For a blockbuster motion picture to impress me these days, I need to learn something. I’m not satisfied being visually fellated by a cornucopia of gratuitous explosions. I require more than just severed limbs, robots that turn into cars that turn back into robots or the occasional sexual innuendo; which, as you can tell, I love.

I yearn for something didactic, preachy and blatant in its attempts to sell me on a particular worldview. That’s probably why two of my favorite movies of all-time are Triumph of the Will and Avatar. I was so glad to watch The Hunger Games this last weekend, because it fulfilled my every wish for the cinema- going experience. I learned a ton from this film, but not exactly what I expected. I was not enlightened on the evils of fascism, the inherent barbarism of mankind or the negative effects of reality TV on the human psyche.

No, I learned about…love.

The Hunger Games has much to impart on the audience in the realm of the romantic. As I am sure you are aware, the movie and the book it is based on contain a major subplot concerning the heroine, Katniss Everdeen, choosing between two handsome young suitors. Peeta Mellark and Gale Hawthorne compete for the affection of sexiest murderer on the planet. Within that saucy love triangle is the first thing I learned from The Hunger Games.

Men are constantly fighting over women, and women have no idea what they want from life except to survive.

Katniss could take a second to decide between Peeta and Gale, but much like her fellow Young Adult Lit heroine, Bella Swan of Twilight, she’s way too busy looking sad or trying to not get killed. Being sad takes up most of my day as it is, so I can’t even fathom having to add ‘getting eaten by wolves’ or ‘not stepping on a giant landmine’ to the docket. The decision to date Peeta or Gale isn’t even a decision to ‘date,’ as there’s no dating in Panem as far as I can tell. Attraction doesn’t come from which guy has the nicest car or most hair on his head. I’m fairly certain the decision-making goes a little something like this:

“I am likely going to die of starvation in the next 2 years. I better have a child so someone is around to inherit the tiny plot of land where I keep my stuff.”

Guys are pretty low on the totem pole, especially if they are both going to die soon too.

Love tends to take place between very attractive people.

When was the last time you saw two ugly folks hook up in a movie besides anything starring Joan Cusack? Exactly. The lead actors in The Hunger Games are smoking hot! It might sound sad to accept this lesson, but it actually frees me from worrying about whether I’ll have a successful relationship. I won’t, because I’m not hot enough. Case closed.

People pretend to love you.

We lie to each other constantly. I dated a girl who told me I didn’t look fat in stripes, but I knew. I knew I looked fat in stripes. She swore up and down that stripes were ‘complimentary to my figure.’ Thankfully, I had an honest friend who referred to me as a ‘grotesquely overweight Hamburglar.’ Honesty is the most necessary of virtues, but Katniss Everdeen is perfectly comfortable pretending to love Peeta in order to survive the Hunger Games. I don’t care if the whole world is watching. If I look fat, you better say so.

The rules of courtship are now dictated by women.

If a girl doesn’t have time to date you because she’s fighting for her survival in an elaborate reality TV show in the distant future, then a guy just needs to understand. Modern women are ambitious. They have their own lives and their own desires. Katniss sets the expectations in her love triangle.

As stated earlier, she’s a bit conflicted about who to choose, but she chooses on her own time. If your gal wants to hunt on the first date, then you do it without asking questions. Here we see the influence of feminist scholar and intellectual Sarah Palin on the 21st century woman. Not only will your sweetheart make your dinner, she will kill the animal, skin it and make you a coat from its fur. When dinner is over, she’s going to lead an uprising against her oppressive government, but she’ll also be thinking about you the whole time.

The best venue to admit you are in love with someone is on TV.

This should go without saying, but I will reiterate the obvious. Being noticed for being in love is more important than being in love. Facebook allows us to note our relationship status for our friends and potential friends to see whenever they choose. I appreciate being able to know which friends of mine are available and which aren’t. More importantly, I like everyone knowing I’m involved with someone. It sends a signal to the world saying “I am better than you. Someone loves me.” That’s why Peeta revealing his love for Katniss in public, on the air, was so astute. In essence, Peeta says to Panem:

“See this hot lady that can kill people with her bare hands? She’s all mine, so stay away.”

