An excessively long list of ideas I had for short films, during a period where the ‘short’ medium had a lot of my attention. (Bold indicates that I have already written its script, and did so sometime between 2015 and 2016.)
· All shot from the POV of a male zombie, aka Zombie: the Zombie eats the bowels of a dead pedestrian on the street-side as an inner monologue of a man complains about how bad it tastes and how sorry he is that he did it: you see, in this universe, zombies are actually humans trapped inside a body they can’t control and are unable to speak, and the body has an insatiable, uncontrollable appetite. The zombies shuffles down the street as the man's voice complains about being trapped inside a monster and not being in control of both his actions and his odd and insatiable appetite; the zombie sees another zombie, who the man recognizes as his neighbor, and he knows that – deep down – the neighbor recognizes him in return: the man wishes he could tell the neighbor he's sorry for turning him, or at least that he could wave symbolically at the neighbor to signify acknowledgement, but he can't even do that. The neighbor is headshot from somewhere, and he falls; the man/zombie turns to see a woman had just shot it with a pistol: she has a kid with her, and the two turn to notice the zombie: the woman is distraught and her little kid points gleefully since it is excited to see its father: "daddy!" The man realizes he's uncontrollably shambling down the street towards his wife and child, and he is scared for them, furious at his zombie body, fearful of perhaps eating them, and anxious for them to get away: he tries hard to resist the zombie body but can't, and it frustrates him. The woman puts her child behind her and raises the pistol at the zombie's head but is hesitant and unwilling to shoot the man she fell in love with, even though he is a zombie; the man realizes his efforts to stop himself are futile, so he screams for her to shoot him so that she can save herself and the child; she begins to cry and doesn't want to shoot the zombie; the man is angry/scared and screams/begs for the her to shoot him, but she can’t hear his thoughts; the zombie realizes it's close to its target and begins to run towards the woman: the child screams, the man yells: the woman cocks her head and fires in the nick of time to cause the man to go quiet and the screen to go black simultaneously.
· 1957: Elias Steadman, a traveling preacher, comes through a small Christian town and gathers the townsfolk at the town center: he stands in the gazebo and talks to the devoted people, telling them that nuclear fusion will bring about the apocalypse: he continues to repeat the slogan "Nuclear Power, Thy Name Is Ruin" to hammer it into the people's memory. All of the townsfolk begin to believe Steadman is honest, but one skeptic in the back of the crowd believes him to be a false prophet. Steadman persuades the people against nuclear fusion as if it is unnatural and therefore ungodly, and the people don't want to be ungodly. Steadman finishes his speech and hands out pamphlets while next to a donation tin, that townsfolk gladly put money into; the skeptic watches from afar as Steadman packs up and leaves. He follows Steadman to his room in a hotel, where he forces himself into Steadman's room and confronts him: this town runs on nuclear power, and you're asking them to regress back to coal burning; Steadman says that the town can connect to a grid system elsewhere in the valley: the skeptic says that to get the same amount of power from the nuclear facility, they'd have to pay twice as much to the nearest electricity company: Steadman informs him that a switch to EC Electric is only a 64% cost increase -- the skeptic realizes that Steadman is in fact a false prophet: he is a salesman for EC Electric, parading as a preacher: Steadman proudly confirms this. The skeptic asks Steadman to reverse his stance, tell the people the truth, and leave the town; Steadman says no and resumes packing. The skeptic grabs a paperweight of a rocketship and bashes Steadman's head in from behind. The next morning, the townsfolk are gathering around the gazebo to view the dead preacher Elias Steadman, who is slumped on the floor of the gazebo, with his two finger dipped in his own blood: next to him (scrawled on the floor, as if he wrote it before passing) are the words "Deceit, Thy Name Is Ruin." The crowd looks and realizes he was a liar, and they're ashamed; at the back of the crowd is the skeptic.
· Recut the 1965 film "Voyage to the Prehistoric Planet" to make a short of it, and then dub over the dialogue, music, and sound effects to make my own story of it: the spaceships Vega, Sirius, Capella, and Arcturus are imperializing the planet Venus for the Nation of Earth (an Interstellar Imperial World Colony -- no longer a planet of numerous nations); they land on Venus and explore it. Make the film cheesy, add some new scenes of my own, and subtly reference the fact that this is a recut of a recut, because "Voyage to the Prehistoric Planet" was a 1965 American copy and dub of the 1962 Russian film "Planeta Bur." In the end, this short film/redub-redub will be a cheesy comedy prodding at the bad acting and special effects of the 1960s; "actors" can explicitly refer to the effects not being too believable, forgetting lines, and wishing they were elsewhere because they have better things to do than film this movie; one person straight-up doesn't want to be on this film, one really wants to take this seriously and not break character, one has angst and is disappointed that their life has led to this, one is oblivious to how bad the film and their own acting is, one thinks they're really on Venus, one has IBS, etcetera. The robot sounds like Peter Lorre.
· A sadistic psychiatrist makes people worse by asking questions with connotations: she aims to drive them towards suicide, because she gets her sick kicks that way. It starts by showing her interacting with four people individually, and it bounces between each one (all people on different days, and each person has multiple sessions -- change their clothing); in each session, we see quick blurbs of the person coming to a realization or finishing a story, and the psychiatrist asks a follow-up question that implies that the person has already come to realize they caused all their problems, when she's really just making accusations and manipulating words (but they think it's true, because they trust her) (examples: "perhaps your mother ignores you because she raised you dotingly all these years and you abandoned her when she needed you most," "are you saying that you think women don't pay attention to you because of your abrasive personality or because you're unattractive," "do you think you haven't gotten promoted because you are too lazy to do your work or because you are too afraid to talk to your boss"). Over time, one of the people stops coming in for their session, and she free time for that time slot. Another stops coming in, and she finds an obituary for them. The first time slot has been replaced by a new person. The third realizes that the psychiatrist has been pointing out their flaws and originally thought it was to be mean but realize she was subtly letting them know what was wrong with their personality, and they're going to work on it with their spouse at home -- they can't thank her enough for helping (this makes the psychiatrist unhappy, but she says "you're welcome" through gritted teeth). The fourth person gets a brunt of cruelty from the psychiatrist as she takes out her frustrations about the third one on the fourth: the fourth breaks down crying about how shitty they are. The first time slot person is berated, there's no second or third (she uses this time to stew), and the fourth gets a lashing; the fourth takes a breath and says they're contemplating suicide: the psychiatrist cruelly says it might be a good idea.
· 1921, the world is Art Deco, and America is prosperous. People are at a party: one man is consorting with two women who don't know about each other, as they are on other sides of the ballroom. It's stylized as if it's a silent film, except the live music, footsteps, and clinking of glasses is audible -- so basically, the world is normal, except people move slightly quicker and more exaggerated, and everyone is mute: that's the real reason there's no noise in old films. As the tryst goes on, it becomes apparent that it's more than just a silent film: the people are mute. How to get that across, I am unsure of right now.
