You Might Be a Zombie and Other Bad News - Writers of Cracked dot Com [63]
The book ending
At the end of Stephen King’s book, Richards has almost succeeded in running out the clock, when he gets a call from Killian, the man behind the Running Man show. It’s a job offer to be the show’s lead hunter. The bad news? Richards’s wife and daughter were murdered shortly after he started running. Overcome by grief and unhappy at himself for participating in this exploitative system, Killian crashes into the headquarters of the game company, blowing it up and killing himself.
Moral of the book
A prescient message about the ghoulish nature of reality TV and more generally about human nature’s love of spectator sports.
The Hollywood ending
Arnold Schwarzenegger straps Killian to a rocket sled and catapults him through a giant neon sign. He makes a bad pun, gets the girl, and walks away into the futuristic sunset as the audience cheers. Nothing is said about whether the company continues to make reality shows where people are killed, but why wouldn’t they? That shit was amazing!
Moral of the movie
Reality shows are like regular game shows multiplied by awesome.
1. BRAM STOKER’S DRACULA , ALLEGEDLY BASED ON THE BOOK BY BRAM STOKER
The vampire Dracula comes to London, where he kills people and turns the innocent Lucy Westenra into a vampire. A ragtag team including Lucy’s best friend Mina and Dr. Van Helsing are forced to kill the now vampirized Lucy and then turn their attention toward finishing off Dracula . . .
The book ending
. . . which they do, through teamwork and courage.
Moral of the book
The ancient and unknown things of this world are scary, dark, and powerful. Once unleashed, you will have to do horrific things to make anything right again, such as murdering your own best friend.
The Hollywood ending
After the count trades mortal blows with one of the vampire hunters, Mina saves him. It turns out she’s the reincarnation of his dead wife and needs to take him to the castle chapel to kiss him, so she can redeem his soul and allow him to ascend to heaven in a beautiful scene. While she’s doing that, another one of her friends dies from Dracula wounds, but he wasn’t in love with anybody so it’s not important. The important thing is that the guy who killed him and turned her best friend into a monster gets to be with his dead wife in heaven.
Moral of the movie
Love never dies and also doesn’t sweat the small stuff like killing innocent people. Good thing Hollywood got that one out of its system.
Oh, right.
THE TEN MOST INSANE MEDICAL PRACTICES IN HISTORY
DOCTORS have a long, storied background of not knowing what the hell they’re doing. History is filled with stories of medical ineptitude, and in all likeliness today’s medical practices will be similarly snorted at a hundred years down the road. So if you’re looking to rationalize not getting that lump on your neck checked out, you’re in the right place.
10. CHILDREN’S SOOTHING SYRUPS
In the nineteenth century, people were simply too busy churning butter and waxing their mustaches to be bothered with disobedient children. To remedy this, a series of “soothing syrups,” lozenges, and powders were created, all of which were carefully formulated to ensure they were safe for use by those most vulnerable members of the family. Oh, wait, no. Actually, they pumped each bottle full of as many narcotics as it could hold.
For instance, each ounce of Mrs. Winslow’s Soothing Syrup contained sixty-five milligrams of pure morphine.
Based on our experiences experimenting with pure morphine, that seems like a lot. Drug manufacturers finally slowed their roll a bit in 1910, when the New York Times decided the whole narcotic babysitter concept was probably bad and ran an article pointing out that these syrups contained, “morphine sulphate, chloroform, morphine hydrochloride, codeine, heroin, powdered opium, cannabis indica,” and sometimes several of them in combination.
You can’t say the syrups weren’t effective, as long as you didn’t mind