The Pharmacy(TM)

Halloween. Undas. (The second one, the local equivalent, but not exactly a direct translation of the western “All Souls Day”, somehow has a more ominous ring to it).

How to spend this holiday? Go to cemetery? Done. Trick or Treat? Sorry, trite. Watch movies? Nothing good showing right now.

Stay up late and watch good-old fashioned horror?

Yes, definitely.

Watching fright movies during Halloween is a favorite past time that I remember doing not only with my family, but also with friends back in grade school and high school. Actually, it’s not quite as easy as it sounds. The traditional horror movies under which we’ve all been raised are not by any means homogenous in quality or theme. In fact, for best effect, I’ve learned that you should avoid “mixing” horror movies. It’s better to watch more of the same thing.

Why? The mechanics of fear and horror movies at a glance seem pretty much straightforward: we fear things that we are not familiar with–we fear the unknown. But if you think about it further, considering the (presumably) myriad things that we do not know, there’s a lot of room to play with–and consequently, more complexity involved. What’s scary to one person, could be funny to another.

Further, and the whole plethora of horror movies is a testament, what seems to scare us most, is not the completely unknown (which would border more on fantasy and science-fiction), but the best horror movies seem to play on what seems familiar at first, but then turns out to be completely alien, and thus, terrifying.

Although I am by no means an expert (who is anyway?), just quickly browsing at the common “themes” in horror movies, we find numerous ways of how the familiar is turned into the fearfully unknown.

In satanic/demonic horror (e.g. Omen, Exorcist, Hellraiser), the familiar is turned horrifying through possession or corruption. Here the world is at the mercy of universal forces outside the knowledge of man.

In psychological horror (e.g. The Shining, Psycho), the line between the familiar and the unknown is blurred further as one learns the enemy to be afraid of is not external, but in the mind. We are our own worst nightmare.

In slasher horror (e.g. Nightmare, Friday the 13^th, Halloween, Texas Chainsaw), this concept is almost satirically abused by taking familiar and safe surroundings (i.e. suburbia, a vacation, etc.) and adding that odd element (i.e. the slasher). To further wear down the point, in more recent incarnations of this sub-genre, the slasher turns out to be one of the earlier “heroes”.

Classic monster horror (e.g. Dracula, Frankenstein, Salem’s Lot, The Howling) is rich with this analogy, usually involving a familiar person that hides a terrible secret/curse, or another person that unknowingly creates/unleashes a terrible horror into the world.

Which brings us to my favorite by far of all horror flicks: the zombie horror movie. In my opinion, there’s nothing more straightforward, nothing more familiar turned terrifying, than walking corpses. Flesh eating walking corpses.

Having seen my fair share of these movies (and continuing to do so) over the better part of my childhood and adult life, there are a few things I’ve noticed among these movies, and some questions as well. Most of which I shall now commit to writing, just fun of course.

Meantime, as Halloween is still around, you all still have time to get the following movies to satisfy your craving for horror. Remember, don’t “mix.”

Exorcist (Satanic): It’s really just 1 and 3 for me. 2 is a piss-off. And the recent prequel doesn’t do justice to it. Always go for the director’s cuts.

Omen (Satanic): The Antichrist gets born (1), grows up (2), and tries to conquer the world (3). Lovers of the Da Vinci Code will like the bible references.

Psycho (Psychological): Watch the Hitchcock original. 2 and 3 are passable (but inferior) sequels. The remake is not worth it.

The Shining (Psychological): Watch Jack Nicholson go crazy (as he usually does). This is not the version Stephen King liked though, but is the best one so far.

Texas Chainsaw Massacre (Slasher): For the original camp feel. The remake is also good, but more cheezy. The villain: Leatherface, is really wearing a mask. He has 3 or 4 kinds of masks in the movie.

Halloween (Slasher): Jamie Lee Curtis gets her break in this film. There are six movies all in all, but the first is the best. Mike Myers (the killer not the comedian) wears a mask as well — it’s a Star Trek William Shatner mask painted white.

Friday the 13th (Slasher): Jason in a hockey mask kills no two people in the same manner (try to count the ways). Has lots of sequels to choose from–all equally gory an inane. Also spawned a TV series–which was actually good. Has a fight with Freddie of Nightmare in one movie. 

