Storm of Spoilers From Y2K!

Um... spoilers?  I guess?  If you're not caught up with the TV show.  Just read the book, it's gonna be a long off-season.  But don't just get all, "My teacher made me read in high school and I faked it because not reading and popping pills is how you get ahead in life," and start reading the second half of A Storm of Swords, because you will be lost.  Read them all like an adult would.

“The things we love destroy us every time, lad.  Remember that.”  -  Jeor Mormont

Poor Game of Thrones TV show fans.  You'll know them if you see them, moping around, clutching their plush dire wolf.  Give them a hug.  They need it, they just sat through an incredibly disastrous wedding.  Or, if you're like me, you can just snicker and go on about your life, since you already read the source material and knew damn well that Ned Stark getting his head chopped off was just the appetizer in Westeros' seventy-seven course feast serving up the noblest family in the land on a nice-guys-finish-last platter.

Harry Potter wiki

And it's covered in cat hair.

Now, you might cry foul and wonder why I have no sympathy for the average GoT tube viewer.  "They didn't know!" you might lament to me.  "Why must you be so cruel?! They killed the puppy, for the Crone's sake!"  It's simple why I feel nothing but relief and amusement at their sorrow: I can finally stop holding my own grief in, and, more importantly, where the hell were they when I read through the same event way back in February of '012?!  Where were they for the original A Song of Ice and Fire fans when they went through this heartbreak back in 2000?  I'll tell you where they were, busy holding their hands over their ears going, "Blah blah blah no spoilers blah blah!" like a child who just found out that the Tooth Fairy isn't real and their mom still keeps the baby teeth in her dresser under her socks.  

Why should I be punished for having the gumption to notice that after the first season of Game of Thrones, I might should pick up some of those there novels that tell the rest of the story of Middle Ea… I mean Westeros and Essos?  It's right there, on the shelves of your local book depository.   Since 1996.

The Virtual Assistant Journal

Places like Borders... oh wait...

777 Peppermint Place

Or Wald... dammit!

Here.  It's here and you don't have to deal with piss poor alphabetizing or stale coffee smell.

I’ve learned well enough that TV shows based on books are never as good as they could be.  Why wouldn't I exercise my gift, given to me by my parents at an extremely young age, of competent and lightning fast literacy to know as much as I can about something I love and care about more than any real, tangible thing in my life?  Why should I, when allowed into a Game of Thrones TV conversation and inquire whether anyone else has read the books, be the one subject to eye-rolls and groans.  First of all, you'd be wise not to piss me off, I know things series watchers won't know until 2015 or later.  And secondly, I'm really awesome at talking about Game of Thrones, and if I'm given an honest answer where everyone is: show, reading, or otherwise; I can cater my spoilers accordingly like a champ.  But nope, some people are just smarmy, and sadly, I imagine it’s not the only time someone has been scoffed at for opening their mind by doing something so stupid and pathetic as, wait for it, reading a book!

Apparently, we live in a world where people seemingly have no time to sit down with a good solid book anymore.  Don't get me wrong, everyone is busier than I am, but if a person can wait an entire week to see the next installment of a TV show, I feel like they have ten minutes every day here and there to read a chapter or two of a book series that's seventeen years old.  Some people may not know it’s a book series.  Judging by some of the Twitter comments, they seem to think that the TV writers hurt their feelings, and should be held accountable.  It’s not like the Internet doesn’t exist and they could waste five seconds doing a smidgen of research before they cry havoc at the wrong people.  Seven hells, it even says, “based on,” in the opening credits.

Squidoo

Most kids don’t even know Titanic was based on a comic book.

Or maybe, and this is worse, people just don't care.  But that can't be true, because people who threaten a television staff over a piece of fictional programming obviously care a little.  They might be the people that buy a kitschy shirt and wear it once to a special event to prove their fandom, but they care enough to spend the ten dollars to half-assedly prove it.

But that's not completely fair, not everyone who hasn't read the Game of Thrones series has avoided doing so on purpose.  I didn't start reading it right away, but the second Dany survived that fire and birthed those dragons, I needed more, and the books deliver more.  Every time Sean Bean stares longingly when his sister is mentioned, the book's flashbacks fill you in, or makes you wonder even more about who Jon Snow's parents really are.  “But it’s Ned Stark and some wet nurse!”  Oh... you sure?  There are people who, “can’t get enough of Game of Thrones, OMG, smiley face smiley face!” and are the same people to instantly dismiss the idea that someone, somewhere, cares about this universe enough to read five whole books and spend hours on the Wiki of Ice and Fire cross referencing characters who will never have the opportunity to be on camera.

dejan-delic

Like this guy, you know, Jon Snow’s dad... whaaaaaaaat?

There are dozens of fan universes that not only benefit from extra material written for and about it, but most of them take on lives of their own.  Star Wars: The Movies, are such a tiny slice of the ten thousand year old galaxy that these characters inhabit.  As my buddy excellently pointed out here, without a small understanding of the Expanded Universe, these new movies are gonna seem, well, as alien seeing a Ryn.  No matter how corny some of the ‘90s novels were, even George Lucas admitted there is twenty years worth of literature that they can’t just ignore if they plan to set these new movies in a respectable timeline to keep the age of the returning characters in perspective.  Some of those favorite side characters people just expect to return and have cameos, might not even be alive anymore.  Let’s face it, there’s no might about it.  They’re not.  They got George Martin-ed.

So, no, I don’t mean to come off as a Game of Thrones snob, and I suppose saying that automatically makes me one.  If I really was, I would say, “A Song of Ice and Fire,” snob. or abbreviate it, “ASOIAF,” just to prove how non-snobish I am.  It's not snobby to say, honestly, that this universe is exponentially larger and amazingly more expansive in these books.  It almost rivals the diverse complexity of Adventure Time, and that's saying something, cause that's some deep math.  The backstory of Jon Snow's birth, which I already mentioned, is reason enough to waste a few hours with your nose in a book.  Robert's Rebellion, the Greyjoy Rebellion, the Landing, the First Men and the Children of the Forest, and the Night King that lived at the Nightfort that Bran and Sam were just at in the season three finale!  The Night's King was a Watch commander who married a white walker!  Come on!  That's insane!  That story doesn't fit in an hour a week, ten episode season TV show.

That said, I don’t really feel sad at all for viewer victims of the Red Wedding.  None of you felt bad for me.  Being the second person I knew that actually read that far, I was alone in my room, about to go to sleep when the shitty musicians started the Rains of Castamere.  When crossbows appeared in the musicians hands and Robb sprouted bolts from his body.  When one of his kingsguard, Dacey Mormont, cousin of Jorah Mormont, took an axe to her stomach.

elia-illustration

This gorgeous lady.  And this girl’s art is awesome, even if you don't know who half of these characters are... cause they're in the books.

When Smalljon Umber, after throwing a table over Robb to protect him, was decapitated; his father wounded and captured while trying to fight his way free.  When Grey Wind escaped and murdered four hounds and tore a man’s arm off while being shot, repeatedly, to death.  When Catelyn watches as her, to her knowledge, last living son is run through and she herself has her throat cut, all the while her last thoughts calling out to Ned for it all to stop.  And it didn’t help that Arya’s next chapter ends with her getting hit on the back of a head with an axe, and you don’t find out she’s alive for a good long time after, something the viewers of the show were spared from.  No one was there for me when I turned off my iPad and struggled to go to sleep, completely drained and seriously considering never opening that stupid Kindle file ever again.

