A Study in Awful: Black Prologue

So far, this blog has been mostly about me being in stupid situations that I could easily have avoided. It has included me making fun of people who can in no way defend themselves. As entertaining as I find that, I've decided to take a new turn here. I'm going to start making fun of things that can be defended. In this case, it probably won't be the original creator defending it because he is apparently an award-winning author and I'm a tiny, unnoticeable blip on the blogosphere.

Now, I am in no way an expert in anything. I don't have a college degree. I'm not especially talented in any one thing. I'm the first one to admit that. So, where do I get off on insulting people that apparently have more talent than me? What gives me the right to make horribly offensive comments about people that are published when I'm not? The simple answer is fuck you. The more complex one is no seriously, fuck you.

Today's Study in Awful is on Ted Dekker's novel Black. Now, since this is a 408 page novel, I'm going to break this up into several different parts. I would just do a one shot review of the whole book, but I can only read so much of this at a time without inflicting physical harm upon the closest living thing. As such, I'll just go over whatever I can get down in one sitting.

Carlos Missiran was his name. One of his many names.

Oh fuck. It's been a while since I've read through this trilogy of books and I've done a lot to help me forget it. However, if I recall correctly, Carlos's other names never come up again. So what's the point in telling us that he goes by many names? Padding! Yay padding! On the second fucking sentence of the book.

Immediately after, we're introduced to Valborg Svenson. You can tell Valborg is a badguy because he's foreign. Also, the next sentence tells us that he was born in hell. What.
Valborg and Carlos are sitting in a dark room, thirty feet apart and eating steak. Why are they sitting in a dark room? Because evil! Without a word, the two get up and go into Svenson's study where they watch a lab that's busy at work on creating a supervirus.

Dekker proceeds to prove how evilly evil the evil evil is by describing such evil things as smoking! Having black hair! Wearing black clothes! THAT FIEND!

Svenson stared at the lab below. The swiss wore his hair parted down the middle so that black locks flopped either way. In his black jacket he looked like a bat.

Bat + Black = Evil

QED: Batman = Evil

I should probably point out at this point, if you don't already know, that Ted Dekker is a very popular Christian author. I do not have a problem with someone being a Christian. I don't really care what you believe in. If it makes you feel better, great for you. However, there is a section of Christianity that has some pretty crazy beliefs that the rest of the Believers don't share. A lot of these typically involve unreasonable and contradictory-to-the-Bible hatred for other people. I'm pretty sure that Ted Dekker is one of those crazier people and these beliefs will come into play down the road in this book.

Like now!

He was a man married to a dark religious code that required long trips in the deepest of nights.

Two things. First: What the fuck does that even mean? Second: This, I am fairly certain, is referring to some form of "witchcraft." This form of witchcraft  shares a lot of similarities to the witchcraft that Christine O'Donnel didn't practice because it doesn't exist. (By the way, Fred Clark is a great down-to-earth theologist that I always enjoy reading. He's also done a massive project tackling the terrible theology behind the Left Behind series. You can check it out here. )
Back to the book

Carlos was certain his god dressed in a black cloak and fed on misery, and at times he questioned his own allegiance to Svensson. The man was driven by an insatiable thirst for power and the men he worked for even more so. ... Carlos didn't care to understand the depths of their madness; he only knew they were the kind of people who could get what they wanted, and in the process he would get what he wanted: the restoration of Islam.

Ah, that's nice. Carlos, being evil, is a follower of Islam. Nice, Ted Dekker. I understand that you have conflicting beliefs with Islam but I'd like to remind you of a little something. Islam and Christianity have their base roots in Judaism. All three worship the same God. The only differences are in the prophets. Also, you're an intolerant fucking prick for this.

"Maybe he's just adding depth to the character by giving him religious beliefs." Ho ho, you poor ignorant fool. We're only on the fourth page of the prologue so you don't know quite yet, but I can assure you that Carlos is about as deep as the author's understanding of other religions.

The problem here stems from an underlying belief that broke through recently with the debates about the Islamic community center a few blocks away from Ground Zero. In short, the belief is that simply by being Muslim and following the Islamic God instead of the Christian God, you are evil.
That's why those terrible, evil "Moose Limes" chose to build an Islamic community center a few blocks away from Ground Zero. They did it to spite those good, patriotic Americans that really suffered during 9/11! And hey! Did you know that there were no Muslim Victims? Oh.

Ahem, that's more fitting for another post at another time. Back to the book. (I'm only at the top of page 4 of the prologue. This... This hurts.)

