Aporia
Introduction
Introduction
You know what I’m afraid of? Going to prison. Not being in prison, because that actually sounds pretty simple, but going to prison. ‘Cause once you go in, you don’t get out until other people think that they want you to go back out. And quite often, they feel like you shouldn’t exist, but since they can’t change that, they have to demonstrate their subjectively perceived superiority to you by locking you in a box that you can’t get out of and controlling the food and water and sunlight and human contact you get.
This is how you learn that as much as pumping gas sucks, it’s what they’d prefer you to do rather than the excitement of running in at 2 am with a pistol. But it’s not that I’m even such that sort of criminal. I am. Obviously. Joyously. It’s one of the most defining characteristics of what being “Me” is.
ClusterBeeSorry, but I’m one of the 20% that you haven’t been able to catch, motherfuckers. I’m still running around out here. I can steal your bicycle if I want to. But I don’t. Not because I’m deathly afraid of going to prison. But because I have ridiculously elitist standards when it comes to shit like that. But I don’t steal your bike because the risk of having to interact with a whole bunch of unpleasant people as a result if I get caught.
I’m not referring to the inmates. I’m referring to the people who ask stupid shit like “Why didn’t you just buy yourself a bike?” or “You *do* know that taking other people’s stuff is wrong, right?” See? These are the people who need to lock others away in order to demonstrate their power to themselves because they know that in the actuality of a feral raw flesh-eating lightless jungle, they are lower on the prey food chain than baby ferns.
In this civilized world they do what they can to feel better about living with the subconscious realization that if the rules of this game weren’t so skewed in favor of the lowest common denominator of the herd, they’d already be past tense. They wouldn’t have existed past their first fuck-up. Or if they did, they wouldn’t be the safe, comfortable civilized polite person that they take great comfort and care in being, since it allows them to look down upon any and all that fall short.
Knowing that you have the capacity to be a murdering cannibal and that you would have been willing to embrace such if everyone suddenly stopped wearing pants and went back to being animals is fucking scary. Mother bears will eat their own children before allowing themselves- the mothers- to starve to death. Has nothing to do with saving her little ones from starving or anything like that.
It’s the Darwinistic mathematical model that requires one sex of a species to have to exist in order to mate with another of it’s species, so the mother bear eats her young to live to mate another year. Could you do that? Why not? It’s wrong? Welcome to the other 97% of human thinking. It makes my belly feel ucky to think about doing that. And I think bears are the coolest thing I’m afraid of.
I have NONE of this when I’m deciding not to steal your bike. I felt none of that when I was breaking into your cars to steal your cigarettes, spare change, and anything else I thought looked neat. I feel nothing for the taking of your shit. Your shit is not secure. You know what you did.
But I don’t want to go to prison, so I don’t take your stupid Huffy even if it would teach you a valuable lesson about not locking it to something that both the bike and lock can be lifted off of ‘cause it’s only 4 feet high. I don’t want to GO to prison. The level of embarrassment itself is overwhelming.
What better way to show that you can’t play the game than to get locked in a box by the people with no power? Embarrassment aside, and that’s truly an aside, in as much as embarrassment hurts, it fades to background burn eventually and you don’t need to face it unless you need warming. But being in prison sounds like being in summer camp. Or, honestly, it would- if I wasn’t 5’8” and currently 160 lbs of cheesecake meets donuts.
Can they start a prison system like the fighting weight rankings, where you only get put in with people your own size? Now that sounds fun. That’s a fucking dystopian game show right there. But I know that in any real prison situation, I’m going to be considering myself lucky if I can just be ignored as an old fuck who is too useless to take sides regardless of skin color or affinity for 80’s gangster rap.
So, even though I love fighting, this is less of an “I’m a bad motherfucker who would thrive in prison.” and more of “I would love to be placed in a society of physically similar people who then get to establish their own hierarchy based on everything other than brute force”. Brute force is unfair. Brute force needs to be hurt in public and hamstrung in the dark.
But if life were just a series of decisions that you could make based on the merits of the decisions and the risks and rewards involved, wouldn’t you prefer a more level playing field? That’s what prison could be. I think I would enjoy it if it were so. But since it’s not, no use wriggling further after that rabbit and let’s focus in on the reason that going to prison would really be the end.
Going to prison is like agreeing to start playing a game that you cannot get out of until all players agree that it’s over. Imagine a cash poker game that could only end by unanimous decision? Imagine a baseball game with unlimited innings- both teams just had to agree that the game was over and then it would be?