Who would want to hide that? That’s right, no one would. Granted, it takes Katniss forever to reciprocate his affection, but Peeta comes out the winner in this horserace. Self-centered displays of grandiose emotion are very modern and very hip. So, the last lesson to learn from The Hunger Games is…

We have no shame.

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The following items have been rejected from the Spring 2012 SATs. The proposed answers are shown in bold.

1. Rush Limbaugh is to civil discourse as…

a.) Gak is to Floam.

b.) The wheat is to the chaff.

c.) The Stay Puft Marshmallow Man is to New York City.

d.) A train is to a car.

2. Wireless internet is to wires as…

a.) A walrus is to the sea.

b.) Wayne is to Garth.

c.) A teacher is to a student.

d.) Tyler Perry is to jokes.

3. Facebook profiles are to job searches as…

a.) William Taft is to democracy.

b.) Bananas are to fruit.

c.) Light bulbs are to door knobs.

d.) Tequila shots are to sobriety tests.

4.) Marty McFly is to the 1950s as…

a.) LMFAO is to the 2010s.

b.) Hairpieces are to wigs.

c.) Democrats are to Whigs.

d.) Branches are to trees.

5.) A fuse is to a bomb as…

a.) Hall is to Oates.

b.) Teen Mom is to the Mayan Apocalypse.

c.) Sitting is to benches.

d.) Ryan Seacrest is to Brian Dunkleman.

6.) Staten Island is to New York’s five boroughs as…

a.) The Algonquin Indians are to the Pointer Sisters.

b.) Kings are to castles.

c.) Joey Fatone is to *NSYNC.

d.) Hot dogs are to breakfast.

7.) Staring into the sun is to an eye exam as…

a.) Watching The Big Bang Theory is to an IQ test.

b.) Spain is to Europe.

c.) The Monroe Doctrine is to measles.

d.) A wrench is to a hammer.

8.) Vanilla Ice’s “Ice Ice Baby” is to David Bowie and Queen’s “Under Pressure” as…

a.) Avatar is to Fern Gully.

b.) Barack Obama is to Yosemite Sam.

c.) Angels are to demons.

d.) Binyah Binyah Polliwog is to Gullah Gullah Island.

9.) Blues music is to the inescapable melancholy of life as…

a.) Cubism is to realism.

b.) Country music is to urban life.

c.) Skrillex is to car alarms.

d.) Noir is to comedy.

10.) A tadpole is to a frog as…

a.) Justin Bieber is to Ellen DeGeneres.

b.) Milwaukee’s Best in a can is to the River Styx in your stomach.

c.) Hulk Hogan is to a movie theater hot dog.

d.) Kid Rock is to Joe Camel.

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1. Topanga was at some point in human history considered not only a legitimate first name for a human being, but the kind of name that would inspire in malleable teenage boys a life-long infatuation. Topanga, in our day, was leading lady name-material. Topanga (pronounced Tah-payne-ga, for those who will have only ever seen in it written down) is the name of the quintessential girl-next-door who will live, along with Feeney, in our hearts forever.

2. At some point, we carried around little plastic eggs with tiny screens on them — in these screens lived our hearts, our pets, our raison d’etre, our very own Tamagotchi. We loved them, we listened to their tiny electronic screams of malnourishment, and we occasionally forgot to pick up their poop for long enough that they died a tortured, poop-filled death. They were perhaps our first foray into the life-consuming world of electronics and self-absorption, later to be fully manifested by Facebook.

3. The black Power Ranger was black and the yellow Power Ranger was Asian because…we were so completely ahead of our time and beyond the capacity to even think in terms of something as inconsequential as race that… uh… I don’t know. Casting directors were racist in the nineties.

