Matthew Vaughn, someone I’m totally unfamiliar with, does a good job directing. The action scenes are colourful and inventive in a way that’s awesome rather than just silly — though it is a bit silly in a way that’s appropriate for a film that’s mostly a spoof of the superhero genre. The film has a very modern look without turning its action scenes into an incomprehensible series of blurry close-ups like so many movies do nowadays. It also features a voice-over from the main character (a narrative device I’m in love with for some reason, so bias ahoy). The movie is technically very well-made: Big Daddy’s big action scene, in which the camera zooms through a security recording and smoothly pans across a large rectangular room, is particularly memorable both as a technical achievement and as an ingenious storytelling device (allowing us to see the entire room without being confined to the security camera we’re supposed to be looking at, without losing coherence).

The story takes a leaf out of Christopher Nolan’s idea trough, following Dave’s transition into the masked vigilante Kick-Ass, how he gets known across the city, and how he takes on the mob first and a supervillain second. Like Batman, the movie keeps to a sketchy sort of “realism” which is just barely realistic enough to fit the theme. Kick-Ass gains worldwide popularity through a MySpace page and a shaky YouTube video, becoming famous in the course of a few weeks.

If you asked Bruce Wayne how he picked his costume, you’d get a vague, “Well, bats are kind of scary I guess.” If you asked Dave Lizewski, you’d get the more succinct, “I dunno.” Keeping in mind that the movie is not supposed to be especially serious, I give it points for cutting the crap and getting right to the point. In fact, that’s the main thing I like about this movie. It really doesn’t mess around at all. Dave becomes a superhero less then fifteen minutes into the film, flatly cutting through that “first hour of the movie is an origin story” bullshit that every other superhero movie does.

The only thing that bugs me about it is the last fifteen minutes. After a startlingly effective tonal shift from comedy to drama during the rising action, the actual climax of the movie is very disappointing. Instead of resolving any of the movie’s themes or being at all consistent, we have a huge fight scene that isn’t even focused on the main character — instead, it’s focused on Hit-Girl, now playing the role of Steve Urkel. It’s okay until the last few moments, when the movie suddenly remembers that Hit-Girl isn’t the protagonist, at which point Dave spontaneously appears out of nowhere, having now gained the superpower of not going deaf when firing two Gatling guns on either side of his head.

Funny? Sure. Awesome? Okay, sure. Consistent? No. Annoying? Very much. I know I’m probably in the minority here, but this climax is so paint-drinkingly stupid that it completely stops the movie from being “great”, in my eyes. Don’t get me wrong: it’s fine for a movie to be stupid. The problem here is that, even though the movie is a comedy, it isn’t that kind of comedy. This isn’t Spongebob Squarepants. The movie, except for this scene, sticks to that aforementioned barely-plausible realism that gave it a very specific theme: “If people tried to be superheros in real life, they would suck.” It’s fine to show Hit-Girl being an unadulterated badass and mowing down legions of mobsters with assault rifles — precisely because she’s Hit-Girl, the character we all know to be completely unrealistic and silly. Dave Lizewski — even when he’s Kick-Ass — is supposed to be this ineffectual nerd who gets his ass handed to him in every scene. Turning him into a badass totally ruins the theme of the movie; at least, it ruins the theme I thought the movie would have.

With the climax taken into account, what is the theme of the movie? “Be a superhero because superheros are totally awesome”? Might as well watch The Dark Knight.

Even when it derails Dave’s character for the sake of a great action scene, it squanders the potential that could have had. Watching Dave murder a bunch of people with his testosterone guns is cool, but not nearly as cool as any of Big Daddy’s or Hit-Girl’s action scenes. His later fight with the supervillain is flat-out boring, basically amounting to a couple of sissy punches in a small nondescript room. Nobody even gets injured; they just knock each other out and fall asleep together like a couple of gay lovers.

There’s a lot of nits to be picked if you’re into that sort of thing. Many references are dated in a very head-scratching way. I understand that the movie is based on a comic book written by a 40-year-old man, but surely someone in the cast and crew must have used the internet in the last five years and realized that no one uses MySpace anymore. The film’s story takes some rather huge liberties in adapting the story as it is, so a minor change like that should hardly be a problem. And what world do these characters live in where everyone has YouTube and iPhones, but comic books are considered a huge phenomenon? The comics industry is dead and has been for a very long time, as much as the writers would try to deny it; the fact that the movie doesn’t even attempt to acknowledge this fact is sort of a missed joke.

Overall, you probably think I hate this movie, but I really don’t. If I was asked to review my favourite movie of all time, I’d still find something to complain about. At the end of the day, Kick-Ass is hilarious, exciting, and very much worth your money. I just think it could have been a bit better.

Jesse, however, did not have children. He lived alone and had always lived alone since the day he moved in. The bar-dwellers would say, “Isn’t he about marrying age by now?” Still Jesse lived alone, never going to the bars, and the people there had to make their own conclusions. But this was a year ago, after all. This was before that chilly Christmas morning when Jesse pulled himself out of bed, looked out his window, and saw the strangest sight he thought he would ever see:

It was a long expanse of short black hairs stretching across the whole Anders property, only stopping neatly at the borders. Jesse couldn’t believe his eyes. He left his house for the first time in almost a month, running to meet the first passer-by he could and asking, “Do you see them? Can you see my hairs?” And every person Jesse asked would conclude yes, he did have some hairs, but they were no longer than hairs normally are.

The Anders family were not quitters, however. Jesse took one look at his hairs and made the decision then: the hairs had to go. Jesse wouldn’t quit until his property was smooth again.

Jesse took his lawnmower and replaced the steely blades with oversized razors. He added a vacuum to clean out the hairs, and a hose to spread shaving cream ahead of him. Jesse called his new invention the Lawnshaver, and used it to shave the hairs that very day. When he was finished it was already suppertime. He left his smooth property behind to eat and sleep alone, leaving the Lawnshaver outside.

The next day, Jesse rose out of bed, looked out his window, and saw that all the hairs had grown back overnight – thicker and longer than the day before.

