Showing posts with label books. Show all posts
Showing posts with label books. Show all posts

Thursday, December 30, 2010

Oh, the holidays...right.

Forgot all about the holidays. If nothing else I did pick up some sweet new games and gagets.

Games:
Assassin's Creed Brotherhood
Castlevania: Lord of Shadows
Dead Rising 2
Madden NFL 11 (with Drew Brees on the cover)

DVDs:
The Expendables
Inception
Scott Pilgram vs. The World

Misc:
So Now You're a Zombie: A Handbook for the Newly Undead (book)
Assorted Meats & Cheeses from Hickory Farms & Swiss Colony
Nintendo Monopoly (I have a growing collection of Monopoly games)
A can of Mixed Nuts
A pasta cooker/strainer (as seen on TV)

And my awesome wife got me this:


And as usual, my mother lost one of my gifts. Happens every year. I'm still waiting for the windshield for the CHiPs motorcycle I got back in 1980.

Sunday, June 13, 2010

The end of the world

I realized that there are so many different apocalyptic scenarios in our pop culture.

The Zombie Apocalypse - found in numerous books, movies and video games.

The Robot Apocalypse - made famous by the Terminator and Matrix movie series, as well as the many books.

The Dragon Apocalypse - most notably in the movie Reign of Fire.

The Vampire Apocalypse - the movie Daybreakers comes to mind.

The Alien Apocalypse - another popular one found in many books, movies and television shows. (this on can be broken into a dozen or so sub-scenarios, including alien invasion, body snatchers, alien virus and I guess you could include The Blob though I'm not quite sure what that falls under.)

I'm adding a poll for you to help me figure out which would be the worst one to attempt to survive. I have my opinion, of course, but I want to now what others think.

My Opinion, in order of worst to easiest.
Zombies - Billions of undead people trying to eat you, the odds aren't in your favor.
Dragons - They are freaking Dragons, they fly, breath fire and can destroy a city in seconds.
Robots - They are cold, uncaring machines of death, but they are just machines.
Aliens - They cause untold damage and kill thousands, but they always are defeated by something simple.
Vampires - They don't go out during the day, and have a fear of garlic. Shouldn't be too hard to survive this.

Monday, June 7, 2010

Vampires and Werewolves and Zombies, Oh My!

Last night I was watching the MTV Kids Choice Movie Awards. I say "Kids Choice" because that is clearly who votes for this award show. Only in the Twilight frenzied minds of ignorant preteens should Kristen Stewart win an award for Best Female Performer over Sandra Bullock, who by the way won a Golden Globe, SAG and Oscar for "The Blind Side." And can someone explain to me how "Twilight: New Moon" wins Best Picture over the highest grossing movie of all time, "Avatar"?


This obsession with Vampires in general, Twilight in particular, is out of control. Hollywood can be blamed to an extent, but they are only doing what every other industry does when something becomes popular, exploit the hell out of it. Movies (Twilight Saga, Underworld, The Vampire's Apprentice), television (True Blood, The Vampire Dairies), books (again, Twilight Saga, The Vampire's Apprentice, Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter), you can't escape vampires.


And of course werewolves come with vampires, right? Underworld and Twilight both focus on vampires and werewolves attempting to prove which is the better species. Sadly, Twilight has a love story involved. However, I was told an interesting way to look at the love story:


Twilight is about a young girl who is trying to chose between bestiality or necrophilia.


There is a ton of things I don't get about Twilight. Team Edward. Team Jacob. Who cares? Personally, I'm on Team Zombie, but I'll get to that in a second. And what is with the sparkling in the sunlight crap? Vampires burn to a crisp in sunlight. You know who else sparkles? Tinkerbell! Having a vampire who sparkles in sunlight is like having zombies who just want a hug. It's degrading to the readers and viewers.




As for Zombies, lets face it, they are having their "day in the sun," as well these days. And like Vampires, there is a boat load of media surrounding them. Everything from movies (Zombieland, Resident Evil: Afterlife, Survival of the Dead), video games (Left for Dead series, Resident Evil series, Dead Rising series) and books (World War Z, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies [also being made into a movie]) are being made about them. They, too, are everywhere.

It's only a matter of time before some Hollywood producer okays a movie that has vampires trying to survive a zombie apocalypse. But here is where I have to go with Team Zombie. Vampires would not stand a chance during a zombie uprising. For starters, they can't feed on zombies since they are dead, blood not flowing or most likely coagulated. They share the same food source, but with as fast a zombies plague can spread the human food supply would quickly run out. Sure, vampires are undead as well, which means the zombies won't eat them, but after some time, the vampires would begin to starve. And what happens if a zombie does bit a vampire? After the vampire starves to death, he comes back a zombie. It's a no win situation for the vampire. His best bet would be to walk out into the sun and burn to death....but instead he just sparkles.