Sequential Horror

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Hollywood seems incapable of making anything original and all the sequels and reboots they make suck mightily.  So, I have decided to step into the breach and provide the ultimate in sequel mashup awfulness.

Movie Treatment: Cosmic-Horror-Palooza

Rick Deckard is at home with his wife Rachael having breakfast before he heads off to work as head school crossing guard at the Philip K Dick Elementary School in Portland Oregon.  Rachael is pregnant with their first child and asks Rick to bring her some sweet gherkin pickles on his way home.  She chastises him briefly because this is the third time he’s forgotten.  He absorbs the abuse kisses her on the forehead and heads out the door while absently loading .45 shells into his revolver.

When he reaches the security office, he notices on the various video surveillance screens that a protest has set up shop in the intersection adjacent to the northwest corner of the school.  A mostly crossdressing mob of activists with signs that say REPLICANT-PHOBIA IS HATE were chanting and marching in one of the crosswalks.  This would not be an easy day.

Suddenly an energy bolt blazed across the screen and struck one of the extremely plus-sized blonds-wigged transwomen in spandex and left a visibly gaping hole through his body before collapsing onto the asphalt.  Several other energy bolts followed in quick succession wreaking havoc with the chant as deep bellows and hoarse screams erupted from the targeted activists.

Deckard bolted for the door and sprinted toward the crime scene.  As he approached, he could see that the attack was coming from a tree located fifty yards from the corner.  He approached warily, shielding himself from view with the side of the building and ending up very close to the base of the tree.  Peering carefully around the corner of the building he could see a shimmering patch of foliage that was the source of the deadly beams.  As he watched he could make out what looked like a humanoid form and aiming for the head he unloaded with his .45.

The shimmering patch fell to the ground and Deckard ran over to it.  What he saw there startled him.  A man shaped creature lay on the ground but the inhuman head had insectoid mandibles.  The .45 slugs hadn’t done the head any good but Deckard added a couple more through the cranium just to be sure.  Looking around on the ground he found a long rod with a blinking light at one end and what probably was a trigger near the other end.  Picking it up and sighting through the blinking light device he aimed at the tree and pushed the trigger.  A bright red bolt drilled a two-inch round hole precisely through the 36 inches of the tree trunk and elicited a respectful whistle from the impressed former blade runner.

Looking into the foreground he could see a shimmering area about twenty feet down the sidewalk.  Suddenly four of the humanoid creatures approached with their right arms raised in the universal sign of respect for a successful warrior’s victory.  They came bearing a large blue lawn dart which one of their comrades had claimed as his trophy over a human in a 1968 Cincinnati Ohio suburb.

But before they could bestow this trophy on Deckard, other creatures poured out of the dimensional portal that the four earlier beings had opened.  These creatures were decidedly unlike the first ones.  They were about eight feet tall with extremely elongated heads with two sets of jaws, one inside of the other.  They had long claws on the feet and hands and a long, pointed tail.  Deckard instinctively knew that the saliva dripping from the creatures’ jaws was molecular acid and that this wouldn’t end well.

About twenty of the creatures attacked the four earlier visitors and an enormous battle ensued.  The bug-jawed warriors put up a hell of a fight with their energy weapons and the lawn dart but there were just too many of the xenomorphs (Deckard somehow sensed this was what these other creatures should be called).  Seeing that the battle would soon be over Deckard called his office and ordered his team to lock down the school and call the authorities.  Then he sprinted over to the protest site to warn them away.

Unfortunately, the activists had repurposed the event into a day of rage against transphobic energy-beam wielding haters and they had begun turning over cars and torching them.  They had formed a kind of funeral pyre for their fallen comrades but it hadn’t really done a thorough job of consuming their bodies so a very questionable pile of remains remained.  Seeing Deckard running toward them carrying the energy weapon they assumed he was the killer and they charged toward him.  He stopped and looked around.  Behind him the remaining ten or so xenomorphs were coming up quickly in his direction.  With the two groups converging on his position imminently, he did what any clear-thinking individual would do.  He ran sideways and hoped for the best.

