Viva Riva!
Djo Munga crafted a gritty urban crime drama with energy to spare, and it benefits from strong performances and the uncommon setting of Kinshasa. The unique aspect, though, is its uncompromising honesty. The story has no apologies for its lurid subject matter, graphic violence, sex, lesbian action, and the utterly corrupt characters that make up the heart of Viva Riva. Ridiculously entertaining, while having neither sympathy nor mercy for the characters held in thrall to the relentless Congolese beat. This is in some ways an exercise in style, but it never drifts too far from the central theme of the gravitational center of money, and how it drives and destroys everything we see. Sure, the men and women kill for money, but without cash flow, like the gasoline Riva brings to the city, nothing shall move.

Tree of Life
One of the most ambitious films of this decade, or indeed any decade, Tree of Life grapples with the most basic and unanswerable of questions. Ostensibly about a father raising his children, it becomes a meditation on how we relate to the processes that created life around us; or maybe it is about how we deal with a distant deity and make sense of religion; or using vast perspective to understand where we fit in the struggle for life and how we find our way. There are as many interpretations as there were viewers of this transcendent film. I considered it through the perspective of the father; falsely confident about how the world is around him, he feels his way through the process of rearing his kids, never able to know the wisdom of his actions until long afterwards. You tell me.

Melancholia
Crippling depression isn’t so bad in the end of days – if Earth is about to collide with another planet, then having an apocalyptic view is a positive boon. While a fascinating consideration of how different personalities deal with the yawning precipice of oblivion, it allows the audience to understand and perhaps internalize the power of depression. That being said, Melancholia is uncommonly entertaining, with shockingly beautiful compositions. The end is nothing to be worried about, after all.

The Artist
A minute or so into The Artist, I had forgotten I was watching a silent film. The surprise here is the extraordinary skill Hazanavicius brings to telling a story with spare dialogue, scrupulously constructed visuals, and the faces of two of the best performances of the year. A star-making turn by Berenice Bejo is matched by a pitch-perfect Jean Dujardin (who already is a star via the OSS films). As far as bittersweet films go, this ode to the glory of old Hollywood is as bitter as it gets. But that is the central theme – the Artist, if they truly believe in their art, wish only to entertain, and that for a brief time. The crowd, adoring though it may be, will move on, never to return. ‘That is life’, as one character says. So why is one of the best films of the year in a dead medium?

Princess of Montpensier
Passion destroys all it touches in this sumptuous costume drama from a master of the craft. Against the backdrop of the pointlessly bloody yet enthusiastically fought war between Huguenots and Catholics, a similarly aimless love triangle reveals the destructive force of passion amongst shallow people who have yet to learn that life is not to be taken too seriously. At least not if it is to be understood. Populated by mostly narrow-minded characters driven by emotion to destructive ends, we get to view the awkward dance of human nature as people labor against their best interests. All in the name of love, pride, honor, and faith – all variants of foolish passion. Seldom has the cataract of human conflict been viewed with such thoughtful reserve.

Cave of Forgotten Dreams
This odd meditation on our history and how we interpret those frozen moments in time captured in ancient objects fascinates beyond reasonable comprehension. The rare experience of the Chauvet Cave becomes the centerpiece for a review of prehistoric peoples, or at least our guess as to who they were based on what was left behind. This sets up the amazing sequence of slow shots of the oldest cave paintings of the world, preserved for tens of thousands of years. Primitive, yet sophisticated in use of contrast and medium, and in the creative use of the contours of the cave; possibly the greatest works of art in human history.

The Red Chapel
A thoughtful commentary on the slippery nature of truth in documentaries, all masquerading as a sublime practical joke on North Korea. A group of comics seek to show the creepy and self-destructive culture of the world’s most isolated country using the dumbest imaginable stage comedy show. Meanwhile, a simple and goofy expose becomes something else entirely. As it turns out, propaganda goes both ways, and The Red Chapel becomes not only wickedly funny, but also ends up burying the guerilla documentary as a fundamentally dishonest genre.

Meek’s Cutoff
A small band of settlers strike west in search of a new life, and in Oregon circa 1845, they find themselves utterly lost, without water or food. Guided by one of the better-constructed unreliable narrators in cinema, their guide Meek has a shortcut in mind. As they press forward into nothingness, we are lost with them in this wilderness. Lacking in traditional narrative structure or any sense of closure, Meek’s Cutoff is a unsettlingly immersive experience as we join the characters in not knowing whether salvation or death can be found beyond the next hill. Perhaps they will make it, as it is always just a bit further. We must do without a hero or any real guide, just as they do, and have no idea who is speaking the truth. Metaphorically rich and thematically dense, one could see it as a simple treatise on the nature of risk while in the midst; the risk of trusting to fate, the gamble inherent in retaining one’s humanity at the cost of safety, and the payment demanded by ill fortune. In more concrete terms, it is a cry from a nation, once emboldened by Manifest Destiny, that has completely lost its way.

Certified Copy
There are no immutable truths in art, as in life or love – subjective in all ways especially regarding perspective. Straying across subjects about art, authenticity, and how these could apply to men and women, courting and married, now and long into the future, Certified Copy is a brilliant work that does not fit any conventional narrative mold. Part of the way into this feature, an antique dealer and a writer appear to be discussing the inherent value of copies against the original – and then the goalposts are moved in a way that shifts the subject, bringing subtext to the surface, and telescoping time in dramatic fashion. Bold and meditative, and benefits from repeat viewings as the person we are changes with time – as would one’s view of this film.

Life, Above All
A blistering indictment of South Africa’s response on the level of health ministry, government, and society, Life, Above All is a deeply intimate look at the effects of a pandemic that has crippled an entire continent. But never mind the mind-boggling statistics of HIV – this focuses on one family that is being devastated by the disease, but even more so by the malignant actions of the community around them. Belief in magic and curse rules the land, and provides a protective curtain behind which the plague spreads unchallenged. This film deftly addresses the war between fact and superstition, and the proxies that fight on their behalf. There is no other way to deal with adversity of any kind other than head-on, and it can be said that AIDS has been less damaging to Africa than the ignorance that nurtures it.

The Muppets
The visionary creation of Jim Henson is now regarded with nostalgia – but The Muppets make it clear that the show is not over yet. The consummate entertainers unite in a knowing and clever film that is a tribute to entertainment and entertainers. Equally turns touching and hilarious, The Muppets is a fitting way to reinvigorate the stage show and reestablish Kermit and Company. Welcome back, guys.

Action films are a way to cut through the tedium that rules our lives and feel an adrenaline rush from the safety of the couch. Those actioners that get right to the point and manage it with characters we care about are those dearest to our hearts. Few can manage this feat, and so there is an imbalance to story versus bone-shattering activity; often a gimmick is needed to excite a lulled audience. Equilibrium invented a martial art that is as ridiculous looking as it is awesome. This is far from a perfect movie and it labors with an unnecessarily fussy backstory and carries the portent of a death sentence throughout.

This background material is an elaborate and unnecessary structure upon which is hung the awesome concept of gunkata. It’s like adorning your balls with peacock feathers – impressive but weird and kind of offputting. So, GUNKATA. All caps suits it. The idea is that the gun is just an extension of your fist like you can punch across the room and through the liquefied faces of your enemies; at the same time, you position yourself in such a way that the enemy is statistically unlikely to hit you with return fire. This is an excuse to use kung fu choreography moves while shooting the shit out of a roomful of thugs while wearing cool fucking suits. If this were two solid hours of exquisitely fought scenes full of perforated extras, it would rank up there with Citizen Kane or, dare I suggest it, Robocop. As it is, the backstory gets nearly all the screentime, and it is a doozy. In the future, a fascist regime takes over and bans all emotion with the use of mood stabilizing drugs and executions for anyone who grins or pops a boner. There is a message about the importance of emotion to human life that is heavy-handed in ways that approach Shoah. It makes for an intriguing narrative, but I would have been happy with ‘this bad guy is an asshole – get him’. The idea of GUNKATA needs to be put in as many movies as possible, including holocaust dramas. Of note, the practitioners of GUNKATA are called Grammaton Clerics. They dress better than priests, that’s for fucking certain.

Hilariously, the opening narration is done over superimposed text in case the viewer is deaf or has trouble following the spoken word. And each word… is followed by… a… … long… pause. Intended to hammer home the pants-shittingly ominous tone, it comes in handy as a long enough break to eat a handful of potato chips without missing crucial info. I appreciate it when movies have this built in feature, and it shows the director is a fucking genius. In the opening scene, the Resistance is concealing some paintings, banned materials in this gray era. The fighters are made up of what seems to be thousands of random guys in the uniform of normal clothing. If they wanted to blend in, they would wear the cool suits like everyone else, and pretend to be bored hipsters. The lead Grammaton Cleric, played by Christian Bale in full Batman form, rolls in and kills everyone in the room with his eyes closed. Statistics killed them, actually. Bale was just the deliverer. The tactic of positioning yourself in a way that decreases the odds of being hit apparently means walking in the dead center of any room or hallway like you are fetching the paper.

He experiences a pang of conscience when his colleague turns out to be palming his medications and must be killed. Played by Sean Bean, it is a twist in that he didn’t get a chance to betray anyone before getting two to the face. Bale proceeds to palm his own meds and discover the joy and pain of emotion, and this isn’t as bad as it sounds. He is surrounded by potential enemies that could out him at any time as a ‘sense offender’, including his new co-Cleric Taye Diggs (smug is apparently okay as far as emotions go), the heavily armed soldiers that accompany him, and his own son. The leader of this regime is played by Robert the Bruce as the excessively… pausing… douche. There are double-crosses and revelations that fit in okay with the story, but the real reason we are here is the GUNKATA. We get the occasional sweet but brief kill zones, but at the end excrement becomes substantive. Bale goes fucking apeshit and kills a building. I mean, he kills everyone in it, but doesn’t stab the floor or anything. Bullets fly and the Cleric flips about and when he is out of bullets a sword does the talking. In a revelatory moment, he faces the pretty motherfucker that is Taye Diggs and severs his most prized aspect. The final boss battle is by turns awesome and funny as Bale and Robert the Bruce get slap happy with guns in close quarters. Even as you think to yourself “This is retarded”, you will have a grin plastered to your visage nonetheless.

