AN UNINSPIRING CONFLICT
I blame the rum personally...
We all dig the excitement of the climactic battle at the end of a film where the hero takes down the bad guy despite outrageous odds stacked against him, coming out of the battle half dead, covered in blood and mud and still looking awesome. Or in a comic book where the hero takes down the bad guys every month, just because they feel they have to, yeah how noble. We all love it. We all wish we were these people. Whether it is down to the average person’s life not having a great deal of excitement in it besides the odd holiday here and there. The idea of a bloody dangerous challenge excites most people.
Then there’s the other hand. You see the news, showing the Afghanistan conflict. Real men and women fighting for their lives in the most dangerous country in the world. No one likes to see that. It’s terrifying, and not in a good way. The point I guess I’m trying to make is where the hell does the drunken egotistical Saturday night fight come from? Is it down to the animal side from us wanting to unleash our inner Spartan in a montage of awesome muscle bound heroics? Or are we really only nice people on the outside and all it takes is a few tins of lager to remove that facade?
So I’m one to usually shy away from danger, be it on a night out in a rough part of a rough town, or just down to not making any crazy purchases on Amazon, I’m a pretty cautions guy. So, when I see the drunken tosser giving the girl a hard time across the street it makes no sense why I decide to do something about it. You know the type of guy I’m talking about if you’ve been out on a Saturday night in pretty much any town in the UK. The gelled hair, shaved eyebrow (do people still do that?) striped top with collar facing up.
Hell, you know the type of girl too. Short skirt, boobs half out (not in a good way), flailing about in ridiculous high heels and a layer of makeup which looks like it was applied by a brick layer with a cement mixer and trowel. Every fibre of my sober being would be telling me to keep walking on the other side of the street, get those cheesy chips and go home.
Shame my sober being left his fibres in the hands of the drunken muppet who seems to have taken over my body.
‘Dispatch the beast, save the girl, and look like a rock star whilst doing it‘.
Sounds like a plan...I face my enemy.
The villain of the piece, filed teeth and a forked tongue, terrifying in every way, the dark lord, the tyrant. The boss fight that is supposed to be climactic and epic in every way with a multitude of very expensive special effects and high production values. Slow motion shots and a choir loudly singing words that no one understands to add to the tension. The hero gives a serious smoulder as he eyes up his final test. One foot slightly in front of the other, chest out, arms back. Hair blowing in the wind. (Ok, swap that for: glazed expression, beer stain on haggard Led Zeppelin shirt and looking pretty bloody cold). I approach my enemy and think about that quote from Sun Tzu in ‘The Art of War’
“Know thy self, know thy enemy. A thousand battles, a thousand victories.” I’m not even sure what that means but it sounds cool in my head when I think it. Maybe cooler if I say it out loud? So, I say it out loud.
Yeah, probably shouldn't have said it out loud.
OK I’m pretty close to this bloke (he’s bigger than I thought actually...and – oh Christ - is that a tattoo?). Time for the one liner. Time for my defining quote. My war cry. My Braveheart speech, the single sentence that will inspire true terror in the soul of the antagonist and love in the hearts of any woman lucky (or drunk) enough to witness this sorry state of affairs...
“Leave her alone!”
Damn...At least I got his attention.
Here we go. I make a fist of my hand. Thumb on the outside so as not to break it from the earth shattering, Bruce Lee smite I’m about to deliver unto my enemy. My own personal Hadouken. It takes just a second for the pain to register in my knuckles. It takes just another second before he has turned around and is staring back at me. Wait...shouldn’t he be on the floor in an unconscious limbo right now?
His fist in my face answers my question with a startling urgency.
Wait...being punched really hurts! But this doesn’t stop my enemy. Great, here I am getting beaten up by a tool with overly spiked hair, collar up Henley top and one of those weird lines shaved into the right eye brow. And the girl doesn’t seem too thankful for it through her screeches of ‘leave it out, dickhead’ in an all too familiar slurred northern accent.
