Author: cmo015

Ben Rees
Writer

Animals are not people. They do have rights, and no animal should be treated poorly; however, these rights are animal rights, not people rights. If I cannot pee on 6th Street without getting a ticket, animals should not be able to sit at the table. I know there is no rule that says dogs must abide by an established canine code of conduct, and luckily, most people who own pets are wholly reasonable and keep their dog’s food in the dog bowl instead of in bone china (go figure). This being said, some strange people interact with their animals in a very creepy and inappropriate manner.

I wasn’t joking earlier; I know people whose dogs sit at the dinner table with them. Because dogs physically can’t sit at the table, and under my chair is ever so lonely, they go above and beyond their call of duty as owners and actually sit their dogs on the table. This isn’t right. I don’t care how many times cleaner a dog’s mouth is than a human’s, if I bathed by licking myself, I don’t think I would be allowed anywhere near the house, much less on the dinner table. When I asked this eccentric couple why their beloved Jeremy sat on the table (note the creepy human name), they told me it was too cold for him on the floor. Now, I’m no evolutionary biologist, nor a veterinarian, but I can bet that the reason animals have fur is because it keeps them warm, especially when they sit on the floor.

In addition, as much as I enjoy providing a pooch with a good ear rub, I just plain don’t like when animals follow me around. When I walk out of my bedroom at eight in the morning, I don’t want there to be a furry bridge troll at my doorway who won’t let me through until I throw a ball down the hall.

Pets are not children, nor will they ever be a suitable indicator for whether a couple is capable of having an baby. They are not the same thing, and just because you can walk a dog every day doesn’t mean you can push a stroller full of Furbees while you breast-feed.

The moral of this column is as follows: people who treat their animals like people are exceedingly creepy. Having a conversation with your dog doesn’t stimulate its intellectual capacities, especially when it’s scooting around on the living room rug. The only thing worse than talking to your dog is talking to your cat. At least your dog is staring at you while you talk; cats are essentially Slinkies with fur. Talking to your cat is only a half step up from talking to yourself, and we all know where you end up after years of doing that.

Ben Rees
Writer

I was seriously disturbed after seeing the somewhat recent movie “Chernobyl Diaries,” or rather, the trailer (I’m sure you don’t walk away with much more after seeing the whole thing). It wasn’t the mutated goblin-people that got to me, nor was it the blood and gore. Instead, what truly scared me was the realization that people have a strange fixation, no, obsession with death. This morose obsession does not revolve around the consistent, inescapable encroachment of death; rather, it is fueled by our sick desire to not only see, but also comprehend all of the horrendous ways a human body can be destroyed. The simple Braveheart-esque sword plunge has lost its entertainment factor and now is being replaced by things like putting someone’s limbs in an automatic pencil sharpener, fueled by an electric current from a 1987 Honda battery into his unsuspecting nipples.

According to Spike TV’s last chance at any sort of ratings, there are “1000 Ways to Die.”  Why do we need to know all the obscure ways that our heads can possibly be smashed? It’s because we are constantly undergoing a kind of desensitization. Remember “ER?” The show ran from 1994-2009, making it a program that effectively spanned the equivalent of a millennium in the special effects galaxy. Even when blood looked like nothing more than barbeque sauce, in the early 90s, people grimaced and cringed. Even a few years ago, during the Mel Gibson “sugar-tits” era, “The Passion of the Christ” was thought to be the most graphic thing on the big screen. Since then, we have greatly surpassed anything that was thought up by “Mad Max.”

What happened? Why do we need to see horrible things happen to unsuspecting, innocent people? In these movies, the person who usually gets caught in a paper shredder isn’t even a bad individual. We’ve moved passed karma and have become fans of indiscriminate robo-shark attacks.

I’ll tell you what happened. We are bored. As people, we’ve become so accustomed to immediate gratification that we no longer care about what happens between the start of the movie and when the characters are killed off. We’ve written off all engagement in plot, and all we want to see is when the mutant bats eat someone’s eyes out. The best proof of this transformation I can give is this: when any group of people get together to watch the Oscars, absolutely nobody there has seen even half of the nominated films. I don’t just mean the obscure silent ones from New Guinea, but even the pictures that have a good deal of cinematic quality were unseen, which apparently nobody wanted to because it was over two hours long and didn’t show Channing Tatum’s testicles in 3D.

I don’t mean to accuse these low budget films of being total wastes of space and time, but please do yourselves and the greater American populace a favor: one time this year, just once, go and see a quality movie with a deep plot line. You’ll feel good about yourself and maybe, just maybe, you’ll enjoy a movie without a disemboweling scene.