So you’re upset over the Red Wedding?  Join the freakin’ club.  You know what I’m upset about?  Every single thing that breaks my heart after the Red Wedding, especially the end of book five that nearly spoiled my mood enough to very nearly not enjoy a Childish Gambino concert.  I mean, I enjoyed it, I’m not a child, I can separate reality from fiction.  I only stood vigil for a few hours, not the normal days and days like Jamie; I had a rap concert to attend.  So the next time someone brings up the books to your favorite, “Oh my god, I love that show so much!  Book, what book?  I don’t read.  I don’t have time.  I don’t understand all this, ‘the book is better,’ talk, the show is enough but I’m still like the biggest fan ever!” program, maybe you should listen for a second, because there might be a cry for help you’re missing.  They might just need to vent.  And if they’re anything like me, they most likely won’t spoil anything for you; I hate spoilers as much as the next person.  And maybe let them gloat a little to you, because they might be holding in more than sadness; dark magic in the Game of Thrones universe doesn’t just affect the underdogs... and it hates weddings...

Game of Thrones wiki

The Status: Alive page, just in case you were worried... and you should be...

Not Talking About Guns... Yes I Am

One of these days, I’m gonna post something about guns, but it’s so hard because people love guns like they love their children.  Just as most parents love their children no matter what awful things they’re capable of, like shooting up a school, most people love their guns no matter how useless they are, especially outside of a classroom setting.  But I gotta be honest here, guns are cool.  I can see their draw and I’m pretty positive they’re not going anywhere any time soon, so put down the peanut butter and relax, psychopath, I’m not calling for any gun bans.  And I know this is long, every draft has been five pages, but bear with me, because it is really, really mean.

Facebook has turned into a crybaby, Betty Ford recovery home for “real Americans,” people who remember the “Golden Age” of America, the era that guns, racism and xenophobia created.  Adults are terrified of young people and a country they don’t recognize anymore, wah wah.  I bet your fathers said the same thing.  And theirs before them.  It’s called the future.  You’ve already tried to keep up by using this computing machine, why don’t you join us in the mental department?  Your kids can come, too, and make up their own minds.  If they don’t turn out like you, it’s gonna be okay, cause you won’t live forever, thankfully.

Christmas in Waco, Texas.  Is that Pam from The Office?

What I am calling for though is for people who are unable to correctly use Facebook, or the rest of the Internet for that matter, to chill the fluff out, get back in your doomsday bunker in your backyard, and leave Facebook for the people who want to use it for staying connected to their family members or posting pictures of pissed off kitties.  Stop finding something that agrees with your stupid, ignorant, uninformed, closet racist opinions, and then bothering everyone you barely know on Facebook with it like you thought it out so long before copy/pasting it.  If you have something interesting and of your own mind to say, then carefully and calmly debate amongst a group of your own friends or go to Washington and yell at the White House because obviously that’s where all the decisions are made.  Stop repeating these utterly mind-bogglingly idiotic “points” that you heard an anonymous “smart” person say from their compound in northern Michigan.

   1:  Guns Are Tools and Should and Usually Are Only Used In the Correct Way

“A gun is not a weapon, Marge. It's a tool. Like a butcher knife, or a harpoon, or... uh, a... an alligator.”  When your views match something Homer Simpson said, you’re doing it wrong.  “A gun is a tool, like a spoon, and spoons don’t make people fat, so guns don’t kill people.”  People kill people, right?  Well then, we should stop selling people.  Well, if the gays get their way, there won’t be any new babies in thirty years anyway, right?  Ugh, morons, we can still grow them in tubes.  The correct way to use a tool gun is to shoot someone, or threaten to shoot someone.  That's really it...  Guns are tools like a pooper scooper is a tool.  They only do one thing and it's not pretty, but they do it well.  And in the hands of say, an old woman who doesn't know how to use it, it's pretty damn useless and just makes your house smell like poop... wait...

“Hey yutz. Guns aren't toys - - they're for family protection, hunting dangerous and delicious animals, and keeping the king of England out your face.”  All of those things Krusty the Clown just said were true, regardless of him being a clown and a cartoon character.  He makes wildly more sense than 99% of Facebook posts, and by posts I meant the things Bill O’Reilly would tell you to repost, if he even knew what Facebook was.  Too bad in the modern world, there aren’t really territorial conquests anymore.  We have the Internet, we don’t have to go outside.  People do that in World of Warcraft.  Family protection requires a gun or two in some bad parts of the country, but if you’re so concerned for your safety, get a moat around your house or stop living there.  Or stop pissing off your neighbors.  Everyone else isn’t getting worse, you are, but I’ll get to that in a second.  You proclaim a law that says you can't have a gun won't just turn away criminals from pilfering your food stamps, what's to say a shaky old woman with a gun will hold any sway either?

Of course she looks big, she's standing next to Stallone.  He's like 5' 6".

Hunting is still cool, though.  I just want my family to know I love them and their hunting and I wish one of them would take me along.  It’s been twenty-eight years.  I go outside now.  Please, I just want to shoot and eat something delicious.

   2:  Don't Insult Assault Weapons

“Assault weapons have gotten a lot of bad press lately, but they're manufactured for a reason: to take out today's modern super animals, such as the flying squirrel and the electric eel.”  I could probably just say watch the Simpsons gun episode, since so many of the posts on the internet have just been quoted, quite seriously, out of that episode.  That episode was spoofing things real gun advocates were saying at the time... which was fifteen years ago.  To explain, and I’m gonna use a word I don’t use often, and I’m using it in it’s 90s playground connotation which meant, “you’re so slow and dumb as a person with all of your mental faculties intact and have no excuse to be this way,” how retarded it is to act like a so-called “assault weapon” is the same thing James Madison was talking about two hundred and twenty-five years ago.  Something called a “street-sweeper” isn’t required to defend a single family home against a jewel thief.  

The Street Sweeper AKA My Unalienable Rights

Oh, and don't forget, (but how could you, people scream it constantly?), “Assault weapons weren’t even used in the school shootings so controlling them wouldn’t have had any effect!”  So, what you’re saying is, we shouldn’t allow people to buy normal, legal guns either?  Okay!  Problem solved!  Thanks for playing!  Morons...

   3:  Guns Only Cause Zero Percent Real Deaths a Year

"Cars, stairs, and slippery pavements kill more people than guns do!  Maybe we should ban those, too!  Ahuhhahuhahauh!" (That was a hillbilly laugh.)  Yes, those things do kill people... on accident, almost 100% of the time.  I’ve never aimed a car at a human.  I’ve never aimed a parking lot of ice at a person.  And I believe a test and a license is required to operate things like cars and if you can’t pass those tests, you aren’t allowed to operate those machines.  I honestly think the driving test should be even harder.  “People can drive cars illegally without a license, people who aren’t white do it all the time!  Same with guns!”  Once again... a person who drives illegally is most often or not trying to drive their car into a school to run over children.  They’re usually just trying to drive to the liquor store, or, if you don’t know what that is, it sells the stuff you buy in that one section at Jewel, next to the frou-frou imported foods that cost way too much and smell like your stupid breath.  Sorry, I kid, that's where you can buy the stuff you make in your bathtub.  I have no idea who my audience is, you're all so varied and kooky. 

