Contrary to the feeling this title might give, I am not going to insult a religion or promote atheism. You see, I am being raised as a Catholic, but out of all the religions in the world, why is it that I so happen to be a part of the one “real” religion? Or, say I asked a Muslim, they would say that Islam is the one real religion. In my opinion, no religion is right, each interpreted God’s message differently, and, using aspects of their society, created a religion resembling the correct belief in many ways. I will talk about different religions, and how they are alike.
In Greek Myth, there are twelve Olympian gods. But, there is one goddess that has control over all of them, Ananke. Ananke, or Necessity, is the goddess of Bonds; she hears any oath said, and rules over constraint, compulsion, coercion, and all form of slavery and bonds. If a god swears to do something, she will see out that they do it. Then, as Greek Myth goes, Necessity gave birth to three girls, Clotho, Lachesis, and Atropos, the three Fates. These beings control life and death. Clotho, the spinner, weaves the thread of life out of the primal Chaos, bringing into being a new person. Lachesis, the allotter, measures the thread of life, giving each man his share of good and evil. Atropos, the inevitable, cuts the thread when it is time for the person to die, she out of all three of the Fates, is the most feared. The Fates rule even the gods, they rule everyone except for Necessity herself.
In Hinduism, contrary to popular belief, there is only one god. This God, Brahmin, is split up into three different parts, Brahma, the creator, made the Earth and all life, Vishnu, the protector, watches over life on Earth and tries to help humanity, and Shiva, the destroyer says when it is time for a person to die, and will eventually end all life on Earth.
In Christianity, there is one god, and, like in the other Abrahamic religions (Judaism, Christianity, Islam), the god is called “God.” In Christianity, this God knows all things, hears every word, every thought, sees every bruise, hears every sound, he is all powerful, though he is split into three parts. There is God the Father, who created the world, put plants, animals, us, on it. Then, there is God, the Son, or Jesus. He is the redeemer of the world, he gave humans a path to heaven without being perfect, people could now confess their sins to god, and be forgiven. Then there is God, the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit convicts people of their crimes, it resides in every person’s soul, and in essence the Holy Spirit is a person’s conscience. In Islam and Judaism, God is one, and that Oneness is stressed throughout religious teachings.
Therefore, in my opinion, there is only one god, and that god is split up into three parts, one part is the Creator, that part creates life in all forms. One part is the Protector, that saves us humans and helps us be the best that we can be, and the third part, I’m not sure, but my guess would be the way Christianity perceives it, as our conscience, not as a destroyer of life, because of Dharma, and I would much rather admit that God is my conscience instead of the eventual destroyer of all life.
In Greek Mythology, Hades is the land of the dead, and Hades, the god, rules the land. All souls go to Hades no matter how bad or good they were. If you were really bad, you would go to Hell, a part of Hades, which is ruled by Lucifer. There, you were punished depending on how you were bad. For example, Tantalus fed the gods his only son, so when he died, he had to stand in a pool of water with a fig tree above his head, but he could never drink the water or eat the fig. If you were really good, you went to the fields of Elysium, where people the gods made immortal were sent, this place is said to be a place of perfection. If you were just an average person, you went to the fields of Asphodel, where the dead wandered around till they were cleansed. Being cleansed meant that you forgot everything and could be reborn in a new life.
In Hinduism, there is something called Dharma, and it is like someone’s conscience. Dharma is the foundation for Hinduism, and without it, Hinduism would be nothing. The basis of Hinduism is that your Dharma will only tell you to do something good, and following your Dharma will bring you good. Then there is Karma, which is like Newton’s third law of motion, “For every action there is an equal but opposite reaction.” Basically, if a person does something good, something good happens to them, and if they do something bad, something bad happens to them. This brings in the subject of reincarnation in Hinduism, if a person is good in their life they are born into a better life, they are bad, they are born into a worse life. Then there is Heaven. In Hinduism, anybody can go to heaven, but they have to be perfect their entire life, they must always follow their Karma every second of every day. When a soul rises up to heaven, they become one with the god Brahmin himself.
In Judaism, there is no Karma, but if a person is good in their life they will go to Heaven, and if they are bad they will go to Hell. Now when someone gets to Heaven’s gates, their soul will be checked, and if the amount of good they did outweighs the bad, they would get into heaven, and if the bad was heavier than the good, they would get sent into Hell. In no way could someone erase the stain of a bad deed, and they couldn’t cover it with a good one.
