Money money money money money money (money!)

I'll let you all in on a little secret: I wasn't always poor.

Oh yes, I remember it fondly.  There was a time where my cup runneth over with skrilla.  A time when, with the flair of my debit card, the world opened before me, my tacit oyster.  With each paycheck came the promise of weeks and months of childhood ambitions not unfulfilled--but simply waiting, hungry for that Pavlovian jingle of a pocketful of newly-minted 500 yen coins.  That moment when the opportunity would finally arise when I could proudly retort "actually Mom, you can spend the entire weekend at the arcade playing Time Crisis," or, "actually, spending $150 on a hot sauce collection is the opposite of that thing you said," or "I'm trying but the coins keep slipping out of the G-string!"

Not scrapping and surviving.  Good times.

Being a manchild in his 20s, I thought that the world insisted discipline and restraint only from those who, you know, actually had some to give.  But, like nice ladies at soapland, life often conspires to milk you dry, even if you've got nothing left to give.

I've mentioned before that Mrs. Merican and I are currently in the process of filling out the necessary paperwork, jumping through the necessary hoops, and reaching the necessary arounds to receive her United States permanent resident visa.  What I may not have mentioned is that this exercise in bureaucracy comes at the convergence of the most expensive anythings either of us have ever done in our lives.

In the past six months, one or both of us have: bought engagement rings, moved across the country, shipped a new computer to the United States (and promptly had it lost, and are now currently waging war against our countries' respective postal services to get the insurance money), bought wedding rings, been unemployed (one of us, twice!), had surgery (one of us, twice!), purchased a ticket to the United States, paid for an initial visa interview, paid for a background check from a foreign country, paid for an extensive medical checkup and vaccination regimen required for the visa application, and in another three weeks, we'll be heading up to Tokyo to pay another few hundred dollars for a second visa interview.  Oh, and we'll also be paying our annual income tax.

It's almost like they don't want foreigners moving to the US.

Twice this year, I have gone to the bank to withdraw funds down to the last dollar.  It's dangerous and exciting, like pooping with the lights off.

It also stinks.

I'm a financial Rocky to the world's Ivan Drago.  Each time beating the count just to find myself flat on my back again.

There's a metaphor for Capitalism to be found in there somewhere, but for the life of me I can't reach it.

Crunching a few quick numbers, it looks like we're going to be able to make it through all this and back to the States just in time for the wedding, so long as we don't have to pay an overweight baggage fee.  This should be no problem, however, since our pockets will be completely empty.

I'd be lying if I said this wasn't causing some amount of tension in the relationship.  After all, it's a lot easier to appreciate each others' company when spending twice as much on train fare isn't a significant blow to your budget.But, in spite of all the bran damaeg I've no doubt incurred at the receiving end of the Perestroikan pugilist's meaty mitt, I honestly rate this time as some of the best we've ever spent together and indeed, some of the best time I've ever spent in Japan.

Really.

Japan is a weekender's paradise, and it honestly demands very little of a sightseer's budget.  Sure, you could do one of those fancy bus tours, getting ferried to and fro as the chirpy lady at the front of the bus says "arigatou gozaimashita" for the four-hundred-thirty-fifth time in between telling you all about the history of the particular type of asphalt the bus is driving on.  Or, you could pack a lunch in a dainty basket, toss a dart at a map of the rail system, and roll.

Dainty.

There is so much to see and do in Japan.  So much going on that if you spend all your time and money trying to buy yourself a good time in this country, you'll miss all the best parts.  Hardly seems sincere coming from a guy who met his wife at Universal Studios Japan, but for every weekend spent forming a heart with our hands for the picture at the end of the Indiana Jones Adventure ride at Tokyo DisneySea, dozens more are spent perched atop a boulder in Hirakata's city park enjoying a picnic, or strolling, fingers intertwined, through the bustling side-streets of Shinsaibashi, or some other romantic shit that I'm good at.

You can't see it but she's actually crying in this picture

Opportunities to find the best of Japan for the price of a train ticket are never more than an accident away.  And unlike how it was your for parents, it one won't haunt them for eighteen years.  One of my first memories of a truly good time in Japan was spent with my old co-worker in Kyoto at the mercy of a bus schedule and his better-than-mine-I-guess-I'll-trust-it Japanese.  On a pocketful of change, we drank in the sights and sounds of a city locked in time.  Monuments of a bygone era standing out like pushpins on a map.  But for all of Kyoto's raw, uncompromising historic beauty, there was one place, one moment not on any tourist map that I remember more vividly than anything else that day.

