Godheval.net

So earlier tonight I saw Transformers: Rise of the Fallen.  To describe it in a word:

Long.

Which isn’t to say that it was a bad movie, but it was certainly a case of overstimulation.  It was practically a full-time job for my eyes watching all of that transforming and merging and shooting and exploding and collapsing.  It was almost as difficult as that third Lord of the Rings movie.

With Transformers being one of – if not the – summer blockbuster, I figured I was in for previews of some big upcoming movies.  Unfortunately, one of those was – wait for it:

M. Night Shymalan’s
The Last Airbender

…

That pause was for me to compose myself.  It failed.

Where the FUCK does this pompous douchebag get off putting his hack name in front of an Avatar movie?  As if he had anything to do with its creation.  Or maybe he’ll be taking credit for what will inevitably be a complete bastardization of a wonderful franchise?

Michael Bay probably deserves a lot of credit for how he’s modernized the Transformers franchise and made it accessible to a wider audience than us nerds who grew up with the TV series in the 80s.  And yet, for all he’s done, this latest movie was not called:

Michael Bay’s
The Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen

So how does Manoj – who has been riding the wave from The Sixth Sense (the only film of his that can pass for “good”) for 10 years now – figure he’s entitled to take someone else’s intellectual property and attach his name to it?  I mean, at this point, M.Night Shymalan is like King Midas – the revisionist version who touches things and they turn into shit.

For Aang’s sake, did you see The Village?  The Happening? Would someone tell this mother fucker to stop making movies?

So putting his name on Avatar: The Last Airbender – which boasts a quality of writing, direction, and overall fantasticness that Shymalan couldn’t manage on his best day – is like taking a dump on a really delicious pizza.

Would you eat a shit pizza?  I didn’t think so.

FUCK M. Night Shymalan.

And as for his penchant for surprise endings, the only one I’ll accept is the one where Shymalan himself dies and is unable to complete the movie.

Surprise!

Despite my attempts to shut out the world through escapism, it’s impossible to avoid all the little glimpses, being so connected through all of the RSS feeds, news subscriptions, and social networking sites.  Change.org is especially troublesome in how it keeps me abreast of all the travesties taking place all throughout the world, like child slavery being used to create chocolate, or the situation in Iran.

These travesties periodically lead me to a particular train of thought, but I don’t think I’ve ever expressed it publicly.  On the question of gods’ existence, my answer remains a “maybe”, and even a “I hope so”, and I’ve even gone so far as to offer theoretical explanations as to the very nature of a god or gods.

In considering the nature of god or gods, we inevitably come to two questions:

1. Are the gods all-knowing and/or all-powerful?
2. Are the gods benevolent?

By my analysis, it is impossible for the answer to be “yes” to both of these questions.  If the gods are all-knowing and all-powerful, then we often ask why they would allow tragedy and suffering?  Some people answer that it is all part of a divine plan, beyond our understanding.  And perhaps it is all for some greater good.  But if this is true, then the gods cannot be said to be benevolent, because to be all-powerful and benevolent would preclude the allowance of suffering.

Whiteness is a virus – both physical and memetic.  Physical through the human medium, manifest in conquest, rape, plunder, mass murder, subjugation, and enslavement.

Memetic in that it has convinced people of diverse backgrounds and interests to shed their individuality, their cultures, their morals, for the promise of something better – a chance to be a member of the ruling class.

It spread to the Irish in America and manifested in the antagonistic relationship between the police and just about every non-white ethnic minority.  It spread to the Italians and made them forget how they were wop ginnies yesterday in exchange for a chance to be just white tomorrow – and to fight vigorously against other groups for the scraps from the ruling Anglos’ table.

The whiteness virus, contrary to popular belief, is not genetic, but it might as well be in how it infects children by way of their parents not much later than they have their first concept of a “self” and “other”.

The primary symptoms of the virus are privilege, denial, fear, and willful ignorance.  Unlike other illnesses, for which we scramble to find cures, there is virtually zero incentive for those with the white virus to seek treatment.

About the Iranian elections:

The supporters of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad seem to be coming out in equal force to match the protests of the Mir-Hossein Mousavi supporters.  To me, even if the election was a fraud and the outcome was more like Ahmadinejad 50.5% vs. Mousavi 49.5%, that’s still millions of people who supported Ahmadinejad.  While Mousavi sounds like the better candidate to me, and Ayatollah Montazeri sounds better still as a Supreme Leader than Ali Khamenei, ignoring the strong support behind Ahmadinejad and Khamenei would be no more democratic than a corrupt election.

It sounds to me like the changes in Iran will have to be piecemeal – a re-education of the people to understand what is wrong with the Islamic Republic as it is, so that eventually someone like A-Jad would not even be a contender.

At the same time I realize that maybe the results could’ve been inverted, with Mousavi the overwhelming winner, but…who really knows?  While I’d like to say I support the “Iranian people”, I don’t think they all feel one way, and I don’t know how they feel in any case.

Just because the dissenters are the ones twittering and blogging doesn’t mean that they represent the majority.  The older and/or less technologically savvy – which could include the poor who simply do not have access to the internet – may not support Mousavi.  They may not support Ahmadinejad, either.

To be clear, although I have defended him in other posts, because I think that he is misrepresented in Western media, I do not support him in any capacity as a politician, and I am as wary of him and his government as I am of my own.  I think politicians as a species are a corrupt sort, and therefore I do not trust them.

I am also skeptical of pro-Western sentiments coming out of Iran, not because I support the anti-Western conservatives and extremists, but because I am wary of propaganda, and wary of any attempt to exploit the wishes of the Iranian people to bolster Western interests.

In summary, my stance is going to remain neutral.  It is not for anyone in the West to say what the Iranian people want, since we just plain do not know.  President Obama, I think, has taken precisely the right stand in the matter.  For now, we wait.  And watch.

I am taking a break from posting to Godheval.net due to a precipitous decline in the things I usually write about.  I’ve been trying to give my mind a break by detaching myself completely from “worldly” concerns and just enjoying myself.  Playing video games, reading fantasy novels, and still pecking away at my own children’s book – Poguri and the Land of Nou.

Video Games

I’ve put a lot of time into Infamous for Playstation 3 – which while it’s a solid open-world game with a comic-book feel, leaves much to be desired in terms of storyline.  After tackling the “heroic” path, I’ve been playing through the “infamous” path to see how the story changes.  So far there isn’t much of a difference, except for a few minor dialogue differences with Cole’s girlfriend and best friend.  I couldn’t care less about those two, anyway.  Sucker Punch could stand to take some lessons in branching storylines from Bioware.

Took a few looks at what was happening over at E3 and can finally say that the horizon looks bright for this generation of games.  God of War III tops the most anticipated list, followed by Heavy Rain, Assassin’s Creed 2, Mass Effect 2, and Uncharted 2.

And speaking of Uncharted 2, I’ve been dabbling in the Multiplayer Beta, which while fun only reinforces the fact that I am a total scrub in competitive play.  I do well enough in single-player games – I think – but put me online with a bunch of 13 year olds and they’ll kick my ass everytime.  The cooperative mode is interesting, but it’d be even better if the regular story mode had that co-op option as well.