Soon Jesse Anders fell into a routine. He would wake every morning to longer and longer hairs, shave them all with his Lawnshaver, then eat supper and sleep alone. It wasn’t a month before the hairs grew so thick and strong that Jesse had to start upgrading his invention: the Lawnshaver 2000, the Lawnshaver XP, the iLawnshaver. By the half-year mark, Jesse’s Lawnshaver was as big as a monster truck, with twelve eight-foot razors and a propane tank of shaving cream.

Passers-by started stopping in the mornings to ask, “Whatever happened to the old Anders house?” The hairs were higher than the roof. The bar-dwellers didn’t want to gossip about Jesse Anders anymore; to them, Alan had no son.

Jesse grew more and more obsessed with his hairs every day. By September he stopped eating regular meals. By October he was an insomniac, lying awake to stare at his ceiling every night. By November he thought he could hear the laughter of children echoing through the halls.

This Christmas, exactly a year after the hairs started growing, Jesse Anders decided to put a stop to it. The hairs were already so long he couldn’t see the tips without a helicopter, tangled and packed so tight and thick that he couldn’t leave his house without shaving. He knew they were growing during the night whether he was sleeping or not, so Jesse decided to just stand outside and wait.

Nothing happened for a very long time as Jesse waited through suppertime, through bedtime, through midnight. He was already so skeletal that he couldn’t eat solid food, so he couldn’t see this as much of a loss. He just had to see what was causing those hairs to grow and grow.

The malnutrition must have gotten to him, though, because when the hairs did grow, they seemed to do it in an instant. He just blinked and suddenly he was surrounded on all sides by pure black hair. He couldn’t see his family’s house anymore. He found himself spinning around in a daze, searching desperately for an escape; his clouded mind unable to comprehend when the atrophied muscles in his legs gave out and he collapsed onto the ground.

This is how Jesse Anders died just one year ago. The official record will claim that he starved himself to death through insanity, but that’s only what it appears to be. In reality, it was the billions upon billions of black widows living in the tangled jungle of hairs that had been the Anders family property. They used no poison, but they murdered him nonetheless.

Ben Affleck stars as Holden McNeil, an uptight comic book artist who makes his living on “dick and fart jokes” while he tries to think of better comic ideas. He lives with his inker, Banky Edwards (Jason Lee), who is totally satisfied with the dick and fart jokes. A running subplot in the film concerns Banky’s desire to turn their comic books into a cartoon series, which Holden is reluctant to do because he feels it will make him into even less of a “true artist”.

During all this, Holden falls in love with fellow artist Alyssa Jones (Joey Lauren Adams), who draws a less successful but more artistically-fulfilling comic book. Unfortunately for Holden, he only finds out after falling in love that Alyssa is a lesbian. They can only be friends, so Holden tries to let it go and do just that. He fails, as anyone would, but so does she. Even though she’s supposed to be a lesbian, Alyssa falls in love with Holden and the two start dating.

The rest of the movie is a really harsh and realistic look at relationships, sexuality, and art, which I won’t spoil here. The characters are engaging and relatable while still being very funny; no one person stands out as being “comic relief”, as everyone gets their fair share of punchlines and witty dialogue. The plot is excellent and treads some serious ground without becoming too angsty — an important quality in any story. It all works very well to provide a satisfying experience — a movie with deep characters, big laughs, and a plot that should leave an impact on the audience, no matter how they interpret it.

There are minor gripes to be had with the execution, however. The script drags at times and loses a lot of its humour as the film goes on. There are a few too many dramatic monologues from the characters, especially in the third act. Although the acting is very good for the most part, some of these are a bit too on-the-nose to make sense.

One monologue that does work especially well is given by Alyssa about two thirds of the way into the movie. As she lies in bed with Holden, she talks to him about her sexual identity and experimentation – in such an insightful way that it makes me wonder how a straight man could have written the screenplay. This dialogue in particular is what makes Chasing Amy worth watching. You’ll have to watch the movie to understand — a quotation simply doesn’t have the same impact.

Still, there is one huge problem that looms over the movie and almost ruins it for me. This is a problem I have with the film’s message. Chasing Amy is a movie about a lesbian who falls in love with a man, but the movie excludes a certain word entirely from its dialogue-heavy script. Not once does a character use the word “bisexual” in the entire film — even though Alyssa clearly is.

Alyssa’s self-identification as lesbian is all because she doesn’t want to be ostracized by her gay friends. It’s an unfortunate identity crisis brought on by our society’s implicit acceptance of monosexuality over bisexuality. It’s a bad thing. The only thing worse than being gay in a straight world is being bi in a gay world, which is a message that the character of Alyssa conveys quite well — but only in implication. The film refuses to use the b-word.

Bisexual erasure exists — to many, many people, bisexuality is a “phase” that people will eventually snap out of. Sometimes being bisexual is seen as a cheat, like an unfair advantage that should be discouraged. Attitudes like this cause people to be pigeonholed into the discrete categories of heterosexuality and homosexuality, all depending on the situation. This is shown clearly in the scene where Alyssa tells her friends that she is dating Holden. To Alyssa’s friends, she is “selling out” by allowing herself to be attracted to men — as if she’s straight now and everything previous was just a lie.

Chasing Amy seems to be making a deal with the audience to accept Alyssa’s sexuality for what it is — and to combat bisexual erasure. But by leaving out the b-word entirely, the film paradoxically supports this attitude. Many people — gay and straight alike — misinterpret Chasing Amy as a movie that shows how the right man can turn a lesbian straight. By obfuscating the real meaning and refusing to make its point clear, Kevin Smith panders to audiences who only want to see this misinterpretation.

It’s still a great movie that has a lot to say about sexual identity, but it doesn’t really make an effort to teach the audience anything. It just preaches to the choir. It could have done more than that with minimal effort.

5. The Zombie Survival Guide
As I’ve stated before, I love zombies. It’s a guilty pleasure at this point. The zombie subgenre really shouldn’t continue to be around; at its best it’s a huge cliche that keeps getting retreaded, and at its worst it’s an insult to the original films by George A. Romero. Yet, I still think zombies are awesome, and I’m really glad that they’re still popular.

The zombie comedy, however, is coming to a close. I really think Shaun of the Dead and Zombieland have run through all the humour a pure zombie comedy could have, and a film adaptation of The Zombie Survival Guide would only be yet another comedic zombie movie. It’s possible that the screenplay could make it over-the-top in the same fashion as the book, which hasn’t been done for a zombie movie yet as far as I know, but that sense of humour would get tiring really quickly.