There, between the muddled scamper from bus stop to bus stop, lost in a web of quiet, meandering paths, we shuffled past an old man sweeping leaves with an old, traditional straw broom and into a humble cemetery.  And along the cobblestone and gravel among the headstones and memorial planks, puzzled by the shooters of cheap convenience store liquor dotting the burial plots, we walked.  A place so ordinary and unassuming to everyone except the two very white guys having a very white-guy-in-a-foreign-country moment.  Without a brochure or tour bus in sight, we found the real Japan.

It didn't cost a cent.

Just FYI, I don't lose man-points for this

What's your guilty pleasure?

Seriously.  What is it?  Go ahead and share in the comments and don't be shy.  I live in Japan; this entire country is a guilty pleasure.  Sign in anonymously, use a fake E-mail address.  Go ahead and share, because today I'm going to share my guilty pleasure, and it's only fair that you share back.  Although I'll say right now that if your guilty pleasure includes any combination of the words "furry" and "ball-washing," you can get the fuck out.

In this blog, I've written a couple dozen pages about gaming.  Yeah.  Wow, right?  A couple dozen.  Suck it, Cronkite.  I've mentioned a couple of the all-time greats of gaming--monuments of creativity in the medium, giants upon whose shoulders the modern hits stand.  Final Fantasy 3/6, Fallout 3, the Street Fighter series, Kirby's Adventure, and so forth.  These games aren't just important to the medium, they're personal passions of mine.  Each of the games I just mentioned were more than just diversions, they captured my imagination, inspired me to think more analytically about a medium that has, for the most part, seen its greatest moments next to a dying fir tree on December 25th than in any sort of meaningful critical reception.

But there is another that dominated my childhood.  Sure, it never defined a genre the way Street Fighter II did, nor the hype of Mass Effect 2, nor did it have the mark of an instant classic like Mega Man II.  Just a modest game with a modest goal.

And a princess who wanted to be where the people are.

At least you understand me, Ariel

I know what you're thinking: "ha ha, okay, no what is it really?"  Boys and girls, this is really it.  Well, that and furry ball-washing.  Yep.  Outside of Megas Man (Mega Men?) 2 through 4, I daresay The Little Mermaid was, far and away, my most rented NES game.  And with good reason.

It was good.

Not great, but good.

You, and by you of course I mean I, played as Ariel, youngest daughter to King Triton (and honestly, watching that movie again, you've got to feel at least a little bit sorry for the guy--he's the king of the entire God damn ocean and no one cuts the guy any slack), and aspiring arm-candy for Prince Eric.  Make it to the end of the game in one piece and you're rewarded by getting to spend the rest of your days giggling and twisting your hair by his side.  Being that I was like seven years old when this game hit store shelves, I think I can be forgiven for spending my recreational hours pretending to be a 16-year-old fishlady with dreams of inter-species matrimony.

Although that would go a long way to explaining the five gigabyte "fishmonger hussies" folder on my hard drive.

I'd like to gut and clean her if you know what I'm saying

So what makes The Little Mermaid for NES so good?

Probably the graphics, right?

Honestly, it's a hard thing to nail down.  The Little Mermaid is basically a side-scroller.  Ariel follows a linear, winding path from point A to point B.  The undersea environments give her an effortless free range of motion.  Unlike most games with underwater elements (Sonic, Mario, Kirby, TMNT, etc.), Ariel doesn't have to struggle against the current to stay afloat.  

The novelty of being unrestricted by gravity cannot be overstated.  Back in 1991 when The Little Mermaid came out, most games allowed little movement along the Y-axis, save for shmup genre, and even then the forced screen-scrolling and constant assault of enemies and bullets prevented you from truly enjoying that freedom.  The controls do feel a bit "floaty" in trying to build forward momentum, but are generally responsive and allow you to feel completely at home inside a slender, nubile teen girl's body.

Just like I would have if my parents had let me go to Thailand that summer before college.