Nightmare on Elm Street (Slasher): Crazy claw-gloved man invades your dreams. Also has a ton of sequels. Has a fight with Friday’s Jason in one movie.

Evil Dead Trilogy (Zombie): Teenagers planning to go on a vacation filled with drugs, sex, and rock and roll, unknowingly cast a spell that raises corpses from the dead. The whole trilogy is cool, ending with Army of Darkness, where the hero gets transported to medieval times to battle the undead.

George Romero’s Living Dead Movies (Zombie): Begins with Night of the Living Dead, where people get trapped in a house overnight as corpses start rising from the dead because of space fallout. Continues with Dawn of the Dead where people get trapped in a Mall as the disease spreads. Continues yet further in Day of the Dead as the last human survivors build undergroud shelters and study ways to reverse the animating process. Finally in the most recent Land of the Dead the zombies start getting more intelligent and wish to carve out a society of their own. Both Night and Dawn have had good remakes recently. Also the completely unrelated 28 Days Later has the same feel of these movies.

<End of Part 1>

"She was telling me about her recent life. She had broken-up with her boyfriend of four years just three months ago. Yeah, I know it’s usually a dating faux pas to talk about ex-relationships. However, call it one of those few instances when the wrong thing seems to work. Who was I to stand between a woman and a good time, eh?"

I nodded and looked at my half-finished shot of vodka, debating for a split-second whether or not to finish it. My friend, a little fresher after his trip to the restroom, was telling me about last night’s date–with Ms. Direction as he called her.

The band was on its first set playing a little jazz.

My ears perked up. "Hey Incubus. A Certain Shade of Green. Nice."

"The is lounge version? I saw it on MTV once–I still prefer the original. Although the band’s not that bad–the one we have right now I mean."

I leaned back into my own chair to enjoy the nice sounds emanating from the band–enough shots of vodka elevating me into that perfect buzz. I looked at my friend and saw he was in a similar mode and we remained thus for a couple of minutes until he broke the truce.

"So, you were saying?"

"Well, one night the guy apparently had a few good drinks in a bar with a friend of his, who had another friend with him–the girl."

"Your date?"

My friend shook his head slightly and took swig from his beer. "No, another girl. The one her boyfriend got drunk with, and incidentally ended up having sex with, and as luck would have it–got her pregnant."

"Oh I see. Hence the break-up?"

"I guess. Ms. Direction was nonchalant about it. The guy didn’t tell her about the one-night affair until she confronted him. It’s a classic six degrees of separation:  she knew a friend who knows someone who knows the a cousin of the girl her boyfriend fucked. And she found out eventually."

I couldn’t help my slight laughter. "Bumm–mmer. That’s got to be the most unlikely, not to mention down-right crappy thing that could happen to a guy."

"I almost felt sorry for this guy–my date notwithstanding. She said, ‘You know the Corrs: Forgiven not Forgotten. Well I’m a forgiving person, but I had to break up with him, not because I haven’t forgiven him–which I have. But because I will never forget that he did that to someone, and didn’t think of me.’"

I smiled a bit. "Makes sense. Funny, I think I’ve heard that from a number of girls, not in the context of pregnancy of course. But usually in the context of a break-up. Weird."

"She told me that her boyfriend eventually abandoned the girl anyway, and after she told him that there was no way they were getting back together–especially after learning that he had consciously ignored his obligation. But wait a minute, this is what she said next:

‘Don’t get me wrong, I’m not trying to come across as a conservative. I’m not exactly a religious person and all. But it got me thinking about the stuff they teach back in school about being faithful and sex and all that. When I learned that my boyfriend got a girl pregnant I just finished watching a documentary about penguins and how they survive. Seems like every other living creature actively does everything to ensure their survival.’

‘And then I’ve been to orphanages and even know some people coming from broken families. Sure I know stories of some who actually make it. But how many actually do anyway? You realise eventually that infidelity and extra-marital or pre-marital recreational sex is practically tantamount to genetic suicide. It breaks up families, leads to abortion, or child abandonment. And we’re not even talking about diseases and the emotional stress caused by it–but it’s something we seem to love to do to ourselves.’

‘I kept thinking about a child coming into the world with parents who are not ready for it. What kind of future did he condemn that child to? Even if unintentional?’"

