Halloween Top 20 (4/4)

Halloween is just around the corner. Actually it’s tomorrow, so let’s wrap this bad boy up with a few more games.

Silent Hill: Homecoming (2008)

I seem to be alone in loving this game. Most fans who played this said it was an abomination to the series, shouting that the game has little to no psychology in comparison to previous titles, and that the plot twist should disallow the character to be so skilled in combat. Well they’re not wrong in those aspects. However, while the majority of the monsters don’t have to do with the protagonist, Alex Shepherd’s nightmares, the bosses do, and they almost make up for that. The bosses in this game are some of the best, scariest, most challenging, and powerfully psychological the series has seen thus far. As for Alex’s abilities, no he probably shouldn’t possess his expert fighting prowess, but then Harry, James, Heather, and Henry all possessed decent fighting abilities when faced with mortal danger, so what makes Alex any different? But now I’m rambling. Silent Hill Homecoming has a really chilling story with a nice amount of twists, and a good mix of pop-up scares with terrifying ambience. As most Silent Hill games go, it makes you wonder what the hell is going on up until the final revelation, but the graphics of the 360/PS3 really make for some impressive visual effects the series wasn’t even capable of until this point.

Fatal Frame II: Crimson Butterfly (2003)

Fatal Frame as a series is a fantastically terrifying set of games. In my personal experience, they make for the scariest games out there. Fatal Frame II specifically follows the events of twin sisters, Mio and Mayu, walking around the woods until they stumble upon a haunted village. All of the villagers are dead and the village is cursed. Their salvation? They need to perform a ritual concerning twin siblings, where one twin has to murder the other, but surely these two won’t succumb to the village magic, right? Fatal Frame is your typical Japanese ghost story, but what sets it apart is the fact that your only weapon against these ghouls is an enchanted camera. Silly as it may sound, Fatal Frame takes a spin on the old saying of how a picture captures a piece of your soul, and uses this ideology to actually harm the ghosts. The better the picture, the more damage. This makes for an interesting parallax because it forces you to get closer to the ghosts, further terrifying the senses, in order to expel the creepy spectres. There are also a number of ghosts that aren’t hostile, meaning they won’t attack you, but you may still need a change of trousers after encountering them as they are no less scream-inducing. This game is beautiful when you’re not being haunted, surrounded by gorgeous Japanese-style visuals that will include zen gardens, wind chimes, and deer scares, with sound effects and ambience to follow. But otherwise the experience is in general horrifying as every corner you round could put you in mortal danger. 

American McGee’s Alice (2000)

Alright, so this game isn’t technically a “horror” title per se, though the environments fit it well enough. American McGee’s cult classic, Alice, takes a new spin on Lewis Carroll’s timeless novels “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland” and “Through the Looking Glass”. The twist? Everything, as in the whole game is twisted. A young girl named Alice obsesses over the Alice in Wonderland stories. One night, however, a house fire causes her parents to burn to death while Alice herself barely manages to make it out alive. The event traumatizes her, and something in her fractures. She is sent to a mental hospital where they attempt to pick up the pieces and help her regain her sanity. That’s where you, the player come in. You play as Alice within her own deluded mind of what used to be a wonderland. In here, the Cheshire Cat bares a sinister grin, the Duchess is hungry for blood, and the Mad Hatter’s madder than ever. Murder is an everyday event for this new take on Wonderland, and the Red Queen’s tyranny must come to an end. This game has an incredibly interesting take on the various characters and locations of Wonderland, and the majority of your weapons, called “toys”, are just that. Demon Dice, Spiked Jacks, a Croquet Mallet, etc. After ten years, a sequel has been announced for the Xbox 360, so you’d better hurry up and play its predecessor l before this new one comes out.

