People Have Been Conscious While Experiencing These Horrific Things:

Human consciousness is a fascinating and mysterious thing. But while it can be viewed as a wonder, is it not rather a burden in a lot of cases? You know, in cases such as:

*Starving to death
*Being eaten alive by a wild animal
*Getting shot
*Getting stabbed
*Drowning
*Being executed
*Being buried alive
*Getting raped
*Being forced to watch your own spouse or family get raped
*Witnessing a suicide
*Being used in medical experiments that involve pain tolerance
*Being tortured
*Catching on fire
*Being forced into an oven and burned alive
*Forcefully being used in government experiments
*Being beaten to death
*Being trampled by a mob
*Getting cancer and dying
*Getting a painful infection and dying
*Seeing your town be destroyed by a natural disaster
*Witnessing your country get invaded
*Being near an area where there was a nuclear blast and dying of radiation sickness
*Getting your eyes gouged out
*Losing a limb
*Witnessing the above

All of the aforementioned have happened to people, numerous times. Why would most people EVER deserve anything like this? The answer is, most people never deserve any of the above. It just happens and life goes on. That's the universe for you.

Before the Cat and the Mouse, the First "Tom and Jerry" Cartoon

Before the Tom and Jerry we now know and love of today (and who also star in weird direct-to-video movies where they visit Willy Wonka's chocolate factory) there were Tom and Jerry. Not the cat and the mouse but two guys named Tom and Jerry. They are now known as Van Beuren's  Tom and Jerry to avoid confusion. I've decided to watch the very first short that seems pretty good as Halloween comes very close. Truth be told it's actually not very good but is a great example of that early-30s cartoon creepiness. Released in 1930, the first Van Beuren Tom and Jerry short, Wot A Night, is, with it's crude animation, primitive sound effects, and choppy quality of the prints I've watched on YouTube, almost a stereotypical idea of a creepy and weird 1930s cartoon. But unlike the Fleischer masterwork Swing You Sinners it's not even very joyful in addition to being creepy and weird, it's just... creepy and weird. The pace is slow, there's really no buildup, the gags just come and go. Of course this was the year 1930 (can't wait to be there for Swing You Sinners 100th anniversary) and the animators were young and it seems just drawing random funny stuff, but Steamboat Willie from 1928 had better pacing and gags. I'm not trashing the cartoon, I did enjoy watching it, but yeah it's interesting to watch, but not a classic.

                                                          It's raining a bunch outside.

As is typical with cartoons of the early 1930s, inanimate objects suddenly come to life. Little did these young animators experimenting with a brand-new artform know that close to a hundred years and their deaths later artists would take a conscious inspiration from this style, such as the video game Cuphead and the artist Shawn Dickinson.

The two identical-looking guys Tom and Jerry are driving being visited by an eerie-looking frog whilst almost flooded. A great example of the random to the point of creepiness gags sometimes found in early 30s cartoons.

                                                   A pretty good-looking bat creature.

                                   The bat is pretty well animated compared to a lot of the cartoon.

                     A skeleton playing a piano causes a bunch of skeletons to get up and start dancing.

A rather uncomfortable racial stereotype. For those wondering, there will be no attempts at censorship of old cartoons and comics on this blog. It's hard to learn from the past if you pretend that certain, less admirable parts of it didn't exist. Like our own time it is important to acknowledge the darker aspects of the past and the mistakes of it and not just pretend that these fascinating cartoons weren't made by people who were above the bigotry of their time. While also acknowledging the good stuff that it had, such as for example, the wacky and inspirational cartoons of the time. But we must also learn from the darker aspects as well, such as uncomfortable racial stereotypes in these works.

                Tom and Jerry are now... skeletal? It's hard to tell what the joke is even supposed to be.

             

And that was Wot A Night. Not even very good, but still an interesting October watch. Happy Halloween!

On My Blog and It's Weirdness

It's always nice getting to relax and spend time with your family and see the sunlight outside. My blog IS super cynical, but I'm actually a pretty happy guy. I just don't hold things back when it comes to explaining how chaotic and violent existence is. There is always a ton of suffering going on, there just is. Humans are born predators who love their precious political ideologies. I think it's best to point out how things are instead of a superficial optimism. This blog can seem a little weird with pessimistic philosophy stuff and old cartoon stuff, but I do enjoy those old cartoons and talking about them. I've wanted to have a blog talking about old cartoon stuff for a while but also wanted to discuss an evaluation of how things are, so this blog is both at the same time. Soon I'll do a blog post talking about an old cartoon, just my thoughts on it.

I've enjoyed writing on this blog and I think the theme of it demonstrates quite well the beauty and terror of life. All-out brutal honesty on things and the happiest artform, both at the same time. It's interesting looking at those old happy cartoons. They're about being able to ignore the chaos for a bit and just enjoy the short amount of time you have to be alive. Indeed it seems they almost delight in the chaos, as the characters fall down and the gags often involve someone getting hurt. Ah why am I getting philosophical with my love of old cartoons? They're just cartoons, after all.

Anyways, I hope you enjoy my blog!

On My Previous Post...

Serial killers murder normal people; normal people create serial killers.

Who's Worse? A Serial Killer or Someone Who Has Children?

Who's worse? The serial killer, or the person who has children? The serial killer is a monster and they know it, viewing fully-fleshed people as nothing more than objects to use for their pleasure and destroy. The serial killer puts someone under immense suffering for sometimes days and then kills them, ending their life. No doubt the serial killer is a heinous monster who should be brought to justice, caring not one bit about the feelings of others.
  But what about the one who has children? They end up being a monster without realizing it. They forcefully create a being that's aware of it's suffering and for years they get to brutalize their own creation and expect it to do things for them. The innocent being forced to suffer is forced to partake in society and go to school and be forced to study even though in the end it'll all be for nothing as, saints be praised, everyone will be dead and the sun will burn out. To escape the monster known as nature the being lives in neighborhoods were there was once wildlife and instead of predators in the wild there are human predators, such as serial killers. Indeed if people would have children for a logical reason, there would be no people who'd grow up forced to have a stupid job they hate and have to get married and learn all the ways to hate someone they have to live with and, yes, end up getting victimized by a serial killer. Luckily for serial killers, humans grow on trees, thanks to mankind's own foolishness. In fact while the suffering a serial killer inflicts upon their victim is immense, it's nothing compared to decades of suffering brought upon by their spouses and family and coworkers and society and children and getting old and withering away and dying.
  So, who do you think is worse?

The Burden of Existing

I guess people have children so they can show what suffering is, so they can force the burden of having to exist onto a helpless being as indeed they are the ones who create them. Not only do couples force the burden of existing they also feel that the beings they've created owe them a living, a child growing up is like finding reasons to hate existence and why your parents made a terrible mistake. But because everyone's doing it, the victims of being alive create more life and the process continues. Indeed it's a gruesome process and all those people who are dead are at peace while the living are at war with themselves and their spouses and families and other countries and the terrible burden of having to exist.
  Looks like the dead experience eternal peace while in the world of the living young people are drafted into wars; some will be lucky enough to die, while others will live and have to cope with the war experiences for the rest of their lives. Plus the monster known as nature has a ton of nice diseases and human predators to throw at people, and the competition that is nature and humanity continues and the sick cycle of beings constantly being born and dying continues. Well one day the sun will apparently burn up the Earth and while there's still an entire existence capable of producing life out there, at least Earth will be done for. Praise the sun!