I learned nothing about the value of human emotion or the importance of culture in bringing humanity to an inhumane world, but I did internalize the need for more GUNKATA in movies today. Just think of how this could improve nearly every film you encounter. Kate Hudson rom-coms would suddenly be splattered with impossible amounts of blood and Kate’s head would go flying to the joy of the watching crowd. Feel-good dramas about racism in the South would be punctuated by badass mofos in Afros and cool suits showing the man that bright red is the only color that matters. Remakes of 80s nostalgia products would pulsate with unce unce and ear-shattering gun battles. Footloose might have been palatable if the final high school dance were to end in tragedy as Lithgow’s preacher walks into the place in a cool suit and delivered his fuckoff evangel and arterial gushers.

Spielberg once made entertaining movies. These days, unless it is about Jews, his heart just isn’t in it. Early on, before daddy issues and cash-ins took over his once magnificent gift, he could craft entertainment that had mass appeal while retaining an undefinable, personal quality. An unabashed joy lay at the heart of Raiders of the Lost Ark for those action serials from his childhood, and with Close Encounters of the Third Kind for human connections that may bring us hope and a link to a higher intelligence. 1941 was an expensive flop at the time, and is considered one of his worst films made during his most creative period. Crafted as a big-budget comedy, it assembled an astonishing cast in a film that was BIG in all capital letters. There are huge setpieces of astounding complexity, a city is reduced to a smoking crater, and the whole affair is so chaotic that 1941 resembles the toybox of a child.  As a child, I remember setting up elaborate battlefields utilizing the troops of GI Joe, the Transformers and Masters of the Universe to create a massive skirmish defiant of the laws of physics or common sense. This is Spielberg’s toybox, his invasion of Hollywood, and a nostalgic look back to a Norman Rockwell youth. Over the course of two and a half hours he gleefully burns it all down. In the most revealing shot, the iconic Hollywood sign actually gets gunned to pieces. To get an idea of the tone, the end credits roll over each cast member screaming their asses off. 1941 is loud, dumb, and cheerfully idiotic. Still, I prefer this unpolished duh to the absurdly serious calculation of his later films.

Spielberg was all over the place in terms of how to treat the subject matter; it ended up as a comedy, but he also considered turning it into a drama and/or musical during filming, so the tone is confused at best. The screenplay was by John Milius, so it should come as no surprise that every single structure, vehicle, and object not made of granite is reduced to molecules by the end. Some real events inspired this film, including the hysteria that gripped the United States after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, and an incident where a Japanese submarine shelled Santa Barbara. In 1941, that Japanese submarine, commanded by Toshiro Mifune moves to attack Los Angeles…

Meanwhile, the people of the West Coast place themselves on a war footing. Actually, that is what would happen in a sanitized version of things. In reality, the population panicked, everyone stocked up on guns, anyone Asian was herded into concentration camps, and false reports of invasion echoed through the hills. In that respect, 1941 captured the national mood, where anything and everything was expected and feared. The preparations were strange and wonderful, including placing an AA gun in the backyard of a home, making the house a target. Lest we forget, these are humans we are talking about, and the focus will either be on blowing shit up or trolling for poon, both activities pursued with maniacal glee by the characters. Tim Matheson plots to steal a plane in the midst of war to seduce some chick who gets horny when airborne. This is Nancy Allen we are talking about, so this is somewhat reasonable. In another story thread, a part time dishwasher who is a great dancer is working to get his girlfriend into a dance competition, the catch being the dance is at a USO and he is not a soldier. That he assaults an MP to get the uniform goes without saying. A few other subplots, amongst many:

Ned Beatty proudly accepts an AA gun placement in his yard. He is so patriotic that he gives his daughter, who just joined the USO, a pep talk as she is going to entertain soldiers at a dance: “Those men only want one thing… show em a good time, hon.” Kind of fucked up, but a great parody of the misguided nationalism displayed in times of fear, where family takes a backseat to the glory of country.

John Belushi is a maverick fighter pilot chasing nonexistent Japanese bombers. He spends his time doing nothing, shooting down only one plane (ours), scratching his nuts, and getting captured by the Japanese. I like to think that the standard ‘lone action hero’ trope would turn into this guy in the real world. Free of any bureaucratic  shackles, he would also be free of any intelligence or coordinated effort, would end up wasting time, killing the wrong people, and becoming a gleeful POW delivering badly worded one-liners to captors in a death camp.

Dan Aykroyd is a sergeant in command of a tank, and his rapid-fire delivery has never been better utilized as he instructs Ned Beatty in specifically how NOT to use his AA gun to destroy enemy targets, which he should NOT be doing. He is angered by Americans fighting Americans, which is what 1941 is all about. His crew is made up of Mickey Rourke (his first role), a unnecessarily racist John Candy, and a person referred to only as a ‘giant Negro’. Candy and anonymous Negro go at it throughout the movie for no reason whatsoever, giving us this shot that pretty much encapsulates the Civil Rights movement:

Warren Oates plays himself as an insane Army colonel who is guarding vending machines in the desert, and demands divisions of troops to defend himself against nonexistent paratroopers and an enemy airbase. In Pomona. He has his soldiers screen all visitors for potential Japanese spies by ‘checking them for stilts’. Spielberg manages to prove that racism can be hilarious.

You probably guessed that Slim Pickens is in this, as Hollis Wood, a hick captured by the Japanese sub crew and interrogated as to the location of Hollywood. “Horrywood… WHERE?” “Here!” He also manages to swallow the sub’s only working compass, leading to a tense scene where the crew feeds him laxatives to retrieve it. As the commander shuts the door to the toilet, and Pickens begins screaming, he remarks “This has not been honorable.”

Treat Williams is a self-righteous Army douche who tries to steal the dishwasher’s girlfriend, to whom he is entitled because he is, after all, bravely fighting for his country’s freedom. An asshole to the core, but also a succinct portrait of the delusional twits who:
1. Selflessly volunteer in the armed forces to serve and protect the United States, and
2. Demand effusive congratulations and constant public honor for their sacrifice, even if that sacrifice entailed serving the interests of multinational companies that have nothing to do with international peace or safety.

In a related thread, some random fat chick pursues Treat Williams, and is willing to knock out cold anyone who gets between her and her man. This has no point, except that fat people are funny.

There are a lot of other groups of characters and subplots, but so many are tightly packed in this labyrinthine mess that it would take a forensic psychologist to tease them out. 1941 is not a good film by any measure, but it is a great parody of war films. Not war itself, mind you, which is a inherently dishonorable, hateful enterprise that robs us of our humanity, dignity, and life. So why are war movies all about how war ties in with honor, duty, and the noble sacrifice of incinerating our fellow man? The Americanization of Emily is the last word on the subject, but 1941 makes a joke out of every war film ever made, sucking the subject dry of any honor, wit, or the notion of duty. In times of war, we actively destroy ourselves and sink lower than the beasts, pursuing our narrow interests even as lives around us are lost. The insane and the sociopathic rise to the top, while cooler heads keep in the trench until the madness blows over.

In this handy chart, we shall examine how 1941 responds to the criminally overused tropes of the war movie:

Standard propaganda

The threat is presented with invasion or strategic target
The enemy moves on the good guys
The good guys rally and win despite insurmountable odds
A callow young hero rises to the challenge, redeems self
An ethnically diverse ragtag group triumphs through unity
The target is destroyed and the day is saved

1941

There is no invasion, and the enemy is made up of idiots
They decide to bomb Hollywood (sorry – ‘Horrywood’)
The good guys fight each other and level a city
A callow young idiot commandeers a tank and destroys rest of LA
An ethnically diverse group acts like racist dickheads
Destroyed: two planes, tank, Ferris Wheel, house, factory, Nancy Allen.

Large and dramatic setpieces are the central feature of 1941, involving impressive special effects and a cast of hundreds for each scene. The USO dance is elaborately staged, briskly paced, and a great deal of fun to watch as it devolves into a brawl that is as tightly choreographed as the dance. It rages on and on, and manages a riot of visual gags featuring the aforementioned fat chick clocking guys at random and gratuitous nut shots. Keeping it classy, the chaos ends with the USO host bidding the mostly comatose crowd goodnight. “Maybe in the future we’ll have some negroes come in and stage a race riot.” Ah, you had to love Spielberg before he became respectable. The Japs get the brunt of the racism, starting with never being referred to as anything but Japs, slants, and yellow commie bastards. In a climactic speech, Dan Aykroyd hypes up the soldiers with “You think the Japs believe in Santa Claus? Instead of turkey for dinner, how about raw fish heads and rice!” That and the statement about ‘Donald Duck at Pearl Harbor’ brings a tear to my eye. Not because they make sense in any way, but because the climactic battle speech is such a ridiculous and overdone cliche that 1941 buries it permanently. Speeches make good cinema, I guess, but in real battles there is generally little time for being verbose. As General Anthony McAuliffe said, when German troops demanded his surrender in World War Two, “Nuts!”

Weaponry can solve all problems in a reactionary world, and it is refreshing to see such a massive expenditure of ammunition for no good reason. Even the average American patriot gets to enter the fray by manning the AA gun in his backyard. Rather than notify the armed forces, he takes it upon himself to shell the submarine because, hey, he has a gun. This is the unspoken dream of any American who proudly boasts of their nation’s military might and how it justifies their exceptionalism. He misses the sub completely, but at least he levels his own house first. The point is that something got destroyed, and somehow that equals the spirit of Christmas. At least that is the point he makes at the end of the film as his house slides into the sea.  Another thing 1941 gets right is the fetishization of weapons. War is aggression and sexual frustration channeled into killing our fellow man. Well, in this movie, it gets channeled right back into fucking. Tim Matheson elaborates on this in his description of a bomber for the benefit of Nancy Allen:

“It’s big. The biggest one here. You know what else? It’s got a lot of range. You know what I mean by range, don’t you? I mean it can stay up for a long time. A very long time. And it’s built firm and solid. Because it has to be. Because of its tremendous forward thrust. And when this baby delivers its payload… devastating.”

