Breaking News! Crocodiles Have Morals

In a recent scientific breakthrough, it has been discovered that the brain of a crocodile is much more complex than previously thought, going as far as possessing a complex morality system not unlike that of a human.


On December 1st, 2012, a four metre long Crocodylus Porosus, devoured a helpless 4 year old child in Arnhem Land, Northern Territory, Australia.  Finally, it has been killed.  According to the NT News 30 Jan 2013, 'locals lured the croc into shallow water where Gumatj Corporation workers shot the animal.'

It's obvious only a morally corrupt, evil crocodile would kill a poor, defenseless child.  The majority of crocodiles are upstanding citizens that know better than this.  Clearly this was one 'salty' that was just plain evil.

'Let it serve as a lesson to all other crocodiles', some local dickhead probably said.

Friend of the victim's family and Gumatj Corporation Executive, who was instrumental to the expelling of the evil beast, told NT News about how the family is feeling.

 'It has been very stressful for the family not knowing, but they have closure now.'

It's great that we live in a society that is hellbent on justice being served, not at all unaware of the hypocrisy of righting the wrong of killing by more killing.  Now that the murderous evil salty bastard has been slayed, the family can sleep a little better.  And according to some recent studies conducted, sleep can be important to good health.

'Most crocodiles wouldn't kill a child, they simply know better than that', commented John, a local expert on, everything.

Not that kind of Morel, Mohammed

Although this has all been such a tragic series of events, we can be thankful it has led to the scientific breakthrough of the mentality of the crocodile.  Instead of lamenting in the catastrophe, Darwin Primary School teacher Vanessa Pointycracke is looking to the future.

'We should be thinking about education now, you know, schools for these crocodiles, or crocopeople as they prefer to be called as of just then.  Sometimes it is ignorance that causes the problems, and with a proper education these issues are easily fixed.'

Vanessa also works part-time as a stripper on weekends, to save up enough funds to start a waterfront fish & chips business, which has been her dream ever since she was a little boy.

'I always wanted to be a primary school teacher whilst working part-time on weekends as a stripper to save up enough funds to start a fish & chips business on the waterfront', she explains enthusiastically.

Scientists are looking to probe further into the mind of the crocodile, and are now speculating that it may have been mental illness that caused it to attack unprovoked, because it couldn't have been hungry and trying to survive or anything.

'We're thinking depression, or possibly even bi-polar', said a leading professional expert.

'The crocodile may not have even been aware it attacked the child.  When someone with a diseased mental brain has an outburst, they lose control of their actions.'

He continues:

'It's much like sleep walking, except you're awake and killing children.'

'Now we're looking for a drug we can prescribe these teen-angst crocs.  We've already got several leading drug manufacturers interested.'

'Don't worry, we've already trademarked the crocodile anti-depressent "croco-smile''', the leading professional expert laughs awkwardly.

'And "Cross-adile" is on the cards, certainly.' 

Several witnesses have even reported local crocodiles listening to 'heavy death rock' music such as American satanic band Nickelback.

'This awful music they listen to, it just can't be having a positive effect on them, it's so negative and full of hate.  It's just horrible', squawked prestigious local woman Glenys Marter.

'I just don't understand it.  Why don't they listen to something nice like twinkle twinkle little star?'

For far too long, crocodiles have been sorely misunderstood.  Now, at last, we can sleep soundly at night knowing that progress is being made.  But progress and sleep doesn't bring back the dead.  At least, not yet.

 


 

My Thoughts on: Django Unchained

As I sat in the second from the back row in the theatre playing 'Django Unchained', I was thinking more about George Orwell's 'Nineteen Eighty Four', where the crowd laughs and cheers at the on-screen decapitations and other various de-limbings of the opposing forces.  There were two middle aged women sitting diagonally behind me that both amused and disturbed me over the course of the film.