I laughed again and took a deep breath. My boozed friend was quoting his date in verbatim–that’s alcohol for you. "Your girl’s a moralist."

"I thought the same way. Then I realised she wasn’t exactly preaching to me–that’s another dating no-no. She made me think about relationships, the way we get stuck thinking about the right thing to do to prolong it, and forget about the whole idea of being in one in the first place: to enrich our lives and enliven it."

"Whoah, so I take it there’ll be a follow-up?"

My friend was quiet for a moment–brows knit, giving my question some thought.

"You remember Pascal’s Wager?"

"Remind me."

"The guy who confronted atheism with a little probabilistic argument about God? He said that since it didn’t cost much to believe, in case you found out somehow eventually that God didn’t exist, you don’t lose much by believing. But in the opposite case that it turns out that there is a God–then believers have everything to gain. Since we’re just dealing with dual probability–say 50:50 of God existing, then believing is the efficient decision to make. How’s that for teaching religion without theology?"

"Gosh dude. I don’t know if it’s all the vodka, but I swear that girl had a bigger effect on you than you’re admitting."

"She just might man. And to answer your question, I’ll probably see her again."

"Oh no, don’t tell me: it’s the efficient decision to make?"

"Haha, I just think of it this way, man. Day-by-day we go through our lives with a question at the back of our minds: ‘Are things going to be ok? Is there a happy ending to my life?’"

"That’s two questions."

"Whatever. Point is, we either believe we are here for a reason, or things just happened to happen by accident. And like old-Pascal, I will believe that things happen for a reason–because it doesn’t cost me much to believe anyway. But then it begs another question: ‘What’s the reason?’"

My head was beginning to throb. It was either the vodka or my friend.

"And when me mull over that ‘reason’–that’s when things get hairy. We try to live our lives to do the good thing, and to avoid the evil thing. Barring acts of nature, there isn’t actually anything that we people do that can be actually classified as really ‘evil’. Even the most despicable people I know or read about have done whatever they did for the good of something–even it’s if only for their own good–it’s for a ‘good’ thing, despite how evil others perceive them to be."

Yep, it was my friend all right.

"So, no true evil can exist without reference to something good. Therefore, I will add to my belief: that things happen for a reason, and that reason, whatever it may be, is a ‘good’ reason. Having said that, why should I worry about anything then?"

"Just go see the girl again man and tell me how it goes. You got it all worked out anyway."

"Yeah. I will. Whatever." My friend finished his beer.

I laughed and nodded, while my friend motioned for the bill.

* * *

The walk back to the parking lot behind the bar was comfortable. The annoying rain earlier had abated and gone was the day’s warm humidity replaced by a soothing cool evening breeze. The breeze and the alcohol coursing through my veins gave me a bliss that I don’t remember feeling for a long time.

Reaching my car, I gazed up at the cloudy sky–some parts clearing up as the rainclouds were blowing away to some other part of the night city, carrying rains, humidity, and interesting conversation away with them for now.

Behind me, the skyline of the night city seemed to sit contently. The myriad office and residential towers dotted by a few lights felt like they were gazing at the fleeting stormclouds as I was–grateful for the temporary comfort that the rains had brought.

I breathed in the cool evening air once more before I got in the car and drove away into the quiet comfort of the night.

<End>

This was such a long blog thread. Much longer than I expected. In truth, I could have written these posts anyway without needing to group them together. In fact, you could say that with the exception of a few of these entries, none of them really have anything to do with each other.

Random ramblings–mostly. That’s what blogging is mostly about after all. I was never there to make a statement of any kind, nor get any particular point across. However, as I learned during one "self-discovery" seminar I attended once in a blue moon, "to think is to create."

When I wrote Part 1, it was only a partial intention to imply that that post would be the "first of a series". But when I started Part 2, it just seemed natural to continue in the same vein–until I grew tired of it eventually. However, by semi-deliberately writing the succeeding parts, somehow, some recurring themes seemed to appear. Maybe randomly, maybe not.

Night City is actually a term borrowed from the Cyberpunk genre–used to describe any modern metropolis in the world, at night. It begins as a description of an urban environment–the one most of us are familiar with, but take for granted. But beyond the physical externalities, Night City, the way I saw it, was more about its denizens–night citizens. Thus, writing these blog posts always centered around the feats and foibles of real people. Real stories in real time.