4. Long before he was spending his days foisting his mediocre children on us, Will Smith was actually the perfect human specimen. He also undoubtedly holds some world record for saving the world the most times while simultaneously delivering flawless catchphrases and giving cool guy nods to the camera. The Men In Black rap song, at the time, was created and received by the public without the slightest trace of irony. Really. He was that good.

5. In some inevitable shift of the time-space continuum in which James Cameron continues to rob humanity of all that is good and sacred in this world, Fern Gully will be known as that movie that ripped off Avatar. It will be up to us to crusade for what is right. It is up to us to explain that Fern Gully was not only a predecessor to Avatar, but far better, in that it contained both Tim Curry as a singing pile of molasses and Robin Williams rapping about animal testing in the pharmaceutical industry. (As a side note, if you have not recently listened to the full lyrics of the “Batty Rap,” I recommend you do, as they are horrifying.)

6. A neighborhood boy who completely disregards your family and puts a ladder directly under the teenage girl’s window to climb up at his discretion is not only acceptable, it’s charming. It’s the kind of stuff that would make said family take the ladder boy under their wing and into their heart. The nineties were a simpler time, one where we didn’t have to worry about things like breaking and entering. Clarissa today would have steel bars on the inside of her window and her father would continually remind her that the next-door boy with his ladder and his touchy hands have no place in his household.

7. Though on the surface, they are the exact same thing in every conceivable way, whether you liked The Backstreet Boys or N*SYNC said more about your character than all of the terrible macaroni art you could ever make for your child psychologist. Essentially, liking *NSYNC meant you liked Justin Timberlake, as he was clearly the Seabiscuit in that race from the get-go. You even liked him with his terrible, icy-blond mini-fro. Liking the Backstreet Boys gave you a bit more of a cultured palate, as there was no clear Diana in those Supremes. Nick was kind of the wholesome, if northern-Florida-redneck safe choice (save for his humiliating younger brother, Aaron). Brian was the shy, sensitive type. AJ was the hottt, dangerous meth addict. Kevin Richardson was mute with sexy, sculpted facial hair. No one liked Howie. Choosing between the two groups was like choosing between two beloved children, but once that line was crossed–there was no going back.

8. “I wanna really really really wanna zig a zig ahh,” has a meaning, and all true nineties kids know it, but we must never share it. Like the Illuminati, it must remain between us, the keyholders. With great power comes great responsibility.

9. Lisa Frank is not the name of a woman, it is the name of a movement, a culture, a way of living. It is a theory, a concept, a belief in something greater than yourself. It is the belief that all girls are entitled to dolphins covered with rainbows, jewel-encrusted frogs, and unicorns in acid-trip colors hugging each other. It is the ideology that no notebook is complete until it literally hurts your eyes to look at from so much color saturation. It is the hope that no school supply, no matter how insignificant, will be left un-bedazzled. It is the knowledge that your eraser cap, and that of your granddaughter’s, and her granddaughter’s after her, will not be some boring little nub–it will be a diamond covered with butterflies in a rainbow of colors. It is the dream of a better tomorrow.

10. Incredibly depressing women in Indiana covered in cats and glass figurines they buy at The Hallmark Store used to troll the web 1.0 to invest thousands of dollars in tiny stuffed animals filled with plastic beans. That happened. Beanie Babies were not just significant, they were the first example most of us had of envy, greed, and wrath. If someone messed up that little heart-shaped Ty tag, so help you God, that was the end of whatever contact you had with that monster of a human being. That tag-less Beanie Baby was now trash, and you had to deal with the consequence. It was at that moment, that de-valued Beanie Baby moment, that most of us accepted the truth… we’ll never have nice things.

