1. There is an inverse relationship between the amount of time a literary theorist spends using any one theory to describe any one topic and the understandability of that topic to the reader.
2. As the theorist’s ideas become more and more esoteric and ridiculous, our language will rapidly run out of words and concepts sufficient to satisfy him. The theorist will respond by making up new words, borrowing them from other languages, stringing words together to create new concepts, and generally doing everything within his power to make the text completely impenetrable to its readers.
3. Whether in criticism or fiction, an author has strong incentives to make its text as incomprehensible and long as possible, since critical acclaim usually follows.
4. There is a positive relationship between how dense the text gets and how frustrated the reader gets in trying to grok whatever idea the author is trying to get across.
5. The more frustrated the reader gets, the more likely s/he is to give up and set the offending book on fire. (Corollary: When asked why the hell they did that, the embarrassed book-burner will generally try to excuse themselves by saying that the book promoted heresy.)
Pictured: The birthplace of post-structuralist theory.
Whether it's keeping the four miserable preseason games or another billion dollars going to the owners, one thing will be true about the eventual deal that wraps up the NFL's current labor unrest: it will be unfavorable to the fans in some way.
This is billionaires and millionaires dividing up more hundreds of millions of dollars. The interests of the fans have gone, and will be, without direct representation in the final rounds of bargaining between the NFL and the NFLPA.
So in the spirit of what-would-happen-if-I-had-a-strangely-particular-magic-ring-that-granted-me-NFL-wishes, I thought I (as a simple fan) might make a list of what I'd like to see happen with the new CBA.
In no particular order, here are my wishes:
1. Let's have it happen soon, so that there isn't a lockout.
Duh. Why not? Too much money and sides that don't like each other.
2. Get rid of two preseason games without adding two regular-season games.
Wouldn't it be great for season-ticket holders not to have to pay for lousy entertainment along with the good? And wouldn't it be great if we didn't expand the season and see more players wind up on injured reserve? (The answer is yes, but two preseason games make the NFL money.)
3. Extend the post-career health care coverage for retired players, and require every team (if they don't do it already) to have rookies meet with a financial advisor.
This is just sensible. Playing a violent game requires better health coverage, and players should be better advised not to spend their money now if at all possible.
4. Limit the salaries of first-round rookies to something reasonable, say $15 million guaranteed, but leave the rest of the rookie wage scale alone.
Aside from JaMarcus Russell-type contracts, the scale works pretty well the way it is; why fix what works?
5. Create an in-season injured reserve list.
This idea isn't mine, I first read it at the National Football Post. But it makes sense. With roster size as the determining factor, the Packers had to place Ryan Grant and Jermichael Finley on IR this year, when their injuries could've healed in time for the playoffs (Grant did, Finley would've been tentative). With a reserve list for players who will heal over the course of the season, owners could perhaps mitigate the damage of an 18-game schedule.
6. The league could open its goddamn financial records already, and the players could judge fairly the owners' contention that player costs are eventually going to outpace revenue.
This won't happen. The first one might, the second one won't, and who knows if it's an honest contention anyway?
One thing that keeps on fascinating me, no matter how many times or where I see it, is the Victorian dyad of science and magic. That was the time of the emerging Industrial Revolution. That was the time when mankind was tapping into previously unimagined forces. Electricity. Steam power. The Iron Horse. I’ve been learning about the Revolution since 9th grade history class, but I think it’s only now that I’m beginning to appreciate the power it had. Today we have the luxury of looking back on locomotives, or telegrams, or the first dreadnoughts as quaint or old-fashioned. But in a world used to wooden sailing ships and letter-carriers, of the horse-drawn coach as the fastest form of transportation on land that didn’t involve a Paul Revere, what must it have been like?
We live in a world that has become jaded with regards to miracles. I’ve noted before that we don’t really appreciate this power. With the proper coordination between parties, I can speak to someone on the other side of the world as if they were standing right next to me, even see their face when I talk to them. With motivation and money, I can transport myself from here to anyplace in the world near an airline hub within twenty-four hours. If you extend that to a week, I can go anywhere on land except the top of a mountain. Human civilization, learning and reading and writing, used to end immediately when the sun went down. Now I can continue the daytime indefinitely, through the use of artificial suns. I can reproduce any sound or video that I have access to, I can scribe any words that pop into my head.
