Dear Diary....
I think that the Prodigy is one of the coolest bands, and nothing anyone ever does can take that away from them. ;-)
Just so you know.
Weird stuff abounded this weekend. And it ends on an even weirder note, as I just got done watching this funky-butt anime called Memories, done by the same guy who made Akira. Really funky.
It was three movies in one. I think the weirdest part of the movie was that none of the mini-stories had any sort of satisfaction in them. There was no hero that won or anything.
The first one was about this space garbage collector. It was this band of people who were in this space ship, who's job was to go around and collect space junk. They are about to wait for the clearance to go back to the space port or something, and they recieve this distress call. It comes from some region of space known as the Sargasso, kinda like Earth's Sargasso. 'Cept this Sargasso is called that because tons of ships die there, because their computers malfunction due to magnetic radiation.
Well, they go to investigate the sos call, and they spot this big huge assed meteor looking thing, but it's made up of space junk.
They send two crewmen to investigate, and they start seeing crazy things. Like it's all space age in this elevator thing they go down to the center of it in, but then they step into this huge mansion looking ballroom. But everytime they pick something up it decays instantly or falls apart.
Eventually the come across who looks to have made this whole setup, and it was some opera chick from the early part of the new millenium (which was 2000 in this story line, she died in 2082, and it's 2100 and something in the 'present').
They investigate some files on the spaceship and her history says that she was a famous opera singer, and her husband died (was murdered) the day of her wedding. There was a lot of side story that didn't make a whole lot of difference thrown in at that point. Basically, what it came down to is that the chick was psycho, and went nuts and dissappeared after her husband was murdered.
Well, the two intrepid adventurers start having more hallucinations at that point involving the chick in question. One of the adventurers is a horndog that has two girlfriends, and wants to bang this opera chick as soon as he sees a picture of her.
The other adventurer is a family man, has one daughter and a wife. (kinda remember this, it's semi-important)
Well, the horndog guy gets envoloped in this hallucination/hologram of the opera chick and she loves him, and calls him by what her husband's name was, and family man adventurer is watching him being sucked into this vortex of space junk. And there is all this space junk he's having to blast thru because it actually looks like it's trying to prevent him from saving his horndog friend. And then after a bit, all is lost, horndog dissappears in the distance. So sad for horndog.
But wait, we still have a ship out there in space that's ready to take off and get family man and the rest of the crew out of there, right?
Well, yeah, but not for long!
Family man get's enraptured in this hallucination/hologram that has his family in it, and the magnetic radiation is increasing outside, and disrupting the ships navigation and all that. So they are getting sucked into the big ball of space junk. Prepare to be assimliated type things.
But then the big ball of junk/opera chick starts addressing family man directly, without the hallucinations for a bit. And they talk. Family man gets ball of junk/opera chick to admit she killed her husband.
And then, the junk ship outside realizes they can't save the intrepid adventurers, because they watch the shuttle pod they landed with get destroyed, so they shoot this big ball of energy at the junk heap just as family man adventurer shoots the illusion of the opera chick in the head, to reveal that she is *gasp* a robot thingy!!!
And then the junk ship is assimilated, and family man adventurer is shot out into the vacuum of space. Luckily he was able to get his helmet on, so he can breath for a while out in space, but as the camera pulls out, you can see the junk heap ball thingy form itelf into a rose bud, and inside his helmet are floating two little red-pink rose petals. Real ones, not illusions.
And then, without warning, it fades to black, and into the next movie.
The next movie starts out with this dude in a clinic getting a shot. At first I thought he was shooting up heroin, but it pans out, and there's this nurse giving him a flu shot or something.
He walks down the street coming out of there, and he's muttering to himself while he sneezes and coughs about how he's so sick and doesn't know how to get rid of it.
You can tell by the way he's drawn, he's going to be a fsck-up. Anime is good that way. Something in the way the nose is drawn, you can always tell that so and so is going to be a doofus, and you know to expect it. Memories is no exception to this, as this guy is the king of all doofii.
He works at a medical research lab. He sneezes, coughs, and someone says, try this medicine, he says, did it already (I'm paraphrasing a lot, because I'm just now realizing how long this is going for, and I apologize for it). And then he says, hey, you ought to try some of this new stuff we are working on now, it's for fevers, it should do the trick, it's in the boss's room, it's the RED BOTTLE WITH THE BLUE PILLS.
What does homeboy do?
Take three guesses. Go ahead. I won't even count the first two.
But you get it right on the first guess. He takes the RED PILLS IN THE BLUE BOTTLE. Like a DUMB ASS!
I knew it was going to happen. You knew it, I knew it, everyone knew it.
Guess what, it only goes downhill from there.
Okay, so homeboy goes and takes a nap in the break room, cuz he is so tired.
The boss, who was strangely absent from his high security office when dumbass was in there storms in the lab where homeboy usually works, and is of course stark raving mad because someone took a pill out of the top secret blue bottle.
He runs around like a chicken with his head cut off for a bit, choking random people, and then some people make note of the sweet smell in the area. Fade to morning sequence.
Homeboy wakes up and goes "Damn, it's morning, I'm in trouble, etc etc."
Walks around.
Everyone's dead. Homeboy freaks out and calls the police and an ambulance.
THEN he goes and follows proper procedure and flips the alarm they have SPECIALLY setup for such outbreaks.
And all these people come on the video screen freaking out, and then just one of them from the government comes on and explains that it's a special military experiment and tells him to bring a breifcase with the files for the drugs involved and the special pills, yeah, bring those too.