In Christianity, Heaven and how to get there is sort of like that in Judaism. The big difference is you can ask forgiveness for your sins, thus erasing them from your souls. You have to be truly sorry for your sins, if you go to reconcile with God with the intent of sinning again, you are not forgiven. Also, in Christianity, some people of all sects (Catholicism, Baptist, Methodist, etc.) There is the concept of purgatory, where you must undergo a system of purification of the soul. A soul can only go into purgatory if they are too sinful to go straight into Heaven, but are not bad enough to go to Hell. Purgatory is like a temporary Hell where the soul works off the sins it owns until it is pure.
In Islam, Heaven is like a perfect Earth, all the food and drinks, without the drunkenness or stomach ache that comes afterward, Muslims believe that Heaven is actually the Garden of Eden. To get into Heaven, one must be good, believe in God, believe in Judgment Day, and believe that Muhammad is the final prophet, which basically says only Muslims go to Heaven.
In my opinion, and using the details presented here, there is a Heaven. I also believe that if you are good, you can go, but you don’t have to believe in God or the right religion, though I do think that not believing in God in some way does put a stain on your soul. I think there is a kind of purgatory, like the fields of Asphodel or reincarnation in Hinduism, before you get to heaven. Heaven being in paradise does seem to be the most prominent theme, but that might just be human hopefulness.
Wayne’s World, that movie based off of a Saturday Night Live skit, starring Wayne Campbell and Garth Algar, are played by Mike Meyers and Dana Carvey respectively and produced by Paramount Pictures. This week, I’m going to give you a short walkthrough of the story and my favorite lines. This post is for you to be introduced to one of the greatest movies of all time, and, if you like it, there is a sequel too.
Our story starts off with Benjamin Kane and his girlfriend channel surfing, meeting commercials like Noah Vanderhoff showing off his new games for his video arcade, “Cha Cha Cha Chia, Chia Pet, the pottery that grows.” and “Clap on Clap off, The Clapper!” when they finally got to channel ten, where Wayne’s World is showing. On this episode, they invite Ron Paxton to show off his invention, the “Suk Cut, a revolution in home haircutting” which is basically a mini vacuum cleaner you stick on the head, thus giving you a complete shave. Benjamin see’s them and calls some guy named Russell, telling him “I think I found something we can sell to Vanderhoff.” Garth gets his haired “Suk Cut” and can be heard exclaiming, “Turn it off man! Turn it off! It’s sucking my will to live! Oh, the humanity!”
Then the camera goes back to videoing Wayne and Garth finishing up their show, and then it proceeds to introduce Wayne, who “still lives with his parents, which is bogus, but still knows how to party.” Then they all hop into the Mirthmobile, Garth’s car, and drive to Stan Makita’s donut shop.
Authors Note: Stan Makita’s is a spoof of the Tim Horton’s donut shop, started by the late Tim Horton, a famous hockey player.
There you meet Glen, the manager, who is the most awesome character in the entire movie; he has all the best quotes like “I’d never done a crazy thing in my life before that night. Why is it, if a man kills another man in battle, it’s called heroic, but if he kills a man in the heat of passion, it’s called murder.” and, when talking about what to do to someone who fires you, “Yeah, you want to find the guy who did it, rip his still beating heart out of his chest, and hold it in front of his face so he can see how black it is before he dies.” Then they head to the Gasworks, (which is another spoof on a Canadian business) where Wayne sees Cassandra, the lead singer for Crucial Taunt. When he sees her, Cassandra is magically ringed in a purple aura and Dreamweaver starts playing. He flirts with her a bit, then scenes change, and you see Benjamin and Russell, a TV show producer, you learn, talking Mr. Vanderhoff into buying Wayne’s World and after much trick talking, finally sell it to Vanderhoff.Then Benjamin goes and buys the show from Wayne and Garth for ten thousand dollars, five thousand each.
Wayne and Garth go back to the Gasworks where Wayne wins Cassandra by speaking to her in Cantonese. Benjamin also hires Cassandra to do a music video for him. Scenes switch again and Wayne and Garth are lying on the hood of the Mirthmobile, and Garth is whistling the Star Trek theme song. Garth asks “What are you thinking about?” and Wayne answers “Cassandra, she’s fox, in France she’d be called La Renard and hunted with only her cunning to protect her.” Then Garth randomly blurts out “Did you ever find Bugs Bunny attractive when he would put on a dress and play a girl bunny?” sending Wayne into fits of laughter.