Bioshock (2007)

This is the only title on my list that I haven’t actually finished. As such, I can’t say that I personally recommend it, but I’ve heard great things. Even though I don’t personally find first person shooters to have that same kind of scare that most survival-horror games possess. Plus the fact that it is a first person shooter by classification, and not a survival horror series specifically. In fact, I almost didn’t include this for those very reasons. But then I remembered the first time I played and pissed off a Big Daddy. He was really defensive over the Little Girl he walked around with, and I wasn’t sure how to progress any further, so I tossed a tin can at him. His yellow eyes turned blood red and he charged full speed towards me, drill at the ready, and I’ve never been more terrified in my life. I panicked trying to throw everything I could find at him, unleashing all the ammo I have into him, electrocuting him, anything I could think of but this guy was absolutely relentless. If the rest of the game is anything like that, I suppose it qualifies for recommendation. It was either this or another Silent Hill title (1 or 3), or Fatal Frame III, but I’m trying to keep it well rounded and not make the majority of the list split between three series.

Are You Afraid of the Dark: The Tale of Orpheo’s Curse (1994)

“Do you believe in magic? Is magic only an illusion created by a stage magician? Well, there’s an old saying, ‘seeing is believing’”. This is the opening line of one of my favorite childhood games. Based on the Nickelodeon show, the game centers around the midnight society inducting you as their newest member. But your test is to tell them a chilling ghost story. The story you tell involves a brother/sister pair entering an old abandoned theatre called “Orpheo’s Palace”. Rumored to have been shut down fifty years ago after it’s head magician, Orpheo, went mad and all of the staff, including himself, died during various magic acts, the theatre was shut down for good. Well it turns out those rumors are true, and you encounter Orpheo upon entering, and he’s still trying to get a magic act right, so he volunteers you for his next act. Tonight. The pair are separated, and you switch off playing as each, coming across the ghosts of the various assistants who perished long ago, including Felicia of the guillotine trick, Roberta who played the woman sawed in half, and the Amazing Aldo who escaped every trick but the water box. The music is chilling, and Orpheo occasionally stalks you or tells you how much he’s looking forward to your performance at midnight via the intercom. The environments are lush and there’s a ton of things to explore, though examining the wrong wax skeleton may initiate a chase scene, and you’d better know where to go if you want to live. There’s a huge amount of puzzles, a fair amount of chases (each with heart pounding music), and multiple endings depending on how much of the mystery you manage to solve. I doubt anyone reading this will actually have access to this game, and I realize it’s really old, but if you ever get the chance, please try it out. If for no reason other than to bring back nostalgia over the Are You Afraid of the Dark crew.

Making this list has really showed me something. Either I really haven’t played as many scary games as I thought I did, or maybe there just aren’t enough good scary titles that don’t already have day jobs of being a first-person shooter. But whichever the reason, this list was hard to make. But if you’re looking for a good, scary game experience, Resident Evil 3, Resident Evil 4, Eternal Darkness, Clock Tower 3, Haunting Ground, Silent Hill: Homecoming, Fatal Frame II, American McGee’s Alice, Bioshock, and Are You Afraid of the Dark: The Tale Of Orpheo’s Curse, all fit the cut. Happy Haunting!

Halloween Top 20 (3/4)

I'm back with the third part of my Halloween List. I've got five more good, scary movies for you to watch this Halloween season.

The Exorcism of Emily Rose (2005)

This one didn’t hit off as well with the critics, but it did do fairly well with the fans. Either way, I liked it. I hadn’t seen the original Exorcist until about three years after I saw this, so I didn’t know what a movie about exorcism would be like. This movie was pretty disturbing however. It features a young woman who suddenly begins acting strange. She starts seeing disturbing imagery, she losing control of her mind and body, she crawls around like a spider, she speaks in tongues, she screams and roars at everything. Conclusion: she’s been possessed by the devil. The movie isn’t entirely centered around her exorcism however. A concurrent storyline is about the pastor who exorcised her. He manages to relieve her of the devil, but is unable to save her life, and so his methods are called into question as to whether or not they were ethical. The movie itself stands alone well enough, but what really makes it disturbing is watching it knowing that it’s based on a true story. Of course, “based on” can be a pretty loose term, but just knowing that events like this have happened to people kind of sends shivers down your spine.