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image – The Best of the Power Rangers – The Ultimate Rangers

Looking at this summer’s movie lineup, it seems like the summer-of-sequels (or was that last summer, too?). Every big-name, big-budget blockbuster is just another part of some preexisting franchise. Even movie news focuses on sequels: Batman 3 teasers and Toy Story 4 rumors blow up my news feeds. Lurking beneath all this hype is the criticism that Hollywood is creatively bankrupt; that they cannot, or will not, make something “new.” This argument is myopic in its scope. Sequels have been an inherent piece of Western culture since its beginning. What is the Odyssey if nothing but the Illiad’s sequel? The New Testament to the Old? Shakespeare dabbled in sequels with his King Henry plays. To attribute the desire for sequels to some lack of creative spark is an error, because to do so damns many of our civilization’s best works right alongside today’s far less canonical blockbusters.

While this pop-critical structure collapses around itself, the underlying recognition of massive sequel density holds true. Sequels have expanded into a large part of the creative output of almost every art form. Most movies are, if not part of a series, then reboots or remakes of previously created properties. Multi-novel sagas like Twilight and Harry Potter, not standalone texts, dominate book sales. Video game companies churn out sequels like clockwork. Even music has its fair share of follow-ups. Both Lil Wayne and Jay-Z have album trilogies. But, tragically for all of us, this phenomenon doesn’t reflect the demands of corporate executives. It reflects the state of our own, sequel-obsessed culture.

The recurring, recognizable characters and setting of any franchise give the viewer a few hours of respite from our frantic postmodern world. Why worry about the Legislative and Executive Branches’ political maneuvering on budgetary policies, Euro-zone economic instability, the long-term effects of a troop draw-down in Afghanistan, Facebook privacy updates, or your own personal issues when you can watch Harry Potter’s cinematic saga come to an exciting and satisfying conclusion? Sequels offer the easiest escapism: a retreat to the familiar. The setting and the characters need no introduction, and so no anxious judgments of acceptability need to be made. The attraction and significance extend further, though, outside purely narrative confines. Many of these serial intellectual properties were birthed in our halcyon childhood, and some even stretch past our date of birth. Either way, this predisposes us to imbue these tried-and-true properties with meaning. At their worst, sequels draw upon this respect for a boost in relevance and revenue. At their best, successive installments update what is our modern mythology. Transformers 2 climaxed in the Middle East, presenting the easy dichotomy of Autobots and Decepticons as some simulacrum of Iraq and Afghanistan. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2, in a horrifically meta move, has Harry and co. return to Hogwarts, to their childhood haunt, the same mental journey that so many members of the audience, now in their teens and twenties, undergo as they watch the film.

This desire for familiarity on the part of the consumer paradoxically contributes to the rage against sequels. The recently hinted at Toy Story 4 is a travesty because the story wrapped itself up so perfectly, giving closure to all the Millennials (and their parents) who grew up with the films. This sentiment is misplaced. The audience’s anticipation or discovery of an end is erroneous, as they are not the creator. Just because Toy Story works so well as a trilogy does not mean that the series deserves to end. The fact that the movie was such a big hit hints at just the opposite fact. This blind logic would necessitate that Toy Story 2 would have been a perfect place to stop as well, since its conclusion tied off all loose ends. The triumph of great sequels, such as the Odyssey, Dr. Dre’s 2001, and The Dark Knight, is that they build upon their seemingly complete predecessors, furthering the franchise’s already rich texture. If some sliver of artistic greatness comes from working within limits, then the confines of existing narratives demand that whatever follows them be imaginative and new.

Even big, “new” intellectual properties break down into sequels. Avatar best exemplifies this. It is the hyper-sequel: layering an intentional re-production of reality (with its CGI world and 3-D gimmicks) over a regurgitated synthesis of the themes and stories of previous, successful films. It is so effective at ingraining its utopian update of our own existence on viewers that some poor souls, cut off from Pandora and the Na’vi, suffered actual depression. Everything about the film was so perfectly archetypal that the messy, nonfictional, original world failed to live up to Cameron’s update.

