The People's Panda

Has anybody ever taken the time to realize how complex the human body is? We are an intricate network of blood vessels and organs. muscle and tissue all packed up nice and neat in a fleshy bag. Every moment we are awake our bodies are doing amazing things all on their own. Shivering to keep us warm, pumping adrenaline to get us through trouble and pain, constantly inflating and deflating our lungs with life giving air. Distributing blood and oxygen where needed. And yet one cell, one tiny cell can decide not to do any of that. And like an insidious double agent it can corrupt more cells, turning them against the greater whole and beginning to poison a person. Disrupting lives and relationships. Killing or maiming, or just tormenting innocent people. It has no pattern. It attacks the victim and the aggressor, the innocent and the guilty. It will attack killers and doctors and heroes and villians. And it will not sleep, it will nost rest. It will force you to attack it. To become as violent and clever as it is. It will not go down without a fight. And it will leave you forever, irrevocably changed. Whether you have it, or know someone who does, it will mark you for life, a walking casualty of the battle that it cornered you into. You become more cynical, more bitter at times. There will be anger, and hate. And your heart and soul and body will be covered in the battlescars it inflicts. And no one will hand you a medal. There will be no presedential speach in your honor. You will either beat it, or it will beat you and then life will continue or it won't. But for the people who fought it, and the people who fought with them, it will bond you, bring you together like nothing before or after. One great united forced, that took down an enemy you could not intimidate, that you could not scare. You will be stronger despite your scars. They will forever mark you a warrior. A fighter. You will love harder, live better, and nothing and no one will ever be able to take that from you. Even one tiny cell that decided not to conform. Fuck that cell, fuck cancer, and hoo rah to every person living or dead that has stood up to it, looked it square in its proverbial face and given it the finger. Piece of shit disease.

-Panda Out

So I went to see Avatar a few weeks ago and loved it. And like the mildly obsessed fan I am, I've been reading up on the movie online. And this whole thing with the different interest groups being pissed off by it just irritates me. I don't really care if you like or don't like the movie. Nobody is going to make a movie that everyone likes. But the things they're saying are just crazy. Anti-smoking groups are upset that one of the main protagonists is a smoker. It sends a bad message. Personally I think it sends a much more realistic image. I am getting tired of this idea that in movies, only bad guys, slick players, and anyone pre-1960's should smoke. Newsflash. A mass amount of people smoke. Good people, bad people, neutral normal people. Saints and sinners and cops and criminals. The same doctors telling you to quit are lighting up in the Mercedes on the way home. They know its wrong, its not healthy, whatever. They smoke because they're addicted. Or because they just plain old want to. To say that we can possibly guilt an entire planet into quitting because the strong and protective Grace Augestine character doesn't smoke is just stupid. Plenty of protagonists don't smoke and its had no effect on our habits. Education and seeing our loved ones hacking up their lungs have stopped far more than Hollywood. Accept that people smoke, accept that the good guy is going to gave flaws. And be happy that thats the biggest flaw you can find with her.

And then there are the feminists saying that they're upset that the Na'vi males are designed to look more muscular and strong than the females. I'm sorry. I missed something here. Because I was under the impression that both genders were of a lithe, slimly muscular build, with very little excess muscle in the first place. Then I was pretty sure that the main Na'vi protagonist was a female who was more than capable of taking care of herself, as well as hunting just about everything. She did save Jake at the beginning of the movie after all. In any event, a person's build does not determine their strength, or their ability to defend themselves or others. The women of Avatar, as with all of James Cameron's movies, are strong minded, strong willed, and able bodied. To have HIS movie of all people's attacked by feminists is hilarious. This man brought us Rose from Titanic, who in the early 1900's would bare everything for a man she barely knew, and demand he sketch her honestly, not glaze over details to make her feel better. Then she abandons a gauranteed life boat to save him. He brought us Sarah Connor, a mother hell bent on protecting her son and averting global apocalypse (who remembers stopping off in the desert for guns in T2 eh? Ehhh?). And finally he brought us Ripley, arguably among the most, if not THE most badass of all female protagonists. She took down an entire fucking species and did it with style.

I won't even go into the conservatives who say he's attacking capatalism and blowing the enviormental issues we face way out of proportion. I'm too lazy to write that much. But to sum it up. This is a movie. A good movie. Which thankfully has a good story to go with a stunning look. End of Story. Like it or not, its succeeded already, and no amount of pitiful whining on your part is going to stop it.

-Panda Out

Just making sure everything works/looks close to how I want it to