robot vs ape

These guys are my heroes:

I’m going to begin simply, if I may: hell yeah! I repeat, hell yeah!

Now it’s 3:45 am and considering I have trouble with typos on a good day, I’m gonna do my best to write without making it apparent I’ve had a few drinks tonight (damn, too late, that was fast).

So a few months ago when first watching the Iron Man trailer, my friends said, “Boo-yah! Halla at your boy!” Now, I probably halla’d a couple times too with all the peer pressure, but inwardly there was apprehension. I mean, they fucking played Black Sabbath’s “Iron Man” when he’s barbecuing Afghan soldiers with a flame thrower. However, I’ve finally seen the film and have three things to write.

Number 1: I’m watching the movie. This scene, Tony Stark is watching a news report about innocent civilians in the Middle East being tortured and oppressed by terrorists — terrorists armed with weapons from his company and the United States. He sits on the couch. He listens to the death toll. He, as we have wished we could do so many times, tightens the bolts of a super-powered suit, a tool to right wrongs and alleviate his guilt caused by lives ruined with the weapons of his own nation. If you don’t like this film, you need to be fucking boxed in the ears.

Number 2: Robert Downey Jr.

Number 3: Even the Black Sabbath song worked.

So I recently resumed reading Mao: the Unknown Story by Jung Chang, starring Mao Zedong. There is an official estimate by the Chinese government saying Mao was 70% right and 30% wrong (I love the fact that they have percentages). Many people switch those figures. Jung Chang forgets both of them and pretty much says Mao was 100% evil.

Taking that into consideration and accepting whatever biases there are, the book is a slightly tough read. He murders subordinates, tortures villagers, introduces government policy which ends up killing 30 or so million people. When reading it, you keep hoping that the book will deviate from history and let the current rival or disenfranchised follower quietly assassinate Mao, followed by a happy ending. Alas, it’s like eight hundred pages about a villain. And the villain always wins.

Monday night, I finally closed the book in frustration and decided life should be fun (then I went to bed and dreamed about being Jason Bourne. Auspicious!) The next day I went to Borders to find a new book and encountered a philosophical… something. Browsing the history section, I ended up amid the books about China. Mao: the Unknown Story sat on the shelf huge and red. Nearby was Red Star Over China by Edgar Snow, which I’ve heard is like the government approved history text to Jung Chang’s Howard Zinn. Two books on one shelf, biased in opposite directions.

Here’s the philosophical something. All around were sections for other regions — Africa, India, the Middle East, etc. I know of all these places, but do I really know them know them? (by the way, I love that grammatical structure.) There are hundreds of books, none written by robots, none unbiased. I experience a confusingly existential moment with a skosh of pessimism. For the first time, I perfectly understand people who hate history.

The end. Nothing too enlightening, but it was a new sensation. Oh, in case you’re wondering, my trip to the book store ended with me buying I’m a Stranger Here Myself, by Bill Bryson. His writing consistently entertains, and the book’s subtitle “Notes on Returning to America After Twenty Years Away” piqued my interest. Bryson getting bewildered by American culture sounds right up my alley these days.

One more thing before I finish, I really like that part in Star Wars when Yoda talks about “luminous beings.” He’s like the Martin Luther King of tiny green men.

With my wacom tablet back, drawing on the computer is possible again.

The other two boxes from Taiwan arrived. Yay!