SOYLENT PINK IS STRAWBERRY-FLAVORED PEOPLE!!!!!!! (WITH FROSTING!!!!!!)

After hearing about “Death Panels” all week, with all the hub-bub related to the healthcare reform bill and crazy town hall meetings with people screaming about the government wanting to “pull the plug on grandma”, it got me thinking about that old Charlton Heston epic from the 70s about the ultimate form of healthcare. It’s more like “death care”…

(Spoilerz) Basically, in Soylent Green, from what I remember, there’s a future dystopia where people have to ride stationary bikes in their apartments just to charge up the ceiling light bulb. There’s huge overpopulation, and like one tree left that’s preserved in a glass dome. Some rich dudes hoard actual food like steak, but everyone else is forced to wait for some trucks to show up in the street shooting out rectangular chunks of synthetic food. Eventually, Heston’s aged roommate or dad or whomever is feeling sick and decides to go “Home” which is this big hospital where they make you watch a 360-degree film about nature like at EPCOT center, except instead of being funneled out to the overpriced gift shop at the end, you are euthanized and your body is thrown on a conveyor belt in a factory that processes it into Soylent Green, the food that the trucks spew out to the ignorant masses. Heston tries to reveal this at the end, but I believe he is tragically taken down by the police just as he shouts “Soylent Green is people!!!” Poor Heston – all the troubles of our future worlds rested on his shoulders… too much for one future man to take on.

Funny thing is – I saw this film in my HIGH SCHOOL HEALTH CLASS! I think it was some kind of health class tradition in my school – they had the actual film reel you put in the old-timey projector and played on the pull-down movie screen. I guess it had something to do with learning about social issues like overpopulation and the environment. Okay, so first they made us watch the whole graphic child-birth movie, and then we have to watch this movie about future cannibalism related to overpopulation. Nice. Were they trying to discourage us from procreating??? No wonder people are scared to death of government healthcare – maybe they had the same crazy sci-fi dystopia health class curriculum I was exposed to!

– Nigel Matrix

Crab Hand Spray? Imagine The Possibilities.

Man With Unpronouncable Name Ponders Gene-Altering Aerosol Pranks

In the new Peter Jackson epic District 9, a field operative named Wilkus van der Merwe is assigned to relocate a bunch of unwanted alien settlers.  They’re called “Prawns”, which is much easier to pronounce than “Wilkus van der Merwe” (played by an equally unprouncable Sharlto Copley).  Who puts an “r” right before a “w”, huh?  Yeah, nobody.  Anyway, Milky von WeeWee–who works for a company called Multi-National United–accidentally gets sprayed with DNA-altering liquid that slowly changes him into one of the aliens, hand first.  Very Kafka.  Oh, that horror of otherness and alterity.    Milky can work the newfangled alien weapons, and all sorts of hijinks ensue, including encounters with the alien who created the device, Christopher Johnson.  Yeah, that’s right, Christopher Johnson.  Milky names him–maybe some downright name envy there–and eventually turns into an alien himself.

I think I liked this movie the first time I saw it, when it was called Alien Nation.  I liked it even better when it was a TV Show and the unwanted alien “Newcomers” (or “Slags”, in the derogatory vernacular of the show) were taken under the wing of George Thorogood, played by Gary Graham.  Okay, well, it really wasn’t Lonesome George.  But it looked a heck of a lot like him.  So much so that everytime I watched the TV show, I knew that his character, Detective Matt Sikes, would drink alone.  Yeah, with nobody else.  Well, maybe with his Dear Old Grandad.  Together, they would share one bourbon, one scotch, and one beer.  Then they would get haircuts, and perhaps a new job.  But I digress.

So, the crab hand dude from District 9 is kind of in a hard way.  Imagine the possibilities of such DNA-altering aerosols, though, if you will.  Squid Leg Spray is only just the start.  Practical DNA manipulation jokes would be at an all time high, and hospital emergency rooms would be packed with unsuspecting victims every April 1st.  There’d only be one way to prevent such abuse at the hands (claws?) of the crab-handed folk.  You’d have to show ’em who’s boss.  Just leave out some Old Bay Seasoning and a Claw Cracker and they’ll leave you alone….

Fatality: Surrogate Greer Loses.

Intervening Layers of Reality Crushed By Classic Video Game

Got an action-adventure movie with lots of explosions? Bruce Willis is your man.  But can he handle moody, nature of humanity, philosophy of mediated experience kinda stuff?  Dunno.  Harrison Ford did an unbeatable job at it in Blade Runner.  Now Willis has his chance in the forthcoming film Surrogates.  In the movie, humans live most of their lives sealed in apartments, running robots by remote control.  The robots walk around and do stuff.  It’s safer that way.  Now that’s a stupid future to be proud of.  Let’s run up huge electric bills and generate pollution just so our robots can hang out together.  Sheesh.  At least getting plugged into The Matrix was environmentally friendly, methane and all.

Anyway, so let’s just accept the premise and move on.  The plot of the movie is that someone is killing surrogate operators (who are supposed to be safe little couch potatoes) by killing their droids, which isn’t supposed to be possible.  Enter Agent Greer (Bruce Willis), jawn jawn, thaw him out and make him walk around with the robots and figure out what happened.  Kinda sounds a bit too much like Blade Runner if you ask me.  The French Post-structuralists would love it (especially Jean “Nothing Exists And You Smell Like Onions” Baudrillard).  Then again, if you ask me, I’d say the surrogates might be dying due to being jacked just a little too far into a Mortal Kombat competition.  Old school.  Maybe on a Sega Genesis.  None of those newfangled Cyrax or Smoke characters, though.  That would just be too many layers of robots.  Nah.  Just the classics.  Good old Liu Kang, Sonja Blade, Sub-Zero.  Well, maybe Baraka–it’s hard to argue with Baraka.  But if anybody could, it would be Bruce Willis.