Attacking in Little Mermaid is reminiscent of Bubble Bobble.  By hitting the A button, Ariel swishes her tail, launching bubbles at her enemy, encasing them in a bubble that can be carried around and thrown at other enemies.  Yes, Mario has fireballs, Kratos has his chain-blades, Mega Man had... Christ, what didn't he have?  And Ariel?  Ariel has bubbles.  And swishing.  

It's almost like Capcom forgot all about how violent the source movie for this game actually was.

Not pictured: the bow of a ship (it's lodged in her belly)

Starting out, the swish-bubbles are (rightfully) a pathetic weapon.  It takes two swishes (oh God my dick is wilting) to encase even the paltriest of enemies in a bubble, and larger enemies aren't even affected.  However, scattered around the stages are power-ups for the range and strength of your, sigh, swish-bubbles, allowing you to trap increasingly larger enemies with less effort.  Most, if not all, of these power-ups are locked away in chests that can only be opened with conch shells, making the transportation and strategic use of these shells into a fairly challenging puzzle element toward the later stages of the game.  At least it was challenging when I was seven.

Oh Jesus what do I do now

The game itself is very short: only five levels and six bosses.  Hell, at seven years old I was burning through the entire game in a half-hour.  In a way, though, that's part of the charm of The Little Mermaid.  There's no bullshit.  The side-scrolling and puzzle elements are strong enough on their own to compel you through everything the game has to offer and have fun while you're doing it.  The game is designed well enough not to overstay its welcome and at the same time not be so short you feel ripped off like when that "doctor" sold me estrogen.

In my defense, it clearly says "Mother's First Choice" right there on the bottle

In the end, it's not a great game, but it's really good.  Much of the charm and novelty has, unfortunately, been lost in the ocean of time.  The controls are a bit dated and a lot of the novelty and innovation has been somewhat eroded by the fact that it came out almost two decades ago.  Even so, it's still a hell of a lot better than most of the "girl games" you'll find available on shelves today (and honestly a lot less sexist and vaguely offensive, and considering this game and its source material are about a girl only being able to find happiness and self-worth only through marriage, that's saying a lot).  But, if you find it at a used game store or can find the time to fire it up on your favorite emulator and look at it through the right set of eyes, you might be able to see it for the treasure it really is:

...a banded, bulbous snarfblatt.

Ass warfare

There exists in Japan a brand of class-warfare unknown in the West.

No, I'm not referring to the wholesale subjugation of Koreans and the "Barakumin" caste--holdovers of a time long past that continue to be wielded like a club against the "less-than-desireables" in modern-day Japan.

Nay, I speak of a struggle that affects all of us here in Japan.  Young and old, rich and poor, Gentile and whatever the hell it is they worship around here.  I think it's supposed to be a deer or something?  Shit, I dunno.

This guy looks legit

Our struggle stems from the loftiest seat of power.  Whether we choose to acknowledge the fact that our behinds are besieged by an ass-aristocracy that rob us of commodal comfort where we Jesus this is tiring I'm talking about toilets.

If you want to know all there is to know about crapping in comfort in the 'Pan, take a seat and I'll provide the reading material.  Settle in, this is looking to be a two-flusher.

As I'm sure anyone with an Internet connection is well-aware, Japan is among the most technologically advanced countries in the world.  Prior to the iPhone turning the mobile market upside-down, Japan was the global leader in the mobile market, and still is on the bleeding edge of feature-phone technology and pioneered the use of 3G services on a massive scale.  This is the country that gave us the Walkman, the Nintendo, was at the forefront of solar panel technology before finally being usurped by Germany in 2008, and rendered love obsolete.

And yet, the same country, opts to shit in this:

Behold your personal hell

It's a God damn porcelain hole in the ground, colloquially referred-to as a "squatter." It barely flushes when it works and I don't know why this always happens but the guys who use the squatter before me never flush their poop.  And it's never like an ordinary duke, either.  I swear I will never understand the shape of the Japanese sphincter because the dootie always looks like really cheap rope or something.  You know, all thin and spindly? What are you eating guys, spider webs?

Not to mention the kind of workout you get while, as the name implies, squatting over these things.  Like a mad scientist who specializes in baby robotic barnyard animals, you must have calves of steel.  Sure, you get a little bit of support if you need it--you can wrap a hand around the stainless steel railing on the wall that every other person who has shat in that toilet all day has used like some kind of stripper-pole for E. coli.