So the derivative or unimaginative insult hurled at sequels is an invalid complaint, because even “new” IPs are equally derivative, just not blatantly so. Their derivation is merely not a part of the marketing strategy. The fault for the overabundance of sequels does not lie with Hollywood, but with the consumers: you and I. Everyone who goes and watches Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 or Toy Story 3, everyone who retweets or adds trending hashtags (even when you do it ironically) or posts recycled material on Tumblr, everyone who does any of those things is contributing to the culture of sequels that we live in today. When you want and drive the production of these half-new things, you can’t complain about the dearth of the “new.”

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1. Footloose (1984)

Every Halloween, when asked what I’m going to be, I’m always like “Yo I’m going to be Kevin Bacon from Footloose!” It’s one of my most overused jokes… ever. And I’ve never been Kevin Bacon from Footloose for Halloween. Anyways, I’m sure I’ll get some flack for calling Footloose a terrible movie, but I’m also calling it awesome! Because Footloose is really awesome. The story of a city boy with an affinity for tight jeans and dance choreography who moves out to the conservative countryside, Footloose is as corny as its midwstern setting is IRL – and for that it’s terrible – but it’s also incredibly endearing and 80s – and for that it’s awesome.

Last night in Hong Kong select audiences saw what is billed as the world’s first 3D porn, 3D Sex and Zen. The relatively high-budget (3.2 million U.S dollars) softcore tale of a scholar who rebukes the teachings of his monk tutor and embarks on a sex-filled adventure was produced by Stephen Shiu Jr., whose father produced the original Sex and Zen in 1991. The film is a deliberate effort to cash in on the buzz around 3D, which of course has a long history but recently blew up with films like last year’s Avatar.

Shiu told Chinese media that the film “will leave audiences feeling like they are sitting right there at the edge of the bed.” The Hong Kong CNN editor Zoe Li confirmed this in her review of the film: “Sex scenes in 3D bring you so close to the action it almost induces claustrophobia. Even a 300-seater cinema is not big enough to contain all that hyper-real flesh and aggressive panting and moaning bursting from the screen… The only thing to take issue with is that the breast to penis ratio is much too low on penis.”

3D Sex and Zen will premiere for the rest of Hong Kong the end of this week, and is slated to come to Australia, New Zealand, Europe, and Peru later this year. Interestingly, other 3D pornographic films are in the works around the globe: a remake of the classic Caligula from 1979 and a spoof of Avatar by Hustler called This Ain’t Avatar XX.

An uncensored, NSFW preview of 3D Sex and Zen is available here.

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Eli is my five-year old son. He has an older brother, Slade. Slade writes fiction and spends a substantial amount of time on FlipNotes, so he rarely says anything worth quoting. Eli, on the other hand, has unknown goals and will say things that I feel other people could relate to, so I occasionally quote him via Twitter and once on Autostraddle.

Below is a collection of most of the quotes from my Twitter feed that I could find in one hour, in chronological order.

3.4

LANEIA! Hot lava is on your head JUST KIDDING!

3.18

Eli: Guess what I'm gonna put on my peanut butter and jelly!
me: "What?" Eli: "Jelly and peanut butter."

3.25

I just scared myself half-alive!

3.28

I'm going to give Slade this fortune cookie present. It's from CHINA!

3/28

Eli: NO I'M NOT DEAD. NO!
Slade: Laneia he's not dead, even though I've stabbed him repeatedly.

3/30

You call these things 'junk food,' right? I call these 'delicious.'

3/30

Eli: I'm glad it's Tuesday! Tuesday is Target day!
me: Who told you that?
Eli: I told myself.

4/7

This is a good song!! I can't even smell my fingers!!

4/17

If you loved me then you should've put some cheese on it.

4/18

I tried to jump and change but my heart got smaller and I died but I came alive again and everything stopped.

4/19

The sky is falling! The EARTH is falling. The earth is US. It's just falling in space. We will say 'oof!' We are all just falling.