After three and a half pages of nothing happening, the only two characters we've met so far finally experience a thing!

...Carlos had interviewed fifty-seven scientists from the former Soviet bioweapons program, quite persuasively. And int he end, nothing. At least nothing they were looking for.                             

 The Telephone on a large black sandalwood desk to their right rang shrilly. 

 Neither made a move for the phone. It stopped ringing.

Wow, Ted Dekker, thank you for that. Hey, reader, aren't you so glad that you were told about that absolutely useless piece of information? The only credit I can give to Dekker here is that he didn't do this:

As an aside, hey, what the fuck does Carlos look like?

"We need you in Bangkok," Svensson said. His voice sounded like the rumble of an engine churning against a cylinder full of gravel.

"Bangkok."

"Yes, Bangkok. Raison Pharmaceutical."

"The Raison Vaccine?" Carlos said. They have been following the development of the vaccine for over a year with the help of an informant in the Raison labs. He'd always thought it would be ironic if the French company Raison--pronounced ray-ZONE, meaning "reason"--might one day produce a virus that would bring the world to its knees.

Spoilers, that exact thing happens. Here's another thing I want to point out: Carlos actually spent time thinking that Raison Pharmaceutical might produce a virus that would effectively cripple the world. I'm no expert when it comes to pharmaceutical companies, but I'm pretty sure there aren't any out there that actually work on creating viruses.

The exception that proves the rule

The two proceed to exposit details on I don't even fucking know because this is seriously awful. Then, Svensson pipes up with this:

"...Our man at the CDC received a nervous visitor today who claimed that the mutations of the Raison Vaccine held together under prolonged, specific heat. The result, the visitor claimed, would be a lethal air-borne virus with an incubation of three weeks. One that could infect the entire world's population in less than three weeks."

Oh, hey, convenient. That's exactly what our villains want! Man, it's like this is a poorly written book or something. I'm just kind of curious about how they ca--

"And how did this visitor happen to come across this information?"

Ah, yeah, thanks Carlos.

Svensson hesitated. "A dream," he said. "A very unusual dream. A very, very convincing dream of another world populated by people who think his dreams of this world are only dreams. And by bats who talk."

. . . . .







. . . . . . . . . .






Let's think about this for a few seconds. A man that can best be described as --ahem-- "nervous," walked into the CDC claiming that talking bats in his dream told him that a vaccine (a vaccine for what, by the way? Who knows? It never says) will mutate into a lethal virus even more contagious than smallpox if kept under a certain heat for a certain time. The man, as far as we know, has no credentials when it comes to science. He has no evidence other than talking bats in a crazy, very convincing dream he had. Nobody would fucking pay attention to him.

Carlos, the evil Muslim, has his hesitations. Svensson responds to his uneasiness by saying:

"We have our reasons for paying attention."

Like what? I mean, other than the fucking convenience to your world domination plot, what reason you could possibly have to believe this lunatic? Hey, book! Book! What is your reasoning for this, book?! BOOK!

Svensson had covered the CDC well, with four on the payroll, if Carlos remembered correctly.

CDC had 14,000 Employees in 2007. This book is set in 2010.  Yeah, that 0.02% of the CDC's employees is definitely great coverage! Okay, but maybe they're at the top of the ranks. That would seem like a logical explanation so I'm satis--oh ho ho, wait, Dekker doesn't say anything more than that.

 Even the most innocuous-sounding reports of infectious diseases quickly made their way to the headquarters in Atlanta. Svensson was understandably interested in any report of any new outbreak and the plans to deal with it.

Great. So, about the four employees you have under your thumb. Where do they rank? What do they do inside the CDC? Dekker isn't a stupid man. After all, he has 33 novels under his belt. I'm sure he'll explain this.

But a dream? Thoroughly out of character for the stoic, black-hearted Swiss. This alone gave the suggestion its only credence.

Or, y'know... Not. Svensson proceeds to be EVIL! and talks about the man a bit more. Carlos is still somewhat unsure about the whole thing. He isn't convinced that the crazy man with the crazy dreams should be trusted since, y'know, crazy. Svensson repeats his orders one last time with the added bonus of more EEEVIIL! to kill people after they've exhausted their use.

And thus ends the prologue of Black. We still have 402 pages until the end of the book and it only gets worse. Just wait until we get to the Other Earth.

You're too unique for me

I'm starting to notice that this blog as a running theme of "You're not as special as you think you are." Here's another post detailing that.