I pictured them sitting there on inflatable tubes, wobbling about while stuffing their flabby faces with bagged ice creams and buttered popcorn, their rolls of lard careening over the edges of the spongy seats, and cackling like old magpies, morally corrupted by an industrial world.

The violence in Django Unchained is gratuitous, sadistic and boring.  So is the rest of the film.  The scenes in which either of the protagonists, Django and Dr Schultz, inflicted brutal violence onto any other character, the women cheered, clapped and laughed heartily.  The gore flew in buckets with blood curdling screams of agony; a scene in which Django shatters the kneecaps of Stephen, the corrupt and hypocritical 'head-house nigger' played by Samuel L Jackson, and he cries out very convincingly, they clapped and cheered like vultures waiting for their prey to die, totally approving of the character's actions.  The rest of the audience had similar reactions.

The scene in which Django blows away a seemingly endless stream of henchmen, gallows of blood splashing over the screen, bodies piling on the floor like sandbags leaking out blood rather than sand, the women laughed and cheered.

If there is any point to be taken from this movie, it is 'the road to hell is paved with good intentions.'  Django will do whatever it takes to claim his wife back from the slavers.  This is shown most dramatically in the scene where Calvin Candie (Leonardo DiCaprio) offers Django and Schultz the chance to save a slave's life by buying him for a sizable sum, otherwise he will be torn apart by 'the dogs.'  Although the anti-slavist (that's a word now) conscience of Schultz gets the better of him, Django resists in order to stay in character.  A necessary sacrifice, he believes, to acquire his wife.

Any scene where the protagonists are injured or tortured, the ladies would wimper and sudder, as if feeling the character's pain themselves.  This proves that they believed the torturous punishment to the so called 'bad guys' is fair and justifiable.  This extremely black and white way of viewing the world points to a state of mind becoming increasingly rigid and fascist.  The morals of mainstream society are so easily decided by the mass media.  It's not hard to see how people like Hitler did what they did.

Django Unchained is a pointless and dull movie.  I went and saw it because I usually enjoy Tarentino's work.  If he made this film to see how stupid and manipulable people are, then in that one way, he succeeded.  But I think it sucks.

The characters are flat and lifeless; Christoph Waltz who is brilliantly hateable and bursting with charisma in 'Inglorious Basterds' just doesn't inspire.  He is just going through the motions of 'acting.'  It's the same with Jamie Fox playing Django, a strong, silent but wounded type that just couldn't convince me.  The whole movie was unconvincing and convoluted.  The only character played halfway decently is Calvin Candie by DiCaprio, but only when compared to the others.  When you've been wading through shit for hours, a bit of piss doesn't seem so bad.

The dialogue, the centrepoint of a Tarentino film, is also dull and uninspired.  I just couldn't be convinced by the bounty hunter/conman Dr Schultz talking his way out of potentially lethal situations.  There is no chemistry between the characters, and no clever wit.   

The film is self conscious about the A-list celebrities cast.  When DiCaprio is first introduced it dramatically zooms in on his face, as if the audience have been fucking holding their breaths for him to appear, which they probably have.  I could practically smell the vaginal sauce leaking out of the middle aged ladies diagonally behind me

And then with Samuel L Jackson, I could actually hear the booming voice of a crowd announcer in my head, 'And heeere's Samuel L Jackson!' and the audience cheers enthusiastically.

Torentino is a sold out basterd, now adding to the media pollution coming to a screen near you.  It's not as if these people were cast sheerly for their acting ability, but because they are names that sell tickets.

The plot goes on and on and on; it seems as if the writers of this story had no idea when it should end, and even why they were writing in the first place (much like this article).  The scenes don't feel unified with one another, and there is no sense of progression or pace (much like this article).  I was wishing it was over about an hour into it (much li...)

Is there anything I like about this movie?  The music is very good overall.  The short segments where the music, landscape and filmography are left to tell the story are the strongest.  The filming locations are breathtaking and very authentic.  Although some of the music is too close to 'The Good, the Bad and the Ugly' to be not just influenced but derisive, overall it is well written and fitting.  I believe one of the songs is actually a cover of an Ennio Morricone, who made those classic western whistlers which have become synonymous with westerns in pop culture.  