· Every time a man closes his eyes, he sees himself in bed (third person view) and a demonic, wretched monster approaches his bed: scared of it being real, he wakes up to avoid the monster (it seems really realistic to him in the dream). These endless nightmares prompt him to not sleep, and he grows exhausted and miserable: each day's wakeful hours are dreadful because he can't focus and feels like crap: people tell to get good night's sleep, but he can't -- and they shrug off his idea of his dream being real as merely a stupid fear. He grows more and more miserable, and each night has the same nightmare when he dozes off: he tries to keep himself awake, but it's torturous. He resigns and decides to set up a camera to see if something really does approach him when he sleeps or if it is a dream: he wakes himself from his nightmare and rewinds the footage: the monster really does approach him in real life; he is defeated, so he goes to the bathroom and slits his wrists: the monster appears in the doorway and the man turns to it and says, defeated, "you got what you wanted, now leave me alone:" the demon vanishes, and the man finally closes his eyes in peace.
· We view the following story as if it is seen all in one take through the lens of a handheld video camera, held by a man as he runs and wanders. -- The ground is shaking as a skyscraper finishes collapsing downwards, onto the city streets: a humongous cloud of dust and debris arises quickly from the base of the collapse, and a wall of dusty fog 40-feet high races away from the base in all directions, careening down and filling every side street, like water racing down the ravines carved into a mountain. The people on the street run away from the base as the dusty fog seems to pour through every street, forcing everyone to run in one direction: away; except the streets aren't spokes on a hub around the base, so they can't get as far away as fast as they ought to, and the fog catches up; people duck into stores and shut the doors, dive under parked cars, and hide behind immovable objects: the fog absorbs anyone in the open air, and blinds them in its haze: everything is dark and yellowish-brown within the dusty fog of concrete and steel particles. People are lost and unable to see beyond two feet in front of their face; they choke on the dust. As the fog continues to race away from the base, the fog thins enough to let light through. The sun is merely the brightest spot beyond the yellow-brown air, but nothing can be seen beyond ten feet in any direction. People are lost and disoriented, and still choking on the dusty air: the man gets up, wipes off the lens, and moves down the road, aimlessly heading away from the base; a rotund older man shambles onto the street and approaches the man: the rotund man is caked in dust. Sirens can be heard and muffled flashing lights get brighter: an ambulance races past them, and swerves to avoids the rotund man: the ambulance hits the curb, rides up onto the sidewalk, strikes against the wall, and swerves back onto the road to race away and out of view and earshot. There's a woman crying out for help coming from near the base, from where the ambulance came from; the rotund man and the man hear it and shuffle off towards it: they run past a number of dusty pedestrians shuffling hurriedly away down the street, away from the base: there's chaos and mess in the street, which is coated in dust. The two men come upon a woman who lies on the edge of the sidewalk, bleeding into the dust: she asks for help, because the ambulance hit her and drove off; the man sets his camera down, and the two men bend down to pick her up when there's an explosion further down the road (closer to the base), followed by shouts; the three of them look at each other, and the rotund man says to the man "I got her" (referring to carrying the woman) and "go on," so the man pats him on the shoulder once, picks up his camera, and runs off towards the sound of the explosion. The air has thinned to allow visibility beyond twenty feet; the man turns onto a new street and comes upon a large light, and when he draws closer, he finds a storefront on fire: outside is a crowd of people who aren't caked in dust (they were inside the store when a fire erupted and forced them out and into the dust): they cough and mention that everyone from inside is accounted for. A police car races towards them and slams on the brakes (skidding on the dust slightly): a cop steps out and orders everyone to head up the street and out of the fog to an evacuation site; the man films a while but slinks away from the cop and up the street, towards the base, while everyone else shuffles away from the store and to the evacuation site. The fog thins to make visibility be thirty feet; the man walks amongst the dusty air, and papers still slowly descend from the sky; an office chair has fallen and hit a car's hood on the front-left; a dust-caked guy crawls out from under the car and the man tells him to head down the street to an evacuation site. Nobody is around; he turns onto a new street; there's a continuous faint sound of sirens in the distance that is now the only audible sound. The man goes up to a storefront with a shattered front window and peers inside: nobody occupies it, but a lot of dust does. The man goes next door, he wipes dust off of a small portion of the window, and he peers through the glass: inside is a number of people, who cower near the back of the store; the man knocks on the glass and shouts that it's ok to come out, albeit a little dusty: they come towards him, and exit the store, shielding their eyes to bright, all-around light, and coughing: one person mentions that the man is caked in dust (everyone else is shell-shocked or scared). The man tells them to go down the street to an evacuation site beyond the fog; they wordlessly thank him and head on out, clutching cloth from their clothes over their mouths and noses. The man continues on; the fog has lightened up to make visibility up to forty feet; he comes upon a wandering, dust-caked black man who seems disoriented: the man asks him what's wrong, and the black man says he's looking for his daughter (they got separated); the man asks where he last saw her, and the black man says it was up the street a ways: the man says they'll go look to see if she's under any cars or in a store; they head up the street towards the base, and turn onto a new street. The man looks under cars and the black man does the same: the man tells him to call for her: the black man continuously cries out for "Amanda;" they walk up the street: the black man looks solely for Amanda, but the man tells any people he sees to head down to the evacuation site. They keep going up the street, both calling for Amanda, and the man asks where the black man last saw her: the black man says it was just up this ways a little; they come upon a courtyard, and the black man says he came through here: they walk through the urban garden and come upon a bank executive building with a large lobby, whose windows have all been blown out: they enter the building, stepping on dust and shattered glass; they cross through the lobby, looking at the urban wealth and glamour that is now apocalyptic. The fog has lifted a great deal, but still hangs loosely in the air, over the tops of buildings; they exit through the lobby onto the street on the other side if the building, and look up to see a building with massive damage to the corner of its roof: the man looks beyond the roof damage at the sky behind it and remarks that the tower once stood there... The black man gets more fervent and the man asks if she was nearby: the black man says it was around the corner (in the direction of the base): the man pauses to look where he was pointing, and then quietly says to himself "oh God" as if a sad burden just fell upon him, and he solemnly follows; they hurriedly walk up the street and past a fallen, twisted highway road sign that says the taking a left turn gets you to the tower. They turn left onto a new street, and the man sees the black man run to a stop, and stand wordlessly, shocked, staring up and down at the space the tower used to occupy, which is now either empty or wrecked, twisted ruins: the black man finally turns and says she was over here: she was at work, and he came to pick her up for lunch, but she's not here; the man doesn't have a response, but eventually says "...the tower fell, dude. ...that's where all the dust is from." This barely clicks in the black man's head, and he begins to weep; the man goes over and puts his arm around the black man to lead him back the way they came; a helicopter flies overhead, and the dust clears up enough to see it, along with the sun.
· Convicted man in Russia sentenced to walk from the west coast of Siberia to Moscow(?) because it's a new form of punishment -- we join him a third of the way in, and he's starving, cold, and tired: most people die, but if you make it, you can be free (it's "a fate worse than dying, with the possibility of freedom at the end;" he passes a number of frozen corpses along the way, because others have been convicted before him; the Russian winter is cold, and it tries to slow him down: he fights it, and he fights the exhaustion, but he's tired and doesn't want to be cold anymore; yet, he'd rather keep pushing and survive: he just needs to keep his mind off of it (he recalls book plots as detailed as he can get). He keeps going, but it's hard: he cold and tired, and although he keeps saying he'll keep going, he slows and collapses into the snow, and he lies there as his body freezes over and is blanketed in snow.