Like this guy, with what I assume is a gun in the waistband.  He is in an "urban" neighborhood.

   4:  God Wrote the 2nd Amendment

“The 2nd Amendment says it, right under Freedom of Speech (but stop discussing guns after gun violence against children, it hurts their feelings... the guns, not the children, obviously, cause they don’t have feeling anymore), it can’t be debated!”  I imagine that’s said by a grown ass man with a duckface as he gets on his Harley motorcycle that also serves no purpose but to annoy his children and cause reckless endangerment.  A country can’t exist without THE Constitution... except for all of those countries that have lasted longer than the United States that haven’t copied our constitution.  You know, like, all of them?  Copying off the French has given us a big ego it seems.  The thing about that brittle paper you hold so dear, it was written when, like, there wasn’t... anything.  

Some day, we'll argue over the most pointless topics over something I call, The Clark-web!

The guns that your militia and real farming men had took a week to reload and a child could dodge them by standing still.  They didn’t have machine guns or grenade launchers.  “But grenade launchers are different than the uzis I need to protect my trailer in the Appalachian Hills from Obama!”  Shut up.  Although, part of me is glad you follow the Constitution so hard, cause this country actually had to change it (WTF?! Change it?! WHENS??!) and write down in permanent octopus ink that we shouldn’t enslave other human beings.  Americans were so stupid that our own species wasn’t safe until someone put it in the holy Constitution.  If there’s anything to be said for your fake hero Thomas Jefferson, if this is your thing, he took the Bible literally.  He owned slaves, as was his right, cause it wasn't in the Constitution he helped write.  He also accepted his right to lie with them, as it says in the only other holy document besides our Constitution, the Bible.  He’s your role model.  But you’re right, the Founding Fathers, and their SimNation fan fiction, were infallible... except for slavery.  Remember slavery?

Disney does.

   5:  Families and Everyone Else Won't Be Safe Without More Secret Guns

“We need guns for defense of our families and any time we’re outside in public.  We can’t get rid of them.  I’ll take a bazooka, please... for defense.”  I remember when I wasn’t terrified that every ignorant loudmouth at the bar had a gun.  Well, way to go, United States, because of conceal and carry laws, now we’re back to the Wild West with much less honor and even more pent up frustration.  And you know who we can blame all that on?  No, not them... Your racist forefathers who called everyone the n-word and forced them to live differently because of the color of their skin.  Their and your xenophobia fueled it even more, caused by unjust fears of Socialism, as if our Democracy was so weak that it would just crumble if one person paid taxes for someone else who honestly couldn’t survive without real, honest help.  You fear your fellow man enough to warrant buying something to kill them with if it comes down to it, but don't care when someone can't afford healthcare for their children, like a Pro-Life extremist who murders a doctor who performs abortions, which are legal.

Tried to find a "pissed off Christian."  Google works too well.

Maybe you should look in the goddamn mirror and understand why that person wants to hurt you or steal from you so bad in the first place.  I guarantee you it’s not 100% their fault.  And don’t start spewing out bullshit like, “Thank God Illinois is FINALLY smartening up and allowing everyone to carry a gun!” like society crumbled when your starch-collared, white bread, war monger of a candidate didn’t get elected and four MORE years is just too long to wait for the Republicans to get in office and literally get nothing accomplished in the opposite direction, like usual.  Most of us have been fine so far without packing heat when we go to the grocery store.  Why don’t you stop acting like every single person in the pork aisle is out to get you and just be a human being for once?  “Cause it’s hard.”  I know, buttface, I know.

     6:  If Crazy People Have To, Then Everyone Does!

“So, will the Secret Service give up their guns too?  Or is the President I didn’t vote for too good to follow his own laws, that he wrote and snuck through Congress all by himself?  And then he raised gas prices!  He did!  Cause I blame him when it happens, cause it never ever happened before him.  Gas was thirteen pennies before Obama!”  In the perfect world that you’re preventing?  No, they wouldn’t need guns.  Careful, your heart stopped beating.  But in this world that morons have created for us?  Yes, they still need guns, because of psychotics who have too big and too many guns and post violence against the President on their secret diaries, i.e. Facebook.  Yelling "Freedom of Speech!" at the computer screen, A: isn’t working and B: doesn’t excuse you for being an asshole.  

C: The 70s called, they want your wallpaper back.

He's still the President, whether you care or not.  The police, the Feds, the Army, and the Secret Service get guns, because they’re trained with them.  They’re trained to not use them unless they have to.  Yes, some abuse them, just like some people abuse welfare.  No, that does not mean that one bad apple ruins the bunch, no matter how red your face gets when you have to pay taxes to live in a “free” country, you ponce.  Go ahead though, arm everyone with a gun, hell, arm children with guns so they're safer.  The only direction you peoples' brains go is down More Guns Avenue, because Peaceful World Way is too gay for you.  If that inauguration girl who got shot in Chicago had a gun, then maybe she’d be alive?  Maybe those children would be alive if the teacher or the janitor had a gun, maybe in his slop bucket?  You mean, the people who have to deal with screaming, awful brats every day?  They all should have loaded weapons in their possession?  Because there’s no bad apples in those bunches.  All teachers love their children... some too much, right?  The point is, instead of actively working towards making this world a better place, you’re literally trying to give everyone who already hates each other even more legal means to end us all.  

Nuclear Weapons For Grade Schools, Vote Lex Luthor, 2016!

     7:  No More Violent Media!  More Guns!

“We don’t need stricter gun laws, we need to parent our children better!  We need to give them more or less drugs, depending on how lazy I’m feeling.”  Holy shit, you’re on your way to sanity here!  How did you manage to come up with sense like that, when you watch so much Fox News?  Did it hurt to think past that big, shiny, barrel in your lap, loading the bullets in slowly, one by one, waiting for next door neighbor Johnson, who you’ve known for years, to make the first move against that pile of pawned gold you have under your mattress?  Stop.  You don’t mean parent your children better, you mean tell other people how to parent their children better, because you’ve been doing it right.  They did join the NRA, after all.  “No more violent TV or video games!  No more violent rap music, that’s what Hussein Obama, that freedom hating racist, listens to as he takes our guns out of our hands and gives them to China!”  I remember a time, it was called the 90s, when Tipper Gore and the mothers of America who forgot how to tell their kids what’s real and what isn’t, tried to blame everything but themselves.  It was stupid.  It’s still stupid.  I've been playing Mortal Kombat my whole life, so I can pull out someone's spinal cord merely by going forward, down, forward, punch, but I don't do it because that's real world violence and that's wrong.  

My fists are registered lethal weapons, but I bet he'll take those away too!

Blaming violent media when all you listen to is hate fueled, inaccuracy laced Fox News is like hitting a nail with a bigger, dumber, nail.  You blame the media, because the "fair and balanced" media tells you to...  wait... what?  You blame violent media while calling the President stupid in front of children.  Congress?  Stupid.  Your fellow man with his own opinions?  Stupid.  People in other countries that have the luxury not to hear you bitch every day?  Stupid.  You blame everything but your ignorant, pointless opinions, and your children hear every word of it, whether you think they do or not.  I mean, my opinions are pointless too, but I’d rather see live, happy children than the cold steel of a pistol filling my household with it’s tinny laughter.  So, I’m not ignorant, I think.  Let me try to see it from your end, though: Getting rid of violent video games, etc. and drugging out children more will have more effect on gun violence then getting rid of the actual guns themselves?  Nope.  My head hurts.