‘Dispatch the beast, save the girl, and look like a rock star whilst doing it ‘. Not much of this plan is going very well...
This is where we enter the hero of the piece. The startling twist in this epic tale truly is revealed to the audience. You see, audiences are becoming way to media literate to simply let the protagonist defeat the antagonist. (Yeah, that’s the reason that I’m getting ten bells of shit knocked out of me, sure). Enter the best mate.
Now all this is a bit of a blur but from what I hear, he flies over to the enemy in a single leap...
aims his punch...
exhales...
lamps the guy...
Repeats steps 1 to 4.
Next thing I know, I’m in a taxi on the way home and shortly after that I’m holding Captain Birdseye’s peas to my face. Every time I hear the story, it seems like I was closer to death and my buddy literally saves my life. Hell, I’m not going to complain. He saved me many more bruises and at the very least gave the story the fitting finale. Just maybe without the slow motion and random chanting choir.
I play enough video games, save the world a few times, those epic confrontations that alter history in the most awesome way. I watch enough nature programmes where the lions stalk the wilder beast that puts up one hell of a fight. It’s all very romantic and exciting.
It just comes off as pretty fucking lame when you wake up with a shiner on your right eye and the taste of booze and pavement in your mouth the next morning and your brain feels like it has grown way too large for your head (although I don’t feel smarter for it).
Yeah and I’ve also found out that black eyes don’t suit me. I just don’t pull it off. And I’m pretty sure that wearing make-up to hide a black eye from your grandparents isn’t something that the Jack Bauer’s and Bruce Wayne’s of the world regularly do. Guess an action man style scar on my cheek isn’t exactly going to win any ladies either...
So that inner Spartan or whatever the hell it was I was talking about earlier? Guess it doesn’t exist in everyone. I think I’ll stick to kicking arse on X-Box Live against genocidal subterranean monsters rather than ‘Captain Chip-on-my-Shoulder’ outside the kebab house at 1:30am
Hell, I blame the rum...
copyright Jonathan Bonner 2011
We all dig the excitement of the climactic battle at the end of a film where the hero takes down the bad guy despite outrageous odds stacked against him, coming out of the battle half dead, covered in blood and mud and still looking awesome. Or in a comic book where the hero takes down the bad guys every month, just because they feel they have to, yeah how noble. We all love it. We all wish we were these people. Whether it is down to the average person’s life not having a great deal of excitement in it besides the odd holiday here and there. The idea of a bloody dangerous challenge excites most people.
Then there’s the other hand. You see the news, showing the Afghanistan conflict. Real men and women fighting for their lives in the most dangerous country in the world. No one likes to see that. It’s terrifying, and not in a good way. The point I guess I’m trying to make is where the hell does the drunken egotistical Saturday night fight come from? Is it down to the animal side from us wanting to unleash our inner Spartan in a montage of awesome muscle bound heroics? Or are we really only nice people on the outside and all it takes is a few tins of lager to remove that facade?
So I’m one to usually shy away from danger, be it on a night out in a rough part of a rough town, or just down to not making any crazy purchases on Amazon, I’m a pretty cautions guy. So, when I see the drunken tosser giving the girl a hard time across the street it makes no sense why I decide to do something about it. You know the type of guy I’m talking about if you’ve been out on a Saturday night in pretty much any town in the UK. The gelled hair, shaved eyebrow (do people still do that?) striped top with collar facing up.
Hell, you know the type of girl too. Short skirt, boobs half out (not in a good way), flailing about in ridiculous high heels and a layer of makeup which looks like it was applied by a brick layer with a cement mixer and trowel. Every fibre of my sober being would be telling me to keep walking on the other side of the street, get those cheesy chips and go home.
Shame my sober being left his fibres in the hands of the drunken muppet who seems to have taken over my body.
‘Dispatch the beast, save the girl, and look like a rock star whilst doing it‘.
Sounds like a plan...I face my enemy.
