Everyone knows the scenario: a well-dressed stranger arrives at your door and presents you with a wood-paneled box, atop which is a glass dome containing a shiny, red button. He says something to the effect of, “if you press the button, someone that you don’t know will totally die and you’ll receive x amount of cash money. Aw yeahz.” What do you do?

This past weekend, Richard Kelly’s adaptation of the classic Richard Matheson story “Button, Button” arrived in theaters and answered the question in true Darko style, with a resounding “I’d… um… well… deformed mind control guy and water teleportation and some NSA experiments funded by lightning aliens and… what was the question?” More than anything, though, Kelly’s film turns the mind back to Matheson’s original philosophical conundrum and the true issues at hand.

What Does it Mean to “Know” Someone?

Matheson’s ending, which is wholly disregarded in the Twilight Zone’s adaptation, and only summarily addressed in Kelly’s film, turns the wording of the enigmatic button contract into its own philosophical dilemma – after the button is activated, the presser’s husband dies and the confused, despondent presser is told, in smirking, ironic-twist fashion, that she never really knew him. Yeah, it’s sort of annoying in that Philosophy 101 “do I really even know myself?!” BUH BUH BUM! kinda way, but it does add a new dimension to the initial problem. You know who I don’t know? RICHARD MATHESON! OHHHH! INSANITY! Statistically speaking, though, it would most likely kill a random Asian person.

What’s a Human Life Worth?

Obviously, the woman in Matheson’s story, who presses the button for a payout of $50,000, values a single human life to be worth, at most, $50,000. The question becomes, of the theoretical individuals who don’t press the button, how many are actually morally incorruptible and how many are merely waiting for a better offer. The button test, as designed, doesn’t assess whether people will compromise their morals and indirectly kill a stranger for money; it tests whether certain individuals will compromise their morals for a specific sum. On one hand, this reveals a major flaw in the well-dressed stranger’s test. On the other hand, it does make you pause to think how much money you’d have to receive to press the button. On a third hand, it makes you think that you’d probably be willing to go as low as $10,000.

Pressing a Button is Fun

Think about how much more money you’d want if you only got to flip a switch or pull on a rope.

To understand the basis of Michael Rooker’s lengthy career as a deft character actor known for playing both hard-ass champions of justice and bad-ass bringers of death, it helps to look at his role in John Sayles’ 1988 film, “Eight Men Out,” which chronicles the 1919 scandal that found eight members of the Chicago White Sox conspiring with gamblers to fix the World Series. Rooker was cast as White Sox teammate and eager co-conspirator Chick Gandil, whose Wikipedia entry notes the following: “Described by his contemporaries as a ‘professional malcontent,’ [Gandil] was physically well built at 6′2″ and 195 pounds, and had a mean and callous expression. He used both to display his toughness, and also did not hesitate to use sheer strength to get his point across.” That Michael Rooker was perfect for this part should offer a sense of what makes the actor so compelling to watch on screen, and why he’s ideally suited to kick ass with the shoes of both protagonists and antagonists alike.

Rooker’s first major role, and perhaps the most indelible performance of his entire career, was the titular seething murderer in John McNaughton’s 1986 horror watershed, “Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer” (a film that will be addressed in more detail later this week). The character of Henry is so fully realized by McNaughton and so completely embodied by Rooker, the role feels like a classic pop cultural mixed blessing that threatens to drive an actor past success and into the backwoods of type casting. Fortunately, Rather than banishing Rooker into a movie-of-the-week limbo filled with “misunderstood” deviants and mindless slash-and-hack murder junkies, this supremely creepy, nuanced performance somehow led the actor to a profusion of police officer portrayals.

“The Dark Half,” “Rosewood,” and “Replicant,” among many others, pit Rooker’s commanding presence, hard-edged focus and nails-tough attitude against the criminal element. In the same way that a lesser performance of a serial killer often results in a cold-staring, machete-brandishing caricature, so, too, can the aforementioned traits alone create a fairly reductive portrait of a policeman. Rooker understands the emotionality and subtle empathetic turns that are crucial to portraying an effective cop who’s as unforgiving to criminals as he is kind to, and understanding of, victims. Take his turn as Sherriff Pangborn in the 1991 Stephen King adaptation “The Dark Half”– Pangborn is heart-and-soul, scary-eyed dead set on bringing a killer to justice, but, even in his unfaltering determination, employs reason, soft eyes and cold brewskies when dealing with the prime suspect, Thad Beaumont – not because Pangborn fully trusts or believes Beaumont, but because he respects due process and, more importantly, sees Beaumont as a person first, even in light of his alleged misdeeds. In essence, Rooker fills a walking costume with a feeling individual. This relationship between societal role and individual emotional core highlights the sheer, unfaltering power of humanity and the impossibility of either purging it through the violence of a killer or numbing it with the focus and determination of a lawman – a fact that writers and actors alike ought pay heed to in crafting even the most archetypical narrative figures.

