2004-03-19

Dawn of the Dead opens tonight! I am slavering with excitement! I don’t know if I should give in and go on opening weekend, though – I like hordes of mindless freaks just fine on the screen, but I don’t so much like being in a theatre packed full of them. Going to movies on opening night is as much fun as going through rush hour traffic in the back of a livestock truck, except without the satisfaction of knowing that your jostling crate-mates will soon be causing their own little traffic jams in somebody’s colon.

I hate crowds. I hate them as a whole, and I hate their composite parts. If you want me to hate you, just surround yourself with a lot of other human beings, and hey presto! I want to shove you in front of a subway train, at just the right angle and velocity so your body gets horribly twisted around but you’re still conscious, looking down at your own mangled spine and waiting for death! I don’t care if you’re my mom! I hate you!

Of course, I’m Canadian, so that doesn’t help: it’s actually the law here that if someone bumps into you, you say, “I’m sorry.” It doesn’t matter whose fault it was – you apologize. The other day, I thought the woman next to me on the bus wanted to get off, so I moved out of her way, and when she didn’t move, I said, “Oh, sorry,” and sat back down. This is actually the reason Canadians invented hockey: we needed an excuse to hit each other with sticks. The puck and skates were totally incidental.