from Yojimbo thrown in just to see what he'll do.
I've seen The Hidden Fortress, but I don't actually own it. It's good, it's got the inspiration for R2-D2 and C3PO in it.
After those you can get into his Shakespeare adaptations, which include Ran (A version of King Lear) and Throne of Blood which is Macbeth. Both are loose adaptations, both are greatly interesting but I wouldn't personally put them up as his best films, but you've got to consider the company they're in when I say that.
Rashomon is the last of his films that I have. This is more drama than action, and more an examination of how points of view differ from person to person.
Then you have the Saumrai Trilogy directed by Hiroshi Inagaki
Samurai I: Musashi Miyamoto, Samurai II: Duel at Ichijoji Temple and Samurai III: Duel at Ganryu Island
These are good, but they aren't my favorite. Part of it is that I find when I watch them I want to do it all in order and that's about 5 hours out of your day right there. Also, the Criterion DVDs are very dark. I don't know if it's like this for all versions, but I have to put the brightness all the way up to see the movie. That's a huge distraction.
Harakiri should actually be called Seppuku but Criterion has a thing about using the titles the movie first was sold under in this country. This is a very good drama about hypocrisy and honor, with only a little bit of action. That is one of the questions you need to ask yourself before starting. Do you want action or do you want drama? Most movies have a little of both, but they will invariably favor one over the other and when I mean favor I'm saying there will only be a little of one and a lot of the other. This one is more drama than action, but it's very good.
Samurai Fiction is a send up of all things Chambra. It's got action, it's got comedy, it's got rock music and ninjas. It's played like a tribute to old Kurosawa films, but it shows it's hand in places and revels it's comedic intent.
Ronin Gai Is one hell of a great movie. It's like they called up every samurai trope and asked it to come over and play in what I can't help but feel would make a great film noir if someone clever put their mind to it. There isn't a ton of action until the end, but when it starts it really clicks. The drama and action are both really good, but this movie favors drama a bit more.
Goyokin is another good movie. This one is action and triller. Not so much drama, but a good deal of fun.
When the Last Sword Is Drawn is almost all drama. There is some action, but this is really a character study movie. A very enjoyable one though, I really like this.
The next three are all by Yôji Yamada and unless I'm wrong, I think they're all based on the writings of one guy. I think the first two are even based on the same book.
The Twilight Samurai is all drama and some romance.
The Hidden Blade feel like a remake of Twilight Samurai, but I maintain they're different enough to enjoy.
Likewise Love and Honor is all romance and drama. It's not the same basic story again though, this one is different even if there is a basic pattern all three follow.
I only have Kitano Takeshi's version of Zatoichi in my collection, but if the rest of the series is like this then I can recomend it for the action side. Even though this is clearly a Kitano movie, it's very much an action period peice and it's good for that. Not so much for heavy drama. Good story though, and good action.
Now a while ago I bought two collections of movies on the cheap. The price tag is a little misleading because the movies are actually well transferred and good quality. What happened was the company that digitized them went under and this second company grabbed the digital masters for a song and now can sell them extra cheap.
Shogun Collection came with four movies, some good, some not so good.
Swords Of Vengeance (or Fall of Ako Castle) Is the best out of these. It's a telling of the 47 Ronin and is a solid period piece without some of the silliness that drowns out the rest of these two collections.
Shogun's Samurai is the second best in the collection, in my view anyway. It's a good action drama, mixing intrigue with fighting. It dips into the waters of silliness once in a while, but not offensively. It's just not a serious as some of the others.
Shogun's Shadow probably isn't bad, but I got bored with it and switched it off about halfway through. After that, I just never went back to it. I probably should, but at the time I'd watched everything in this package and the next package and I was getting a little tired of the whole thing. It's probably a fine movie, I don't actually know.
Shogun's Ninja showed up in the same package and it's laughable. Go watch it on Joost, at the one hour and one minute mark the hero starts doing interpretive dance as a form of mourning. It's actually not such a bad movie, but it's more of a ninja movie than a samurai flick. It's very clear where the main competition was because this is much trying to be a Kung Fu movie.
The other package was The Samurai Collection and it came with less serious fare.
G.I. Samurai isn't really bad per say, it's just not much of a samurai movie. It's more clashing modern and ancient warfare.