You’ll never get out of prison because once they have you in there, the chances of the entire team agreeing that they’d prefer you to be outside with them is realistically next to nothing. This is why we need prison reform. That and the fact that there’s some pareto-ish bullshit regarding the amount of colored prisoners in for crimes vs the ratio of Caucasian motherfuckers in there for the exact same thing.
But going to prison is a one-way door. I’m afraid that if I go to prison, I’ll never get out. What I mean by that is I’ll go to prison, and then dislike being in prison, so I’ll act out, and that will lead to more prison time, which will lead to more middle fingers, which stomps itself in a circle until everyone I ever knew outside is dead and there’s no reason for me to leave my box anymore. This is what I’m afraid of.
I’m afraid of making that first, slight, fatal slip, and then once I’ve got momentum down the slide, I’m unable to stop until I’ve shot off the hot, slippery steel and am rolling through the bark mulch already in prison stripes. I have a hard time making the right decision – and I mean the socially correct decision- when I’m upset. When I’m upset, I want to make things worse until Dresden looks like a sparkler from afar.
If I go to prison, I might as well die. I won’t be coming back out again vertical. I’m not saying another prisoner is going to kill me, either- I’m just saying that once I go in, I’m going to continue making the same decisions that keep me in. This is why I’m afraid to go to prison. I know I’m not smart enough to get out again.
I’m in the house. I have anxiety. My anxiety is that if I leave the house, I will do something stupid that puts me in danger of prison. Is it still considered agoraphobia if you’re not afraid of the crowd, but you’re afraid of what you’ll do in front of or to the crowd that will then turn the crowd against you and into agreeance that you should get locked in a box?
What is the name for the fear of innocently assaulting someone for all the right reasons and still going to prison as a result? That’s the thing. It’s bigger than a breadbox.
(5/25) I’m not sure when the above was written. I remember writing it, but I didn’t intend to watch a movie when I was struck with the impulse to detail all that phobia out. Since then, I’ve… well, I’ve drank mushroom tea in the desert, gotten extremely startled by a lizard, and spent far too long than is acceptable for an adult to play with a bb gun.
I also was smoking a gram a day. It was a great road-trip for my buddy’s birthday, and we toured the south-east of the state. But I’m a little bit… fatigued, even if there’s nothing that I’ve done. I don’t think I have it in me to do a review tonight. I’m just fucking fading.
I wonder if I should chug a butt-ton of coffee and push through. I think it’s important to be productive. So I’m going to start microdosing on mushrooms. I haven’t talked to my doctor about it yet, but I have started 4 colonies with my wife.
Meaning, we’ve sailed around and abandoned personnel on random shorelines to prove that we own that place if the people can survive until the next ship gets there. That’s a big lie. What I mean is we’ve stuck needles full of mushroom spores into bags of rye and horse-shit, but only after sterilizing the shit out of everything.
My wife, medical professional that she is, takes things like “sterilization” really seriously, and I’m kind of a “rub some dirt on it to stop the bleeding” kinda approach. When I get a cut that requires a band-aid, I put on that first band-aid and then continue wearing it until it essentially rots off. And every fucking time, I’m completely healed underneath.
Like, I wear it in the shower, and then dry it off like anything else. Like an earing or a tattoo. I don’t mess with it. My wife insists that things need to be periodically cleaned and to breathe and all this logically correct scientifically proven advice- well, not really advice when disregarding it could result in gangrene, but it hasn’t happened yet.
Worst thing so far is losing a toenail. That was because I kicked something really hard. Would it be strange to have all the hair on my toes zapped off? I’ve already been under the laser a bunch of times- I was born with a pelt. But I’ve never really thought about the hair on my feet, except in a “fucking hobbits” sort of way.
But now, I think I don’t want to have hairy toes. I’m going for it tonight. I’m going to watch something that’s just left fucking field. It’s called Aporia, a name that looked like a word, so I googled it, and I was right. “NOUN- an irresolvable internal contradiction or logical disjunction in a text, argument, or theory: “the celebrated aporia whereby a Cretan declares all Cretans to be liars”. Yeah.
So… Aporia. That’s the name of the movie, and the description of it reads “The residents of the settlement were captured by the unknown armed group. They began to conduct experiments on people. But the experiments were unlucky for the difficult position. The people who were practiced on them were taken far from the settlement on mountain and were killed. But Arvin and Ejla were saved from them and were hidden behind the mountain in the deep hole.”