And that worked extraordinarily well for him.  But much less well for the angry mob that suddenly intersected with the xenomorphs.  It turns out xenomorphs are not transphobic.  In fact, it turns out they’re transphilic.  In fact, I think they even enjoyed eating the wigs.  It wasn’t pretty.

Deckard took the opportunity to sneak over to an entrance to the school and punch in the entry code and head for the security office.  When he arrived, his crew updated him on the current state of the “battle.”  The xenomorphs were somewhat leisurely feasting on the four warriors and the fifty some-odd rioters.  Deckard tried in his mind to come up with a strategy to hold off the xenomorphs until Space Marine troops could be summoned.  But nothing occurred to him.  He did remember that he had to get those gherkins for Rachael but that didn’t really seem to improve the situation.

But then a very odd thing happened on the screen.  One of the corpses of the warriors suddenly stood up and metamorphosed into something that was a combination of the xenomorph and a rioter.  It looked like a xenomorph wearing a yellow wig.  But it grew to five times the size of one of the xenomorphs and began eating the other xenomorphs.  And each time it ate one of them it got bigger.  The xenomorphs never ran away and kept fighting but one by one they were swallowed by the shape-shifting creature.  At one point a xenomorph managed to rip an arm off the shapeshifter and throw it to the ground.  The arm sprouted six spider like legs, a mouth full of teeth at the shoulder and proceeded to attack the xenomorph.  Within half an hour the battle was over and the shapeshifter and the walking biting arm coalesced into an amorphous mass of protoplasm.  After a short time, the blob flowed over to the school and covered it in a layer of pulsing goo.

Deckard watched in horror as all the doors began to slowly ooze rivulets of the creature.  He sent his crew to the doors and they used CO2 fire extinguishers to freeze the jelly as it attempted to enter the building.  Things were looking quite bleak as the extinguishers one by one were emptied of their frozen contents.  But suddenly the ooze retreated from the doors and the creature flowed off onto the nearby street and reformed into the shape of a yellow wigged transwoman complete with alarmingly overstretched spandex body suit.  The creature was apparently asleep.  As Deckard watched the sleeping form evaporated completely.  At that point he saw that there was a similarly sized shape on the ground about ten feet from where the sleeping creature had been.

Gathering his courage Deckard walked out of the building and approached the shape on the ground.  When he got near it, he saw that it was what looked like a giant seed pod.  And as he watched it burst open and slowly a living being pushed its way out.  When it had exited the pod, it was seen to be an identical blond wigged transwoman; spandex and all.  Deckard stood his ground, pointed the energy weapon at the creature and asked it to explain what had just happened.

The creature adjusted its costume, scratched at its beard and explained that its species sent spores throughout space that land on planets and produce seed pods that mimic other life forms and then replace them with their own individuals.  And slowly they replace all individuals of the local dominant species and thus take over that world.  However, because of all the various different cell types that were present in this individual’s new body, life on Earth was just too painful for it to continue and it begged Deckard to finish it off as a mercy killing.  And Deckard promptly obliged it using the alien energy rod.  At that point the creature evaporated into the air (except for the spandex suit and wig).

When the police finally showed up, they wanted to know what the hell was going on.  All that remained of the battle were the few burned out cars and the spandex suite and wig.  Deckard started to tell the whole story then thought better of it and just said there had been a protest that sort of got out of control and left it at that.  One of the officers asked him about the energy rod and he said it was a prop for a school play.  The police did a walk around and cited the school for a safety violation because of the empty fire extinguishers and Deckard had to fill out a lot of paperwork and give some of his staff a mental health week off to keep them from quitting.

He didn’t get home that night until ten thirty and when he walked in the door Rachael asked him how his day was.  He said it was okay.  But then she looked at him and said, “You forgot the gherkins!”

So, he turned around and headed off to the grocery store with his walking stick blinking along.  She said after him, “Men are so easily distracted.”

The Dunwich Budget

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Farmer Cthulhu in His Fields

Here in Dunwich we had our town budget meeting and the Finance Committee asked for a 10 percent increase and there was an uproar.  The Bishops and the Whateleys demanded that First Selectman Cthulhu go into closed session with them and provide an itemized list of all the increases in expenditures.  At the end of the session the First Selectman exited the chamber.  When asked by the committee if all demands had been satisfied, he belched out a dark viscous cloud and declared, “Sure, at least until dinner anyway.  I’m always hungry an hour after Whateley.”

