Flush It Friday: The Dismemberment Edition
Greetings from Olympus Mons, Flushers.
Some of you may remember me from everyone’s favorite Sharon Stone film—the inarguable pinnacle of her celluloid career. You may even remember us making out while that sucker Quaid watched, writhing in his impotence. Doubtless, you recall my ostensible demise: having my arms ripped off by some kind of Martian elevator.
What–no Oscar? Pffft.
And doubtless you think I deserved it. But I assure you, my apparent villainy in that film was a trick of editing. You see, originally the film was written as a love story between myself and Stone—with Quaid as the lecherous villain. But the original cut of the film didn’t “play” with test audiences. None of you special-needs Earthlings could understand why I, with my shiny pate and perpetually Jack Nicholson-like brows, was cast as the love-interest, as opposed to that mouth-breathing protean disaster sometimes referred to as the Former Governor of the Meh State of California.
Gross.
And so, in some clandestine and poorly ventilated room in the uncouth bowels of Hollywood, the director, Paul Verhoeven, and the editors, Carlos Puente and Frank J. Urioste, conspired to alter the film’s narrative. All that was required was a conscientious re-ordering of scenes, a shuffling of shots. You’d be surprised and appalled how simple it is to transform a film’s tone—nay, its entire meaning—in the editing room.
Point being, the BAD here is that I am a delightful antihero and was robbed of my rightful legacy as such by pandering, greedy, cowardly Hollywood jerks.
The GOOD? Let me see . . . For starters, some kind soul with three mammary appendages (whom the deceitful editors would have you believe perished in a terrorist shooting) discovered me at the bottom of that elevator shaft and brought me to the ER. There, I was nursed back to health by a faction of Quaid-detractors and fitted with a pair of bionic arms. Armed (<——excellent pun) with these badass new limbs, I joined a Martian Death Squad. (We kill kittens, not people.)
Look at him beg for his pitiful life.
At least one among you (I’m not naming any Lizards) will be happy to learn that I spend my days these days hunting hordes of feral cats. These felines were originally introduced into the Martian ecosystem as house-pets, but in the brouhaha following Quaid’s “liberation” of the mutants, several million of these filthy quadrupeds went rogue and now roam the dusty, partially terraformed plains of the Red Planet, breeding with impunity and spreading disease with Satanic delectation. It is my job and my sacred duty to hunt them down with tanks and turret guns and exterminate them by the hundreds. On a good day, I transform the Red Planet’s horizon into clouds of blood-mist and fur; the screams of my enemies rise toward the bloodshot sky like an overture to the pain of damnation.
And with that delightful imagery lingering in your mind’s eye, we come to the UGLY: In response to my noble efforts (hilariously dubbed a “massacre” by peddlers of semantics), PETA, that most nauseating intergalactic organization, has sent a fleet of ships to Mars to enforce some bogus trade embargo and sabotage ongoing terraform efforts.
But before I go off on some PETA-trampling screed, let me at long last bring the METAL:
Enough about me. Let us talk about you. Celebrate yourself and/or grieve for yourself like the Earth-scum that you are. What ails you? What titillates you? What engages your gag reflex? And what gifts of metal do you have for the NEW KING QUEEN SAVIOR DEMIGOD GOD OF THE RED PLANET? Deposit answers in the trash bin labeled “Disqus” below.
