The Devil's Own

    “Anastasia! Wake Up! Wake up!”

    Bullets, blood, and fire fill the sky. Jolting up, Anastasia barely misses losing her head to a vicious shard of shrapnel. Round after round of machine gun fire tears through the blood-soaked ditch, ripping through men and munitions alike.
   
    “Anastasia!”

    Shooting a glance behind her, Anastasia finds Dimitri crouching down, knee deep in guts and gore, clutching his PPSH-41 submachine gun. Next to him, covered in mud and the remains of some poor victim of the never-ending rain of machine gun fire, lies her Mosin-Nagant. Snatching up the rifle, Anastasia quickly checks for ammo. Two rounds. Satisfied, she turns to Dimitri.

    “I am going to stop that gun!” she screams, barely audible over the relentless roar of the machine gun. “I need you to cover me after I kill the gunner!”

    Nodding nervously, Dimitri reloads and pats Anastasia on the shoulder, letting her know he’s ready. Seconds later, the hurricane of bullets shifts down to the far end of the ditch. Seeing her chance, Anastasia jumps up and takes aim.

    The machine gun sits mounted on a small jeep, it’s seemingly infinite ammo belt slithering through the belly of the beast. Belching fire and lead, the beast rocks the jeep and shakes the ground. Behind the cacophony, a beetle-black helmet violently bobs with recoil.

    Anastasia lets loose a round from her rifle, splitting the helmet in two. Blood and grey matter color the air for a brief moment and the beast wildly perforates the sky before screeching to a sudden stop. A German soldier at the back of the jeep takes aim at Anastasia, but catches a face full of frantic submachine gun fire from Dimitri. The driver of the jeep scrambles for his Luger before another round from Anastasia’s rifle tears through his throat. Silence descends on the ditch like a leaden blanket.

    The silence doesn’t last long, however. The cries of the dying and the damned echo through the shelled-out city. The first wave of German troops has been destroyed, but the next will come soon. Anastasia turns to the ditch, looking for any salvageable supplies.

    “Dimitir, check the jeep.”

    Kneeling in Mud, blood, and God-knows-what, Anastasia checks for a pulse on a fallen comrade. His cold, clammy skin and the two ragged holes in his chest suggest that he doesn’t have much of a heart anymore. Undiscouraged, Anastasia moves on to the next muddy corpse.

A New Year

Welcome to 2011, my friends. We’re one year closer to the end of the world and the Mayan zombie apocalypse. With that in mind, what are you prepared to do to make this year awesome? Try base jumping for the first time? Make a movie? Start a band? Train for the zombie apocalypse? All good ideas. How about we make this year really awesome? 

You know what would be great? No more bad movies. No more of these CGI-filled crapfests like Prince of Persia, Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, or Clash of the Titans. You know why movies like these exist? Because we’re dumb enough to pay to see them. Box office and DVD sales combined make enough money to keep churning out terrible movies. Why do you think that there are seven Saw movies? Or, even worse, over thirty more god-awful horror movie remakes on the way? They’re remaking The Thing, because they know that enough people are either bored enough, dumb enough, or have a crappy enough taste in movies that they’ll make a profit. It’s a shame, really. How many good movies didn’t get made because of these remakes, reboots, prequels, sequels, and “re-imaginings”? 

Here’s an idea. Before you go to see a movie, read up on it. If it’s any of those things, think twice before you go and see it. Try rottentomatoes.com or any of the other thousands of movie review sites. The new american remake of The Host only pulling a 4.5/10 on IMDB? Don’t see it. It’s really that simple. Not all remakes are bad, but 99.9999% of them are. How about we boycott terrible movies for a year? If they stop making money, Hollywood will stop making these kinds of movies. They’ll realize that the only way they’re gonna survive is by making good, original movies. 

Now, this isn’t guaranteed to work. But, it’s a start. I for one am sick of bad movies. Aren’t you? Don’t waste your time on terrible movies this year. And just remember, there are TONS of good movies made before the nineties. Need a recommendation? I’m full of ‘em. Obviously, good movies aren’t the only thing needed for an awesome year. But they sure help. Not everybody is as big of a movie geek as me, but we can all enjoy good entertainment. 

Music is another thing we need to work on. Don’t stick to one genre please. All you listen to is gangsta rap? Try some Elvis on for size. Screamo all that you’ve ever really tried? There’s some pretty intense classical music out there. Justin Bieber more your thing? There are plenty of cliffs in the world, do us a favor. 

Raise a glass to 2011, and prepare for an awesome year. For those about to rock, I salute you.