· PTSD episodes and thoughts that invade average life, after being a soldier in war... A veteran returns home to fanfare, but the next day is back to normal for everyone else: for him, he doesn't know where to start, so he watches television, but nothing is interesting, so he flips through channels until he comes to a WWII movie from the 1950s (one that makes war cheesy), and he chuckles at how wrong it is; his wife comes home and asks if he went job hunting, and he says he wanted to wind down first (this aggravates her slightly). That night, he falls asleep quickly but hears the door creak, which startles him awake (drawing a pistol from the side of the bed simultaneously): it was the dog coming into the room; the wife, awakened, asks what's wrong, and he says nothing, and his heart rate starts to slow down. Driving down the street in their neighborhood, he sees up ahead a garbage bag on a neighbor's curb, so he drives into the oncoming side of the road to get around it as from it as possible; there's one coming up on the oncoming side, so he steers back, and then steers back into oncoming to avoid another on the right; the wife asks what he's doing, he says there's a lot of trash on the road (and is angry that people don't pick it up), she says it's garbage day (ignorant to there being a problem). The couple is walking in a forest together because she wants to find some activity that is peaceful for him; he is paranoid and checking the trees for possible snipers, and any snapping twigs cause him to stop, crouch, and scan the forest -- the wife watches empathetically, because she realizes that he's still stuck in the war. That night, they're in bed and he's having a nightmare that's causing him to whimper and writhe in his sleep: this wakes his wife up, and she watches for a moment, then tries to wake him up: he springs awake upon being touched and pins her down: he realizes it's just her and apologizes profusely. The next day, they're in the grocery store and he sees an Arab man buying produce: with hate and suspicion in his eyes, he watches the Arab man; his wife looks up from shopping and calmly pulls him away. Later that day, he's outside tending to the lawn when some neighbors launch fireworks: the initial whining of a rocket causes him jump down to the ground and lie flat to take cover; the following whines and explosions cause him to recoil, and he crawls to find a safe place to hide; inside the house, the wife shakes her head, upset, at the neighbors whose fireworks are startling her: she jolts with awareness when she realizes that her husband is probably reacting negatively, so she runs outside to get him: she finds him in the fetal position and tries to coax him to come inside. That night, he sits in the corner in the kitchen; his wife comes in and asks if he's coming to bed soon: he says no, he'll just stay out here; she figures there's no changing his mind, but kisses him on the forehead and walks off: he speaks up and she stops; he asks sadly if she still loves him, and she says of course, and he asks if she will still love him in five years, and she asks if this is about the PTSD, and he doesn't respond: she comes back to him and kneels down to his level, and says she will love him forever and stay by his side, because he can trust her and lean on her for support; she curls up next to him and falls asleep on the floor with her head in his lap: he leans back against the wall with a thousand-yard stare; cut to morning, on the same shot, and he wakes up with the sun to find she's still curled up at his lap, and he smiles for the first time since he came home.
· Peaceful painter lives in peaceful studio apartment, but his works are boring and don't get sold. Then, the building next door gets demolished: construction of a new building next door interrupts his peaceful painting. He calmly paints abstract works with broad brushstrokes, but the noise of the construction makes him angry since he can't concentrate; his sweeping, calm-colored paintings grow increasingly peppered with swift pecks and strikes of sharp, hot color: his painting reflects his emotions, which grow from calm to furious as the noise of construction gets louder. He goes to sell his new works, which he thinks are not-too-great, but the dealer thinks they are complex and loves them. When the construction ends, the painter is now disappointed and nervous; so he signs a lease at a new apartment complex next to an upcoming construction project.
· A man desires wealth and power but lives in a socialist society: he is a meager dock worker; however, he has access to commercial vessels carrying goods that will be stored in warehouses at the port. He figures he has to build an underground empire of getting desired things to the people who want them selfishly but can't get them otherwise; these things come at a price, which is how he raises money; his great avarice is unknown to the nation under socialism. He begins small, but, over time, he eventually gets promoted to dockyard supervisor with all the workers being in on the scheme. Eventually, the police come to arrest a dockworker for committing a crime against the state (supposed sabotage, but really just an accident at work when a state inspector was visiting and found a malfunctioning crane), and they kick in his door to find him playing a PS4 on a 60" LED screen; the worker is interrogated but won't crack: they promise him immunity if they can have the name of the ringleader and the details of the smuggling operation: the worker cracks and spills the beans, and the police kill him. The police quietly surround the dock at night to launch a surprise raid (the dock is supposed to be closed at night, but is alive with lights and workers and boats); the police strike and corral the surprised workers; the man is in his office and hears the commotion quick enough to grab his pistol and barricade the door: he goes out fighting but doesn't win. The next morning, the newspaper regales to the masses of how insurrection of secret capitalism was once again crushed by the united forces of socialism.
· This film is seen completely through television monitors. On numerous home television sets, we see live new reports of a man being dragged away from a cabin in the woods. On the viewing monitor of the video camera in the interrogation room, as well as the interrogation room's numerous security camera's monitors, we see the interrogation of this man, who is handcuffed to the table. The interrogators begin by detailing what they know: the man is a Unabomber-esque anarchist who had sent numerous bombs to buildings of national/economic importance; multiple packages would be sent to the same place at the same time, so that they would all be on the same truck: all had homemade bombs in them, that were fitted with detonators and GPS tracking devices, so that he could track where the boxes were, and when they'd get to the building's loading dock, he'd hit the switch and blow them all up. He targeted the national headquarters of bank companies and insurance companies, as well as regional FBI headquarters (and other federal agency buildings), and the UN building (which was his last attempt before capture). His ideology (Neo-Luddite, traditional) is against globalization, industrialization, and liberalization (he hates the World Trade Organization): he wishes to return to the earth like Aldo Leopold, return to Hobbes' state of nature, and at least resurrect feudalism: he wants to get rid of all modern advances in technology and medicine, because they are not natural and humanity should progress at a constant (not exponential) rate, because our technology has far surpassed our comprehension of its abilities and usefulness (since automobiles, at least); his ideology was laid out in his manifesto, which they read thoroughly. They ask him if that about covers it: he says yes.
· Power outage occurs in an apartment occupied by two people: one says to two "how could this possibly get any worse?" Sudden economic downturn occurs, as a neighbor bursts into the room to say: apparently their power is working, which bugs the two people as much as the recession does -- one repeats himself: "". A home invader comes in through the window and is startled by the three people, so he pulls out a gun and tells them to go to the corner; he wants to know where they keep the valuables -- one repeats himself: "". A meteor shower starts to rain outside, and it distracts all four of them, diffusing the situation: a meteor hits the neighbor's car -- one repeats himself: "". Suddenly, the streets below are flooded with raptors who chase and attack the pedestrians: holy shit -- one repeats himself: "". Just then, the dead people rise and a swarm of other zombies from God-knows-where bring the zombie apocalypse as the zombies start eating the pedestrians and the raptors -- one goes to repeat himself: "- but is interrupted by two saying "stop saying that!"