We take these things for granted. How often have you heard people complain when ‘their’ Internet took too long to download a picture, or when ‘their’ wireless carrier dropped a call, or when ‘their’ public transportation system was late or broken? Say rather, the network they used or the transportation hubs through which they passed. We each like to think that we are wizards ourselves, in command of these marvels we communicate with. In truth, there are forces of mercantilism and power generation beyond our capacity to imagine that work to bring these wonders to our homes. Marx called it “the fetishism of the commodity”. Today, it might be better referred to as the fetishism of a lifestyle.
But I digress. The Industrial Revolution was more then just an advancement in technology. It changed the way people thought about power, and about their relationship to Nature. Far from being buffeted about helplessly by forces beyond our control, we could for the first time harness those forces for our own will. Instead of running from the storms, humans had captured lightning and made it their servant. Despite the science behind the new era, might it not have seemed like wizardry to an unprepared audience? Despite the engines and machines that produced these marvels, might this new way of living-of thinking-have crossed over into the spiritual, into some higher plane of human knowledge or existence? Might these supposed scientific advances have inadvertently harnessed…magic?
That’s what the best novels of the period did, foremost among them, Frankenstein. What is that allure of Frankenstein, you might ask? For me, it has always been the image of the monster leading Frankenstein on his hopeless chase through the snowy wastelands of the Arctic, on his way to the heretofore unexplored roof of the world. There is a spirit of discovery buried within the bleak scene, a fire to explore the last frontiers. Back when the edges of the map were penciled in and some waggish cartographers wrote Here there be dragons in the undiscovered countries, that spirit of discovery was still alive. Frankenstein’s chase is part of that spirit. His is a world of magic and monsters, where science has only the most tenuous hold on the forces it attempts to harness. That is what the best period films attempt to capture. Sherlock Holmes came so achingly close, but failed in the last extremity of its attempt to catch it. And a film like The Prestige, which obscures the very nature of science and magic better then any other film, might just have it.
I once read a critic’s description of why he didn’t enjoy The Prestige. “I don’t mind going to see a science-fiction film,” he said, “Just tell me that I’m seeing one beforehand.” While I appreciate the sentiment voiced by that critic (Nolan’s transition from science to magic is rough if one does not look for it in advance), I think that he has ever so slightly missed the point. Obfuscation, smoke and mirrors, layers and layers of trickery and magicians’ games… that is the genius of the film. Because beneath all of the layers, hard and shining like some exotic metal, is the real magic of the film, waiting for the covers of deceit to be stripped away and its true nature to be revealed. This movie does not become a science-fiction flick at all, Mr. Critic. It was a magical one from the beginning. Within it, the magician (and supposed lord of artifice), is blinded by a deeper level of magic, cheap tricks replaced with an elemental force that he can neither comprehend nor penetrate. That’s the caged beast toiling at the center of every device. That’s the force that drives the new world. Magic.
A professor is wild. Who knows what he thinks? He hibernates in his musty office, filled with books and wisdom, tenure applications scattered about the room. Sometimes he stays in his office for six hours before he sees a student. Outside, he stalks theses, I.S. proposals, papers and short stories, taking on more assignments then he could reasonably handle, and often dragging the work back to his home. Obedient to instinct, he covers the paper with marks and red comments, either attacking a wayward thesis or eviscerating a disordered essay structure, and he does not let up. One student refused to trash a paper so bloated with check marks and ”No!”’s that the original writing could no longer be seen. The student could in no way pry the professor’s words off his draft, and he had to walk half a mile to his advisor’s office, the paper burning with all the scarlet ink, before he could decipher what the professor had actually advised him to do.
(This is a parody of the first paragraph of "Living Like Weasels", a short essay by Annie Dillard, which was given to me by Prof. Maria Prendergast, along with an assignment to write an "in the stye of" paragraph. The full citation is this: Dillard, Annie. "Living Like Weasels". From Contemporary Writers of/on Creative Nonfiction, 3rd edition, edited by Robert L. Root, Jr. and Michael Steinberg. Published by Pearson Education, exact location unknown, 2005. This is a completely proper citation and if you complain I will slap you.)
I saved this, and I felt like getting it off my desktop, so here I am putting up the text of the game with annotations. This is a blitz game (3 minutes per side), online, so it's not exactly the spitting image of theoretical chess play. But it was fun. Here it is. I'm White.
(Irving Chernev always said, when your enemy has two options to take one of your pieces, give him a third! I'm going for the slightly less aggressive/insane "let him decide". Plus, if I make him take, the e-file will be clear for my rook/queen.)