Once again, this man agrees with you, and even he hates Fox.

     8:  Obama = Hitler

“Remember when Hitler took away guns?  Remember four years ago when we tried really hard to explain how a man who was a minority is trying to turn America into a socialist dictatorship like Nazi Germany but we couldn’t get anyone over the IQ level of 56 to believe us because the Nazis hated minorities and then we gave up cause stupid, uneducated correlations with no basis in fact were all we had?”  I love when I hear this, because I just get the image of people sitting in front of their computers just stretching their brains to the breaking point to make correlations.  Also, they're naked, but that's my issue.  I don’t want to say anything nice about Hitler, but I really bet he is just rolling in his makeshift bunker grave with how often he is mentioned these days.  

He has to stare at this image in his condo in Hell for eternity.

Comparing him to a black man, I bet that pisses Adolf off something fierce, so, kudos?  I guess?  Let me get this straight: Hitler took away guns and then tried to take over the world, so that’s going to happen here if Obama takes your guns, which he won’t, because he just wants your insane ones you can't hide under your muumuu, remember?  So Obama = Hitler?  From what I remember of the Nazi party, they started blaming a certain group of people for Germany’s financial problems, like maybe the “welfare” of the country?  And of course they weren’t big on women leaving the house to work... like rich white guys.  Then there’s the homosexuals, Nazis couldn’t stand them, trying to be free and married and happy and such.  Of course they also used religion for their political agendas.  Wait... whoops!  Aw, it looks like you’re Hitler.  Sorry.  And that’s why you want guns so bad, because when someone finds out that you’re Hitler, you can defend yourself against the sane people who attempt to stop you or just come to get the money that you owe for living in that Democracy you keep celebrating and waving your stupid American flags on the back of your pick-up truck for.  You’re Hitler... Hitler.  How does it feel to hear that over and over with little to no point?

Say this out loud, repeatedly.  It's okay, it's a good first step.

     9:  Obama's Conspiracy Against America

“There’s a conspiracy against citizen gun owners.  Obama killed those school children to get your guns and he’d do it again.  He needs to disarm us so he can be Emperor of USA!”  Listening to that crackpot psychotic David Lory VanDerBeek (anyone who uses the phrase “gang raping” when talking about our government, deserves the word crackpot before their name as a title, like “Sir”), whom is running for governor of Nevada, talk about how Obama killed school children really drove home for me just how exhausting it has to be to believe you’re sane when you regurgitate every idiotic load of garbage you find on the internet.  

Raise your hand if you're American.  Raise your hand if you're insane, ha!  Tricked you!

Obama will be president... for four more years, until a new president comes into office, because that’s how this country works and has always worked.  Checks and balances.  Someone proposes something, their opponents trash it.  That’s how America works, that’s how we’ve always voted, and it’s apparently worked out pretty well for two-hundred and twenty plus years.  Or it did until a black guy got voted into office and then pandemonium and world-ending prophecies and he hates the Constitution... ‘cause of your racism.  Remember racism?  Obama will be gone in 2016.  Can you make it?  Or is it all over for you?  If so, please put your handgun to good use.  “If that freedom hater takes my guns, I won’t even be able to take my own life when they come to put me in a white, hillbilly concentration camp!”  Take pills or use a belt then, do I have to tell you everything?  

Just asphyxiate ten more seconds than you usually do...

Saying that gun owning citizens are being discriminated against in America is like Christians saying they’re being bullied by non-Christians.  They’re the majority.  That’s not possible.  The NRA is the biggest, loudest, dumbest organization we have, how do gun owners feel threatened in any way?  If you think that within the next four years, after Obama kills all of the school children with drones, Obama will create an empire and then invade Poland... you’ve lost my interest.  Leave my Facebook, please.  And if you honestly think that America is out to get you, and you want to act superior because you’re proud of that, let me inflate your ego a smidge: maybe they are out to get you, because you’re a pathetic, ignorant, loud-mouthed psychopath who needs to be watched just in case.  No, wait, it’s the opposite, that’s why they don’t give you the time of day...

     10:  Freedom of Speech... Unless You're Famous

“I wish celebrities would stay out of politics, they don’t have any right to tell our government what to do, that’s my job!  And as for those foreigners who have opinions on how we should run our country, we built a fence to keep them and their incorrect opinions to their tea drinking, unarmed selfs!”  Aw, that’s cute, you think you’re not an immigrant.  Just because your family was here when they shut the border behind them doesn’t mean you’re “from America originally.”  We do have an immigration issue in this country, sure, but we also have an overabundance of assholes in this country.  You were already here.  You’re wasting my air, please stop.  And I don’t know if you’ve ever noticed this but so many people, most who barely have a grade school level grasp of “American” English (psst, you stole that language, too), somehow think they know exactly how to handle all kinds of situations involving foreign countries and don’t hesitate to tell their Facebook friends how they would have handled Libya or Israel.  Countries I’m super positive they could point out on a map.  

Daddy says the real terrorists are here.  We agree or we get hit.

That was sarcasm, but if you’re this far and have missed all my sarcasm, then maybe we should get a foreigner or a talking head newsperson to explain this to you.  You’re all obviously listening to them more than you listen to the people who are in charge.  Oh yeah, you don’t think they should be telling you what to do either or even care about you; apparently, that's not their job.  But you care what decisions they make.  Your parents must have had an awful time getting you to do anything, you're so confusing.  I think a lot of you could benefit from a couple years in a dictatorship, maybe you’d learn a little humility when your ass got thrown in the stocks for being disrespectful to your rulers.  Actually, that sounds awesome, let’s vote in a dictator.  You vote for those, right?

Well, technically there was a vote... he didn't really win it, though...

Lotta Hitler, but you started it, so I don't feel bad at all.  Not that I would anyway, he's dead.  So, some of those quotes weren’t real, but I could point out to where something very similar has been said in all seriousness as if it’s a sane point on the side of, “If my guns get taken away, it’s gonna be like 1776 all over again!”  Hey, maniacs, maybe that’s why they want your guns.  Because you keep yelling about using them against human beings because you think that everyone else but you isn’t a real American.  You’re the last real American, fine, and you’ll get arrested and hopefully get shot by someone who’s allowed to shoot you because of your ignorant threats.  Speaking of 1776, one more point...

     11: AHGAHHAHGA AMENDMENT NUMBER TWO! (SPITTLE!)

“But the 2nd Amendment was written by Jesus Christ and that’s it!  No discussion, no matter how many kids are shot!  Deal with it some other way but don’t take away the only thing that has ever loved me!”  Just saw something like that the other day.  Those two ambiguous lines were written when it was possible for the King of England to come waltzing back over here and try again.  We barely had an army and we were young and a bunch of pansies who still wore stupid wigs.  

Oh my God, Benjamin, gander at yon Corporal's caboose!  It's as grandiose as Franklin's tummy!

