kermit gets homicidal

writers should not underestimate children. i think it's an enormous pity when people treat kids as if they were all sweet but just a little mentally handicapped. as if they were puppies rather than reasoning individuals, albeit small and still developing ones. now, i certainly don' t think that a 5-year-old has my sense of mental acuity, because i am really, really smart. hah! but that kid is probably sharper and more inventive and interested than my 40-year-old high school english teacher who had us watch the tv version of gulliver's travels starring ted danson instead of having us actually read swift and then (egads!) discuss the book. because he hated anyone disagreeing with him and discussion tended to lead to disagreements, he generally opted for lectures composed of historical facts gleaned from textbooks, arranged chronologically, and then deployed via bullet point sentences clearly designed to smother your desire to learn. this method largely succeeded, unless you took enormous pleasure in disrupting class and making a general nuisance of yourself. which i did.

perhaps i'm just bitter about never getting to talk about the complete and total awesomeness of jonathan swift in a classroom setting. but my point is that kids are active and engaged learners who respond not to condecension, but to challenges and activity and, quite frankly, anything interesting whatsoever. treating kids nicely reveals more about the adult than the child.

which is why i am such a huge fan of morbid humor for children. for some reason, people tend to interpret this assertion as either cruel or irresponsible (or both). in fact, the frequent antipathy this opinion generates has led me to develop a boring person litmus test. if you think that kids should be exposed to flowers and rainbows and kittens until they are 21, you are boring and i want nothing to do with you. if you think edward gorey's the gashlycrumb tinies is both art book and illustrated children's story, i may deign to speak with you again. poor you.

morbidity is intellectually challenging - that is what makes it so good for developing minds. it forces you to think and interpret images, events, and relationships counterintuitively. death is funny. death is funny.

the thing is, people who find morbidity to be unsuitable for children generally think morbidity is simply in poor taste for everyone. which means they don't get it. they don't think death is funny. in the right circumstances. here lies an atheist. all dressed up and no place to go.

even if they didn't deploy gorey's kind of overtly violent and ennui-ridden imagery, the best children's entertainers created work tinged with the depressed and morbid. did sesame street ever seem a little strange to you - entertaining, but kind of unsettling, as if there was something you weren't quite getting?



henson had a wonderful, quite, deadpan sense of humor that i still find enormously endearing, especially when it tips into the vaguely offensive. one should not be too serious and one's not-seriousness should not be too upbeat. you end up launching yourself into ashton kutcher humor, and i start gleefully contemplating your demise, turned into a homicidal kermit myself. which is why i love the complete lack of emotion in the narration of henson's films on these coffee commercials. and their "documentaries."





the wonderful thing about henson's creations and, indeed, edward gorey (at first, they seem to have little in common) is their attempt to create stories and characters that will appeal to children and adults in equal measure. morbidity seems to be a good way of bridging this gap, largely because it reduces an occurance that is often complex and loaded with meaning to something very simple. because death is very simple. you are alive and then you are dead. almost anything could precipitate death, thus the hilarity of gorey.

you are unlikely to be assaulted by bears anytime soon, but that's the point. basil's fate is the same as ernest:

and choking on a peach is equated with wallowing in self-absorption and self-pity:

ennui - like being mauled by a bear! it's funny and unnervingly true, especially when one considers the fact that in the case of melancholy, you are the bear mauling you. gently and quietly. these morbid, occasionally cringe-inducing equivalencies often remind me of biblical lessons, whacking you so squarely in the face with a lesson that you might not see it, focused as you are on the stars circling about your head. details. in conclusion, the bible is horribly, excitedly morbid - and often feels geared very much towards children.

so i encourage you to expose your child to the ghastly baby as soon as it emerges from the womb.

news that makes you look normal

strange news stories force you to realize that, no matter how strange you think you are, there are much stranger people out there, and their strangeness is impairing their ability to live life on a day-to-day basis. i collect these stories in a little notebook. they are all earnestly written. the misfortune of others shall quiet my own discord.

