Last night I attempted to upgrade the site to the latest version of MovableType, but discovered it was far more complicated than I cared to deal with. I could have managed to get the new system installed, import all the old entries and fix the website templates, given enough time, but there wasn’t a real need and I didn’t feel like spending days and days figuring it out. Thankfully I’d backed up the site and was able to put everything back. One change I do hope to make in the near future, however, is to add comments.
In other news, my girlfriend, who goes by DottyGale (DG) online, has start a new blog. She hopes to update at least as frequently as I update this thing, so the time to beat is twice a month. Update: I’ve also added the blog of my cousin Ed Humphries, the funniest man ever to take a bath in his underwear.
My immersion into the Whedonverse continued unabated this weekend. DG and I watched Serenity on Saturday (finally, after owning it for two months). (Spoilers ahead.) I enjoyed it; DG thought it was depressing. Which it was, I suppose, but I really liked it. Interesting characters, great action, a story with a message, and special effects that served the story rather than the marketing budget–maybe I’ve just seen so many bad science fiction movies that it was immensely refreshing to see a good one. I’ll admit the movie probably wasn’t as good as the series (shades of X-Files), but it was still better than 90% of what Hollywood puts out in terms of science fiction every year.
On Sunday we started Buffy season six. For those keeping track, I still need to see Buffy seasons 6-7 and Angel 3-5. We’re also trying to get through the first season of the new Battlestar Galactica, but despite the fact that it’s the only water cooler show at my geek-oriented office, I just can’t seem to get into it. At the very least, I can’t motivate myself to watch it when I could be watching a Buffy or Angel episode. Perhaps after we’ve finished those.
I finished reading Philip Pullman’s “His Dark Materials” trilogy. I enjoyed it immensely and highly recommend it to just about anyone. It’s written for a late adolescent or teenage audience, but the subject matter is often very adult. It’s one of those truly great coming-of-age books–and an excellent fantast adventure as well. It was also nice to read the prose of a skilled writer; I’ve been reading so many comics and not-so-great novels lately, I’d forgotten what truly great writing was like.
—02/27/06
I’ve been playing Call of Duty 2 lately. I lost interest in the FPS (first-person shooter) genre after Quake II (with the notable exception of the Halo games), but COD2 came with my graphics card and apparently was the best-selling game of the holiday season (nothing says Christmas like an M3 Grease Gun), so I thought I’d give it a shot.
The graphics are excellent, and based on the evidence (my sitting in front of the computer for extended periods time, my lowered blink rate, and the relative frequency of cursing at a pixelated enemy), I’d have to say the game is fun.
But playing has made me wonder–how many virtual Germans have I killed in my time? Games like Wolfenstein 3D, Return to Wolfenstein, and Bloodrayne feature the wholesale slaughter of Nazis, to name just a few games. How many virtual Germans have been slain in WWII-themed videogames? Probably many, many more than were actually killed in the war. Movies like the Indiana Jones films, Hellboy, and pretty much any WWII film reinforce the notion that Nazis exist to be destroyed without a second thought.
The whole Nazis-as-villains thing sometimes makes me uncomfortable. They make such perfect stock villains. Slaughtering them is like killing orcs in a fantasy game; there are no moral qualms attached. It’s not hard to understand; murdering six million people in cold blood tends to get you painted in a certain light–for eternity. Of course, we all know that your average Joe Sausage in the German army probably wasn’t entirely aware of the Holocaust and was almost certainly being misinformed about them, as well as the war effort in general. But that’s really beside the point; for the limited purposes of an action movie or a video game, the soldiers are identified with the Nazi regime, and as such are subject to annihilation.
What I find a bit more interesting is that you never seem to hear any protests from Germans about games like COD2. They never make the above argument regarding the soldiers and sit idly by while their virtual ancestors are wasted time and again. I’m sure there have been protests, but I’ve never heard of one, which presumably means they haven’t been very loud.
On the other hand, the makers of the Western FPS GUN have been censured by the Association for American Indian Development for its use of Indians as bad guys in the game. And you certainly do kill Indians; you gun them down as they hoot and howl, firing arrows and wielding hatchets. And yes, you can scalp them after you kill them (though you can do that to anyone, not just Indians). There’s no question GUN presents a pretty 1860s portrait of the whole cowboys and Indians thing. There are some good Indians, including one who runs a store and another who teaches you to shoot a bow and arrow, but I have to admit that when I first spoke to these characters, I was surprised they weren’t trying to kill me for slaughtering two dozen of their kind just a few minutes earlier.
