What's in a Name? Or, the New Crusoe

Andre Bernard's written a great nonfiction book about the process by which different books got their title, and the work is aptly named, Now all we need is a Title. Bernard implies that an important component of a work's commercial value, even in the case of great works of literature, is in the title. What if F. Scott Fitzgerald got his way, and The Great Gatsby was instead Trimalchio in West Egg? What if Hitler's pithily titled Mein Kampf had been titled Four and a half years of Struggle against Lies, Stupidity, and Cowardice? If The Mill on the Floss were called St. Ogg's on the Floss (Who in their right mind would name their kid, or their saint, Ogg?)? If Peter Benchley had followed his father's advice, rejected Jaws and called it What's that Noshin' on My Laig instead?

This has caused me to wonder if perhaps Daniel Defoe's second sequel to Robinson Crusoe, Serious Reflections of Robinson Crusoe, might have been less of a commercial flop if he had chosen a better title. Defoe actually wrote two sequels to Robinson Crusoe. The first was titled Farther Adventures (published 1719), in which Crusoe returns to his island and even travels to the Far East. Believe it or not, it went through seven printings by 1747 (the first book had gone through nine), so its sales were comparable to the first work. In 1720, Defoe published his second sequel, Serious Reflections, whose sales were so stunningly not spectacular that no single editions were published after 1720.

Now, the easy answer to why Serious Reflections had bad sales is to say that it was boring. After all, it's only a collection of essays: essays on solitude, on honesty, on propriety in conversation, on the present state of religion, on listening to Providence, on the proportion between the Christian and pagan world, and a "Vision of the Angelick world." But I think the real problem is not what's inside: rather, it is the lack of a glossy cover and cool title. What if, instead of calling it "Serious Reflections," Defoe had opted for something more exciting, like, "Crusoe III: This Time, He's out for Blood," or "Crusoe in Space." Wouldn't you be more likely to pick the book up?

In addition to a cool title, you could really dramatize the content with an exciting blurb. Below is a sample. I should note that what the blurb describes really does happen in the book! I am not endorsing the events; I am merely pointing out their commercial (and controversial) appeal.

This is Crusoe as you've never seen him before. Thrill to Crusoe's detailed description of sodomy of the tongue, including tips on incest and how to remove clothes with your tongue! (105, 108) In the grips of insanity, Crusoe strikes out at those he most loves ... even his parrot! ("Vision," 9) Crusoe unfold a sweeping plan for a religious jihad to wipe out the Muslim faith! (248) Crusoe travels into outer space, sees the planets, and even Satan! ("Vision," 26, 31, 32) You'll hear about English cannibalism (121) and even celestial hedghogs (137)! When it comes to contemplative essays on religion and the world, Crusoe says, "No momma's boys need apply!"

Now, you're probably thinking that I'm grossly misrepresenting the work, and I am. This is what effective advertising does. All my blurb claims have been painstakingly referenced in case of lawsuit. It's not that much different from the misleading Gilmore Girls advertisement that makes you think Rory had sex with her boyfriend, but you learn from the episode itself that it's really her friend Paris who did. With someone who wasn't Rory's boyfriend. Of course, Rory later had sex anyway, but that was at least a season later. Dean was the wrong man for her, why couldn't she see that? Why? And Dean, what was he thinking, how could he do that to his wife? Anyway, the moral of the story is that, sometimes, it's not what's on the inside that counts, but what's on the glossy cover.

My Two Cents

The psalmist once wrote to God, “When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers … what is man that you are mindful of him?” That is, given the vast bigness, and by bigness, I mean hugeness, of the farthest reaches of space, what’s the big deal about this whole humanity thing?

If even humans feel hard-pressed to justify their existence when they can do cool things like talk and be sentient, how much more so must a two-cent stamp feel unable to justify itself when it can neither talk nor be sentient? They have no heroic Horton to hear them. Of course, part of the reason is that they cannot speak, but the other part of the reason is that there is no talking elephant. I must be their talking elephant.

