I was with Dave the other day attaching a door to the rear of his house. It was on before but for the past few months it’s not been able to shut because it’s warped. That and a bust boiler means that their house has had days where it’s been so cold that when you breathed you could actually see your breath! Fortunately, all is fixed and the house is cosy and warm for once.

But anyway, whilst we were outside and trying to saw off the edge of the door so that it would fit in the door frame, my hands got so cold that they turned bright purple. And it hurt. And I suddenly had a bit of a revelation or an epiphany or something; When you get cold, it hurts!

Okay, so that’s not exactly news to anyone. But when you think about it - the pain receptors in your body are there as a self-defence mechanism. If you burn yourself on a stove it hurts - so basically that’s your body telling you that the stove is not a chair and therefore you must not sit on it. If you get decapitated then that hurts too, and your body’s then saying “Yeah buddy, you’re gonna die, right about……. now!”

And then there’s the cold; when it gets freezing it’s simply telling you to get somewhere warm before body parts get frostbite and then start falling off. But when you’re busy trying to fix a door outside it kinda gets distracting. The one part of your body you’re trying to use is your hands and they’re the only part of your body that’s freezingly in pain! So, I had an idea…

Your alarm clock wakes you up in the stupid hours of the morning so you can go to school or work (or in my case, both) but who seriously wants to do that first thing? So what most people do is they hit the snooze button on their alarm so that they can have an extra 15 minutes in bed (or an extra 5 hours, depending on how many times they keep hitting it). So, why can’t pain receptors have a snooze button?

Think about it - you’re stood their freezing in the cold trying to sort out this door, your hands are in absolute agony and you can’t use them so you hit the snooze button which tells your body “Right, I get it, it’s cold - cold is bad. I know this. But for now I’m okay and I really need to use my hands for just another 15 sodding minutes!!!” and voila! Pain is gone and you can get on with your work. It’s simple.

Tonight’s prayers to God are going to include a request for a pain receptor snooze button as a possible upgrade to the next evolutionary phase of man or the ability to produce play-doh by rubbing your hands together for 5 minutes - whichever’s easier.

But talking of pain, there’s something else I realised when watching the Superman Quadrilogy a few weeks ago with Dave and Louise. Children get beaten because of Superman. Seriously! Watch it! Buy the DVD and then go to Scene 22. It’s the scene where there’s a cat stuck in a tree and Superman shows how kind he is by rescuing the cat.

Superman: Here you go, miss.
Little girl: Gee, thanks, mister.
Superman: Well, good-bye, Frisky. So long, now.
[Flys off, turns and waves]
Superman: Bye.
Little girl: Bye.
[Goes inside]
Little girl: Mommy! Mommy! Frisky was stuck in the tree! This man swooped out of the sky and gave him to me!
Mommy: Haven’t I told you to stop telling lies?
[Sound of the little girl getting bitch-slapped by her mom!]

Now don’t get me wrong - I love Superman and I’m a huge fan of Smallville, but there are some things about the man of steel which are a little, dodgy…

For starters, when he’s at the north pole, he has his green kryptonian crystal. For some unknown reason he throws it, and hence forth his Fortress of Solitude is built. It’s actually quite a violent force that’s used to build it, and he does so without due regard for seals, penguins, or any other ice-dwelling creatures. For all we know - he could have killed the Abominal Snowman! Also, Superman’s a bit of a pervert. After Lois asks him what colour underwear she’s wearing, he stupidly admits to not being able to see through lead (way to go to reveal one of your few weaknesses) but then after she’s moved away he still takes the liberty of having a look. And talking about ‘liberty’, since when was the Statue of Liberty relocated to Metropolis?

When he’s in the pool in Lex’s lair, aside from being so stupid that he’s able to lift up a chain around his neck (with kryptonite attached) but not enough to pull it over his head (which to be fair, isn’t hard in water) he’s also a bit selfish. When Miss Teschemacher (Lex’s dum-witted female assistant) asks him if he’ll save her mother first before anyone else in exchange for helping him, he pleads that he wants to save Lois and Jimmy first. Then he agrees to save Miss Teschemacher’s mother. And then doesn’t. He saves a school bus, and a train, but no sign of saving the mother. And to be honest, even then he doesn’t save Lois. Sure, he saves Jimmy, but then he abandons him.

But of course, with Lois dead, Superman gets so amazingly upset that he decides to alter history. Even though it still takes him a while to fly to various places, when he flies into space he can spin around Earth’s orbit about 3 times per second. Does wind resistance on Earth really affect him that much?

But it doesn’t end there. Superman returns to find Lois alive and Jimmy bitching at him for being left on the roadside. Lois’s car is wrecked in the middle of nowhere and what I suppose is Superman’s way of teaching Jimmy a lesson; straight after Jimmy’s whining session, Superman just up and leaves him and Lois. Yeah, he can be a bit of a dick at times. He even does that in Superman 3 when he drops off Gus Gorman (the late Richard Pryor, who sadly passed away earlier this month) in the middle of no-where with a couple of miners.

Then of course there’s the sequel (aptly named Superman 2). He reveals his identity to Lois and they fall in love. He then returns to the Fortress of Solitude and gives up his powers. What I don’t get is this; He’s a superhero. Lois is in love with him. She wants to be with him. But she can’t stand Clark. Why is it that he can’t see that she’s obsessed over his strength and super-powers? If he gives them up, then he’s just Clark Kent. Lois likes him because he’s indestructible and can fly and is faster than a speeding bullet - just watch her interview with him in the first one compared to when she meets Clark. He’s an idiot basically. He gives up the one reason she wants him in the first place. And of course it buggers everything up later seeing as there’s three super villians from Krypton on Earth.

And of course here’s the big shocker - one of Superman’s powers is the power of Date-Rape! Yes ladies and gentlemen, watch these movies - for I kid you not!

They get it on in the honeymoon suite and then at the end of the movie he kisses her and makes her forget everything that’s happened - even the kiss. That means he’s had sex with her and she can’t remember it, which essentially is like date-rape. And it’s not just this once that he uses his power. He uses it repeatedly - revealing his secret identity and then kissing Lois, and then making her forget. It’s almost like he’s got Lois on tap - and she’ll never know. Personally, I’d consider that a bit imorral - especially for someone who says “I never lie” in the first movie.

There’s plenty more that I’ll probably go into at a later date, but I still have christmas presents to wrap. Don’t forget that Superman Returns in Summer 2006 and if you’re interested in finding out more about how Superman is a dick, then check out SuperDickery.com which shows pages from the original Superman comics proving how much of an asshole he can sometimes be. And then there’s my favorite section on there entitled “Seduction of the Innocent“. It features covers and frames from a more innocent time, a time ignorant of how friggin’ hilarious these would be to future audiences. If it’s inappropriate sexual innuendo, it’s in there.

Well I’m off to finish wrapping presents and then I’m off to bed so I’m going to leave you know by wishing you a Merry Christmas, Happy Chanukah, Happy Kwanzaa, and a Happy Festivus. And if you don’t celebrate anything, have a Happy Sunday.

This entry was posted on Saturday, December 24th, 2005 at 12:24 am and is filed under General, Movies. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.