(Has there ever been a more perfect opportunity for a kingside attack?! I was thinking "Come on, castle into it, c'mon you magnificent bastard, castle...")
I guess, imagine that there was a popular uprising in Cabinetland (although Cabinetland with an authoritarian regime and a larger army. Somewhere between Cabinetland and Toyduck, although without Toyduck’s immense military strength and with Cabinetland’s wealth). Imagine that the major port cities (some of them) are held by rebel forces, that the King of Cabinetland insists that he’s still in power. Major oil companies have pulled their employees out of Cabinetland, and oil prices are the highest they’ve been in several years. Cabinetlanders are fleeing the country into P.R. and Boxland. The U.N. is wrangling over what should be done, but diplomats worldwide are pushing the King to resign.
And in this latest development, Copperdomian and P.R. military forces are taking up positions offshore. Copperdomian civilians have been evacuated from the country, or their passage out has been facilitated. There’s talk of establishing an international no-fly zone over the country with Copperdomian and P.R. aircraft. Journalists and human rights groups can’t agree on a body count, but it’s anywhere from the hundreds to the thousands. Cabinetland aircraft have been reported as bombing and strafing opposition forces, and Cabinetland helicopters have been trying to destroy opposition radio stations and antennae.
The most significant deviations from reality are 1) the lack of similar uprisings in other, similar countries (maybe protests in Boxland or something?), 2) the presence of a pre-existing Copperdomian military base in Cabinetland and 3) chemical weapons, although we could say the King has them as well as Qaddafi.
You’re in the game, in one of the powers that isn’t Cabinetland. Who would you choose to be, and what would you do?
If I were in my oldposition of Copperdomian Parliamentarian with power to act as President, I'd be simultaneously trying to get the King to step down and evacuate himself and his family from the country (perhaps offering him asylum in Copperdomia, or on our military base) and praying that the revolution ends up as a stable, democratic government. I'd be prepared, though not eager, to send troops into Cabinetland to protect the pipelines and port machinery, so as to get the world's supply of oil flowing again. And I'd be negotiating with P.R. and UFTOP for the the use of their land as staging points for any potential intervention, and with P.R. to see if they'd want to be a military partner.
Let's not forget, either, that everyone would be meeting in the U.N. at this point. I'd be trying to convince everyone to pass resolutions condemning the Cabinetland king's use of excessive force against his citizens, encouraging him to step down for the good of his country, and if it becomes necessary, authorizing the use of military force in Cabinetland through an international task force.
Honestly, though, I wouldn't really have a clue what was going on, and I'd have to be ready at all times to change my plans based on what was happening in Cabinetland. Same as they are right now in the real world.
So last night I watched The Princess and the Frog for my Junior I.S. Hold your envy.
It was a pretty good movie, but the one thing that stood out was the villain's sticky end. Even by Disney standards, this is pretty bad. Dr. Facilier is seized by the hoodoo spirits he's been allied with, pulled into a giant green mask and eaten, and his name and agonized face are inscribed on a nearby tombstone.
But that got me thinking, always a bad thing, and the thought was: was that the worst Disney death? As it turns out, it wasn't even close. Here's a list I've compiled of Disney animated villains and the grisly fates they've met.
And They Say These Fairy Tales Were Cleaned Up For Kids!
Dr. Facilier/The Shadowman, Princess and the Frog: Dragged off screaming into voodoo hell.
Ursula, The Little Mermaid: Stabbed with the jagged prow of a recently resuscitated ship.
Medusa (sort of a Cruella De Vil knockoff), The Rescuers: Left clinging to a stovepipe of her ruined ship, beset by her (former) pet alligators, Brutus and Nero.
McLeach, The Rescuers Down Under: Falls down a 700-foot waterfall.
Scar, The Lion King: Simultaneously attacked by hyenas and burned alive.
The Wicked Queen, Snow White: Nearly electrocuted by a lightning strike, then falls down a mountain to her death.
Sykes, Oliver & Company: Drives his limousine into an oncoming train and is obliterated.
Prince John, Robin Hood: Put to work on a chain gang.
Hades, Hercules: Dragged by lost souls into the pit of said lost souls.
(This isn't a clip of Hades' death, it's a clip of Hades is fucking awesome.)
Shan Yu, Mulan: Hit by a giant rocket, which carries him into a tower full of other rockets and detonates.
Jafar, Aladdin/Return of Jafar: After being turned into a genie in the first movie, Jafar’s lamp is kicked into lava in the second. He is electrocuted before exploding into a cloud of dust. (Bonus: Sa’Luk, the villain from Aladdin and the King of Thieves, is killed when he grabs the Hand of Midas and is turned into gold.)
