Can’t think of a good title for this one, basically I’ve got a promotion at work and I have a few working days left before making the move.
Its kind of a running joke that I’m reluctant to talk about the move because it seems almost too good to be true that I’m leaving the department I’ve worked in for nearly five years (I still enjoy the work and the people but just fancy something new) and I don’t want to jinx myself.
Someone joked that I don’t want to be like the veteran cop in the movies talking about his last day on the force or like the soldier in a war film showing around a picture of his sweetheart back in the states and talking about what he’s going to do when the war’s over, a nigh-certainty the character is doomed!
You don’t want to be the one having sex or doing drugs (even drinking) in a horror movie. Or the black guy.
You don’t want to show any form of illness, even a light cough on a period drama. You are doomed if you do.
If you are part of a group of scientists trying to find a legendary monster / save the world from destruction / investigate some ancient ruins, try to be the smiling, bright-eyed idealist, not the smug cynical type.
If a chick coughs in front of a bathroom mirror and opens the cabinet to show an array of medicine bottles and then dry swallows a couple of pills and winces, you know she is checking out early. Bonus points if she teaches the stuffy, uptight hero the value of spontenaity and the joy of living in the moment by doing stupid random shit like dancing in fountains.
Depends on genre. On the old detective shows, being a recognizable celebrity, but not a regular cast member, and showing up in the first scene, usually meant you were a goner. This was lampooned on Police Squad, where people like Florence Henderson would get killed during the opening credits.
I used to be a security guard and got sensitized to how rent-a-cops and security personnel in general got killed off early and often. Mimic had a black, pot-smoking, security guard who predictably died in about 5 minutes, as I recall. Star Trek was famous for killing off security guys.
TV/movie Hookers tend to get killed, which has some basis in reality, I guess, if the show is about serial killers. Oddly, Natural Born Killers had the cop, not the serial killers, waste a whore for no reason.
Horror movies like to make the victims incredibly stupid. “Hey, haunted house. I heard people get killed here every twenty years on this exact night. Let’s have a naked dope party.”
So you could tell your coworkers that you feel like “the time Florence Henderson played a lobotomized teenage pot-smoking black hooker who was moonlighting as a security guard.”
(I got called away in the middle of writing this and fully expect to be ninja’d at least once. These are pretty obvious examples. I don’t care.)
Conversely, if you are the fresh-faced rookie paired off with a grizzled,seasoned veteran, and you are eager to make your mark, you are likely to buy it. Especially if you have a wife at home with your child on the way. It’s gonna be your one & only child.
In murder mysteries, never, never, NEVER call the detective and say “I know who did it. Meet me at [such & such place.]” The detective will arrive to find you dead with a bullet between your eyes.