A common objection to the two-cent stamp is that it is puny. “Look at you,” the naysayer says, “You are puny. My thumb could squash you.” Yet can it? Stamps are robustly squash-resistant, even more than talking elephants. Even before you’re finished squashing them, they mysteriously bounce back to their original shape, like Mr. Fantastic. This suggests that, far from being puny, they are in fact super-heroes, to whom we owe our very lives. “You are puny, you epitome of musclelessness. My thirty-nine cent stamp could kick your butt,” the other naysayer says. But can it? To the naked eye, as well as to the clothed one, we see that the two types of stamps are virtually identical: both are the same dimensions, both fashioned out of the same crude materials, both have pictures of nouns on them. By denigrating the two-cent stamp, we unwittingly reject the 39 cent stamp, and consequently the very possibility of human communication over distance.

Despite these stamp similarities, a potential counterargument is that the addition of the dinky number 2 on it somehow diminishes the grandeur and rampant potency that would otherwise be the two cent stamp. However, this is ultimately akin to saying that King Kong would be less primal, a less ferocious ball of growly energy, if you gave him two additional heads. In fact, without the two-cent stamp, the thirty-seven cent stamp is nothing better than a fraud. The two-cent stamp is that push over the edge that separates the men from the boys, the tea parties from the Boston tea parties. As noted in This is Spinal Tap, a stereo sound system is not much good if its volume only goes up to ten, not eleven; similarly, what good is a thirty-seven cent stamp if it only goes up to thirty-seven?

At the same time that the two cent stamp completes the thirty-seven cent stamp, it also offers us a way of “sticking it to the man.” “How is this?” asks the naysayer. “Is not adding a 2 cent stamp to a 37 cent stamp offering tacit endorsement and acquiescence to the recent postal rate increase?” Now, it is easy for someone to think this sort of thing. But if we think this way, we miss the truly revolutionary and subversive character involved in using a 2 cent stamp. A 2 cent stamp, you see, used to be the normal cost of sending a letter, back in the olden days. By using the 2 cent stamp, you remind the post office of what it used to be, back before it got expensive and forgot about its responsibilities to the little man. It’s kind of like writing in the top right hand corner of the envelope, “You piece of crap sell-out postal services, I hate you! Drop the cost to 2 cents again right this instant!” I think we can all agree that’s pretty subversive. It’s like a triple-dog dare, saying, “I defy you, monument to postal decadence, not to send this letter,” and at least nine times out of ten, you can cow the post office into submission and delivery of the letter despite your unfettered expression of rage. With that two cent stamp, you not only successfully send a message to your friend, but you send a message to the post office that they are evil. For this reason, I recommend that you never buy 39 cent stamps and horde 37 cent stamps instead. This means that, even five years from now, each letter you mail can communicate your hatred to the post office once, twice, perhaps (given recent rate increases) five times with the same letter!

In closing, I would like to give a shout-out to those places that sell two-cent stamps. I do not know who they are. I do know that they are not Osco or Meier. Here’s a big shout out to places that are not these places!

When Frogs Play RPGs

By Wibbity Wubbity.

I was sitting on top of a computer monitor the other day, when Leopoldtulip called my attention to an interesting web site. After the eccentric cartoonist Jack Chick drew a tract called "Dark Dungeons" attacking role-playing games (RPGs), someone had written a Mystery Science Theater 3000 style commentary exposing the tract's inaccuracies. It's very funny, and you can see the commentary here. In looking at the MST3k parody, however, I was surprised at the number of inaccuracies that the commentator missed, so I will now address them.

I suppose I should mention that, in real life, I am a frog. I also have hair. On Friday nights, I often role-play with my friends. One of the things that surprised me was that, in Jack Chick's pamphlet, everyone playing the game was human. I've role-played with dozens of groups, and let me tell you, it never happens.