So the intrepid homeboy (intrepid is the word of the day, did you notice?) ventures out, and people are keeling over all around him, and he doesn't seem to get the picture. I mean, he steals a moped from this dude that keels over in front of him, and he crashes it, and all these birds and frogs die around him, as well as people, and he STILL doesn't get it.
Well, I'm going to make a long story short here. Basically, the drug he took was to make plants grow back real quick or something, but it reacted with the drugs he was injected with to make his flu go away.
What it did was make this whole cloud come up from his sweat glands that reacted with electrical instruments, and people, and living things, and basically fscked everything up.
This is all in Japan. He's heading from the lab to Tokyo on a moped. And this huge cloud is following him. And people are dying. And he STILL doesn't get it.
So then the entire Japanese military (this is where you have to suspend your disbelief, because as we all know, Japan doesn't have a military, it was outlawed by constitutional law in Japan at the end of World War II) is going after this mofo. They shoot tank mortar, cruise missiles, heat seekers, everything. And they all miss him. And he's riding on a moped.
Don't ask me, it's just an anime.
Anyways. Finally, the US steps in, because they were somehow behind all this mess, and they use some specialy NASA space suits to contain this guy and his oderous cloud in one of them, they finally deliver him to HQ, and he gives the guy the breifcase and the pills, says something that indicates that he's STILL clueless, then accidentally hits the release button and kills everyone in the room with a cloud of smoke.
Fade to black.
Third and final story. If you are reading to this point, be proud. This is like a three hour movie, and you are making it to the end of the description.
The last movie is probably the easiest to describe, but was the most thought provoking.
It starts out in this really metallic looking house. It's not space age or anything. If anything, it looks like they are living in a 1930's factory, but in a homey kind of sense. (not like homey g word up, but like homey it's a home sense of the word. Got it? Good. ;-)
The momma is talking to the kid, saying school isn't mandatory, but you need to wake up and go, because you need a scholarship and all that. The kid is kinda pudgy, looks to be in elementary school or something.
(completely off topic: for some reason, I just had a flashbulb memory of middle school and elementary school thinking it was going to be a long time until I grew up. Wow, I'm old. Anyways, back to the story.)
The kid and the dad are off to school and work respectively, they are both wearing helmets (as is the momma) in the style of WWI German's.
Then they walk out the door under the auspices of catching the train, and the camera pans out to reveal the city-scape, and when Phitt and I saw it, we both said "wow! that is wacked out!", or something to that effect.
What you see is a cityscape that looks like 1890's-1930's London, except on top of most of the high buildings and on the wall around the city is a bunch of turretts. Like what would be on a tank. Except MONSTROUS in size. And you realize that everyone in this city's civilization is devoted to operating those cannons and that their life is devoted to some war. Ostensibly with some other city.
The rest of the movie is devoted to detailing the day to day life, and it really is mundane. It shows the kid in school, and he's learning physics and chemistry, but they all relate to operating the cannons.
It zooms out the window of the classroom, and zooms in on one of the cannons, coincidentally the cannon his dad works at. The thing is fREEKING huge! It's probably a couple hundred yards long. At least. And it's a medium sized cannon for the city.
The kid's dad works on loading the cannon. That's what he does. He's one of like 10 people who help load the bullet off the crane, into the barrel.
They fire off a copule shots, it's a real big deal. Takes about 5 minutes to do. On one of the shots, the dad messes up, and they make him stand on the platform without his gasmask, and he has to absorb the shockwave without protection.
He doesn't die or anything, but you can tell it wasn't a fun experience.
After every cannon fire, everyone does this salute like Heil Hitler, except they say Yay or something like that.
And then it shows everyone go home for the evening.
And the tee vee news reports nothing but how many cannon shots hit. And then some sitcom comes on, it has the name cannon in it, it's supposed to be some sort of propaganda show, obviously.
All the while it's focusing on the teevee, the kid is drawing something on a paper. The dad and momma tell the kid to go to bed, and he does, and leaves the drawing there.
Right before he goes to bed, he asks his dad who it is they are fighting anyways, and the dad tells him he'll learn about it when he grows up. It's a big person subject.
The dad picks it up and looks at it... it's a picture in definate child's drawing style of the kid himself dressed up like the actual cannon shooter, not a loader, or regular worker, but a big shot cannon shooter (pardon the pun).
And all of a sudden, it animates itself, and it is this kid leading all these tanks and cannons into battle, still drawn kiddie style. He wins some big battle. Blah blah.
Then it shows him looking at a picture in the hallway of a cannon shooter. Then the kid says something kinda sad.
"When I grow up, I wanna be a cannon shooter, not a cannon loader like my dad."
It's sad on a couple levels.
Then the kid gets dressed for bed, winds up his big clock, and goes to bed.
Fade to black.
Roll credits. (in japanese, no less).
The end.
Does your head spin too? Try watching the movie. It will spin like mine I'm sure. Or maybe you people got something out of that. I'm still trying to draw conclusions. Definately thought provoking, though.
I can get the last one, pretty well, the middle one seemed kinda pointless, the first one, just made me go huh?!?
If you just read this far, fire me off an email and let me at least know that. And if you have any thoughts about it, let me know that too. I'm interested in hearing what people have to say after reading what is probably diaryland 's single most wordy entry ever. Cool?
To reward all you kind readers that read this far, here is the quote of the entry. For those that skipped straight to the quote of the entry, shame on you.
/rizzn
Quote of the Entry: "I wanna create a fruitopian society where all my friends and I just run around screaming and practicing anarchy. Yeahyeah!!"
- who else but Tenderpoison