Legend Of The Eight Samurai is more of a fantasy story. It is at least a samurai movie though, albeit a samurai fantasy.
Ninja Wars isn't really a samurai movie either. It's a completely insane movie involving head swaps, evil wizards, and all sorts of really weird shit. Seriously, they cut off two women's heads and then put them on each other's bodies. And instead of people being declared 'straight jacket forever' crazy, because of magic, it works and they both live through the rest of the movie. It's a pretty batshit film.
There is an unconnected trilogy by Yuji Shimomura which carries a lot of the same themes and ideas. They're also all about the same level of action mixed with comic book ideas. These are mangas come to life.
Versus has guns, zombies, swords, demons, blood, gore, and almost no plot. If it had car chases and velociraptors I would claim we could just stop making movies forever because perfection had been achieved. I think the total budget for this movie was a $1.75 so it looks super cheap, but it's fun.
Azumi is based on a manga and it holds up well as an action movie. Some of the fights are pretty neat, some are a little unconvincing, over all it's fun. Azumi 2 is off to one side because someone else directed it. It's not quite as good as the first one, but it's still a good manga come to life action movie.
Death Trance is all kinds of goofy, but a lot of fun. It's sort of post apocalypse fantasy with guns, swords, demons, guns and a guy dragging a coffin around with a little girl. Yes, it's dumb, but I like it dumb sometimes.
I'm going to throw in Shinobi, even though it's really another manga inspired ninja flick because it works with enough of these. It's another action filled story light number sort of Romeo and Juliet style.
I'm not putting in The Last Samurai or Le Samouraï for various reasons. With the first, it's not so much a samurai movie as it is a mix of Glory and Dances with Wolves set in Japan. With the later, it's a French crime movie and only the title holds it to the group.
I think that’s all the movies I’ve got with samurai in them. I hope this was helpful.
Don't quote me
Something occurred to me today. Actually, it has occurred to me before, but the justification dawned on me today. I always loose respect for someone’s views when they start throwing bible quotes into the conversation. I think this is for several reasons.
1. They never just quote the bible, do they? No, they have to mention the chapter and verse. This is smug and insulting to my intelligence. I know the bible. I’ve read it and read lots of books about it. Lots of people have read it, you’re not part of some tiny minority. You’re not some clever little group who has discovered this little tome no one has ever heard of before. Not only have we all read it, we all know quotes from it when we hear it. You’re not impressing anyone by then saying “Generals 45:15:23:HIKE!” at the end of your quote like we’re all too dumb to know what you’re talking about without the chapter and verse markers. You’re only making me go, “Yeah, I know that, do I mention the chapter and page number of ever detective novel I quote?”
2. They assume that they’re leveling some judgment by delivering lines from the book, which assumes that the book has any meaning for me. The bible isn't everyone's book. Some people subscribe to holy books of a different nature, some people leave books with gods and legends off their shelves all together. My book is The House at Pooh Corner. Insisting that I'm supposed to respect everything in the bible as absolute fact is troublesome and contradictory and suggests there is no other book of wisdom in the world. Like they’re going “Ah! See? In the bible, argue with that!” To which I say “Gladly!” and either throw quotes from a dozen different books both holy and secular or I make up my own as I go along. This leads me neatly into my third problem.
3. They’re clearly not thinking for themselves. They can’t have an opinion unless it’s stated by someone else, or if they do they have to justify it by something in a book. I should probably say they can’t express their own opinions without knowing that there is some back up somewhere, some authority figure they can cling to. I don’t need this, I can come up with my own bullshit on the spot. I don’t need to quote Nero Wolfe and say, “I’m no fatter than I was five years ago” when justifying my lack of gym membership. I can just go “Meh, whatever” which isn’t exactly original, but I’m not specifically quoting anyone. I want to hear what you actually think, if you can’t justify it on your own then maybe you should reevaluate your views. I want to know what you think, don’t wait for someone else to express a view and then say “Yeah, what they said.” Remember how you’re teachers would ask you to express something in your own words? Remember? Back in school? Do you remember school? I don’t. I only have vague memories because I was on drugs during my elementary years. I was given lots of drugs by people who claimed to be doctors and later had to leave the country under assumed names to stay one step ahead of the federalies. Only some of that last sentence maybe true.