Orphan (2009)

This is one cah-reepy movie. It follows a family who looks into adopting a young Russian girl named Esther. But Esther isn’t like most 9-year old girls; she’s psychotic. Aside from the creepiness in general she tends to carry around on her persona, there’s just something very off about her. She makes decisions and talks in manners that many will find unnerving. She persuades her adoptive sister to do bad things, and she brings physical harm to her adoptive brother, all the while threatening to kill either of them if they ever bring word to her adoptive parents. And then she gets a weird obsession with her new father, and we’re not talking a cute schoolgirl crush on her Math Teacher. I mean this girl wants mommy out of the picture. With an overall super creepy vibe and an ending I never would have seen coming, Orphan definitely delivered.

Last House on the Left (2009)

Not that I’m trying to spoil the movie or anything, but you know how sometimes you get a real douche of a villain, but they manage to get away without you, the viewer, getting the satisfaction of watching them get mutilated in return? This movie is for you. This movie features a band of villains that kidnap, rape and kill a pair of best friends that unfortunately end up in the wrong place at the wrong time with the wrong people. Well, as it turns out, one of the girls actually manages to get away, and word is gotten to her parents what happened, and the whole dichotomy of the movie shifts as now it’s the villains’ turn to take a chance at survival. I’m hardly a sadist, but it’s oh so satisfying to watch such awful people get just what they deserve.

Sleepy Hollow (1999)

I haven’t seen this movie in a long while, but what has always stood out to me with this title is the lack of gore. This movie probably has more character deaths than any other on my list, yet in return has the least amount of blood. The story follows the headless horseman, terrorizing a village, riding around lopping off the heads of the villagers, trying to find a replacement. So the movie is just chop, chop, exposition, chop, chop chop, yet no blood. This only further proves my belief that you don’t need wild gory deaths to have a good, scary movie. Saw VI? Lots of gore, terrible movie. Sleepy Hollow? Minimal gore, great movie. If this description isn’t enough for you, it’s made by Tim Burton, featuring Johnny Depp and Christopher Walken [when he was still playing villainous roles], with Danny Elfman on music. This should be a no brainer.

The Others (2001)

I love a good ghost story. Events of the supernatural are something that no human truly understands. Included in this is Grace Stewart, played by Nicole Kidman. Grace is a mother of two with a husband at war. Her tightly knit family lives humbly in a quiet country home, and life in general seems to be pretty normal. Her children develop a disease that makes them weak to sunlight, but nothing too out of the ordinary. Well, not until ghosts inhabit the house. Suddenly strange events begin to take place. The little girl is drawing pictures of a family she keeps seeing. A scary old woman appears wearing the daughter’s clothing. Someone hides the curtains, endangering the children. These events leave Grace certain that these are hostile ghosts that wish to bring harm to her poor children, but perhaps that’s not the whole story. Pay attention all the way through, because there may just be another surprise in story.

Well that’s it for my movie list. Saw 1, Saw 2, Final Destination, Disturbia, Thirteen Ghosts, The Exorcism of Emily Rose, Orphan, Last House on the Left, Sleepy Hollow, and the Others are ten good, scary movies for you to enjoy this Halloween. The list ends next time. 

Halloween Top 20 (2/4)

The Halloween Haunt continues. But this time with a few good survival horror games thrown at you. I’ll finish my movie coverage next time, but for now, let me throw a few good scary games at you.

Resident Evil 3 (1999)

The Resident Evil series as a whole is a good survival horror franchise, and I would honestly recommend RE 1, 2, 3, and 4. But for the sake of redundancy, I’ll not fill the entire list with Resident Evil titles. Despite Resident Evil 2 being my personal favorite of the old-school generation (and the series as a whole, really), what stands out about Resident Evil 3 is the fact that you’re being stalked by Nemesis throughout the entirety of the game. You play as Jill Valentine, one of the four primary protagonists of the series, and you’re caught in the middle of the massive T-Virus outbreak of Raccoon city. Jill tries to escape the city before it’s nuked via government missiles, but Umbrella Corp’s latest bio-weapon seems to be a constant blockade in your path. Nemesis tends to show up at the most inconvenient of times, and often forces you in a series of heart pounding, split second decisions on how to shake him, the outcome of which may effect your fate. You can never seem to get a moment of rest in this game, and just as you do start to feel comfortable, he shows up again, so it keeps you on your feet at all times.