Ratcliffe, Pocohontas/Pocohontas II: Dragged back to England in chains at the end of the first film, he frees himself in the second but is eventually arrested by the King. (I haven’t seen this one, so I’m not sure about his fate.)
Commander Lyle Rourke, Atlantis: This has to be the single weirdest death. Rourke is stabbed by a magic shard of glass that turns him into a blue, red-veined, golden-eyed soulless monster. He then runs into a giant fan blade (on a flaming blimp that’s rapidly falling out of the sky) and explodes. Whatever’s left of Rourke is then blown to hell and beyond when the blimp, now a gigantic flaming comet, hits earth. And as if he wasn’t sufficiently dead, the crash sets off a volcanic eruption, which drowns Rourke’s blue, shredded, exploded, flaming remains in HOT LAVA. Somebody in the Disney studios really had it in for this guy.
(None of that was made up.)
Frollo, The Hunchback of Notre Dame: Falls from a bell tower and dies.
Ratigan, The Great Mouse Detective: At the end of a balloon chase, Ratigan crashes into Big Ben, along with the titular hero. Ratigan, who makes his way to the outside of the clock tower, falls to his death after the clock strikes midnight and the vibrations shake him off.
Gaston, Beauty and the Beast: Falls to his death from the tower of the Beast’s castle.
Edgar, The Aristocats: Locked in a trunk and mailed to Timbuktu.
Captain Hook, Peter Pan: Last seen swimming like heck into the distance, with a crocodile in hot pursuit. Wikipedia tells me that he does the same thing at the end of Return to Neverland, only with an octopus this time.
Yzma, The Emperor’s New Groove: Changed into a cat and becomes some sort of miniature Wilderness Scout.
Lady Tremaine, Cinderella: Absolutely nothing.
Shere Khan, The Jungle Book: Chased away with his tail on fire, but reappears in the sequel.
Cruella De Vil, 101 Dalmatians: Crashes into a ditch after her hellmobile car is hit by a truck, but is otherwise unharmed.
Maleficent, Sleeping Beauty: Possibly the most awesome of all the deaths. After a protracted battle with Prince Phillip, Maleficent changes into a giant black dragon and is stabbed by Phillip’s magic sword. She tries to crush him, but falls forward and instead breaks a rock ledge, falling to her death in a sea of fire.
Watch the first six minutes. It's like the Ben-Hur chariot scene of Disney movies.
I'm not sure what to say to that, except that falling to one's death is weirdly common (Maleficent, Gaston, Ratigan, Frollo, Rourke, Hades, The Wicked Queen, McLeach). Women also get off relatively easy; four of the seven female villains on here survive past the end of the movie. Nine male villains die, six live and the immortal Hades is dragged into a pit of living death, so count that however you want. The women tend to be motivated by greed (for things such as coats and diamonds), envy of someone's beauty or good looks, or envious of male power. The males are more generally motivated by greed, whether it's for money (McLeach, Rourke) or power (Hades, Scar).
If I Had To Rank the Top Five Worst Deaths/Punishments:
5. Medusa. Medusa's going to die. She's clinging to a stovepipe in the middle of a deserted bayou, without allies and with two hungry alligators waiting for her to fall. She's got no means of transportation, no way to call for help, and sooner or later she's going to be eaten by her former pets. What gets her on this list is the hours and hours of clinging to the stovepipe she'll endure, with the certain knowledge that the alligators are waiting at the bottom, before her exhausted arms finally give in and she falls to her death. That's a horrifying thought.
4. McLeach. Even when I was a kid, I found this scary. He can see the humongous waterfall drop, and he knows he can't get away. That dawning comprehension makes his last moments absolutely terrifying. I mean, damn.
3. Facilier. Pulled, screaming and panicking and trying to make a deal, into the giant mouth of a huge evil mask by his former friends? It takes a lot to top this guy on the list, but we're going to go further...
2. Rourke. No villain on this list can match the ridiculous extreme that Rourke's creators went to to kill him off. 1. Scar. As Rourke might say, "Congratulations, cat! You just won the solid gold Kewpie doll."
Scar loses what he's always wanted, is beaten in a fight by the lion he thought was dead, loses everything he had as king of Pride Rock, then is attacked and eaten alive by his former allies at the same time as he's burned to death by rising flames. That, dear readers, is a fucking hardcore death and it's No. 1 on this list.