We needed guns for real life protection against the world.  We were rebels, we were traitors in the eyes of our mother country and we had just trounced them in a war we shouldn’t have won.  They were pissed, so they came back to try again one more time and then we kissed and made up.  Now we have our own army.  Several of them.  Some on land, in the air, on the sea, under the sea!  Under the sea!  And now that it’s nearly useless for you to own one, you want all the guns!  And if not, you want to be traitors again, but instead of being the good guys, the oppressed rebels, you’re just backwoods idiots who have had it too good for too long and now mommy wants to take away that really dangerous toy that Aunt Gladys bought for you because she didn’t know any better at the time, because of her dementia, and so you’re gonna threaten to stage a coup and lock yourself in the bathroom and threaten to flush all your parents money down the toilet if your stupid demands to keep your toys that literally are only useful to exceptionally murder other human beings and absolutely nothing else because it’s illegal to shoot them at anything but a freakin’ paper on a stick in the middle of the desert.

"Come on, President Clinton, come get our guns!" Cause they've been in hiding since... never mind.

I bet James Madison had a higher hope for the idea of the freedom that every household having a musket would feel.  Knowing that if the King of England, or any other King, came through your door uninvited, you could stand up for your rights as an American against him, and with good cause.  But I bet if he heard what selfish, ignorant, baby-hating, extremists you’ve allied yourself with without even half a thought that maybe, instead of just blindly following the words he wrote down two-hundred and twenty-some years ago during a time of isolation and post-war, you might open up your minds to the fact that it’s not Revolutionary America anymore and the world has moved on; and that maybe, if those people of different skin color can succeed so well to go from little more than property to elected as the president of this free nation, thanks to a change in the very document you’re so opposed to changing, maybe the rest of it can use a little tweaking, too... he’d be at least a little upset.  Or maybe he’d just spit in your stupid eye and steal all your women.  I don’t know, he’s your slave owning/misogynist role model, not mine.  Mine’s Aaron Burr.  Look him up.

For gender equality and anti-slavery in Revolutionary American, and he shot Alex Hamilton!

But be honest, you need the 2nd Amendment to back up your 1st Amendment rights, because everything you're freely saying is probably pissing off everyone else around you.  No matter how big and blustery you sound, you're just terrified of people who don't have the same opinion as you.  Cause you're a bully.

So just stop posting things from the internet to your Facebook where I can see them, pretending you’re clever.  You’re not.  Go back to doing what you do best, laughing at poor, starving people because you were born lucky and can have food when they and their children can’t.  And in four years you can vote for the next extremely rich, white, boring robot who will validate your pathetic fears of maybe being a wee bit compassionate towards your fellow man.  Because Mittaghast P. Romney would have never ever talked about guns after little kids got shot in the face by guns.  He would have blamed poor people and that non-American Obama, just like you do, because of course, he and only he makes all of those decisions you hate.

It’s good that I won’t be so exhausted after eight straight years of complaining, like you will be.  It’s gotta get tiring posting all that shit every single day.  All that crap that goes on in Washington that no one cares about because it doesn’t affect the normal every day person.  I just like comics.  And sci-fi movies.  And video games.  Oh and children that are alive and happy.  I’m just glad that little kids’ blood isn’t on my hands, that’s all I’m trying to say.

But I shouldn’t talk about guns, cause it’s rude.  So I won’t.

Movies I Haven't Seen: Big Miracle

There comes a time in every man's life when he's got to take a stand, to rebuke the popular opinion and yell and scream until there's nothing left in your voice except for gravel and blood, and then dammit you scream some more!  So now I'm doing that.  I'm sick and tired and I don't want to take it anymore!  What the hell am I talking about?  Well I'll tell you what I'm talking about!  I'm talking about hypocritical conservationists!  And those fools are the subject of this week's movie that you shouldn't spend money on but probably will because who am I kidding, your girlfriend is dragging you to it as we speak and soaking your shoulder with her sobs.

Moby Dick's Shakespeare in the Pond was a critical and commercial failure.

You know what really gets my blowhole in a uproar? Hippies. Not just hippies, but the hippies who have absolutely no idea what they're fighting for. There are some activists out there who get it. That guy in front of that tank in Tiananmen? He gets it. Jacques Cousteau? After he stopped dynamiting fish, he got it. Most of the ones I've encountered though don't know the difference between the abundant asshole Canada Goose and an endangered Hawaiian Goose, presumably still a bunch of assholes though far fewer in number.

Weird Al Yankovic.  Killed by kamikaze gander attack.

Along the same lines, there are those in Hollywood and let's face it, everywhere else, who obviously have nothing better to do than tell us what Mother Nature needs and when she is hurting, like some sort of tree whisperers. Apparently only they are the chosen who can speak with the goodly creatures of the earth, to tell us if they need us to step in and assist their tiny brained brethren with our more evolved, soul having bodies (Ha, I put evolved and soul in the same sentence! I feel like both Charles Darwin and Kirk Cameron just rolled in their graves), or if we just need to stand back and let nature take its course. Sometimes it's, "Don't kill bald eagles, they're endangered and a symbol of our country!"  And other times, "That bald eagle is going to eat my pet Chihuahua that shouldn't live in this cold of climate anyway!  Get a sweater for my dog and kill that bird!"  It's this alarming puzzle of confusion which leads us straight into the "true life" plot of Big Miracle.

Big Miracle tells the hair raising story of three trapped whales and their apparently Cold War ending struggle for survival. In the northernmost frozen wastes of asshole filled Alaska, the town of Barrow sits near the very top of the world. It is here that an intrepid and bored reporter noticed a big ol' hole in the ice with three whales popping up and down in it. Somehow Drew Barrymore, who just happens to be his ex-girlfriend (based on a true story), finds out. She determines in her drug addled hippie brain that those whales don't wanna be there and need freedom from their icy prison. What, is it illegal for animals to commit suicide too?

"Could you kindly point me to the nearest beach?  I've grown tired of living."

So the world, that's right, the entire Cold War stricken world of uncaring, warmongering people, decides it's their duty to save these three whales that we're not supposed to interfere with in the first place.  And I'm sure Jim Halpert and Drew Barrymore will fall back in love while watching these whales hump backs.  Gag.  Seriously what bet did half of these people lose to have to be a part of this movie?*  Actually, I kinda think they just told Barrymore that it was really happening and she ran up there to be a part of it.

How self righteous do you have to be to think that Mother Nature needs your help, especially when you were the one that broke her in the first place?  I understand that when you take down a tree, you should plant a few more.  And you probably shouldn't hunt an animal to extinction in twenty-seven years like the Steller's Sea Cow.  But everyone yells about leaving Mother Nature alone until your motherly instinct kicks in and makes you think every cute thing that doesn't have the human levels of intelligence to speak needs you.

Without your help, this dog will be forced to wear off-brand tuxedos.

Here are some facts which hopefully turn off the water works surrounding this tearjerker.  This particular species of gray whale is of least concern on the conservation status. The whales got themselves that far inland under the ice, humans had nothing to do with it.  The reason they remain trapped was because the ice sheet keeps freezing farther into the ocean, which is exactly what it is supposed to do being cold and almost winter.  So in the eighties people bitched about the ice freezing too fast and now we're complaining that the ice is melting too fast.  It's mind boggling how quickly their concerns change when it gives them something to do.  Stop eating mushrooms and drinking your own urine to save precious water, you're all batshit insane in my humble opinion.