Resident Evil 4 (2005)

As I said before, I won’t flood the list with Resident Evil titles, but I figured I’d recommend one more. Again, Resident Evil 2 is my personal favorite, but Resident Evil 4 is a close second. RE4 isn’t so much a scary title, though it’s not without its moments. There are some pretty horrifying enemies you come across (Regenerators, Iron Maidens, and Los Garradores come to mind), but there’s also that sense of panic you get when you enter a seemingly innocent village, only to have every villager swarm to you like you’re Thanksgiving dinner; which in retrospect isn’t that far off. The story is a bit of a departure from the past series, but the gameplay is a huge improvement. It’s a lot more tactful, and you can actually aim your guns to wherever you want to shoot. Not that I don’t appreciate the older titles, but since these “zombies” are smarter and more tactful, it makes sense that I would be too. Like the Star Wars series, RE1-3 and RE4/5 feel like two separate series, both having their share of positives over the other. RE4 sacrifices some of the scares for a more pleasurable gameplay experience. But unlike RE5, does not sacrifice the “Horror” in “Survival Horror” entirely.

Eternal Darkness (2002)

Eternal Darkness is not what you’d expect of a survival horror game. It’s not actually scary. I can count on half of a hand how many times I was actually spooked by something, and that’s attributed by a number of reasons. The lighting in the game isn’t very dark, there’s all of maybe two pop-out scenarios, and it’s actually a well written piece of work, showing off good story rather than focusing on scaring. So why on earth am I recommending it? Because it encompasses an incredibly genius sanity system. As you encounter supernatural beings, your sanity meter steadily depletes, and the lower it gets, the more “sanity effects” you endure. These effects range anywhere from visuals of bloody walls or upside-down rooms, to audio effects like screams or children crying, to 4^th wall effects like lowering the volume, pretending to erase your memory card, or a fake ending after only two hours of play. The list of effects goes on and on and is so vast, I rarely encountered the same effect twice, and this is a game that plays through the stories of twelve separate characters, each with their own story, location, time period and statistics; though all tie into the same story. It’s lengthy, the story is interesting, there’s a major choice made in the beginning that effects how the rest of the game pans out, and it holds a fantastic sanity system. Who cares that it isn’t scary?

Clock Tower 3 (2003)

The subject of actual terror has been addressed a few times already. Is Clock Tower 3 terrifying? Well the answer is yes, and then no. Unfortunately the best part of Clock Tower 3 is the first 25% of it, and it gets gradually less horrifying and more nonsensical throughout. So lemme dish the dirt. Clock Tower is a series revolving around a similar concept of Resident Evil 3. Not in terms of story, but in terms of getting the hell out of there. Clock Tower 3 involves six psychotic serial killers chasing you around London. Each killer is distinct, and allegedly more dangerous than the last. But the first one is the one I find to be most terrifying. He goes by the alias “Sledgehammer”, and as his name implies, his first appearance involves him bludgeoning a 13-year old girl in the back of the head. He’s horrifying. He has a creepy voice, a terrifying costume, strange habits like sniffing around for his prey, and he sometimes drops down from the catwalks, landing with a loud BANG, cutting your morning jog abruptly short. The gameplay involves, literally, trying to outrun these guys, but you can’t simply outrun them. You’ll be making use of hiding spots and evade points, which are mini cutscenes that involve you knocking them out in some manner. Again, after Sledgehammer, the game becomes progressively less scary, and the end of it is downright cheesy. But I’d recommend at least playing through the first level, maybe even the first two.

