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By Mark D, December 3, 2011 8:25 pm

So the other day I was flipping through the channels and Comedy Central was actually playing something good. Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey. It’s funny that I’ve probably seen Bogus Journey more then I’ve seen the original. It’s probably cheaper to get the rights to the sequel, which would explain that. Either way, for a time it was one of my favorite movies, and I enjoyed watching it again. That they are going to do a 3rd movie worries me to no end.

One of the best parts of Bogus Journey was Death. He goes from being scary and frightening to comedy relief. The scene where Death continually loses to Bill & Ted and keeps demanding best 2 out of 3, best 3 out of 5, best 4 out of 7, etc is a classic. The serious way he delivers the line “They gave me a Melvin!” to God is pretty good too. If you didn’t like Death from Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey, you have no heart.

So that got me thinking to all my favorite incarnations of Death in media. I ended up with 5 that I could remember, cause my memory sucks.

#5 Lady Death

Okay, I sort of cheated here, cause Lady Death technically isn’t death. Evil Ernie’s lover and originally just eye candy for his comic, Lady Death was spun off into her own series and is considered Queen of the 90′s comics bad girls. She expelled Lucifer from Hell and took over it’s leadership for herself. In retaliation Lucifer bans her from stepping foot on Earth again until all life is gone. She ends up taking advantage of young, lonely Ernest Fairchild, offering him love in exchange for Megadeath.

Eventually she causes Ernest’s death, he re-animates as a Zombie and is off to destroy all life. She meanwhile struggles to control Hell. I’ve never read too much of her books, I have a few and they were enjoyable. While she isn’t technically death, I figured she was worth adding just for her goal of Megadeath. Megadeath basically means the death of all living things on Earth, which Ernest figured was easiest by firing off the United State’s nuclear missiles and causing a domino effect of everyone else firing their missiles.

#4 Death From Family Guy

While I’m not the biggest Family Guy fan, I am a huge fan of Norm MacDonald. He doesn’t nearly get enough work considering how funny he is, and is a perfect fit for death. This is probably going to be a short entry. This is mostly so I can talk about how there’s a guy who does a great impression of Norm MacDonald. So when negotiating to do voicework he’s been leveraged with being replaced by that guy. And yes, the guy has gotten work directly imitating Norm.

#3 Death/Ghost of Christmas Future From Scrooged

Scrooged is such a great, underrated movie. I can’t wait to catch it during this holiday season again. While the first two ghosts never shut up and are very comedic, Christmas Future doesn’t say a word. Without ruining some of the things that make this death so great (including his insane height and size), he’s easily one of the most frightening deaths I can remember from movies. If you haven’t seen Scrooged yet, go see it and enjoy Bill Murray and Death.

#2 Death From Bill & Ted

yes, I know, your wondering who beat out Death from Bogus Journey. Well it’s because I’m insane. Death absolutely stole the show in Bogus Journey despite his limited time. I guess part of the reason is that he is relatively frightening in the beginning, and he ends up such a teddy bear.

#1 Death from Sandman

For someone who never read Sandman and was never a big fan of anything DC anyway, you might wonder why Death from Sandman is my favorite incarnation. Well my dad was a huge Sandman fan, to the point that he had a Sandman shirt he wore so much the imprint faded off. He always had a way with wanting to display gaudy stuff related to his interests around the house and my mom would have none of it. In the end he finally compromised and got my mom to let him put a statue of Death in the china cabinet. This statue:

Something about her always caught my eye, always caught my interest. For years that statue was in the china cabinet. I’d always sneak a peek into or over to it as the cabinet was in the dinning room. I just think that when you think of death, this was so much the opposite. Plus add in that this was before goth became really big, so it was probably the first time I saw a goth chick, even if she’s dressed plainly.

I know I’m forgetting another good incarnation of death. But I feel good about this list right now.

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By Mark D, September 3, 2011 3:42 pm

The Tenth Anniversary of 9/11 is coming up soon, and before everyone gets sick of hearing about it I thought I’d throw in my two cents. While 3,000 people died due to the attacks, we can look back with a different vision and see the true horrors of what happened. In the end, we might be just as bad as the terrorists who attacked the United States that day. Yes, 3,000 lives were lost that day, but not due to anything more then luck. Meanwhile the most expensive military in the world has been paying it back to countries that could never defend themselves.

The civilian body count in Iraq is anywhere from 200K to nearly a million. Is that a fair retaliation for the deaths of 3,000 people? Not at all. Don’t forget that Bush lied to us to get us to go to War with Iraq. He used all the power he could to influence people to lie for him. Now Bush gets to sit back at his crawford ranch he loves so much, sipping iced tea and relaxing. It should be noted that another 4,000 US soldiers have died in Iraq, while 30K have been injured. There should be thousands of people ready to storm the Crawford Ranch and string up Bush for what he did.

We had a chance too, to stop the Iraq War. One of the largest protests of all time took place before it. But a large amount of people couldn’t think independently of the non-stop patriotism being thrown at them from the TV and Newspapers.

Where were you? Did you not find it suspicious when Haliburton got the no bid contract to rebuild Iraq? Dick Cheney was formerly on their board and got a nice golden parachute when he left to become VP. The whole war was one of the hugest failures in American history. Sure there’s no more Saddam, but the US economy was ruined, we probably created a new generation of Terrorists and it made us no safer then we already were. Saddam didn’t want to attack the United States, and had no ties with Osama Bin Laden. Saddam just wanted to live in luxury and keep control over Iraq, attacking the US wouldn’t help that.