· A ravaging disease in Africa makes its way across the ocean when an American returns home; USA thought it was safe, but this guy began to infect his doctors, who infected other patients, who infected other people, etcetera... A woman lives in her apartment, with the windows sealed shut with caulk, the central air system is taped shut with black plastic bags, the faucets have been duct taped shut, and the seal under the front door stuffed tight with a towel; she has amassed a large storage of food and bottled water. She used to be a nurse, but abandoned the profession and locked herself indoors after three of her colleagues contracted the virus. She reads books for entertainment, as well as watches TV, but if the TV is on, it's on the news: she's waiting for updates about the cure, but more and more news stations are replacing their staff as the come down with the virus or choose to quit and live indoors; the government has assumed control of broadcasts regarding the virus, as they want to avoid sensationalizing it; the government has a fleet of scientists working around the clock to develop a cure. She knows it won't work: the virus is too adaptive; she doesn't want to protract the virus, so she'll just live out her days in her apartment; she has begun to talk to herself since she's alone.
· A guy bends over backwards to please his girlfriend and make sure she has nothing to worry about, thereby being exhausted himself; ex: she comes home from work when he gets back from school, but she relaxes while he does the chores and makes dinner, and he tucks her in so she can sleep and he does his homework afterwards, goes to bed late, but then they wake up at the same time. We're shown this cycle numerous times (smaller clips for each bit to help speed each iteration up for the viewer); between classes, at lunch one day, his friend tells him that he looks exhausted, and the guy says why he is; the friend tries to tell him that he shouldn't have to do all of the work: that's a poisonous relationship and it'll bleed him dry, or at the very least make him grow to resent her. The guy says that he won't, and the friend says the guy doesn't know for sure; the guy doesn't care: he wants to make his girlfriend as comfortable as possible, because she'll have less reasons to leave him. The friend says he's insecure and that she loves him; the guy says he knows she loves him, but does she love HIM or the “him” who does everything for her: if he stopped, would she still care as much? The friend says he's paranoid, but the guy says he's never had luck with relationships: everyone always wants to leave him -- even his parents, so he doesn't want to risk it: he needs her and he can't lose her, or he just won't be able to take another loss. The friend tells him to tell her that, so the guy says he'll think about it: the guy starts to delve into some further soul-searching, but the friend looks at the time on his phone and realizes he has to run off to class -- they say bye and the friend leaves the guy all alone to finish his lunch.
· In the bowels of a basement in the Downtown Core of Singapore, a rebellious-dressed American man pulls a black hood off of a well-dressed Asian guy who is tied to a chair: the Asian guy speaks English well but with a slight accent, and he asks the man who he is; the man says it isn't important; the guy says he can give him money in exchange for freedom; the man doesn't want money; the guy says he has power over city officials that he can wield to get the man anything he wants; the man doesn't want anything other than the Asian guy dead; the guy wants to know why: the man says it's because the guy is a ghost. The Asian guy smiles but asks for clarification, and the man says that the guy works underground through back channels and black markets, and has no government record, so he doesn't exist: he's able to pull strings and nobody knows he exists; the guy is proud of being this ghost, because it's what he's always strived to be: the real power is behind the scenes. The man says he understands this, which means that by killing the guy, he'll kill one of the most powerful men in the world -- which not only makes the man into one of the thereby-most-feared men in the world, but it'll also dramatically change the dynamic of Southeast Asia, and thereby the world (and that'll be cool to see happen); also, since the guy doesn't technically exist, the man isn't technically committing a crime: people will miss him, but nothing can be done about it; the guy understands this as a downside to his job. The guy asks how the man found him, since he's a ghost and all; the man says the first thing was to look at trends and timing behind political and economic changes, and see how they were linked, then to find connections between what was linked, then follow the money and paper trail (just like any cop show says), which was harder since his trail was near-invisible -- the man was a hacker and investigative journalist in Seattle when he stumbled upon the connections, and continued investigations required him to leave the computer and fly to Singapore after the trails got off the electronic path. The man looked for patterns, like he always did -- patterns and trends in a nation's history and culture allow foresight into where a nation is heading, which allows you to predict what will happen next, which is why he can't wait to be the only one taking advantage of the new-to-be-unorthodox fluctuations of the Stock Market, once the guy is killed and the balance of power shifts among nations and companies -- he broke in or snuck into corporate buildings to look through files, and copied ones with patterns, then studied those patterns for corresponding trends between companies, then he looked for patterns in company actions and determined the connection was behind the East Asia Summit (which didn't say much considering Singapore is one of the Four Asian Tigers), but after looking at the list of attendees, he realized another thing: the guy wouldn't manipulate the elite officials, like the prime minister: he'd manipulate someone two tiers down, who had a lot of influence but not a lot of publicity -- one of the lower diplomats also was at APEC, ASEAN, and NAM: that's a lot of global influence for such an unimportant diplomat; the man figured that it wasn't the diplomat with the real power, though, because power is always behind the scenes -- so the man followed the diplomat and put a screen-copy bug on his computers so that he could monitor live what the diplomat was seeing on his screens: the diplomat seemingly had a lot of meetings in the Downtown Core, which was understandable, but he had a lot of them in parks, hotel lobbies, dock warehouses, and train stations: whenever the diplomat went to one, the man followed; after seeing a couple of the same suited thugs meet with the diplomat, the man followed the thugs -- he got lost a few times, but eventually he followed them back continuously to the same spot: a Girl's Primary School (specifically, the basement) in Bukit Timah. The man staked out the school for a while and hacked his way into the security system (rooted around in cable lines and busted into a wifi network): he studied the comings and goings of people (including the guy, who lives in a nearby mansion estate which is perpetually heavily guarded) and determined there was a window on Wednesday nights where the guy worked late and there weren't as many thugs inside. The man describes a physical phenomenon called the Aberration of Light: light reflecting off of a faraway planet tells us observers the location of the planet in the night sky, but the rotations and movement of the Earth change the way the light gets back to us, so the location is skewed slightly; a pattern is something that consistently and constantly occurs, and a trend is when a pattern changes in certain ways at certain times: the light reflecting back to Earth is a pattern, and the Aberration of Light is a trend: studying the patterns helps finds the trends, and the trends let you predict how things will play out -- for instance, after viewing the Aberration of Light on a single planet numerous times, we know where it will both be and appear to be each time we go to look at it. (If you walk in the rain with an umbrella, the rain falls down so you point the umbrella up; but if you speed up walking, you have to tilt the umbrella forward to proactively deflect the rain, since the droplets that would've landed ahead of you are now coming towards you.) Now, the man calls the guy a planet and himself an observer: the guy communicates to the diplomat in certain ways at certain times and everyone follows an unofficial schedule; for instance, Flat-Face Thug takes a dump each night around 1 am for fifteen minutes, Knob-Chin Thug falls asleep before midnight and sleeps like a rock, and the three look-alikes play cards after the main detail takes off for the night at 10 PM; so, the man figured out his path to sneak in during a fifteen minute window around 1 am where he could incapacitate the guy and drag him out without being seen or heard; since the look-alikes play music, they wouldn't hear the loudest of brief scuffles if the incapacitation took too long: the man snuck in, tranquilized the guy, and dragged him out: he threw him in the trunk of his car and drove back to the city, to the basement of a corporate headquarters whose back door was chronically left unlocked: and here they are now. The two are silent, until the guy smiles and says "I thought you weren't in it for the money?" and the man asks if he's referring to the Stock Market prediction plan, and the guy says yes -- the man says that he intends to manipulate the stock market, but it's not his main goal (plus it is completely legal other than a million dollars suddenly showing up in his bank account unexplained): the main goal is an experiment, coupled with the elimination of a corrupt man and the allowance of the governmental and corporate systems of a whole region of the globe to assert their own social, economic, and political agendas, rather than listen to a single man beneath an elementary school. The guy says that there's one problem with his thinking: the governments and corporations listen to him because they need guidance (every group needs a leader) -- they don't do it under threats, they do it by choice: they're free to do as they please every time he gives them advice, but 9/10 times they listen: they choose obey to the higher power; and if he is eliminated by the man, then another person will assume the role, just as it always has been. The man tells the guy that the guy reads too much of Machiavelli's work, and the guy says that the man can believe him or not, but killing him won't eliminate the trends and voluntarily-submissive heads of states and CEOs, so the man might as well let him go: the man says that the guy just called himself expendable, so the man sees no reason to do so, since the guy will surely try and kill him if he we're let go; the guy says he won't lie and say that he wouldn't track the man down and kill him, so the man sighs: the man doesn't know what to think of what the guy said about the trends of leaders never being able to change (as he circles behind the seated guy), but he'll still try to change it just in case: the man garrotes the guy until the guy is dead; the man leaves.
