My Whole Expanse I Cannot See…

I just want to say that everyone involved with the film, Rise: Blood Hunter, owes me $9.99 right now. Obviously, I take some responsibility for the loss of my $9.99, I was bored and a little muddle-headed, but the fact remains that Rise: Blood Hunter is the absolute most boring vampire movie ever made. At least BloodRayne was so astonishingly bad that it was hilarious. I’d take hysterically awful over mind-numbingly dull any day.

I just finished Chuck Palahniuk’s latest, Snuff. I’m not quite certain how I feel about it. While reading it, it wasn’t my favorite of his works, yet the last four chapters kind of won me over. Snuff is the story of Cassie Wright and her attempt to break the world’s record for the most sex partners in a single work of pornography, 600 to be exact. The story is told from the perspective of three fellows waiting in line for a go at Cassie and the “talent wrangler,” the woman in charge of the 600 fellow gang-bang.

My first problem was that I just find the sex industry astonishingly depressing, and not in a fun Dawn of the Dead sort of way. Secondly, I couldn’t really like or relate to any of the characters. I suppose it’s a good thing that I have nothing in common with a bunch of porn fiends, but what I usually love about Palahniuk is that I do tend to identify with or feel empathy toward his characters. That said, it’s a short book and the last four chapters are amazing, so I have no regrets.

Continuing with Palahniuk, I’m now reading Choke. I’ve also got an audio book on deck, Orson Scott Card’s Speaker for the Dead.

Whenever Sara’s cat gets into something he shouldn’t she says, “no, not for kitties.” So, whenever I see a movie, particularly horror, that I know she wouldn’t like, I say, “no, that’s definitely not for Saras.” Normally, that phrase isn’t necessary for me. Movies and books don’t scare me, they don’t bother me at all. However, I wish to God somebody had said that to me before I watched The Diving Bell and the Butterfly. At this point, anyone who hasn’t seen the movie and doesn’t want to know the ending should stop reading right now.

To put it bluntly, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly fucked me up like nobody’s business. Diving Bell is the true story of Elle editor Jean-Dominique Bauby, a man entirely paralyzed save for his left eye after a stroke. Much of the film is shot in the first-person, looking at the world through his eyes. Waking up in the hospital, the initial sense of confusion and utter disconnect, the realization that he can’t speak, the frustration of not being able to communicate, the loneliness and isolation, it’s all there and it’s captured perfectly. Too Goddamn fucking perfectly. It was like watching a gag-reel of the spectacularly worst moments of my entire life. It’s amazing how I’ve thought the exact same things as him in certain situations. I’m better off than him in that I can use a computer and when I woke up two Januarys ago, I definitely wasn’t surprised I couldn’t walk. Still, we share so many other experiences. Of course, there’s one experience we haven’t yet shared, he’s dead and I’m not. Right when he starts to get a little bit comfortable, right when he’s perfected the use of eye movements and the alphabet to communicate, he’s hit with pneumonia and dies. One evening he wakes up coughing, mucus pouring from his trach site. It’s such a disturbing image and I can’t seem to shake it. I actually started coughing while writing this, needed a suction really badly and immediately saw that image. It was like watching how I’m almost certainly going to die. I’m going to have some kind of acute respiratory failure and no vent or medicine will be able to help me. I’ll drown, I’ll suffocate, I’ll die. That movie gave me a bunch of images to go along with things I already worry over.

Obviously, I’ll get over it, Diving Bell will fade some, but not yet. I wanted to drown it out with brandy, but I know that is the worst possible thing to do. I’m better off writing and getting things done. That is exactly what what I’m doing.

Yesterday I finished Neil Gaiman’s Neverwhere. Basically, it’s a story of a man, Richard Mayhew, who after saving the life of a young girl, ends up being erased from existence in his own world and forced to journey to a parallel world. The girl’s name is Door, she’s from London Below, a shadow version of Richard’s London Above. After her entire family is murdered for reasons unknown to her, Door desperately flees her would-be assassins by opening a magical portal to London Above. Enter Richard, who happens upon Door bloodied and semi-conscious lying on the sidewalk near Richard’s flat. Nobody bothers to help her because people from London Below barely register in the minds of people from London Above. Yet, Richard can see her, which is the start of all his troubles.

Neverwhere is a great concept set in lush and interesting world. Unfortunately, Richard and Door are two astonishingly flat protagonists who pale in comparison to the book’s far more rich lesser characters. The story itself, while “fun,” is definitely a little formulaic. Luckily, Neverwhere is one of Gaiman’s first novels and they do get much better.

My current book is Chuck Palahniuk’s newly released Snuff.

So, I’m a little late on this, but I wanted to write about it anyway. As it turns out, and I’m quite surprised, Iron Man was pretty spectacular. I expected it to be a ridiculous CGI nightmare, but no, the film was solid. I guess I underestimated the fact that Robert Downey Jr. is a total badass. Sara and I went to see it at the drive-in, which also tends to make any movie just a little bit better.

Did I have a stroke earlier? I was watching Indiana Jones, but he was really old and a little heavy. Then there were aliens that looked recycled from Artificial Intelligence: AI and CG monkeys. I obviously went to see a good movie and stroked out, right? I made all of this up, right? God, I’m scared…

In a shocking display of political solidarity, the Onion is reporting that Senators Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and John McCain have broken party lines to form a single triple presidential ticket dubbed by observers as the “2008 Nightmare Ticket.” While many already fear that the trio will only plunge our nation deeper into despair and hopelessness, I, for one, welcome the triple-threat of “ClinbamaCain” and cannot wait to see where their contradictory policies take us.

According to the Onion, embattled Presidential hopeful, Hillary Clinton, has proposed a “Next Vote Takes All” scheme to finally decide who will get the nod for Democratic Presidential nomination. Were I Obama, I’d go for it. He totally wouldn’t lose

I recently finished reading Whitechapel Gods, a decently entertaining fantasy novel with a hint of fabulism. Victorian London’s Whitechapel district is tormented by not the Ripper, but rather two mechanical Gods, Mama Engine and Grandfather Clock. After coming to existence on earth, which is never fully explained, we just have to accept it, Mama Engine and Grandfather Clock seal Whitechapel off from the rest of the world making it a soot-filled mechanized nightmare.  The sky is hidden by a vast canopy of steel, and monolithic metal towers loom haphazardly, casting ominous shadows over everything. The air in Whitechapel is thick with factory smoke, barely battled by dimly lit street lamps. Some citizens voluntarily give up their bodies and souls to the Gods. Their hearts are replaced with coal-burning furnaces, their limbs torn off and replaced with mechanical facsimiles. Other citizens are afflicted with “the clacks,” a disease in which mechanical parts grow spontaneously from human tissue, usually resulting in death. The book does an amazing job of creating a dark and truly claustrophobic atmosphere.

Unfortunately, the story itself isn’t anything spectacular, even a little muddled at times. A group of rebels banding together against impossible odds to topple their malevolent oppressors, we’ve read it before. The book’s characters are a little flat and not particularly engaging. While definitely a fairly fun read, I see Whitechapel Gods as a great deal of wasted potential.

I have decided that web sites with embedded audio should be stricken from the internets! They’re not cool, they’re not fun, they’re fucking annoying.  They’re especially bad if your computer is connected to 5.1 surround sound. Thanks to Fandango.com I don’t think my cat will be frequenting my room for some time. Apparently, she doesn’t like pop-up ads to scream at her at dawn, not that I don’t share her sentiment.

At the very least, the coders who invented embedded audio should burn in a car fire, or just have a really really bad headache for several days.