Rancid Monke

My father always had a nasty habit of pointing out the absurdity in movies and TV shows. Man could ruin an episode of Dukes of Hazzard or MacGyver before the first commercial. Apparently this sort of dick behaviour is herdatary, so I leave you with these Points to Ponder!

Batman – Why the hell did Bruce Wayne’s parents leave out the back of the theatre anyway?

Starting with the obvious question of why the hell Alfred wasn’t picking them up, we at least have to question why the two richest fucking people in the city popped out back into a dark alley in the middle of downtown with such a bad reputation that it is literally fucking called CRIME ALLEY?

What was the plan? They weren’t going to catch a cab in the middle of an alley, they didn’t park back there, Alfred was apparently at home organizing his sock drawer and not coming to get them. I don’t give a fuck how “down to earth” and “man of the people” you want to be, rich people are usually not so stupid as to wander the back streets of downtown in the dead of night in order to take public transit. It isn’t like they have public transit all the way out to THEIR MANSION ON THE OUTSKIRTS OF TOWN ANYWAY. Do you think there is a lot of call for the 10:30pm bus to Wayne Manor?!!!!

WHAT THE FUCK WERE THESE PEOPLE DOING?

“Hey Honey, lets wander this crime infested ghetto looking for a way home. Surely our vast wealth and fancy clothes will frighten off intruders.”

“Quick, he pulled a gun. Act condescending and aloof!”

Batman versus Superman – I have had this argument with two different friends. Who wins in a fight, Batman or Superman? Both times they have picked Batman and both times I have had to defend the Last Son of Krypton from their razor wit, despite the fact that his last movie was utter crap. Both levels of my argument are below.

Fictional Reality – The simplicity of the answer stems from the simplicity of the question. It isn’t “Who could prepare the most for a fight?” nor “How could Batman beat Superman?”, the question is “Who would win in a fight?”

So if we remove all the trappings and get down to brass tacks? If Batman spills Superman’s beer and they decided to step outside and settle it? Let’s face it, Batman then has to climb a near unclimbable mountain while all Superman has to really do is land one punch. Even with all the lack of finesse you would expect of a hillybilly farmboy, it is hard to imagine him not being able to connect with one solid punch, effectively decimating Batman’s resistance to the next punch and turning Bruce into a puddle of man-soup in no time. Among other things, Superman has a near limitless reserve of stamina. All he would really need to do is let Bruce tire himself out and go in for the haymaker.

When people talk about Batman winning they are creating scenarios of his planning and scheming or using tricks and kryptonite. They are talking about pre-meditaition, which there is no guarantee of. Maybe he keeps his kryponite with him at all times just in case but that isn’t a reliable assumption. Which brings us to the next point.

Plain Old Reality – The winner is whoever the hell the writer decides will win. Considering it is an underdog story then odds are Batman will win as he is the one who would have to work the hardest. He is the David to Superman’s Goliath. The reality of it all is pointless because whatever the writer needs it to be for the story to work is how that fight will end. In a fair fight, Batman is a man trying to defeat a god from on high. That is why it will never be written as a fair fight.

Despite it being a much more interesting story for Batman to win, Superman is much more a creature OF story than Batman is. Superman’s power fluctuates depending on who is writing him and what needs they have at the time. One minute he can move planets out of position, the next he has been dialed back to the point where he is a fair opponent to Batman. Batman, despite being a rich dude dressed up in fetish gear fighting street crime, is still more anchored in reality than Superman.

In short, Batman would probably win because he is more popular and it would make for better fiction. Superman probably should win but who the hell would want to read that?

The Matrix – So at one point they mention that the machines liquify the dead to feed them intravenously to the living. Is that the only source of food for these people? Assuming a standard life cycle and the current population of earth is it conceivable to feed the entire living population off of the dead on a daily basis? If not, what the hell else are they feeding them considering there is no sun to support vegetation (or farm animals on the surface)? I assume they are also recycling waste products (so how many times has that steak you’ve been eating been eaten before?) but it would still lose nutritional value each time it was passed on.

So what are they feeding the pod people and where does the goop on the Nebakanezer come from? At the end of the day it would be infinitely easier to eradicate all human life and then adapt to any of a vast variety of other energy sources (or find a way to set up solar panel farms above the cloud bank) than it is to maintain the bizarre Matrix illusion as well as feed an maintain the bodies tied in to it.