The thing is, I know that this isn’t a religious thing. I know lots of people, even fairly closed minded folk, for whom expressing their views without falling back on bible quotations isn’t a problem. It tends to be only a special kind of tiny-minded bigot who I find resorting to quotes from the bible, which is probably my last problem. I’ve come to associate the quoting of bible texts with something horribly bigoted from someone who won’t recognize when they’re failing to follow some part of the bible themselves.
It’s like the problem I’ve stated before, about the clean-shaven man in a cotton/wool suit eating a shrimp cocktail while waiting for his blue cheese smothered pork chop to arrive telling me that Leviticus says homosexuality is a sin. Even if he quotes chapter and verse, I know he clearly hasn’t read it, or if he did then he only read as much as justifies his bigotry. Besides, the ministry of Jesus is supposed to have wiped the old rules away and set up the new rules, which were his rules of peace, love, forgiveness and being just generally groovy. But of course if I started on that I’d just get a blank look and he’d start to argue even though he doesn’t know the book half as well as I do. Did I mention it's Latvian pig milk blue cheese? Cause it is.
And that never ends well because I always pretend there’s a book called “Generals” that has three numbers instead of two just to see if anyone is paying attention. You’d be surprised how many people get caught thinking that Generals is a real book. If they catch me I can easily fall back on “Did I say Generals? Sorry… Judges!” It’s actually a very versatile book, being in both the new and old testament, and it says that homosexuality is okay, that driving SUVs is bad, and it explains once and for all how Jesus dies and comes back leads to bunnies and chocolate.
I think one of my biggest problems is that I’m actually a huge asshole who likes to play Emperor’s New Clothes with the unwitting. I get so bored talking to mortals, and it’s soooo hard being nice and friendly all the time. It’s either fucking with people or serial murder, honestly and I can’t be bothered to come up with clever clues to leave for some rouge cop who doesn’t play by the rules but gets results.
1. They never just quote the bible, do they? No, they have to mention the chapter and verse. This is smug and insulting to my intelligence. I know the bible. I’ve read it and read lots of books about it. Lots of people have read it, you’re not part of some tiny minority. You’re not some clever little group who has discovered this little tome no one has ever heard of before. Not only have we all read it, we all know quotes from it when we hear it. You’re not impressing anyone by then saying “Generals 45:15:23:HIKE!” at the end of your quote like we’re all too dumb to know what you’re talking about without the chapter and verse markers. You’re only making me go, “Yeah, I know that, do I mention the chapter and page number of ever detective novel I quote?”
2. They assume that they’re leveling some judgment by delivering lines from the book, which assumes that the book has any meaning for me. The bible isn't everyone's book. Some people subscribe to holy books of a different nature, some people leave books with gods and legends off their shelves all together. My book is The House at Pooh Corner. Insisting that I'm supposed to respect everything in the bible as absolute fact is troublesome and contradictory and suggests there is no other book of wisdom in the world. Like they’re going “Ah! See? In the bible, argue with that!” To which I say “Gladly!” and either throw quotes from a dozen different books both holy and secular or I make up my own as I go along. This leads me neatly into my third problem.
3. They’re clearly not thinking for themselves. They can’t have an opinion unless it’s stated by someone else, or if they do they have to justify it by something in a book. I should probably say they can’t express their own opinions without knowing that there is some back up somewhere, some authority figure they can cling to. I don’t need this, I can come up with my own bullshit on the spot. I don’t need to quote Nero Wolfe and say, “I’m no fatter than I was five years ago” when justifying my lack of gym membership. I can just go “Meh, whatever” which isn’t exactly original, but I’m not specifically quoting anyone. I want to hear what you actually think, if you can’t justify it on your own then maybe you should reevaluate your views. I want to know what you think, don’t wait for someone else to express a view and then say “Yeah, what they said.” Remember how you’re teachers would ask you to express something in your own words? Remember? Back in school? Do you remember school? I don’t. I only have vague memories because I was on drugs during my elementary years. I was given lots of drugs by people who claimed to be doctors and later had to leave the country under assumed names to stay one step ahead of the federalies. Only some of that last sentence maybe true.