I was also surprised by the storyline. Traditionally, role-playing is set against the backdrop of a post-apocalyptic world in which the only hope for survival is mutated frog cyborgs. Customary names include "Amphibitron" and "Frogonitar," not "Blackleaf" and "Elfstar." Usually, the goal is to find the dark overlord Flybertok and to eat him before he can effect completion of the Death Lilypad. Prophecy says that when Flybertok has been eaten the seventh time, all our bodies will be transformed, and we will sprout wings and return to our home, the planet Ribithia.

As for the whole dark magic thing ... never happens. I will admit that I was in one game where I was asked to pray to the Egyptian frog goddess Heqet. However, that was because a giant pigeon had shot me with a petrification gun, and I was pregnant at the time. Well, I lost the baby, and I had to become androgynous anyway in order to repopulate the species, so it's not as if Heqet was actually listening. However, I did learn that it was better to role-play male characters rather than female ones, since males can't get impregnated by parasite DNA.

I'd like to buy a word, Pat

The Online Etymology Dictionary has recently made available the option to "Sponsor a Word." If there's a word in the English language you've always sort of had a hankering for claiming the etymological privileges of, now's your shot! For just $10, for six months, you are added as a sponsor of the word and can place a message of 100 words or less, plus your picture! See http://www.etymonline.com/working/deal.php

Cool as this is, the "Star Registry" is even cooler--you get a star named after you and a neat booklet all about your star. In the twenty-first century, colonialism and slavery are just not viable options, so it's nice to know that even if we can not control our fellow human beings, we can still buy the farthest reaches of space and leave a permanent mark on them (or, at least, a permanent mark on a little piece of paper).

It strikes me that the "online etymological dictionary" could learn a little bit about marketing from the star registry. Part of the limitation for the dictionary is that, even if the star registry can (apparently) buy a patent on stars, you can't really buy a patent on a word. Or can you? The problem is that the dictionary only offers the etymology of words that are already in common usage. Since I am a graduate student in need of money, I am selling off some words that are not in common usage, along with their etymology. For a small fee, I will be happy to name any of these words after you. For a little more, you will also possess full etymological rights to the word. Look at the fine selections below!

educodomophile: A person who doesn't like to stay at home. (L. educere "bring out," from ex- "out" + ducere "to lead." L. domus, "house." Gk. philos, "loving.")

Pinguisphobia: a fear of fertile men. (L. pinguis, "fat, oil, sleek; fertile." Gk. phobos, "fear," originally "flight.")

belbelgbot: a possessor of a belly button. This can refer to a person born with a belly button, or someone who has purchased another person's through the Star Registry's parent company, the Belly Registry. ( Akkad. Belu, lit. "lord, owner, master." O.E. belg, "leather bag, purse, bellows," root for "belly." O.Fr. boton "a button, bud.")

King Kong: It was Vaudeville Killed the Beast

Last night, my wife and I saw Peter Jackson's King Kong movie, and I was rather impressed. I do think that they went a little overboard in the Jurassic Park look-alike contest, but I suppose they had to say, "Look what I can do!" to validate the re-make. It is somewhat disturbing that Jackson, former director of Lord of the Rings, has made his African natives look like orcs. Nevertheless, if you neglect the potentially offensive bits, it's good stuff.

One of the best improvements over the original is that the female lead, Ann Darrow, has some depth. In the original, all she seemed to do was scream. Admittedly, Jackson's Ann screams a lot too, but it's more understandable, since she has three T-rexes trying to eat her at the time. In the re-make, it feels like Ann has a much more complex background--the movie starts with a great parallel montage between scenes of her in a vaudeville act singing about how great life is and scenes of the Great Depression with people rooting through the garbage for something to eat. After she loses her job, the casting director sees Ann in a reflection and wants to hire her because she was the "saddest thing he'd ever seen." She answers that he's wrong about her, because she wants to make people laugh. In the movie, she ends up doing both.