And that brings me to my next point: as anyone who has been to Japan for any meaningful duration can attest, Japanese are crazy about hygiene.  We're talking about a country where, at the hospital, you must first remove your shoes and switch into slippers to go into the operating room, walk 5 meters, and switch slippers again before finally being allowed to enter for realsies.  You know, just in case it didn't take the first time.

We're talking about a country that, during the height of the swine flu pandemic, bought out every last box from pharmacies across the country, and when the stores sold out, scalpers sold cases online for over $1,000.

And yet, many bathrooms in Japan (particularly those in the most crowded areas, such as train stations), do not offer toilet paper.  Sure, a lot of those places have a dispenser at the front of the bathroom from which you can buy toilet paper--but not all of them.  If it's an emergency, you'd better have an eagle eye heading into the stall, lest you leave with a brown one.

Even more do not offer hand soap.  This is basic hygiene, fellas.  This is the sort of stuff they figured out in the 1800s.

And yet.

And yet, Japan offers scatological amenities befitting the incandescent ass of Hirohito, for those with the coin to afford it--or who are fortunate enough to work in a building or visit a restaurant that furnishes it.

This thing...

...controls this thing

Read 'em and weep.  Boasting automatic lid, automatic flush, self-heating seat, self-illuminating bowl, bidet, ambient water-trickling-sound-to-cover-your-shameful-deed (not joking), and a remote sporting more features than the holiday season Sharper Image catalog, this is the '67 Corvette of the fecal freeway (skid marks not included).

Self-heating.  Self.  Motherfucking.  Heating.  Do you know how long that has been a dream of mine?

Neither do I, but if I had to guess it was probably the first winter after I discovered jerking off or possibly when I discovered that if you hide it in your pocket going in, no one can judge you for playing Game Boy while making doo-doo.

Words cannot describe the schoolboy-on-Christmas squealing that followed when we moved in to my wife's dad's place and I found out his shitter was rocking one of those self-heating seats.  Seriously.  Like an terrified sea otter on helium.  

Some guys sneak out of bed in the middle of night to have affairs.  Me?  My first month here, my "other woman" was named Lady Toto Toastybottom.

And if you're really lucky, after you're done, you have this to look forward to: 

Christ, my bathtub isn't this nice

This thing is a dream machine--man's greatest substantive contribution to sanitation since penicillin.  A sink with automated faucet and soap dispenser, and combination UV sanitizer and blow-dryer all-in-one. I mean, like, what?  You take the subway and you're basically one step up from using a garden hose, but you work in an office with your own personal shitter where at least you know who all the filth belongs to and you get this thing?  How is that a possible thing that can happen?  

Truly, there is no justice in this world.

Those decadent, feculant, poo-tocrats in their towers of glass and steel have these things to retire to when nature calls, while we working-class peons have little better than troughs to pee-in.  It's not right.

Anyway, I'll spare you any more of my proctological posturing about the plight of the powder-room proletariat.  I heard a flush, and I just got Mega Man X3 for my PSP.

Meat slurry

There are moments etched into the collective consciousness of men of honor rising to a challenge.  Moments that test courage, define careers, and that live forever.  Jesus' Sermon on the Mount, Michael Jordan's flu game, JFK's handling of the Cuban Missile crisis, Babe Ruth calling his shot, MLK's I Have A Dream.

Unforgettable moments of time, flawless and crystalline, glimmering in the cosmos of human history, everlasting and immutable.

Last October, I had mine.

I mean, yeah, the Cuban Missile crisis was pretty important, too

Such opportunities often only deign to test a man's quality once.  Pass or fail, that is the moment that changes the course of a life.  And yet, on Monday, May 17th in the year of our Lord 2010, the gentle hand of fate pointed its finger my way a second time.  There was still work to be done.

 Huh... that doesn't look too bad.  In fact it looks prett-

 

 oh

No burger too big, no indulgence too great.

Look on my works ye mighty and despair!

Playing for the wrong team: Life outside the big four

For anyone who hadn't heard the news regarding Geos--one of the original "Big Four" eikaiwa--declared bankruptcy a few weeks ago.  Good news in the short term for anyone at the top of the food chain in the "Cautiously Optimistic Three," bad news for, well, everyone else.  With the original top banana, Nova, going bust in 2007, the reputation of eikaiwa and their teachers has fallen considerably.  Imagine the collective sigh of relief in the fast-food industry if McDonald's suddenly tanked overnight upon health inspectors discovering the supposed two all-beef patties in your Big Mac were actually fetal mice.

