My eyes are all gummed up from the cold I caught on Friday. I wake up in the morning and my lids are sealed shut like an unpeeled banana...seriously that's what it feels like. I have to open my eyes with my fingers, and then it's like looking through a curtain of snot.
I imagine that if I was in the game Resident Evil and I caught the T-Virus, it would start this way. First the eyes, then the throat, and as the skin begins to itch and peel, the virus makes it to your brain. Then, the feeding begins. Any sort of flesh will do, even your own, picked from your arm or thigh like a piece of chicken wing.
itchy
tasty
You might even chew your own lips off. Then, the feeding gets sloppier. Food slides out through your ruined cheeks and squirts bloody, gory chunks down on to your shoulders and on the floor and walls.
I also watch a lot of war films. You can Netflix now over Xbox Live, so I don't think I will ever pay for a movie channel ever again. In any case, I was noticing something in this movie that I am watching today called "To Hell and Back." I don't know when it was filmed, but it looks like about the 1950s.
In war movies, and war TV shows, when dudes get shot, they all do this funny little ballerina move where they trip on their feet, arch their back, throw their head back and fling their arms in the air. Then, they flop to the ground like a salmon up on the riverbank.
I have witnessed this maneuver in probably at least a hundred different films and shows, and it has always sort of bothered me; the idea of the dramatic death. It's not like that at all in real life! It's more of a "pop and flop" as a veteran would say. Well, maybe a veteran wouldn't say that. Maybe I will put it in my book when I write it.
The 'pop and flop'...the crack of the rifle, spitting the orange tongue of ignited gunpowder and oxygen, acrid smoke floating from the chamber and barrel.
Before the victim could hear the crack, he would be dead. He could see the flash of the muzzle, but his death would be silent to his own ears. He would see the flash and be gone in a snap.
There wouldn't be the dramatic pirouette and hand flailing you see in the movies. It would be a pop...and then a flop. Pop, and a human being-a grown man with a family, thoughts and experiences, maybe even a wife and kids-is gone, and leaves behind a sack of meat. Flop.
Flop to the ground. No rolling around, no stiffening, no goofy face making. All of the electricity in the body shut off like a switch. Mind gone, muscles slackened. Sphincter unclenched.
Pop and flop. Whiz, bang, dead.
We still really haven't gotten there in our filmmaking when we try to show the horrors of war. Saving Private Ryan was a great leap forward in war film making, and it was very visceral. If I could change anything about it, I wouldn't have made the squad comprised if the main characters of the move such a bunch of pretty boys.
Let's face it...everyone in that war was drafted or signed up off the streets. They were just as goofy looking and awkward as you and me are. And when they died, it was all the more horrible. Their little lives gone in a flash. There was no film dramatizing that last moment, just a flop to the earth.
In case you were wondering about my motives...I am a pacifist, I have never been in a fight in my life, and I couldn't bear the thought of ever hurting anybody personally. I'm just fascinated by the most horrid things we do to each other.
I imagine that if I was in the game Resident Evil and I caught the T-Virus, it would start this way. First the eyes, then the throat, and as the skin begins to itch and peel, the virus makes it to your brain. Then, the feeding begins. Any sort of flesh will do, even your own, picked from your arm or thigh like a piece of chicken wing.
itchy
tasty
You might even chew your own lips off. Then, the feeding gets sloppier. Food slides out through your ruined cheeks and squirts bloody, gory chunks down on to your shoulders and on the floor and walls.
I also watch a lot of war films. You can Netflix now over Xbox Live, so I don't think I will ever pay for a movie channel ever again. In any case, I was noticing something in this movie that I am watching today called "To Hell and Back." I don't know when it was filmed, but it looks like about the 1950s.
In war movies, and war TV shows, when dudes get shot, they all do this funny little ballerina move where they trip on their feet, arch their back, throw their head back and fling their arms in the air. Then, they flop to the ground like a salmon up on the riverbank.
I have witnessed this maneuver in probably at least a hundred different films and shows, and it has always sort of bothered me; the idea of the dramatic death. It's not like that at all in real life! It's more of a "pop and flop" as a veteran would say. Well, maybe a veteran wouldn't say that. Maybe I will put it in my book when I write it.
The 'pop and flop'...the crack of the rifle, spitting the orange tongue of ignited gunpowder and oxygen, acrid smoke floating from the chamber and barrel.
Before the victim could hear the crack, he would be dead. He could see the flash of the muzzle, but his death would be silent to his own ears. He would see the flash and be gone in a snap.
There wouldn't be the dramatic pirouette and hand flailing you see in the movies. It would be a pop...and then a flop. Pop, and a human being-a grown man with a family, thoughts and experiences, maybe even a wife and kids-is gone, and leaves behind a sack of meat. Flop.
Flop to the ground. No rolling around, no stiffening, no goofy face making. All of the electricity in the body shut off like a switch. Mind gone, muscles slackened. Sphincter unclenched.
Pop and flop. Whiz, bang, dead.
We still really haven't gotten there in our filmmaking when we try to show the horrors of war. Saving Private Ryan was a great leap forward in war film making, and it was very visceral. If I could change anything about it, I wouldn't have made the squad comprised if the main characters of the move such a bunch of pretty boys.
Let's face it...everyone in that war was drafted or signed up off the streets. They were just as goofy looking and awkward as you and me are. And when they died, it was all the more horrible. Their little lives gone in a flash. There was no film dramatizing that last moment, just a flop to the earth.
In case you were wondering about my motives...I am a pacifist, I have never been in a fight in my life, and I couldn't bear the thought of ever hurting anybody personally. I'm just fascinated by the most horrid things we do to each other.