Our next scene is in a test of the “New” bought Wayne’s World, where Russell tests out the blue screen, which Wayne and Garth call the Chroma Key. They first travel to New York, “Hey, we’re in New York! I’ve got a gun, let’s go to a Broadway show.” and last they travel to Delaware. “Or, imagine, being magically whisked away to… Delaware. Hi, I’m in Delaware.” Benjamin asks Garth how he likes the new studio, and Garth replies, “It’s like a new pair of underwear, you know? At first it’s constrictive, but after a while, it becomes a part of you.”
Then Benjamin has to tell Wayne that they must give Vanderhoff a weekly interview, and what follows is the bluntest display of product placement in the history of the world.
Benjamin: Wayne, we need to talk about Vanderhoff. The fact is, he’s the sponsor, and you signed a contract guaranteeing him certain concessions, one of them being a spot on the show.
Wayne: (holding a Pizza Hut spot) Well, that’s where I see things a little differently. Contract or no, I will not bow to any sponsor. (Holds up a slice of pizza)
Benjamin: I’m sorry you feel that way, but basically, that’s the nature of the beast.
Wayne: (holding a bag of Doritos.) Maybe I’m wrong on this one, but the beast does not include selling out. (Eats a Doritos chip) Garth, you know what I’m talking about, right?
Garth: (In Reebok shoes, socks, sweatpants, sweatshirt, sweatband, and cap) It’s like people only do things because they get paid, and that’s just really sad.
Wayne: I can’t talk anymore. It’s giving me a headache.
Garth: (holding Nuprin bottle) Here, take two of these.
Wayne: (showing his hand in black and white with two yellow pills in his hand) Ah, Nuprin. Little. Yellow. Different.
Benjamin: Listen, you can stay here in the Big Leagues, and play by the rules, or you can go back to the farm club in Aurora. It’s your choice.
Wayne: (Holding Pepsi can) Yes, and it’s the choice of the new generation. (Takes a sip of Pepsi)
They are now in Benjamin’s apartment, and Benjamin shows his first interest in Cassandra by ordering Chinese Take-out in Cantonese instead of English, and then showing his knowledge of The Orient by guessing she was from Kowloon Bay instead of Hong Kong, which was true, by her accent. Garth goes and explores the house, and finds a calendar with Daily Reminder: Thursday, Purchase feeble public access cable TV show. The next scene is in Cassandra’s studio where Benjamin gives Wayne and Garth backstage passes to an Alice Cooper concert to get rid of them and then invites Cassandra to lunch.
On the way to Milwaukee, which is where the concert is taking place, Wayne cries out “There’s Sharp’s Brewery” they proceed to do the whole Laverne and Shirley TV show theme song, as a tangent. They finally get to the concert, where Alice Cooper is singing the song “Feed My Frankenstein” and Wayne and Garth go backstage. They go through the wrong door and end up outside in front of a big limo. A security guard tells them that it belongs to Frankie Sharp, head of Sharp Records, who is coming back through Chicago later in the week. They finally get to Alice Cooper’s dressing room and ask Alice if he comes to Milwaukee often. Alice’s reply is “Well, I’m a regular visitor here, but Milwaukee has certainly had its share of visitors. The French missionaries and explorers were coming here as early as the late 1600’s to trade with the native Americans.” Then one of Alice’s band members chimes in, “Isn’t Milwaukee an Indian name?” and Alice replies, “Why yes Pete, it is, it is actually pronounced mee-lee-wa-kay, which is Algonquian for ‘the good land.’
Next, is the first, and only, Wayne’s World show. It starts off with Wayne interviewing Noah Vanderhoff, but on the back of his note cards he has sayings such as “Sphincter Boy” and others that I do not find appropriate to write all over the web without knowing who will read this. He then gets called up to the booth and fired by Benjamin for “publicly humiliating the sponsor.” In anger, Wayne breaks up with Cassandra and Garth, and then makes the camera run away. He gets the camera back, and talks to Garth to get him back, but can’t come up with a plan to get back Cassandra. Finally, he remembers that Frankie Sharp is coming back through Chicago. Garth says that he can get Mr. Sharp to see it by hooking his limo TV to a bunch of satellites his exact words are, “OK… First I’ll access the secret military spy satellite that is in geosynchronous orbit over the Midwest. Then I’ll ID the limo by the vanity plate “MR. BIGGG” and get his approximate position. Then I’ll reposition the transmission dish on the remote truck to 17.32 degrees east, hit WESTAR 4 over the Atlantic, bounce the signal back into the aerosphere up to COMSAT 6, beam it back to SATCOM 2 transmitter number 137 and down on the dish on the back of Mr. Big’s limo… It’s almost too easy.” Wayne then goes to Chicago to get Cassandra to his house to play for Frankie.
