The end of the World (?!),Tim 316 Tebow, Vampire Diarrhea and other 2012 Thoughts

So the world is going to end this year.....yeah, for anyone who dies....and that's about it
We are a little over a week into 2012 and I think I have already seen about 10 shows about the end of the world this year. This is the last year of the Mayan calendar and everyone sees that as a prophecy that this is the last year of our current version of the world. Did it ever occur to anyone that maybe the Mayans just ran out of room for their calendar on the tablet?

All joking aside, I think people need to relax and get a grip on things. The way I look at it, the day you die is the day the world ends for you. This planet, as old as it is and as much of a beating as we do to our environment, the world will not end. This planet is millions of years old. It has survived anything and everything our cosmos has thrown at it and even though we have been acting like the Decepticons in an old Transformers cartoon episode by draining all of our resources at record levels, this planet will endure. We, however, may not and that is the main reason why we need to get our collective heads out of our asses and do something about the environmental issues around us.

 Not sure if you’ve heard of a guy who is the QB of the Denver Broncos. Tim something or other. Tebow, right yeah. Tim Tebow continues to amaze with the way he has evolved over the last 10 weeks. When he was promoted from the 3rd string QB to the starter, he simply went out and won 7 of his first 8 starts, including 3 OT wins, propelling his team to an 8-5 record at the time and had them leading the division. The last 3 weeks of the season saw a regression of sorts as teams started to catch on to what he was doing and we saw an 0-3 record and the team back into not only a playoff spot, but also a division championship. Even when he lost, he won. Just not with regards to his critics.

 He has had a spot light on him since his college days when he won the Heisman trophy as the top Collegiate Football player as 2 National Championships. He is a devout Christian who has chosen to wait until marriage before having his first sexual experience and he has even appeared in an anti-abortion ad that has run in the Southern US. He has had almost every single football expert critique his play to the point where almost to a man, they all agreed he will ultimately fail as an NFL player and yet, he has somehow managed to get the Broncos to the 2nd round of the NFL Playoffs. He has had games where he has looked like a high school player playing against men for 3 of the 4 quarters then turns the tables and looks like a man playing against boys in the 4th quarter in leading his team to several come from behind wins.

He was supposed to get eaten alive by the big bad Steelers and their #1 rated Defence and instead he came out and threw for a religious 316 yards in the air in a thoroughly entertaining 29-23 OT win. Now he goes up against someone who is considered the poster boy of the NFL, Tom Brady, who is almost the exact opposite of Tebow. Tebow was the 4 year starter and Big Man on Campus for his entire college career while Brady had to scratch and claw just to make his way up the depth chart before he was finally the starter in his final 2 years. Brady has kids with 2 of the most beautiful women in the world, one of which was out of wedlock, Tebow right now wouldn’t know what to do with a naked woman other then tell her to get on her knees….and join him in prayer.

Then there are the similarities. Both of them did not play in their first year in the NFL. Both of them had to come in and take over the role of starter in their 2nd year when many thought they were not ready for it. Both of them were involved in massive upsets of the Steelers in the Playoffs in their first year as the starter. But unlike Brady, Tebow has been very harshly criticized more for his beliefs then for his play (and that’s saying something considering he was usually awful for 3 out of every 4 quarters he was playing, even when he was WINNING?!?!). There are many who believe that Tebow has been more harshly attacked because of how he wears his religious beliefs on his sleeve.

To be fair, NFL players commonly get into prayer circles when a player is injured and well over 95% of NFL players are Christian themselves so it does seem a bit odd that yet so many are openly attacking him that it seems almost as if there is some form of resentment towards him from many of the people who are supposed to be objectively reporting what he does. I hope that after he fails to defeat the Patriots this weekend, that people don’t start calling him a flash in the pan because he isn’t and the performance he put on display a few days ago shows that he does in fact have what it takes to be a solid NFL starter.

And now to the real thing I wanted to rip when I first started writing this today. Vampire stories are just flooding our airwaves with garbage almost on a nightly basis. Just since 2009, there has been an onslaught of  TV shows and movies all with a central theme of Vampires and it’s just insane to me. Here’s a quick list of some of the ones that stick out (complete list below); Daybreakers, Priest, True Blood, the Vampire Diaries, Underworld 3 and 4, Being Human (UK and US versions), Fright Night, Lost Boys 3, not to mention all the Twilight movies, 28 Weeks Later, I Am Legend (while both of the latter are about blood sucking creatures, they still fit into the criteria).