Remember high school? Of course you do! It was high school when that one thing happened. The one that scarred you for the rest of your life and made talking to girls damn near impossible for me. You. Impossible for you. Fuck you! Anyway, high school has this retarded tendency to make people stupid. "Shit, really?" Yeah! I know, right? But I mean really stupid. It's only getting worse.

Quick history lesson in Counterculture.
In the 60's and 70's we had these guys:

The 80's gave us those problematic punkers

The 90's is when things started getting really retarded. Now, I know that there could potentially (not very likely, but y'know.. Potentially) be some older readers who would argue "No, the hippies are the worst damn thing to ever happen ever." I would normally agree with that if it wasn't for the fact that my generation is the worst thing to happen. You want proof? Here's fucking proof.

I'm fighting the man by buying all my clothes at the mall!

"Counter"culture has only gotten worse since the new millennium. We now have more counterculture than we know what to do with in America. Hell, our entire culture is based on being counterculture. It's a mass madness so awful that not even the Dark Lord Cthulhu could have come up with it. In the year 2010 we have

Hey, it's okay. Don't cry, guy... Girl? Um.

And then we have the even worse hipster problem to worry about. Counter culture is a dumb idea. I've never had a decent encounter with someone from ANY of these "rebels." What does that mean? It means that we need to reset society. Humanity has become too stupid that not even Natural Selection can help us now. Here's a story.

I stood in line minding my own damn business. The night had been interesting so far and I was looking forward to the show I was about to see. Then I heard them. No! I thought. Not right now! Tonight could have been so good! Teenagers. Not just any ordinary teenagers, though. Of course not. By going to a certain musical I placed myself in a situation I should have been prepared for. Super rebellious goffik-emo-teenagers. Ever the optimist, I hoped that maybe they wouldn't be as bad as I expected.

"So yeah, I totally lied to my mom about where I was going to be tonight," said one.

Fuck.

"That's so cool, Raven," said another.

Fuck. Really?

"Yeah, I totally told my dad off tonight. He was all 'You need to watch your sister' and I was like 'Fuck you, Dad! I'm going to go no matter what you say!'" the third commented.

This is why abortion should be legal.

I can't remember for sure if I actually said it as loud as that or if I said it just loud enough for my brother to hear. I'm pretty sure I said it loud enough for everyone to hear. That would explain what these little shits said next.

"Y'know it'd be really cool if we each had psychic powers so we could hear what other people were thinking. But, y'know, like, limited so we can only hear each others' thoughts and not share them with anybody else."

Actual quote. Actual fucking quote because it's too damn retarded to make up. I don't remember much of what happened next. The next thing that I clearly remember is speeding down a dirt road with my brother going on and on about the gore that I seemed to be drenched in. I may or may not have killed three people that night. So, theoretically I should be on the run from the cops. But I'm not!

Wanna know why?

"Because you didn't actually do anything, you stupid fuck"

Wow. Killed all momentum. I had a really good joke running in my head about how if I actually had killed them it wouldn't have mattered because seriously everybody was getting sick of their stupid shit. But no. That joke is gone because you killed the momentum. Man, I wish I had psychic powers so that only certain people could hear my hilarious thoughts and nobody that I didn't want could get in because that'd be totally awesome right? Yeah, totally awesome. Totally! Cool. Hurhur.

Back to the story. After that little comment, I stood in complete shock. Had I seriously just heard that? Did somebody ACTUALLY say those words in that fucking order? After confirming that I had indeed heard the single most retarded sentence ever spoken by a human being, I figured that the madness would stop there. The hole went no further. Nobody on this plane of existence could go beyond that monument of stupid, right? The only way would be to take a retarded gothic-ized version of Alice's trip to Wonderland. And come on, nobody's stupid enough to do anything like th

FUCK!

"I can't wait to get inside. I saw on the website that they have these contact lenses like vampire and werewolf eyes. I'm totally gonna use my mom's debit card to get me a pair." Figures that I would stop carrying my knife the day that I needed it most. I'm not interested in taking another human's life or anything. I just wanted it to end my misery. I thought about snarking at them some more. My only defense when it comes to people like this is what passes for wit with me. I feared, though, that these people were far too dense for such tools to be effective. I sighed and took a step forward in line.

Once upon a time, I would swear to you that people like this didn't exist. All those stereotypes you heard about were just gross exaggerations. Caricatures, if you will. Then I met these people. I lost my will to live that day. Unfortunately, the Powers to Be has (have?) a cruel sense of humor and I didn't drop dead on the spot. If they wouldn't help, then I'd have to resort to gathering up enough will power that what I desired would manifest itself physically. My head didn't explode like I so desired. All right, thought I to myself. Maybe I can't destroy the thing that I'm using to create my will-power. I'll just destroy their heads with my psychic powers. Then I remembered psychic powers don't exist.