· Three people are trapped inside a cabin because of blizzard -- Cyril Fitzgerald, Walter Cusack, and Norma Spillane: Cyril owns the cabin while Walter and Norma were driving by individually and realized they had to stop and ask to stay the night; they all sit in Cyril's living room and keep warm by the fire, and the two drivers thank Cyril again. It's quiet, and then Cyril asks them about themselves, and Walter and Norma give an ice breaker's amount of generic information about their lives (in 2014, Walter (43, born 1971) is a married teacher with 2 kids, and Norma (48, born 1966) is a divorced journalist); Cyril (54, born 1960) wants to know them more personally than just a blanket definition, since they'll be staying with him: he wants them to tell a story about their lives: Walter wants to know what kind of story, so Cyril starts them off with an example... Cyril was friends with a man named Denver Folstaine in high school, in the late 1970s. Denver pined for a girl Susan, but Susan was in a sour relationship with the football team's fullback: Susan was his friend but obligated to go to Prom with the fullback, so Denver had to go with someone else -- he chose Susan's friend, Cathy, who had an obnoxious personality but passable good looks. All throughout prom, Denver kept his eye on Susan rather than Cathy; eventually, Denver grew so unhappy that he wanted to leave -- Cathy took this as that he wanted to get out and hurry on to a hotel for the night: she was dumb and vain, and thought Denver liked her -- she was also a loose woman, and was ready to give herself up to Denver. Since she drove them both to prom, she drove them to a hotel, where Denver reluctantly paid for a room -- after spiraling into depression, he figured he would have sex with Cathy since he never would with Susan. Cyril and their other friends thought Denver wouldn't need the condom he put in his pocket just in case he bagged Susan, so they poked a hole in it, as a prank. -- Denver was accepted to Dartmouth for political science; he wanted to be a senator. -- Denver had reluctantly had sex with Cathy, and he used the condom, and she ended up getting pregnant; it changed the course of Denver's life forever: he had to defer his acceptance to college so that he could get a job and support the kid that was on the way, so he got a job at his father's restaurant; he married Cathy in order to keep her from giving a birth to a bastard (she wanted to save her reputation); they had the kid, who grew up to be an entitled punk; Denver never stopped loving Susan, and Cathy realized this, so she has openly cheated on Denver -- but Denver doesn't care, because he's now the owner of a shitty restaurant rather than a senator and unable to marry the woman he loves while married to a bitch. The worst part is that Susan broke up with the jock after prom, and word on the street was that she did it because she wanted to date Denver, but after he impregnated her friend, she didn't want to impose. Cyril and his friends can never tell Denver what they did. ...Walter and Norma are shocked, but don't send any accusations of disappointment to Cyril since they can tell that he is very sorry for what he has done. Norma says she has a story that Cyril would probably accept, judging by the one he told... Norma was a foreign correspondent in Hong Kong back in 1993, and she was investigating the disappearance of a Chinese diplomat, and suspected that a small mafia in Hong Kong was behind it, since they were opposed to the Chinese diplomat's constant attempts to assert Hong Kong into Chinese rule -- this would've meant that their abilities to continue black market business would be impeded by the Chinese government. She scoped out the places she knew that the HK mafia hung out, and followed a bunch of them around until she found a place they all seemed to frequent: a laundromat that didn't get a lot of business, yet whose records showed a lot of financial gains: it was a front for the black market business of the mafia. She bravely snuck around back and peered into the back door, and saw the diplomat jovially conversing with some mafia men while coming upstairs from a secret staircase behind a shelving unit -- the diplomat was aiding the mafia, if not one of them. She hung out in the shadows behind the laundromat and waited for him to come out; she followed him through the alleys until they were completely alone, and she spoke up and confronted him about it: he deflected the accusations originally, but when she revealed that she had evidence, he gave in and confirmed it, all the while smiling; she then supposed it was a dumb idea to reveal it all to a man with ties to the mafia, so she asked him to put his hands up and walk out to the street so that he couldn't kill her in public (if at all). She pushed him down an alley towards the street, but he kept slowing down, prompting her to push him more: at one point, when she pushed, he spun around and grabbed her arm: he unsheathed a knife with the other hand and went to plunge it into her: she hit his arm with hers and deflected it, then kicked him in the knee, and he buckled to the ground: she grabbed the knife from him and plunged it into his neck -- blood spurted everywhere. She killed him in self-defense, but she would've lost her job and gone to trial (and perhaps even jail) if she turned herself in; she never touched him, so she wiped the knife handle clean and left the scene, as if it were a gangland murder. She applied for a transfer out of HK and received it at the same time that the HK government held a funeral for him and cracked down on the mafia by raiding the laundromat. The worst part was that she told only one person, her husband, who saw it as the last straw in their suffering relationship and he divorced her (she agreed to the divorce so long as he never tell anyone that she killed a guy); and now three people know. ... Cyril and Walter are shocked, because she doesn't look like the kind of girl to kill anyone -- she's petite. Walter sighs and reluctantly says that he has a story... When Walter was a kid (14), in 1985, there was a nasty dog in the neighborhood named Oberon, who was the neglected pet of a nasty old man, but became a stray when the old man died. Oberon was a cruel Rottweiler who chased him and his little brother Mickey (9) home from school at least once a week -- he didn't do it too often, and he sought them out at different points along the way, to keep them on their toes -- he was evil; Oberon lived in a storm water drainage tunnel under a small bridge, so they always took the long way home to avoid him, but he always found them. One day, running down a dirt road in a forest, Mickey tripped and Walter turned around from ahead of him after hearing the shouts for help, and turned to see Oberon standing over Mickey; Walter tried to approach Mickey but Oberon barked viciously with bared teeth -- so Walter just stood there. Oberon then started humping Mickey's backpack right above him, all the while angry and growling at Walter -- it lasted for almost 2 unbearable minutes. After Oberon finished, he barked and ran off; Mickey himself wasn't harmed, but he still felt the effects of being a sexual assault victim -- and it was by a goddamn dog; they threw his backpack into a ravine and went home, saying the backpack was stolen by bullies: you see, when they arrived home panting or crying, they had to explain why they were running, but thought it would make them look weak if they said they were running from a dog, so they said they ran from bullies. Mickey didn't want to walk home after school the next day, so we called our mom and she picked us up: by this point, she wanted to know the names of our bullies -- I said I could handle it myself and she said I had one day before she got involved. So she drove us home, and I walked along the gravel road out to the storm drainage tunnel and snuck to the side of the bridge, and peered in: Oberon wasn't home. Walter took a plywood board and leaned it against one side, so Oberon would have only one entrance; Walter waited in the bushes. When Oberon showed up, he went inside the tunnel, but he couldn't exit out the back, and he couldn't turn around, so he backed up to exit; when he got to the end of the tunnel, Walter snuck up behind him and grabbed his hind legs: Walter dropped his pants and thought about a model from a playboy magazine he had back in his room: he grew an erection and began to rape Oberon from behind -- Oberon squealed and whined, but Walter powered through, because dominated Oberon was the only way to win: killing him wasn't good enough -- he had to rape the dog that raped his brother. When he finished, he backed up and Oberon ran off down the tunnel and crashed into the plywood, knocking it over and running further up the riverbank. Walter zipped up, both ashamed and triumphant -- he never saw Oberon again. The worst part was that it was technically his first sexual encounter -- he told Mickey ten years later when Mickey was talking about how he never saw Oberon again (and Mickey was both disgusted and thankful), but he hasn't told his wife. ...Cyril and Norma are stunned and don't know what to think; they sit in silence and sip their hot drinks. Cyril speaks up, saying that maybe it wasn't such a good idea to get to know each other -- all agree.