During the next session a group of concerned Dunwichians demanded that alternative revenue raising methods be provided.  Cthulhu suggested a 0.001% head tax be levied.  This low rate excited many of the concerned group and they asked what details would still have to be worked out if this tax was provisionally approved.  The First Selectman confided, “Well we’ll have to figure out how to decide which heads to harvest.  I favor going blind fold and just biting off whatever heads come within my grasp until I’ve reached the agreed upon total.  That seems fairest.”  It was unanimously decided to shelve that proposal indefinitely in favor of the 10% tax increase.

Democracy in action in Dunwich is a frightening but somehow clarifying process.  As opposed to other less mythic New England towns Dunwich cuts through the pretense of egalitarianism and nakedly reveals the precise power dynamic between Great Old Ones and anyone small enough to be engulfed, chewed and swallowed by their cephalopodic maws.

But to be fair, it’s not as if Americans aren’t equally at the mercy of their government.  Paying taxes and not receiving services like police protection, safe drugs, secure borders and honest representation in Washington are standard operating procedure since at least the Obama administration.

Surely, no one is surprised anymore that no balanced budget is ever negotiated, approved and administered.  Since Obama’s time continuing expenditure resolutions and multi-trillion-dollar omnibus boondoggles are the new normal.  I wonder if it is even possible to get a balanced budget enacted.  Would the administrative state just shrug it off and print more money and chalk it up to the need for “clandestine intelligence programs” above the public’s pay grade to know or even question?  I have to confess I’m curious what in the world Trump will do if he gets back into the White House.  It’s rather like being one of the fifth century Westen Roman emperors.  You have to go through the motions of giving orders to the generals but outside your window you can see the Goths and the Vandals carrying off the last of the treasury.

This beyond reckless deficit spending will eventually lead to collapse.  It has to.  Really the only question I have is whether there is a plan to handle the collapse or will the rats just desert the sinking ship for greener pastures.  Will the Obamas flee Martha’s Vineyard for New Zealand or Singapore?

Well, at least locally, the budget process is carefully controlled and all due respect is provided to the voters.  First Selectman Cthulhu is also the ballot clerk at the budget vote.  Every registered voter receives one ballot and casts it proudly.  And we’re proud of our innovations in local government.  By pre-printing the yes oval already filled in we have saved hundreds of dollars over the last few years in the cost of pens and markers.  And that way Cthulhu doesn’t have to eat any “no” voters.  That’s progress!

Turtles All the Way Down

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Over the last few months, I have been reading and listening to a bunch of physics.  Particle physics and cosmology.  The micro and the macro of the attempt to understand the universe.  Limitless vistas of space with super clusters of galaxies and more exotic objects that stretch back to the alleged Big Bang.  And inside the proton are the ephemeral quarks and gluons flashing in and out of existence in (I kid you not) a yoctosecond.

And all of this hyperactivity of nothingness just to make it possible for me to push on the keys of my laptop to write this post.  All of those electrons and quarks following all these conflicting forces at various distances; the strong force, weak force, electro-magnetic force and gravity just so that reality can be felt and tasted.  All of these incredibly complex concepts and the mathematics that tries to describe it.  And the weirdness of quantum mechanics and its inherent and explicit ruling out of determinism.  All of this and how far we’ve come from Galileo and Newton.  And all we’ve achieved in technology.

And yet…

What are quarks made of?  What are gluons made of?  What happened five minutes before the Big Bang?  What happens five minutes after the End of the Universe?

There is no bottom.  There is no top.  There is no start.  There is no finish.

The human mind cannot encompass the infinite.  If we find something beneath quarks, I am sure there will be something under that.  And when the successor to the James Webb Space Telescope is put into service in twenty years at a cost of $100 billion or so I’m sure it will show us even further wonders that defy our ability to explain.  And so will the telescope after that.

And as the man said, “Not that there’s anything wrong with that.”  But that’s the part you have to wrap your head around.  Thinking that scientists have the ultimate truth is a misnomer.  All they have is the latest and greatest explanation as to how things work.