Sadly, even this summary understanding of characterization is reductive. To say a character has two sides – feeling and function – is to reduce humanity to a binary, and, further, to suggest that the halves are split – that they aren’t constantly and unforgivingly shaping and re-shaping each other. Just look at Rooker’s roles in “Mallrats” and “Slither” – or let me look at them for you and over explain them in a way that makes you never want to watch a movie again – This Wednesday on WeidThings.com.

During its first 14 months of operation, the flying observatory has detected 17 gamma-ray flashes associated with terrestrial storms — and some of those flashes have contained a surprising signature of antimatter.

This of course lends even more credibility to the hypothesis that lightning can be as useful of a way to obtain super powers as cosmic rays. The presence of gamma rays and antimatter particles makes them both good options. We hope Marvel Comics can take some time off from overdoing their zombie premise to write a Fantastic Four series with Ben Franklin as Reed Richards.

link: Signature Of Antimatter Detected In Lightning / Science News

So if we earthbound humans have to worry about space organisms turning our blood into dust, what do astronauts on long term space missions have to stress out about? According to a report in the Journal of Leukocyte Biology (via PopSci): Earthborn bacteria mutating into killer diseases.

It turns out that bacteria that we’ve evolved pretty good defenses for could overwhelm our immune systems if we’re cooped up together on long term space voyages. So add that to the already growing list of space hazards including radiation, zero-g bone loss, space madness and your holodeck trying to kill you.

Mutant Bacteria Are Likely to Threaten Future Space Travelers | Popular Science

Today: Still Crazy After All These Years – Modern American Hysteria

It’s tempting to shrug off wild epidemics of inexplicable panic as the stuff of the uncivilized, overly superstitious or poorly educated, and conclude that mass hysteria is a fading remnant of an older, less rational past. But, of course, if that were true, the shrieking, sweat-drenched rioting of a wild-eyed, fear-addled public wouldn’t be assigned the anti-rational moniker “hysteria” and wondered over. Folks would just be like, “Oh. This again.”

In compiling modern, first-world examples of a sane public turning mental, it’s almost too easy to include Orson Welles’ 1938 nation-punking War of the Worlds radio play, during which Welles trompe l’oreille news-broadcast style collided with the looming specter of WWII to create a volatile reaction… but how about this: United States, 1962. After several dressmakers working in a textile factory began developing flu-like symptoms, the overworked employees heard rumors that a swarm of strange, poisonous insects was loose in the factory and spreading an unidentified virus through unprovoked bites. By the time the media picked up on the story, dozens were feeling dizzy, nauseas and numb. In the end, 62 people were sickened by the phantom ailment. Though some sufferers did exhibit small bug bites, others didn’t and, anyway, there’s no known species of insect capable of causing the symptoms reported. Now known as the “June Bug Incident,” the events were ruled the hysterical imaginings of over-stressed laborers.

More recently, in 1994, several hospital workers fainted, one after another, in the presence of a dying woman’s skin and blood, which the employees later alleged was emitting toxic fumes. No evidence supporting this claim was ever recovered, and while scientists have suggested a number of possible chemical causes, no one has explained why the supposed fumes only seemed to affect females, or why no evidence of a foreign substance was found at the scene.

Mass hysteria is a stark example of the power society holds over the individual human psyche. With all of their internal idiosyncrasies, preconceptions and limitations of perception, people depend on external stimuli to provide critical data about the surrounding world. In a civilized, socialized community, other people – people with those same idiosyncrasies, preconceptions and limitations – become one of the most important sources of that data. This process allows people to act and react based on the perceived needs and intentions of those around them. It’s the basis for empathy, cooperation and understanding. But when there’s a glitch in the process – a stress-induced stutter in the feedback loop or interference from the drifting ghost of some primal, forgotten neural sub-routine – that social data can become corrupted, leading to a contagious collective discomfort – a communal panic. Mass hysteria.

]]> http://weirdthings.com/2009/11/weirdest-thing-in-the-world-canned-food/feed/ 1 http://weirdthings.com/2009/11/weirdest-thing-in-the-world-chat-is-back-with-canned-foods/ http://weirdthings.com/2009/11/weirdest-thing-in-the-world-chat-is-back-with-canned-foods/#comments Fri, 06 Nov 2009 16:11:10 +0000 Justin http://weirdthings.com/?p=4072

Ladies and gentlemen, it’s that time of year. Halloween has passed and those in need require your kindness. So please, gather what you can and help us donate the Weirdest Canned Foods In The World.

Here are the ground rules:

• Pictures, Pictures, Pictures

• Commercials or ads are encouraged

• Must be real.

Email all submissions to JustinRobertYoung@Gmail. I’ll see you kids right here at the front page at 5:30 p.m. EST where we will hash out the ultimate champion.

Our baseline is Reindeer Paté. Nuff said,

The truth is out there, we find it today at 5:30 p.m. EST.