· A politically-corrupt governor has had a tendency for grafting (stealing money intended for public works and lining his pockets with it); the leaders of his elite order of corporate men (the Brotherhood) comes knocking, and he invites the seven of them into his office. The Brotherhood is glad to see he's enjoying his position, and the governor agrees; the Brotherhood says that he wouldn't have gotten it if it weren't for them, and the governor agrees, since he got them his mayoral position two years prior. The Brotherhood says that they need him to replace his attorney general with Swanson, who is a Brotherhood member; the governor is bothered, because his attorney general has become a really good friend, and he knows about the grafting; the Brotherhood says that patronage got him where he is, and patronage will help him get other Brotherhood members elected; the governor tries to explain that he doesn't want his AG to tell anyone about the grafting if he feels burnt about being fired; the Brotherhood tells him to just owe him a favor later -- the governor says that this system of theirs always does that: it passes out favors and never repays them because it's too busy uplifting the same handful of people. The Brotherhood asks why he's complaining, since he is one of those being uplifted; the governor is thankful, but he'll have a scandal if the AG talks -- the Brotherhood says that a real friend wouldn't talk, and the governor says actually a real friend wouldn't fire their friend for no reason. The Brotherhood asks the governor if he wants to be president someday; the governor says yes; the Brotherhood says that he needs to do two things: 1. Stop grafting, 2. Change the AG. The Brotherhood takes a breath and says that his AG is siphoning the grafted funds into his own account. The governor pauses, stunned... He says that that's not true, because he is the doing that: the Brotherhood says that tomorrow the governor will begin to trickle the stolen funds back into public works, and those funds will trickle into the AG's account; at the start of next month, the governor will launch an investigation to look for the reason behind the discrepancy in the funds, and they'll find it with the AG: he'll fire him and promote Swanson. The governor thinks hard, and the Brotherhood chimes in that it gives him a month to enjoy friendship with the AG until the AG loses faith in everyone and loses his reputation (which will happen no matter what path the governor chooses to take), but the Brotherhood can hook the AG up with money enough to live out his life in peace. The governor is unsure; the Brotherhood repeats that the AG getting fired and ruined will happen no matter what path the governor chooses to take, so he can either remain governor or get impeached in the process. The governor agrees reluctantly, and the Brotherhood is glad to hear it: they leave. The governor takes a breath and collapses into his chair, then dismally calls up his AG, and answers the phone with a false joy, asking the AG if he wants to come over and play pool on the billiards table: the governor is distraught.
· A married man stands on a bridge contemplating suicide, but realizes he is too chicken to do it; he goes home, depressed. At home, his brother's family has come over and his wife asks him where he was at, and he mumbles back something about the grocery store; his jovial brother says he doesn't have bags so he gets really investigative and asks where he was, and the brother frustratedly says he was out on a walk: the brother relinquishes and goes back to distracting his two kids (the man doesn't have any kids -- just a wife); the brother's wife asks where the man was and the brother says that the man won't say. The man's wife asks the distraught man in the kitchen where he was, but the man just asks why his brother is over; his wife says that the brother's wife called to ask about coming over for dinner, and she tried to get a hold of the man but he wouldn't answer so she said yes because she figured the man wouldn't mind: the man sighs, and the wife asks where he was, and the man dismissively says he'll tell her later. The man goes to the living room and asks how his brother is doing. At dinner, the man is emotionless but asks his two nephews what grade they're in, and what they learned recently in school (they made paper mâché flowers: the man remembers doing that); his wife is concerned for the man, and the brother notices tension. After dinner, the kids are playing on the floor and the man and brother sit across the room while the wives talk in the kitchen; the brother breaks the silence and says that he doesn't have to bring the boys over anymore if it bothers him: the man shoots down the idea because he likes seeing the boys: the brother can understand that; the man asks what he means by that, and the brother says it's like watching a heist movie rather than participating in one; the man decides he doesn't know what the brother is talking about, and the brother says he can't think of the word and that's the best example he had. The brother breaks the silence again by seriously asking the man where he was earlier: no response. The brother breaks the silence again by saying that he's gonna head out: he tells the kids to get their coats on, and he goes to get his wife from the kitchen; without emotions, the man watches the boys scamper to their coats and put them on, all the while still playing with each other. The man and wife wave goodbye to the brother's family out the window and he turns to go upstairs; both the concerned wife (who calls after him a few times), and the camera follow the man upstairs to his bedroom. The wife finds the man collapsed on his bed with a face full of grief; she asks what's wrong, and he apologizes; she asks why, and starts to cry, so she puts his head an shoulders on her lap; he says he didn't want to tell anyone what happened earlier: he tried to kill himself, but he didn't have the guts to do it. She starts to cry, as well, and asks why: he feels bad about not being able to give her kids, because he knows that she wanted to have kids more than anything -- if he knew he was sterile, he wouldn't have married her, so that she could marry someone who could give her what she wanted. She tells him not to think that, because she loves him no matter what -- it sucks that they can't have kids themselves, but they can try other methods, or even adoption. He apologizes more, and she shushes him and consoles him and strokes his hair...
· In the following adventure, there are five adventurous, mature, expert explorers: gruff leader adventurer, hot lady gunslinger, tough brutish survivalist, snooty noble navigator, and sheepish linguist-scholar; all dialogue is vaguely childish, and they all talk about things that explicitly define their characters and roles. The explorers hike up a dangerous rock slope on a mountain next to a lake; they shoot bad guys along the way, and the navigator slips and almost slides off the rocks but doesn't; they all climb a tree to get to the top of a cliff, then they shoot more bad guys; they come upon a cave and see inside a treasure, so they take it, but it triggers a trap of explosions- cut to a bunch of kids flopping around in the backyard on the playground and one (the leader) is making explosion noises and running away from a little fort -- the perilous adventure we just saw as actually a bunch of kids imagining it on a playground; the characters are real adult characters until we realize they're kids: the kids resemble their adult counterparts. The leader has a toy in his hand that represents the treasure, the lady has some toy guns, the survivalist is crawling on the ground, and the navigator is running over to the playground where the linguist-scholar is hanging on the rope saying that the helicopter has arrived to lift them away; all the kids run to the rope and climb it to get higher and into a platform- cut to the helicopter flying away from the mountain as bad guys shoot at it, and the explorers are relishing in their victory and congratulating each other, when the leader stops and smells the air: he asks if anyone pooped, and they all smell the air and then look at the survivalist, who says he didn't, but all the other explorers say "ew!" and jump out of the helicopter with parachutes on, and skydive away from the helicopter, as the survivalist just sits there, bummed- cut to the playground, where four of them run away from platform they were on, and the survivalist is bummed.