The war in Afghanistan was no better. The country is nearly identical to what it’s been for the last 20 years, except the UN controls the capital city of Kabul with Karzai running a government whose control barely extends beyond the city limits. You see, there’s been a lot of conflicts over the last 20 years in Afghanistan. These are warlords who have survived every conflict because they simply switch sides when things turn against them. One of the strongest warlords in Afghanistan is infamous for this and has switched sides during EVERY conflict.

For all the lipservice to women’s rights, sure women now can leave their houses and speak in public. But what isn’t mentioned is that most areas under control of Warlords are prety much lawless. Sure you can leave your house, but don’t cross the wrong warlord’s men or you’ll end up being raped. And of course since those men are the security forces, good luck getting any justice. But hey, in Kabul there’s some women on the council, so that makes everything better.

In the end how did we find Bin Laden? By illegally entering our “ally” in the war on terror Pakistan territory and finding his compound. So in reality there was never any reason to have a long drawn out war in Afghanistan, as Bin Laden obviously would have went running for the border as soon as the US got close. Which is exactly what ended up happening. So while we were running around in Aghanistan and Iraq largely did nothing, a quick precision strike in Pakistan killed the man who planned 9/11. Shocking.

It should be noted that the recent surge of Democratic revolutions in the Middle East have very little to do with “Spreading Democracy” in the Middle East. It was actually the release of the Wikileaks cables which showed to these people how their corrupt governments were taking advantage of them. Of course I could see why the US government would be working so hard to shut down Wikileaks, only they should be able to cause the fall of governments.

In the end, yes, remember those 3,000 who died. But take the time to reflect on the nearly million lives that have been lost since then in search of justice. An eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind.

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By Mark D, August 25, 2010 3:18 pm

Leon Trotsky

For forty-three years of my conscious life I have remained a revolutionist; for forty-two of them I have fought under the banner of Marxism. If I had to begin all over again I would of course try to avoid this or that mistake, but the main course of my life would remain unchanged. I shall die a proletarian revolutionist, a Marxist, a dialectical materialist, and, consequently, an irreconcilable atheist. My faith in the communist future of mankind is not less ardent, indeed it is firmer today, than it was in the days of my youth.

Natasha has just come up to the window from the courtyard and opened it wider so that the air may enter more freely into my room. I can see the bright green strip of grass beneath the wall, and the clear blue sky above the wall, and sunlight everywhere. Life is beautiful. Let the future generations cleanse it of all evil, oppression and violence, and enjoy it to the full.

So reads the ending of Leon Trotsky’s last will and testament. To find him still believing after everything he’s been through his amazing. His whole family was basically wiped out except for a single grandson. Even those who had nothing to do with him like his sister and her family was slaughtered by Stalin. Can you imagine living your whole life with one dream, finally making that dream happen, only to find it corrupted? And then your family killed? Eventually Stalin managed to kill Trotsky in Mexico. But in that time Trotsky was pretty much the most feared man on the planet. After his exile he time and time again was refused entry to nations due to his history as commander/creator of the Red Army.

My knowledge of Trotsky started when I was younger. One night I pretended to sleep while one of my parents watched the Animal Farm British Animated Film:

Animal Farm

I quickly got interested in Snowball and never forgot about the movie. As I got older and went through years of catholic school, the constant bashing of communism left me intrigued. Eventually I read the communist manifesto and started reading more into communist history. Around the same time I also was required to read Animal Farm for the first time. I immediately recognized it as the movie I had seen when I was younger.

This time though, I was able to recognize Snowball as Trotsky and started reading up more about Trotsky. Especially his own works and those of Lenin. It’s amazing that the pre-revolution disagreements between Lenin and Trotsky that it was Lenin who came to agree with Trotsky’s vision. It is unfortunate that these old disagreements between the two (and despite Lenin trying to name Trotsky as his successor on 3 occasions) were used to run Trotsky out of power.

Trotsky lived an amazing life. Ironically his early pen name was Antid Otto or “The Pen” but while being held for his actions in the 1905 Russian Revolution, he took the extremely conservative guards name as his new pen name. Another interesting scene in his life involves his attempt to return to Russia following the February Revolution. Returning from New York, he got stopped in Canada and was put in a POW camp. After a week or two of rabble rousing in the POW camp the German officers requested that Trotsky be removed from camp. And so during the Great War both the Germans and British agreed that Trotsky was dangerous. I can not recommend enough the “Prophet Trilogy” by Isaac Deutscher as being one of the greatest biography’s I’ve read. If I ever had the money I would love to turn it into a film.

Today many of Trotsky’s works still ring as true today as when he first wrote them. The world today would be drastically different had the power struggle between Trotsky and Stalin ended up differently. At the very least one can picture Trotsky’s belief in permanent revolution changing the history of Germany. Trotsky’s exile and inter war writings point towards a united front to fight Fascism. Meanwhile Stalin would claim that the Socialists where the real fascists and didn’t allow the Communists and Socialists to work together until it was too late. Or even worse, in Spain where he changed his mind about such an alliance and cost the Republicans the war.