A Heartfelt Confession

I have a confession to make: I hated The Avengers. I thought it was asinine, excessively bombastic, and devoid of any reason to care about anything going on in the movie. Let's face it: Even if you abso-friggin'-lutely LOVED The Avengers, you knew how it was going to end. Even if you were an idiot. Hopefully. I mean, Marvel isn't going to kill off any of its cash cow characters in movies, even though death means diddly-squat in comic books or comic book movies. Hell, they already had sequels planned for every main hero. No one was going to die. Everything would be all safe and fine and dandy and stuff in the end.

I love big and exciting set pieces as much as the next guy; Independence Day, Raiders of the Lost Ark, and The Incredibles are some of my favorite movies. The Avengers, on the other hand, took this all UP TO ELEVEN!!! and it got really REALLY REALLY TIRING!!!!11!!1!111!!! WHEN THE ENTIRE MOVIE is SO COOL it's AWESOME!!!!! ALL of the REALLY EPIC set-pieces become SO GENERICALLY AWESOME!!! that it's like SOMEONE is YELLING ALL!!! THE!!! TIIIMEEEEE!!!!!!!!! And you're NOT given ANY space AT ALL!!! Because first we're gonna have this CHICK with the NICE ASS beat up A BUNCH OF DUDES while talking on the phone then THE HULK will be IN INDIA OR SOME PLACE!!! SUDDENLY!!! The big, bad MOTHERF***ER LOKI!!! is gonna show up and BEAT UP CAPTAIN AMERICA AND IRON MAN!!! Then we'll have A FLYING AIRCRAFT CARRIER and shit is gonna HIT! THE! FAN!!!!!! And now we're in NEW YORK CITY!!! fighting SPACE BUGS!!! while Iron Man and the big, bad MOTHERF***ER LOKI!!! will have a tense stand-off on a big building! AND THEN A NUCLEAR STRIKE IS ORDERED!!!!!!!!!!!!!!11111!!!!!11!!!11!!111!

You got really sick of reading that paragraph, didn't you? (Silly me, assuming people will read this... ha ha...) That's how the whole movie is: capital letters, italics, bold, underlines, exclamation points and no substance. It just leaves you sitting there wondering how long you've been sitting there and when the good guys are going to win against this big scary Loki dude and his big scary space bugs. Non-stop excitement just dilutes what would have been some admittedly pretty great action pieces. How long does it take for the shark to show up in Jaws? How much screen time does Batman actually get in Dark Knight Rises? Indiana Jones opens with the classic temple scene then goes into a literal college lecture. These movies are (or will be) classics, in part because they don't oversell themselves; the action is something to be anticipated rather than something that never stops going.

The heroes, as likable as they may have been in their own movies, all became huge egotistical pricks for no more reason than a plot point (Tony Stark already was one, and oddly enough, he was the only character I liked). Yeah yeah, Loki was making them jerks so they'd fight each other instead of stop him and whatever he had planned.I get it, and he did a pretty good job of it. The closer we got to the end, the more I was rooting for Loki and his inexplicably literal Giant Space Fleas from Nowhere (I know, they're actual characters from the Marvel comics, and the trope doesn't directly apply; too bad).

Now, about this Loki guy, I was rooting for him, but he sucked just as bad as the rest of the movie. He had a silly hat and some scepter thing, decided to subjugate humanity, and pick a fight with the Avengers all because some bigger villain decided to give him said silly hat and scepter thing because he wanted to subjugate humanity (sure, Loki has family issues with Thor too, but family wangst doesn't automatically equal good character motivations). We only find out about the bigger villain in the stinger after the (really really long) credits (on top of an already really really long movie) because they're saving the real reason Loki decided to subjugate humanity (because some other, bigger villain wanted to subjugate humanity) for another sequel to what is already a sequel to five other movies because Marvel really just wants your money.

I get it. Marvel's plan for the movie was ambitious. Make a bunch of movies and have them all feed into one giant sequel with a bunch of characters and set pieces so they can make more money. And they succeeded! They made a movie with all these characters and it made tons of money and are now making more movies with these characters to make even more money! That all doesn't mean the movie was good, though; with all the hype they had built up around this franchise, the movie could have been worse than even I've been saying it was and Marvel still would have made enough money to justify all these sequels.

You Know, I Really Like Meat

If you're reading this blog*, you're already read the title, so I won't repeat myself. The fact that I enjoy consuming the flesh of my fellow animals doesn't necessarily mean I look with distain upon herbivores. I actually rather like giraffes and capybaras and fruit bats and whatnot.

Vegetarians, however, I form opinions of on a case-by-case basis. Most meat-abstaining-Americans (that's the PC term for them, right?) I know are decent people, humble folks without temptation from bacon. I like most of the vegetarians I know. Seriously. Others, however, are smug, self-important floaters who feel morally superior because they partake in the murder of innocent plants that can't protect themselves and are raised just for the slaughter.

