The clock is ticking, my friends

I've got until Sunday night to meet my self imposed deadline. It's definately a possibility at this point. There are several things slowing me down. The first is I had the flu all week, so that kind of slows you down. I don't know, maybe it's just me, but taking any kind of medicine makes me drowsy and lacking of focus. Plus, it's the flu.

Ergo, I put off my calculus homework. That has to be done this weekend as a priority. Can I do calculus and finish two cutscenes and a whole area? It's a challenge, but it's not beyond hope.

Or else it'll just take a day longer, so big deal. It's not like it's an actual deadline.

Anyway, did I tell you I switched from Showtime to HBO? Smart move, I think. I've complained about Showtime in the past because frankly it's awful. Only problem is the HBO package comes with Cinemax, which is also a terrible, terrible premium channel unless you're into softcore porn. Which, I'm not. I don't think anyone is, actually, except teenagers who lack identification to purchase regular porn and whose parents happen to have Cinemax but it's blocked with a password that's either the last four digits of your phone number or your street address.

You know if you have kids, don't put a stupid password on anything, but especially the premium channels on your cable. It's seriously not that hard to remember four random numbers...and even if you can't, you're only missing Cinemax which is awful. Might want to think about it with, say, a PIN number or something. How about the last four of your social security number? Shoot, you probably don't even know that, so you're kids won't.

Still more, today I caught the last hour of both The Hills Have Eyes and Snakes on a Plane. Frankly, I don't really feel compelled to dial in again to check out the first half hour/hour of either. They're both not very good movies.

First of all, The Hills Have Eyes. There's some lessons to be learned from this movie, one of them to potentially save your life should you ever find yourself up against a villian. But first, the bad:

OK, being exposed to radiation doesn't make you immune to pain and bullets. It doesn't make you super strong, or predatorily cunning, or fast and deadly. It doesn't make you a cannibal. It gives you tumors and cancer. It destroys your thyroid. You get bloody vomiting and diaharrea from GI damage. It makes you sterile. Your kids have birth defects, small brains, abnormal growth, cancer, and retardation. Seriously, they're deformed mutants living in the middle of the desert, not the X-Men kind, but the kind with huge health problems.

I had similar complaints about Wrong Turn, but in that case they were inbred mutants with huge health problems. Also, the same goes above for being inbred, it's really not a good way to go about getting super cannibal powers, but being sterile, deformed, and mentally disabled.

So the whole premise is just stupid.

"Hey man, why are you trying to kill us all?"

"We're mutated cannibals, ooooOOOOOoooo!"

"Dude, you have lymphoma and a hunch."

"Your nuclear bombs did this to us! oooOOOOOooo!"

"Why are you making ghost sounds? Also you guys should have moved when they told you they were nuclear testing."

"But the incredible hulk...."

"No, dude. Thyroid cancer and brittle bones."

"Crap..."

Alright, so it's just a movie, I know that. And I guess this is why they figured that at the end they'd pull a classic "the hero is an idiot move", since not a lot here makes sense why should any of the character's actions, right? You know what I'm talking about, when he plugs the bad guy a few times and the bad guy falls down motionless, they he walks up to the bad guy carefully with the gun trained on him, kicks him, is relieved that his gentle kicks indicate death (I guess those with limited knowledge of radiation poisoning also have limited concept of the pulse), and drops his gun next to the dead bad guy to turn around in success, only to be completely surprised when the bad guy is, get this, not really dead!

And here I am screaming at this idiot "just pop him in the face! Finish the job! He's not dead!", but they never listen. What is it, like, "maybe he's just disabled but needs medical attention, just hurting him is enough"? Nah, man, it's a mutant cannibal. I mean, what the hell?

I mean, even before that he catches the brain outside of skull wheelchair guy, and he's got a big axe in his hand, but walks out without offing that guy...alright even before that he catches a bald fat lady combing a wig not paying attention when he as a baseball bat... Anyway, this is why you can respect the guy from Man on Fire because, in what is nearly unanimously considered by me the greatest scene ever put to film, when he wants information, he cuts your fingers off one at a time until you tell him what he wants to know. Then he cuts your fingers off anyway, and then kills you. That's why that is a classic, the guy is realistic about handling his revenge.

But look, you don't walk away from the deformed wheelchair guy. You finish him off and go about your business.

But we've all seen that enough to know that if we're ever fighting mutant cannibals, or even non-mutant non-cannibal bad guys, don't do that! Don't inch up to them slowly, give them a love pat, and drop your guard so they can stab you or wait until you're not paying attention or something. Shoot them in the face a few times while they're down...because really if your whole diabolical plot hinges on your victim nearly killing you and being an idiot at the last second...well, you're the idiot.

But I suppose techinically these are retarded cannibals. And when I say retarded, I don't mean like as an insult, but literally retarded from radiation poisoning.

Now, Snakes on a Plane, that's another story. Obviously there's a lot of stupid in there, like when the boa constrictor bursts out of the phosphourescent light, like the maintainence guy accidentally installed a boa constrictor instead of a tube light bulb. Again, things to learn:

One is viral marketing on the internet can't make a successful movie. This had all of the factors, a stupid premise, snakes, Samuel L. Jackson screaming the F word, but still did abysmal in ticket sales. Maybe it made it up in DVD sales, I don't know. But one thing is things on the internet are supposed to be free, so advertising a movie to people used to stealing stuff probably is a poor marketing strategy.

But the important lesson here is if you're fighting either snakes on planes or mutant cannibals in Arizona or whatever, you're going to want some guns. Shotguns are cool, bring those.

Peace!