As much as it pisses hippies off, we are now part of the planetary ecosystem, whether you admit it or not. I believe very strongly that once the Industrial Revolution began and we started pouring coal smoke into the air, and worse since, we started a little ecosystem changing of our own. We're responsible for some of it, but it's not like the world was just peachy and constant before we came along either.  First it was fiery and violent.  Then there was a lot of swamps and dinosaurs.  And then...

The whole world used to look like this... and that was before aerosol spray cans.

I feel like I didn't talk much about the movie, but why should I?  It looks like a manipulative load of sap, based on a true story, which in Hollywood terms means add a pointless romance to it and every girl will knock over their mailboxes in their rush to make it to the theater.  And we all know how it ends... cause I read it on the back of the book.  No, I won't tell you what happens to the whales, but the situation eases tensions between the Soviet Union and The United States o' 'merica and leads to the end of the Cold War.  Yes, that's right, the effort to save these three whales basically takes credit for defeating Communism.  Just makes you feel warm inside and forget those years of negotiations, the suffering of millions of humans, the Vietnam and Korean Wars, and the constantly bickering heads of state who finally decided to turn to peace and tear down that wall.

"I am Mik-whale Gorbachev.  Pleased to meet you Scuba Gear Ronald Reagan with real diving action!"

Nope.  It was obviously three (Spoiler alert!) soon to be dead whales.

Oh and I'm sorry Kristen Bell!  I'm still bitter about Party Down getting canceled and have nothing else to do, that's all.  I'll see your next movie, I swear.


*Joke courtesy of Shannon O'Connor.

Relationshits... I'm Clever...

I'm gonna start this off with a disclaimer: I'm probably the last person you should take relationship advice from. Now here's my relationship advice based on absolutely nothing but over-casual observance bordering on stalking and a love life striped straight out of the pages of a romance novel... a poorly written PG rated version where Fabio looks a little bit like John Cusack.  And yes, I just made fun of myself.  It's a strange concept, humility, I know.  Try it sometime.  I feel like I'm diving into a completely separate blog so let's leave that on the back burner and run head first into a brick wall of terrible couplings where one person holds all the cards and the other can't wait to bet their lives on a pair of deuces.


The Cloners

The bad news starts off innocent enough.  Rolling with a new crew, your significant other's crew, you tend to get interested in the things they're interested in.  Liking things is harmless.  I myself like a good many things.   A few of those things I stumbled on myself but most of them were recommendations from other people.  My best friend, when I was five, introduced me to a certain fat Italian plumber and my physical fitness has lacked ever since.

This is how I play Wii Marathon Runner.  Nice try, Nintendo.

People... sorry the word people used there is offensive to real people, I meant hipsters... who say they 'discovered' a band before it was popular, are full of shit.  People who get mad because they read Game of Thrones before the show aired, have a stick up their shit, which is also full.  No one is truly ever the first one to discover anything.  But once coupling has taken place and you start liking the exact same thing you knew nothing about a week before, guess who's full of shit now?  When one person seems to slowly, or more disappointing, rapidly, take on the likes and dislikes of the other person... well you're gonna lose your individuality right quick.

They forgot to step in front of the train...

There's no problem with being turned on to new things, but becoming a chameleon to try to blend in with someone or a group of someones who should really just appreciate you for your terrible choices in entertainment is only leading you down that road where you're becoming 'their girlfriend/boyfriend' instead of 'insert before-relationship-name here.'  It's okay for two separate people to be together and have different tastes.  Really.  I don't make my lady friend watch Judge Dredd and Face/Off, two of the greatest action flicks of the 90s, or watch me play Zelda for three hours straight.  In turn, she doesn't make me watch Glee or... sing Glee? We get along fine.

It's not good to have absolutely nothing in common, though, otherwise you're just sitting there talking about what kind of bands are good... and stuff, boring the hell out of the floor boards.  Takes a lot to make wood board.  That's hilarious.  I wrote that at 6 AM.


The Changerators

This is the technically the opposite of that last thing I rambled about.  "She/He will change, I know it."  "She'll stop drinking," or "He'll stop illegal dog fighting, for me, because he doesn't make that much money doing it."

"He promised he'd stop rapping, too.  He lied on both counts, but oh well."

At the core of a person, the very gooey, innermost meatiness of the bone bag, no one changes for another person.  The real changes come when they realize that something they're doing is making them unhappy.  Being forced to change by someone who has no control over your life is like trying to get me out of bed before noon.  Impossible.  Putting a nice polo and khakis on a punk rocker will change him into a slightly unhappier punk rocker.  You can show him off to your parents now, from a distance.  But he changed a little, he now hates you for trying to change his life.  You've just now shown someone that who they are is not good enough for you.  If he tried to get you to pierce your fleshy face bits, you would probably say no, since you've got a high horse and you're planted on it.

That's a stupid example, but it's a snowballing idea.  Suggest a little thing like, maybe not having that seventeenth beer because it's ninety-three seconds until closing time, and the next time you're asking him not to hang out with the people that he drinks with.  And soon, you're two lonely losers sitting on a couch watching TV every night, one content with the changes they've forced on someone, and the other who secretly wonders how slippery the front step could get in the winter.

That's what you get for making me wear argyle...

There are at least six billion people on this planet.  If you can't find one who fits into your stringent set of guidelines for a partner and have to change the first guy you stumble drunkenly into, maybe you need to take a little look in the mirror because you might be some sort National Socialist.


The Sacrificers

Relationships are full of sacrificing.  Most of the time they're little things like not playing thirty-seven hours of video games a day so you can take your lady to a fine dining establishment or not hanging up those terrible doily curtains your grandma gave you because your boyfriend doesn't want to live in a Thomas Kinkade painting.  And those are acceptable sacrifices because as much as you'd like to think otherwise, relationships aren't just about you.  But then there are the people you see who literally give up everything to be in the same breathing space of the person they're with... which they are quickly shoved out of because they're in the other's actual breathing space.

It's simple science.  His musk is her oxygen.

The first thing to go is free time.  When you spend every minute with a person, outside of a job, you start to lose your identity as a separate human being.  I love my alone time and before you say, "I have alone time, gawd!" I don't mean when your significant other happens to be busy and you've got no one else because who would try anymore?  Real alone time is telling that other person, "I'm going to be with me tonight.  See you later."  It's fair, everyone needs it, unless of course you don't care that someone refers to you as 'so and so's girlfriend/boyfriend' in conversation because nobody remembers your name anymore.  And why should they?  The only time they see you is when the sun is out and you're playing their shadow.

And they wouldn't leave Neverland for you, you can bet on that.

Your friends take a back seat, and you'll act like you care as long as it doesn't interfere with your busy schedule of sleep/work/clinging.  Then your family starts to get left behind and soon every single person but you thinks everything you're doing is pretty much the opposite of what is good.  And apparently in Crazyland, population you, you're the only sane one and you've finally become...


The Delusionists

Of all my made up words, that one sounds the coolest, like you've become some kind of magician that makes everyone feel like they're the only people who know the truth.  But being delusional is the opposite of cool, and I feel like this is the meat of this whole relationship issue.  Lying to yourself and having other people go along with it because they just do, because who the hell wants to deal with your thirty day long cycles anymore?  You ask other unstable people for advice because if you asked a competent human being, they'd tell you things you don't want to hear, if they weren't terrified you'd stab them with a lemon zester.

Anyone who owns one of these shouldn't be your friend anyway.