What annoys me most about this whole thing is that the movie seemed like a quickly thrown together Hollywood cash in by a film maker that has done some great work in the mainstream.  The audience's reactions added to my agitation, and that it could have been any pile of crap they were watching on screen.  As long as it has names like Tarentino and DiCaprio involved, they'll clap and cheer along much like the brainwashed citizens of Orwell's Oceania.

      

The Warlock

It was a positively cold autumn day when the shy warlock entered the salloon.  Orange, yellow and red leaves were falling in patterns on its roof, and had covered the dirt road completely.  The bar was oriental in appearance, and a faint smell of opium was protruding from within.  He walks up to the bar and a pretty Japanese girl in her early 20s greets him.  He orders a glass of Shlampey on the rocks, and lights up a cigarracka.  Puff, puff goes the magic lungs, poisoning the air with a seductive aroma, tantalising the bartender and making her even sexier in the soft lighting strategically placed around the room.

She gasps and blushes and catches the shy warlock's eye in the deep end.  He puts the eye spell on her, with a +1 charm on his silver necklace that glistens even more in the smoke.  And then as quick as you can say 'crackity goes the snap tongs' she fell into his arms, her slenderly beautiful body clicking into his and assuming the appropriate position.

They were spinning around and around, faster and faster until the bar became a blur of colours, mainly the orange yellow of the candles and fireplace.  She starts to sing in ecstasy, in the forbidden scale, and the notes enter the warlock's eye and melt him in two.  They fly upwards, still spinning, out of the bar and into the void where all emotion is drained out to fill the empty yin yangs, and the ego is extracted by godlike beings with arms made of wisp and multi-tools built into them.  The beings have an infinite amount of faces which somehow you can see all at once, and it makes you feel comfortable.  They poke and prod you as if you were abducted by aliens, but inject you with good happy feelings, better than you've ever felt before.

The beings start to sing out and cheer in strange tongues whilst spinning around you, their infinite faces all displaying pleasure.  Cosmic balloons and streamers fall all around them, and the beings momentarily transform into slot machines which ding and beep with 'WINNING' displayed on the screen.  They extend their long theoretical arms out and hold the warlock and the girl in a forcefield made of magnetic quantam, gently carrying them back down through space and time and relativity, back down into the bar, while the spinning gradually slows down and comes to a complete stop. The girl gives one final moan of pleasure and looks so incredibly sexy in that one moment that everyone else in the bar spontaneously combusts and god kills itself.  They stare into each other's eyes, deeply connected. 

And then just before this scene ends, a nearby cartoon frog exclaims 'I'll have what she's having' and winks into the camera.

The Tale So Far

One

We ride slipstreams in sleek silver lines, zooming through a future city, cyborg statues and neon lights in a blur, me in the driver's seat with sexy brunette riding shotgun, breakneck speeds through smooth contours, airborne food stations pulsating blue, robot cleaners with shiny metallic smiles, sending out waves to one another in secret.

Split second navigation, take the right turn, inches from the wall we skim along the surface, creating a ripple in the metal, a city where everything is covered in solar and everything ripples.  En route to deliver a package, danger not specified but always possible, I arrive on time and speak the code word into the wall mic, entry granted and door glides open, inside lights line the edges creating a cube effect, no one around... yet.

Apartment 405, nice number, ring the buzzer and wait for anything.  Five seconds, ten seconds, nothing, ring again, twenty seconds, nothing.  I try the door - it's open.  I go in, it smells of sulfur and something else, something familiar I can't quite wrap my head around, pristine apartment, everything's in order, I snoop around.  The bed is made, there's some barely audible ambient electronica playing somewhere, I inspect the closet and a gleaming face is staring at me, soulless eyes and a pointy open mouth.