What brings up this seemingly non-sequiturial rant? A particularly entertaining comment on this New York Times article. The article itself is quite enlightening and an example of vegetarians I, an unimportant and rambling denizen of the internet, can stand and may rather like if I were to meet them. The comment, though, is an example of a smug, self-important floater who feels morally superior because he** partakes in the death of different subset of life-forms for his** sustenance than I do.

Courtesy of one Mr.** Guji2:

These so-called carnivores are not really carnivores. They follow a highly restricted omnivore diet. They do not allow and are disgusted by the consumption of animal flesh including, but not limited to, human flesh, dog flesh, monkey flesh, whale flesh, cat flesh, etc. Only certain groups in west Africa and central China are open to these type of animal flesh although they are prohibited from consuming human flesh due to laws. Gorilla and chimpanzee flesh is a delicacy in west Africa and comes closest to the taste of human flesh. 

I am going to bet dollars to vegan donuts that these so-called "carnivores" would react in shock, disgust, and condemnation if faced with the prospect of being served gorilla or chimpanzee flesh, let alone human flesh. 

There is a reason vegans/vegetarians feel morally superior. They do not pick and choose which animal flesh to avoid - they avoid ALL animal flesh. Meanwhile, the omnivores have to justify picking and choosing this animal flesh for consuming but not that animal flesh and the reasoning behind avoiding certain animal flesh while not avoiding other animal flesh leads to extreme cognitive and moral dissonance (i.e. mental/moral compartmentalization) that vegans/vegetarians do not have to suffer.

I know he** doesn't speak for every vegetarian/vegan; I know some (read: one) who just don't (doesn't) like meat. But really? You choose what you eat just so you can feel morally superior to the majority of Americans. Dislike meat? Okay, that works. Feel better eating just veggies and stuff? Makes sense! But just to feel smug? Dude, you're a douche. No offense, but seriously.

Similarly, I don't speak for every meat-eater, but if I could subsist on eating just meat***, I abso-friggin-lutely would!!! The only reason I don't eat (or at least try) "dog flesh, monkey flesh, whale flesh, cat flesh****, etc." is because those kinds of meat are rather hard to come by here. And stupid Greenpeace doesn't like people killing whales. I would totally eat a whale (well, part of it; I'm not that much of a glutton). 

Hell, I'd eat a human. I mean, if s/he died and wanted to be eaten by people, and I was included in the people she wanted eating her. Seriously. I swear I'm not a psychopath. Of course, I'd probably have to settle for gorilla or chimpanzee instead.

Putting aside my somewhat-morbid curiosity about the flavors of various unusual meats, most "highly restricted omnivore[s]" don't care about the morals. We don't "pick and choose which animal flesh to avoid" because the flesh you claim they avoid isn't readily available here; you, Mr.** Guji2, and smug, self-important floaters like you are the only ones who care about the morals of food.


*Someone other than a select handful of Facebook friends reading my silly blog? Ha! That's funny...
**If you somehow find yourself reading this by some odd happenstance, Guji2*, and you happen to be female, I'm sorry for addressing you by the wrong pronoun. Also, how did you find this in the first place? Googling your New York Times comment screen name? Why did I even bother including this note?
***Except arthropod meat. Those things are creepy. Roaches, crabs, lobsters, shrimp, etc. Gross.
****My fiancée and I aspire to eat a cat someday. Seriously. Yeah, we're weird.

Eventually is NOW!

I've been telling my friends, family, rivals, acquaintances, classmates, and coworkers that I would start dabbling in blogging "eventually." Well, eventually turned out to be approximately 02:37 CDT on September 19th of 2012 A.D.

I was having one of times where my brain refused to shut up and let me doze off (possibly a delayed reaction to the coffee I had 9 hours earlier?), and as a result I kept my fiancée up entirely too late rambling about chronophysical conceptualizations of eternity, non-linear visualizations of time, Batman, Sir Paul McCartney, the Foo Fighters, weddings and TVTropes. In the midst of this whirlwind trip through the mind of John Batnand, something preposterous whispered "Start a blog...", and here I am!

About that title, yes, I am a fan of the Foo Fighters. I was listening to "For All The Cows" when I realized that cows would possibly stand around listening and idly chew their cud or something while I embark on ramblings that have no coherent flow of thought for normal people, but make perfect sense to me. As Einstein was once misquoted, "Genius is in making similar the dissimilar." (I'm no genius, by the way; I'm just precocious and prone to jumping around logically within my own little mental world.)

One final note: I doubt that anyone outside of my aforementioned friends, family, rivals, acquaintances, classmates, and coworkers will actually read any of these posts, and I have stronger doubts that I'll actually regularly write here. But hey, it's the thought that counts, right? Roads are paved with good intentions, right? If you, dear reader, happen to stumble across this blog without actually knowing me in person, I sincerely hope that you find some modicum of amusement to justify the time spent here.

Good morning to you all,
John N. Batnand