And once your best friends start humoring you, you've hit rock bottom.  Here's a lemon shaving of advice: The one person that either refuses to give you an opinion or has the opposite views as everyone else is probably the person you should listen to.  It's downright hard to tell someone the cold hard truth straight to their face.  When it comes to telling someone they can do better significant other wise, it's about as comfortable as putting down a guinea pig.  That's why people post their lives on Facebook, so that every little insignificant complaint post gets the attention they're not getting from whoever they're complaining about.  And generally, all of the 'friends' who comment with a "Stay positive, you're the best!" comment are merely telling you what you want to hear.  It should red flag your brain when you've written one nice post about one nice thing they did, nestled somewhere amongst thirty shitty ones.

But he paid for dinner before he followed her to the bathroom...

Here's a test: Grab your most delicious vodka, possibly a nice Cake, and get on your Facebook wall.  Now, take a drink for every "You can do it, girl!' comment on your "My life sucks this hour," posts.  You're drinking because those people, while being affirmative and nice, have no goddamn clue about your life, yet they're giving you false hope in spite of their ignorance.  And take one for every "Oh my God, you guys are so cute.......lol...." on that fourteenth annoying couple picture you took today while he was trying to watch the big game or that one nice post about him out of thirty.  Double shot if the compliment about him is from him.  Are you in the hospital yet?  Cause you ought to be.

This is where your friends on Facebook end up when you lie to them. 

But this is a positive thing.  Stay there, go through detox, go through rehab, and when you get out and take a taxi home because let's face it, he's still too hung over, look directly at your terrible boyfriend (I was gonna say /girlfriend but it's obvious that only girls do this Facebook delusion game) and how many women he's hit on while you were drinking water and praying to the Goddess for a month.  Good, hopefully you're not delusional anymore.  And if you're still stupid and have talked yourself back into his not-so-loving embrace because you feel like there's no other choice and well... deep breath... you've been dating a while and you've put a lot of commitment into it and you don't want to start that dating process over again and you'll just end up getting back together anyway and your best friends and family who have known you forever just don't know what they're talking about and if they do you won't listen anyway and you have to marry someone 'cause everyone gets married and it'll only be miserable until you have a kid and then you can hope the kid loves you more than he... wow, I just depressed myself.  If any of those words have come out of your mouth before, find a nice solid desk, preferably oak, and bash your head into it.  Good, now you know how I feel when I hear delusional word vomit like that.

The feeling transcends all races and species, even the mighty Vulcan.  On a second gander, that's Bones... point still stands.

And drop every Facebook friend that coddles you, they're just making themselves feel important, like someone who prays for natural disaster victims and acts like they're in the Red Cross.  I'm not saying all of your friends are like that, just the ones on Facebook.  And in churches.

Maybe I've become a little over the top in my old age.  Obviously the dream of a Prince Charming coming to take you away to a shiny palace with hundreds of animal servants is stupid and impossible and won't happen in the middle of the suburbs.  But there are good people out there and they do make good couples.  It's just infuriating when 99% of Facebook is filled with people in terrible relationships, complaining about them, and no one is doing anything to stop it.  There is someone or someones out there for everyone, I truly believe that.  You just can't expect to find them the first time you look.  And if you don't, don't just settle down with the last person you meet on the way out of the bar at 2 AM.  And if you did that 'cause you're kinda dumb, you obviously aren't obligated to ever stay with someone that doesn't make you truly happy.  Ever.

(I tried to find a picture of like, a crazy person handcuffing someone else to something, you know, like you might have to stay with them if they handcuff you to the radiator or something.  Don't ever Google Image search anything with the word handcuffs in it.  If you don't believe anything I've said in this article, please believe this.)

My next blog will be about how everyone is so goddamn cynical and serious these days.   Wonder where I got the idea for that...

Destroying Things People Love: The Walking Dead

Since I feel like writing about and making fun of an Adam Sandler movie is just like shooting a whale in a barrel, I've decided to start a brand new column, something you've all been asking for for weeks and weeks and like the generous samaritan I am, I'm going to give it to you.  Welcome to my new, most likely never happen again column, Destroying Things People Love.  It's pretty self-explanatory.  Since my opinion is the only one that I care about, I'm gonna throw it around at things that I can't seem to stand but everyone else seems to bend down and lick the boots of.  If there's one thing I've learned from having a blog, it's that one person's blog can change the world.  So, best case scenario, the thing I write about that I hate will be gone by next Tuesday.

I'd head for the Adult Swim building.  You know there's nerd survivors in there.

I have to admit that I've never read the comic series that The Walking Dead is based off of and I probably won't, because I also have to admit that I have never been a fan of zombies.  Literally every other movie monster, except for maybe Pete the Dragon, is scarier and more dangerous than zombies.  Hell, even Robert Pattinson killed something in the Twilights, and he's coif-ily challenged.  Zombies are slow, brainless, and really only partly dangerous when there's at least thirty of them coming at you at once.  And no, I'm not talking about those really fast, scary zombies from England; that's just cheating.  Sadly, that's not the last time I'll refer to 28 Days Later.  One prepared human against one zombie is like an elephant with the hammer of Thor fighting a kitten.  Then Shaun of the Dead came along and did something so right it hurt: they made the idea of a zombie apocalypse a ridiculous joke while still convincing us that the characters were in real danger.  After Shaun of the Dead, I haven't been able to take anything zombie related seriously.

Which brings us to The Walking Dead, AMC's quote unquote EPIC zombie show.  I guess the word epic kind of fits since we're supposed to believe that the whole world has been overrun by zombies, even though they only show up at the worst, most inopportune times.  Other times, the characters literally have to go and hunt for them.  Look at that poster up there, there's not even any damn zombies on it and it's a zombie show.  Don't get me wrong, I honestly didn't go into this show thinking I was gonna hate every dirty, yellowish-brown second of it.  A serious horror show on the second best network on television, created by the guy who brought us the best Stephen King flicks?  How could it miss?  Oh yeah, the part where they decided to make it so serious it has a tighter butthole than Bill O'Reilly.

"I haven't crapped since Obama got into office.  I won't give him the satisfaction."

Shall we start at the beginning?  I guess if you're not caught up and really for some reason want to be, you shouldn't read some of this.  The hour and a half long pilot, directed by Shawshanker Frank Darabont himself, is a pretty solid piece of TV.  Sets up the world nicely: there's a cop with a serious See-You-En-Tee of a wife, adorable son who looks up to him, and a best pal best friend who would have his back whenever, living an idyllic existence.  Until he gets shot.  He wakes up some time later in a hospital and realizes the zombie apocalypse has already happened.  I swear I've seen this before.... somewhere.  Oh well, I'm sure I'll think of it later, in a few days... twenty-eight perhaps.  It's a nitpicky thing, I suppose, 'cause how do you cheaply and effectively show zombies taking over the entire country?  But really?  It had to be a guy waking up from a coma in a hospital?  Anyway, the cop makes his way home, gets schooled in the story so far, and treks down the road to Atlanta to find help.  He finds others, he finds his family and his friend, realizes there's little hope and they band together to survive.