For all of its faults, lack of wit, and generalized stupidity, 1941 is not only a great satire of war movies, but is also our romanticized vision of warfare boiled down to its essence. Battle! Dames! S’plosions! Who cares that for nearly three hours only Americans shoot at each other, nothing is accomplished, while a major city is razed to the ground by our own Army? As for the enemy invasion, the Japanese sub manages to shoot down a Ferris Wheel and escape. This is what warfare is about, namely itself. Useful ends are rarely served once a disagreement becomes armed conflict. 1941 manages to make this vision crystal clear. Never has so much been so destroyed for so many grinning idiots.

Damien: The Omen Part II was a sequel to a fairly effective horror film that dispensed with the best part of the original – the creepy kid. Nothing in film is more unsettling than children, even if they are not meant to be repulsive or malevolent. The idea that a bundle of joy will kill both his adoptive parents was bothersome for me as a child, but as a father and generally paranoid person, I view him with an unhealthy amount of suspicion.  When my son plays around in my parked car, I wonder if he is tampering with the brakes. At the close of The Omen, Damien has seen his foster father gunned down by policemen as he lay helpless on an altar, and it is suggested he is then adopted by the President of the United States. In 1976, this was considered the most powerful position in the world. These days it would have been the President of Kraft or Exxon, which would make for an awesome trilogy. In Part II, Damien has been sent to military school, and the creepy kid factor is replaced by the less effective whiny bitch-faced teenager factor. He is learning the truth about his diabolical pedigree, and coming to terms with what he must do. The actor is terrible, and annoying, and witnessing the angst of the Prince of Darkness is not gripping cinema. Heroes are more interesting when they are conflicted, but when one learns that their father is Satan, a good cry just should not be in the cards.

There is a whole lot wrong with Part II, starting with the whole thing being ridiculous and the storytelling awkward at best, and facepalming at worst. The ominous AWOO… HOOTIE HOO… of the original is replaced by a brooding synthesizer track, so clearly there is something amiss. Damien as a snotty adolescent is introduced walking towards the camera, which pans left to superimpose a burning pile of leaves in front of Damien. Subtle stuff… the demon of landscaping is upon us! Infodumps occur so as to lay the groundwork for building Damien’s empire, but it is presented in such a tedious way that we fear the rise of the Antichrist only to avoid the apocalyptic boredom. The whore of Babylon, with 10 heads for 10 kings, each granted power on Earth by Satan. The Thorn family industry is poised as one of these ‘kings’. Their business manufactures crop lines and fertilizers, as famine is good business.  In addition, they buy farmland to control the means of production and deny people the ability to provide for themselves. So they are Monsanto. Damien is discovering his talents for inducing fear, but the actor is so bad that his threatening presence comes off as goofy as fuck. In one scene, he simply stares at another kid and he runs screaming into the nearest wall, prompting horror in my heart. No wait, that was hilarity. He is surrounded by apostate protectors, including a completely wasted Lance Henriksen and a creepy fucker with ear to ear carpeting that demanded a razor. Part of what makes The Omen work is that the devil is everywhere and nowhere, a ubiquitous and fearsome presence. This is scary if you were brought up Catholic, but this also destroys the series, because one cannot be omniscient and unaware. Some of the devil’s enemies are able to get very close to his son before they are dispatched, so He is either stupidly overconfident or a lazy sack of shit. Not a good movie by any stretch – in fact the story sucks and the characters are only lined up to be knocked down.

Still, this is an Indefensible article, so there must be something redeeming therein. As with The Omen, the real draw was the occasionally startling means by which the enemies of the devil are aced. In this way, Damien: The Omen Part II excels. The plot is shit, so we shall skip to the meat, so to speak.

1. Burial

Buchenhagen, the exorcist from the first film, is racing like a motherfucker through the streets of Judea, and when he gets to his destination, we can see what the big hurry is. A catacomb is unearthed that reveals the face of the son of Satan. And so we see the face of Damien as a child, and then as a young adult. Daddy doesn’t dig this spoiler, and so he pulls in the ceiling, and dumps the entire desert into the catacombs. A slow burial is a bad way to go, and we see him solemnly suffocate. Though an expert in the field of devil stuff, he neglected to use a camera. His last words – “The antichrist is with us…”. That’s a terrible thing to realize. Not a flashy kill, but it gets better.

2. The eyes have it

Now we are getting into it. A reporter is made aware of Damien’s identity; she used to work with Bootyhiggy. She reveals to the uncle acting as Damien’s guardian that her boss’s body has been recovered, and that blearghlblag starts yammering about the Bible, and not surprisingly is thrown out for being a lunatic. Or a terrible actress. Either way, the bitch has to go. So a crow is Satan’s form du jour, and birds are very good at attacking the eyes. While on an isolated country road, she is enucleated. Dizzy with pain, she wanders onto a road and is smacked by a Mack truck, and tossed against the trailer, then rolled over by all 18 wheels. The only way to make the minge deader is to have her devoured by ants, but in the interest of time, we shall move on. Because it gets better.

3. Iced

Damien is at a birthday party, so per tradition somebody must get killed off. This time it is an old guy at Thorn Industries who is concerned about ethics. Really, he was just introduced; you see better character arcs in Friday the 13th. He is playing hockey and goes through thin ice. He is sucked in by the current and he hammers at the underside of the ice until he drowns. This is one of the worst ways to go that I could imagine. Okay, not so great, but since the film must sustain interest with a steady stream of corpses, there is inevitably a macabre padding.

4. Going Down

A scientist notices that Damien’s blood is that of a jackal. Why this would be evident under a microscope on routine examination boggles the mind, but let’s give the guy a break, because he is a black guy in a white man’s horror film. He takes the elevator, and it turns out to have failed an inspection or two. It shoots up to the top floor, stalls, then drops like a greased pig on stairs. It hits bottom… and the guy is okay. Well, that was a disappointment. Just when our erection starts to subside, 
the counterweight cables bust free, and shoot down at what appears to be terminal velocity to shear the fucking elevator in half, as well as our scientist. The worst of this is that the descending aorta was probably cauterized shut, so the guy has time enough to contemplate that he is, actually, 3/5 of a man.

5. Coupling

Another executive with the Thorn Museum (they own a museum which is acquiring Satanic artifacts including the wall upon which Damien’s face is engraved) shoots his mouth off about the son of the devil. These people tend to talk a lot, as if it takes a shouting match to awaken Satan. Damien’s cousin Mark overhears this, and is convinced with one read of the Bible. After a walk in the forest, he is cornered by Damien, who demands his loyalty as he declares himself The Desolate One. Mark refuses and Damien force chokes him to death. Not an interesting death, but kind of a cool power to have. Which brings us to the 
executive who shot his mouth off. He is standing in a railroad yard, and a train bearing evidence of Damien’s identity is about to leave the station. He is hit from behind by a train coupler, which pushes him along, and he hangs on for dear life to avoid being cut in two like the bum from Emperor of the North Pole. Alas, this does not save him, as the train couples with another car, pinning our friend in between. In reality, this could takes hours to kill a person as there would be only slow blood loss with the major vessels under clamp. No survival would be possible, as there is no practical surgical way to cut the body in half. There would only be the slow and agonizing death while realizing you have failed to stop Satan’s dorky offspring.

This, and the death of his only son, convinces our protagonist, played by the overqualified William Holden as a complete pussy, to kill Damien the brat. He arms himself with the sacred daggers to kill the Son, and is compelled to tell his harpy of a wife exactly what his plans involve. Even when in danger he is unable to so much as take a piss without his wife’s approval. And so she takes the daggers and stabs him in the balls. It might have been the chest, but maybe they failed to descend in the first place. Damien incinerates the entire museum including the foster mother who protected him. Okay, that was boring, but once a load is shot, it cannot be reloaded so quickly.

While it is easy to defend films that boast critical acclaim or have a healthy cult following, we all harbor unreasonable fondness for films that are generally regarded as utter crap. This series will consider those secret feelings we carry for films that are Indefensible.

When Star Trek: The Motion Picture was in production, it was intended as a TV show reboot for a new generation of Trek adventures. Fans of the original series were anticipating a campy romp of low budget fun with The Shat-man and the crew of that hallowed starship Enterprise. Surely, there would be alien women of various hues available for seduction, weird pseudoscience used to escape various planets that all looked like the same collection of rock props rearranged, and tribbles aplenty. The Motion Picture (ST1 for short) caught the notoriously impossible to please audience off guard, to put it mildly. It was a morbidly serious construction that viewed the Trek legacy with a regard that we can fairly call religious. It even went so far as to approach Sci-fi with… I am ashamed to use this word, but… verisimilitude (ducking rotten fruit). It was felt to be no fun whatsoever, and even though it made money, is regarded as the beginning of the rule where Odd Numbered Trek Films Suck. I was unaware of this as a child, and was swept up by this new universe that I found every bit as interesting as that one with the gay robots. Perhaps nostalgia compels me to see ST1 through a rose-colored tactical view, but I still find it fresh and invigorating. The Star Wars prequels had nothing to do with this – I built an elaborate Klingon vessel in grade school, and nobody recognized it. Everyone kept asking what kind of Star Destroyer it was. So I held this unreasonable attraction to a dull and largely forgotten movie, prompting a feature like this. It is to either ask the people of Earth to reconsider its judgement of ST1, or to justify to myself why I like something when I should know better.

If a film’s opening sequence shows its audience how to view the film, then ST1 has few equals. It is similar to Star Wars in that it establishes the scale of the film as no less than epic, with the fate of all on planet Earth as the stakes involved. As we open, an alien vessel unlike anything before seen approaches with a diabolical chime on the soundtrack. It is attacked by three Klingon ships that are utterly dwarfed by the sheer size of the cloud – described as 2-3 Astronomical Units in diameter. For reference, 1AU is the distance between us and the Sun. The ships, and their flight, are beautifully photographed, and Jerry Goldsmith’s score lends it an uncommon urgency. Since directors ceased using models, a great deal has been lost, as the special effects are better than CGI used today. If we had any doubt about the malevolent threat that approached, the Klingon warbirds are wiped out. Instead of being shattered by an identifiable weapon, they are simply erased, and their soundless departure is unsettling. This becomes a plot point later, but more importantly it presents us with an unstoppable enemy that is dangerous, and more importantly, inscrutable.

