I’m so unoriginal. I’ve been hiding out hoping you wouldn’t notice. I’ve been standing in front of your house with dynamite strapped to my body holding a large clock, waiting. Slumming so fantastic. Open your window. You can hear it if you listen hard. The ticking of your heartbeat, the rhythm of the traffic pouring down the streets. The mice scratching under the floorboards are safe to follow when the ship starts to sink. They’ll be running in the opposite direction of the mad scientists. Towards Nihm, towards Nicademus, into the hazy summer sky-glow as the clock runs out. The score is tied so there’s gonna be overtime. Sudden death. The pink pills are for your sanity. So lets go kids. Lets go…

The Better, Happier Me.
The Better, Happier You.
A Better, Happier World To Live In.

How is everyone out there in happy land? You been taking your vitamins? You been drinking lots of milk and saying your prayers? You been good little boys and girls? Hmm? You know Santa doesn’t just check up on you at Christmastime. He’s watching all year round. So you’d better be on your best behaviour. You’d better be looking both ways before you cross the street and brushing your teeth twice every day. Santa doesn’t like little boys and girls with yellow teeth. He sends them to an unhappy land where fire falls from the sky and rivers of blood cut through a harsh, barren, rocky wilderness devoid of plant life and animals (except for man-eating wolves and giant three headed vultures that can rip little boys and girls apart with their claws and teeth). So you’d better keep those teeth clean. You’d better be cooperative and obedient. You’d better be doing your homework, your leg work, your chores. I can no longer guarantee what will happen if you don’t. They have a way of finding out if you’re not happy. They have hidden cameras and informants dressed up like ordinary people. They smile all the time, as if setting some example for you to follow. Like there’s an equation that you’re supposed to memorize and use to attain that which all people strive to attain: inner peace, humility, civility, the programmed ability to bend. Call it what you will. They’re watching and taking notes. They’ve got computer files, metal files, paper files, and the cabinets to keep them in. They’re the ones that wrote the handbook. Everybody gets a shit kicking. You don’t have a choice in the matter. They’ve brought in seasoned professionals to make sure that you get one. Everybody gets one. That’s the rules. I didn’t make it up, I’m just saying.

So be happy. Happiness is paramount. Your happiness is of the utmost importance. Everyone else has their own happiness to worry about. You just follow the program and keep reading the handbook. Everything will be revealed in time. But for now you just keep grasping for that gold ring, that blue ribbon, that dreamy picture-perfect-magazine you. It’s in there somewhere. With your DNA, what you ate for dinner, and all those terrible secrets. You’re in there somewhere, waiting to be reborn. The better, happier you. If you play your cards right the possibilities are endless. There’s an equation for everything. For you, for us, for everything. Everything’s been prearranged. Mostly for the better. Mostly for the worst.

I’ve decided to finance the making of WaterWorld II. I just finished reading the script and it’s rough in places, but I think it’ll do better than the first one. The story is about the children of the survivors that found Dry Land who’ve turned their island paradise into a Lord of the Flies kind of vibe. Lots of gory, unnecessary violence and such. The first twenty minutes is all blood and gore, actually. After that there’s just a lot of unnecessary sex, betrayal, and explosions. Not exactly The Bicycle Thief or Red, White, and Blue, but what is these days?

I can’t abide movies without explosions. They’re just no fun at all. We’re thinking about adding a scene where two secondary characters are having sex and get blown up in the middle of it. So you’ve got your nudity, sex, an explosion, and unnecessary violence all rolled into one three-minute scene. Shit, that could be the whole movie.

I just got off the phone with Steven Spielberg. He doesn’t want to direct the picture. Even after my lengthy pitch about the horror, sex, and explosions. He kept babbling on about having small children and not wanting to be affiliated with a movie that’s going to contain such scenes. James Cameron turned me down too. Same reasons and everything.

All big Hollywood directors are hypocrites. I bet you he makes Terminator III this year. Like that’s not going to have a ton of violence and nudity. I can see it all now. The Terminator running around shooting flowers at elves riding unicorns. How lovely.

I think I’m going to use Sam Raimi. He was my first choice, but the writers wanted me to ask Spielberg and Cameron first. Evil Dead, Evil Dead II, and Army of Darkness were wicked movies. I think he’s perfect for the job. It just doesn’t make sense that people wouldn’t want to make this picture. Nothing’s made sense since The Texas Chainsaw Massacre as far as I’m concerned. Now that’s art. You’ve got your power-tool-wielding psycho, your unsuspecting girl with big tits, your sacrificial-lamb types that get killed throughout the movie, and your gratuitous nudity and violence. There’s even an equation that explains it. They call it a FORMULA movie. Check it out:

P+G(BT)+SLT+GN/V=$$$

It’s all there in simple black and white. It doesn’t take a genius to figure it out. When you get right down to it, it’s all about giving the people what they want. Trust me, this is what they want.

Back to WaterWorld II, there are about 200 people living on the island. They’ve managed to defeat the rest of the smokers and now worship a statue of a golden half-fish, half-man god. The 200 people are divided into two warring factions who live on either side of the island. So, one night, three boys from one group sneak into a costume party being thrown by their enemies. They drink, scope chicks, etcetera. But one of the boys spots this girl from across the room and immediately falls head-over-heels in love with her (or some superficial dream-like version of her that he’s created in his own mind). They meet and start seeing each other in secret. Eventually their parents find out about the affair and all hell breaks loose. There are missile attacks and assassinations, torture and espionage. Distraught that their love is the cause of all this death and destruction, the two kids run away into the hills where they live in a cave for a couple of weeks. It’s there that they discover the alien space ship.
During all the fighting we’re probably going to throw in that sex/explosion scene I was talking about, as well as a small scene where the roof is blown off of a shower house and everyone comes running out screaming (à la Porky’s).

As a subplot, there’s also this little bald man that everyone likes who threatens to starve himself to death if both sides don’t stop fighting. So when he begins to starve himself they stop fighting and start again when he agrees to eat.

I’m really not sure what’s going to happen with the kids and the alien ship yet. Everyone’s kicking around ideas, but we haven’t got anything firm.
The two lovers eventually return to their villages only to get caught up in the war between their peoples. In the end the little bald guy helps the boy fake his own death, but the plan backfires because the girl really thinks he’s dead and kills herself.

The boy wakes up and, after learning what’s happened, kills the little bald guy and then shoots himself in the head. During all of this there’ll be more explosions, sex, and violence as well.

Both kids are dead and everyone’s pretty upset because the little bald guy’s dead too, which leads to an uneasy peace between the two groups. This lasts long enough for the aliens to introduce a mind-controlling drug into their water supply, which turns everyone into their slaves. The aliens then activate a GATE back to their own world and take the slaves with them. And that’s pretty much it. It’ll all be quite dramatic of course, with a big score and all the usual merchandise.

The equations for this movie would look something like this:

B+G(BT)+W+E+GN(S)+LBG+A=$$$

So there you have it. WaterWorld II. A hit? I think so.