Now, in the original, I didn't quite buy that King Kong, receiver of beautiful female sacrifices up the wazoo, can't find any of them remotely beautiful except the one white girl he gets. It would have had some plausibility if the girl were a redhead, like my wife, but a blond? I think not. As noted above, all the girl in the original can do is scream. Now, I have a cat that meows a lot, and let me tell you, if you have a noisy creature around, you become more inclined to eat its flesh, not less. If I were Kong, I would have eaten the girl, and ended up better off, I might add.

In the remake, Kong's herbivorous impulse seems more reasonable. At the opportune moment for King Kong to eat Ann, she does a vaudeville pratfall and plays dead, surprising Kong. She then realizes she can make it into a bit of a game, and does various acrobatics to amuse him. King Kong starts laughing, and even plinks her a couple of times. After repeatedly plinking her, she yells at him to stop--"No means no"--and he throws a little fit that involves hitting mountains and getting rocks to fall on his head, but he never harms her.

It reminds me of the joke about the cannibal who refused to eat a clown, because he tasted funny. If someone makes us laugh, we're more inclined not to eat him or her. It makes me wonder if, when my cats are running around the house, making weird noises, and seeming insane, perhaps they are not insane at all; perhaps I have done something to make them suspect I'm thinking about eating them, so they are doing a kitty vaudeville act in the hopes it will satiate my bloodlust.

In addition to Ann's pratfalls, there's a great scene in New York when King Kong takes her to the iced-over lake, repeatedly falls, and both of them are laughing. In fact, many of the most "human" moments between the two of them involve laughter of some sort. Well, okay, those are the only two I can think of, but they were pivotal. Aristotle remarks, "Of all living creatures, only man is endowed with laughter." Kong's ability to laugh humanizes him and is what enables their relationship to grow.

At the end of the movie, the director who hired Ann surveys Kong's dead body and concludes, "It was beauty killed the beast"--that is, Kong loved Ann so much that he kept hanging out on the empire states building getting his butt kicked by helicopters until he was killed. But since the movie clearly presents the director as a scumbag, I think we need to question his assessment. Kong was not slain by "beauty"--he's probably eaten quite a few beautiful African maidens in his day. No, he was slain by vaudeville and the transformative power of comedy. He has traded in his bananas for the banana peel.

There are many ways in which Kong can also be seen as a tragic hero with a tragic flaw, since it is his affection for Ann that proves his undoing. While we might be tempted to privilege this tragic aspect over the comedy, the reason that Kong holds such tragic power is because he was first drawn to Ann's comedy. In the remake, tragedy and comedy are deeply intertwined--while Ann's pratfalls comically mimic death (as when she "plays dead" and then jumps back up), they foreshadow Kong's own tragic fall to his death from the empire state's building. The Kong who humorously fell on the ice is the Kong who, fifteen minutes later, will fall and never get up. The blog entry that was intended to be funny borders on the serious. One of the characters remarks while reading Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness, "This isn't just an adventure story, is it?" King Kong itself becomes more than just an adventure story by intermingling the comic with the tragic, while Kong himself becomes both funny and sad, the tragic hero slain by a killing joke.

Something to Chew on

Last Sunday, there was a guest preacher speaking on II Kings 6:8-23. It's a passage in which the King of Aram is at war with Israel and decides to kill Elisha, the prophet of God. Elisha asks God to let his control-freak friend see that there are invisible armies of God surrounding them. Elisha then asks God to strike the Arameans with blindness, then leads them to the king of Israel. The king of Israel says, "Can I kill 'em, Elisha? Can I, can I, pretty please? I'll be your best friend and stop trying to kill you." Elisha says, "No, let's throw a big feast for them, then let them go." So, the Arameans leave and stop raiding.

The preacher's application of the passage was to the effect that, rather than being mean to people you don't like (or who don't like you), why not invite them over for a meal? It could help establish a deep friendship.