Haunting Ground (2005)

This game was made by the same people behind the Clock Tower series, so the gameplay is pretty similar. You play as a girl named Fiona who wakes up one night inside a cage in a castle basement, surrounded by meat cleavers, and raw steaks made out of things that we doubtfully hope are cows, and she’s clad in nothing but a towel. Throughout the course of the game, the various tenants of the castle stalk you for varying reasons, and it’s your job to progress in the storyline without getting killed by them. This once again involves finding hiding spots and using other methods of slowing them down. However, unlike Clock Tower 3, you actually have ways of harming them. Not to the point of killing them of course, but you can at least stun them. Also paired with you this time around is a dog named Hewie. You can train the dog by praising or scolding him whenever he does or doesn’t protect you, which will either increase or decrease his likelihood of helping in the future. You’ll need Hewie to reach areas you can’t reach yourself, and unlike Alessa in Clock Tower 3, Fiona was obviously on a track team at some point in her life, because this chick can actually run. And run she will, because also unlike Clock Tower 3, these enemies DO progressively become more horrifying. While most of them don’t physically look scary, they each have their own personalities, mannerisms, and attacks that really make you wanna get the hell out of there. The only cost of this development is the fact that each person’s section seems to last shorter than the previous. Aside from the very end of this game, I’d say this game is overall an improved version of Clock Tower 3. If they can take this concept and improve it again for a console like the PS3 or 360, I’ll be set for life.

That’s it for today’s list. Check back in a few days for the last five movies on my Halloween Horror list.

Halloween Top 20 (1/4)

In the spirit of Halloween, my next few blog posts will be featuring lists of good scary movies and games to watch and play for Halloween. First I want to talk about a few movies. Now, the following movies define the word “scary” in different ways. Some are more psychological, rather than pop-out scares. But a good scary movie, in my opinion, does not rely on a) killing off as many people as possible, and b) killing people off in the bloodiest, most disgusting ways possible. Movies like that should really be their own genre because they’re not scary, and they’re not psychological; they’re just gross.

Now my picks aren’t necessarily my top 10, and they’re in no particular order. But they’re all movies that stuck out to me over the years, so think of them as nothing more than recommendations.  So without further ado…

Saw I & II (2004/2005)

Keep in mind I’m ONLY recommending the first two in the Saw series. The first movie presented one of the most brilliant villains of our lifetime. He’s a killer that doesn’t actually kill his victims. The famed Jigsaw killer goes through a life changing experience that makes him appreciate the gift of life itself, and he wants others to experience this epiphany. He captures seemingly innocent people who don’t appreciate the precious gift that God has given them, and puts them into “traps” where they must sacrifice some pain and fight for their own survival. This is a brilliant concept. Every situation is escapable, and most directly reference the reason they’re there in the first place (such as a man who cuts himself being caught in a maze of razor wire), and with the exception of maybe one or two of them, the sacrifice seems pretty fair. Well, as fair as a psychopath can make it.

So why am I only recommending the first two? Because after that, the series goes downhill at an accelerated rate. Starting with the third movie, the traps start encompassing innocent peoples lives, so that their survival is in the hands of someone else. And there are even some that aren’t innocent, but it’s still not up to them if they survive. The series picks up again for the fifth movie, reverting back to mostly people who are in charge of their own fate. But the sixth is the absolute worst. It involves an insurance agent that has to choose, out of about 10 people, only about 4 of them can survive these trials. This is no longer the question of fighting for your life, this is now a selection of picking favorites. Basically, this is the complete opposite of Jigsaw’s original objective if no matter what, people will have to die in these traps. Regardless of the fact that these people are put in the hands of Jigsaw’s apprentice, they’re still Jigsaw’s traps that he planned to continue even after his death in the third movie. I can’t even begin to describe how thrilled I am that this series is FINALLY ending this month. The first two are great, but the series as a whole is just an excuse to kill people off in the most inhumane ways possible.

Final Destination (2000)

This is another movie like Saw. Not the content of it, but the fact that the first movie is brilliant, and everyone should see it. The following three movies, however, exploit the brilliant idea of the first movie in order to kill off as many people as they can in as horrifying of ways as possible. The setting of the first movie is a high school class goes on a field trip to Europe. One teenager has a vision of a plain crash, which ultimately causes him and six other individuals to safely get off the plane before takeoff, sparing them. But Death has other plans, and the students begin dying off post-crash, one-by-one, in the order they were supposed to die originally, in a series of freak accidents. They seem like freak twists of fate, but the movie is so chilling, it keeps you wondering if anyone can survive the cold grip of Death. Please watch this movie if you haven’t already. And do yourself a favor, never watch FD 2, 3, and 4.

