The Omega Man
Modern uses for the character of Robert Neville

If you don't have the same thirst for Charlton Heston science fiction vehicles as I do (Except maybe for Soylent Green, because once you know the twist...) and if you don't read up on your classic sci-fi/horror, then you're not likely to have any idea what the hell I'm referring to in my li'l title up there. Lemme explain. (It's not a review, it's an interpretation of a theme.)

The Omega Man (1971) and The Last Man on Earth (1964) were both film versions of Matheson's famous novella, I Am Legend. The book dealt with Robert Neville who was, as far as he knew, the last man on earth. Of course Neville wasn't alone. A plague of some sort had turned the population of the world into a species of vampires. Each day, during the day, Neville roots the wreckage of society for supplies, and he spends the night fending off attacks from the monsters outside. One day Neville rescues a "human" woman which brings about his eventual downfall when she turns out to be one of the vampires.

Simple enough right. It's a great page-flipping story.

My reason for bringing it up was that I got to thinking about the rant that I've been on this week. I've been steamed about all sorts of stuff. Now, I'm generally annoyed by the general stupidity of a good portion of society, but it rarely comes to head like this. It's like elevator music, normally I can just tune all the stupidity out.

Several things brought this to this point for the end of the week. The first is all these people I know, or friends of friends who are having children (I've already ranted about people having and raising kids these days, and what a colossal mistake that usually turns out to be). The second was a news story about this idiotic couple who killed this old man trying to steal his car and then hid his frozen corpse in a public storage locker. And last, the fact that my lunch order was f*cked up and no one seemed to care.

Let's take this in order. But first more about Robert Neville:

In the end, when the vampires finally manage to get their hands on Neville a funny little bit of philosophy takes place. The lead vampire reasons that as Neville is the last man, then it is only right that he be destroyed. Evolutionarily speaking, Neville's a member of a past archaic era, and just as primitive man likely wiped out the last of the cro-magnon man, so should the vampire wipe out the last of humanity. (Oh I should mention that these vampires do like chomping on some good old fashioned human meat, but don't subsist on it in a Dracula kind of way.) If you look at it one way, then it comes across as the sad fate of humanity at it's own hands (Neville was partially responsible for the research that led to the plague that led to the vampires). If you look at it in a more Nietzchean fashion, the vampire is absolute correct. It's a modernization of ideals, and in order to move on, the vestiges of the past need to be eliminated. Oddly enough, that's just what they do.

Now back to my pissy mood.

The baby thing. Well, I'm not gonna rehash is all over again. Luckily the personal friends of mine who have recently had or are with child are financially sound and emotionally stable. Not necessarily so much with the friends of friends. Then I hear about people I went to school with who are having or have had children, and my fear begins to spread. Then I look around on the streets and the stores, all these people with way, way too many li'l spawn running around brainlessly and crowding out everything. Sure some of them maybe cousins or some such and sometimes there are multiple parental types, but there's usually still too many kids to be divided up amongst these people. Perhaps you don't see this wherever you are, but it's a constant in Los Angeles.

For instance, you walk into a burger joint, and there's like twenty people between you and the counter. One person is at the counter ordering. When they finish, suddenly all twenty of those people walk away to go sit down and you discover that you're next in line. Then you take a look at the twenty people. There are three adults, and the rest are kids of varying ages from teens on down. Now even if you divide that up, that's still like six kids for each parental unit.

And before you make any race calls or some such: Trust me, I've seen it for nearly each and every race and ethnic group out there in my trips around town.

Of course that's an extreme, there are plenty of people I've met for whom one child is one too many for them to handle on any level.

Either way, why are we suprised as a nation that in this society we seem to be turning into a sociopath generating machine? Morals, ethics, and courtesy seem to be at an all time low. I'm not playing it Joe Conservative either. Tradition can be a way, way stupid bullheaded thing, but some stuff is always worth preserving. You know like that "Do Unto Others..." bit. You don't have to be religious to appreciate that. So people of my generation are already handicapped for that kind of stuff thanks by and large to the 'peace and love' generation parents who became the 'sex, drugs, & rock 'n roll' generation before spawning a bunch of kids they had no equipment with which to handle. And now the slacker devil-may-care Gen-X and Gen-Y are having kids with even less tools. Nice.

Which brings me to my second point: the car-jacking couple turned murderers.

Ok, so it isn't as bad as the cousin turned killer for french fries story from the other day, but it was still a stupid stupid thing that shouldn't and once upon a time wouldn't have happened.

The victim was going to meet with the couple to complete the sale of his EIGHT year old SUBURBAN truck. Lemme repeat: EIGHT year old SUBURBAN. Note that that doesn't look anything like BRAND NEW FERRARI or 2003 ESCALADE. I don't imagine that the Blue Book value of that truck made it anything remotely worth killing that man over. I mean, no car is worth dying for, but that's just really, really f*cking wrong.

Some I'm guessing that these two criminal pieces of sh!t either A) didn't know any better or B) plain didn't give a fat rat's @$$ about this guy.

It kinda reminds me of that Utah woman whose child died because she refused a Caesarian section because she didn't want to have scars. Did you ever see this woman? In addition to routinely making an ignorant cold-blooded dipsh!t out of herself, I'm not sure that with that face she should really worry about scars. Call that a cheap one, but what do I care about that human stain. She falls under my category of people who are actually a waste of the couple gallons of water and $6.00 worth of chemicals that make her up. (In case you ever wondered, that is literally about what a human body's value is. Think about it. Hard.)

The only positive thing in a sense is that she didn't have and raise that kid if she herself is already that far gone. What would the kid have ended up like? "Ted Bundy Jr., dinners' ready!" Criminey.

Tell you what, I'll back abortion if only because it keeps people who aren't going to raise their kids properly or who aren't ready for them from having them. That's fine with me. You're welcome to call me whatever names you want for that one.

The final straw was of course my lunch which doesn't exactly hold on the level of infanticide, but it fits my thread here. I wasn't p!ssed off that my lunch was effed up. I was pissed off at the incredibly glib attitude that thos responsible for it took about it. I'm aware that I'm not an executive so my opinion doesn't count, but I certainly would've treated them with more courtesy had it been the other way around. Simply apologizing would've been nice. I didn't expect them to run out and get me something else, but I would've expected a little "Oh, sorry, we effed up."

I think that's just another indicator of what I'm talking about today. Even respectable people with decent jobs that are financially and socially in the middle of the road have veered off into a sort of trashiness. My job sucks too and there are aspects I hate about it, but I still do it and I'm careful and thorough about it. When I screw up, I apologize and try to remember it for next time.

So Robert Neville again.

The thing about stuff like this is that the slide tends to continue. Every now and again we have something like a new golden age, then it all starts to slide again. The Roman empire is perhaps the best documented and well known textbook case of this. And I'm sorry, but I'm not sure where the golden age is supposed to kick back in. Maybe it's something I have to get in on.

I'm all about evolutionizing new ideas, but not in glorifying trash. So I won't take the path of what seems to be the majority these days. However, once you've let something regress and go feral, it's difficult to reign it back in again.

If the trend continues, then maybe it's time my voice fade away, and what represents both the future and an accelerated form of entropy needs to take over the earth. (Think me=Neville and the world=the vampires. See how that works?) I've never once believed in trying to turn back. It's impossible. You move forward or you're not moving at all. Perhaps, however, the world itslef has passed me by, and my time was past before it got started up.

You would think I was too young for that.

Cheers.