'Hello sir, may I be of assistance?'  The robotic butler smiles a blank grin.  'Perhaps you'd like some hot soup, I find that always cheers me up when the temperature is, ten degrees, outside.  Now that my heartbeat has started to return to normal I ignore the robot and resume my snooping.  I find two hundred dollars in cash, a gold pendant with a strange and unfamiliar design on it, an array of passports of different names, some of them the same face, others different, and a control with a single red button.

Something doesn't feel right.  The vibrations in the room have changed.  I realise the electronica playing has gotten louder and developed into a beat, but it's in seven eight, and the cyborg's eyes are glowing red, so I stuff the items in my jacket pocket and run out the door.  I slam the door behind me as I bolt down the corridor, and three seconds later I hear it open again but I don't even want to look back.  As I round a corner I hear a bullet whizz past my head and bounce off the wall.  I keep running full pelt, and in the glass ahead of me I catch a glimpse of my pursuer - it's the butler cyborg and he's perfect-sprinting toward me, eyes glowing red and face transparent like a skeleton.

I get to the garage and as I near my car the door auto opens and I vault in, engaging the engines and directing all power to maximum acceleration.  Just as the door shuts a bullet hits it and bounces off, cyborg charging at us glowing red, and we glide out of there just in time, but I hear something strike the car on the way out, and Aleish glances at me.

Gliding home through the night sky, up high surrounded by stars and skyscrapers, the city pulses, everything's connected, the veins are wireless, the brains are ultra compact and the heart is a complex electromagnetic generator.  Back at my pad, liquid music flows out of strategic points, sleek lines make up the room and the view overlooks the chaos amongst the order.  There was a time when it was the other way around.

Two

The silver blue hue of the alarm clock woke her before the buzzer.  She always woke up exactly one minute before it went off - that terrifyingly shrill siren that pierces dreams into an unpleasantly sudden climax.  As she readied her finger on the off button, her dream began to fade rapidly.  It was something about a Chinese lady dressed in old fashioned attire, standing amongst the falling red leaves of autumn, and as she concentrated more intently on the leaves, they began to turn grey and morph into hundreds of tiny dancing robots.  Then what happened?  The Chinese lady began to speak about something.  But already thoughts of waking life began to flood her thoughts and push out that other world, that seems so real and vivid.  It's like another universe parallel to the one we occupy upon waking.

She pulls herself up out of bed and gracefully floats over to the corner of the room, where there sits a glowing red sphere on top a small wooden table.  Manipulating it with her fingers, it starts to gently throb and rotate, and hums in a pleasant neutral chord, syncing itself with her, healing any broken links.  It feels as if someone is gently massaging her temples to a steady rhythm.  Five minutes have passed and she is finished with her morning meditation.

Outside the window, mechanical birds chirp in 1s and 0s, communicating to one another and all through the whole city, all in rhythm - a very complex never ending rhythm necessary to the proper flow of the city.  Giant hollow poles tower in the sky, and hum in deep monotones from the reverberation of electrical discharge that is constantly being emitted.

Time for her morning run.  A perfect figure, she currently scores 9s and 10s in all the various categories of physical grading.  Her brunette hair is medium length; it hangs perfectly down and bounces  in rhythm, on her smooth olive skin.  She runs from her apartment, first through the industrial district neighbouring hers, and through the factories constantly manufacturing millions of different sized metal cylinders, the robotic arms pulsing with red LED's, like a sea of cyborg eyes, all blinking, in rhythm.

She runs past the vast water farms glistening with heavenly golden light.  She approaches the water and it parts, revealing a path dotted with more golden lighting.  The surrounding walls of water give off a faint mist of water which made the spot popular with local runners.

She exits the water path out the other side, and she sees something; she thinks she sees something, that makes her slow to a jog and then completely stop.  Up ahead, by the large red Asian style temple, stands a figure.  From her viewpoint, it looks remarkably like the Chinese woman from her dream.  A closeup of her flashes in her minds eye for a split second and she violently flinches.