4/20

You're a smart, strong person -- now COME ON and give me a granola bar!

4/21

Eli, wand in hand: Laneia I just need to get some Polygrip for my dentures. Oh there's some.
[grabs bottle of nail polish remover]

4/22

Eli: Ok so now I have your hula hoop and I'm ready. I'm ready."
me: "Ready for what?" Eli: [blank stare]

4/23

There are no funny parts. There are no real parts. - Eli on Avatar

4/23

Well if there was a knife machine that cut your legs, you could find cookies in your bones.

5/11

Laneia! I found a starfish in the bathtub! No, wait. It's just my hand.

On his creative process:

…That’s all I do while I work on music in the studio, I just look at all these photographs, look at movies, I watch Avatar, like we got this 72-inch screen at the studio, and I watch Children of Men, There Will Be Blood, and just create music and I look at the visuals and I’ll turn the track up… And we’ll be in Hawaii and just completely zone out.

On whether or not he is a racist

I actually don’t know a rapper before me that liked white people more than me. I don’t know a rapper that wore tighter jeans. I don’t know a rapper that collaborated with more white people than me.

On the way he makes decisions

…I don’t know, feeling random, you know, my moves are a little bit random sometimes. I am not really that calculated it’s just like hey this is what I felt like doing, hah.

“Portrait of Power” video

On the “Power” music video

… So we, you know, vibe’d out at my house and we just kept bouncing ideas and we had all these references of these like renaissance paintings and baroque paintings, and I always had the dream of, like, re-creating the Sistine Chapel in a way so you, you know, when people say that this is not the full re-creation cause I still might want to do that, like re-create the Sistine Chapel. But, um, just emotionally and image-wise all that’s it it was really easy on set to, you know, to create the characters because it just feels things I dream and I see and that I felt since I was child from reading comics to being in love with paintings to going to art school and just always wanting to apply that.

On his ambition

When I make music I am not really thinking about other rapper’s albums I am trying to make my music compete with that McQueen collection. Which is, and I am not saying that it does, I am just saying that is the goal, that is how I set the bar of creation. You know, I rather compete with, umm, you know, when I think of competition it’s like I try to create against the past I think about Michelangelo, Picasso, you know, the pyramids. That’s the reason I put, like, 5,000 years in a song like “power.”

On how a philosophy course he took at SUNY Stony Brook on Gilles Deleuze inspired him:

… It’s funny I like want to find more of an abstraction in my work when things are, like, completely literal and you have to take it one way it’s just too commercial for me. But when it’s a bit more abstract and people can take it a lot of different ways so whatever people think about it it’s good, if people think hundred different things and have hundred different opinions about it that’s, that’s much better than giving or demanding that person or someone thinks one way about it…The fact that there is such a vast opinion makes it so great.

On his mission as an artist

I just feel like things on, um, the radio they just almost seem just too clear to me. It’s like when I listen to Thom Yorke or Trent Reznor I don’t understand everything they are saying the first time, but I feel it, I feel the emotion of it, I feel the artistery in it, and to take what I feel is that level and bring it to the radio is an extremely important task and I don’t take that lightly.

Christopher Nolan’s epic masterpiece Inception is just about as narcissistic as movies can get. I mean really: it’s 2 ½ hours long and you have to stay put the whole time or you’ll miss a crucial plot twist. Also: nobody knows what it’s about. I imagine the thought bubble inside Nolan’s head going something like, “My name is Christopher Nolan, and I’m going to develop a plot so above people’s heads that nobody will get it.“

To me, the confusion surrounding what the hell Inception is about is the best part of the movie. It sparks debate, and it’s a great advertising ploy. Before I got to the theatre, I had no clue what was going to happen over the next 3 hours of my life. I mean, I knew the movie was about dreams and everything. But an hour and several Twizzlers in I still didn’t know what was happening, and then I left even more confused than before. Whoever said movies should be easy?

