Movie Review: The Happening

Just watched M. Night Shyamalama Ding-Dong's hate-letter to humanity, The Happening, and felt compelled to immediately review it. The movie's premise is *** spoilers ahead *** that the plants feel threatened by human activity, and since they're stuck in the ground and can't run away, they have to defend themselves the only way they can. So they release some kind of neurotoxin that causes humans to become confused and kill themselves in gruesome, inexplicable ways. The self-slaughter ramps up for a couple of days, and then suddenly stops.

The kicker is, the happening only happens in one part of the world, Northeastern United States, ostensibly as a warning. A warning, I guess, that rural Pennsylvanians are most to blame for the impending destruction of the Earth. A reasonable person watching this movie might wonder why the trees in Central Park are in a murderous rage, yet aren't up in arms in Beijing, Mexico City, Cairo, or Chernobyl. Lest we think the trees just have it in for Americans, we get a closing shot of the happening starting to happen in Paris. Apparently body odor, public urination, cigarette smoke, and unscooped dog poop are more threatening to the survival of vegetation than massive amounts of smog, lead contamination, and radioactive fallout.

I kept wondering what Shyamalamalamyalan was thinking when he wrote this thing. I can accept that some people are so concerned about the environment that they think the Earth could become angry and strike back at the polluters. But according to Time magazine the ten most polluted cities in the world are in China, Russia, Ukraine, Zambia, India, and Peru. Not a single Western city made the list. So why didn't Shyamalamyamanan have the trees and shrubs and weeds rising up against the people in those places instead of the U.S. and France? Because none of them have large populations of guilt-laden well-off Westerners. Because it's a projection of Shyamamamamyalam's self-loathing and the self-loathing of the movie's intended audience. That's the only explanation I could think of, and it's supported by a subtle message we get late in the movie when the survivors are running through a brand-new housing development and we see a billboard announcing "You DESERVE it!" in big letters.

I wonder if the people involved in the making of this movie realized what a pointless, misguided, hate-filled downer it was. It would explain why Mark Wahlberg and Zooey Deschanel, both of whom can act, are absolutely lifeless in their roles. But what I really want to know is why no one has pulled the plug on Shmyamamyamalan by now. The Sixth Sense was novel and intriguing, and Signs had its moments, but all of his other movies have been absolute turkeys. Who keeps giving him money to crank out this crap? Whoever it is, I wish they would find a better use for their money, like composting it.

Screw it

I'm voting for McCain. I hate it. I'm holding my nose. I'm going to do penance afterwards.

While the thought of an Obama presidency is truly unspeakably horrible, that's not what changed my mind. What changed my mind is that the media and others are trying to skew perception to make an Obama victory seem inevitable. So that's it. To hell with them. Just for that, I'm voting for McCain.

UPDATE: Here's an analysis by Zombie that confirms my reasons to vote for McCain, i.e. vote AGAINST media manipulation.

Nuts

"When people cease to believe in God, they do not believe in nothing -- they believe in anything." ~ G. K. Chesterton



The last few years I've been wondering if people are getting stupider, crazier, and more desperate or if they were always this way and it just took the Internet to unleash them on the world.

[h/t Dirty Harry's Place]

Reasons to Win, Reasons to Lose

Well, it looks to me like I'm with my sister, Stickwick, in not voting for McCain this time around. He's not the right guy. The GOP has gotten terribly off track and they need a kick in the pants. Obama, and the Democrat controlled congress are that kick. We'll have four to eight years of their turn at the helm, and I foresee bad things. Maybe I'm wrong, but I doubt it. Sure, Bush sucked, especially when combined with a Republican House and Senate (I saw that coming a mile away), but could the Democrats with even more power and the media behind them all the way do any better?

The only two problems: 1. Obama might get to appoint new judges to the Supreme Court, and 2. it will be very difficult to undo the damage that will be done in the next four to eight.

The only upside to a McCain victory, and it's a large and petty upside, is to look at the faces of Obama supporters the next day. Will the McCain crap-sandwich be worth it? Probably not, but it's tempting now.

Why I'm not voting in November

UPDATE: As explained here, I've decided to vote, afterall, and I will be voting for McCain. It's not really a vote for McCain or a vote against Obama, but a vote against the media, which are trying to swing the election in favor of their candidate. I can't even begin to explain why this is wrong. But when nothing else could motivate me to vote for an unappealing candidate, the media did. And McCain thanks you.

September 11th of this year was my husband's one year anniversary as an American citizen. On the day he became a citizen, he registered to vote. My husband still believes there's hope, and he will cast his ballot in favor of McCain this November.

I, however, will not.

As the saying goes, people get the leaders they deserve. Thanks to decades of leftist indoctrination known as public education, Americans are going to get the leader they deserve, which I'm sorry to say is either a lukewarm statist cadaver masquerading as a conservative or a Marxist idiot.

Satan will be ice-skating to work on the day I vote for someone like Obama, but I can't in good conscience vote for McCain either. I believe that a vote for McCain is a vote for the continued decline of the Republican party, which is already unrecognizable to me as the once-great party of Ronald Reagan.

So the big question is, how to stop the decline. If we look to history, we recognize that all revolutions -- whether violent or peaceful, whether scientific or political or cultural -- are preceded by one thing: crisis. To stop the decline of conservatism in this country we need a crisis. Not the middling, waffling, slow oozing decline of another RINO presidency, but the full-scale, full-tilt, all-out unmitigated disaster of a liberal presidency.

Americans apparently need to get this out of their system. Four to eight years from now, when things have gotten truly intolerable in this country, I think the majority will be ready for a return to genuine conservatism. "Liberal" will once again be a bad word, and conservatives will get someone like Bobby Jindal, who is youthful, optimistic, and unapologetically Republican.

When that happens, I'll vote.

Sako 85

Well, I broke down and sold my 6.8spc AR-15. That was one great rifle, but I got a recent high-end hunting rifle mania and I had to sell the AR in order to slake my lust. Here's the result:


That there is a Sako 85 Hunter in .300 WSM. I've yet to shoot it... hunting sight in will happen tomorrow. Sako guarantees sub-moa accuracy and I believe it. The bore is as smooth as you can imagine, the bolt like butta, the trigger breaks like glass, just look at the stock, and I topped it off with a Nikon Monarch III 3-12x42 with side focus and BDC reticle.

I'm heading off to Boomer Shoot this year and this rifle ought to do the trick. I'll be building a new AR next year by the way, and probably be buying a new lower (or three) before January 20, 2008, given the way things are going.

Observation

That an elitist, inexperienced, Marxist, Opie look-alike with America-hating family members and associates is this close to winning the presidency of the greatest country on Earth is testament to what a mistake both public education and the 19th amendment have been.