Punch Line

I tell stale jokes.  I suppose I don’t know many good ones.  I don’t think I can drum up a new joke to save my life.   In my early ESL days I sat in front of  a TV and watched stand up comedy.  People laughed at what the comedians were saying, in my early ESL days, I didn’t get it.  Later, as my English improved, I started to laugh along.  Sad but true, they were crazy jokes ranging from sex, race,  hate, and so on.  Those were the ones that were obviously funny.  They have strong punch lines.

In another context, I think punch line in a joke is like the message in the films.  I posted something about zombies and zombie movies recently.  George Remero had a new one, “Journal of Zombies.”  The punch line or the message here is, you are what you are.  It was when one of the characters said, “In the end, we are what we are.  Those that died will come back and try to kill the others.”  It was something like that.   I thought about that for a moment, it’s true.

All different religion in the world offer salvation.  All geniuses of the world offer hope.  The bottom line is, what happen when we die?  Most of us don’t care for dying.  We care about life and take all we can while we are alive.  Thank God, dear God, there are enough people to hold the balance between good and evil.   But what is good might be evil in disguise.  Everything repeat its self.   The prehistoric people already went through all this.  They die when it’s their time come.   We just die differently now.   We live and die in style.   We die from getting shot at, getting killed by animals, we kill each others, etch.  If not that, we die by sickness which is really relate to our own doing.   We want to stop death that is enevitably.  Time Makazine posts an interesting article about stem cell research.  What do I know about that?  I know it can cure some deasease and prolong life.   It slow death as it approach.  We are actually running  and we hiding from death  these days.  The punch line here is, our clock is ticking.

Hiding  from death, remind me of a joke mae tu (grandma) Eet from Syhom, Vientiane told us.  It was a good joke.   I laughed when the punch line came.  The joke was, a long time ago when people were allowed to know their death date.   People excepted death pretty well back then.  When there time come, they just went peacefully.  The yommatude (death embassors) had no problem.  They just came and retrieve the sould of the dead and go.    As time went on, people started to get bold and disrespectful of the rules set for them.  One of those rules was the death sentence.  So they decided to try and cheat death by hiding.   Mae tu told us that there was this man who didn’t want to die.   He tried to hide in the water because everywhere else the embassador would find him.  The water was a place people didn’t use before.  The embassador can not imagine that someone would hide in the water because there’s no air under the water.  So he didn’t look there.  Finally after a long search foe Mr. I don’t want to die yet, he gave up and decided to look at the the odd place, the  river.  The man that was hiding saw the embassador coming, he took another big gulp of air and went under.  He held his breath as long he could.  Here is the punch line, his butt was sticking up above the surface.  We all should laugh at this point.

Imagine hiding in the water to escape death but the man’s butt was floating above the surface.  So the embassador took the man.  The president of the underworld got really tire of people not cooperating with the embassadors.   Human kept trying to find a new way to live longer then they suppose to.  It caused a lot of confusion for the heaven people that incharge of accounting.  The writers of people’s fait were having the same problem too.  So God said, dawnit, from now on no one is allowed to know their death date!

Live your life to the fullest.  Be a good person.  I promise you will be judge very kindly when the time come.

It’s Dawn

Night of the Living Dead (1968 )

Dawn of the Dead (1978 )

Day of the Dead (1985 )

Night of the Living Dead (1990)

Land of the Dead (2005)

There are other zombie motivated films.  Why more and more zombies are made?  I tell you later.   I came to know what a zombie is when I saw “Dawn of the Dead” for the first time when I was in my teans.  Back then you have to stay up late to catch a horror film.   I didn’t think of it when the “Day of the Dead” came out in 1985.  I thought I check it out too since I already saw “Dawn of the Dead”. Since then, there has been many more zombie movie made by different people.

Fast forward here a second, why zombie is such a big hit? It is because it’s simple.  It’s kill and be killed.  You kill the thing or you get killed. The modern zombie movies, however, are more like an action film with hero or heroin figure out to save everyone.  What is a zombie.  By definition a zombie is a walking corpse.  There is nothing infected about the creature. A zombie is a reanimated human corpse.   In a zombie film, people will be fighting for their lives.  They are usually out numbered by zombies.   A zombie can be killed or get blown away by shooting it in its head. Senseless, the zombies will keep going and it is killed or until there is nothing left to kill.  Sound familiar now?

The whole point I am trying to make is people are starting to act a lot like zombies. People are more and more foolish and senseless. They rather just kill and destroy without reasoning.  Watch the world news tonight, what do you see? You will see corpses reanimated in the hearts and minds of their remaining relatives.  Legacy of hate goes on.  Forget about going to a movies. Just stay tune.  There are two kinds of people in this world today, the human and the zombies. The zombie films may have suggested otherwise, but the message is loud and clear.  Look around you. People are walking around carrying on about their problems.  They seem to have a lot going for them and nothing is going to hindering their progress.  When ever someone or something gets in their ways, they honks their little horn (this is happening a lot lately) or they just run over them and be on their way.  Sounds harsh but true.  Human got a lot going on in their heads.  Their concerns are enless.  More and more human are becoming zombies, empty and senseless. Unlike zombies, human still have a spirit, heart, mind, and body that capable of making change, alter directions, and come back from oblivion.   Zombies just need to be put out of its mystery.

Since the first zombie film, I can offer many reasons why I see zombie as a good metaphor for evil spirits exist in what’s left of a human body remains.   They just the hate reincarnated, to kill and to destroy over and over again infecting one person after another.   There is nothing mystereous about hate.  Hate can only put out by destroy the core of it.  Hate is like a seed.  You plant it in your heart and you keep watering it.  In time, it grows and grows.  One last thing, as a human being, we have a choice. Don’t be a zombie.