The thing is, I know that this isn’t a religious thing. I know lots of people, even fairly closed minded folk, for whom expressing their views without falling back on bible quotations isn’t a problem. It tends to be only a special kind of tiny-minded bigot who I find resorting to quotes from the bible, which is probably my last problem. I’ve come to associate the quoting of bible texts with something horribly bigoted from someone who won’t recognize when they’re failing to follow some part of the bible themselves.
It’s like the problem I’ve stated before, about the clean-shaven man in a cotton/wool suit eating a shrimp cocktail while waiting for his blue cheese smothered pork chop to arrive telling me that Leviticus says homosexuality is a sin. Even if he quotes chapter and verse, I know he clearly hasn’t read it, or if he did then he only read as much as justifies his bigotry. Besides, the ministry of Jesus is supposed to have wiped the old rules away and set up the new rules, which were his rules of peace, love, forgiveness and being just generally groovy. But of course if I started on that I’d just get a blank look and he’d start to argue even though he doesn’t know the book half as well as I do. Did I mention it's Latvian pig milk blue cheese? Cause it is.
And that never ends well because I always pretend there’s a book called “Generals” that has three numbers instead of two just to see if anyone is paying attention. You’d be surprised how many people get caught thinking that Generals is a real book. If they catch me I can easily fall back on “Did I say Generals? Sorry… Judges!” It’s actually a very versatile book, being in both the new and old testament, and it says that homosexuality is okay, that driving SUVs is bad, and it explains once and for all how Jesus dies and comes back leads to bunnies and chocolate.
I think one of my biggest problems is that I’m actually a huge asshole who likes to play Emperor’s New Clothes with the unwitting. I get so bored talking to mortals, and it’s soooo hard being nice and friendly all the time. It’s either fucking with people or serial murder, honestly and I can’t be bothered to come up with clever clues to leave for some rouge cop who doesn’t play by the rules but gets results.
Duck Tales?
I have the Duck Tales Theme song on my computer. Which rated number one on the Top 11 Catchiest Theme Songs. It's a full 3 minute song too. Listen for yourself.
I'm telling you, the computer rips CDS and downloads things when I'm not here!
EDIT: Hmmm, that was supposed to be a embeded play window.
Discover Simple, Private Sharing at Drop.io
#I'm telling you, the computer rips CDS and downloads things when I'm not here!
EDIT: Hmmm, that was supposed to be a embeded play window.
Discover Simple, Private Sharing at Drop.io
#Jack Collier Omnibus (Part Two)
This is the second story, which came after Hard Boiled Christmas.
Wonderland
Part One: Mister Rabbit
Part Two: A Simple Job Goes Wrong
Part Three: A Trip to Wonderland
Part Four: The Surprise Egg
Part Five: Awaken Dream Child
Part Six: Aiding and Abetting
Part Seven: The Hotel
Part Eight: Alice in Wonderment
Part Nine: Putting Together Pieces
Part Ten: Trail’s End
Part Eleven: Time Gentlemen
Part Twelve: Settling up
Wonderland
Part One: Mister Rabbit
Part Two: A Simple Job Goes Wrong
Part Three: A Trip to Wonderland
Part Four: The Surprise Egg
Part Five: Awaken Dream Child
Part Six: Aiding and Abetting
Part Seven: The Hotel
Part Eight: Alice in Wonderment
Part Nine: Putting Together Pieces
Part Ten: Trail’s End
Part Eleven: Time Gentlemen
Part Twelve: Settling up
Liberty's Child (Day Thirteen)
Liberty’s Child
A Jack Collier Mystery
By Brett N. Lashuay
Look here for last week’s entry!
Day Thirteen: Or Not
I had all the windows down and open, I’d even pulled the fabric sun blocker from the over head so that Columbia could stick her hands out through the open sun roof. It was actually kind of nice, sitting besides her and just diving like we were. You could forget your problems at a time like that, with a beautiful young girl sitting next to you on a warm night, driving on a lonely stretch of highway, just yourselves and the music to distract you. Only one thing could really damage a moment like that and we were on I-94, about ten minuets after going past New Baltimore when it happened.
I was watching the rear view mirror, just to make sure of who was or wasn’t following us, and about half a mile after the last on ramp, I noticed a pair of headlights. This was no big deal, but kept my eye on them. Columbia was explaining something about international economic law, and how her father’s company was breaking it, when the headlights behind me went out.