The first real problem I have with this show, besides the super-duper, pissed off Grandpa seriousness of the tone, are the mind-numbingly awful characters.  When the show was just Officer Rick trudging through a desolate Georgia wasteland, much like our own Georgia of today, it was like a gritty, lonely western.  Once you start piling in the supporting cast of terrible cliches of humanity, like a Dexter episode vomited all over it, we start running into problems.  Let's point out a few winners.  We've got the overbearingly racist hillbilly hanging out with the oddly named token black guy.  The innocent and unspoiled Asian kid who's good at getting in and out of places.  The wise old man who takes the damaged young woman under his wing as his substitute daughter.  The abused, meek wife who has to take care of her lowborn daughter.  The only character with a hint of depth to him is Daryl.  He had a shaky start as the clone of his racist brother but he's really growing into a character that's both badass and for some reason really gives a shit about people.  Hopefully they have a good reason for his actions later.

Actually, that works for me.  Hire this man!
source: http://inappropriatedixon.tumblr.com/post/12469255418

And then there's the "leads" if you can call them that in an ensemble.  Lori, Rick's wife, has to be the supreme biggest bitch in the known universe.  To survive something so terrible as the end of the world and then continue to stick to the "I'm a strong woman who doesn't take no guff, even when I admit that I'm constantly dead wrong" mindset, especially while hiding the affair with Shane, the best friend of her not-so-zombie husband; that takes a special kind of beotch.  There can be likable evil characters, Tony Soprano is the only example I would ever need, but this woman is not likable in any sense of the word.  And she admitted it in the show!  She changes her mind back and forth constantly when it comes to her husband, calling him a saint one second and yelling at him the next.  And why not tell him about the affair?  It's the end of the world.  You thought he was dead like most of the population, it's not that far fetched to assume that.  Add a sensitive man like Shane, whose poker face is about as effective as a zombie's brain, and you're just asking for the secret bomb to drop at the worst time.  And Rick himself is a wooden man with a one track mind: find his family and survive.  Anything else happens, at least we're alive.  His decisions literally keep me firmly and lazily sunken into the meat of the couch.  If he has to make a choice, it'll be the safest, most boring decision you can think of, complicated only by the assholes that he has decided to surround himself with.

Which leads to the writing of the show itself; my biggest beef.  Every week, we are subjected to these people mostly doing one thing: surviving.  "Well, that's what they're trying to do, survive, duh!"  Yeah, I know, that's what we would do in real life, try to survive and stay as safe as possible.  But this isn't real life, this is a fictional zombie television show.  I know that everyone involved is trying really hard to make it a human drama but when I know that there's an apocalypse happening right over those trees, I don't want to hear you say, "This show isn't even about the zombies."  Guh, it's freakin' named after them!  You have an hour, entertain me.  Don't depress me constantly with people who are ready to just give up hope, can't find what they need, fail at the one task they had to do that day, or just plain mope for a good solid forty minutes.

This house is so nice, let's just sit here for all of season 2 and say we're doomed.

There's nothing wrong with teasing us with the idea that these people are doomed, we've already assumed they are, but to keep our viewership, you have to offer us a little redemption.  I didn't stick with LOST because I thought they'd never get off the island, I watched because I was sure they would.  I watched Dead for thirty minutes last week as they found the one zombie featured in that episode (the episode of a zombie TV show remember) stuck in a well they were going to drink from, and risked lives trying to haul him out whole so that he didn't contaminate the well more... only to rip him in half and ruin the well anyway.  Why am I watching if everything they try to do fails? I wouldn't drink from a well with a dead rotting corpse in it even a year after it was outta there; why did they think they could?  I understand that it's a continuing story and it's probably very grand in scope, but unless this is an educational how-to for surviving the big one, I don't need to see these idiots try to fix something that's unfixable.  I feel like you give a show an hour of television time, the desire to fill as many hours of it as they can gets inside the writer's head.

Hence, the hunt for Sophia.  How long do they plan to drag out this search for a little girl who's been missing how many days during the apocalypse?  A completely avoidable mishap, by the way, if the cop would have just killed the two lonely zombies trailing them.  He didn't need to run away without her in the first place, he didn't need to lead the zombies away to kill them, and he didn't even need a weapon more sophisticated than the rock he picked up and killed both with effortlessly.  He caught up to the girl before the zombies did, without acting as quickly as he could, because everyone just sat there and watched her run away.  This show is called The Walking Dead... cause the dead walk... slowly.  Amble is the word I like to use.  Rick could have left them in the dust with the little girl in tow.  Hell, she outran them, too; why hide now?  Do the zombies smell blood or don't they?  In one stupid episode, they covered themselves in guts to hide their scent, but the girl can hide five feet away from them in another?  In one episode, a scientist tells them the zombies' brains are just motor skills and taste for blood, but later, a zombie wanders onto an open RV with no provocation or enticement.  The show can't even keep it's own science straight.

This would take them four episodes to avoid, after sacrificing the rest of the season 2 guest stars.

In conclusion, finally, I guess the show isn't all bad.  The zombies look okay, although some of them look like rotting drywall and the fat one in the well looked like the Stay-Puft Marshmellow Man's slightly handicapped little brother.  Some of the cliffhangers are pretty good, but if you constantly rely on those, you're gonna end up LOST.  See what I did there?  And like I said, the more they flesh out Daryl, the more interested I'll be.  I wish I would have seen all of these before I met Norman Reedus briefly at Comic Con on my way to Sean Patrick Flanery.  I would have told him he was the only well written character on the show.  But despite those few things, all the praise this show gets is very confusing to me.  I know there's no other show to compare it to in the zombie genre, but as a horror show, it falls flat on it's face.  American Horror Story captured and still holds my attention week in and week out, and I thought that show wouldn't have enough stories to keep it going.  And it doesn't have any padding in it.  And it's scary.  You know what's not scary?  Stopping looking for someone for five screen minutes to autopsy a zombie because you found bits of flesh in it's mouth.  Way to go Gil Grissom from CSI, how many of those walking meat bags do you think have skin under their nails and flesh in their teeth?  I would say most of them.

Her teeth and nails are immaculate.  Move on to the next one!

Like I said before, I didn't go into this show wanting to hate it and I'm going to keep watching it to see if it gets better this season.  The last year of my life has been immersing myself in all things zombie.  I figured it was about time.  So I was just as surprised that this show pissed me off as most people are.  But I can't just like something because it's insanely dramatic and gory and cool.  The reason I've moved from liking movies more to liking story based television more is that you get more story out a seasonal television show.  This show might be attempting a big story, they just seem to be taking their sweet time to get to it and by the time they actually figure out what they're doing, the terrible humans will have already killed each other off.  All the zombies really have to do is wait them out.  And when the main character; the moral, sensible, righteous one, stops to pick up his cop hat in the middle of zombie infested Atlanta with the dead at his heels, it doesn't seem like the zombies have to wait too long.  You are not Indiana Jones.  Your hat isn't a part of who you are.  Go team Z!  I'm rooting for you, fellas.

P.S. Spoiler alert... who gives a shit if the baby is Shane or Rick's?  What are they gonna do, go on Maury and get a paternity test?  Maury Povich is a dead rotting corpse somewhere.  If you tell Rick it's his, he'll believe you because you've got him whipped and he's a guy so he doesn't understand things like your oven timer and baby-baking.  Tell him you're stressed and it came out early.  And honestly, if your biggest concern is that somebody will notice if that baby you're going to have during the end of the world is going to have Shane's Jew nose or Rick's non-Jew nose... you don't deserve to live anymore you stupid bit--

On closer inspection, he might have already turned.