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"Taste for Gummies Gets Man in Sticky Situation"

ROGERSVILLE, Tenn. -- Police in Rogersville says a man's taste for gummy fruit chews landed him in a sticky situation.

The Kingsport Times-News reports Rogersville police chased 19-year-old Wesley James Hough as he fled on his motor scooter after taking a Life Savers Gummies pack valued at a little more than $1 from a Dollar General store on Monday.

Hawkins County Sheriff Roger Christian said Wednesday police found meth lab ingredients and components stashed in Hough's yellow motor scooter.

Hough was charged with promotion of manufacturing meth and theft under $500.

He remained in the Hawkins County Jail Wednesday evening on $10,000 bond, with an arraignment set for June 8.

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"Authorities Believe Bug Caused Crash"

Plymouth, IN -- A bug that flew into a moving vehicle, frightening the driver's child, is believed to habe caused the driver to strike a utility pole and telephone junction box Sunday morning.

Marshall County Sheriff's Department investigators said teh driver, Jeffery Parenti, 39, of Plainfold, Ill., told them he was driving his 2002 Ford Excursion eastbound in the 8000 block of 3A Road when the bug flew in one of the open windows an 11:20 a.m. Sunday.

Police said Parenti told them his child became frightened and, when Parenti attempted to capture teh bug, his vehicle went off the road, striking the utility pole and telephone junction box. No injuries were reported.

Parenti, police said, told them he stopped and assessed the damage, saying he's glanced the utility pole with his bumper but did not notice the damage to the junction box. He then left the area.

Bremen Police Department officials located and stopped Parenti to make a report. No charges were filed, according to county police.

There also was no word on whether the bug made it out of the vehicle without injury.

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"Notes on the Olympics"

South Bend, IN -- I have been largely bored by the Olympics, but the one sport that has grabbed me is table tennis. Derided by the ignorant as "ping pong," its grace, speed, and athleticism are a revelation.

I was a teenage prodigy at table tennis, but the other kids at school thought I was just a weirdo. It's not cool - but it's a subtle and wonderful game.

If you're still not quite interested enough to pick up a bat, then read Howard Jacobson's wonderful book, The Mighty Walzer - undoubtedly the only great Jewish table tennis novel ever written. It's almost as much fun as playing.

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note: the initial picture is of an austrian art installation by dutch artist joep van lieshout. it is an oversized skull containing a sauna, with bathtubs and showers located on each side of the neck. the sauna fits 8 people and, when in use, emits steam through the skull's eyesockets.

irony and self-abjurement

the oxford english dictionary defines irony as "a figure of speech in which the intended meaning is the opposite of that expressed by the words used." irony's more specific dramatic meaning includes the "ill-timed or perverse arrival of an event that is in itself desirable . . . a [l]iterary technique in which the audience perceives meanings unknown to the characters."

yet the greek etymological roots of irony point to a worse kind of disingenuity. εἰρωνεία eirōneía which, when translated, roughly equates irony with hypocrisy and pretended ignorance while hinting at an underlying meanspiritedness.

now, i am ironic. not my existence (though that's debatable, i suppose), but irony makes a regular appearance in my general conversation. this often leads to problems. one time, i accidentally convinced a friend of mine that i did, in fact, believe everything pat robertson says. but i never thought about the fact that i simply lived with and among a very irony-receptive audience until i met a girl who did not understand what irony was because she had grown up in spain, where irony apparently does not exist.

as far as i was concerned, this was a vast oversight on the part of the spanish. how could i possibly flee to spain after defaulting on all my college loans now? it's one thing to learn a language and another to learn how to be honest and straightforward all the time and i was, quite frankly, ill-equipped to deal with consistent honesty. fearful, i proceeded to teach quenna how to speak and respond to irony - at her request.

