Something Positive

I've bored myself with all the negative/political crap that I've been writing in this World Wide Web log. I'm going to think of something pleasant and apolitical to write about.

Hmm ... Oh hey, my cat did the cutest thing the other day. She ran over to me and said "What the hell is wrong with the Republicans in Congress? Are they capable of anything besides obstructionism for political gain?"

No, that's not true. My cat is actually a right-wing freak who thinks that the Senate's health care plan is fascism, despite the fact that it is very similar to the plan that Republicans put forth in the early '90s, and by the way, have the Republicans offered any constructive criticism during this whole thing? I'd like to ... OK, I'm going off track again.

Hm. Well, here's something that could be interesting, at least. I have a few conventions of movies and TV that always make me laugh, because when you think about them, they're preposterous. But for some reason we always accept them. Read, enjoy, and have your movie-watching experience permanently damaged by intrusive realizations of the niggling implausibility of what you're seeing.

1. A character awakens from a scary dream and sits straight up immediately. Try actually doing this sometime. No matter how scary your dream is, it is almost impossible to sit up ramrod straight immediately. There's actually a scientific reason for this. During certain parts of your sleep cycle, your body is in a sort of rigor mortis -- your muscles are locked and cannot move. Some people have a disorder in which they wake up while in this state, which is very scary, as you can imagine. Some believe that it's in this waking rigor mortis that people have delusions about being kidnapped by aliens -- the fear translates to terrible semi-conscious dreams that they are later convinced really happened. But anyway, that's besides the point.

Point is, most people experience this state of rigor mortis while they're dreaming. You can wake up with a start, but your eyes will open and that's about all you can do for at least a second or so.

2. A character coming home from the grocery store always has a baguette sticking out of his/her bag. I'm actually stealing this one from Roger Ebert, who's such a terrific movie reviewer that I'll read his reviews for fun, even if I have no intention of seeing the movies he describes. He documented this observation, which is an especially odd convention because I'm betting that a huge percentage of Americans have never bought a baguette in their entire lives. But we just implicitly accept that every movie character loves baguettes and buys them constantly.

I won't use up more spots for other Roger Ebert rules, but I have to include a few more in this one. He also has the Rule of the Apple Cart, in which every high-speed chase through a city involves someone knocking over a large cart of fruit, as if every city is lousy with them. My favorite, though, is the Meet Cute, in which every couple in a romantic comedy has to meet in some ostentatiously cute way, such as smashing into each other in the street or grabbing each other's genitals simultaneously during an orgy (awkward!) or something like that. It's never a matter of the guy just sort of sidling up to the crazy drunk girl during Dollar Shot Night at the Tipsy Pelican like what happens in real life.

You know, this is probably because in real life, meetings of potential mates are always painful and unseemly to watch. In fact, everything about the human mating process, in real life, is horrible to watch. If you're watching bad relationships, you feel icky and sad for both people. With good relationships, the people seem sickly sweet and annoying. Best to keep love off the screen entirely and just stick to watching stuff fart and explode.

3. Characters using computers in movies often end up with screens that blink "ACCESS DENIED!!!" in massive, boxy red letters. Movie characters seem to always be using computers that are actually running Atari games from the early '80s. In real life, you'd get a tiny little box coming on the screen saying "Password does not match username. Please try again." I guess that doesn't have quite the same cachet for the big screen.

4. Characters in different movies often use exactly the same scream. There's the Wilhelm scream, which is sorta famous and might actually be extinct now because it's too famous. Here's a video that compiles Wilhelm screams in various movies: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cdbYsoEasio

But there are other ones I notice often. In TV ads I often hear a surprised sort of "WhaaAAAAaa!" that I of course can't describe further because I don't know what it's called or anything. So it's kind of pointless to bring it up. Oh well.

What else? I'm sure I'll think of more later. And when I do, I'll delete this part and put in another one. Kinda sad, really. These words never got the chance to fly on their own. Sigh.