The Miss: Is 'The Mist' This Summer's 'Under the Dome'?

IT was such a big movie that I haven't seen it, but I have heard of it. I've seen the memes. The memes are OK, and I watched the 80s movie which is frankly a pretty effective if silly horror movie. Stephen King is doing alright lately. But for every good media product, there is a subpar product created as reaction. Stephen King has provided society with a fair amount of media products as his bestselling books regularly get reconfigured into television and film, and that makes sense: King is a prolific writer with a huge audience. Sadly, his admirers often fail to elevate the material, and a recent case is all the example we need.

Today, we are gathered at this sloppy blog to discuss and explore The Mist - the 2017 Netflix special. Apparently it started its sad life as a new series for Spike TV. Spike TV's last major show was MXC and that was over a decade ago. You're going to ask something about why I would watch a show made for Spike TV. Because, let's face it: I should've known better, right? Let me answer for my actions: sometimes you know the trainwreck is coming and you just have to make sure you see it happen. I saw it on Netflix (where it had been dumped fairly quickly for an American exclusive), knew it would be pretty bad without any research, and dove right in.

I vaguely recall a movie of The Mist released in 2007, based on Stephen King's novel by the same name (at this point I won't read it anytime soon). The movie had weird bugs that the protagonists had to shoot when they were in a supermarket. Big things loomed in the dark. Were they dinosaurs? Then, at the apportioned time, the mist blew out of town, and everyone had endured personal struggles, survived, and grown as people. I assume this TV series is aiming to do the same, but since it was written by committee with little regard for coherence or impact, I also assume it will kind of spin around in annoying circles for 10 episodes.

All you need is a coping mechanism, and you can watch this show.

It opens, kind of like Under the Dome did, with the destruction of an animal. In Under the Dome it's a cow that gets split into two steak-like halves, in The Mist it's a dog that gets eviscerated. And a soldier wakes up without any memory of what's going on... oh yes, friends, you've entered a zone of mass entertainment you've probably stumbled over before. The dead dog looks a lot more realistic than the dead cow, though. If you have Netflix, you can see for yourself. Actually I'll spare you the trouble:

Big mystery: who did the dog piss off to get done like this? Also: nice one, SFX people.

The same team is responsible for The Mist as made Under the Dome. I'm sure that the key people are unchanged. There's a deep connection between the shows. I can sense these strange coincidences... the casting seems similar. The locations seemed to have been scouted the same ways. The special effects: again I'm getting some deja vu. The writing is what really seals its fate. Something about the situations and the handling of characters and the bizarre missteps they have to take in order to make plot lines viable just reminds me of the 8 or so episodes of Under the Dome I watched.

Functions of Extreme Worry and Anxiety in Modern Society

These days most anybody is or knows someone who is very on edge, suffers from Professionally Identified Anxiety Disorder, or suffers from bouts of Extreme Worry (a disorder which includes subsets like '90's style extreme' and 'extremely incapacitating'). I see this more and more often. While I am fortunate enough to simply be extremely paralyzed by it, I realize looking around in my life that plenty of people seem to function nominally well under such pressures. A minority of acquaintances have more serious issues and the effects aren't always immediately apparent, but when I stop and think about it I can see hints of avoidant behavior and other quirks. I used to always write them off as high-strung but I've come to a number of realizations in the past year especially.

I mean I've gone long stretches without worrying too much, or with only minor worries blown out of proportion. Every now and then something relatively important will fill me with a sense of dread that cannot be banished. I refer to those most often as moments of clarity. I had a few such moments when I lost the ability to write effectively for this blog, and killed it, and knew that I blew it, and didn't have the energy or drive to replace it with a better one. I've had such moments about about personal relationships, and they've have kept me from the blessed realm of sleep. I regularly get the sensation of growing dread when I think of my life. I'm fairly certain I'm not the only one, and I've seen people with much less fucked-up lives than mine worry outrageously.

I've seen lots of unhappy faces on the streets. I assume most of them are facing some kind of anxiety. I can't blame them. There seem to be about a million things to worry about. There are always hundreds of things going on. You're missing out. You're probably sick with something. There are new illnesses every day. The planet is not dying. The world is under attack by fanatics who think the planet is dying and want to ruin your standard of living because they're hippies. People are out to get you. Lies and murder rule the streets, maybe even the world. You're going to lose your job. You're unemployed already and nobody will ever hire you. You'll never be in love again. The love you're in is falling apart. You're not in love, of course, you're far too rational for that. You're over-thinking things. You're not living your dream. Someone somewhere is stealing your dreams from you. You're insufficient for your dreams. Your dreams are killing you.

