The Bravest
There is a documentary on Netflix that should not be watched by just anyone. It is chilling and ridiculous and powerful all at the same time. It is called The Act of Killing, and while this should be in my Media Blog I don't want it to stay there among all the fun and interesting things. The documentary is about a group of men that in the 1960's killed millions of ethnic Chinese in Indonesia, and how they are heralded as heroes and talked about on their national news and praised.
It was in this documentary that I saw one of the bravest things I've ever seen in my life, ranked up there with the mysterious man in Tienanmen Square. Let me set the scene for you. In this room they are re-creating the torture and killings that happened. The actual killers are playing the parts of themselves. There is a man that killed 1,000 men, women and children by himself. There was no mass killings, no mass gas chamber poisonings. There was no barrier or veil of euthanasia, every kill was hands on murder. Another man there was another leader of a different death squad. They are re-creating this scene and the actor playing the "victim" speaks up, saying he has a tale, a true tale. This man, this brave man, reveals that his step-father(who is likely his real father, but claims step-father so he does not seem like someone wanting revenge) was taken by one of them, tortured and murdered. He tells how the next day that no one would help them bury the body because they were afraid they would be killed as well. He explains that he and his grandmother had to bury him in a shallow grave "like a goat". The whole time he's telling this story, to the killers, he has to smile and explain he's only telling the truth, he's not judging them. There is no accountability for these killers, they are praised and applauded at the drop of a hat. Rarely has anyone made them face the choices they made. They then film the scene. This brave man is now his father, and the men that really did kill and torture his dad are "faking" doing the same to him.
This scene will stay with me for the rest of my life. It may be the bravest, saddest thing I've seen on film.
March 20th, 2014
I wrote that above this morning and the rest of this before. I feel weird talking about my day after writing about something so heavy, and I probably bummed you guys out, sorry about that. I'm going to continue with what I wrote about my day before.
I continued writing. I have plenty of video game stuff done to last me a while, so I'm trying to come up with topics for my Music and table Gaming side. I've got a Bon Scott retrospective coming soon, and I'm about to move on to the Brian Johnson era, which probably has more songs I haven't heard than the Bon Scott era. On the table gaming side I had an idea, a little "trick" that a GM can use to get the players creating some of their own story during games. I started on writing about the Lord of the Rings Living Card Game, and as I type this I think I should write a descriptor of Living Card Game and why its not a Collectable Card Game.
I started God of War 2 today with the intent on beating it. I never got around to buying the game for my PS2, and so its really nice having it to play in HD on the PS3. I have played through part 1 several times, and I just could not imagine them topping the awesomeness. I mean, I knew from what people told me that God of War 2 was considered better than 1, but I just figured they meant the story or the puzzles or the graphics. I did not believe they would top the over-the-top spectacle that was God of War. I was wrong, and I'm having a blast with it.
I am doing a level in Flower each day. I have said before that this game was the best "skating" game since the first Tony Hawk. It really feels like you're skating or surfing among the grass as you play, and I can't help but do things like soar up into the sky before getting the easily gotten flower... it feels fun to just "play" in that game, and not worry about "beating" anything. It is way better than the other game I have by the same people, Flow. Though Flow is fun in its own way.
A house blew up near me today too. I think I heard it, though I can not be sure. I had one of those moments, similar to that Earthquake we had a while back, where something happened and I explained it away quickly and almost forgot it. Then, while I was out smoking my pipe on the porch, all the emergency vehicles near me started blarring and heading down the road. For a solid 10 minutes they came and went by. Then I read the news. The thing that happened was that I thought I heard a car door slam, which isn't too rare of an occurance, but this time I was so convinced I had heard a car door slam that I went outside and made sure no one was parked in my garage that I can't see from my windows. Then I came back in side and grabbed my pipe to go out and have a smoke. So I think it was the car door slam sound that was the sound of the house blowing up.
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