4. Monopoly
What would be better than a film based on the most popular board game in the United States? Almost anything, I’d think. As if the game wasn’t boring enough as it is! Who wants to watch an old man make super exciting retail estate dealings for two hours? Though I admit, I look forward to seeing that thimble playing piece as a cute CGI mascot. Besides, don’t we already have a movie about how much monopolies suck?

And Citizen Kane was kind of good, so the Monopoly movie is going to have a hard time competing. Besides, do you really want to see rule 34 applied to the thimble even more so than it already is? I don’t.

3. The Magic School Bus
Wouldn’t life be better if there existed a hardcore action movie based on the Magic School Bus? The film takes place twenty years after the events of the TV show. Liz has been kidnapped by an evil corporation bent on destroying science education forever. The movie follows the students as they reunite under Obi-Wan The Frizz and battle the evil Ben Stein, who has used the kidnapping as an excuse to lead our heroes into a deathtrap!

Our protagonist is Arnold Schwarzenegger as “I shoulda stayed home today” Arnold, who has somehow turned into a muscle-bound Austrian politician in the last twenty years. Seriously people, this movie writes itself. Someone get Michael Bay on the phone.

2. The Sims
Has The Sims ever been more than a voyeuristic dollhouse/murder-simulator? How do you turn that into a movie? The way I see it, there are two options:

a) A reality show in movie form, with a twist ending. The first act introduces all the Sims and establishes their various motives, desires, fears, etc. The second act shows the Sims sleeping for an hour or so, sped up to run eight times as fast as it was filmed. The third act is when God comes down and sets fire to everything.

b) A Truman Show rip-off, with Truman’s fear of water replaced with Truman’s fear of fire.

Either way, the movie might actually have a chance at the box office thanks to all the searing flesh that will be included — but I’ll give it a scathing review on my blog, and that means it’s bad.

1. Twitter
Do I even need to explain this one?

The question is, does the enormous price tag help make Avatar something worth seeing? Or is this just an expensive tech experiment?

The film follows Jake (Sam Worthington), a marine tasked with exploring the surface of an alien planet, Pandora, and communicating with the natives. Jake gets this position because he has similar genetics to his twin brother, who was a scientist initially picked for the job. To visit Pandora, the scientists and Jake use artificially-created alien bodies as avatars (thus the title).

The aliens – blue-skinned cat-people made out of advanced CGI and motion capture technology – are known as the Na’vi (with an apostrophe for decoration). The Na’vi are very spiritual beings who live in a giant tree, worship a god who actually exists, commune with the animals, etc. They are cliched nature-loving aliens through and through.

Humans are the bad guys who want to destroy the aliens’ big tree, which is located on a large deposit of valuable “unobtainium” (probably the funniest joke in the movie). The whole avatar program is in place so that scientists can communicate with the Na’vi and tell them to move out of the tree. Why the government would spend billions of dollars developing the avatars instead of just killing all the aliens is never explained.

From there, the film turns into Pochahontas. Jake falls in love with one of the aliens, they have a PG-rated mating ritual, and he turns against the evil humans. Some other sympathetic scientists help Jake to stand up for the Na’vi while a generic antagonist with literally no personality whatsoever rides around in a manga-inspired mecha and tries to destroy the big tree.

It’s an environmentalist film, if that was too subtle for you.

Still, even if the story is nothing special, that doesn’t mean Avatar is a bad movie. The delivery is a big part of it, too. And with this much money on the table, it’s clear that the delivery of this film was a big deal to Cameron. He waited twelve years because 1997 couldn’t deliver.

The acting is good. No performance really stands out, but that’s the story’s fault. Sam Worthington and Zoe Saldana do most of the movie in motion-capture, which is pretty impressive – it’s hard enough to act in the film industry when you have to do the same scene dozens of times, even harder when you’re working against computer-generated creatures that you can’t see on the set.

The imagination and design put into the setting is also pretty impressive. None of it is particularly original, but there’s clearly been a lot of thought put into fleshing out what’s there. The human technology looks very mechanistic and grey, which is played for contrast against the blue-and-green alien motif. The Na’vi themselves are nicely designed. The filmmakers cheated somewhat by making them very humanoid, but it’s necessary to make the human-falls-in-love-with-alien plot work. If the Na’vi were any less human, the whole film would have crashed because the audience would no longer be able to believe that Jake could fall in love with one of them.

The CGI is gorgeous, of course. Nothing to complain about there.

I’m torn on exactly what to think about Avatar. It has an incredibly trite story that I find very annoying, but the delivery is actually pretty solid. It is a very well-made film that might be worth seeing for the effects alone. It still leaves me with a sour taste, though. Titantic, at least, had something worth delivering, and that made the delivery much more satisfying. Avatar is frustrating because it has good effects that it doesn’t even deserve. It’s a very boring and uninspired movie that isn’t worth 230 million dollars by any stretch of the imagination.

Had the film been made in a realistic setting – not as a fantasy with sci-fi flavour – it wouldn’t be half as annoying. The aliens aren’t necessary, and the special effects only serve to distract. Just watch the trailer and you’ll get the same effect. All the eye-candy without the condescending tree-hugging nonsense.

“Condescending” is the word, really. The aliens and humans are both totally one-note and boring: humans are all evil for no clear reason, and aliens are perfect paragons of good. I find myself rooting for the humans to kill everyone just because the aliens are so perfect and infuriating, and that’s where the story really falls apart. Even with the cliche story, it could have come to life with some engaging characters. Avatar doesn’t have characters; it has archetypes.

Watch Avatar if you want to see some really cool motion-capture. Don’t watch Avatar if you want to see a good movie.

Ross actually has a real bed, but it’s in the tiny bedroom of this apartment. I’m over almost every day now, so he just leaves the spare out in the living room so we can sleep together. The single mattress in his real bed isn’t big enough for that.

I smile to myself as I walk into the kitchen.

We didn’t get to do anything last night, though. Ross always wants to watch the news before bed, and there was an extended report last night about some kind of new virus that was going around. I was tired and not really paying attention, but it seemed to really shake Ross. He just… wasn’t in the mood at all. That’s weird for a boy.

“Good morning,” Ross says. He stumbles up to me, eyes still half-closed. “What are you doing?”