You know, hypothetically

And then the butt-clenching anxiety of the sudden realization that now, all that scrutiny is on you, Burger King.  Or you, Subway.  And especially you, KFC.

 Aww... you know I can't stay mad at you

At a time like this, it's nice to work outside the constraints of the "Big Four."  As Bob Dylan or perhaps a Snapple label once said, "threedom is freedom."  If that's true, you wouldn't believe how liberating it is to be this far down on the totem pole.  It's not that my school is small, necessarily.  We're doing okay for ourselves just shy of 200 students.  It's just that we're not, you know, making money.

Is it because we're bad at what we do?  Is it because we don't charge enough?  Or maybe because we accept aluminum foil instead of currency?

I'm going to throw a figure out there:

92%.

Thank you for reading.

 

Yes, 92%.  Without any scientific backing, research, or justification of any kind, this is my thesis: 92% of people either suck at their jobs or aren't paid enough to care.

During my time at a fast-food chain, there were perhaps one or two employees that actually tried.  Who actually cared enough to make the customers happy.  The rest of us stole bacon when the manager was away.  

Because all of us, regardless of how justified we were(n't), didn't really care how well the dishes were washed or if the food was even being stored at the proper temperature.  Because fuck it, if they really cared, they'd be paying us more than $6.50 an hour.  And now realize that this is probably true of virtually every fast-food restaurant you visit.

It would be awesome if this were just the fast-food industry because hey, free bacon, but everyone from expensive restaurants in Japan to the SEC to NASA phones it in.  It's the reason Japanese TV is a cesspool.  Just the same 30 or so "famous" people sitting around and bullshitting and eating on camera every single day, because that's easy to produce.  Writing scripts, editing video, and building sets is hard.  On many channels in Japan, you can watch for an entire day without seeing a single line of scripted dialogue.  

Japanese "comedians" do entire sets--make entire careers--around screaming, making "funny" noises, and making faces for five minutes.  Because writing a routine and practicing to perfection is difficult, but standing up and acting like a drunk homeless person is easy, especially when the everyone in the 30-man circle-jerk shares the same unspoken agreement to laugh and pretend to be entertained for everyone else, no matter how untalented.

So where I'm going with this?  Take a good, hard look at the eikaiwa industry.  Or hell, go to Google and look up any random eikaiwa.  Go to the first page and what do you see?  

Probably kids.  Fresh out of college, fleeing their respective countries for the Far East looking for a year of paid vacation.  In most cases, this is the majority of every school's teaching staff.  Most of these companies are marketing good-looking white people as much or more than English education.  Most sites won't tell you a thing about their curriculum, their teaching methods, their qualifications, or any proof that they can even teach.  Because it's so, so much easier to take a few well-lit, generously angled pictures of white people holding up a textbook and playing monkey-at-the-zoo than it is to hire people with any sort of qualifications or even a basic interest in teaching.

Hiring trained monkeys is easy, hiring qualified teachers is difficult.  Just ask McDonald's.  

Not too many qualified teachers there, are there?  Check and mate, reader.  Check and mate.

Even at my own school now outside the "Big Four" clusterfuck, I constantly hear the Japanese staff speaking in Japanese to the kids, spending half the class just shooting the shit and talking about boys and pretending to be fifteen years younger.  Or when I ask the manager how I should teach a class I've never taught before and was only informed of it an hour before the class was scheduled and the basic answer is "just fill time."  I've taught here long enough and at enough different schools and met enough teachers to corroborate this that I know these aren't isolated incidents.

There are no standards in this business.  It's making me lazy.  It's making us all lazy.

When I left the security of the "Big Four" and took this new job, I was worried I was playing for the wrong team.  I'm starting to wonder if I'm playing the wrong sport.  

I'd say the odds are about 92%.

Torture porn: the worst genre or the worst genre?

Far be it from me to break with the tradition that video game blogs have of accompanying the mention of Roger Ebert with the wringing of fists and the swearing of Klingon blood oaths, but this article actually has nothing to do with his controversial position that video games aren't art.  Instead, Ebert garnered an eyebrow raise from me with his review of no-and-no-half stars to Human Centipede.