· A superhero who is an ordinary man except for the fact that his body rapidly heals wounds and regenerates itself if exposed to light; the brighter it is, the faster it works. He has a pistol and knives, because this is real life and not a comic book, so he needs to actually eliminate the bad guys. Thing is, he can't go out at night without having light sources near him, but people don't tend to commit crimes in the in the light (let alone the daytime). The hero stops a burglary by shooting a perp in the chest, and shooting the accomplice in the leg and stabbing him in the back after he fell; the perp didn't fully die, so he shoots at the hero, and the hero is hit in the arm but shoots and kills the perp; the hero stumbles to a light source (an approaching car's headlights) and stands in front of it, soaking up the light: the wound heals, and he waves for the car to continue on driving. Later, the hero finds three men on the dock who have a guy with cinderblocks tied to his feet at gunpoint, forced to walk off the pier; the hero sneaks up on one man and stabs him in the neck with a knife, then shoots at the other two, who spin and open fire: the two men land a total four non-lethal shots into the hero, but the hero ends up shooting them both dead; the hero crawls over to a street lamp and pulls himself under its light: the guy hobbles over to him, trying to talk but is muffled by the gag in his mouth; the hero's wounds slowly heal up, and the hero eventually stands up and cuts the guy's arm-bindings and removes his gag: the guy asks if he's ok, and the hero's wounds close up and he says he's fine; the guy thanks him and the hero leaves. Later, the hero looks down at a warehouse from atop an aka cent building (we hear people inside it); in the warehouse, a crew of thugs is loading up crates of electronics into a truck to steal, and the boss directs them all from atop a pile of crates; in another room, the hero turns on the lights of the warehouse: this startles everyone, and the boss tells them go spread out and find who did it: the thugs fan out, and the hero stealthily kills one that comes close by stabbing his neck; the hero kills another by stabbing him the heart and covering his mouth. The hero kills another with a knife to the back of the head, but he is seen: the thug opens fire and the hero returns fire: both are hit, but the hero immediately heals under the lights, and the thug dies: the boss sees this all and points it out to the thugs, who swarm in that direction. The hero shoots them as he sees them coming, and any bullet that hits the hero causes pain but the wound heals almost immediately. A thug goes into the room with the power switch and turns off the lights; in the warehouse, everything goes dark, and the last bullets fired both ways all do damage: the thugs go down, and the hero goes down; the boss steps down from the crates and walks back over with the power-offing thug, over to the bullet-riddled hero and the last two other surviving thugs; the 3 thugs and the boss circle around the hero, who has five bullet holes in the body, one in the thigh, one in the forearm, and one in the jaw: he squirms and chokes on blood; the merciless boss comes over, smirks, and says that he's pretty powerless without the light -- and she shoots him twice in the head with a pistol, killing him: he is obviously dead. The four survivors rally up, close the truck, and drive away. Later, at dawn, the sun starts to peer over the horizon, and the light shines against the side of the warehouse: the rays of light pour through the windows and hit the opposite wall, and as time goes by, those rays of light sweep down onto the floor, closer and closer to the hero's corpse; when the light hits the corpse, he starts regenerating: when the light hits his wounds, they start closing up; he sparks back to life, and he gasps for breath, and he groans as he strains to stand up -- he has blood stains all over him, and his face: turns out a foreman stumbled upon him as he was awakening and is shocked to see him: the hero says hi, and the foreman asks if he's ok, and the hero says yeah, he just has a headache and is sore; the foreman says that earlier, when he was still a corpse, he called the cops -- so he might want to head on out: the hero says thanks and staggers out of the warehouse, leaving the foreman to stand amongst a bunch of dead thugs and pools of blood.
· 1920: a trumpeter wants to audition for an orchestra but as he's waiting outside and practicing he finds that the tone is off and it's squealing, and he doesn't know what's wrong; he auditions and they reject him. He leaves, disappointed, but someone in the waiting room with him nabs him off the street after he leaves and says he should come join them for a jazz band jam that night. (Make it a silent film.)
· A rainy November day: a homeless man wanders through a subway platform asking people for spare change, shaking a cup with a few coins in it; he passes a man on a cellphone who nonchalantly puts in some change, without stopping talking (thankful); he passes a seated old woman who looks at him, goes into her purse briefly, and pulls out some change that she gives him (gracious); a woman with a grocery bag waits for him to come over and hands him a whole dollar (much obliged); an anxious college student stands and looks at Twitter on his phone: the homeless man shambles up and asks for his attention, but the student ignores him: the homeless man tries again, and the student ignores him: the homeless man waits and gets a little closer, then asks if the student would at least look at him, and the student shifts in his foot and rotates to not face the homeless man any longer: the homeless man sighs and shuffles off: the student stands and his train pulls up, so the student puts his phone away and looks around for the homeless man, but doesn't see him: the student gets on the train. The homeless, who is leaning against a pole and mostly out of view if the student, stares over at the student and glares with mal-intent: the student waits for the train to move: the homeless man whispers gibberish and rubs an ancient coin between his fingers, crescendoing on a sharp exhale: the student stands in the train as it leaves. (FYI, the homeless man put a hex on the student so that the student will find a coin (the ancient coin) on the street and take it, and proceed to consistently lose things until he gives up the coin (to what ends up being the homeless man, but the student doesn't even know it!)): he steps off the subway and finds the ancient coin on the ground, and pockets it; he goes to class and seems to not have his PowerPoint for his presentation, so verbally gives it; his pen vanishes; his jacket disappears; he leaves and his shoes aren't on his feet when he enters a place for lunch so they tell him to get out (no shirt no shoes no service); he gets a call and his girlfriend frantically tells him that his dog isn't waking up and she thinks he's dead: he goes to respond but he's lost his voice; he frustratedly, freaked out, hangs up and walks sock-footed down the street (through puddles), and then his hearing stops working (and we hear nothing as well); he thinks he's dying and he starts to cry and wordlessly plea to pedestrians, and people are looking at him like he's a crazy homeless guy, so the student shambles defeated down an alley (through puddles); the student passes a homeless man (the homeless man) and the homeless man charismatically asks if he's alright but he can't hear him (we can't either): the student relinquishes to the request for change since he might as well give up what he has, so he digs out all the change from his pocket and plops it into the homeless man's cup: the homeless man mimes a tip of the hat and the student shuffles on: the student walks sock-footed through puddles, but suddenly the foot-splashes are both audible and made with shoes: we then see that the student has his jacket on again and is back to normal, and he is ecstatic and whispers, then yells victoriously while gripping his jacket: the student runs back down the alley to the street, but doubles back and sees that the homeless man doesn't have a head-covering: the student digs into his pocket and pulls out a winter hat, and hands it to the homeless man (much obliged): the student runs off, giddy: the homeless man is glad and pulls the coin out of the cup, and gives a sharp exhale on it.