“Looking for your oatmeal,” I say. He wraps his arms around me from behind.

“Sorry about last night,” he whispers into my hair. “You know this whole quarantine situation has me worried. I can’t help it.”

“It’s okay.” I turn around to give him a proper hug before returning to the cupboards. He points me in the right direction. As I start making a pot of oatmeal, he goes quiet. I think he’s still a bit spooked.

“When did you go to sleep last night?”

He runs his hand through his hair. “Sometime past one, I think. I couldn’t sleep.”

“What’s got you so worried?” I ask. “You need to stop watching the news. They’re scaring you for no reason.”

“I’m just concerned about the quarantine,” he says. “And we haven’t had internet access in this city for the past week, so I need to watch TV. Even if it’s garbage, I need to have some idea of what’s going on.”

“I know, I know,” I assure him. Sometimes he gets worked up over things like this and I have to calm him down. “Here, your oatmeal will be done in a second.”

Soon we’re eating together at the small kitchen table. Ross’s spoon clanks against his bowl as he eats slowly, his mind elsewhere.

“Why don’t we go buy you a new bed today?” I say, trying to sound cheerful. “We’re going to need tetanus shots if we keep sleeping on that mattress.”

Ross cracks a smile. “Yeah. I’m just being silly about this whole thing. Sorry for getting you down.”

“Whatever. You can get me down whenever you like,” I say, winking.

Ross starts to laugh, but he’s cut off by a crashing sound downstairs. He jumps to his feet immediately, staring at the front door.

“What was that?”

He lives in a decent neighbourhood, but stuff like this is still bound to happen at times. I’m the voice of reason when I answer:

“Sounded like glass.”

“From what?”

“It’s none of our business, Ross.”

He ignores me and walks to the door. He looks through the peephole. After a moment, he opens the door to look up and down the hallway.

“What’s wrong with you?”

“Look, I… I don’t know,” he says, still looking. I can see cold sweat on his forehead as he looks back at me. “I heard reports that there were some… killers on the loose. That’s why we’re under quarantine.”

“What? Why would we be quarantined over that?” I start to get up from the table.

“I don’t know.”

“That’s ridiculous!”

“I don’t know!” he shouts. “I think something’s going on that the government isn’t telling us about. Just trust me, okay?”

I shake my head, but Ross ignores me. He looks genuinely scared.

“I’m going downstairs to check it out, just in case,” he says. “Stay here until I get back.”

“This is stupid. I’m coming down with you.”

“No!” I back away from him, insulted. “Stay up here. I don’t want you to get hurt.”

I roll my eyes. “Alright, Ross, be my knight in shining armour. See if I care.” But I didn’t really mean it. I’m used to stuff like this. Ross got himself fired once for punching out a coworker who insulted me. It’s not charming exactly, but I’m not seriously insulted.

Ross gives me a kiss before leaving the room. I shut the door behind him, then turn around to face the room, fidgeting slightly. I can’t help it. Ross’s paranoia is starting to spook me a bit. I go over to the window and pull the curtains.

At first everything seems fine, and I relax a bit. It looks like a typical busy day, cars driving through throngs of people who don’t know how to use the crosswalks. But when I look a little closer, I see that the cars are moving quickly – far more quickly than they should be, given the traffic congestion.

One elderly man seemed to be crossing the road, until a truck started driving up to him. He turned around to face it like a deer caught in headlights, but the truck didn’t stop. It plowed right into him and just kept driving, mangling the man’s body as the tires peeled off from the bloody mess.

I’m seeing murder on the streets in broad daylight.

And just at that moment, I hear a thumping out in the hall. Footsteps.

I whip around, letting the curtains fall behind me. Ross is right; there really are killers on the loose! How could something like this happen in broad daylight?

I try to keep a cool head as I lock the door and grab a knife from the kitchen. Ross doesn’t have a gun, so this will have to do. But as the footsteps draw nearer, I can hear the sound of Ross’s voice, booming down the corridor:

“Kaitlyn! Let me in!”

He’s panicked, I can tell. He reaches the door before I have a chance to unlock it, pounding against the wood with his fists. “You have to let me in, Kaitlyn! Come on!”

I fumble with the lock for a moment before he bursts into the room, nearly hitting me with the door in his haste. As soon as he comes in, he slams and locks the entrance behind him. He runs to the kitchen, panting heavily. This apartment is on the nineteenth floor, and he must have run up every one of those steps from the way he’s breathing. The handle of my knife is soaked in sweat.

“What’s going on?” I ask as calmly as possible. Ross just shakes his head at me, looking through cupboards. He grabs a large frying pan – cast iron and heavier than some people – before turning back to me.

“They aren’t killers,” he says.

“I saw someone get hit by a truck outside! How aren’t these killers?”

He pauses for a moment. “They are killers, I guess. But they aren’t human.”

“Wha–?”

“They’re zombies.”

I blink.

“What?”

“There’s no other explanation for it,” he says. “As soon as they saw me, they tried to attack. Some of them were running, some of them were shambling, some were just… groaning and not doing anything else… I don’t know, Kait. They’re all torn up and violent, and their eyes…”

“This is stupid!” I yell angrily. “How can they be zombies?”

“Just trust me,” he says. “Whatever they are, they aren’t the good guys. That’s for damn sure.”

He sets his pan down and starts pushing the couch.

“Help me set up some barricades. They have a hard time with stairs, but they’ll be up here soon.”

I stand still for several long moments as Ross pushes the couch across the door. This is too much. He doesn’t look like he’s joking, but this can’t be true. It doesn’t make sense.

“Stop standing around!”

“I don’t– I don’t know what to do!” I say, and it’s true. I don’t know where to start. I’m overwhelmed. This is too much.

“You need to help me, Kait! Come on!” Ross yells. With a final grunt, the couch is in place. I can hear more thumping from outside. Ross looks at me seriously.

In some ways, I still think this might be a joke. But the old man outside getting hit by a truck? Something is going on here. I help Ross throw the mattress against the couch, just as the footsteps approach the door.

They stop just outside, for a brief moment. Then we hear a loud, piercing screech. The blood runs from my face; I look like I just lost a fight with a bag of flour.

“It’s calling for others,” Ross says. He runs into the kitchen before I can respond.

