Good v Evil

Who are the good guys, who are the bad guys?

I’m not talking about how “history is written by the winners”.  I mean, as we see it right now (and I think defining “we” is going to be the key) who personifies good and evil in your eyes?

I just made a short comment involving good/bad and I realized I used the names “Hitler” and “Gandhi”.  I’m not sure I would have picked Gandhi as my go-to good guy except the comment I was making was about quoting out of context, and Gandhi’s got some good ones.  Hell, even IN context…  (But since the comment was on Facebook, I substituted the names with generic “good guy/bad guy” because I didn’t want to make it too easy for someone to fulfil Godwin’s Law.  I also substituted “eviscerated” with “sad” but that was just out of good taste…)

When you think of the evil bad guy, who do you think of?

When you think of the righteous good guy, who is that?

And let’s not go with the obvious, I mean, “Lucifer/Christ” doesn’t flesh out much of an answer in this case…

Movie list time…

This one is about the second movie in a series.  It doesn’t matter if it was a sequel or a prequel, if it was a different director or if the title isn’t identified as “Movie: part 2″.  If it is known as the next movie in a series, it counts.

Name the “number two” movie that you think most improved a franchise and the “number two” movie that most damaged a franchise:

I had to think on this because my immediate answers for the first one were wrong.  I wanted to list my favorites.  I prefer “The Empire Strikes Back”, “Godfather Part2″, “Aliens”, and “Superman 2″ over each of the first movies in their series but each of those originals are great movies and hold their own without the “part 2″.  I’m looking for something that was a MUCH better movie than the first.

So my answer would have to be “Star Trek 2: The Wrath of Khan“.  I’m a strange breed of nerd, I love both Star Wars and Star Trek.  The common species of geek will force you to choose one over the other for a nerd fight but I’m all Switzerland on this one…  I like them both.  However, you’d have to pay me to sit through “Star Trek: The Motion Picture” again.  Right after the release of the new “Star Trek” movie Teresa said she wanted to see them all so I got them and we spent a weekend watching 1-10.  I was dreading her reaction to #1 but we got through it.  I watched her closely and I can say, without a doubt, that if Wrath of Khan wasn’t so damn awesome, she would have given up.  There were good and bad movies in the franchise but I think Khan saves the day by dramatically improving the series in the second movie.

As for which movie drove fans away from a franchise, the obvious answer is the correct one: “Highlander 2“.  There should have been only one!  They destroy the intrigue, the mystery.  The story was told, the movie was finished, done.  Until it gained a little bit of popularity and suddenly we had to make more money off of it.  Let’s resurrect a dead character and explain it all by saying they were aliens.  Chickenshit writing.  And to this day, I’ve never seen the rest of the movies or television series.  I have friends that swear by the TV series but I refuse to give it a watch.  Highlander 2 was so repulsive to me, that I am afraid of anything else that may come after it.  In fact, it’s hard to watch the original now, knowing how they handle the origins…  And now they’re talking about a reboot and they’re going to let the “Twilight” writers have a go at it.  Ahh, why not?  I’m content to watch my original and pretend the second (and later films) never happened…

So what are your two movies on this list?

I don’t belong to  a cause but I’m happy that some people believe in causes.  I like the idea that everyone can pick out what is important to them and root for change.  However, not every person I know has the same causes.  That would be boring.

I have no known causes.  I believe people can affect change, I find it nice that people take time to adopt causes, but I don’t see the practical side of most of them.  Becca and Teresa attend the Cancer runs every few months.  They help set up, hand out water and clean up when its over.  They are helping by supporting the runners who are raising the money for research.  Practical.  As a family, we donate money (when possible) to various charities and we volunteer our time in many different ways to many organizations.  Practical.

