Random Writing #13 - Eulogy

You were the wind beneath my wings, the wind in my sails. You never had a mean thing to say. Truth be told, you were always there, droning away in the aether of my mind, white noise drowning out all the other more problematic white noise. At night you wrapped me in your feathery touch, never quite there but always making sure I was aware of your protection. For many years we shared the dark of night with that simple caress. We grew up together. You saw my most intimate moments, heard my muffled cries, shared in my joys, stayed up with when I couldn't sleep. RIP Sears Classic Electric Fan. Goodnight. Sleep well.

What? He's just in a dust induced coma? We have the technology? We have the capability to rebuild him? We can create the six million dollar fan?!

Thanks anyway, but I think I can score a new one for thirty bucks.

Random Writing #12 - I Had a Toy

I had a toy once. But it was fragile and I was careless. I gave it to another and she dropped it. Not out of meanness or discord but simply because she already held another and could not juggle. And so it fell to the ground and shattered in slow motion, taking weeks if not months, years. But I could not part with it. Like so many other broken bric-a-brac that I had neither the skill nor the tools to repair, I put it in a box, set it precariously on a shelf out of the way. From time to time something or someone or my own self will brush lightly against it, knocking it from its shelf. It falls and the pieces break further, get trampled into dust. Each time I sweep up the fragments and put them back in the box. Each time I hope some skilled craftswoman will come along with the ability to repair it. But with each falling, breaking, sweeping, there is always a little line of dust that escapes re-imprisonment in the box. It gets tracked away on the bottom of shoes, blown away with a draft. There is always that one little piece missing from a repair job. It can never be perfect or whole again. Do not play with such fragility lightly for you have only one to share in its entirety. But with luck you may share another’s.

Review - The Hunger Games: Catching Fire

I don't have a clever way of starting this one out. I tried but I just began to sputter and moan. Let me try again. "The Hunger Games: Catching Fire" is... ugh. See? There we go again. No, I just can't. This is just a remake of the first film which itself was the film version of the novelization of a reality TV show - namely "Survivor." Let me be clear, I'm not harshing on the book, here. I haven't read the book. But the movie sucks. That's a very bland, trite and derivative way of describing a film that is very bland, trite and derivative. I mean, this is just crap. It's plodding, emotionless, boring, completely predictable, banal, and utterly nonsensical. The dialogue is so bland, it's just as easily watched with the sound off and possibly to better effect. What the hell is the point of this? Why set up gladiator games to placate insurgents when this is clearly a prime sparking point for another rebellion? Why have everyone and their mother - everyone except the fucking heroine! - in on it? Why is it even happening at all? That is to say, what event led to the rebellion in the first place? "Oh, it's a dome!" No shit! I figured that out by the parallax of the projected images in the first film. Immediately. Later, "Oh, it's shaped like a clock!" No shit! Domes and clocks are both round?! Motherfucking brainsplosion! "Each hour represents one of the districts!" Except, you know, district 13. But whatevs. Also of which no proof or meaning whatsoever ever materializes. The sad thing is that there is some real top notch talent here. But the characters are so devoid of character or purpose that there is nothing to act. It's like watching Philip Seymour Hoffman eat a slice of cake. Sure, he's great (and dead) but he's just eating a slice of fucking cake (before he was dead). It's exactly like watching Donald Sutherland watching a TV show- namely "Survivor." Then there are the sock puppets of "love interests." These guys are so generic they could be every cover guy of Teen Beat Magazine ever. Does Teen Beat still exist? Google says: "No." I've used a lot exclamation marks, italics and swearing in this review. This suggests I'm passionately sarcastic about my lost time for which I actually have no better use. Initially I intended to give this film 2/5 but since I started writing I realized how mindless and pathetic this shit is and demote it 1/5. 

Aside, it bothers me what has become laudable among critics these days. This film has "generally favourable reviews" and it's shit. I wouldn't want to have to scrape this off the bottom of my shoe with the neighbour's newspaper. Mediocrity has become a standard to which we aspire. Read that again for full effect. But then I note that the MTV Movie Awards has a category called "Best Shirtless Performance" (of which I notice there is no female corresponding category - double standard much?) so perhaps my arrows are flying entirely wide of the target audience. This just makes me quiver. Ha! I finally got one in!