But they’ll never be able to tell you why you’re here or why you should care.  Each of us has to do that all by ourselves.

It’s remarkable.  Five hundred years after the Renaissance put us on the trajectory of man is the measure of all things and God is dead, we come right back to the same place.  The universe isn’t a big windup toy that means nothing and will return to nothing.  And after science tried to convince us that Earth is nowhere and humans are less than nothing it turns out that life is really the only thing with inherent value.  And human life is the miracle that we started out with before we killed God.

The more we study life the more in awe we are of its complexity and miraculous properties.  The more we study humans the more we discover about their potential.

I do not mean to disparage science.  Wresting the secrets of the universe from Nature is a noble endeavor.  And done with proper humility it is one of the finest works that can be achieved by the human mind.  But surely by now all the best minds in the world must be aware that an infinite universe cannot be defined by finite beings.  God built this nursery for us and it’s built to hold us while we grow up.  I can’t imagine we’ll find the door to the nursery unlocked.  At least not on this side of reality.

Divergence

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Regardless of who wins what in November, the path forward for people who don’t want their kids to end up as cricket eating, bottom dwellers is to start creating a future with the ingredients needed for human life.  I can see the beginnings of this in places like Florida.  Local leaders will have to think carefully about how to protect their citizens from Washington.

Coming in first place will be education.  The public-school systems are the primary avenue for proselytizing children.  In addition, the education provided has been degraded to the point where graduates are no longer qualified for higher education or even normal positions in business or trade.  The voucher system that some states have come adopted is the correct solution.  These bad schools need to lose their student base and end up closing.  Later on a triage system can be enacted to try and reform some of the public schools that can be saved.  And useful trades should be encouraged as a viable alternative to college.  And the state should review any college curriculum to ensure that it has value and yank the charter of any college that attempts to charge people for learning “gender or queer studies.”

Next up is law and order.  Each state must come to terms with urban areas that have abandoned their citizens into the power of a criminal element.  Prosecutors are allowing those arrested for serious crimes to go free and even some police forces have abandoned their jobs and no longer arrest criminals. The states must take over these areas and clean them up and keep them that way.  Firing and prosecuting district attorneys and other officials who have been criminally negligent in their duties must be performed to prevent this behavior from recurring.

Welfare reform and homelessness must also be addressed.  No one should be paid for sitting around.  Welfare should be reserved for widows and orphans.  Everyone else works or they don’t eat.  If the state becomes the employer of last resort, then let’s make sure the state gets its money’s worth.  Road gangs repairing pot holes and picking up trash have some value.  Small business incentives should be put in place to encourage initiative.

States should pass laws that will allow illegal aliens to be excluded from the benefits of society.  They must be denied any state resources that can be withheld.  Criminalizing all of the statuses that come with being an illegal alien must be pursued as a way to drive the illegals out of the state.  And this should be done despite the federal government’s attempts to protect them.  And most importantly the corporations that employ them must be punished as strenuously as possible to help close up this avenue of funding.

And finally, the state must build a system of policies to promote and encourage young people to raise families.  Everything must be done to provide support to young men who want to work while their wives stay home and raise children.  And the law must specifically require that arrangement.  It must be explicitly tailored to encourage young women to act as housewives and mothers because this arrangement is uniquely suited to provide the maximum amount of harmony and well-being for the whole family.  And the state should fight for this arrangement, tooth and nail.

And all of this is just the beginning.  Each state is going to have to embark on a program to counteract the harmful programs that the federal government pushes.  Each state will have to review all the federal programs and refuse the money associated with those that cause harm.  For instance, a state might decide to forbid the airing of television shows produced by PBS and other government propaganda mills.

And finally, a mechanism has to be instituted to provide the “big picture” planning that currently is done at the national level.  Things like research and development and transportation, highway, urban and environmental planning can’t be left to the feds.  Their priorities and biases won’t allow them to do a good job on these.  Luckily no one state has to take over these functions.  A consortium of states can team up to do this work.

It’s clear that if we don’t want to end up living in a place like California or New York we are going to have to take control of our future and pushing off in different directions from the federal government.  We can’t assume that control of the federal government will be in the hands of rational people.  It’s time to move on.