An outpost identifies this alien force, and with great foreboding it is noted that it is on a direct course for the Earth. Naturally, the only federation ship in interception range is the Enterprise, and we are introduced to the characters we have come to know and love. The characters come fully developed, dispersed after their prior adventures in the TV series with ST1 the next part of the canon. Still, the details are what make this a story that focuses on character more than spectacle. Shatner plays his part like a veteran, walking onto the bridge of his ship taking immediate and implied command. His confidence is as always boundless, but his mastery of the craft is communicated via subtle touches like operating the transporter himself when there is trouble. Spock has undertaken the discipline of Kohlinar, whereby all emotions are purged. Part of his character has always involved the inner conflict between Human and Vulcan, and this continues here. Strangely, he is regarded with a rock star quality, as officers who outrank him give their complete deference. McCoy is introduced in a big fuck-off beard and disco medallion, and really the picture says it all. He is, as ever, the curmudgeon who doubles as the conscience and caution of Kirk, Spock, and the Enterprise in general. The remaining crew are their usual selves and do their thing; development is reserved for the principals. Lastly, but not leastly, is Lieutenant Ilia, who is the hottest bald chick who ever lived.

The character to take center stage, however, is the Enterprise itself. As Kirk approaches in a shuttle craft, this vessel is given a revealing introduction that is so lovingly intimate it can only be described as pornographic. Kirk observes it in awe, holding a tear back only just; as an Admiral he only longed to return to its ivory embrace. The portentous tone set so far becomes deserved with this reverent introduction – after so many years of Trek, and the many to come, it has become an important part of our pop culture. The deification of the Enterprise is in keeping with the mission statement of ST1: We Mean Business. This reintroduction to the Star Trek mythos has a reverence that is self-serious and almost drives off the nearest cliff of pretension, but I can appreciate that. Trek is in some ways about the best in all of us, the drive to discover in both galactic knowledge and intellectual endeavor. Everything works the way it should, and most everyone works together in a universe where cynicism takes a backseat to greater matters. The journey upon which they are to embark is of a distant threat, but it turns ever inward as their exploration of an intelligent alien lifeform teaches the human involved most about the value of humanity.

All is not well, however, as Kirk is a bit rusty at the helm, and his unfamiliarity with his charge endangers the mission. He must come to grips with his limitations, and learn to accept criticism. Spock must come to terms with his human side, as his search for Kohlinar dovetails with this alien superintelligence that has achieved perfect logic – and is deeply flawed because of it. Bones must keep the potential conflict of interests of these two from destroying everyone. It is interesting to see how such longstanding characters can be established, yet still be capable of change when necessary.

Throughout, there are fun details that make this a rich experience. There is a transporter accident that eventually leads to Spock’s arrival, but at the time, it seriously fucked me up as a six year old kid. Bad omens abound as a wormhole is created by a warp drive problem; it looks awesome, but also serves to immerse us in that lovely pseudoscience that is Trek’s bread and butter. When the alien is finally reached, it becomes a familiar Trek struggle – discovering a way through using some trial and error, and brilliant guessing as they work to define a new method of communication with the unknown. And during this process, delicious hints are dropped that perhaps the crew is more familiar with this threat than they realize. The vessel itself, and its imaginative design is beautiful, pulling us inward. During the course of the film, perspective is cleverly used to give an idea of the scale of the ships involved. The shuttle craft that docks with the Enterprise is minuscule; the Enterprise is in turn swallowed whole by the alien craft. The scene where Kirk wordlessly negotiates with the alien vessel is a thoughtful presentation of intuitive writing: Kirk orders Sulu to drift over the alien ship at a range of 500m, then go back out to 100km. Whatever language you speak, the move insinuates the desire to enter. ST1 is in no hurry to reach its destination, and that suited me fine. What is done will transpire no sooner than it is meant to.

(Spoilers) ST1 has no real plot apart from the crew finding their way to the center of the threat – interpretation, adaptation, and discovery. The slow pacing is meditative, and threw off many who otherwise dismissed ST1 as a dull meander. Fair enough – discovery rewards the patient, and the crew of the Enterprise comes to find an alien intelligence that challenges their understanding of what intelligence is. In a way, the search is also for where religion lies in human understanding; the alien seeks the Creator, and in this setting, where a machine has achieved self-awareness, artificial intelligence becomes a misnomer. Exploration of Man as God and playing with ideas regarding the nature of intelligence is what makes this Star Trek fascinating. The probe that V’GR sends to the Enterprise is a recreation of Ilia down to the molecular level with machines, suggesting that intelligence comes from the design of the mechanism – the physical symbol systems hypothesis of AI theory. At the same time, the alien is incomplete, childish, and unwise for its lack of carbon units. Life itself and the formative experience of evolution over eons and adaptation over a single lifetime is what creates a flawed and learning intelligent being. And all this came from penetrating an orifice to the reach a chamber where answers lie. The way in which Kirk, Spock, and McCoy work through this philosophical debate is a joy to watch, and contrast sharply to the Star Wars approach. There is no central threat to shoot at until it explodes – this is a two and a half hour negotiation. Small wonder it has so little mass appeal.

The end is hinted at all along, and we progress haltingly toward that end over an uncertain sojourn. It is preposterous and overwhelmingly pretentious, and serious to a fault. On the other hand, the ambition to toy with ideas regarding the meaning of intelligence and our place in the universe as a stand-in for God? A computer of perfect logic achieves completion by merging with flawed humanity (Bones delivers a child, he muses), and a human from the Enterprise crew merges with the computer because of his need for hot bald chicks. I think that covers all one needs to know about human nature. That is why I have an unreasonable love for Star Trek: The Motion Picture.

Action archetypes dictate the hero must be alone, aloof, and infallible, and while true heroism in a complicated world can be difficult to define, sometimes action films get this so wrong the effect is jarring. The setting is the Cold War, only the good guys of the Capitalist West versus the evil Communists of the East, just to keep things simple. A school for fighter pilots is established that succeeds in training our flying aces to be even more effective at shooting down nobody. After all, there were no smoldering conflicts in which we were engaged in 1985. In any case, this prophylactic training serves to fill our naval air arm with pilots of exceptional skill and predictably high performance. When Tony Scott released his tribute to the military in Top Gun, it had a character playing a pilot of ideal skill, superlative class, earning the utmost respect of his colleagues and the fear of his enemies. Why then, did he make that pilot, Iceman, the antagonist, while the self-destructive narcissistic sociopath Maverick was the hero? Even by 80s action standards, this made no sense and betrays the entire theme of pursuit of perfection. For the sake of avoiding repetition, I will not comment on the gay love story between the two, or reference the vaseline-lensed volleyball game, because that horse is devoid of flesh at this point. One could make an argument that the tiff between the impetuous Maverick and the mature Iceman is a fascinating analysis of a troubled relationship worthy of Scenes From a Marriage, but that would be another review entirely. Iceman is the Misunderstood hero of Top Gun.

To start with, Kilmer is a statuesque God compared to the gargoyle-like appearance of Cruise, not to mention a better actor (an actor, let’s be honest). His is a command presence that never wavers when onscreen, and he is presented as ‘Ice-cold, with no mistakes’. When we meet him, he is in a perpetually good mood, and even his taunts are in the good spirit of competition. “The plaque for the alternates is in the ladies room” was the high water mark for humor for me as a teenager. He has ego to spare, but considering that he is considered one of the best in the world at his job, I would not begrudge him that indulgence. He challenges Maverick with the age-old question “Who is the best?” Fair enough, it is a competitive school. Maverick is dismissive with a guy who would defend his punk ass with his life, but never mind. In combat, he makes few mistakes, taking down his instructors as often as he is taken, but his attitude is that of a learner. He eventually wins the Top Gun trophy, and leads the charge as the United States takes on Stankazzistan to rescue a ship. Not too bad a presentation, but how did he become the asshole here?

Maverick on the other hand is introduced leaving his fellow pilot out to dry while a Mig-28 takes position at point-blank range behind Cougar. Instead of doing something to drive the enemy away, he fucks around with him and takes a Polaroid shot while inverted at a range of four feet, or one Tom Cruise. That this is insanely dangerous goes without saying, and is of little comfort to Cougar, who filled his pants. Cougar was an excellent pilot, but was unprepared for being forced to engage an enemy fighter because his volatile wingman decided to take a vacation. Instead of checking on him, it’s a quick ‘see ya on deck’ and off he goes. If somebody pulled that shit with me, I would feel free to remove their liver with a pair of pliers. Maverick gets no points for coming back to fetch Cougar, because too little too late, and both of their fuel tanks were empty. Endangering his own navigator to fix his fuckup is a meager criterion for heroism. At Top Gun he flaunts his toxic level of arrogance despite being considered second rate even by the commander who knew him best. To be fair, though, that guy threatened to assign him to flying cargo planes full of rubber dogshit, which actually sounds like a hoot.  In any case, he makes one mistake after another, not as a pupil who can benefit from instruction, but as a jackass who is convinced he knows everything. I get that the hero of an action film must always know everything, always be right, and be capable of superhuman feats, victory simply coming to him every time. Maverick, though, is obnoxious about his fragile ego. The far less interesting version of heroism comes from years of thankless work and sacrifice, and perhaps endless preparation for a time that will never come – but when it does, the hero is ready to do his duty without fear or hesitation. Iceman has the persona of someone who worked for their rarified greatness, and his arrogance is earned by his accomplishments. Maverick’s arrogance is borne of being unreasonably daring, and a willingness to ignore protocol to prove his awesomeness. Now which one of these pilots would you want protecting you?