I may be paranoid, and I might have issues, but I know a problem when I see it. Those headlights had just gotten on the free way, and then their head lights went right out when they thought no one was looking. They did everything too early though, came on too early, turned their lights off too early, everything. They were giving me time to think of something to do.
“Fuck.” I said noticing that they didn’t come back on any time soon.
“What?” She asked.
“There is a bar over head and another one on the door.” I said, trying to sound calm as I pressed down on the gas. “Please grab them.”
“What’s going on?” She asked looking worried, but doing what I’d told her. I hit the top window’s button and grabbed the end of the fabric sun blocker for that window and zipped it shut on an automatic impulse. I was about to close the windows but decided that having them to open would preferable to shooting through the glass.
“Someone has decided to take you back.” I said, and as the moon broke through some clouds I could see that the large truck was much closer than I wanted.
I pushed the gas down to the floor and the large needle on the Mini’s over sized speedometer swept down towards the stereo. The problem was that I could see the big SUV was closing in. At this speed, all they’d need to do would be to bump one of my corners to send me into a spin. The Mini couldn’t keep up with whatever company had made that truck. We flew past one of those small bridges that traffic cops use to cross from one side of the free way to the other and a thought occurred to me, if I couldn’t out run them I might be able to out think them. While I composed my thoughts, Lucas With the Lid Off started to play on the ipod. The SUV came dangerously close to ramming range and I decided to go with my idea.
“You know what the funny thing is?” I asked as I put my hand on the gear knob.
“What’s that?” She asked as the wind blew her hair back dramatically.
“I do all this for two hundred and fifty dollars a day, plus expenses. Hardly seems worth it some days.” I put my foot down on the clutch, took the car out of gear, and slammed down on the break with one easy motion, yanking up on the parking break in hope that it might help slow me down.
The tires screamed as if were subjecting them to some kind of arcane torture that had been outlawed centuries ago for being even too nasty for the Spanish Inquisition to perform. The SUV sailed past, and it would be miles before they even had a reaction to what I was doing. I gave the wheel a slight adjustment, let the parking break up and the car spun gently around. I put the car back into gear and tore up the freeway, going the wrong way. A police officer must have seen what was going on because he was coming across the same small path I intended to use with his light blaring. I passed him too close and the driver’s side mirror from both our cars smashed in a crunch of glass and plastic.
The officer’s siren went on as he passed me by and I could see another car nearly hit the cop when they both tried to cross at once. That was bad news, because the SUV was just coming across which meant we were now outnumbered something awful. I could have taken the SUV with the cop’s help, but now we were in real trouble. The SUV had turned its lights back on, and was coming up on the rest of this little pack of cars that were going down the road as fast as we all could.
“There’s a cop!” She shouted over the wind. “Why don’t we stop?”
“One officer.” I said. “This late at night, he’s got his side arm, maybe a shot gun if we’re lucky. They’ve got two cars, no doubt with three guys each, all armed. I’m not stopping until a fucking swat team shows up with lots and lots of guns, and then maybe not then.”
I looked in the back window at the SUV, which had pulled up next to the highway patrol car. There was another flash besides the ones from the cop car and it suddenly swooped off the road and into the field next to the road, where it stopped. I knew then that we were pretty much fucked. The car, which was some variety of Mercedes, pulled up next to us. There were four of them in the car, and the one in the front passenger seat was rolling down his window.
“Pull over.” He shouted.
“What?” I screamed out the window, using the motion to cover the fact that with my right hand I was grabbing the Webley from its holster.
“Pull over.” He shouted again, trying to sound louder. “We just want the girl.”
“What?” Columbia screamed.
“They say they just want you.” I said, seeing the SUV was coming up from behind to box us in.
“Stop now.” The man said pulling out his gun and aiming it at me.
“Okay.” I said nodding.
“What?” She screamed and I took my foot off the gas and we started to slow down a little.
I then raised the gun over the window’s edge and pulled the trigger twice, then put my foot back down on the gas. The driver of the car wasn’t fooled though and kept up even though his passenger was dead. I saw the other two fooling around in the back seat and let up on the gas just long enough to see them. I pointed the gun into the back seat and fired three times, then deciding I was through with this car fired at the front tire.