the process began with baby steps - my first directive was to pause whenever anyone said something that sounded . . . untruthful. ridiculous. potentially insulting. if a qualification or a half-hearted, self-satisfied comment did not emerge within 30 seconds or so, the person was either being truthful and was simply weird or they were, in fact, being an unmitigated jerk. potentially, both.

quenna then moved to practicing saying untruths with a straight face. she would wander into my room to tell me that pants were originally meant to be worn on the head as a kind of wrap but migrated south to fend off frostbite. or that the christian right was beginning to make sense to her.

eventually, she graduated to saying the opposite of what she meant, completely deadpan, straight-faced, serious. and then she moved back to spain, where no one would understand this kind of behavior.

so if not the spaniards, who uses irony? i think upper and upper middle-class, college-educated, liberal people are ironic. in that they are ironic and they employ irony to make points, mostly to themselves. fundamentally, i think irony might be a form of verbal and emotional bullying. you're an idiot if you don't get it.

am i a bully? i don't think i come across that way. but i might think you're an idiot if you don't get it.

the brits argue that americans don't understand irony. in that we are far less likely to think that deadpan humor and uncomfortable situations are less funny and more . . . straight-up uncomfortable. this is a fair assessment, i think, if properly qualified. british advertisements employ irony, after all. we've only just begun to steal that particular approach, and our versions of funny-by-not-being-funny ads tend towards existential ennui.

i find that intended american irony falls flat:


whereas unintended irony is mindblowingly hilarious:


though the producers clearly understood the ironic facets of this commercial, the lack of understanding prompted an equally hilarious response:


are americans just naturally funny, in an ironic way? is it because a large number of americans don't really understand what in the world irony is? is laughing at this kind of behavior a way of taking ourselves less seriously, or a method of differentiating ourselves from those who are acting in ways that we perceive as uneducated or heavy-handed or . . . wrong?

the discrepancies between intended and unintended irony would indicate that taking academic courses on irony as a literary device might not be the best way to develop the ironic sensibilities of americans. but just in case, you can now buy papers on irony online:

As the world is becoming more specific, the writing techniques are also becoming more specific. The writers have more variety of literary tools such as allusion, metaphor, symbolism, and irony. Irony is the most common and most efficient technique of the satirist. Since this technique is so popular and being used in many different ways, people do not really understand the true meaning of the word. A clear understanding of the word irony as it applies to literature can be attained by an analysis of its formal, historical, and informal definitions.

alanis morrisette should have read this before asking the world whether rain on your wedding day was ironic.

setting aside the god-awful nature of the language here (this is an a+?), there is a sentence arguing for irony as a "tool," a method of making one's point. and certainly, irony is a literary tool - thus the number of writers who defend it as a necessary and oftentimes immensely illuminating method of conveying information and meaning. david foster wallace is (was) a proponent of irony as a method of stripping away sentimentalism and, in a lot of ways, deconstructing complexity. as he writes, "the great thing about irony is that it splits things apart, gets up above them so we can see the flaws and hypocrisies and duplicates."

this is an interesting observation, although i do not necessarily agree with his interpretation. after all, is irony not also a method of obscuring one's meaning? is it not a veil used to deflect criticism and interrogation, a method of self-abjurement? a way of not taking responsibility for one's opinions and conclusions? and can we trust a man who proclaimed irony to be king and then proceeded to kill himself?

apparently, there are then two versions of irony - using irony and viewing or interpreting events through the lens of irony. i suspect that i tend towards the latter, which is why i find most everything to be at least a little humorous. irony is my way of not taking myself or the world too seriously. as jessamyn west asserts, "a taste for irony has kept more hearts from breaking than a sense of humor, for it takes irony to appreciate the joke which is on oneself." though her differentiation between humor and irony seems a bit like pedantic hair-splitting to me.

instead, perhaps jean stafford is correct in correct in noting that "irony is, i feel, a very high form of morality." although maybe she was being ironic.