In class, Maverick is a dork. His instructors tell him where he erred, and his first response is to retort “There’s no time to think up there.” Oh really? If instinct is all that matters, then there is no point to a fighter school, then. Way to insult everyone in the room, dickfeather. Otherwise, you need to shut the fuck up and pick up some instincts, reflexes, or both of them shits, because you suck at this. Meanwhile, the teacher states “Now let’s look at an example of excellent combat.” She need not name Iceman, we already know he is the best. Naturally, Maverick runs out like a bitch, whining that his instructor won’t give him a break because she digs his umbilicus-like penis. Ice didn’t seem to have that problem, but then he already fucked his instructor.

Maverick is a terrible team player. Iceman picked up on this: “You like to work alone.” This is the popular view of a hero, acting alone, vanquishing the enemy without assistance, nary a scratch to show for the blood shed. In reality, these assholes die before their glory is realized, since armies tend to include, you know, lots and lots of people acting in unison. Iceman, on the other hand, has no problem working with a team. The one time he loses his cool is after Maverick shoots his mouth off about the awesome Mig episode. You know, the one where he left behind Cougar, who was so shaken by the incident that he retired.  “Who was covering Cougar while you were showboating with this Mig?” “Cougar was doing just fine.” The guy nearly died from fear, and this sociopath registers no guilt or concern. In combat training, Iceman’s exploits are not shown, but rest assured they are awesome – we only hear about how well he does. Maverick, meanwhile, makes critical mistakes and learns nothing from them. In one session, Maverick and Hollywood go up against Viper and Jester, and Maverick leaves his wingman. Maverick is shot down.  Leaving his wingman was stupid, and he accepts this, but fails to heed Iceman’s advice: “It’s not your flying, it’s your attitude. You are dangerous and foolish. You may not like the guys you are flying with and they may not like you, but whose side are you on?” These are words of caution, but Mav and Goose console each other with “At least Viper got Iceman before he got us.” Yes, that is the lesson here, that your fuckups are acceptable as long as someone else is unlucky.

Maverick breaks the hard deck to eliminate Jester in another flight; I have no idea why this is a bad idea, but presumably it is a safety issue, which Maverick was not concerned with. It is a minimum altitude barrier, presumably so fighter pilots in training do not routinely slam into the ground. His move is shown in class to be a bad idea despite winning the encounter, namely that his survival was a matter of luck, and that a more skillful pilot would have escaped rather than stay in combat and lose their plane as well as their life. Naturally, Maverick takes this advice in stride and learns from the experience. Oh wait, he throws a shitfit since nobody on Earth has anything to teach him. The guy who should be the hero intones “You are everyone’s problem. I don’t like you because you are unsafe.” Iceman’s point is well put – when the air speeds exceed Mach2, and weapons of war move faster than brain signals cross synapses, it is calculated precision that matters. Even Jester is not sure if he would want Maverick in battle with him.

Iceman is all class and reserved bravado. In the bar where the pilots contract their next case of gonorrhea, Iceman chats up the ladies with his aloof demeanor, while Maverick puts on a ridiculous show that would, in the real world, end with his eye sockets full of pepper spray. Ice gives credit where it is due, while Maverick pouts about the lack of glory showered on him for being mediocre. One is a stable pilot who is aware of his abilities and limitations, one has no idea what he will do from one moment to the next with his wounded psyche and short man syndrome. Maverick has daddy issues endemic to dumb action films, but Iceman has no such qualms. One is fit for duty, and one is clearly not.

Naturally, a bullshit ending is written so Cruise’s embattled hero actually looks like one, but nothing of what we see leads us to that point. Just before they take off to defend a crippled warship, Iceman expresses his reservations that Maverick is even given an assignment. He is supposed to be an asshole for this, but his concerns are more than justified. The last time Maverick got in a plane, he practically flew into Iceman’s exhaust while whinging for Ice to get out of his way, crashed his plane and frapped his friend’s skull. No fucking way that was an unforeseeable accident. Even in combat, while Iceman is engaged by several enemy fighters, Maverick refuses to enter the fray until he overcomes his crushing depression. The time for that was before you enter the cockpit, you idiot. But hey, he has appearances to keep up, even if he endangers the lives of his fellow combatants.

So. Why isn’t Iceman the hero? Perhaps the story of a pilot who is in the learning process is more interesting, but Maverick learns very little and runs screaming from the bounds of maturity. He is that grand illusion of a hero as isolated victor, one who is great not out of a lifetime of work and preparation, but bred as a genius as an informed attribute. It is the lazy method of crafting a heroic character, since a lazy audience prefers the idea of a protagonist who is given all they need, and no actual effort is required over their arc. A true hero is one who spends their entire life perfecting their craft for the opportunity to effect a difference of great import. Such stories can be told well, but it takes some skillful writing and an adult perspective. Top Gun has none of that, so our hero is a self-obsessed twit who is impulsive, reckless, and ignorant of whom suffers at his hands. But, he breaks the rules and so is more interesting. This assumption is shared by adults living in arrested adolescence and teenaged girls in high school, and this audience made a massive success out of this terrible film. The story is dull and cliche-ridden, and the capability of our developmentally delayed hero is embellished beyond what good sense should allow. The style of writing is that of a gregarious liar who would routinely punch up mundane situations to make them interesting rather than tell a story in an interesting way. I worked with a guy who would do this uncontrollably. He would see a guy pulled over on the roadside, and by the time he finished his version of events at the water cooler, it was a high speed chase that ended with the cops getting sucked into jet engines. So this pilot goes to school – and he fucks his instructor! And shoots down his teacher – BAM! And he kills all the bad guys – WHAM! Well, I beg to differ with this nonsense. Iceman is the hero we should want, but Maverick is the hero we deserve.

(above is a diagram of a return activated sludge plant. You may refer to this complex drawing periodically for this very science filled article)

When most people flush the toilet, not a single thought or feeling is given to the fate of their turds, to the outcome of their urine. It’s out of body, out of mind. Your favorite value meal or high dollar steak inevitably leaves your body with an unceremonious push of the anus. Water spirals around a bowl, accompanied by the cascading sound of a distant waterfall. You might then glance in the mirror, wipe the sweat off your brow, and exit, already thinking about your next meal.

What you don’t know is that your poo is now traveling at a scouring velocity down a pretty substantial pipe at the rate of about two feet per second. It might go through a series of pumps, through dozens of lift stations and holding basins, and finally arrive at the Inlet of a sewage treatment plant. This is where my unique set of skills comes into play. This is where all turds go to die or live on in eternity, depending on how you view the excremental, existential universe.

(The Inlet is that concrete building in the distance)

THE INLET: The Inlet is a lot like Hell of the Upside Down Sinners from Big Trouble in Little China. A desolate, cursed pit of wretched stank, and anytime your feet start walking up those grated steps, you’re reminded your life didn’t work out exactly as you had hoped. It’s the place where the death of your dreams isn’t only realized, it’s physically felt from your olfactory glands down to the pit of your stomach. The Inlet is equipped with grit chambers and blowers, but its main function is the bar screen, which must be cleaned manually every day. I once had to dry off my naked grandfather after he exited the shower because he was too old and sick to dry himself. That was less traumatic that cleaning the bar screen. Think of everything people flush down the toilet that can’t be liquefied. That’s what the bar screen catches and filters out. It’s packed tightly, in a wet mass of condoms, Kotex, and corn. Sometimes there is even a dollar bill or two, mostly around Mardi Gras, when drunk fools drop money in the toilet and decide it’s not worth picking out. Many of the plant employees who’ve buried their dreams long ago, decide it is worth picking out; they rifle through the bar screen with small tools, searching for that big payday. If money is found, it’s washed and placed in the sun to dry for the day before inevitably finding its way back into general circulation. The filth of lucre and the free market couldn’t be more clearly manifested. Anyway, the contents of the bar screen are pushed with a giant squeegee into a dumpster, which is picked up once a week and scattered in a landfill. This is the function of the Inlet.

(the bar screen and its contents pictured above)

Fun Fact: Why even eat Corn? It comes out just the same. We might as well eat pennies or little watch batteries. It would serve the same function.

(The E.Q. and you can almost smell it through the picture. Fart Soup.)

The EQ: Otherwise known as the Equalization Basin, is where pure, raw sewage gathers, festers, and mixes after going through the Inlet. Four giant aerators assist in keeping the smell down and oxygen levels just high enough to keep the entire basin from turning septic. A picturesque pond, where turds and every idea you have of them go to die. This is their great beyond, their nirvana. The cozy, familiar confines of intestinal linings become faint memories of home, as they are thrust into that great void, churning in great chaos and fury towards formlessness. Their old fibrous natures are stripped of all humanity; their log-like forms are deconstructed into the most basic elemental visages. Their terrestrial identities transcend into some sort of infinite, vast diarrhea with Bodhisattva wisdom. The EQ water represents everything the human spirit yearns for and strives to be. Outside, in the human world, my city is filled with class tension, racial hatred, and a general mix of misplaced anger and inner pain. We are all separate people, living selfish, individualistic lives, divided masses fighting for ill-conceived notions of happiness. The EQ represents the hope of humanity, us at our absolute bests. Here, our turds have become one. On a unified, peaceful accord. Insulated selfhood gives way into innate, homogenized harmony. If there was a stubborn turd who refused to evolve, he was left at the barscreen, like the chaff which the wind driveth away, cursed to dry out and die with a condom ring around his neck. Meanwhile, EQ water, traveling with newfound dignity, is pumped into something called Primary Settling Tanks. The journey continues. The beauty of divine formlessness is that movement and constant speed render time mute. As long as there is a voyage, there will never be a death. Matter’s constant flux and inability to be created or destroyed reminds one that our shit, which we hold most vile and offensive, contains the blueprint for eternity. Instead, we cling to materialism and distractions. Pity.