One movie. Five people, living or dead, at the screening. Who and why?

Today’s screening: “Ghost Busters”

This revelatory 1984 horror comedy gave the culture such enduring cinematic icons as Zuul, the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man and Ernie Hudson.

Charles Barton (1902-1981), Actor, Director

As horror comedies go, there’s none more classic or beloved than the Barton-helmed “Bud Abbott Lou Costello Meet Frankenstein,” an uncontestable grand slam for the titular comedians and the last great film featuring Universal’s “Big Three” monsters (Dracula, Frankenstein’s Monster and The Wolf Man). It’s seems unfair Barton died just three years before “Ghostbusters,” one of the greatest modern horror comedies, was released. Granted, he did also miss “Idle Hands.”

Kate Fox (1837-1892), Medium

Kate and her sister Margaret are generally credited with inadvertently jump-starting the 19th century Spiritualist movement when, through a system of taps and knocks, they began to communicate with an alleged ghost. Kate later grew up to be regarded as the more spiritually gifted of the two. After enjoying the spooky comedic stylings of Canada’s Dan Aykroyd, I will woo Kate with some spirit rapping of my own – “I’m a big big ghost and I like to haunt, I love to rap, something something haunt. Word.”

Sammy Stephens, Entrepreneur, Entertainer

Speaking of hip-hop, Sammy Stephens made a name for himself in the (ahem) respectable world of viral Internet memes with the TV commercial rap (and corresponding dance step) he composed and performed to promote his business, Flea Market Montgomery, a 73,000 square-foot mini-mall analog. Sammy can critique the Ghost Busters’ television ads and offer some helpful pointers about how to turn their dull slogan (“We’re ready to believe you”? ZZZZZZZZ!) and amateurish TV ads into marketing gold. Or at least oxidized YouTube copper.

Robert Bess, Inventor

Bess got tons of Travel Channel play just this past weekend for inventing his “Parabot,” a containment system supposedly capable of imprisoning spirits. (Yes, I, too, thought ‘Parabot’ sounded like some kind of county-owned handicapped android designed to laser blast elementary school kids into being polite to cripples.) While we watch a movie about ghost containment system, I can tell Bess how original his idea was. Bess’ next project is inventing a bus that explodes if it doesn’t retain a speed above 55 mph. He calls it the “GimpMobile.”

Ray Parker Jr. (1954- ), Musician

Oh, Ray Parker, serenade me with your melodious Ghostbusters theme. My plan is to mute the opening of the film, say “Take it Away!” and start beat boxing. Ten bucks says Parker just glares at me while, from the other side of the room, we hear, “living rooms, bed rooms, dinettes, oh yeah! You can find them at the market. We talkin’ ‘bout flea market”.

In this episode we discuss our entirely self-serving ideas on utilizing superpowers, how even Tyler Durden couldn’t make us cool and argue over the logistics of building your own extinct animal preserve.

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Today: Honey, I Shrunk the Dong – The Todger Inversion Delusion

In the “Seinfeld” episode where a naked, mortified George finds himself in a humiliated tizzy about shrinkage, imagine that, instead of engaging in whiny banter with Jerry, he runs screaming down to the kitchen, hand stretches his penis, mashes a stack of dinner plates on it to keep it extended and then starts to cry and hyperventilate. Cue funky bass riff.

Sufferers of Genital Retraction Syndrome believe that their genitals are rapidly disappearing into their bodies – a situation that they perceive as not only shameful, but also fatal. GRS, a very real fake malady, is a psychological syndrome akin to a panic attack, but one which feeds on sexual guilt, sexual ennui or sexual dissatisfaction. It’s most prevalent in cultures that hyper-moralize sexuality while also using sexual prowess as a barometer for measuring masculinity. As such, its perceived onset is generally viewed by the afflicted as a punishment for either sexual immorality (masturbation, hooker purchases, etc.) or their inability to please a sexual partner. The resultant panic and anxiety, of course, lead to further shrinkage and, as a result, often drive sufferers to employ a variety of household ephemera – shoelaces, chopsticks, fishhooks, kitchen tongs – in rigging up painful ad hoc penile extenders. (In rare cases, GRS affects women, who became convinced that their nipples or vulvae are retracting.)

The whole business of GRS is most common to Asia and Africa, and only became a popular topic of conversation among sniggering anthropologists after a 1967 epidemic in Singapore (where GRS is known as “Koro,” meaning, appropriately, “head of the turtle”) that found thousands of men desperately yanking and tugging themselves into a screaming panic. The mass freakout only ended after the government launched a massive educational campaign to assure dudes that their little soldiers weren’t in danger of going permanently AWOL. What the Singapore epidemic underscores is the tendency to mystify aspects of the human condition, even when they relate to things as concretely rational as biology – these cultures have, and understand, medicine, but in ascribing masculinity and sexuality to a morally policed intangible divinity, the sexual organs come to be