TNR, First Peel

"Although I did not share my father's aversion to ugliness--which often led us to associate with stupid people--I did feel vaguely uncomfortable in the presence of anyone completely devoid of physical charm. Their resignation to the fact that they were unattractive seemed to me somehow indecent." --Francoise Sagan, Bonjour Tristesse, p.8

Scorpion King 3, for a schlock multicultural saga, one which minimizes Eurocentricism to brute force which plods its way though Eastern mysticism, isn't bad for light-hearted distraction, though spastic lost track of the climatic battle with Talus (damn it to hell) because she was busy pruning twitter accounts-- something we'll return to momentarily-- and I wanted to raise an incident from the opening, when Ramusan utilizes elephants to defend his city.

Spastic has mixed feelings about elephants. Padre once rode one at the zoo with Nicky or Stephanie with his legs splayed across the beast, and my mother and I had a pissable laugh moment, even remembering it brings an immediate chuckle-- but when I say mixed feelings, I mean I mourn an ancient, highly intelligent, if inconvenient, herd animal which is apparently doomed, but also, rather powerful, threatening, and a target to be killed and handled with respect, simultaneously. The army of Talus, having breached the wall, spears one of Ramusan's beasts, with an implication of mortal wound, and it upset me, in a militant PETA guerrilla type of provocation, even though I knew it was a movie, and the elephants probably understood they were playing a game at the behest of the huge monkeys who took care of them.

I was trained to study this in film, our sentimentality at our own destructive capacity with other species. There is no hard and fast either or here. Apex predators evolved for a reason, but human conscience and bio-empathy, to use an E.O. Wilson phrase, is one of inherent contradiction between our need to prove time and again our mastery over environment, and our desire to see the majority of mammals as our children, despite consuming them to our taste or eradicating habitat. Environmentalists will invariably lose this battle, and I do not write it lightly. Were it up to me I'd be a male lion breaking the backs of hyenas for sport, in an unadulterated display of power, but since humans are paramount, I'd imagine within a hundred years of my death Africa will have lost its magnificent big game, unless we brutally curtail our own population. That is an exceedingly difficult task, even if we grant our own psychopaths unfettered license.

As to social media, I do not mean to be deliberately hurtful here, but I am increasingly paranoid about mothers with children, and blocked one of my long-standing followers accordingly due to it. I beat my own path, and while mothers are ferocious forces in their own right, I am writing for mature, hopefully literate audiences. High schoolers read at their own risk, and I write this with full realization that I'm rarely "hard core," but I do, euphemistically, tap the brass ring now and then. If I cave in and give myself an FB account, then I may indeed go haywire managing it all, being detritus needs clearing now and again. Mathayus could give Goodell a few pointers about putting two teams in contest that are equally matched in battle. The third and fourth quarters were deplorable. What else is new?