(The Primaries. I heard you can get AIDS if you sniff this tank too much)

The Primary Settling Tanks: The Primaries lack the chaotic hum and torrid splashing of the EQ. Peaceful, placid tanks where the solids are left to settle. Gravity, which governs the entire universe, does not take a break here. The heavier, solid particles, suspended in a murky unknown begin to fall slowly, like listless pollen tumbling through the air of a brisk, spring dawn. Through the gray, turbid waters, a dichotomy appears: solids, which we wastewater professionals call “sludge” and laymen worlds away refer to as “shit”, are collected in a giant hopper at the bottom of the tank and pumped into digesters. Meanwhile, the lighter, purer water falls unevenly into weirs and tumbles into a thrashing, churning sump.

The Sump: The Sump becomes a crossroads of sorts (kind of like that Bone Thugs In Harmony jam) where this new shit-laced water meets older, shit-laced water that we call “return activated.” This causes an explosion in fecal fecundity: the mixture of these bodies results in the new waters being activated, doused with ciliates, baptized with tiny organisms which will remove the Ites from the land. Here, it’s the ciliates, which are a friendly protozoa, that indicate healthy sludge and a stable wastewater system. They feed on the bacteria and help clarify and purify. These new waters are then pumped by sump pumps into the Aeration Basin. You could even make a song about this because sump, pump, dump, and hump all rhyme, but I won’t because this is a serious article. All you need know is that such a song exists, as well as a dance that accompanies it which pelvic thrusts and various outdoor turd-squatting poses are involved.

(THE A.B.)

The Aeration Basin: We call it the A.B. and it’s cray-z. It tickles the senses, grabs one and doesn’t let go. If gazed at long enough, the inner beast is awakened inside you, and that’s when you realize as you stare into those churning chocolate waters, that the beast is staring right back. Six mega-giant aerators tear into these primal waters, indiscriminately destroying any type of serenity it ever dreamed of having. It’s baptism by fire, with each aerator operating at the rate of 6,000 submerged elephant farts per minute. The sludge filled waters here aren’t meant to settle. We do everything in our power to make sure this tank stays crazier than a rabid crackhead’s wild, desperate street antics. If things ever did settle down, and the water became as placid as a puddle of urine behind a Denny’s dumpster, bulking and flocculation would commence, nitrification would set in, killing our celestial ciliates, depleting dissolved oxygen levels, raising the PH, and sending the biochemical oxygen demand soaring. In short, it would be like the Challenger shuttle fiasco of 1986 all over again. This tank, and it’s trusty aerators, insures that our sludge soaked waters keep their suspended solids in a healthy medium before sending said waters into the Final Settling Tanks.

(The Final Settling Tanks, with Clarivac shooting poo)

The Final Settling Tanks: As the murky, mixed up chocolate waters make their way in, they are met by something called Clarivacs. As the water enters this calm basin, the particles start to drop out, creating a layer of thick sludge at the bottom of the tanks. That’s where there Clarivacs come in; they meander the bottom of the tank like granddaddy catfish ambling along the cloudy bed of the mighty Mississippi, sucking up all organic particles in the way. This sludge is siphoned through four giant tubes, each one like a shit-shooting cannon. Hundreds of gallons of thick shit are shot every minute into a trench that funnels this sludge back into the sump. This prodigal poo now is return activated, charged to infiltrate and mix with the incoming cascade trickling in from the Primary Settling Tanks. Meanwhile, at the back of the Final Settling Tanks, crystal clear water, where almost all the sediment and solids have dropped out, falls into weirs and is shuffled off into the Chlorine Contact Chambers.

(Contact Chamber)

Chlorine Contact Chambers: A deep, cement labyrinth guides these pristine waters around sharp corners and difficult angles. So far, any fecal content, bacteria, or microorganisms which have made it to this point are undoubtedly the best of the best. John Rambo type feces. Nothing short of chemical warfare will destroy them. Enough chlorine to kill an assisted living community is pumped in. You can smell the chlorine in the air, reminds me of a fresh, fluffy load of white laundry. Now, I know you may be thinking that we just can’t discharge millions of gallons of chlorinated water into nature. There are rules about things like that, rules we try and follow. At the end of the chamber, after the water has fallen over yet another weir, it’s met with sulphur dioxide. If Chlorine are the Crips, then Sulphur Dioxide are the bloods. They fight an underwater battle to the death, neutralizing each other, making our water free from chemicals, bacteria, and solids. This purified, divine H2O makes its way down a giant pipe and is pumped into a drainage canal that leads to a huge freshwater lake. The dissolved oxygen level of our finished product is about 6 milligrams per liter or parts per million, whichever you prefer. Fish come from miles around simply to breath and play in this water. It’s a bastion for aquatic life everywhere. Sometimes, I’ll throw my cast net into our effluent (where our pipe meets the canal) and come up with 30 to 40 fish. At least one 5 lb Bass is expected. I don’t eat any of them though because it feels like cheating. I’m a sportsman, not a fish massacre-er. I just look at them, maybe poke one in the stomach and make a joke about how they don’t have any arms or legs, and then throw them back.

(Picture of my typical catch)

At this point, you maybe wondering what happens to all the solids. Well, the heaviest solids which fell out in the primary settling tanks are pumped into Digesters, and we also periodically pump solids from the sump into said Digesters, to keep our sludge fresh, lively, and exciting. You don’t want your sludge to get too old, as nematodes and rotifers take over and eat the ciliates. In this microorganism warfare, we the gods, tip the scales in the favor of our own laid plans. I’m sure the rotifers have no idea why they can’t win, can’t gain foothold in our tanks. In the same ways we futility pray to the heavens for a new car or a superbowl victory. We don’t understand that bigger things are afoot, a grander scheme plays out, a scheme that rarely overlaps with our deepest or most frivolous desires. All which is meant to be will be.

(Digesters)

The Digesters: Imagine a fifty foot cylinder, chocked full of shit, and try not to smile. Every time I’m at work and glace at those towers of terror, I chuckle. Inside them, anaerobic bacteria eat away at the poo, changing its molecular structure. Explosive methane gas is the byproduct. We’re supposed to burn off or release these trapped gasses, but we never do. The whole things could explode any minute, sending shit flying miles away, raining on unsuspecting citizens, caught in a fecal storm of epic proportions. An elderly widow toils away in her garden at dusk. The shadows of her dandelions undulate with a light breeze. Suddenly, a mass of burning human excrement falls from the heavens upon her like molten lava spewed by a volcanic blast that would make Krakatoa seem like a science fair project. It would be hellish; not even John the Revelator could predict such diabolic catastrophe. One time, a safety man came to the planet to inspect our digesters for danger. When he put his little machine next to them, the needle pegged out as super dangerous, and he couldn’t even reset it. The gasses literally broke his machine. If I die in an explosion, I’m sure my family will get super rich due to this negligence. That is my only condolence, that and knowing it will be a quick death, unlike the hoards of cursed fools destined to suffer the slow demise of a fiery fecal napalm. In any case, the digesters can’t hold all the shit in the world forever and must be emptied. The poo is sent to something called the Filter Press.

Filter Press: The Press is a fat, loud shit-eating machine. It’s like most Americans, but it has more of a personality. It sits there all day, squeezing the juices out of the sludge, producing dried cakes of flat, black cork-like material. There is no semblance of human excrement left. Everything it once was seems like a faint memory or a half forgotten dream. It doesn’t look, smell, or feel like anything that could ever come out of your butt, a reminder we live in a world where change is abundant and necessary. These flat, black pancakes can either be buried, burned, or sold as fertilizer. We generally just send it to the landfill, as that’s the easiest way to get rid of it. I mean, we could just flush it down the toilet, but where would that get us?

And that’s the process. That’s how it all works. You now have a shit education (something the public school system gave me years ago). It’s admirable the way we humans have colonized and controlled this planet, but the way we treat it is a disgrace. Our trash, the things we leave in our wake, things like rusted metals, cheap plastics, and harmful emissions curse the air, land, and sea; however, the refuse we find most contemptible, the refuse we can’t stand to look at, touch, or smell can be recycled back into the environment not only seamlessly, but in a way that actually benefits the natural world. And it’s sad because we know more about the Olson twins’ filmography than we do about the fate of our own flushed feces. Well, news flash: The Olson twins shit too. Hell, they probably sit in a special bathroom with adjoining toilets, holding hands while grimacing and shitting tiny, identical little turds in unison. Wake up America! Turds and water are like caterpillars and butterflies. That’s an S.A.T. question.

Now that I’ve pretty much overwhelmed you with science, let’s get to the fun parts. I will now rank the three least desired places at the poo plant to fall in.

3.) The AB: If you’re in, it’s certain death. Even someone with superior swimming abilities, like a burly Hasslehoff wearing floaties, couldn’t survive. The buoyancy you know and love that follows you to the beach or swimming pool won’t be by your side. Here, the aerators are so effective and chaotic, the bubbles change the water’s density. You would sink faster than Stephen Hawking wearing a brass toilet seat around his neck. As you slowly fall to the bottom of this 30 foot tank, you’d be swallowing shit all the way down. Your feet would finally touch the soft floor. You’d struggle. You could even walk around a bit even, like a curious astronaut on the moon, but you could never come back to the surface. The sky would seem like an opaque window to another world beyond your grasp. You’d then die.

2.) The EQ: Only one man has lost his balance and tumbled in, claimed he swallowed some corn and spit out a condom. He said he wasn’t worried about hepatitis because he already had it. He fell very ill afterwards, but claims he has never got sick since then. Whatever was in that water prepared his immune system for a lifetime of germs. Many claim that if they ever fall in, they won’t fight it, but succumb to death’s rank embrace. It would be better to die than live with the memory that you were once submerged in a filthy fecal-filled fountain. And the stench is indescribable. There is a saying, “don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater,” but by the smell of our incoming wastewater, I think that’s exactly what people do around here. I can best describe the putrid smell like this: picture a three day old bloated corpse with a yeast infection who was left in the sun. Now jump up and down on top of its stomach. That’s it. Would you even try and swim out? Could you find the strength to go on living after that?

