I Don't Know What I'm Going to Write About Yet -- I'll Probably Put a Real-ish Title on the End of This Though--Summer (of love?) and Movies, and Zero

Ah!

Spring!

That time of year when a young man's fancy turns to love.

Or so Hobbes said to Calvin once.

He was probably quoting something else, but whatever.

That was the first place I saw the phrase.

But that's not what we're talking about.

No, no.

We're talking about Summer.

Why?

Because I said so. And I write the blogs.

*sigh*

So what happens this summer? Well, two things. Well... much more than two things happen (trillions upon countless trillions of things happen, depending on how you count moments and happenings). But, as it were, two things of actual import that we shall discuss happen this summer.

One, Madagascar 3 comes out. (I haven't heard for sure, but I'm willing to bet you can see it in 3D if you want.) Two, Prometheus comes out... on the same day, no less.

June 8^th's most compelling movies...

What IS this newfangled fascination with good movies? What happened to the good old days when Hollywood could push out any sh*t they wanted to, and we'd leap to see it, literally screaming "TAKE MY MONEY!!!"???





I'm secretly hoping my little flying man will become the meme for "Take my Money!"

Okay, so we're still in that era, aren't we? Need I mention Avatar? (I know, I know, many of you loved it... but, really, it was awful. It was--no joke--the only movie I've ever walked out on. It was that stupid. I spent the last ninety minutes or so in the arcade wasting money and waiting for my friends to give up on the movie. Actually, "arcade" is a bit of an over-statement. The theatre I was at was so small it just had a few games set up in the main lobby. I did buy a drink while I was out there though, so, win, I guess. My friends briefly wondered if I had died in the bathroom.
Madagascar 3 and Prometheus are just two exceptions to the bad-movie rule. (Or, so I'm hoping. Technically I haven't seen them yet. But, judging from their previews, and the past work in their respective series, and the past work of their respective creators...the odds are ever in my favor.) That last line was a Hunger Games reference, in case you're a plebeian and didn't get it.

Speaking of The Hunger Games, I still haven't seen the movie. I loved, Loved, LOVED the books, but my sisters said the movie was an awkward shadow of a ghost of the glory of the books. Which got me to thinking: Do ghosts cast shadows? Deep, I know.

But... do they?

Anyway, the below is rehashed from a Facebook note I wrote once. I think it's worth repeating myself to flesh out the rest of this blog.

I read that certain cultures in the ancient world (in fact MOST cultures in the ancient world) did not know about zero. This idea intrigued me. I began to think about it: how does someone not know about nothing?

Imagine this:

Bob: "Hey, Frank! Long time no see! How's life?"
Frank: "Howdy, Bob! It has been a long time. Life's good."
Bob: "What you been doing since we last met?"
Frank: "Well, I got married."
Bob: "You? Married? How many kids do you have?"
Frank: "Uh..."
Bob: "Come on, how many?"
Frank: "I don't know."
Bob: "You don't know?"
Frank: "I mean I can't say."
Bob: "Why not?"
Frank: "I don't know."
Bob: "Frank, can you count?"
Frank: "Yes! I love to count! I'm the countin' master!"
Bob: "Then count your children."
Frank: "I can't."
Bob: "Why?"
Frank: "I don't know."
Bob: "You don't know how many kids you have?"
Frank: "No."
Bob: "You don't know how to count?"
Frank: "Yes I do! Watch... 1, 2, 3..."
Bob: "Okay. I believe you. Now do you know how many kids you have?"
Frank: "Sorta."
Bob: "You 'sorta' know how many kids you have?"
Frank: "Well, yeah."
Bob: "Try counting them? Please?"
Frank: "It doesn't work like that."
Bob: "Frank... Something's wrong with you."