(Thank you to http://suburbanvampire.blogspot.com/2008/12/vampire-films-in-2009-2010-2011-and.html for the complete list)


Being Human (2009) (UK TV series) TRAILER
Bled (2009) (DVD)
The Bleeding (2009)
Blood (2009)
Blood: The Last Vampire (2009) TRAILER
Bram Stoker's Vampire Diaries Renfield (2009)
Carmilla (2009)
The Coffin (2009)
The Dead Matter (2009) TRAILER
Dead of Night (2009)
The Death of Alice Blue (2009)
Doomsday County (2009)
The Eternal (2009)
Hello Darkness (2009)
High Midnight (2009)
The Informers (2009)
Kiss of the Vampire (2009) (DVD) TRAILER
Lesbian Vampire Killers (2009) TRAILER
Let the Right One In (2009--Italy, France, & UK) TRAILER
New Moon (2009)
Live Girls (2009)
Patient X (2009)
PCP... A VanGuard Chronicle (2009)
The Revenant (2009)
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Undead (2009) TRAILER
Shadowland (2009)
Sodium Babies (2009) TRAILER
Suck (2009) TRAILER
The Teeth of the Night (2009)
Thirst (2009) TRAILER
Transylmania (2009) TRAILER
True Blood, Season 2 (HBO TV series, June 2009)
Twilight (2009--various countries) TRAILER
Twilight Watch (2009)
Underworld: Rise of the Lycans (2009) TRAILER
Valemont (MTV web series) (2009)
The Vampire Diaries (TV series, 2009) TRAILER
Vampire Girl vs. Frankenstein Girl (2009)
Vampire in Vegas (2009)
The Vampire's Assistant (formerly Cirque du Freak)(2009) PHOTO TRAILER
The Vampires of Bloody Island (2009)

30 Days of Night: Dark Days (2010)
Baltimore, or The Steadfast Tin Soldier and the Vampire (2010)
Bite (web series) (2010) TRAILER
Daybreakers (2010) TRAILER
Dead Sucks (2010) TRAILER
Dracula: The Undead (2010)
Eclipse (2010)
The Fixer (TV series) (2010) TRAILER
The Historian (2010)
The Knights Templar (2010)
Last Blood (2010)
Let Me In (Let the Right One In U.S. Remake) (2010)
Lost Boys 3 (2010)
Love at Second Bite (2010)
Priest (2010)
Somewhere Between Heaven and Hell (2010)
Soulstice (2010)
Stake Land (2010)
The Un-Dead (2010)

Bubba Nosferatu and the Curse of the She-Vampires (2011)
Breaking Dawn (2011)
Castlevania (2011)
Dark Shadows (2011)
Dracula (2011)
Dracula Year Zero (2011)
Hotel Transylvania (2011)
House of Night (Untitled Project) (2011)
The Night Projectionist (2011)
Virulents (2011)

Blood Brothers (date TBA)
Blood Type (TV series, date TBA)
Damned Friday (date TBA)
Damn Nation (date TBA)
Dear Dracula (date TBA)
The Hunger (date TBA)
The Legend of the 7 Golden Vampires (date TBA)
Pangs (date TBA)
Vampire Tales (date TBA)
Vamps (date TBA)

I’m sorry to anyone who likes this stuff but just looking at the list and realizing how much money is being poured into it is kind of scary. Even scarier is the fact that women (mostly) are so enthralled with these vampire stories that they just can’t get enough. They idealize these “dead” men in these stories and dream of being whisked away by these creatures like what’s his name in Twilight does to what’s her face (Yes, I know it’s Edward and Bella, I have a sister who is a Twilight nut).