He braces himself and kicks a leg out from under the table with all his strength. It collapses on one corner, and it barely has time to land before he’s kicking down the other side. Within moments, Ross has the entire table in pieces, bracing the door closed. I run for nails and a hammer so we can block the door the way they do in zombie movies.

I don’t know what else to do.

“How long is this gonna hold?” I ask Ross when he finishes nailing the table into place. On the other side of the door, I can already hear the scratching of claws. None of the zombies can open doors. Not yet, at least.

“I doubt it’ll be around for long. Just long enough for us to get out of here.”

“How are we going to do that?”

Ross looks around the room.

“We’ll have to use the window.”

He tears the curtains right off the frame and pulls up the glass. A cool early-autumn breeze enters the room and makes me shiver reflexively. Now that I know what’s going on, I can see what’s happening outside.

All the people wandering the streets, getting hit by the occasional vehicle as it drives through at top speed… these are the monsters. These are zombies. I shiver again, and it has nothing to do with the cold.

The city is infested.

I can barely remember anything after that point. Ross threw two hundred feet of nylon rope out the window and we started the climb. Eventually, Ross fell. I’m not really sure how it happened, but it was close enough to the street that he wasn’t killed immediately.

Every time I draw back my arm to hit another nail, I feel the hammer slip from my hands a little more. The handle is coated in sweat – my cold sweat of fear, panic, and whatever other emotions I’m feeling right now. I don’t have time to name them all. Hundreds of walking corpses are right outside this window. I have to nail things over it. Whatever I can find.

We’re in the bottom floor of someone’s house; I don’t know whose. Ross is lying behind me, barely alive. At some point while I was dragging him to the first house I could find, he went unconscious. There were already people here when I broke in.

I hear broken bits of a table fall to the floor behind me. Sam dusts off her hands.

“My arms hurt,” she says. “Whatever happened to collapsible card tables?”

“I think that’s enough wood,” I tell her. I back away from the window, rubbing my biceps. “Can you finish this window?”

“Finish?” Sam raises an eyebrow, inspecting my work. “Those are service-sector workers out there, not zombie lumberjacks. How great do the barricades have to be?”

“I don’t know!” I yell. “I just don’t want them inside, Sam. Please…”

I lay down on the floor next to Ross, trying to calm myself down. After so many hours in this house, the moaning really gets to you. I rest my head against Ross, trying to hear his heart instead of the zombies.

Ba-dump. Ba-dump.

Well, he’s still alive at any rate. I close my eyes, focusing on this sound like a lullaby. But I can still hear the moaning and scratching around me, relentlessly. I know that Sam isn’t doing any work; she’s sitting in the corner, resting. I can hardly blame her from my position.

Another body enters the room from the stairwell. He doesn’t speak a word, so I know it’s Bippers. I reluctantly raise myself off the floor to see him. Ross is still alive for now at least – I’m not accomplishing anything by lying here.

“Bippers,” I say. “Is everything okay up there?”

His eyes dart around the room, nervously examining every detail. He nods slowly, not looking me in the eye. From most people that would be unusual, but for him it’s just par for the course. Bippers is always watching, never talking. Sam tells me that he was in this house when she got here, and she has no idea how or why he’s around. When she asked him his name, he just told her and hasn’t spoken a word since. He seems harmless enough to her.

But what kind of name is Bippers?

I just think he’s sketchy. But we need all the help we can get.

“How’s Ross?” Sam asks.

“He’s alright,” I say. “Still bleeding.”

“Like a vampire water fountain?”

I ignore her.

We sit in silence for long minutes, just trying to keep ourselves calm. I guess that’s an effort in futility, though, since the silence only ever emphasizes the sounds from outside. The wood covering the windows and doors remains firmly in place, but that’s not as much reassurance as I’d like.

As soon as Ross gets better, I’m getting out of here. We’re both covered in his blood, so I’ll find a place with running water first. Then we’ll make a break for it. This city can’t be totally quarantined – there’s going to be a hole somewhere that we can scurry out of. We just need to find it. As soon as Ross gets better, everything will be okay.

I’m fighting to keep tears out of my eyes now.

“I think these ‘cades will last us another hour or two,” Sam says, standing up. “Let’s go back upstairs. There’s still a few chairs up there.”

“We need to stay with Ross,” I tell her.

“Just let me and Bips carry him up there,” she says.

“We don’t know what’s wrong with him. He could have broken his back and now the slightest movement will kill him.”

Never mind the fact that I dragged him to this house already. But he’s getting worse by the minute and I really don’t want to risk it. Why did this have to happen?

Before Sam can answer, we hear a loud crash from upstairs. I jump to my feet immediately, my heart pumping. Sam freezes, eyes on the staircase. Bippers stops looking around the room for once. There’s another crash, and what sounds like boots stomping around. Something is definitely upstairs.

Sam scowls and runs up the stairs. I just stand there, listening hard. Her footsteps stop at the top of the stairs. I can hear her voice demanding something, then an indistinct reply from a male voice. I let out a sigh of relief.

Zombies can’t talk.

I look at Bippers, but he doesn’t meet my eyes right away. He’s still watching the ceiling intently, ignoring me. After a moment, he turns his head to look at me. His eyes are widened in terror. I’m about to ask what’s wrong when he grabs me by the arm and starts pulling me towards the stairs.

“Hey!” I yell. “Let go! I need to stay here!” What if the zombies break in while I’m gone? Ross can’t defend himself.

Bippers doesn’t listen. He seems panicked, like some sort of animal, putting all his adrenaline-fueled strength into pulling me. He practically drags me up the stairs. I’m watching my boyfriend disappear around the corner of the stairwell, tears of fury welling in my eyes as I scream at Bippers to stop.

He doesn’t.

By the time we reach Sam on the next floor, I’ve rendered myself silent. My throat and eyes are burning. Bippers sets me down gently next to Sam, then stands behind the both of us. Sam is sitting on the only chair in the room, glaring at the intruders furiously, but she has the decency to pat me on the shoulder when I sit next to her.

The people who must have entered through the windows are two men in military uniforms, flanking a woman in a lab coat. All of them are soaked with blood.

“Is this everyone?” the woman asks.

Sam nods.