In any event, the Association for American Indian Development did make a protest. Yet you don’t hear much from the German Veterans Society. Here’s my theory. The Germans have made an unspoken deal with world pop culture: we can use Nazis as stock villains in our entertainment as long as we agree not to bring up the whole Nazi thing too often in the “real” world.
And while there’s plenty of Holocaust literature, there isn’t a whole lot about Germany of that time in pop culture (aside from Nazis, of course). Family Guy even made a joke about it, in an episode where Brian and Stewie are in Germany and Brian points out to a tour guide that the leaflet doesn’t mention any German history from 1939-1945. The tour guide ignores him–before descending into a parody of a Nazi.
At this point, I feel I should write some sort of wrap-up “final thoughts” paragraph, but this isn’t an essay and I don’t have a conclusion. This is really just an extended humorous observation, just one step removed from a Jerry Seinfeld joke. But my writer’s ear dictates I get a few more syllables in to complete the rhythm. There.
—02/07/06
I wrote this brutal little piece–for no reason I can recall, though I may have been playing Resident Evil 2–almost exactly six years ago, on Wednesday, February 2, 2000, just one minute before the stroke of midnight (thank you, Microsoft Word “Properties” tab). I think the idea behind the piece was to write a scene showing how I’d deal with a zombie if I ran into one in real life (hence the uncertainty about using a gun–and the crying).
It’s a little eerie that I thought about it today and now, just forty minutes past its six-year anniversary, I’ve decided to post it here. If I were a more superstitious man, it might freak me out; instead, the materialist in me wonders why I tend to think about zombies in early February.
I’ve toned down the violence and cursing from the original version, though it’s still definitely rated R–but a cheesy horror B-movie R, not a reprehensibly gory R.
The corpse slid to the floor.
It seemed an eternity before he heard the tink of the shell on the floor. The blast still echoed against the concrete walls of the alley outside the window.
For more than a minute he was motionless, the shotgun held out before him in one hand, his arms quivering with its weight. Finally he lowered the gun and stepped back, slumping against the wall behind him and sliding to the floor, never taking his eyes off what he’d done.
He was twenty-two, an art school graduate living in a dingy apartment in a New York suburb. The shotgun had belonged to a cop; he’d pried it off the half-eaten corpse in the hallway. He hadn’t seen the one he’d killed until it was almost too late.
There would be more of them. He’d seen enough movies to know that. Maybe even in the building. He should check how many shells he had–but how?
He’d never fired a gun in his life. Now he’d killed his landlady, Mrs. McNeil. Shot her head off with a shotgun.
Granted, she hadn’t been herself lately. More like a hideously diseased and undead shadow of her former self. So in a sense, he hadn’t killed her; she was already dead.
Somehow, that didn’t make him feel better.
Watching a human head explode because of something he’d done tapped into a portion of his mind that terrified him. It was something beyond mere shock; it was the horror of not only having to kill someone, but someone he knew. That it was in self-defense, and that the person he’d shot didn’t seem to be the same person he’d known, were rational facts that his mind wasn’t able to grasp at that moment. He began to sob. After a few minutes, the tears subsided, and he sighed deeply.
He sensed the thing before he saw it.
Slowly, he turned his head and looked up. Another one of the things was in the doorway, watching him. Like the other one, its skin had faded to a dull grey color, and the eyes had turned a pale shade of yellow. The milky orbs fixed on him while the thing stood there silently.
He slowly stood, backing away as much as he could. He brought the shotgun up again and prayed there was another shell in it. The thing continued to stare at him, but didn’t move. It opened its mouth and made a hissing noise that turned his stomach. Without warning, it lurched toward him. There was a thundering crack and the thing collapsed in a heap.
Still in shock, he began to scream obscenities. He kicked at the corpse on the floor. The tears flowed once more as he struck the thing with the butt of the gun.
Another one appeared at the door.
“Goddamn it!” he screamed, and he wielded the shotgun like a club, smashing the butt into the side of the thing’s head. The shotgun broke in half but it did the trick: the thing’s neck snapped and it collapsed to the floor.
This time, there were no tears, no cursing. He paused a moment, looked at this latest victim.
“You messed with the wrong graphic designer, assholes.”
There would be more. He might be the only remaining human in town. He had to get out and warn the proper authorities. And he needed another gun.
He went out into the hallway. The elevator was out. He took the stairs.
To Be Continued…?
—02/03/06