the lord knows

i wonder if the old person who wrote this note apologizes for the sins of others when he or she goes to confession.

in love with elvis perkins

if you ever get a chance to go see elvis perkins in dearland live, you must do it. it will be an unadulteratedly joyful experience. he writes songs that make your heart feel like it's going to explode.

from ash wednesday:


from elvis perkins in dearland:


part of me didn't want to post this, wanted to keep the music a secret somehow, something that was mine in my pocket. oh, well. silly, since he's been on letterman.

faster, pussycat!

i love kitsch movies - those b horror films that develop cult followings of both the socially withdrawn and the overly intellectualized collectors of arcane trivia. i am firmly in the latter category, while also occasionally allowing my feet to dip into the former group during fits of self-absorbed melancholy.

as moving (to new york, to london, to virginia) is especially likely to trigger acute feelings of ennui or overconfidence, one of the first things i do post-move is find the weirdest film showing in local theaters and straightaway go see it.

in london, the film happened to be faster, pussycat! kill! kill! this was extremely exciting, since i'd been meaning to see russ meyer's 1965 cult classic for the better part of a decade, having spent hour upon hour watching other b-film horror flicks during a couple high school summers. stuff like attack of the 50 foot woman and plan 9 from outer space and (my favorite title) amazon women on the moon at a tiny family-run theater briefly reopened in the hopes of finally attracting an audience in staid northern indiana. valiantly rallying whenever the weather warmed and weird high school kids began milling around, the theater closed about two months after each opening. apparently, the weird kids were going elsewhere. i generally sat alone, near the front, after having chatted with the elderly couple who practically set up camp in the third row from the back.

london had a much larger weird theater and film selection - so faster pussycat! kill! kill! it was. the south end theater was just as small, but it clearly had a devoted following and, with its red couches, cigarette stench, and basement feel, fit the film. mildly louche!

though faster pussycat! kill! kill! revelled in its disreputability. don't race the fastest PUSSYCATS - they'll beat you - to DEATH! what a tag line!

faster pussycat! kill! kill! begins with a voiceover proclaiming:

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to violence. The word and the act. While violence cloaks itself in a plethora of disguises, its favorite mantle still remains... sex. Violence devours all it touches, its voracious appetite rarely fulfilled. Yet violence doesn't only destroy, it creates and molds as well. Let's examine closely then this dangerously evil creation, this new breed encased and contained within the supple skin of woman. The softness is there, the unmistakable smell of female, the surface shiny and silken, the body yielding yet wanton. But a word of caution: handle with care and don't drop your guard. This rapacious new breed prowls both alone and in packs, operating at any level, any time, anywhere, and with anybody. Who are they? One might be your secretary, your doctor's receptionist... or a dancer in a go-go club!

wherein we turn to said go-go bar, where the three anti-heroines pole dance. but this is not thrill enough - looking for greater excitement, they hop into their tiny sports cars and drag race across the desert. embodying a number of fabulous stereotypes, blonde bimbo billie, vaguely ethnic and agressive lesbian rosie, and leather-clad dominatrix varla are also overtly male. they are violent, domineering, sexual, competitive, and congenitally enraged.

the best part of this film is the snarky innuendo that laces every line of dialogue. check it:

Gas Station Attendant: [staring at Varla's chest as he pumps gas] Just passing through, huh? Boy, that motor's sure hot! You gals really must have been moving on these little machines. Yessir, the thrill of the open road. New places, new people, new sights of interest. Now that's what I believe in, seeing America first!
Varla: You won't find it down there, Columbus!

aaah, the ever-present parallel between women and cars! a lot of "body work" talk, a lot of "look under the hood" suggestions, a lot of "great headlights" commentary. cheeky!

yet also more than simply cheeky. this is a film that equates sex and violence. embrace one and you embrace the other. neither proactive sexuality nor violence was associated with women until the late 1960s - women were simply not as sexual as men, and because men tended to employ violence in defense of the sexual sanctity of their women (as well as their own heterosexuality), women eschewed violence as well.