– Where do babies come from in the Matrix? Obviously people don’t actually touch genitals so there appears to be only 2 options.

1) Man spunk is transported to a pod lady who gets pregnant.

2) Man spunk and lady egg transported to separate pod

Either way, do the machines wait for a couple to get it on in the Matrix before matching their sperm and egg or does it just assign a random pod baby to a couple after they have copulated and it has grown to a point where it has a conciousness?

In many ways this explains the fundamentalist views of contraception and abortion though.

No condoms or birth control should be available, no abortions of unwanted pregnancies should be allowed, no interest in the health or welfare of kids after they are born. Makes sense if you look at it from the view point of a programmed response from the Matrix to ensure a steady supply of fresh power sources…more sense than anything they come up with on Fox News.

Lord Of The Ring – What the fuck half assed plan was the Fellowship of the Ring supposed to be? A small group of people take a magic invisibility ring THAT THEY SHOULD NEVER WEAR into the enemy stronghold to walk it through the gathering armies of Sauron in order to throw it in Mount Doom. That was a stupid fucking plan BEFORE the Hobbits took off by themselves, AFTER it is 99.9% likely to end in two dead Hobbits and the ring back in Sauron’s possession. There is no logical reason it should have worked nor that ANYONE should have thought it would work.

-Why the fuck does Boromir think the ring is the answer to all his problems in Gondor? I know the ring is using it’s power to give him a wicked stiffy for it but he never really explains at any time how using the ring to make exactly 1 person invisible is going to win him the war against the orcs in Gondor. Galadriel or Gandalf could probably wield awesome power with the ring but there is no indication it does anything but make non-magic types like the Hobbits and Isildur invisible (while painting a big supernatural target on them). One invisible dude is not turning the tide of an entire war.

Star Wars – So you are taken from your family at an incredibly young age and then indoctrinated with the idea that strong emotions are bad and will lead to “the dark side”. So you are supposed to be noble, righteous, faithful and charitable despite the fact you are supposed to have no strong emotions or emotional attachment to people, places or things. Perhaps a psychologist can enlighten us, but it sounds like they are attempting to instill psychopathic behaviour to me.

You seem to give up all worldly possessions in order to avoid physical attachment except you get to build your own kick-ass laser sword which you then get to keep and which they drill into you that it is an all important life-saving tool. I would give up my worldly possessions for a kick-ass laser sword so this just seems counter productive to me.

You are also a one in a million genetic anomaly with a blood borne virus of some sort that allows you to manipulate the force but you aren’t allowed to have relationships, sex or kids. So instead of the excellent odds of your special mutation being passed on through 2 Jedi parents or even the decent odds of 1 Jedi parent, the entire system is based on the one in a million freak accident of nature being able to continue your mutated evolution.

Maybe they kept their numbers artificially low to not make the Senate feel that they were a threat, but you are talking a scant handful of people to defend the ENTIRE Republic. Remember that pretty much all of them fit in that stadium in Attack of the Clones. That would be around 1 cop for every major city maybe. The Republic seems to have no standing army until the clones show up. They should be working on breeding Jedi to at least an acceptable standard for protection of the galaxy but they really aren’t even doing that. Meanwhile, the Senate might feel they are a threat but they are also relying solely on the Jedi to defend the entire Republic.

– What the fuck does Shmi Skywalker do for a living? She is a slave but she never seems to do any work for Watto. She also never seems to leave the house. The house isn’t Watto’s, he would have noticed the kid building the podracer in the back fucking yard. So she and her son are slaves but they have their own house and she never seems to do any work of any kind that would benefit Watto personally or financially.

Some fan-fiction has postulated that she is a prostitute and Watto is her pimp but like I said, she never leaves the house, she never dresses up and you never see a parade of men hanging around her bedroom.

– So Han Solo dumps his illegal cargo before being boarded…but why the fuck did he bother? Dumping cargo into the inky black nothingness of space is really not a subtle manoeuvre. Unless he dumps it into a planet’s atmosphere so it burns up, all it will do is sit there like a space turd until someone notices it.

Rancid Monke