The tire exploded, and it was then that I realized what a dumb idea that was. The Mercedes banked right very hard and the front of the Mini struck it. The SUV behind us didn’t have time to react and plowed into the back end of the car. The car swung in a hared arc to the right and then began to roll over.
The car made crunching noises as we tumbled over and the world began to turn in actually a pretty slow motion. There wasn’t as much sound as I would have expected after the first roll, and those first noises were primarily glass breaking. The car didn’t seem to bounce, just roll a couple of times and then come to a stop. The windshield and back window had managed to go through all of that without even cracking, but when I looked behind I noticed the windows in the back seat hadn’t been so lucky. I figured that there were probably two window shaped sections of shattered glass, holding their basic shapes in defiance of being destroyed.
I was surprised that none of the air bags decided to burst open. I wondered for a moment, as we slowly rolled over again, if there wasn’t something wrong with their sensors or something. Maybe the whole thing happened too slowly for it to kick in or something, I don’t know.
What’s amazing is that we landed upright with all four wheels on the ground. The car had stalled in its roll, but beyond that we were alive. I put my foot down on the clutch and turned the key, and thanked the gods of automotive quality as the car started right up with its customary call of joy. I put the car I gear and heard something whine as we started. One of the tires had slipped off its rim and went flat, but I would deal with that later, right now we were going to get away.
Or at least we were going to.
The problem with the plan was that the SUV struck my door and the air bags exploded around me. They popped open from the side of the seat, the steering wheel, and I would have sworn that the gear knob popped open and a small air bag deployed from that. We slid maybe ten feet side ways before hitting something and rolling again. This time we stopped rolling on my side of the car. We were just on the shoulder of the road, another push and we’d go down into the ditch next to the freeway. I noticed the glass was gone from the top window, but the fabric cover remained. That would at least give me a few seconds where they couldn’t see what I was doing.
“Are you alright?” I asked as I opened the arm rest compartment and pulled out my black plastic punch dagger.
“I think so.” She said.
“Okay.” I said unbuckling my seat belt. “When I get out, you unbuckle and get into the back seat as fast as you can. Okay?”
“Okay.” She said.
I reached back with my right hand and pulled the Marley thirty-eight out. I had no idea where the Webley was and at that moment I didn’t feel inclined to go looking. I held the black punch dagger, a present from a friend a year or two ago, against my arm so that no one would see that I had it until the last moment.
“Are you still alive in there?” Someone from the black SUV asked us.
They opened their doors and started to walk toward us with intent. Their boots making crunching noises as they walked across the shattered glass littering the streets. I drew back the hammer of the Marley and waited until one of them was almost close enough to touch the car. I aimed as carefully as I could in the cramped conditions and when I was sure of my self, fired a single shot that went right up his nose and through his brain. There was a considerable amount of scurrying back as he hit the ground and I used that opportunity to burst through the window, or wiggle through the best that I could. I saw something move as I started to come out and fired at it. I heard a shout as the bullet hit someone in some part of their body. I ran around the back of the car and used it to cover from the shots that hit the hood.
“Don’t!” Someone yelled. “She’s in there, we can’t risk it!”
“That’s right mother fucker.” I muttered as I thumbed back the hammer. “You’re going to have to come out and get her, and then get shot by me.”
I patted my sides to find the speed loader for the Marley, and then realized that it was in my jacket pocket, which was in the back seat of the car, which was only a few feet away in actual distance but was a million miles from here in reality. I had four rounds left, and an unknown number of assailants to kill, which was just great really. I looked down at the stones on the shoulder, it all else failed I could declare my enemies dumb and throw rocks at them. I held the punch dagger tight between my fingers, just glad to have something in my hand.
My only solace was that there had to be about a dozen cars on their way by now, you couldn’t have what happened here happen and not get a full alarm going off. If I could wait them out for just five minutes, I’d be fine. As it turned out, I was actually right about the time it took them to show up. Of course the down side was that these would prove to be five of the longest minutes of my life.
This is part thirteen of twenty-three, come back next week for part fourteen and every Thursday until we're done to see what happens next. If you get lost, one of the tags here should help you. The Liberty tag will take you to the story while the Jack Tag will take you to Part One of every story we post here.
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