Pbbbbth!

At this point the average blogger would likely make fun of these kids for wanting to be vampires and/or werewolves. They would probably proceed to make a reference to Twilight and start making fun of that as well. Since I am not your average blogger, however, I will instead say, "Nnyeh, I am far too sophisticated and above such petty, obvious insults. Mm. Yes."

But seriously, guys. Fuck teenagers.

Another shitty post by

Mr. "Oh God, Why Do I Do This to Myself? Fuuuuuuu--" Sandwichman

Survival of the Fittest? More like survival of the fat...dumb...ugliness!

Okay I'm bad at puns. And will never try them ever, ever again.

Today I want to warn you about the dangers of being a stupid little kid. I'm feeling especially generous today, so I'm adding in a free side dish of "The History of Stupid Little Kids" if you call now! That's right, you'll get a Sandwichman was a Stupid Kid PLUS the History of Stupid Little Kids, all for the low price of having read my blog! Are you interested? You should be! Act now!

Survival of the Fittest: What it is and Where it's at now
"Wow, kids aren't the bastion of intelligence I thought they were? How enlightening, Mr. Sandwichman. I never would have been able to figure that out without your guidance." Why the hell are you still reading? What is the matter with you, imaginary reader? Do you enjoy--ah, wait. Internet. People do this all the time. Ugh.

Way way back when mankind was just discovering that they were slightly more intelligent than the monstrous animals surrounding them, there existed a thing called "Survival of the Fittest." This is the thing that Charles Darwin proposed allowed for evolution to bring us the world we have today. Certain traits developed that allowed creatures to survive longer than others. Those creatures then passed those traits on and on and on. As populations spread, they were put in different situations and had to develop certain traits. And that is why we have all the species we have.

There's just one key issue to be aware of here. Only the strongest survived. Stupid ones (for instance, kids that might throw rocks at a hornet's nest with the idea that their super soaker and an ounce of bug spray would be enough of a defense) would get eaten pretty quickly. Most of the time, this happened because such idiot individuals would wander into a predator's mouth thinking, "Hey this cave is so much warmer than Ug's cave. But oh no! It's not a cave! Now I'm dinosaur food. :("

Over time, mankind developed better technology that allowed everybody to survive longer, breed more and breed faster. Everybody. Everyone that was human, anyway.

We don't serve your kind here.

With humans kicking Evolution in the jaw, the whole concept of "Survival of the Fittest" has started to decline. It's no longer "The strongest survive!" but rather "Who can hide from humans the best?" Throw in some "Who can be the most frightening?" and you're a spider.

Teehee! I hide in your shoes!

Some might argue that being able to hide really well is part of being among the Fittest.
That is a reasonable argument and you should be aware that reasonable things don't exist on this blog.

I am now legally required by the State of Kansas to provide an alternate hypothesis to Evolution.

God made the world and humans. Humans did stupid things all the time. God became angry.

Years and years and years later, God had this prophet. Elisha was the protege of Elijah, but Elijah had been taken up into heaven. Shortly afterwards, a group of stupid kids made fun of him for being bald

AND GOD SENT BEARS TO MANGLE THEM. (2 Kings 2:23-25)

Moral of the story? No matter what you believe, the stupid should not survive.

Okay, so you're the great-great-great-great-grandson of Ug. Ug's friend Ungabunga is the one who found that really cool "cave" years back. Through a weird twist of events involving an ostrich farm and a hideous amount of necrophilia, your family moves to Europe. Due to the fact that thy mother provides sexual favors of questionable and unsavory varieties, your family quickly becomes a bunch of nobles. Well, you're digging your French noble-house and your French noble-food pretty well when you decide to enjoy the French noble-passtime of laughing at the peasants. You approach one group because you're a stupid kid and shout, "Your mother is so thin, if this were a 20th century cartoon, I could play her ribs like a musical instrument involving specialized sticks!"

Well, those French peasants don't really like your fatass or your mom's fatass (which when they say "goes around town" they mean "goes around town") so they have a revolution and kill you all.

Stupidity in progress.

By some miracle, you are now living in America. Your grandfather of x years back is celebrated for having started the French Revolution by being the straw that broke the camel's back. You're working in a cloth-making factory when you notice a bit of hair caught in the gears. You, being a stupid kid, reach in without thinking, get dragged into the machine and are crushed to death.

