the hobbit

pretty much the only idea this pompous, fat action movie has in its head that bilbo ought not kill people with his new sword for no good reason. "heroism's knowing when to not use it, not poking everyone you see with it," or something like that. this strikes me as fantastically odd in a movie where life is so cheap. i mean, it's always cheap for the enemy in action movies, but the not-human enemies of middle earth give special license to massacre conscious beings the way i eat chocolate covered raisins and have it be totally chill.

this comes naturally from the whole fantasy of the good guys, that there are like, 10 of them, and that they can each kill about a million evil people, kind of the way conquistadors massacred the locals when they arrived in central america. (i think cortes LITERALLY had like 60 guys with him and managed to subjugate a solid chunk of mexico). this willingness to have creatures with consciousness die in such stupefying quantity is super fucked up, and super central to propagating the myth of perfect evil. the creatures are helpfully hideous and slobbering so their lives literally mean nothing.

anyway, what really made me think of this was the part when bilbo, clearly thinking back to this whole "poke only the nameless numberless hordes" shtick, does not kill golem, but merely kicks him in the head jumping over him and so running away with the only thing that gave its life meaning. now, i think golem is the strongest argument for euthanasia in the history of the world. but this preposterous restraint coming on the end of the most epic, meaningless slaughter of so many people (but goblins, so it's chill) was fucking mind boggling.

alright, that's enough. i'm the guy who watches lord of the rings and gets outraged on behalf of the orcs.

i think i did super, super well on the GREs unless i straight up saw a mirage of desire before i got up from that computer, which is super possible, and the idea of which makes me feel a little sick, but i think it'll be okay. everything's alright. i wish k was here because everything is better with her and pretty hollow and shitty and just not all that important to me without her.