Unfortunately, that's exactly what the makers and proprietors of this shlock want.  The second the most widely known and respected critic in the entire world gave Human Centipede the review of unmitigated shock and disgust they were angling for, he gave it legitimacy.  Which is one thing I have over Ebert: no one respects my opinion, much less knows or even cares who the fuck I am.

And honestly, I still can't believe I'm even doing this genre critique/review for two reasons: first, I don't want this movie to earn a cent because my review caused someone to go to the theater to see what I'm all butthurt about, astronomical though those odds must be.  And second, I seriously can't believe it.  I just can't.  After being exposed to this movie last night, I woke up this morning with a strange sense of denial about the whole thing.  Like, I can't actually believe this movie even really exists.  I mean, I know it does.  I'm looking at it right now.  It's clear as day.  I see the title, I see the screen, and yet it just feels like it can't really actually be a thing.  A thing that millions upon millions of dollars were spent to make.  This must be how people feel when they realize they've won the lottery.  The rape lottery.

So step aside, Ebes; let an amateur handle this.

I didn't always hate the torture porn genre.  In fact, there was a point where I defended it.  There was a point where I thought labeling it "torture porn" missed the point.  After all, if you want to make an omelet, you've got to brutally rend a few eggs.  Of course, at the time I was also defending better movies.

To wit, I will defend Saw--the movie, not the franchise--to the death, even if it means being eaten alive by a horde of angry scarabs unless I can bite my own fingers off in 60 seconds, that I may never again type another harsh word about Kevin Greutert.

Saw, and its spiritual predecessor Se7en, actually had something to say.  Saw's three principal characters were deeply flawed but fundamentally likable people in horrendous circumstances.  Adam and Lawrence find themselves trapped in Jigsaw's human experiment, while detective Tapp can generously be called "obsessed" with bringing Jigsaw to justice.  Adam and Lawrence both harbor a dark past of secrets and lies, condemned to play the game for "not valuing life."  It's a punishment and an offer of a cure--a second chance at life--all they have to do is survive Jigsaw's game.

That's it.  That's all there is.  No secret pasts, no outlandish justifications or sob stories, no flashbacks to "the time before I became a villain."  Just two guys chained in a room and only one key to salvation.  And a ticking clock.

From the moment we are introduced to these characters, we become judges, arbiters of a twisted morality.  We can cheer for one or both of these men to overcome their foibles and co-operate and win the game and their freedom, or we can cheer for them to be crushed.  It's Jigsaw's warped sense of objectivist morality and survival instinct or redemption.

And as for the blood--there's plenty, to be sure.  But honestly, go back and watch Saw or even Saw II again.  There's actually not that much.  A lot of scenes are gut-wrenchingly difficult to watch because of the anticipation of something being done, not in the act itself.  Adam and Lawrence are given the opportunity to free themselves of their shackles by cutting through their own feet.  It's a gruesome decision that stirs in the background of every decision and escape plan, and the tension ramps to a head at the critical moment of the live-or-die decision.  Horror is a guillotine poised to strike; torture porn is watching the execution and then the severed head being bashed with croquet mallets for 90 minutes.

More than the threat of inevitability is the aftermath.  The murderers of horror movie legend all had more than one masterpiece, each of them linking the story to an inevitable climax.  I can think of few better examples than Leland Orser, who was in Se7en for all of a minute-and-a-half, and I still rate his screen-time as more shocking and memorable than virtually any other scene in the movie.

If you've seen the movie, you know what I'm talking about

A strong script and good actors convey way more than all the red dye and corn syrup the effects department could whip up.  When viewing gore on the silver screen, it's easy to create a barrier between what you're watching and what really exists.  We know special effects when we see them.  But good actors conjure emotions, impulses, twitches, memories, mannerisms--the stuff of humanity--and bring that composite to life.  The above scene from the police station interview room comes from a dark place in the mind of someone who has been forced to do a thing too rotten to comprehend.  Had we seen it ourselves, we'd be grossed out and maybe avoid red meat at the dinner table for a couple weeks, but this brief scene shows us more than we wanted to know.  It's something that will never, ever go away.  

Oh, wait, isn't that exactly what John Doe wanted?  Wow, it's almost like there's a compelling story here.

