I’m enjoying something strange and beautiful tonight. The movie “Razorback” has appeared on my screen and it’s seducing me with its horrible acting and ridiculous storyline. Cause what could be better than an 80’s Australian horror/thriller film that’s about a killer pig? I’m texting my brother and describing it to him as a kind of Jaws meets Tremors meets Texas Chain Saw meets Crocodile Dundee meets Mad Max sort of film.

I said horrible acting earlier, but it does have Ben Kerr in it and he’s holding it together as the man whose life goal is to kill the giant pig beast because it ate his baby during a dark and stormy night in the deep interior of the outback. Jesus, that’s just how the film got started. It moves on from there to a woman in a hatchback being raped and gored to death by space pigs.

Below the television (and the nightmare on the screen), my 3-year-old son is fumbling around with a Batman Lego plane that has some kind of arsenal hidden within it. I tell him “It’s 11 o’clock. You need to get to bed.” He responds with his usual “Huh?” So I point to the cable box and tell to him to look at the clock. He turns and looks all around the entertainment center but has no idea what I’m talking about. The boy has no concept of what a clock is or what the significance of the number 11 means. What a beautiful feeling that must be. Pure unadulterated bliss.

He quickly gets bored with the search and starts again with the batman plane. With a sense of youthful urgency, he begins launching projectiles across the room at me and I soon realize he’s aiming for my beer glass. It’s a red beer and in it are two olives that are awkwardly looking out the bottom of the glass like lonely captives in need of being rescued. The first shot misses but the second one gets a bit more air and PLUNK in it goes.

Right then I knew he’d be a great pig hunter someday. An unstoppable boar-killing aficionado. Although I may not be that middle American parent who poses in photos with theirs just-out-of-the-womb child next to dead animals they’ve just killed (although I was that child), camo dressed and rifles in hand, suggesting to all who view the photo that yes, we have prepared this child for the apocalypse and the eventual onslaught of socialism. No, that’s not quite where I’m at but I do like to occasionally fire a high power rifle, slamming round after round into the face of an unsuspecting jack-o-lantern. Some people jog. Others help with composting. I own a British Enfield .303 and that thing can make a fine mess with a couple of rotten watermelons. They burst just like water balloons.

I have these friends in Florida who hunt alligators. They told me the same thing happens when you shoot gators in the head. At first, they wiggle around for a few minutes, then eventually they float belly up. After that, they gut and clean them. My friend also told me his wife likes to wear the skins around the house, peering out the windows at the neighbors. “It keeps everyone honest,” she tells him. They really know how to have a good time down in Florida.

But an alligator isn’t anything compared to the baby-eating swine from space. They’re in a strange league all of their own, the one and true adversary of man. So yes, I do think it’s important that kids have good survival skills and at least one good eye to aim. Because if I were to be attacked and mutilated by a giant killer alien pig, I would hope that my child would avenge me.