Category: Entertainment

I have been a fan of the computer game Doom for well over a decade. I can remember listening to Amy Grant as the game sound track (instead of Nine Inch Nails) and blasting away with the BFG at anything that moved. I was glad that someone wanted to make a movie based on the game.

I was concerned that elements of the storyline were altered. The storyline in the game is that a portal to another dimension has been opened by a secret lab on a remote world. Unfortunately the portal opens a doorway to Hell not ET’s home world. Doom II introduces us to Hell on Earth. Doom III is basically a revisit of the first game with better storyline and graphics.

Several years ago, the story was novelized. Instead of a doorway to Hell, a race of aliens are using evil imagery to exploit our primal fears so they just look like demons but are just genetically engineered freaks.

In the movie, the whole Hell part has been dropped in favor of a secret genetic engineering experiment that went terribly wrong.

Starring in the film version of Doom are Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, Carl Urban and Rosamund Pike. If you have played Doom III then you will recognize the general setting of the station on Mars and some of the types of creatures that will be fought in the film. The movie maintains many of the same features that can be found in the game. Game elements in the film include the BFG (which contrary to the movie doesn’t stand for Bio Force Gun) chain saws and lots of automatic weapons; sewers and mutant critters. The gamer tribute to John Romero of the Living Dead films is clearly present.

Granted that this is a niche marketed movie but if you ever enjoyed playing the game or like films like Alien v Predator then this is a must see film. It does have an ending but nothing would exclude a sequel.

Every fall about this time we find an unexpected package on our doorstep. No its not another one like the Stork left of our doorstep last year about this same time, but a plastic pumpkin from the local Dollar Tree store full of candy and some signs made from cheap orange paper that say Boo!

We aren’t sure which family started this game—although we have it narrowed down to two houses but the rules are simple. Place a Boo! on a neighbors doorstep without getting caught. Then they are supposed to place a Boo! sign on their front door and then do likewise to someone lacking a Boo! sign on their door.

Its much more fun than a chain letter and will end at midnight on October 31st. Try it and see if you spread a little good cheer in your neighborhood.

My wife and I went to see The Island last weekend. In this movie, we are introduced to a world where the rich and powerful grow clones of themselves so that they can stay young and harvest spare organs to keep themselves healthy. There are shades of Logan’s Run and Freejack in this film.

The mad scientist running the cloning center found that growing bodies for organs was not enough. The clones would not stay healthy without allowing them to live. The clones are allowed to develop enough to be part of the community waiting to go to The Island.

Getting to The Island was the goal of the clones inhabiting the center run by the mad scientist. The clones lived to win a lottery whose winners thought they were going to the only spot on earth untouched by a global ecological catastrophe. Of course, the clone was actually selected because their owners needed spare parts.

Like real life, the clones were not considered human, and were treated as property. At the convenience of their owners, the clones were harvested. The reality that the clones were sentient beings was a closely guarded secret; a secret that some were willing to kill in order to keep it that way. Hence the chase scenes as the clones struggle to unravel their purpose and their humanity.

Likewise, Congress is grappling with the issue of fetal stem cells. Should some human beings be created and harvested so that other human beings might live? One group of humans has no voice, cannot vote and many deny that they even exist as anything but tissue.

The other group is acting from self interest, desperate that some scientist can get the winning sample to prolong their lives. This group of humans vote; the older they are the more they turn-out on Election Day. There is no limit to the amount of government monies that they are willing to spend to put off death.

In our culture nothing is worse than suffering and being ravaged by disease. We talk in terms of quality of life. We make a mental balance sheet and when the liabilities outweigh the benefits, we try to find a way to change the balance or check-out before it hurts.

It is no wonder that the purveyors of eugenics including the abortion industry are trying to exploit our fear of death and suffering to create a socially acceptable justification for the slaughter of even more pre-born humans. Now instead of throwing children away in the name of convenience, we can comfort ourselves that its ok because we are furthering the science of prolonging life.

What irony that we justify snuffing out life to prolong life. DR. Mengele and his ilk would surely be proud that the nation that defeated his Nazis and gave the world the Nuremburg Trials has adopted his ideology.