On the way, Wayne is pulled over by a traffic cop, and in classic Terminator 2 style, he walks up to Wayne, holds up a picture and says, “Have you seen this boy?” and when Wayne drives off, he just stalks off after him, ignoring his motorcycle completely. Wayne finally gets to Chicago and goes into this big Oscar scene about how he cares for Cassandra, “Cassandra, I love you. You may not believe it, but I love you. Am I supposed to just turn my back and leave? Am I supposed to be a man? Am I supposed to say ‘That’s OK, I don’t mind.’ (Wayne splashes water in his eyes from a nearby pitcher and the words ‘Oscar Scene’ appear in white on the screen) ‘I don’t mind!’ well, I mind! I mind big time! and you know what the worst part of all this is? I never learned to read!” and eventually, she goes with him, performs for Frankie Sharp, and Sharp goes to their house, and says, “I must say, I’ve see a lot of acts in my day, and although you are extremely beautiful, I think it’s the wrong time.” A whole bunch of other bad things happen, and it ends with Wayne walking out of his blown-up house holding a dead Garth and crying out “Why God, Why?”
THE END
Except for the surprise of alternate endings. Wayne and Garth come back on screen and Garth goes “Hey we can’t end the movie like this!” and they do the Scooby Doo ending, where they rip off Benjamin’s mask, and he just happens to be “old man Whithers” the 70 year-old man who runs the amusement park. Cassandra then doubles up and looks like she’s going to blow chunks. Wayne then goes, “Hey we can’t end the movie this way!” and they do the Super Happy Ending, where everyone comes on stage and presents what they learned throughout the movie. This is the real end.
These clips you will recognize from the summary, they are the best!
And the following clip does not appear in Wayne’s World, it appears in Wayne’s World II, but I put it in here because it is the best Wayne’s World scene of all time and does not deserve to be left out.
There were 6,778,450,486 people in the world on May 8th 2009 at 10:38 GMT, according to the US World Census. When I looked up “Fat” on Google images, there were six million results, and on the first five pages, only ten of the pictures were not of an obese person, and four of those were not of a person, five of the pictures were repeats. Now, according to the World Health Organization, there are approximately one billion people in the world who are over the advised weight. Now, if the other pages are of the same pattern, I can assume that there were around 5,500,000 pictures of an overweight person. Now the real question is, who in their right mind would go around taking pictures of random excessively-nourished people and posting them on the internet, and another scary point is that most of the people seemed to be posing. Now, this search came up as research to this topic. But, say, for my Spanish project, I looked up sit-ups. There were 1.5 million results of people doing sit-ups, diagrams of sit-ups, and the like. Now why would there be so many pictures of such a random thing like sit-ups, it just doesn’t make sense. Now, I can understand why groups like the World Health Organization would post pictures of sit-ups, but the majority of the sites were blogs. As more research, I looked up “Black Square,” and apparently, there are thirteen million pictures of a black square all over the internet. So, this post is really about some of the strange things people do. For example, why a person in their right mind would pour liquor on a scorpion is unknown to me, but it is a fact that if you pour liquor on a scorpion, it stings itself to death. Then there is the complete randomness of some tags. I searched “muscle diagram” on Google images for Spanish class, and found a picture of white dots on a black background arranged in a random pattern on like the fourteenth page (I was extremely bored). Why would somebody tag a bunch of white dots as “big muscles?” I checked out the site, and the entire site had different colored dots on different backgrounds. My curiosity sparked, I decided to look up “Dots” on Google images, and there were eight million pictures of dots. I will admit that about a fourth of the pictures were optical illusions, but still there were all these pictures of polka dots that are there for no reason. It just doesn’t make sense to me, unless almost everyone who posts a picture on Google images is not in their right mind, or maybe there are just a lot of helpful people out there who want to help people like me who need topics for their blog, or pictures for Spanish projects.
To some ears, the words Dungeons and Dragons cause immediate panic, worry, or stereotypical thoughts that the person saying it is a hermetical loser. But this is not the case. The Dungeons and Dragons role-playing game, by its very nature, is a social activity. But there is much controversy over Dungeons and Dragons
Now, most of the people stereotyping Dungeons and Dragons have no knowledge of what it is at all. Dungeons and Dragons is a fantasy role-playing game. Usually four or five people sit around a table, or in a circle on the floor to share in a story where they are the main characters. They can attempt to do anything their wildest imagination permits, from hack a giant floating head in half with blunt meat cleaver and then flirt with the princess they saved, to doing the backstroke up a waterfall and building a flying castle that floats along with the wind. Then there is one other person, the Dungeon Master, or DM who “writes the story” for the other players. The DM plays the giant floating heads and the princesses, and decides whether the other players succeed. There is only one main rule in Dungeons and Dragons, every time you try something you roll a twenty-sided die and add any bonuses or penalties that apply. There are a bunch of other corollaries that make things like combat more than “I hit him, he hits me” sort of thing though. Dungeons and Dragons is a story written by the players, not some recruitment for paganism, or a bunch of dice in a box meant to prune and breed violence to the author’s unknown cultish ends.