given rape and domestic violence data, the link between sex and violence ought not shock us as much as it does - and though meyers' film is certainly not feminist, it raises a number of questions about the ways in which depictions and constructions of sexuality are intertwined with the right to violence.

not to over-theorize the film or anything. it's a booberific cult classic, after all. these are former playboy bunnies we're talking about.

the trailer ---->



this is a great movie. i'd rather not reveal the murky and completely nonsensical plotline, but my favorite part of faster, pussycat! kill! kill! is possibly the sexualized fried chicken dinner near the end of the film. it is truly masterful.

you must see this film.

The Old Man: Women! They let 'em vote, smoke and drive - even put 'em in pants! And what happens? A Democrat for president!

hobo chic

riddle me this - why do strange "fashion" trends occur in a recession? does the recession simply allow women to get more creative when it comes to making imprudent and unnecessary purchases? is it just more of a challenge to our innate instinct to make ourselves look like someone other than ourselves? or does someone out there look more like themselves with fake eyelashed glued to her lids? is there a male equivalent of this tendency? are they simply buying more cost-effective aftershave? did they restrain themselves from purchasing that chicago bulls logo-emblazoned laz-e-boy with built-in cup holders? oh man - i want that chair. but not with the bulls logo. the bulls suck.

enough questions. to the numbers! you can't argue with numbers (social science!), though they are courtesy of the guardian, so we're really looking at the british version of this bizarre phenomenon.

Fashion products flourishing in the downturn:

Selfridges
Sales of false eyelashes are up 30%. Demand is such that it is setting up a lash bar in the London store this month. Watch sales are also up 30%: Toywatch is one of the highest performers.

John Lewis
Accessories are doing great business - branded handbags are selling extremely well, with Osprey and Lulu Guinness bags up 58% and 42% respectively. Gucci sunglasses sales were up 19% on last year.

ASOS
Top sellers for the first three months of 2009 include bow design (£29.50) and jazz-print dresses (£37.50), with 12,000 sold in all. Shoes are also doing well.

Superdrug
Sales of hair dye are up 17%, as are manicure and pedicure tools. Nail polish remover sales have risen 13% compared with 2008.

Harvey Nichols
Fragrance sales are very strong, particularly older heritage brands such as Baghari and Creed, as customers prioritise quality over quantity.

now, there are a few trends that i think i understand. for instance, shoes. everyone needs shoes, excepting members of that crazy cultlike (hippie?) group who refuse to wear shoes - apparently their only protest against modernization and all the accompanying totally awesome stuff you can plug into outlets and play with for hours without speaking to another soul. a woman at grinnell attempted to explain the shoeless rationale to me while i was standing in the dining hall line once, but i stopped listening after about 30 seconds, right around when she was launching into some getting-back-to-nature diatribe. taking off your shoes is hardly getting back to nature. i refuse to take you seriously until you stop annoying people while waiting to get into a cavernous heated dining hall, so you can eat things prepared with electricity-sucking equipment and then stuck under heat lamps. you are not worthy to kiss the feet of the amish. those people are badasses. i once watched them erect a barn the size of new hampshire in three days.

either way, these are not amish consumers. these are regular jills. so what about manicure and pedicure tools? hair dye? sunglasses? are these faceless consumers attempting to disguise themselves in order to escape debt collectors and the irs? are all the new handbags for storing the dozens of passports, driver's i.d.s and social security cards necessary to evade capture by the government? is bernie madoff entirely responsible for the bump in fake lashes sales?


"In the economic downturn, it's important for consumers to look for chic and cheap deals in unusual places. The message to consumers is clear: recession chic is possible. Just take the time to compare prices and make good choices and you can still treat yourself well. . . . The brilliant colours and patterned fabrics in [this] collection will cheer up anyone suffering from the recession's gloom."

sold.