Well, I was feeling pretty psyched about the idea of inviting people over and getting my wife to cook for all of them, but I was a little curious if the Arameans showed up again in II Kings--maybe Israel would be under attack, and a bunch of Arameans say, "Hey, weren't those the guys who fed us once? Who's up for a little carnage and possibly our own deaths? Let's go save them!" So, I took a look. It turns out they do show up again, in the very next part of the chapter. Three years pass, and a famine is ravaging Samaria (a region in ancient Israel), so the Arameans decide to starve the people out. The King of Israel rides by to wave hello to the various starving people, and a woman cries out, "Help me, my lord the king!" Ever the sweet-talker, the king replies, "If the Lord's not helping you, how am I?" Knowing the king's soft spot, she gives her sob story: she had her son over for dinner ... I mean that in the most cannibal sense possible.

My first thought while reading this later passage was that the sermon was much more inspiring if you didn't read it. The whole, "Feed your enemies and preserve their lives, so that later they can starve you until you are driven to eat your own children" is a little new for me. But after further thought, I like to think that the sermon's basic message is not only salvagable, but more challenging in context. Sure, I'm all over the "shrewd manager" parable (Luke 16:1-9) where you give away someone else's money so you can make friends and have power, but "Love your enemies, even if they trample over you" is harder to do. And it's significant that God doesn't abandon the Samarians in the siege: God delivers them in the next chapter (II Kings 7:7). I like to think that an indirect application of the chapter as a whole is that, "No matter how hard things get, God is still protecting you, so please do not eat your own children, or anyone else's, even if they are Arameans."

Why Dracula Isn't Scary

Children are often scared (or not scared) by odd things. At around the age of five, my favorite movie was Dracula, and I watched him gleefully appear on the screen. In contrast, the movie that scared me so much I could not watch it all the way through was the cartoon Dot and the Kangaroo, because Dot and the Kangaroo discover mysterious cave ruins with cave drawings of a creature called the "bunyip." The movie never even actually shows this mysterious bunyip personage, leaving my parents moderately baffled why I ran out of the room each time the movie was in danger of making a passing reference to the bunyip.

At this point in my graduate student career, I like to think that these childhood fears indicate I had already grasped (at a rudimentary level) an awareness of the sublime as defined by Burke and explicated by Radcliffe. In her essay "The Supernatural in Poetry," Anne Radcliffe, a pioneer of the Gothic, distinguishes between two types of fear, "terror" and "horror." According to Radcliffe, "Horror" is associated with the graphic and the certain--for example, Dracula sucking blood. Granted, she doesn't mention Dracula, but trust me, the blood was graphic, and it was way cool! "Terror," however, is associated with the uncertain and obscure, what cannot be seen. Terror is the bunyip hidden beneath your bed. Terror is the poisonous iocaine powder that is tasteless, odorless, but smellable if you are an expert tracker. Terror is an invisible six-feet tall rabbit named Harvey looming menacingly over you and making invisible threatening motions at you in a bunny-like manner.

Radcliffe goes on to make the startling claim that "They must be men of very cold imaginations ... with whom certainty is more terrible than surmise....neither Shakspeare nor Milton by their fictions, nor Mr. Burke by his reasoning, anywhere looked to positive horror as a source of the sublime." To paraphrase Radcliffe: "They must be children of very cold imaginations ... with whom Dracula is more terrifying than Dot and the Kangaroo.... Dot and the Kangaroo is a source of the sublime, and therefore not appropriate for children under the age of ten." (In Edmund Burke's philosophy, the "sublime" was associated with fear and a sense of awe, and is thus distinct from "beauty," which is more pleasing.) I think the moral we should draw from all of this is that, when children are capable of deep thought and imaginative power, we need to show them movies with a lot of graphic violence and dismemberment so they aren't scared.

Introducing ... Wibbity Wubbity!

“There is nothing more dreadful to an author than neglect, compared with which reproach, hatred, and opposition, are names of happiness.” -Samuel Johnson

Now that I have had a blog for a few months now, I have noticed a veritable dearth of outrage and/or nominations of me for president. I have not had one lawsuit from USAirways. The Boswell estate has not accused me of defamation of character. The hymn I composed in my sleep, “God Give Muscles to the BoyTM,” has not been picked up by a major record label. This blog, this fledging enterprise that is my weirdness on display, thirsts for raging controversy, thirsts to be listed on blogger.com’s “blogs of note” and having 60 billion comments for every post I write.