What, exactly, makes sense about this to you? Me? I’m pretty sure this is a zombie movie, but… They sure don’t go out of their way to help inform you. What sort of sentence structure is “But the experiments were unlucky for the difficult position.”? I’m pretty sure it’s a too-literal translation out of another language.
One that assumes, to begin with, that we all know “The deep hole” “behind the mountain”. The big tragedy of the road trip was that I’d grabbed what I thought was a loaf of Dave’s Killer Raisin Bread, but I’d actually grabbed a loaf of wheat. Now, eating dry slices of wheat bread isn’t actually as bad as you’d think. After a couple days with nothing else but beef jerky, edamame, and pistachios, a random slice of wheat bread, while still quite, quite dry, is still perceived as something of a yummy delicacy.
That’s what I kept telling myself every time my buddy ripped on me for munchy-ing my way through a loaf of wheat bread. I just looked up when I’d last written. Fuck, I need to slow down on the everything. Not anything, especially in specific, but I should… know more about what’s going on. I’m not sure where.
My wife and I went to an exhibit on Banksy. It got a whole lot more fun when I started pretending that random strangers at the exhibit *were* actually Banksy, and that I was being watched for my reaction. Also, announcing to the tour guide right out of the gate that due to autism and ASPD I might ignore him or stare him down like I wanted to fight, but please be assured that the reality is that I’m listening and appreciate the information you’re sharing with us was a fun way to set the tone. I tried to explain that I just don’t show things normally. Then I spent the majority of the tour either avoiding all eye contact, or staring through him for entire explanations of the art.
(5/26) “Mama, we’re all going to die… Mama, we’re meant for the flies…” That about sums up how I’m feeling. I’m being good at being productive but… I’m not feeling it. I cannot level out. I’m either going up or coming down. “I had to run away high…” The calling has started. Actually, the letter-writing campaign has started as well.
Headlamp and I have received two of the same “got questions? Bible got dem answers!” form letters from some kid named Aaron the next town over. There’s something in me that wants to write back, to create a thread of Letters To Aaron. I think I will write back. Gosh, now that I’m being productive, I wonder how long *that* will take?
My fucking therapist- the woman who diagnosed me- is still waiting on my “What I want to get out of therapy” email. I’ll get to writing it. I’m just so fucking tired and disinterested. I want to go back to playing video games and drinking. If I do these things far enough away from other people, I can’t cause any trouble.
Imagine a drunken, magic-mushroom and marijuana growing Timothy McVeigh writing horrifically mean letters to random strangers.
So there’s this movie, and it only cost $1.99 to purchase. That means it’s GOT to be good. Otherwise, I’m gonna be making a lot of… Fuck. What’s his name. Jokes. “The international language!” Better Off Dead. John Cusack. I feel like the fucking cat is already twice-stepping already. I recently found a very melted bag of weed edibles and I just ate one or two.
Hard to tell when it’s all one Rorschach test of multicolored gummies sticking to the inside of the bag like geckos covered in Gorilla Glue. I don’t want to do this review tonight. I want to turn out the lights, blast My Chemical Romance, and curl up on the floor and cry. I can’t understand it but I have tears in my eyes as I’m typing. I’m not… enjoying… *this*.
I’m re-reading the description again as I take a dab hit. Arvin. Arvin and the Chipmunks. Ok. That got a bit of a smile.
Review Notes
Review Notes
Starting off with a convoy of trucks. And eagle sounds. Could have been the same sample Steve Miller used.
Everyone is wearing some shade of blue. No reds. Is this, like, a sect of pacifist crips?
Got some British accents.
And it appears that everyone has been injected with something.
Now we’re headed towards the mountains.
“How much do you think this bullet costs?”
“One or two dollars. Maybe less.”
A rifle round costs about 40 cents at the moment. I mean, caliber changes everything, but that’s gotta be 7.62×39. The guys, whose broken noses show them to be bad men, are also speaking with… what *could* be a Russian accent?
How much… Ok. I was going to bitch about how long is it going to take to get somewhere, but then… the eagle. A bald eagle. Horribly CGI’d into the overhead shot. They’re obviously not Americans- we’d be shitting ourselves and calling for lawyers and mommy. So, where the fuck else does bald eagles live? I’m gonna go all Ben Franklin if they’re common around the world. Ben was right. Shoulda been the Turkey.
“Even if we die, we won’t die as cowards.”
Ok, we met Arvin. Just as a guy makes a runner.
Got shot in the leg for his efforts.
Dude. Yeah, she was being annoying, but that was too much. You’re a dick.