Disturbia (2007)

This movie is more of a psychological thriller than a true blood horror movie. But it’s still quite good. This movie features a young man name Kale whose mother begins dating another guy after his father is killed in a car accident. There’s something off about this new guy though. The teenage boy feels that the new guy may be some psychopath, but seems harmless in person. Still, something rubs him the wrong way, and he’s got the sneaking suspicion this guy is a murderer, and Kale swears he partially witnessed him murdering another woman. However, considering Kale is on house arrest after a confrontation at his school, there’s not a whole lot he can do. Who is this guy exactly? Did Kale really see what he thought he saw? Can he prove it before it’s too late? Or will his mother be the next victim? Give it a watch, it’s good. 

Thirteen Ghosts (2001)

So this is the first movie on my list that’s like a true blood ghost film. It could just be my obsession with lists in numbers, but I love this movie. It’s from Dark Castle films, which does mean one thing: Gore. However, this movie’s not as bad as you might expect in that area. There’s not as many deaths in this films. The few deaths they have are horrific, but they’re still fairly few in number because there’s actually a plot to this. The film encompasses a family whose rich uncle has just passed on and left his estate to them. They are led to his estate where they are to spend the night. The estate in question is unlike any house I’ve ever seen before. Almost none of the walls are solid. As grandiose as it is, a house full of glass walls with weird writing all over just gives you a weird vibe, and it should. As it turns out, dear old Uncle had some skeletons in his closet, or ghosts in the basement rather, and a booby trap has caused them to be set free. As the title implies, there are 13 ghosts, each more terrifying than the last. They each have their own unique appearance and personality, and all of them make a sizeable appearance in the film. Well, actually, there were only 12 ghosts in the basement. So who’s the thirteenth? Watch it to find out.

So there’s five select titles to give a watch. The rest of the list will appear before Halloween. Keep an eye out for it.

The Mass Effect of Mass Effect

Storytelling has long since been a part of the video game industry, but it baffles me just how intense the plotlines for video games are becoming.

Mind you, I for one have been an advocate for storytelling in games for a good many years anyway. A lot of people are more concerned with graphical prowess than actual substance within a game, but personally I’ve always preferred a dramatic relay to help push me forward. Though there certainly is such a thing as too much exposition (Square Enix’s last twenty titles), stories can be anywhere from a simple plotline serving as structure with sole intention of moving the game forward (Mario, Zelda) to a dramatic narrative where the gameplay is little more than the afterthought (Heavy Rain, anyone?).

Spoilers for Mass Effect are to follow.

The point I’m getting at however is the fact that video game plotlines have grown to have such an impact on the player that the player can actually feel conflicted over a character’s death. Of course we’ve all mourned the loss of Aerith (some are crying about as much as Cloud still is, and it’s a little embarrassing). But in Mass Effect, most characters are not required to die. However, I just finished my first playthrough of it, and I did it without once looking online to see what choices affect what. What ended up happening to me was that I lost two of my six party members, as in permanently lost them. They died.

The first person was killed by a different party member after having acted out of line and jeopardized the mission. The second was a much crueler scenario. There’s a point in the game where two of my party members are off doing separate things, both taking heavy fire, and I can only save one of them. This isn’t one of those Batman choices where the odds are against you, but with the proper aim and timing you can save them both. This is real, one of these people die. So I was faced with a difficult decision. Do I run off to save my romantic interest who volunteered for this suicide mission? Or do I save my friend and comrade who’s fought with me through the hard times? Regardless of their backgrounds and personalities, they were both members of team, and they both felt very much alive. The choice wasn’t easy, but I assure you, I did feel guilty afterward.

The storytelling is so well written in this game, and the relationships you build with these characters feels pretty authentic. Every conversation has multiple outcomes, so they don’t feel artificial. After losing my first team member, I felt responsible, as if I could have spared him if only I’d said the right thing (which turned out to be true. Turns out he can live with the right vocal input). And as for the second loss, even though I had no way of saving both of them, I still felt guilty for having to choose one life over another. It’s like being made to choose between a stranger and a friend. You’re obviously going to WANT to say your friend, but then you realize that isn’t exactly fair. It’s not the stranger’s fault he doesn’t know you. Plus who’s to say he doesn’t have his own family and friends? And what if he was in the same boat? Would he just throw you away because he doesn’t know you?