“Excellent,” she says. “I’m Dr. Euel, working for the Necrotech division of the federal government. Necrotech is doing a systematic sweep of all solanum-infested areas in the Midwest. We received a report from our agent here, Mr. Sauvé” – she gestures to Bippers – “that there were infected individuals in this building.”

“Only one,” Bippers says. This is the first time I hear his voice; it’s gruff and manly, the way you would expect the voice of a man with two names to be.

That liar.

“There’s only one infected here, in the basement,” Mr. Sauvé continues. “Take him and leave the rest of us alone.”

I want to scream at them, “He’s not infected! He’s mine and he’s just sick!” But I can’t bring myself to speak a word. My throat is too raw and there are too many emotions running through me. Too many for me to name.

“Bippers,” Sam says, watching her feet. “You betrayed us.”

Dr. Euel laughs.

“Still doing that secret identity thing, Sauvé? You can’t think of a better name than that?”

“It’s not a secret identity, Euel, and you know it,” he growls. “Leave these women alone and do the job you’re paid to do.”

“This is the job I’m paid to do,” she responds. “You’re the traitor, always letting the infected escape. How do you think this whole virus is spreading? These areas are under quarantine; if we let people free, they’ll only infect more people.”

“You don’t know that!” he yells.

“That’s why we need to do this,” Euel responds. She keeps her calm throughout, smiling falsely. Her guards start to make a move for the stairs, and I fall to the side as Bippers pushes through me to stand in their way.

There’s tense silence for a moment as he stands there, blocking the two guards. Sam hasn’t moved an inch. I can’t draw the strength to pick myself off the floor. I feel like I’m melting through it, watching the world underneath.

Through the floorboards I hear wood begin to crack. I hear glass shattering. I hear nails being ripped from the walls as hundreds of living dead push and shove their way into the bottom floor. But I’m the only one that hears this, my head pressed against the floor.

Sam jumps from her position and throws the chair at Dr. Euel. It hits her square in the face, knocking her back near the broken window. She teeters on the edge, so close to falling through. One of the guards punches Bippers in the gut and tosses him aside. He falls to the floor beside me.

“You’re an inhuman bitch!” Sam screams. “Necrotech kills people! Your science is a slaughter!”

She’s about to push Euel out the window when one of the guards intervenes. He tackles her to the ground and pins her there as his boss moves herself out of harm’s way.

“Get rid of them,” she says coldly. “We have enough people who won’t cooperate.”

She and the other guard walk downstairs.

Bippers is out cold. He hasn’t moved since he hit the floor.

I don’t know what to do.

“Please,” Sam begs as the guard lifts her to her feet. “Please just let us go. We haven’t done anything. You can take the man in the basement. We’re not stopping you.”

The guard shoves her towards the window. She shuffles precariously over the edge, about to fall. From my position on the floor I can clearly see shards of glass cutting into her feet as she stands there.

“Please,” she says. I think I can see a tear in her eye.

The guard pushes her out the window. I hear a scream; a long string of curses that fall on deaf ears. We’re only on the second floor – the zombies will kill her before the fall can.

The guard isn’t even paying attention. He moves towards Bippers and me.

Beneath the floorboards I can hear gunshots mixed with yells. Are they shooting at Ross, or are they shooting at the zombies? I don’t have time to figure it out.

The guard shoots me in the head.

My emotions start fading away one by one.

Goodbye fear, panic, hopes, and dreams. Goodbye Ross. You were right all along.

I hope the zombies kill you before the government can.

This is actually a good film that isn’t dominated inappropriately by Tim Burton’s friends (and partner). This is especially apparent with Mia Wasikowska, who plays the titular Alice so well that I almost forgot that I was supposed to be impressed by Depp’s usual great performance. It also helps that she has that wavy hair thing going on for the entire movie. (Don’t ask; I just really love that hairstyle for some reason. It’s awesome.)

This new Alice is really nothing like the old Disney film, and even less like the original Lewis Carroll books, though it still has enough similarities that you could call it an “adaptation” with a straight face. Unlike previous Alices that played a lot with dramatic structure, this new Alice sticks to the standard fairly strongly — there are three obvious acts, for instance. It also has an obvious moral, which, though it’s a bit ham-handed, is still a step up in my opinion. At least for this movie, drugs are optional.

Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland is a good movie. It’s not incredible or anything, but it’s still a good movie overall. I like it better than the 1951 version, but that isn’t saying much — I really never liked that version in the first place. (And I can already feel my artsy cred evaporating as I type that sentence…)

Should you see it? If you’re a huge fan of the old one, you might not like this new one, which is an entirely different kind of Alice. Other than that, you’ll probably find at least one thing to like about it. It’s a nice fantasy film with good effects and good acting, so, while it’s not really anything special, it’s nothing to hate either. And I’ll probably get it on DVD when it comes out.

From an objective point, whether you yourself are a pessimist or an optimist (or whatever in between), it stands to reason that optimism and pessimism in large amounts is a bad thing. Being overly optimistic will only lead to your being naive, and being overly pessimistic will only lead to… well, depression. Who would have thought that seeing the world in shades of brown would make one depressed?

The optimal point is somewhere between the two extremes. Being able to see the bad in a situation without ignoring the (incredibly trite at times) silver lining. But how does one do that? Well, let’s backpedal for a moment.

My pessimism started around the eighth grade — roughly four years ago. I had an agressively depressing math teacher then, who, due to the fact that the eighth grade is the worst grade ever, happened to be my favourite teacher. He was the only teacher I actually liked at all back then purely because of how depressing and detached he was. I felt like I could trust him. (Purely my fault, by the way; I’m stupid, not the math teacher.)

One bit of advice I remember him giving me ran thus:

If you’re an optimist, every time something goes wrong you will be disappointed. But if you’re a pessimist, every time something goes right, you will be pleasantly surprised. So what would you rather: to be disappointed, or to be pleasantly surprised?

This little quotation was stuck in my head from that point on: my mantra. It’s something I thought about every day, in every little situation, when I was making decisions on how I should feel about something. Consciously or otherwise, I would always hold things up to this standard:

Would I rather be disappointed, or pleasantly surprised?

So I went through my life trying to keep my expectations low. Low. When I started Ryan and Bran I figured, “No one will ever like this.” When I started this blog, I figured the same thing. I expected everything to fail, even when I knew it was illogical to do so. I forced myself to do it anyway.