Well, now they’re going to drag the guy to death.
So that big bald guy is really a bad person.
Oh. Fuck. I didn’t expect that. That was new. That was…next level. Poor guy got ripped in half at the belt-line by the two trucks. I have no urge to go back and rewatch it, but he appeared to be filled with orange.
I want one of these trucks. Not for ripping people in half though. They’re just big off-road trucks.
So, unloading everyone out of the trucks?
Arvin just got a gun.
The alpha bad guy doesn’t seem to care much though.
These guys suck at teamwork.
Arvin appears to be ok though.
“Shoo!”
Uh… I don’t feel very trusting.
Oh, the evil head nod.
That is one hell of a cross-bow.
Wasting a lot of bullets now.
I also enjoy a good ravine slide.
Now they’re in a mud pit.
Uh… other survivors… not anymore, really.
The director really liked the idea of all the bad guys personalizing their guns with rags and duct tape and stuff.
Wow. These bad guys are really bad guys. The chuckle all the time. And so evil.
So, the radio says to bring back all the captives- that something has gone wrong. Bad guy doesn’t care.
Now they’re using bald eagles as vultures? Is this an intentional “Fuck America” statement?
Down in the mud pit, Arvin is bathing Ejla in mud water.
Are we supposed to know that the pit has been dug recently? With those sticks, carving hand and foot holds to get out would be easy.
Or, it’s just some strange U shaped… place.
So the sticks are made of Styrofoam or the ground is harder than it seems. Digging is a no-go.
Ejla is bleeding and soaked in mud water and she wants to hang out in the pit for the rest of the day. Arvin appears to be intentionally drawing out his lines so that the scenes last longer. They’re taking a lot of time showing us a whole lot of nothing really.
Oh. Shit. The first zombie just re-animated.
Or is that guy not dead?
“I bet you they will rape your wife and drink your blood.”
Gone silent again, for whatever that means.
This is dark- meaning, hard to see.
Well, looting the dead is one of the positives that we’re all secretly looking forward to, so I can’t hold it against him.
Something just pulled the corpse away.
Jesus, these two bicker.
And now we’ve seen Arvin light a fire two times.
The next day…
Well, that camp fire could be the analogy for the entire movie. It is a very, very slow burn…
Arvin’s plan sounds like about the worst way to spend your day in a pit.
Stealing a dead man’s pants. This is not something I have fantasized about in my zombie apocalypse scenarios.
Arvin, why are you soaking all your clothes? That’s gonna SUCK when it gets colder.
This scene is going on forever, but I think Arvin just went in for a kiss and got confused by a yellow light.
And now he’s throwing a clothing spear, seems to have gotten the hang of it.
He won’t let her go up first? Her logic is sound.
Arvin, you idiot. Now you hurt your leg.
Jesus, was the budget for this $37 and free use of a back-hoe?
Arvin’s moans of pain are about as realistic as a porn star’s shrieking.
“Hunger brings the philosopher out in you.”
Thank you, Arvin, for explaining how rain works. And yes, it’s raining. Ejla can’t swim, either. This is called Darwinism, boys and girls.
And the bad guys came back, what, 2 days later? To do a half-assed search and execute of wounded? Who we have NOT heard at all. If you have a field of people with gunshot wounds, I think that’s not going to be a silent field.
Another unit of time has passed. We’re now 56 minutes into the movie with 28 to go- including all the ending crap. And I don’t think I’ve seen a zombie yet.
Whoah! Ok, I think that’s the first one! (Steve Irwin voice) “It’s eating the corpse, so that’s a really good sign!”
Ejla just saved Arvin from a zombie attack. Did Arvin get bit?
Back to the looting of corpses…
Examining of necks…
Oh, shit. Arvin has a neck… thingy. That’s not good.
Arvin, what in the SamHain Hell are you talking about? Is this science or verbal hallucinations?
I think they’re both slowly turning into zombies…
That’s one tense hug.
Yeah, kinda saw that coming as a nightmare. They’re desperate to pad this out in any way possible.
Arvin’s got the droolies and may be eating a frog.
Yes. He is eating a frog. And she’s vomiting.
I mean, I don’t want to eat raw amphibians, but… calories are calories.
Arvin is puking up his frog. And not looking good.
If it’s so fucking easy to get out, why are you just mentioning it now?
Right before turning?
Seizures in a puddle. Eye liner and growling. Puking. Violent head shakes.
Now he’s back to lucid?
Arvin, you fuck EVERYTHING up.
Arvin, you’re head-butting a muddy wall.