Inception’s heavy bass, rich colors, and wild chase scenes will turn you all the way on. Basically, it’s a high-octane thriller about your wildest dreams and ideas. Dreams within dreams within dreams within dreams within reality, all couched in a dream. French philosopher Jean Baudrilliard wrote a tiny book about this stuff called Simularca and Simulation where he basically argues that reality isn’t real anymore. Nobody knows what’s real. Seems to me like Chris Nolan read a little Baudrilliard to cook up this idea. Hey, is any of what we’re seeing real? Or is it all a dream? Where do ideas come from? When are we dreaming, and when is it real? Or is it ever really real? And – fuck! – does that top keep spinning or does it fall at the end?!

What I really loved about Inception was the ambitiousness of it all. There is nothing small about it. But Inception’s ambition is a lot different than similarly epic movies like Avatar, where it is all about showing what computers can do. Where James Cameron preferred CGI, Chris Nolan builds a real prison/fortress on a mountain that he blows up. He goes for thousands of gallons of real water being blown through windows at Leonardo DiCaprio. He builds a set that actually tilts 25 degrees (for real!) with every glass and piece of furniture glued down so it doesn’t budge. And I was especially blown away during the scenes when Joseph Gordon Levitt (I die) defies gravity, taking down all the bad guys in a rotating hotel hallway. But guess what? The hallway was really rotating! And, yeah, there is some CGI, like the really cool scene where the city of Paris folds on top of itself, but most of the stunts are real. So take that, Avatar.

Inception is an intellectual thriller of the highest class, one that packs smart dialogue, a plot so brilliant nobody understands it, and dazzling graphics into a fast-paced extravaganza. I just saw the movie on Saturday and I’m already dying for the sequel.

The other day, my friend sent me a link to the Wikipedia page for “Bloop.” A summary:

The Bloop is the name given to an ultra-low frequency and extremely powerful underwater sound detected by the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) several times during 1997. The source of the sound remains unknown… NOAA’s system ruled out its origin as any known man-made sound, such as a submarine or bomb, or familiar geological sounds such as volcanoes or earthquakes. While the audio profile of the bloop does resemble that of a living creature, the system identified it as unknown because it was far too loud for that to have been the case: it was several times louder than the loudest known biological sound.

What the hell… Just the existence of a “loudest known biological sound” makes me feel weird. A loudest known biological sound. Jesus.

And this thing is louder than the loudest known biological sound, which is apparently produced by blue whales. What’s going on? Why is there probably some living ‘thing’ producing a sound louder than the loudest known biological sound? In the ocean? This is terribly frightening. This makes me even more afraid of large bodies of water. Maybe it is somehow connected to this thing, which is also weird:

Apparently there are UFOs in China now, and this one recently closed one of the country’s airports for a day. What is that red light there? Is that a laser? It looks like a laser. Officials say it’s military related—also weird—and are keeping quiet about it.

And then there’s the Grinning Man, some guy that’s apparently really tan, has long, slicked-back hair, is tall and ‘gangly,’ wears “sparkling green overall costumes” and walks around scaring the shit out of everyone by making shit-eating grins and asking them weird questions. He may or may not have eyes and ears. Here’s what someone said about the Grinning Man:

Then a man stepped out, described as around 6 feet tall, with long dark hair combed straight back. His skin was heavily tanned. He wore an outfit that was made out of some sort of “glistening green material,”… He was grinning broadly. Derenberger said that the figure spoke to him telepathically and said his name was “Cold”, and went off asking him strange questions.

Seems really bad. The giant beast making loud, bleak noises somewhere in the Equatorial Pacific, the UFO with the laser propulsion system and the Grinning Man are not chill. They make me feel doomed. I only hope that they find out that the bloop is actually the sound of like, global warming being reversed, or something, that the UFO one day delivers us Avatar-looking, world peace inducing aliens, and that the Grinning Man stops doing that.