Was I right to do this? The funny thing is, most of my expectations were spot on! Ryan and Bran has continued to go nowhere, and this blog has almost no readership at all. My low expectations were completely accurate, and not just in those situations; they were right in almost every situation! Pessimism was the way to go!

But in all my excitement to be “right” about everything, I forgot the important part of my math teacher’s statement: being pleasantly surprised. And I wasn’t pleasantly surprised. I was surprised pretty well, but not pleasantly. In fact, being surprised was downright depressing, because it meant that my low expectations were wrong. I couldn’t stand to be wrong – but being right meant that I had to deal with the depression of failing, thus nullifying the effects of being right in the first place.

Whoops. Talk about a lose/lose situation.

This went on until roughly two and a half months ago: December 2009. That’s when I realized that I had been wrong about being right. It took me about four years to realize it, but it finally hit me sometime that month: by expecting the worst out of everything, I was only making myself depressed. And it was so subtle that I didn’t even notice it happening — slowly, ever since grade eight.

Last December I made a choice to stop being a pessimist. I’d had enough. I wanted to be an optimist. I wanted to see the world in a better light like I was able to do when I was in primary school. I longed for the days when I could be happy with the most minor of accomplishments.

I remember, back in grade four, how ecstatic I was when I won fourth place in a county fair. The fact that there were barely four people in the county fair didn’t matter to me. Yet in 2008 when I won first place in an essay-writing contest, I shrugged off every congratulations because it was “just a regional thing”, confined to my city.

The fact of the matter is, both of these accomplishments were equally terrible. My reaction to the latter may have been more realistic, but my reaction to the former is the one I remember fondly. That’s the one that made me happy.

There’s a school of thought known as depressive realism which postulates that one’s view of the world during depression is more realistic than the elevated view we have in our natural state. Basically, depressive realism admits that the world is crap.

My counter: who gives a shit?

Yes, the world is crap. Depressed people probably have everything right in that regard. Why should I care? What does depression do for you? What does “having everything right” do for you? It makes you depressed, obviously.

Bad things are happening all the time, and the “good” things we perceive are usually pretty meaningless. Think about the things you do for fun, like watching a movie with some friends, or going out to Pizza Hut or wherever. These are the most meaningless things in existence, but they get put on a pedestal simply because they’re fun. Now think about the bad things that can happen to you. You could die, for one. People you love could die. Your favourite writer on your favourite blog could die (God forbid).

It’s like the second law of thermodynamics: it’s easier to go down than it is to go up, and there’s nothing you can do to stop it. If you think about it, you’re just going to get depressed. Your life is totally pointless, really. Now that you’re alive, very few people truly care about you. When you’re dead, everyone will forget you were ever there, given enough time. What’s the point of trying?

The point is to have fun.

I decided last December that I wanted to be an optimist. I wanted to be an optimist so I could be happy, I wanted to be happy so I could have fun, and I wanted to have fun so I could have fun. My entire goal in life is to have fun, and to help other people have fun: maximize the fun! And if you screw something up, try not to dwell on it needlessly; that wouldn’t be fun.

Pessimism creates a self-fulfilling prophecy. If you expect something to turn out badly, it’ll probably turn out badly. It’s your fault for having zero confidence in yourself. Make an effort to do everything to your full potential, and give life all you’ve got. Life is all you’ve got, after all. You aren’t guaranteed an afterlife; it might exist, but there’s hardly a guarantee.

This is all just my roundabout way of saying this:

Choose to be happy.

Life is crap, and you’re going to have to do crappy things sometimes. You might have to take a job that you hate to get enough money to live in a house that you hate, with neighbours that you hate, and no future that you don’t hate. I know it’s hard, but you have to pull through and make an effort to see the light at the end of your crappy tunnel. It’s literally all you can do.

I know it’s stupid. I’m fully aware that everything I’ve said in this article is just wishy-washy feel-good bullshit. That’s fine. If bullshit makes you happy, go ahead and pile up more bullshit. Choose to be happy.

The true goal in this exercise is to weed out the weak — the people who visit your website for such base needs as “content”. There’s an art to web design that some people just can’t appreciate on its own. These people need to be lost if you are to be a true artist, and my studies have shown that there is no better way to do so than to ruin your website with the following tips:

5. Don’t label anything clearly.
Common navigation tools are too easy to understand! Why have an “about” page to explain who you are and why you have a website? If you use a synonym for the word “about”, but provide the exact same information you would normally, you can confuse your visitors without having to do much work.

Consider words such as:

• Author
• Legacy
• Identity
• Pretentious Asshole with a Thesaurus
• Me

4. Abuse long filenames.
No one reads URLs these days, anyway. That’s why companies don’t put their website’s full domain on all their business cards, and popular domain names don’t get sold for huge sums of money. Why not show your disregard for basic readability by having the most unwieldy URLs imaginable?

To start off, you’ll need two or three hyphens in the domain. But make sure not to put a hyphen between every word, because that would create a pattern. Use something like bensawesome-web-site.org.uk — and make sure to never use a common TLD such as .com or .net! Those are for conformists, anyway.

When people go to your website, make an index.html redirect them to Main_Page.htm — search engines will thank you later! If you need to redesign your website, just put all your work in /New%20Web%20Site/. When your new design reaches the deployment stage, just change your index redirect to go to /New%20Web%20Site/Main_Page.htm. Who needs to do things like removing superfluous directories, or not using characters that require awkward workarounds? That’s just unnecessary effort. Note: The mix of spaces and underscores is crucial! Think different!

3. Tilt everything.

2. Make everything a PDF.
If your website has rich content that would benefit from a rich format such as PDF, make sure to put it in a PDF. If your website has ordinary content that could easily be placed on the website itself, make sure to put that in a PDF, too. And whatever you do, never make any indication that your links lead to PDFs. Everyone likes surprises!

If you put your text in a PDF without any ornamentation, though, people might notice how much of a dumbass you are. Take the extra time to underline random words and add inappropriate colours. Arrange everything in a table so it looks like a half-assed Excel spreadsheet, and your audience will be successfully fooled! Take another shot.