I am not an academically trained scientist–only a person who tends to think scientifically, perhaps as a result of my former professions as a stock broker, credit risk manager, then finally a financial analyst. But it is not a pretentious attempt to be scientific (hopefully at least). It just seemed more fun to inject a little science in what would be otherwise mundane events.

Statistics is a fairly recurring device in these stories–and usually connected to statistics is a comment on human heuristics and biases–and how conventional intuition leads one to the less efficient results. Through the lives of the people we meet along the way we see how we are somehow predisposed to make the "wrong" (I use this term in a relativistic sense, not moral) decisions.

However, morality does come up in these stories. Some of the people in my posts have done, or are capable of deeds normally frowned upon by conventional society–but I was always careful never to be too preachy. One of the biggest lessons night city has to offer is that the morality of a human action, does not change the humanity of the action. (Wow, that sounded profound).

In other words, I believe morality is a device–albeit a crutch–that society uses to define itself. But setting aside the "good" and "evil" of anything, at the base of any action is a human being doing a human action based on human motivation. Thus, any value judgments we render on a fellow human being–the kind we do without any thinking at all–have to be carefully examined in the context of the humanity of the person we judge.

To put it bluntly: can you blame a human for being a human?

This is a sticky point, to be sure–and one that I do not claim to be an expert on. But I guess what led me to this questioning of morality is that many of our societal issues and problems have a lot to do with the twin C’s: condemn and condone–and this is really driven by our "statistically inefficient" biases which we mask under the veil of morality.

Too much harm is done by people who do things emotionally under the guise of being right.

In a way, (and this is a bold claim–which I can rightfully make since this is my blog anyway) I think human beings, being flawed in the first place, are afraid of their own emotions, and attempt to distract themselves from their emotionally driven actions by hiding under convenient labels. But this does not change the fact that they are flawed, nor the fact that they are slaves to their emotions anyway.

It also reveals that sadness and happiness, fear and hope, anger and serentiy, and all other emotions that we feel enslaved to–are actually chemical impulses–and have little to do with real outcomes. Therein lies the real paradox of human existence–we either live by our emotions, or our emotions are driven by our lives. One seems to be random, the other seems within our control. Which is it?

Vodka–that other recurring theme, apart from my liquor of choice, is my symbol for society. Straight-up, vodka is a clear transparent liquid, capable of delivering that alcholic buzz in a matter of shots. But sophisticated urban society has transformed vodka into many other things, mixing it up with other substances to come with other drinks–a screwdriver (orange juice), a black russian (coffee), a martini (vermouth), a bloody mary (tomato juice), a sea breeze (cranberry juice), etc. etc.–all for the sake of adding "flavor" and "excitement".

More importantly, most cocktails recipes are designed to mask the alcohol in the drink–to give one the illusion that they are not drinking alcohol, while providing the same buzz at the same time. This is perhaps the most accurate depiction of conventional human existence–our pretentious attempt to have a life withouth actually living.

I live in Night City. Firstly because it is a City–with all its structures and rules, which gives me a very stable reference on whether I am breaking structure, obeying structure, or even defining structure (it’s emotionally comforting to have some bearing, even if incorrect, of where you are).

Secondly I live in Night City because it is set at night–and I mean this more as metaphor rather than an actual timeframe. I just imagine that while walking the darkness of a night street, dimly lit by street lamps and neon signs, people are more honest about themselves and less pretentious–only because they know they are covered by darkness anyway, and the road to be traveled is more defined (i.e. go where there is some light, and avoid the shadows).

At night, people are predictable. At night, people are more like people. At night, you have too look more closely, more intently–and in so doing, you see things you wouldn’t normally see in broad daylight.

Unfortunately, given the proximity and time you’ve spent observing the not-so-obvious, when you finally find that thing you were looking for, it may not turn out to be the thing you expected or believed. And by then you may already be too close to pull away from that thing you never realised you disliked after all.

That’s the edge of Night City. That’s the thrill. You live in this place and you learn to be more courageous–to face up to your fears. It also teaches to you to be observant and calculating, but at the same time more sensitive and just. And just maybe, elevate the human condition to a slightly higher level, and more succintly, attain that satisfaction we’ve always craved.

Regardless of the random circumstances.

<End of Part 7>