Most of the stereotypes that lean more towards occults and devil worchipping were envisioned by people who just looked at the book filled with monsters and saw creatures like demons and devils, and thought that the players were demon worshippers or Satanists or looked into the Players Handbook and saw an entire chapter devoted to deities or looked up a spell and saw it told you how to cast it and told you what you needed to hold, be it a dried bats wing or a handful of diamonds. What these people didn’t understand was that Dungeons and Dragons is really just a fantasy world people imagine. “I made up all the spells out of my head. How can anyone take them seriously?” (Gary Gygax, creator of Dungeons and Dragons)
Then there are the people who believe Dungeons and Dragons inspires violence. These rumors are spread by word of mouth and exaggerated literature. The first known link of Dungeons and Dragons to the choice of committing violent acts was with James Dallas Egbert III. He disappeared from Michigan State University in East Lansing, Michigan. Egbert was a sixteen year old prodigy and computer wiz and player of Dungeons and Dragons. A private investigator was called in to find the boy, and he had many hypothesis on how Egbert had disappeared. The ones he favored involved suicide, child molestation, and drug overdoses, but he pushed the theory that Egbert was part of some live-action Dungeons and Dragons adventure down in the tunnels underneath the university because he wanted to protect Egbert’s family from the truth.
Now, the last stereotype that any person playing Dungeons and Dragons is an antisocial nerd and has no life comes from anyone watching a game without knowing what is going on. Five or six people sitting around a table rolling dice can seem boring and anti-social. Then with the Egbert case, he was a child prodigy. Then there’s the fact that people who play Dungeons and Dragons read more often, whether it’s to know more about the environment they are playing in, to look up more powerful special abilities, or if they are thinking about being a Dungeons and Dragons themselves. Dungeons and Dragons players also have a bigger vocabulary because most of the books use exquisite words like obfuscate, vicissitude, and umbra.
As you can see, the controversies over Dungeons and Dragons are false. I’ll end with this quote, “Dungeons and Dragons is like a chair, you can use it to sit in… or hit someone over the head with.” (Gary Gygax).
OK, I’m going to write about a question that has nagged at the back of my brain for months, and hopefully, in writing, I figure it out. What is traffic. Now, the easy way to do this is to check the dictionary, but the vehicles, persons, etc., moving in an area, along a street, etc. (Websters Encyclopedic Unabridged Dictionary) doesn’t help me. I mean, sure traffic is cars on the road, but not in the normal use of the word. Is traffic when there is more than one other car on the road? Or is it when you’re slowed down by cars. And then how much? Is traffic when you have to go the normal speed limit because if you go faster you’ll crash into the person in front of you, or is it when you have to half the normal speed limit. Or is it when you are stopped? Then again, could traffic impair your speed at all, or is it when there are just a lot of cars on the road (another topic for discussion is what is “a lot”) or is traffic when your going slow, and at a stand still is when your stopped. And then, when you’re at a traffic light, does that count? And if traffic slows you down, does heavy traffic slow you down even more, or is that when you’re stopped, meaning that “traffic at a stand still” is interchangeable with heavy traffic, or then would “when traffic is at a stand still” be when you get out of your car and start screaming curses and random gobbledygook at that guy in front of you who is yelling curses and random gobbledygook at that guy in front of him who is yelling curses and random gobbledygook at the guy in front of that guy who is yelling curses at… you get the point. And on the opposite side of the rope, what is no traffic. Is that when you’re the only other car on the road, or is no traffic when you can only see one or two cars in front of you. And what is light traffic, is that when there are a bunch of cars on the road, but they don’t impair your movement, or is it when you can see a wall of cars that is about to become traffic? And does traffic have to be in front of you? If you see no cars in front of you, but when you look in your side mirrors or rearview mirror, and you see a mob of cars bumper to bumper behind you, is that traffic? I’m starting to ramble, so I’ll quit typing. Unfortunately, I didn’t find anything out.
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