Defying logic, your genes have been passed down. It's now the 20th century and things are a lot better. Technology has come a far way. People are living long and life is good. It's roughly 1998 and you're a 7-year-old kid that is possibly allergic to hornet venom. You've seen "My Girl" once or twice and saw Maculay Culkin's character get stung to death by bees. You fear anything that flies and stings, now. As you should. That's the "Survive!" part of your brain working.

Your mom has a friend in this neighborhood, right? Of course! Well, one fine summer that friend goes on vacation. Hornets inhabit her mailbox. You think, "Well, this simply will now do. I must valiantly drive these fiends away for the sake of Boobs! TALLY-HO!" This is the 20th century part of your brain thinking. All sense of survival has been driven away because technology has come so far. You can now be incredibly dumb and still manage to survive. Consequences be damned.

Mr. Sandwichman was a Stupid Kid
"I must valiantly drive these fiends away for the sake of Boobs! TALLY-HO!" Now, I didn't fully understand why I was doing what I was doing. I just knew that when I was around Boobs, I felt quite content. Must be the Misogynist Chauvinistic Penis, am I right feminists? Ho ho!

I don't remember who came up with the idea. In the end, it doesn't really matter who the mastermind was. We still threw rocks into a hornet's nest. Literally. That saying didn't exist until after what my brother, my friend and I did. [citation needed]

Our plan was pretty simple.
Step 1: Throw rocks into mailbox, disturb hornets.
Step 2: When hornets fly out, spray their wings with water gun so they can no longer fly
Step 3: Walk up to downed hornets with bugspray. Kill them.
Step 4: ?????
Step 5: SUCCESS!

We made it to Step 1. Step 1 went without a hitch. It went flawlessly. If the rest of our plan could have gone as smoothly as Step 1 did, we would be gods! Strangely, though, hitting about 15 targets that were no bigger than 2 inches long is a lot harder than pissing those 15 targets off. Who would have thought?

My brother, my friend and I quickly found ourselves in over our heads. We had an idea of how things would go, and then shit went down. It didn't exactly go the same way as planned. It took all of 2 seconds to realize, "Oh, hey. Hornets have stingers. These hornets aren't happy. RUN!" Keep in mind, having been as young as we were, we didn't have a Plan B. We didn't account for "In case this goes wrong..." If somebody ended up getting stung repeatedly by the entire hive, we probably would have just abandoned the poor guy.

Good ol' wikipedia tells me that an entire nest of non-European hornets can sting you to death even if you aren't allergic. So here we are, two 7-year-olds and a 10-year-old realizing what we had just done and were now running. Chances were high that the slowest person would have to take one for the team and distract our pursuers while the others called for backup, re: my mom. So, who would the slowest person be? Well. My brother had a bike. My friend had a bike. I did not have a bike. Uh-oh. Looks like I would have to man up and 

Run faster than either of those two bastards could ride. I was the first one back inside my house where the hornets couldn't get me. The Flying Insect killer had been used up, our water guns abandoned and our plan compromised. None of that mattered, though, because the hornets couldn't get me. I decided the best way to relax after my battle was to play with my giant tub of LEGOs.

I went into my room, poured out more bricks than I would ever need and went to work building something or other. Then I felt a tickling on my leg. I scratched at it but didn't really think too much about it. The tickling returned. I scratched back. It kept getting tickled. I finally moved my leg to find out what was tickling me.

OSHI--!

I belive upon discovering what had been tickling me, my thought process went something along the lines of "SUNAVABITCHFOLLOWEDMESHITSHITWHATSHOULDIDOOHGODHELP!"

I darted out of my room and down into the garage where my brother and I had originally found the Flying Insect Killer. I remembered putting it back in the cabinet, thinking that my parents wouldn't notice us using it all up. If I was nearly as intelligent as the school said I was, I probably would have been able to figure something else out. I am not that intelligent, apparently. Or maybe I just lack common sense. But, I grabbed the first thing I saw that might kill that mother fucking hornet. A can of KILZ.

I thought to myself, "Self. This says 'Kilz' which means it can probably Kill. It's also in a cannister similar to the one we used outside. It must be another kind of insect killer!" So. Armed with my spray paint, I ran upstairs and sprayed that little devilish fucker to death. On carpet. I noticed that the area turned white, but I figured that would go away as it dried. It didn't. "That's all right, though," I thought. "I won!"

And that's how I almost got stung to death.