Eating Toward Victory

Conditions: Cold, Sunny.


Military Declares War On Fatness.

One thing that is still vital to the military is kids. You can't have a war without kids. I mean, who else would do all the dying? But there's a problem in the recruitment offices of America: Kids are getting fat, what with all the playstation and cheap hamburgers. Fat kids means smaller wars. And we can't have that.

"Obesity rates threaten the overall health of America and the future strength of our military," generals John Shalikashvili and Hugh Shelton, both former chairs of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, wrote in a commentary.

Obesity disqualified more potential recruits for military service than any other medical factor, the two former commanders wrote in the Washington Post.

The two generals urged Congress to adopt legislation that would ensure better nutrition in schools, offering children more vegetables, fruits and whole grains while cutting back on foods with high sugar, sodium and fat content.

- google.com/

Does anyone else get the massive irony in this?

"We must feed our nation's children more healthy food!"

"Because healthy kids grow up to be healthy adults, taking the strain off our economy?"

"No. Because we need kids to bleed on our future battle fields, and at the moment they're too fat to fit in the uniforms."

I mean seriously, if you have to choose between a gun and a cheeseburger, I really think the smart decision is also the fun decision. It sure beats cutting your thumb off.



Film Review: Daybreakers

I do enjoy me a good vampire movie, and Daybreakers has quite a good feel to it. It's the vampire apocalypse, this time triggered by a bat-virus that swept the planet. Humans have now become rare, and most of those left are kept in matrix-style blood milking installations, the largest of these run by a big corporation headed by Sam Neill. But Sam has a problem. With humans becoming rare the blood is running out, causing the vampires of the world to start devolving into shrieking, clawed animals. Society is on the verge of collapse, and the only hope is Ethan Hawke, who works for Sam as a blood doctor and is on the trail of a blood substitute vaccine.

But Ethan is a reluctant vampire, and sympathizes with the humans, so when he bumps into a bunch of them on the run he's more inclined to help them than turn them in. And when he meets William Dafoe, a former vampire who has become human again, then things get really complicated. This is a pretty involving film, there's a lot going on. And it's well shot, too. Set in the future, but with a real old-style classic feel to it. Not only do we get the fun of vampire hunting, we also get a story about society rapidly falling apart as overly-consumed resources run dry. There's also Sam Neil's attempt to reunite with his long-lost (human) daughter. Needless to say, it's a reunion that does not go well.

All in all, it's a very ambitious tale. And while it doesn't really have an ending in the classical sense, which is frustrating, it is somehow fitting that a story about society devolving into chaos isn't neatly tied up before the end credits. I enjoyed the trouble they went to with this, and the actors all do a pretty good job. There's also a bit of a twist in the ending, and I must say some of the most goriest of kills I've seen outside of a horror film. It's certainly a hard R. So, a vampire film that is dark, gothic, bloody and makes you think. It'll never catch on. Four fangs out of five.


- Peace out