The game puts you in some cruel situations, and there are multiple points where you must choose to kill or spare an individual. But no previous moment actually made me feel as if I’d really lost a comrade. Although I know she was nothing more than polygons filled with scripted data, the loss felt more real than any canon character death I’ve ever experienced prior to Mass Effect. It just goes to show you have impactful interactive storytelling has become, and it makes you wonder how far they’re planning to push it.

OMG BOOBZ

So it’s begun. It’s officially October and the ta-tas are singing about it. Yes, I’m talking about Breast Cancer Awareness Month. Firstly, I do want to say that I wholly support the cause. Cancer is a terrible thing, and a cure needs to be found for it. I do believe it will be found in our generation’s lifetime; at least I hope one will be.

Now, I know this has nothing to do with entertainment, but I still feel the need to talk about it. And before your hate flags fly, keep in mind that I do support finding a cure for breast cancer. That being said, I think the whole campaign for breast cancer has gotten to be nothing short of ridiculous for a number of reasons. Firstly, the campaign itself is counter-productive.  I understand that the point is to spread awareness in order to get more women to get mammograms so that they can catch the cancer in it’s early stages, thus decreasing the chances of fatality. However, honorable as that may be, wouldn’t it also be nice to actually donate to the cause so that research for a cure can be funded? I mean, really, I don’t think I know a single person who doesn’t know about breast cancer. i.e. We’re aware, so it’s time to actually do something about it.

Second, the campaign’s methods of “spreading awareness” are shortsighted, faulty, and, well demeaning. Facebook has been a prime outlet for spreading awareness as of the past year or so, and its methods are down right juvenile. Telling people where you left your purse, what color bra you’re wearing, and where you like getting banged, not only does not inform them about breast cancer at all, it makes you look like trash. For all the women that like to walk in marches and give speeches on how they shouldn’t be treated as objects and how there’s more to them than just sex, these statements, simple as they may be, really build up to take you a step backward in that fight. And to be honest, you really suck at telling people about breast cancer. All that does is confuse people. It's a feel-good campaign designed to make women feel like they're making a difference even though they really aren't helping the cause at all. I certainly don’t care enough to look up some stupid inside joke between half of my female facebook friends. The only reason I know about this is because someone else looked it up, and I happened upon them commenting about it.

Third, breast cancer is not the only cancer out there. As I’ve said before, we’re aware of breast cancer. We may not be doing much for it, but we are well aware of it. Now how about brain cancer? Lung cancer? Skin Cancer? Prostate? Testicular? Colon? What about those cancers? My grandmother died of lung cancer, and her idiot doctors didn't catch it until Stage 3 (which is bad for those who don't know what that means), yet I never see any campaigns about lung cancer. And I find that offensive, especially considering the ridiculous amount of people that still smoke these days, and instill second-hand smoke unto others, many of which I am certain are posting these ridiculous statuses. My other grandmother had skin cancer because she got too much sunlight through the course of her life, yet I don’t hear any campaigns for that either. On top of that, just before her death, hundreds of tiny tumors were found in her brain. She died before I ever got to know her, and I’ve grown up having to only hear what a wonderful individual she was.

She was 52. Where’s her campaign?

As it is, breast cancer is one of the most common cancers out there. However it is also one of the most treatable. If you have brain cancer, lung cancer, skin cancer, or colon cancer, it’s not as easy to get rid of, and just trying to can kill you. All cancers are bad, and there should be awareness campaigns for each of them. But I’m not going to tell people what I had for lunch to promote colon cancer awareness, nor say something manly about building bridges to promote prostate cancer awareness. And I think if you really want to help the cause, then you should get off your ass, pull out your wallet, and make a donation instead of making yourself sound like a slut on facebook while all your girlfriends giggle about how you’re changing the world.