1.) A Digester: Aged feces, with the consistency of quicksand pulls you down into a murky abyss. If the methane and hydrogen sulphide don’t kill you, you’ll gobble down gallons of shit as you plead for help while sinking into a deep pit of excrement that has been aged like fine wine. There is no way out. You’re body will be fished from the digester hours later by reluctant emergency personnel, and they will treat your mortal coils irrelevantly, like roadkill. Bystanders will make jokes even before rigor mortis sets in. People will do David Caruso impressions, removing their sunglasses while waxing pithy shit related puns. You’ll undoubtedly have to be incinerated. Even your ashes will smell like dookie. Your relatives will make up some distracting lie about your death. A car crash. A chainsaw accident. Anything but the truth. Jesus won’t even be able to stomach your spirit’s stench in the afterlife. You’ll be quarantined in heaven like a leaper. Correction: even Jesus could cure leapers.

Myth and Folklore:

Genetically Altered Gator: Many talk of a giant alligator that lives in the EQ. A thirty foot turd gargling beast who laps up incoming sewage, and these toxic waters have turned him into some kind of super-intelligent killing machine who has mastered stealth and can mimic human behavior. He’s kind of like a big, mean ninja turtle. I don’t believe any of this foolishness, except at night. When I walk the banks, my heart always beats a little faster

The AB monster: The AB is filled with little brown spiders on the catwalks and hand railings. It’s said that in this deep, dark tank, a giant momma spider dwells in a melancholy, subdued state. She’s ten foot high and ten foot across and can breath underwater. And if you kill her baby spiders, she’ll drag you down and eat on your corpse for weeks. They say that at night she awakes and leaves the tank and hunts in the woods nearby, eating pigs, gators, cows, and deer. I don’t believe this crap, but I don’t kill any baby spiders just incase.

Sometimes, in the middle of the night when my girlfriend is sleeping real hard, in the R.E.M sleep they talk about on mattress commercials, I’ll pin her down and place my put mouth an inch from her ear and whisper about monster tales in a really squeaky voice. I tell her that I throw a little of my poo straight into the EQ ,so the EQ Gator will know my scent and accept my sacrifices and never harm me. Sometimes I’ll tell her about the AB monster eating a whole heard of cattle, guts and all. She wakes up slowly and terrified, not knowing where she’s at or what’s going on or if it’s a dream. Often, she’ll start screaming and since I’ve already got her pinned down I just hold her there laughing my ass off. That’s when she really freaks out. It takes her a few solid minutes to piece together what’s going on, and usually after she’s finished crying we’ll both have a pretty good laugh about it.

And just to clear something up, my job isn’t nearly as gross as one might think. When people picture a poo plant, they think of errant, misplaced turds just lying around in the sun. They think of a shit-stained door handle to the main office, a slack-jawed worker with a skid mark across his forehead fumbling with some giant pipe wrench. Not the case. The smell is only bad around the EQ and Inlet, which are located pretty far away, and the only time I’m up close and personal with sewage (besides cleaning the barscreen) is when I take the daily settling test. I scoop up a bunch of sludge water from the AB, place it in am Imhoff cone, and watch it settle. I have to document the rate it settles. MLSS (mixed liquor suspended solids) and TSS (total suspended solids) are things we have to know. Also, we have to document it’s texture (usually fluffy) smell (usually OK) and if there are worms (not usually).

(settling test: you can see the cone full of fallen shit. My first day they told me taste was also part of the test. Not funny.)

Another perk of working there is the natural beauty that is abundant throughout the area. There are lakes, ponds, bayous, and canals that surround the plant. Sometimes I’ll climb on top the digesters and cool out for a while. Or I’ll watch a peaceful sunrise or sunset to wind down the day. There are gators, turtles, deer, snakes, nutria rats, and all sorts of animals to study and throw rocks at. I typically enjoy this job. I don’t know how long I’ll have it, but at least I can say I fully understand Shit. And so can you.

I, Marcus Bachmann, PhD, husband of presidential candidate and Minnesota Congresswoman Michele Bachmann, am a homosexual. After a lifetime in the shadows, whether sneaking away from my government-supported practice of literally fucking the gay out of gay men to visit buff male prostitutes, or dashing about like a mincing reindeer to the nearest rest stop lavatory, I am coming clean before my God, my wife, and my country, largely to ensure that my dear wife’s campaign proceed with the purifying disinfectant of sunshine. And a rainbow or two. I owe it her, and myself, after so many years of joyless, procreative intercourse, whose acts were little more than obvious bouts of overcompensation, that I can no longer stifle the imagery of the male form as I perform dutifully on that pillow-topped mattress of lies. Even as I frequented dark alleys, sleazy motels, backseats, and the occasional airport restroom, I tried desperately to picture my beloved Michele in full professorial mode, naked to the waist, poised and stern as she set forth on her nightly ritual of combining Scripture with cunnilingus. And as much as I suppressed my rage, disgust, and self-loathing as I massacred the deceptively simple task of bringing dear Michele to orgasm, my subsequent attacks of copious vomiting, unending showers, and mouthwash dependency proved, time and again, that my flirtation with the straight and narrow was nearing its end. The queer, long suppressed, had to spread its cheeks and fly.

Yes, friends and supporters alike, I have nursed at the government teat for more than simple hypocrisy. I have profited from the very entity I claim to loathe, but more than that, I have seduced, tricked, and raped countless young men, all in the name of counseling and “rescue.” Every troubled youth who entered my facility had little choice but to enter my rectum in turn, and I theirs, and during no session was fluid not exchanged. I took advantage of young and old alike, embarrassingly conveying my alleged heterosexuality, even while my hands choked their helpless necks to the point of asphyxiation. In turn, these babes in the wood were punched, kicked, fellated, and shoved; humiliated beyond description, simply to convince their putty-like minds that getting the gay out took even more fucking than usual. As I dried their tears and bruised their soft flesh with Biblical beatings, I held all authority in my lily-white, delicate, work-avoiding hands. And no matter how often they left my office with cocks better resembling chewing gum, they always came back for more because, as I always reminded them, the road to manhood is forever and always through Our Savior, with a painful, but necessary, detour at butt sex.

So is this my swan song? My farewell to the troops? Hardly. Now, out and proud, I can better serve the cause of justice and freedom that my wife represents. More than ever, I am devoted to her body and soul, even if the body part remains strictly metaphorical. So no, I will not apologize for my continued and repeated seduction of pre-teen boys, the married and confused, and most prized of all, aging bears with a fondness for scrotal tickling, but that bursting forth of activity will in no way interfere with my aid and comfort on the campaign trail. Wherever there is a speech to be given, I will be there. A hand to shake, a back to pat, or an erection to sustain, I will be of service. She has protected me, nursed my battered body back to life, and never, ever interrogated me, even after having disappeared for four days, only to be found at last, naked and unconscious in our backyard garden. She has wiped my brow, darned my socks, shaved my chest, and given every last bit of strength with needle and thread to return my tattered clothes back to their original form. She has taken the phone calls, made the late night drives to hospitals from coast to coast, and not once cast a burdensome glance in my direction, even after losing complete control of my bowels. She’s forgiven the endless road trips to Fire Island, the Wizard of Oz marathons, and the Boy Scout outings, even when she knew deep down there had never been a three-month Jamboree without cell phone service. She’s my rock, my beard, my one and only. And she can be your President, God willing.

When I witness women engaging in competitive sport, a smile will usually sweep across my face, as if I just saw a baby wearing a sombrero or something. And when I see women fighting, a pulse of adrenaline shoots through me, like when I win ten bucks from a scratch off. Naturally, when I heard about this thing where women race on skates and fight each other, I was heartily amused. When I found out they were coming to my town, I was determined. Determined to make sure my eyes saw this fabled spectacle and those images would be burned into my brain forever, giving me endless joy whenever recollected.

I was a little apprehensive about how my community would receive this venue. I mean, we don’t welcome anything foreign or accept anything new. When Wal-Mart installed the self checkout machines, it almost shut down commerce completely. Many of us elected to steal, as to avoid interacting with these new machines from Futureland. And the few brave souls who decided to use them were often made fools of. I’ve seen some people tapping on them the way you would smack around a TV on the fritz. Some shouted at them. Some dickishly pushed all the buttons, like you would while drunk in an elevator. A few of us would even talk to the machine in a robot voice, “Computer. I. Want. To. Check. Out.” we’d would say.

When I found out the price to see the Cajun Roller Girls battle the Hattiesburg Hooligans was fifteen bucks, I was shocked. Then, I realized that they were trying to keep all the riff raff out, catering to my town’s affluent populous (a group that could fit inside an entire Chili’s, and usually did). When I showed up, a crowd of a few hundred was already seated, waiting patiently with beers in hand. I was shocked that this sport has such interest, but I quickly realized most seats were occupied by perverts hoping a titty would pop out. I then realized I was one of those perverts.

I’ll try to break this down the best I can:

The Game: Basically, I had no idea what I was looking at the whole time. A bunch of women skating around in a circle. Sometimes they would push each other down. Sometimes one would skate really fast, faster than the others even. Sometimes they would stop and rest. Sometimes they would swap out players. But a titty never ever popped out. I realized I didn’t know what was going on and never would, but that was ok. Watching these girls skate and try at something was its own reward. If women, inferior to men in almost every physical aspect, could skate that fast, hit that hard, or could dust themselves off after taking a nasty tumble, what was I capable of? Imagine my own potential! The whole thing was pretty inspiring. I loved how their little faces would get all serious when skating super fast or how they’d frown up after being pushed down. You could tell this meant something to them. And that made it mean something to me, even though I had no idea what was going on. I just cheered on in blind excitement. In south Louisiana, you have a better chance at meeting a real life Jew than a woman with a bona fide hobby. Overall, It was refreshing seeing women do this, act this way.