Through my study of great literature, I have realized how I can obtain more comments. In retrospect, it’s so obvious I don’t know why I didn’t think of it before: I can write the comments myself. For example, when Samuel Richardson wrote his eighteenth-century bestseller Pamela, the introduction provided ecstatic praise of the book, much of which was written by Richardson himself. When James Boswell published his correspondence with Erskine in the Erskine-Boswell Letters, the concluding paragraph of The London Chronicle’s review begins, “Upon the whole, we would recommend this collection as a book of true genius, from the authors of which we may expect many future agreeable productions”—the review, of course, was written by James Boswell (the eventual writer of Life of Johnson). If I wish to generate controversy with my posts, what better way than by manufacturing my own critic? The playwright Tom Stoppard once commented, “dialogue is the only respectable way of contradicting yourself”; a natural corollary is that the only respectable way of being contradicted is if you are the one writing the contradictions.

I have long enjoyed the eighteenth-century Spectator letters, a periodical with a daily essay—i.e., they were written in a prototypical blog format. The letters were framed as the product of a social club composed of different personality types, with such noteworthy personages as Sir Roger De Coverley, Sir Andrew Freeport, and Will Honeycomb. Well, world, prepare yourself for … Wibbity Wubbity!

With origins shrouded in mystery, with a future so important that it may determine the salvation or destruction of the world, Wibbity Wubbity is a baffling enigma, a Rubik’s cube with the colored stickers removed. His beliefs, his desires, his political affiliations, all are mysteries, all can only be discovered through reading his comments … and engaging with them. In future blog entries, I may acquaint you with some of Wibbity Wubbity’s friends, and may even allow them to write on occasion.

ADD--or Ruthless Efficiency?

I was very hyperactive as a child. When I have recited various childhood activities--such as attending a spaghetti dinner where I repeatedly accidentally kicked the woman across from me because I couldn't sit still--my wife has attributed this behavior to ADD (Attention Deficit Disorder). She thinks I still have ADD now. For instance, one of her family members posted a link for an ADD test. I started the test--the very long test--and by the first five minutes, I was able to infer from the questions what the common attributes of ADD were, as well as to realize that I have never suffered from this malady. Now, I could have spent twenty more minutes to confirm something that I already knew, but what would be the point of wasting the time? So, I stopped the test in the middle, which my wife still brings up as confirmation that I have ADD.

I have been thinking about her charge, and the more I think about it, the more firmly I decree that I do not have ADD, but REP (Ruthless Efficiency Power), which can sometimes be mistaken for ADD. People with ADD often lack control over their attention span; people with REP, on the other hand, can control their attention span just fine, but they voluntarily refuse to concentrate on things that are stupid, useless, or over which they have already achieved a competent mastery. (Admittedly, I have not researched ADD in order to establish this distinction, but since I have REP and obtained mastery over ADD through taking the ADD test, I refuse to concentrate on researching ADD further.) Far from being a "weakness," REP is a testimony to practicioners' astute judgment in discerning how to spend their time most efficiently and effectively.

A noteworthy recent example of this ruthless efficiency: when I was playing "Final Fantasy: Mystical Quest" (see last entry), I noticed that every battle scenario involved me hitting the "A" button for "battle," then the "A" button for hit, then the "A" button for "continue," then the "A" button for "battle," etc. Sure, after my character was poisoned in battle, I might want to select the "heal" button so that I could cure him of poison, but if I did that, he'd just get poisoned again within two turns, so why not just have him grin and bear it? Then, my character would win the battle, and I'd just click on the A button so he could fight the next battle, and the cycle would repeat. So, I did what any self-respecting REP person who was also a graduate student would do: I got out a book and read while I kept hitting the A button. Occasionally I would glance up at the screen to confirm that my character was not yet dead, or that he still hadn't rescued any maidens yet, and then go back to reading. I think keeping my brain occupied with a book actually enabled me to play the game longer than someone who had nothing to do but press the "A" button; game play productivity actually went up, as did my scholarly activity. Far from treating this as a "disorder," we should acknowledge it for the gift that it is. It's time that we no longer give REP the bad rep of ADD.