Recent News Suggests that the Swiss are Idiots Too

Recent news suggests that the Swiss, long known for looking down at other countries for wars and stupid decisions, have a tendency to be pretty stupid, too. Having a rave at a zoo is probably one of the dumbest things I've ever heard of, since any legit raves take place in abandoned warehouses or vampire nightclubs.

Stupid event planning like this is bound to lead to problems. This story wouldn't even have existed in a rational world organized by logical thinkers and responsible adults. However... c'est la vie.

The dummy crowd have claimed another two victims, which weren't even human, at literally the dumbest possible event. There were few other outcomes than dead animals and a shocked public. The User Comment Rodeo v1.2x instantly pinged the most interesting and unthinkable response, which I felt compelled to post here so as to offer context:

This scathing, ignorant, and extremely stupid post basically reflects all the many things that are wrong with the story. These animals didn't belong in Switzerland – at all. But whatever, animals in captivity should be allowed to live fruitless and unfulfilling lives for the entertainment of religious wieners who believe that animals in captivity are precious and that there's nothing wrong with harvesting a few for the benefit of the public.

On the other hand this post is obviously a troll, from the double-single-standard animal abuse refrain that the evildoers be made to suffer to the same extent of their animal victims. Fucking dolphins overdosed at a rave. This world is evidently a few idiots away from a critical mass of stupidity, arrogance, and incompetence that will likely remain unnoticed for years.

Some Swiss losers deserve to have their drugs taken away from them, forever, for attending this insane farce of an event. The fools who organized this event should have their event-planning licenses revoked in perpetuity. The zoo is obviously going to buy two new dolphins and I'm sorry for their loss, even if I don't agree with their policies or whoever vetted this insane rave.

Black Friday

I decided to do a commercialism/consumerism bit because in the United States of America it is Black Friday, which is a day when the bottom falls out of consumerism and people draw blood for 20% discounts on dishrags and various goods manufactured overseas. The obvious problem is that Black Friday is not patriotic. If you want to see how eager the average citizen of the world is to sell out their country, you just have to search YouTube for Black Friday videos. It seems most people would bum-rush the secret service for a $20 doohickey or polymer-based thingamajig.

What really sickens me is the subliminal vibes I get from the videos. There are literally herds of consumers. Yes, they are consumers at that point and, to the people advertising at them, not humans. They forget themselves in a strange orgy of incompetent and overloaded greed. I see that as degradation. There are a few news stories about it each year but no gigantic outcry.

Well, I think that Black Friday makes explicit the implicit degradation of consumerism, in which every bit of human potential is swept up in a subhuman madness to get the most for your money - from corporations to the individuals who mimic their behavior. There are no particular individuals to blame for a pathological, systematic problem. I don't hate consumerists. I don't even pity them. They are just bums with money, and in this era being a philistine is completely acceptable, so they work towards the next holiday, the next sale, the next iPhone, et cetera...

Despite facile attempts at being ethical and ecologically friendly, consumerism is more and more a bald lie that people chase because there's little else to do in the modern world but buy things, favourite things, attend things, unbox things, use them, show them off, and throw them out when they become outdated or broken. Oh and if you don't fit into this system there are labels for you: from communist to hobo to slob to snob. This goes beyond the differences between a pedestrian and a highbrow activist. I don't want my and my descendant's future sold to the highest bidder and sold at inflated prices to a mindless horde. I have to wonder if the bottom has fallen out of consumerism, but despite scenes of insane lemmingism I feel it will continue to be a powerful force in the world. Smug capitalism laughs, because this is all a useful distraction.

I find it sickening. Others might see it as fun or harmless, but consumerism guts economies and degrades not only the planet but the human spirit. For all that, spineless millions are unable or unwilling to give up the endless chase and (almost all) world leaders are curiously quiet on the matter. If commercial reform is going to happen, it will have to start with the literate consumer and work its way down the food-chain. Greed is a powerful and addictive drug, next to which cocaine looks like baby powder. This habit is going to leave our species on a truly heartbreaking comedown, and the more we snort the harder we will fall.

And I'm not innocent. Nobody is innocent, and I admit that we need things. However there are currently too many things and not enough reasons for them to exist. Production quotas could be fairer to natural resources and manufacturing does not have to be concentrated in coastal China. There are a lot of things that could be done, and our deluded quality of life might have to change, but if it doesn't, it's only a matter of time before herds of North American Consumers are fighting not for deals, but for livelihoods, to say nothing of consumers, producers, and bums across the world. So in the end I have to give it to Black Friday: thanks for showing how disgraceful we really are at our cores, and hopefully we notice this and do something about it.