· A man sits at a late night talk show with the host and he’s being interviewed. The conversation starts with how much he loves his wife, and he’d quit his job if she asked him to – the man says he loves her more than his job; when he was a kid, he was just looking for what was important in life – he was bullied and- the host remarks with shock and asks if he wants to share stories of being bullied, and the man says no. The man does say that it was a thing in elementary school and culminated in middle school, but high school was a four year period of him trying to understand how to go about life post-bullying, since it really stopped by that point – probably everyone was bullied in middle school, because kids are cruel, and they got picked up out of the arts & crafts and recess of elementary school and thrown into locker-filled hallways, classes with lectures, and rooms with cranky teachers, power tools, or both: it was a culture shock and the first glimpse of how life was going to be like – made you feel lost, and the classes were structured by intelligence levels, which emphasized your usefulness in society (which didn’t help being lost, because it set up either high or low expectations). Middle school prepared you for the real world more than college did – High school prepared you for college, middle school prepared you for life, and elementary school prepared you for dealing with kids; basically life is split by a mirror planted on the high school graduation day, and the second side of the mirror is a lot longer than the first, and with less standardized testing. The man digressed, and says that bullying was a real hindrance in his growth, as a person (emotionally, mentally), but it helped him become a realist early on, which allowed him to see the world in its true light (not idyllic or entitled or fake), so he grew up intellectually a lot faster than everyone else – he was surrounded by people in high school who were obsessed with superficial things and events that only matter in the present: meanwhile he was looking deep at things that mattered and what mattered over long periods of time, both backwards and forwards. He was always a funny guy, but he was shy (and he remained shy until some point in high school – probably his first mission trip, if he had to choose a time (although at least 9 people take credit for being the person who inspired him to break out of his shell)) – but because of bullying, he learned that if he could distract a bully or deflect their attacks, the bully had a chance to go away: an easy way was to make jokes; not only do jokes lighten the mood for the person receiving the abuse, but they can cause a bully to either stop being angry or to make him too proud of you to harm you – being funny became essential, and now my immediate response to stimuli it to have a joke for it – I was forced to be clever because I literally had to be on my toes all the time – and now it’s my job. I remember a specific class where – just in this one class – I had my glasses stolen, I was stabbed with pens, and I had my hands held on the radiator in the winter (when it was scalding hot). I am ok with looking back at the bullying that took place, because I’ve accepted that it happened and made me who I am today, but I don’t like to bring it up – although I often regret not standing up against as many bullies as I did; I stood up to a lot, and if you do it enough, eventually they see you as too much of a hassle and not enough of an easy target and they go away (they never feel remorse, though); oh, and peer pressure sucks – just saying. I didn’t like when my siblings were bullied, if they ever were, so I tried to direct their bullies to me (generally just my brother since I saw his bullies and not my sisters, since he and I were in the same grade); I figured that I could handle it a lot easier since I’m level-headed and vindictive – so I apologize to them if I let any slip through the cracks. I hated not beating the shit out bullies, and I regret more-so the more recent bullies that I didn’t straight-up murder than I do the earlier ones, because later on, if it’s happened enough, you just get tired of dealing with it and you want your goddamn revenge – that’s why bullied kids seem to “suddenly” either kill themselves or go on a murderous rampage, like Columbine. – He asks the host if he can address the parents of children in the audience at home, and the host says yes – the man says that if the parents know or even think their child is being bullied, they should tell the kid two things: 1. Tell an adult at the institution where it’s happening, whether it’s school or church or an extracurricular or whatever – the adult will probably do nothing about it, but at least the institution will understand why your kid suddenly started attacking other kids. The bullies are such low-lives that the teachers don’t see them unless it’s disrupting the teachers themselves, but the good kids are always on their mind as good kids – so unfortunately your kid’s bullying will only become “real” if the kid suddenly starts attacking people, and those people being attacked better be the bullies who deserve it and not someone whom the anger is being taken out upon. 2. The kids should be allowed and encouraged to fight back, because that’s the only way anything gets done – ideals are peaceful, but history is violent, because that’s how change comes about, whether it’s good or bad. A bully won’t go away unless your kid makes a move. Even if an adult at the institution intervenes, they will only make it worse, because the bully will come back with a vengeance, and this forces the kid to act – so don’t sit around thinking it’s all over, because your kid needs to be prepared for when the hammer falls. – The man asks the host if he can address any kids if they might be watching, and the host laughably says sure – the man says that the kids need to know a few things: 1. The chances of being bullied go down drastically if they are not alone – even if it’s one other person; it doesn’t eliminate the chance of being bullied, but you’re an easier target when you’re alone – so find somebody (anybody) who is also alone and try to be their friend. 2. Tell an adult about bullying when it becomes apparent that it is bullying – if you don’t like it, tell the bully – if they don’t stop, tell an adult – only then can you begin planning to confront your bully. 3. Fighting a bully is not about who is bigger, so don’t be afraid if they’re larger than you – and if they’re smaller, it just helps you out more: here’s the thing… it’s not about the amount of power, but the use of power; be quick and tactical, be smart about how you fight – find their weaknesses, whether it be mental or physical: if it’s physical, aim there (I suggest the neck – everyone’s weakness is their need to breathe), and if it’s mental, berate them mercilessly: call them fat, dumb, smelly, lonely – whatever – because this will make them angrier, and while that doesn’t seem like a good thing, it will eventually become too much and they will be blind with negative emotions and unable to react to you as easily, as well as the fact that you ought to fill with pride when you berate them and it works, which is a confidence boost that’ll aid you in quick thinking – best case scenario, they quit the fight and leave for good; otherwise, they might come back later, at which you just verbally abuse them (become the bully, but only against your bully). 4. Only fight the bully; don’t take it out on other people. 5. Understand the dynamics of power, as seen in primal manners with apes, and know the universal stances and glances of dominance – assert yourself symbolically before you begin to attack, because you might get them to back down (sometimes even for good). 6. It takes work to perfect standing up to bullies, and hopefully by the time you figure it out, you don’t have any more bullies – I wasn’t that lucky, but by then I knew how to deal with them. 7. Bullies aren’t always peers – sometimes they’re older, and sometimes they’re younger. Now, you’re supposed to “respect your elders” and “not hurt little kids,” but if they bully you, the natural definition of justice states that they deserve the same, so you can attack them – equality and fairness is after all an aspect of a democratic state. 8. Remember that use of power is more important than amount of power, and you should attack symbolically first, attack verbally second, and physically last, because it’s risky when they’ve been slamming your head against gym lockers every time the high school dropout gym teacher wasn’t looking, so they know your weaknesses or are at least already intimidating. Put space between yourself and them, gain public approval from classmates in favor of your victory to further intimidate the bully to stand down. 9. Whether or not the bully is your gender or not, a bully is a bully and they need to be put down. 10. The bully won’t remember you in the future, after you both move on to separate lives, but you will remember them – unless you stand up for yourself and force the bully to remember you. Don’t roll over – don’t give in; nobody deserves to be bullied unless they bully someone else first. An eye for an eye may make the whole world blind, Gandhi, but at least everyone got what they deserved. – The man then redirects the conversation back to the fact that he really loves his wife – she’s very pretty.
Original document created 12/13/2014.