Dance Against Materialism

Now that we’re back in the undisclosed location that is our actual home, I figured I’d write another entry.

We have a tradition when we visit my wife’s family for Christmas and summer break. This tradition involves my going into her brother’s room and playing his computer games so that I’ll never have to buy them. Sadly, he has decided to actualize his potentiality by getting his own apartment, taking his computer with him. Since it would have been morally wrong not to continue the tradition despite a minor obstacle, I decided to switch to the family’s Super Nintendo.

Since I have never owned my own Nintendo, the whole fine motor skill development thing posed a bit of a problem for me, such as in the “Jurassic Park” game, where I kept accidentally jumping into the dinosaur’s mouth. Happily, I discovered “Final Fantasy: Mystical Quest,” which was turn-based (rather than real time), so I didn’t have to be coordinated. My carefully formulated strategy was to sit there, click on the “A” button when the “battle” option showed up, then click on it again when the “hit” option showed up. Eventually, when I realized I was about to die, I’d just have my character return to town, where he could take a nap, and then wake up, miraculously good as new!

Now, I expected that by playing on an antediluvian game system, I would rediscover the simpler pleasures in life—I would be reminded that all you really need to be happy is a computer with an 8-bit microprocessor and CGA graphics, that there is a priceless childlike joy that can be satiated by something as simple as Super Mario Brothers 1. And 2. And 3. And Super Mario Kart. And Super Mario World. But what this game taught me that even after I had lowered my expectations for childlike happiness, I was still missing the excitement that ought to come simply with getting up in the morning. Now, I cannot count the number of times that I have gotten out of bed in the morning without doing a dance of joy. So imagine my surprise when, after my character goes to sleep after suffering some rather debilitating head injuries … he jumps out of the bed and starts to celebrate by dancing around! (I’m not making this up.) And this is not the only occasion for which he dances. For instance, when he is meeting a complete stranger who agrees to join him on his quest, he does his little dance again. Now, I cannot count the number of friends I have for whom I have never done a dance of joy over their befriending me. I bet you can’t either. What kind of world do we live in that encourages you to dance when you win the lottery but considers you insane to dance over a new friend?

The game is indeed aptly named: it is indeed a fantasy world, where people are satisfied with a good night’s sleep and with a new companion to help them slay the dangerous Minty-Minty. It is indeed a “mystical quest” because it seeks for something beyond the material world—beyond the materialistic world—for its gratification. The game reminds us that what matters in life is not possessions like a Nintendo Gamecube or Sega Genesis, but the people around us. What matters in life is not something to keep us entertained but something to put us to sleep, like a bed, or perhaps a blog entry. What matters most is that you invent a dance in my honor and compose canticles about how great I am. That’s what friendship—and the simpler pleasures of life—is all about.

Emotional Baggage

I thought I was over USAirways losing our luggage and making me wallow in my own filth for a day. Really, I thought I was. But yesterday, we had a graduate student friend who's on the job market and has several interviews around here, so we offered to pick him up from the airport. He was flying in from (surprise, surprise!) USAirways.

Since the USAirways web site denied any knowledge of the flight number I was given, I called the phone number listed on their website at 1-800-438-4322. I have to say that their automated system is the very friendliest I have ever heard. When you dial the number, there is disco music in the background, and a woman invites you sexily, "Call 1-800-918-TALK. That's 1-800-918-T-A-L-K. Just 99 cents per minute," before hanging up on you each time. While this was certainly the friendlier phone line, apparently 1-800-428-4322, the number listed in the phone book, provides more practical information.