What I don’t get are these on-line cause-groups for strangers to commiserate and bitch about things.  I spend a fair amount of time on the social networking site “FaceBook” and I get at least two cause invitations per day.  I have never joined a single one of them.  I’m not the cause joining type.  Even the ones I believe in, I don’t understand what the on-line group is there to accomplish.  While I am opposed to breast cancer, or any form of cancer for that matter, what will my click of this button do to stop cancer?  Is it simply for awareness?  Who isn’t aware of cancer?  Maybe some remote tribe living in the desert or jungle, but I’m pretty sure anyone with a computer who can see your awareness campaign is also already aware of cancer.  And for that matter, who isn’t against cancer?  Are there really on-line groups that are pro-cancer?  If not, then wouldn’t it be fair to say that most people are uniformly against cancer and therefore, no group is necessary?  Signing up with these groups just seems to be a way of earning your “good deed” badge without actually putting in any real effort and saying, “Hey everyone, look at me, I care!”

So, being the bah-humbug type of guy and refusing to join any of your groups, I have started a list of form letter rejections I can send to my friends when they repeatedly ask me to join their cause:

• Clearly you miscalculated when you asked me to sign your, “Keep Christ in Christmas” petition.
• I don’t give a shit where they move the trial, as long as they fry the bad guys and free the good guys.
• But I like leather and fur.  They’re like a wrapper that keeps the tasty meat from going bad until I eat it.
• Global warming is not a myth, the myth is the idea that I give a shit about it.
• Strangers praying for tragedy victims is just silly for so many reasons.  But asking ME to pray  at all is even sillier.
• FaceBook will not do a damn thing if this group reaches 1 million people.  Other than laugh at you.
• No, the government is not going to take away your guns.  The last time they tried that was April 19th, 1775.  Didn’t go so well for them.
• I personally find strangers attending online memorials for dead children they never met kind of creepy.
• Even with proper training, Pit bulls can be dangerous animals.  So are ferrets.  And large birds.  And feral cats.  Maybe the answer is to license the pet owners, not the pets.  I will not sign up for banning the pit bulls and I will not sign up to stop the banning of the pit bulls.
• I’ll sign your “Allow the Bible (or Ten Commandments) in our courts (or schools)” campaign as long as you also agree to allow the Qur’an, The Epic of Gilgamesh, the Satanic Bible, the Book of Mormon, The Bhagavad Gita, Dianetics, Tao Te Ching, Havamal and The Gospel of the Flying Spaghetti Monster to sit alongside it.

And as long as I’m addressing the flood of FaceBook requests, what is up with the massive identity crisis everyone is having?  Every day I’m getting quizzes for, “Which Harry Potter character are you?”  Or South Park, Twilight, Seinfeld, Friends, Star Wars, Chakra Color, Video Game, breed of dog, brand of liquor, college football team…  Some of these are just plain stupid.  I actually got a quiz asking “what kind of way to smoke weed am I?”  This came from the same person that also sent me an invite to a group called, “I’m not ashamed to admit I love Jesus” just minutes after they sent me the cause invite for the group that wants to deport all people that can’t speak English…  Maybe they were smoking a little too much when they sent me any of these requests?

I have a list of “things I want to do before I die but will never try because they’re either too difficult, impossible or simply too much effort for the payoff” Number six on that list is called the “Reverse Pygmalion”.  I want to learn a very complicated language.  Something like Russian or Mandarin Chinese.  I want to get totally immersed so my pronunciation is perfect and my accent flawless.  I want to attend a royal gala or ball and when I am finally introduced, I will speak perfectly but then I’ll end each sentence with the Keanu Reeves accented “dude”.
Yes, I have very simple plans for the rest of my life…

But, thinking about that made me realize that I have almost no chance of ever learning another language.  I am a mimic and I watch too many movies.  Aside from some high school classes in Spanish and German, all my exposure to languages comes from the movies and most of it is just English spoken in a bad accent.

I can speak:

Russian, “I must break you”
Italian, “Funny how, funny like I’m a clown, I amuse you?
Australian, “That’s not a knife”
Scottish, “There can be only one”
Japanese, “Oh sexy girrrlfriend”
South African, “Dip-lo-matic Immunity”
Cuban, “I am Tony Montana, a political refugee from Cuba”
Mongolian, “This woman is for my pleasure (pilgrim)”
and finally…
Jawa, “Ohhtee-Dee!”