The villain of the piece, filed teeth and a forked tongue, terrifying in every way, the dark lord, the tyrant. The boss fight that is supposed to be climactic and epic in every way with a multitude of very expensive special effects and high production values. Slow motion shots and a choir loudly singing words that no one understands to add to the tension. The hero gives a serious smoulder as he eyes up his final test. One foot slightly in front of the other, chest out, arms back. Hair blowing in the wind. (Ok, swap that for: glazed expression, beer stain on haggard Led Zeppelin shirt and looking pretty bloody cold). I approach my enemy and think about that quote from Sun Tzu in ‘The Art of War’
“Know thy self, know thy enemy. A thousand battles, a thousand victories.” I’m not even sure what that means but it sounds cool in my head when I think it. Maybe cooler if I say it out loud? So, I say it out loud.
Yeah, probably shouldn't have said it out loud.
OK I’m pretty close to this bloke (he’s bigger than I thought actually...and – oh Christ - is that a tattoo?). Time for the one liner. Time for my defining quote. My war cry. My Braveheart speech, the single sentence that will inspire true terror in the soul of the antagonist and love in the hearts of any woman lucky (or drunk) enough to witness this sorry state of affairs...
“Leave her alone!”
Damn...At least I got his attention.
Here we go. I make a fist of my hand. Thumb on the outside so as not to break it from the earth shattering, Bruce Lee smite I’m about to deliver unto my enemy. My own personal Hadouken. It takes just a second for the pain to register in my knuckles. It takes just another second before he has turned around and is staring back at me. Wait...shouldn’t he be on the floor in an unconscious limbo right now?
His fist in my face answers my question with a startling urgency.
Wait...being punched really hurts! But this doesn’t stop my enemy. Great, here I am getting beaten up by a tool with overly spiked hair, collar up Henley top and one of those weird lines shaved into the right eye brow. And the girl doesn’t seem too thankful for it through her screeches of ‘leave it out, dickhead’ in an all too familiar slurred northern accent.
‘Dispatch the beast, save the girl, and look like a rock star whilst doing it ‘. Not much of this plan is going very well...
This is where we enter the hero of the piece. The startling twist in this epic tale truly is revealed to the audience. You see, audiences are becoming way to media literate to simply let the protagonist defeat the antagonist. (Yeah, that’s the reason that I’m getting ten bells of shit knocked out of me, sure). Enter the best mate.
Now all this is a bit of a blur but from what I hear, he flies over to the enemy in a single leap...
aims his punch...
exhales...
lamps the guy...
Repeats steps 1 to 4.
Next thing I know, I’m in a taxi on the way home and shortly after that I’m holding Captain Birdseye’s peas to my face. Every time I hear the story, it seems like I was closer to death and my buddy literally saves my life. Hell, I’m not going to complain. He saved me many more bruises and at the very least gave the story the fitting finale. Just maybe without the slow motion and random chanting choir.
I play enough video games, save the world a few times, those epic confrontations that alter history in the most awesome way. I watch enough nature programmes where the lions stalk the wilder beast that puts up one hell of a fight. It’s all very romantic and exciting.
It just comes off as pretty fucking lame when you wake up with a shiner on your right eye and the taste of booze and pavement in your mouth the next morning and your brain feels like it has grown way too large for your head (although I don’t feel smarter for it).
Yeah and I’ve also found out that black eyes don’t suit me. I just don’t pull it off. And I’m pretty sure that wearing make-up to hide a black eye from your grandparents isn’t something that the Jack Bauer’s and Bruce Wayne’s of the world regularly do. Guess an action man style scar on my cheek isn’t exactly going to win any ladies either...
So that inner Spartan or whatever the hell it was I was talking about earlier? Guess it doesn’t exist in everyone. I think I’ll stick to kicking arse on X-Box Live against genocidal subterranean monsters rather than ‘Captain Chip-on-my-Shoulder’ outside the kebab house at 1:30am
Hell, I blame the rum...
copyright Jonathan Bonner 2011