Halftime: While the skaters took a break, we were treated to a belly dancing routine. With all this exotic entertainment, I started feeling like a cultured noble, residing in some ancient, Neapolitan city. But every sip of my canned beer in the same auditorium I bought my first handgun in slowly brought me back down to reality, a reality where all the belly dancers have day jobs at Home Depot and Rome might as well be on Jupiter. Anyway, I always thought belly dancers were supposed to be skinny and hot, like in the movies. This wasn’t a movie, and most of the dancers were about two, maybe two-twenty on the hoof. Personally, I liked it. I think the bigger the belly you have the better belly dancer you are. Watching a big squishy tummy gyrate around like some electocuted jellyfish was kind of sexy, mostly because it takes extreme confidence for a woman of that size not only to display her midsection, but flaunt it, bounce it around in your face even. I’m not sure how human stomach fat factors in to sexuality, but it does somehow. I’m convinced if I’d watched them shake for five more minutes, I would be downloading a fat people porno right now instead of writing this review.

The Skaters themselves: With names like, Alpha Bitch, Derby Gibson, and F.N. Trouble, you have to admire the creativity. They really do keep it interesting and can be as animated and theatrical as their names suggest. There was even one named Trigger, a crowd favorite, who wore raccoon makeup and went around shooting cap guns into the air. Later that night, she would wrestle some hefty woman on the dirty floor of a pool hall, creating cheers and half boners everywhere. The after party was held at a local sports bar often frequented by biker gangs and neck tattoo dropouts, and both teams attended. I have to say there is a dark underbelly to roller derby (and I‘m not talking about the halftime dancers). I’d say most of these girls really know how to party: They drink like fish, curse like sailors, dance like skanks, smoke like chimneys, fight like men, and shoot pool like hustlers.

The Elephant in the Room: I know what most of you are thinking, “Are they all a bunch of lesbians!?” Well, I’m not sure. I’m not good at interpreting sexuality. I don’t even know what gender my pets are because I refuse to look at their dick/pussy parts. I usually make somebody else do that and then describe it to me in detail. I’m not some kind of sick weirdo. But if I had to guess about the Roller Girls, I’d say they all had vaginas, and I’d say all were at least a little lesbian in the same way all MMA fighters are somewhat gay. You don’t pursue a hobby/career slamming into members of the same sex without having some kind of homosexual tendencies. However, I doubt the locker room after a game/match/contest/whatever they call it turns into a giant dungeon dike dildo orgy with an endless coochie buffet. From all I can gather, they’re just normal people doing abnormal things.

Would I ever go back: If I do, I’m sneaking in my flask. Fifteen bucks is kind of pricey, especially since they charge three freaking bucks for a canned beer. I’m not made out of money. I’m made out of atoms…which money is coincidentally made out of; however, different atoms. Money atoms. I’m made out of people atoms, and I won’t even spend fifteen bucks on a good steak or doctor visit. If they want me to part with an Abe lincoln and whoever is on the ten dollar bill (Christopher Columbus?) then I’m going to need to be assured I’ll see a full out brawl or a titty pop out. However, I’m very glad I went, and I’m very glad Roller Derby exists. The world is a better place because of it.

The divisive bill in Wisconsin has now become law.  Officially called Wisconsin Act 10, its unofficial titles depend on who you ask. Conservatives adhere to ‘budget repair’, while those affected by its fallout refer to it as ‘union busting’, or a generalized attack on the middle class. Regardless of your political views, few dispute that this has anything to do with budgets. In addition to banning collective bargaining, it significantly decreases the power of unions to collect dues and will help break their political clout, eliminates union contracts enabling more direct manipulation of public workers’ pay, benefits and work situation by administration and government, cuts public school budgets while increasing money available for charter schools, and other measures that have nothing to do with budgets. At the same time, it allows for considerable tax breaks for large companies and reduces the Capital Gains Tax by over $36 million; at the same time there will be a $56 million tax increase for over 150,000 families by eliminating the Earned Income Tax Credit. The wealthy will be rewarded, the lower classes punished. Public worker unions will be broken, with the exception of public safety (police, firefighters) unions are left untouched. Walker’s bill rewards the supporters of the Republican party, and breaks the supporters of the Democratic party. Wisconsin’s budget is incidental. Communism, then terrorism, and now budgets are the emergencies used to justify extraordinary measures that are just the same prongs of an ideological agenda.

The protests over this bill have been a tremendous show of numbers and energy that will be applied to the recalls and 2012 elections that will surely result in turnover of state houses and reversal of some of these policies. The problem is, winning elections matters little in the long run. A liberal agenda is to provide for the weak, elderly, the racial minorities, and regulate powerful forces that would otherwise make life miserable; this is done by a Byzantine series of laws that provides legal protection, and a system of graduated taxation that allows for public education and health care for the most vulnerable in society. To erode this system is easy, and the work has been steady since the 1980s. By cutting the budget for public schools, slashing unemployment benefits, and disabling regulatory bodies like the FDA, one can decrease the effective work they do. In the PR blitz to follow, one simply points out that those programs are incompetent, and should be further broken. Liberals have never understood fully just how easily dismantled some key elements of Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society would be. Cut the budget, and the programs disappear. Meanwhile, by decreasing tax revenues from the wealthy and other groups that tend to support conservatives, you increase the money available for elections. By clearing the way for mass cash infusions into elections (as Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission did in January of 2010), the playing field is further tilted to the right. Democrats will do well in the next election, but dismantling the laws that have been passed will take decades. Meanwhile, the coffers for the conservative faithful will continue to fill, and the consistently amnestic public opinion will turn against liberals again, and the cycle continues. The powerful lesson has already been learned – public outrage need not influence politicians since the goal is not to win elections, but to disrupt the proper mechanics of the government, and keep hammering away until it falls. Liberals are on their heels and still stumbling backwards looking for a recourse. Winning elections may provide enough time to appoint judges at all levels that will not necessarily support corporate interests, but even Democrats are quick to choose fiscal conservatives to appeal to their wealthy donors. Even this most formidable weapon is disregarded.

This will result in the inevitable slide over the next few decades towards the libertarian utopia that has been dreamed about by Ayn Rand fanatics. Right or wrong, this is where we are headed. Our little democratic experiment is already weak. In an age signified by a glut of information the electorate remains fairly ignorant about the issues that directly affect them. Effective attack ads serve as the single most influential factor in elections, and voter turnout is a joke. That and the legacy of Lee Atwater’s ingenious work in persuading Americans to vote against their own interests guarantees the inevitable slide. Time is on the side of the libertarians as money and voter apathy are more reliable forces than the system of tax and bureaucracy that defends liberal interests. The waves that crash upon Medicare or unions have intensified after globalization of the economy. Unions were truly broken when our labor markets were exposed to China and India, and people willing to work for a fraction of Americans. Exportation of jobs led to lower costs for goods and concealment of corporate assets overseas leading to erosion of middle class earning power and a decrease in tax revenues; less political money for liberals and less of a budget for the things they care about. Some of the slack has been taken up by tech jobs, but those are even easier to export than manufacturing. All the while, free market demagogues gain ground in Washington while managed economies like China take advantage; they have no such qualms about manipulating currency values, and seem to have a vested interest in remaining a economic power beyond the next financial quarter.

None of this is any reason to fret – voters have wanted to rid themselves of regulation for a long time now. That regulation allows for cheap and effective public education, health care coverage, stable job markets, and the ability to raise a family and live with some degree of comfort is beyond the point. Americans are acting as though they have grown soft and less adaptable, and are more than willing to fall upon the sword for the sins of the Great Society. Since their children will have a greater struggle ahead as a result, one must admire their willingness to sacrifice their comfortable future in favor of a clean and pure system of libertarian economic warfare that will benefit only the elite. Truly a brave new world.

Since the only true libertarian economy in the world today is Somalia’s, it is difficult to imagine what a broader global economy run by Libertarian principles would look like.  For one thing, there would be no annoying elections; administrators where necessary would be appointed by the largest landowners; otherwise governments, nations, and borders would have no reason to exist as they would invariably hamper commerce. Individuals would have very broad training in private trade schools so they could be highly adaptable since there would be no steady jobs. Projects would come and go, and everyone would be essentially freelance. Contracts would not exist since regulatory bodies would be necessary to enforce them, and since money talks, any dispute between worker and owner would be in favor of the owner. Property ownership would be a thorny issue since there would be no legal system as such; banks would protect the interests of their customers, but if it is in the interest of a company to seize a person’s land for development, the individual would hardly have the power to stop the larger company. One item in Walker’s bill actually makes this process easier. Since large corporations would control the means of commerce, and prices could be easily fixed with agreements between companies, it would behoove the lower classes to develop a black market to get any sort of fair deal for their dollar. Without organized police, firefighters, or emergency health services, only private companies would provide protection. If you have not paid your dues, 911 will be of no help to you, and the private army hired to kill you off would not be repelled by the relatively cheap security service to which you have paid your regular tithe. The world will be exciting, to be sure, but not for the faint of heart. At least the life expectancy will come down to a more reasonable fifty or so, since there is no economic reason to keep people alive when they no longer provide a cheap source of labor.

Of course, this absurdly apocalyptic scenario would never come to pass since libertarians are as full of shit as socialists. When it matters, even free market adherents love government and the role it can play in ensuring no bid contracts to friends and favors in exchange for funds. Walker may be working to cripple union strength, but uses his government position to give tax breaks to campaign finance sources, legalizing concealed carry gun laws (though strangely not into his office), and provide funding to charter schools despite the strain it places on the budget he holds most almighty.  Conservatives will always try to please their narrow-minded constituencies, and eliminating taxes only pleases the wealthiest. The rest will be sated by government-sponsored edicts of some sort, whether they are funding for religious teaching or bailouts for businesses with shitty business plans. Public funding also benefits private corporations in many ways at present. Funding for research via the National Institutes of Health or the National Cancer Institute yields molecular targets for treatment for which pharmaceuticals can be designed; these are handed over to pharmaceutical giants who benefit greatly when selling expensive new patented drugs developed using taxpayer money. Without the hated government, Big Pharma would need to do all the heavy lifting of discovering the targets from scratch, and that sort of risk is more easily placed on the public. The stability to businesses provided by financial regulation may annoy the elite, but the long term benefits of not going out of business escapes the short-term greedy. Of course, by the time free market conservative apologetics realize they have been duped, the system will be entrenched and the despised Great Society erased from public consciousness and history books alike. Unfortunately, the populace will get exactly what they want.