1. Don’t have a favicon.
A favicon is that little icon to the left of the URL bar in all modern web browsers. It used to be rather uncommon, but it’s totally ubiquitous on the web nowadays. But not for your website! After taking all that effort tilting all the images, putting all your text into PDFs, writing long filenames, and reading the thesaurus, who has time to make a favicon? It’s not like it only takes 15 seconds or anything! But this might not be the right approach for you…

There are certain Firefox extensions that can replace the hideous “no favicon” image with appealing shapes and such things. The only way to foil these extensions’ attack on your artistic integrity is to master the art of giving your website a bad favicon. A good start would be to take a picture of something irrelevant, then resize it with MS Paint. If you don’t have a camera, just take something off Google Image Search.

If you’re really feeling creative, why not skip the photo part entirely and just give your website a white box for a favicon? In fact, why not replace your entire website with a big white box? No one is going to read the damn thing anyway. And it might help you get into art school, what with all those high standards and all.

There really is an art to making a website so appalling that no one will ever read it. It’s an art that some people just don’t have the talent for, but they shouldn’t feel too bad. At least they’re trying. Some people just use Microsoft Frontpage.

The foreskin is not a necessary part of the penis — in the sense that it doesn’t actually affect the man’s reproductive function — but cutting it off is entirely unnecessary. In fact, it goes beyond being unnecessary. Circumcision in this day and age is flat-out stupid. It’s not a big deal, no, but it gets way less controversy than it deserves.

There are five horrible arguments I see people make in support of circumcision: let’s rip them to shreds.

5) “My religion says that men need to be circumcised.”

This is probably the best reason to get your son circumcised, I’ll admit. It’s stupid, but at least it doesn’t pretend to be anything more than a vague excuse. Saying “my religion says so” is the equivalent to plugging your ears and humming, really.

But really, who cares about your religion? It’s always annoyed me how religious people like to pick and choose things to believe. Whenever something makes no sense or gets thoroughly disproven through science, the religious have a tendency to excuse whatever conflicting dogma they have — so it’s an allegory now? Fair enough, but if you’re going to ignore bits of your religion anyway, just ignore the part about circumcision as well.

I’ll be honest: I hate religion. Can’t stand it. Even so, I accept that people have a right to believe what they want. What I don’t accept is using your beliefs to circumcise your son, who might not even have the same beliefs as you. It’s not like you’d know.

4) “The foreskin can cause health problems.”

This is the most infuriating, but it’s low on the list because it’s not as common as it used to be. Still, I do occasionally talk to people who labour under the impression that circumcision is “good for you”. IT ISN’T! And some people just refuse to accept this fact. How hard is it to understand?

Yes, it is technically true that circumcision at birth can prevent certain medical problems such as phimosis. But how common is phimosis? I’ll give you a hint: it’s not! No matter what all the over-diagnoses from paranoid parents and ridiculous old wives’ tales say, the vast majority of men do not have a hard time retracting their foreskin.

That applies to pretty much every medical myth about circumcision. There’s no significant medical benefit to circumcision, and anyone who says otherwise — based on some urban legend — is woefully misinformed.

3) “Circumcised is easier to clean!”

This argument is just baffling to me. Are uncircumcised penises really that hard to clean? According to a lot of people who aren’t uncircumcised men, yes they are. According to everyone else, what the hell are you talking about? That makes no sense. Do you have a hard time cleaning under your arms, too?

There’s no greater way to say “I have no confidence in my son whatsoever” than to get him cut at birth. You don’t even know him yet and you already think he’s a slob! Seriously, it might be uncomfortable if you have to remind your son to wash behind his ears penis, but that won’t even be necessary. He can figure it out on his own, I’m sure.

2) “It feels better for a woman!”

And gay men, presumably, but nobody ever mentions that. All I can say to this is, how the hell do you know? Most countries aren’t split evenly: either a huge number of people are circumcised, or almost no one is. It’s very unlikely for someone to have experience with both cut and uncut penises, in significant enough numbers to actually be able to have a non-bullshit opinion on the matter. And even if you do have the credentials necessary to shout your opinion, it doesn’t even matter. That’s still just your opinion. If there were an obvious winner in the war of “what penises feel better”, it would be common knowledge. Yet people give different answers to the “what feels better” question, usually in direct relation to what is more common in their country.

Beyond your son’s hypothetical future partner, there’s also his sensation to think about. Some people who have had circumcisions later in life say the sensation is worse, and some say that it’s the same. No one says that it’s better, except for the people who have no way of telling. So the option you’re given is thus: have no effect on the sensation whatsoever, rendering the surgery pointless in that regard, or have a negative effect on the sensation, which is a bad thing. Unless you want your son to have less sensation.

I’ve heard the excuse that being less sensitive is a good thing, because then the man can last longer and let his partner have an orgasm first. The people who honestly think this have a) no confidence in their son again, and b) an intimate knowledge of old sitcom cliches. Just shut the hell up already, please. That whole “women are hard to please” shit is getting more annoying by the day.

1) “It looks better circumcised!”

So what, you’re a penis connoisseur? People’s opinions on the aesthetic show the same pattern as above: their preferences depend on what’s most common in their country. So yes, most people in the USA would say they like cut penises better. That could be a valid reason to get your son circumcised: you want him to be accepted by his future lovers, you don’t want him to be ugly, or “different”, or whatever. That’s a good thing for a parent to think about. But you still have to take a risk with it: what if the surgery goes wrong?

It’s not likely in this day and age, but it’s certainly possible. And is it really worth it to take a risk just for the sake of looks? Would you support his expensive plastic surgery, too? Getting it cut just because you think it looks better is a silly reason; a silent way of saying, “Yeah, I don’t really have a reason. I’m just going with the crowd because I’m too lazy to resist.”

Circumcision represents something. Whether your country makes it the norm or not, making your decision based on that fact alone shows that you can’t be bothered thinking for yourself, and you have a disregard for your son, however slight it may be. You should do research and make an educated decision, because myths and misconceptions are rampant when it comes to routine practices like this.

Many circumcised men won’t want to think about it, or they’ll fudge up an answer so they don’t have to think negatively about themselves. But really, it doesn’t matter if you’re circumcised or not. Just because it’s something we should stop, doesn’t mean it’s something we should be ashamed of.

I bet my mother didn’t think I’d ever write 1300 words about penises. Your children can surprise you.