Compare Saw and Saw II to Hostel and you see why it's so necessary for a decent torture porn movie to have an ethos.  Saw was an intriguing premise because the characters were likable enough to want to see them succeed, but flawed enough that you don't want them to weasel out of it too easy.  Hostel, by contrast, is a story of a couple of stereotypical douchebags going to Europe, getting tricked, and then becoming unwilling victims of a snuff fantasy camp.

It's a display of agony and human suffering for its own sake.  It is objectively bad to pay $25,000 to torture and kill a person, so I understand the conflict.  But since the poor saps on the receiving end of it are just kind of dicks, I don't really want them to succeed so much as I don't think they should be tortured to death.  The entire "entertainment" value of the movie is just supposed to be watching some dudes getting tortured while sitting in the audience and pretending that these are the bullies that shoved your head in the toilet during passing period in middle school.

But even still, a good movie can be made around that premise.  Untraceable is a perfect example of a movie that, in spite of the soul-shattering brutality, actually has the presence of mind to keep it relevant.  The basic premise of Untraceable is that a hacker has been kidnapping people and making them the unwilling stars of his online snuff show.  The more hits his website gets, the quicker the star's messy demise, making the viewers accessories to the murder he's broadcasting live.  It's a stunning display of self-awareness for a supposedly "base" genre.  Untraceable turns the mirror to both itself and the audience. We demand to be shocked in spite of ourselves.  We eat this shit up, sick as it makes us.

And speaking of eating shit, that brings me perfectly back to Human Centipede.  I earned that segue.  YOU HEAR THAT INTERNET I EARNED IT

So if you've made it this far you must be wondering what all the fuss is about.  Well, it's your standard "car breaks down in the middle of the European countryside oh gosh it's rainy dearest me shouldn't we find some cover why yes I think that creepy looking isolated mansion in the middle of the woods will do just nicely oh who is this nice gentleman my word is he a German mad scientist who is going to surgically attach us all ass to mouth and and experiment on us why yes I think he mffff hmmmfff fmmm mrrrrrff mmmmph" story.

Yeah, I think that pretty much nails down the gist of it.  It's the kind of movie that, after watching, you can't really chuckle at how savage the Roman empire was compared to the 21st century, what with their Colosseum and all.

It's the kind of movie that leaves you shaking your head and wondering why and how.  Why anyone would make this and how we, as a species, could have ever evolved so far as to call this entertainment.

Although it certainly does make a powerful metaphor for the Saw series.  See?

Incidentally, more work went into this image than any of the last four Saw movies

There aren't any protagonists in the movie.  There are victims and a mad scientist.  The characters are paper-thin, not so much people as they are screams and tears with bodies attached.  By the time they've been been captured and surgically mutilated in the movie, what more is there?  Nothing remains except to watch this abomination writhe and suffer.  In Saw, no one survived the game without paying a cost, but the cost was never so great as to outweigh survival.

In Untraceable, there is no hope of salvation for any of the victims.  We aren't there to root for anyone.  We're spectators and the movie wants to make damn well sure we know that.  But Human Centipede?  We have no reason to root for the victims because we don't care who they are.  They're so mutilated that there's nothing left but to die.  It's like watching a coma patient on life support while your asshole kid neighbor kicks at the plug in the wall socket.  

To put it another way, at some point you've just got to total the car.

It's human misery as spectacle with absolutely no redeeming value.  The only answer to this this movie provides us with is to the question "when is it okay to go ass-to-mouth?"

"Well?"

That's not to say more terrible movies haven't been made (after all, Korean filmmaker Jin Won Kim made The Butcher, a 75-minute torture and death-rape extravaganza, which I think edges this one out in terms of hateful, exploitative films with absolutely no redeeming value--but I'm just a big softie for death-rape).  I'm saying that this brand of torture porn is a waste.  A waste of time, a waste of money, a waste of effort.  It has nothing to offer, especially in a 21st century world where you can have your daily dose of human misery for free on the Internet, without having to rely on the finicky schedules of cunning hacker-kidnappers.

I understand if people can't get through the day without watching total strangers breathe their last in a strange place thousands of miles away from home.  That's what Wikileaks is for.  What I'm saying is that there's no reason, purpose, or value in paying studios to manufacture it and market it as entertainment.

If after all of that, you still feel like you must see this movie--whether it be for the hype, the gross-out factor, or being able to beat off with your own tears while imagining the faces of the three girls who shot you down for the prom being surgically grafted to each others asses--please don't pay money for it.

This is the 21st century after all.