Well, when my wife and I drove my parents' car to pick up my friend, we couldn't help but reminisce about our own trip just a few days ago. Once our friend got in and we were waiting for his bags, we exchanged pleasantries. By "pleasantries," I mean offering inquiries into his trip which would enable me to show my own travel scars. "Where did you fly in from? Oh, from Chicago, that's where we flew in from, where there was a lot of bad weather. Did you have trouble making your connecting flight? What a coincidence, so did we. We were supposed to have a four hour layover, but the flight was delayed so long that when we landed, my wife had to run to the bathroom, and I had literally to run to a fast food place so we could grab a dinner to eat on the plane. Do you see your baggage yet? You know, when we were waiting at a baggage retrieval system at this airport, we didn't see our baggage yet either, because they never put it on our connecting flight to begin with, and we had to wait for them to send it in the 'morning,' by which they meant, our bags would not arrive at my parents' house until after dinnertime the next day."

Now, a funny thing happened while we were standing there, waiting for his bags to come in. By, "a funny thing happened," I really mean, "a thing failed to happen," namely, his bags showing up. This whole experience of seeing someone else lose their luggage from USAirways is like same-life deja vu. It's sort of like if you read the book of Genesis, and Abraham is pretending that Sarah is really his sister, and you say, "Didn't that just happen a few chapters ago, and didn't God curse everybody else that time, too?"

Well, on the plus side, I knew exactly where to take our friend to apply for his lost luggage. On the minus side, the experience reopened wounds that had just been healing--in fact, made them worse than they had ever been, because I have seen how much better they have treated my friend than they treated us. We arrived around 10 pm and had to wait for our luggage until the next evening--whereas our friend, who arrived at 5 pm, would receive his bags that night! Further--the unkindest cut of all--they had given him a complimentary packet with soap and shampoo inside. I even fear that the complimentary packet included additional materials, materials he did not dare to show us because he knew we would be hurt, materials such as coupons. They gave him an entire complimentary packet, whereas a husband and wife, with nothing to live on but love, were not even given one bar of soap to share between them. Why would they do something so emotionally crippling and so harmfully stinkifying to us? I hadn't even cursed or sworn at them for losing our luggage, so why did they give him such obvious preferential treatment? Was it class-related, because he was only one bourgeoise grad student, whereas we were two of them and thus twice as much "the man" ... even if one of us wasn't a man at all? There is no answer ... only silence. And formerly lost luggage. The luggage may no longer be gone, but the emotional baggage is something I will never lose.

French Fry

I've had a nasty cold, so I often have really weird dreams while I'm a quarter-awake, such as that by turning the blanket a certain way, it functions as a remote controller to put on a new episode of Moonlighting (this was also the DVD I got my dad for Christmas). Well, I was in bed a couple nights ago, and suddenly realized that there was a tasty French fry in my mouth. So, I decided to eat and swallow it, and it certainly did seem to taste like a French fry, but I also noticed it was crunchier than even a large abundance of crispy goodness could possibly account for. In my stupor, I pondered, "Where did the French fry come from, anyway?" The realization that a French fry had inexplicably materialized within my mouth started to wake me up as I suddenly had the scary thought--what if it wasn't a French fry at all? What if I had actually just chomped up and swallowed one of my teeth? (I'm not making this up.)

After a minute of sudden alertness and a burst of adrenalin (which would keep me awake for another thirty minutes), I remembered that I had taken a cough drop before bed. I can only assume that my saliva had transmogrified the cough drop into a crunchy French fry (or at least altered its accidental properties). My mom has earlier warned me against taking a cough drop while I'm sleeping because she's afraid of choking on them, but I was never convinced. I had been mildly afraid that sucking on a cough drop all night might give me cavities (that is why I take the sugar-free kind), but I had never anticipated that taking one might result in waking me up in the middle of the night from the fear I had swallowed a tooth. People just don't tell you about this sort of thing where I come from. Please pass along this warning to any sick people you know, even if they don't have colds, just to be safe.