It is my opinion, and I hope others back me on this, that we are being over saturated by movies of this genre and horror movies as well. Why do people really want to see scary shit on the big screen? I fucking can’t stand horror movies. It’s almost as bad as the tabloids; it’s shock-entertainment. Being scared while watching a movie doesn’t exactly float my boat and I don’t understand how horror movies can be seen as entertaining by anyone. The vile and gruesome thoughts that are unleashed in these movies (in most cases on innocent people IN these movies) while the villain not only survives but keeps killing with impunity (Freddy, Jason, the Scream character and all the Texas Chainsaw gang to name a few) and without any remorse makes you wonder about the type of person who not only would dream such stupidity but actually enjoy watching it.

I admit I enjoy a suspense movie, a crime drama, an action movie. Some are more realistic then others (yes, the Expendable is completely unrealistic but still fun to watch), but you go into those movies knowing that 8 times out of 10, the good guy wins and you aren’t going to need to puke after watching some of the ways in which people are murdered in them. In most horror movies, the only winner is the coroner who has the unenviable task of doing the body count.

I have a collection of nearly 700 DVD’s and NONE of them are what you would classify as “classic” horror movies and I like it like that. I am glad that I can say I have watched nearly all of my 670 DVD’s and can say every single one of them is better than the best Horror movie ever made because I don’t think there is such a thing as a “good” horror movie. Again, this is just my opinion.

A quick hit on a couple of other items; The Syrian PM has said he is going to crack down on dissidents with an “Iron hand”. Kind of scary when you think about it I guess because if killing nearly 17000 of his own people isn’t being heavy handed then what the fuck is he going to do next? I really think that if he doesn’t stop  what he is doing, the Arab League may just take him out on their own as he is becoming a real embarrassment to them on the world stage. He agrees to stop killing people and lets their observers into the country and yet, apparently, the killings have increased since they started “observing”. Unless of course the observers are there to learn how to crush dissident movements the wrong way, he is flaunting his authority within his nation right in their faces and, if it continues, I really think the Arab League may take some much more aggressive action to keep their own legitimacy from being questioned by the rest of the world. One can only hope.

The US Republican Presidential Nominee will be selected over the course of the next few months and if it turns out Mitt Romney ends up at the top of the Republican Bill, then you can write this down now; Welcome back to the White House, President Obama. Romney has no chance to unseat the President, not when Romney was raised with a silver spoon in his mouth and is still a very, very rich man at a time when most voters are struggling not only to find jobs in a depression era-like economy but to put food on their tables and keep a roof over their heads. Another thing working against Romney; all of these current issues were left behind by former Republican President George W. Bush.  How can anyone really trust the Republicans to go back to the White House after what they did when they were in there for 8 years?

That’s the thing that Obama will need to key on heading into his 2nd campaign; He was left with an enormous pile of steaming crap for an economy by the previous administration and was handcuffed from the start. The problems he has had in congress were again caused by the Republicans that refused to work with him. He and the Democrats need to not only win back the Presidency but also to get a healthy majority in the Senate and Congress to push through the reforms he has wanted to push through from the start.

The last thing I would have liked to have talked about would have been this Honour Killing Trial going on in Kingston right now. 3 young girls (19,17 and 14) murdered as well as their father’s first wife who was living with the blended family under the guise of being a cousin. The prosecution has rested after calling over 50 witnesses and so far, surprisingly, the patriarch and matriarch of the family have actually gone up on the stand in their own defense. Both of them have been blabbering incoherently trying to say they did not do anything with the worst of it being today’s testimony by the 2nd wife who said she fabricated the story she made up about being at the scene of the crime just after it happened.

Quite frankly, with only one more defendant yet to take the witness stand, I hope these three rot in jail for at the very least 25 years each and that it serves as a wake-up call to people coming over here thinking they can bring backwards traditions with them. Honour killings are not welcome here. Women have rights here and (despite the objections of certain sects of Mormons) you can only have 1 wife at a time here. Either accept it or don’t come here!!!

And one final thing I need to mention here. Concussions are still a big deal in the NHL and still increasing in number. Sidney Crosby is out of the lineup for the foreseeable future as well as a whole host of other top flight players. Crosby needs to sit the rest of the year and let his brain heal properly. Clearly, despite all the precautions he took before returning, you never know when a 2nd or 3rd one will hit so it’s best that he wait and take his time before returning again. He wouldn’t be the first one nor the last one to take time off to heal and it’s probably for the best.

Until next time….