A little nutrition for thought...

[Thinas]

(IMPORTANT PRENOTE. THE LINKS IN BELOW MESSAGE CANNOT BE LOADED BY CLICKING DIRECTLY ON THEM. YOU HAVE TO COPY PASTE THEM INTO AN ENTIRELY NEW BROWSER.)

 

And so it came to pass that a cocky idiot finds himself at the gates of The Pen. Yeah...He wrote a letter, tied it to an arrow and fired it in, over the walls before. But this time, he thinks, he might be better off walking in with it himself. They say the places you get to see in there are worth the effort. So here goes.

 

My application is neither fiction nor poetry nor drama. It's another one of these ugly thoughts that strike me. A realization about something utterly random and really, quite useless, nevertheless interesting. (I think).

 

I am a 19-year-old kiddo. And I watch quite an amount of movies. The knowledge one slowly accumulates about movies gets frightening. I've reached the level where I begin to discuss movie-related subjects that immediately give away my nerd-status to anyone listening. If you want a good example of my condition, take the two conveniencestore/video shop guys from Kevin Smith's "Clerks". Yeah. I'm that bad.

 

If you haven't already guessed it, what you are about to be subjected to is a movie rant. It's an ethical detail that suddenly struck me, and I tried to explain it to Gwai over IRC a while back. It failed miserably. Wrong approach. As the arrogant snot I am and as video freaks often become, I assumed she'd seen this particular movie as many times as I have, and thus, noticed as many details as I have. She hadn't. It went to hell. This is not a mistake I make twice, however. So fear not. This time, I'll carefully explain so even people who haven't seen the movie at all have a good chance at catching what I'm talking about.

 

We'll begin with a picture. I have uploaded this to my brinkster account beforehand.

 

http://www16.brinkster.com/thinas/Matrix031.jpg

 

Provided the link works, note that you are looking at a scene from the movie "The Matrix". The time in the movie is where the hero (Keanu Reeves, "Neo") has just swallowed the red pill at the meeting with Morpheus and has been freed from the Matrix. He just recently woke up from the computer-generated, illusory world that is The Matrix, and is now sitting up in his cell, wondering what's going on. A robotic drone senses the malfunction (Humans aren't supposed to wake up) and comes to check on him. Since his mind is no longer trapped in The Matrix, his body is useless to the machines. So the drone disconnects him by ripping out all the wires that go into his body. Neo is then flushed out into a pool, where Morpheus' ship comes and picks him up. So much for the situation...

 

What's interesting is Neo's red cell, and those in the background of the picture. Neo's cell is not exactly unique. There are thousands, yes, even millions of these cells. The point in the entire movie, the wronging that justifies the beatings, is these cells. They are power generators. Humans in the movie are kept as prisoners, their minds sleeping in an eternal dream, The Matrix, so that the machines of the real world outside can use the human bodies to generate power and thereby run the machines. Furthermore, there are scenes of fields in the movie, in which human babies are grown in red, egg-shaped cocoons until they're large enough to be inserted into the huge powerplant of millions of human batteries. It is these fields I went on the net to get a picture of, but the one picture I did find above will serve its purpose.

 

Looking at the picture, we grimace at this fictional fate. We find it preposterous that we intelligent beings could ever be degraded to that, could ever be subject of such cruel abusal. And then the filmic setup works. The movie succesfully identifies the bad guys for us, for with that scene, we place our blame on the machines. They are evil, we think. Controlling. Scary. Their atrocities against the human race should be brought to an end. They should be destroyed.

 

And now, for the hopefully shocking point of this ramble. There we sit, every last one of us, yours truly included, in the comforting darkness of the theater, and are professional hypocrites. All of us. Hypocrites. We sit and watch a horde of machines abuse and imprison the human race to uphold itself, and we call it evil.

 

But the true question really is...

 

http://www16.brinkster.com/thinas/point.jpg

http://www16.brinkster.com/thinas/kyllingehal.gif

 

...who's evil? How many species do we abuse to uphold US?

 

Can you blame machines that are not capable of morale? Conscience? Or perhaps the machines of The Matrix, in some weird sense, function as a symbol of the human race, and their crimes done to us in the movie, the crimes we do to nature in real life?

 

Saw those chicken? There were 18 per squaremeter.

 

Think about it.

 

The morale of the story is that one should NEVER, EVER, watch as many movies as I have. For if you do, above bull**** is the result. Now double up into a fetal position and suck your thumbs.

 

/Thinas the Darkelf\

 

Local Lunatic of Denmark

Edited April 7, 2003 by Thinas

[Degenero Angelus]

Clerks is a great movie

 

Really unique application, though I shouldn't have expected less, from you. Good job, and good luck.

[Wyvern]

Wyvern lobs his clawed feet onto the top of his cluttered desk, rubbing his scaly chin in admiration while reading over Thinas' breakdown of "The Matrix" and it's potential relations to the poultry/pork market of the U.S... Grinning evily to himself and jotting down several notes on potentially cheap ways of starting a meat market for a scheme, the overgrown lizard belches a few flames and happily turns towards the dark elf applicant, exclaiming:

 

"A very interesting piece of analysis, Thinas! Glad you ran out of arrow letters and found your way into the Pen... Being a "Matrix" fan myself, I might point out a few more interesting observations in the pictures you offered..."

 

Wyvern picks up the first picture, which depicts the robot scene from "The Matrix", and gleefully hisses:

 

"If one examines this picture carefully and magnifies it, one may notice that the robots don't have trademarks of any sort, dispelling the common myth that trademarks are a trendy fashion in futuristic robot culture. People might also note that the human in this picture is being drawn out of a long, red contraption... subtle advertising at it's finest! "Oscar Weiners" anyone...?"

 

Thinas stares at the picture thoughtfully, trying to imagine the long red contraption the human is being pulled out of in a hot dog bun...

 

"What's more..." continues Wyvern "... the design of the robot in the picture is obviously a rejected design of the character Charlotte from the animated picture "Charlotte's Web." This alludes to the fact that the robots of this dark future are in fact controlled by the cyrogenetically frozen body of Walt Disney, who went crazy after watching 'Bambi' one too many times..."

 

Snickering to himself, Wyvern picks up the picture containing the confined pigs and snorts:

 

"Interesting... I never realized Melba was raised on a farm, but that face peeking out of the lower lefthand corner of this picture is undoubtedly her. I actually believe this was a cut scene scene from 'The Matrix' when, after Neo had learned Kung Fu, he wanted to learn farming and the art of piggyback riding..."

 

Finally, turning to the picture of the chickens, Wyvern raises a brow and mutters:

 

"Ahhhhh yes... Zool showed me this picture previously, I believe. It's the chicken plantation right before Zool's rubber chicken got stuck in the fabric of the machinery and the entire plantation went haywire..."

 

Wyvern smirks at his findings, then bows his head to Thinas and stamps the honorable dark elf's application "ACCEPTED."

 

;-)

 

OOC: An ACCEPTED application, Thinas, welcome to the Mighty Pen! Though I normally prefer stories or poetry, this was a very creatively thought out and well written piece of analysis that certainly deserves acceptance. Be sure to either post your e-mail address here or send me a mail at elitwack90@hotmail.com so I can send you some additional Pen info. Welcome once again... I'm very glad you decided to apply, and apologize for the lateness of my response.