Well, Ejla’s up and out of the pit.
And I think she’s ditching Arvin.
Well, only long enough so that when she DOES decide to go back and save him, he’s already drown.
Ejla, who are you talking to?
One zombie avoided.
Thankfully, these are very spazzy zombies.
Arvin zombie has a grip on her now!
Jesus, please end.
Ejla’s just… walking around.
Well, she found a road and a truck and, well, it has the bad guys in it.
Oh! Snap! Arvin lied when he told her that there was just a needle mark. She’s been infected this whole time, too!
Then she’s thrown into the back of a box truck with a half dozen zombie in it.
————End Transmission——————–
Plot Autopsy
Plot Autopsy
- Bunch of prisoners in blue are driven out into the desert to the sounds of eagles shrieking
- Bunch of prisoners in blue are gunned down in the desert, except Arvin and Ejla. Who fall in a hole.
- Arvin makes a “clothes spear” and hurts his leg badly.
- Arvin and Ejla both have to kill a zombie
- After talking about getting out of the pit (yet not actually doing anything) for 5 days, Ejla escapes.
- I sat here in awe of how badly that movie wasted my time. So bad.
Zombie Description
Zombie Description
Well, we know they’re scientifically created zombies from something medical that went wrong. We’re really not told much more than that. Everyone got a shot in the back of the neck, then taken out and executed. Which doesn’t really make any sense in itself. But then the bodies began re-animating and eating other corpses. These are fast and angry and aggressive and feral, but a stick to the head works just fine in a pinch.
Where the money went
Where the money went
Who the hell knows? The special effects were pretty good, but then again, they were used so fucking sparingly that I found myself working through a bag of pistachios because there literally wasn’t anything going on to type about. Just the main couple arguing about getting out of the hole, which made no sense since they didn’t even try to stand on each other’s shoulders until shit was so dire that the lower person had to drown to pull it off. There could not have actually been a written script. Possibly a bullet-point list of things to happen in an arranged sequence, but no one ever read that dialogue and said, “Yeah, that’s just marginally acceptable.”
Best Weapon
Best Weapon
Rope and two trucks. Not many zombies died in this, and those that did just got their heads caved in with a stick. A bunch of humans got killed, but that was mostly with guns and a crossbow. You know. Just… because. But… rope and two trucks and a medieval enjoyment of casual brutality all mix together into a toxic stew of yuck and startlement.
That was new!
That was new!
Seeing a guy get ripped in half by a couple of trucks was new. I’ve never seen that. I don’t want to see it again. They… did a good job with it in a way that you’ll have to trust me on, since I’m not going back and rewatching any of it. You want to know what I’m pissed that they never explained? Why was there this U-shaped trench dug in the middle of the desert for anyway? Who did it? When? Why? Where? Who? So many questions.
Can I get a hand?
Can I get a hand?
Well, there wasn’t much in this movie, so there sure wasn’t any nods to tradition or easter eggs to the long-ago days. This was more of a “neighborhood kids make a movie” but with adult production values. Maybe this was intended as a tax write-off.
Overall Recommendation
Recommendation?
The first, most important thing, is don’t watch this movie. Now that we’ve gotten that out of the way, I’ll explain some of the reasons why you shouldn’t. Aside from a couple “Whoah!” moments, this was the slowest movie known to man. 94% of it consists solely of Ejla and Arvin asking each other questions, or bickering, or repeating shit that they’ve both already said. There’s very little actual zombies, horrid misuse of bald eagles, far too strong of a fascination with rain, and a plot gimmick that appears the offspring of lazy meets “Already got a backhoe.” Was this movie written just to write off the back-hoe tax-wise? Why were all the captives wearing blue? There’s so much about this that makes no sense, and even more that doesn’t even attempt to offer you anything. It just lets you stand there awkwardly on the threshold of the kitchen trying to keep up your end of the conversation while your host eats an entire pie sitting at the table in front of you without offering you any or even acknowledging the gastric abuse taking place. There’s no reason to watch this, a couple reasons not to (it’s boring and pointless) and so many better zombie movies out there. And so many better non-zombie movies out there. Have you seen Signs yet? Or Roadhouse? Monty Python and the Holy Grail? Killing Them Softly? The Explorers? Rango? If you haven’t, watch these before you waste your time with this. If any part of you even remotely enjoyed any of these movies, then watch them over again for whatever time it is before you watch this. The name of this movie is just pretentious and irrelevant. I’d pay Danny Boyle to kick this guy in the nuts.