Or this:

Bob: "Hi, Frank. Goin' fishin'?"
Frank: "Yup. Haven't started yet though."
Will: "Hey, Frankie! How many fish you caught?"
Frank: "One!"
Bob: "I thought you said you haven't started yet."
Frank: "I haven't."
Will: "Then how many fish have you caught?"
Frank: "One."
Bob: "How did you catch a fish before you started?"
Frank: "Don't be silly. You can't catch fish before you start fishing!"
Will: "You said you had one."
Frank: "That's as low as I can count." :(

Okay, for all you literalist historians and/or mathematicians out there (you know who you are, you're the one getting all ready to correct my misunderstanding of the differences between nothing and the mathematical concept of zero) let me say this: I freaking Know!

Booyah! Don't have an answer to that, do ya?

It's called comedy.

Learn to laugh.

And I thought I was bad... Sheesh!

Anywho... Ciao!

(Go do some evil!)

~Rafe

The Legend of the Spider of Death (AKA "Can you find the iguana?")

Are you a sufferer of arachnophobia?

I am.

It sucks more than a vacuum cleaner.

And that’s a lot.

One night I was in my room, sitting in bed, and enjoying writing a story about someone or something or whatever. Pen in hand, tea by my side, paper in front of me… *ah* …the only thing that could have made it better is if the tea was soda and the pen was candy… and the paper a movie starring Eddie Izzard, Ed Helms and Will Smith. Let’s throw Keisha Castle-Hughes and Karen Gillan in there for balance.

(Of course I would still wanting to be writing said movie, and would need at least a $100,000,001.82 budget. I’m not picky.)

This film would be entitled: “Snow White Powder and the Seven Dealers” it would win all kinds of awards (including “Coolest Writer”) and make me famous.

Me getting famous:

While I was trying to get famous, I innocently glanced at the floor.

*Was that movement?*

I glanced again (this time not so innocently)…

*GASP!* IT WAS MOVEMENT!

It was a spider…

…of death.

But it wasn’t just ANY spider of death. This was, I shit you not, the biggest, baddest, baby-eatin’est son of an eight-legged, creepy, crawly, she-devil I have EVER seen in my entire life.

Then it began running towards me.

Now, let me take a moment to say that I know I suffer from arachnophobia. I know that what I actually saw was probably something like this:

But that knowledge doesn’t help me.

It doesn’t help me one bit.

What I SAW, What I remember seeing, what has been seared with a hot-iron into my memory FOREVER looked like this:

I was terrified.

I was Petrified.

Mortified.

Stupefied.

By a spider.

That was charging me.

I jumped up.

And I screamed.

Like a girl.

And it ran under my bed.

At the sound of my heart exploding, Behemoth, my brother—who was asleep in his bed across the room, woke up… ish.

He (kind of) opened his eyes and (sort of) looked to see why I was screaming like a banshee.

Of course, by this point, I was merely hyperventilating.

So he did this:

And then he went back to sleep.

I was (for all intents and purposes) alone in my room with a giant, man-eating demon sent straight from the bowels of HELL to torment me for my SINS!

There was a spider in there too.

Okay, I kid…

…the spider WAS the demon.

Somehow (I don’t remember exactly how) I escaped the bedroom with my life.

I was determined(ish) to defeat this atrocity of creation, and reclaim my right as the ONLY ONE who could hide under my bed.

But I needed to find something to aid me in my quest.

I went looking for a flashlight.

I couldn’t find the bloody flashlight.

Damn.

I stumbled on an electric lantern.

After I got up again, I took it into my room and tried to peer under the bed. This is difficult to do when you refuse to get closer than ten feet from the bed in question. (I wasn’t going to stick my face down there for it to feast on!) Luckily my bed is raised a bit high off the ground, and none of my blankets were hanging down. So I could see decently well as I looked for the beast below.

I didn’t find it.

The next day my mother brought a flashlight in from the truck.

FML

I still couldn’t find it.

Actually, I never found it.

To this day a demon-possessed spider dwells in my room… and I sleep on the couch.

Did you find the iguana?