The Hunger Games

I know that I have not been all that active here recently. In fact, compared to the way that this calendar year was going here on "The Charbor Chronicles", the last few weeks have lapsed dangerously close to outright inactivity, having barely written anything new of substance.

With a new job (technically, right now, I have three jobs, more than ever in my life to this point!), and with the level of fatigue acquired from the mixture of the intense training for this latest job and continuing working my overnight job, as well as the other responsibilities and stresses that life has to offer, something was going to give. Unfortunately, it was this.

Still, it is not as if I have not been writing. As a newly certified writer for an online newspaper, the Guardian Liberty Voice (search for articles by Charles Bordeau, if you are so inclined), I have actually been writing these past few weeks like never before!

It all caught up with me, and after the grueling 24-hour day that I had on Sunday (which actually stretched in the wee hours of Monday, since this was all done on Pacific time), I felt so exhausted that I could hardly think. A part of me did not want to see a computer screen for days, although I had to. The last couple of days since passing the test on Sunday, there were interviews over the web that I had, and there will be another one tomorrow. Still one more next week, to boot! Again, it has been a flurry of activity, although you would never know it if you based it on activity here on this blog.

Indeed, I was exhausted, and yesterday, it all came crashing down! When I went to sleep last night (roughly around 10pm or so), I would not fully wake up until more than twelve hours later! Oh, I woke up one, around 4:30am or so, and went straight to the couch after a few sleepless minutes, where I quickly fell unconscious again. Then, I woke up again when my girlfriend got ready, and left, for work. I stayed awake for maybe forty minutes, but felt a bit like a zombie, so I went back to bed, and did not wake up until a quarter to eleven! Hel, I can not remember the last time that I slept so long, or slept in so late!

But I needed it! Life was stressful, and sometimes, you just need a day - a full day - to recuperate.

At some point last evening, I was tired, and my girlfriend and I were arguing, and I kind of just went in front of the television and looked for something good to escape things for a while. Just to get away, if you will.

A movie that I had wanted to see for some time was on: The Hunger Games.

I had heard about it, and it sounded really interesting, although I got the idea, for whatever the reason, that this was a teenie bopper movie.

In fact, this movie is actually much deeper than that, with many layers to it. And it is a thought-inducing movie.

The premise is this: 24 teens or young adults (12 boys, 12 girls) are getting set to survive for two weeks in the wilderness. Only one of them will come out alive, which means that they are attempting to kill one another throughout.

We follow the main character, Katniss Everdeen (played by Jennifer Lawrence) voluntarily replaces her sister for the 74th Hunger Games. The candidates are selected by lottery. Katniss and a love interest, Peeta Mellark (played by Josh Hutcherson), are set to represent the 12th district of the fictional, totalitarian nation of Panem. There are 12 districts, and Panem is considered one of the outlying regions.

The first half of the movie sees Katniss and Peeta preparing for the "games", which are, in fact, deadly serious business. The second half is the actual survival in the woods part of the movie, which seems anything but a "game."

Some thoughts from my perspective:

As the move goes along, humans seem to become more Godlike. Or, maybe I should be more specific: the powers that the creators of the show have become more sophisticated, more advanced. We find that the whole "playing area" is actually one of their constructs, and they can control things like fire and sunrise/sunset. Also, we see ferocious creatures that are unlike anything that we have ever seen.  And the producers of the show are the ones creating creatures from dirt (or Biblical clay?).

The whole wooded land is apparently created, even though we seem to see a beautiful region surrounding it, with mountains and lakes and streams and such - everything reinforcing beauty and open space -two things that we seem to lack today, and which do not seem promising for the future.

The president in the movie, played by Donald Sutherland, mentions at some point that he does not like underdogs. At this point, he almost seems like one of the elites, hell bent on ruling over the rest of us, and always, always with an emphasis on control.

In any case, those are my thoughts on the movie. It was, on the whole, pretty gripping. Also, thought-provoking, and it certainly keeps you entertained. Much deeper than I would have believed when it first came out, and seemed to be all the rage among teenagers (or am I confusing this movie somehow with something else?).