Benton, Eroticism, and a Writer's Issues (Live, On-page, Uncensored).

Here's the problem: People Have Sex.

Well, okay, that's an over-generalization of the problem. People Having Sex is not, in and of itself, that big of a deal. Sex can be a very useful thing, not only for procreation, but for the delight of intimacy, the chances to explore another person on an emotional and physical level, or even just the satisfaction of lustful impulses. Sex is a basic component of the human condition, the problem occurs when I have to write about it.


Let me explain why:


Whenever there is hue and cry over a child model being stuffed into something low-cut and skanky, I get annoyed when people decry it as the sexualization of children. My annoyance comes out of the word choice: it's not the sexualization of children, it's really the pornographication of children. The choice of words is revealing about the way society views children.

I remember being thirteen, the age at which my characters currently are. I remember it quite vividly, with the sort of wry nostalgia I hold for most of my past (I said what? Why? I can't possibly have been that arrogant. Oh. Oh, that's just sad...) I have equally vivid memories of myself at other ages, including cracking dirty jokes with friends on the playground in grade three, in which I would have been eight or so. Now, doubtless these were not the most hilarious jokes about copulation ever voiced by humankind, but the sophistication of an eight-year old's humour is not my point (for the record, my jokes were ace). We can not sexualize children anymore than we can colourize them: children already have sexuality. Please note that I am not using here in the sense of specific orientation, but to simply note that they have an instinctual libido. Freud's Psychosexual development is a theory I've always found to be rubbish in the details, but what I do find notable is its acceptance of youth and erogenous experimentation from a very early age. There's a quote by Donna Tartt that I use in Part Two of Benton, which I'll use again here:

I think it's hard to write about children and to have an idea of innocence...
I think innocence is something that adults project upon children that's not really there.

To put my own spin on it, let's look at the term “innocence.” I actually think children are innocent, but in a different way than the people who decry the loss of childhood innocence do. There's a myth that children these days are more exposed to sex than they've ever been, but this is a ridiculous statement. It's not that there more exposed than ever before, they're just more exposed they've been recently. The dichotomous Victorians, with their predilection for sex obsession mixed with puritanical sexual repression, created a social culture that hid sex from youngsters on a level not really seen before, at least from a Eurocentric standpoint. This “children should know nothing of sex [and therefore should not be aware of it]” culture lasted for about a century and a half. The modern, “sexy” media has clearly driven it off the rails. The people who decry the loss of innocence undoubtedly had the same lustful urges of youth, but they see their own past like many of us do: with rose-tinted glasses, and an ability to forget that which is inconvenient to our currently world view. The tight-ass pundit with his moral certainty turns a blind-eye to the “show me yours” experiences he had in kindergarten as he does to the pot smoking he did in college.

Children are innocent, but innocence doesn't mean an ignorance of sexual expression. What it means is that they are innocent of the adult, free of the prejudices of the grown-ups. Children (and I'm really using this as a catch-all for everyone 15 and under, here) grow up to be us, but its an evolving process. No one gets handed a maturity package at 16 that suddenly takes childlike innocence away.

When two young kids make the first fumbling gestures that are hooking up, they do so, by and large, without the concerns that will haunt them later in life. They're not weighed-downed with the memories of bad previous relationships. They're not worried with getting seduction “right,” or parsing couple doublespeak, or anything we create as adults to make our intimacies the minefields of past mistakes and weaponized miseries they become. No, the sexual explorations of the young are the only true innocent adventures we ever get in that particular sphere. Whether they are done out of curiosity, boredom, or the sweet, green love of first affection, the fact of the matter is that they happen. The young kids who walk far ahead of their guardians so they can have a quick snog by the lockers every time they turn a hallway corner out of sight are the perfect example of that kind of innocence. Those youngsters are innocent and naive: they honestly believe that the people lagging behind are completely clueless to the hidden romance going on under their noses. Us cynical, older bastards can look back on ourselves with disdain, and wonder how we ever thought we were fooling anyone, but you know what that leads too? It leads to us becoming one of the pundits, shouting that innocence is being destroyed, all because we can't come to terms with the fact that we were ever really that young, dumb, and carnal.

They aren't dumb, though. To me, that's the innocence of childhood. It's making jokes on the playground about daddy putting his car in mommy's garage and thinking you're really clever; playing doctor during a sleepover; or being oblivious of how transparent your cries of “did I show you this thing that is conveniently out of sight of our parents for the next forty seconds?” are. Kids aren't stupid (they instinctively know what parents will disapprove of), but in their innocence they just lump that with every other irrational parental disapproval, like staying up late watching movies, or pigging out on candy. Parents are a bunch of fun-hating old duffers, what do they know about life's pleasures? And, of course, there's the old refrain of “no one understand our love, no one has ever been as much in love as us.” As an adult, I have a tendency to smack that shit down hard whenever I see it, but that's because I'm a grumpy misanthrope. Our rite of adulthood (at least when it comes to “mature” relationships) involves having that kind of cloying ebullience beaten out of us by more experienced bitter people who want to spread their bitterness around. The forbidden fruit was only a problem because God was a colossal cockbite who planted a shame tree and then didn't give adequate reasons not to eat the fruit beyond “because I said so.” Occupy Eden would totally be speaking truth to power against that kind of ipse-dixit credentialist bullshit, I can tell you that. Who died and made him G-, well, nevermind. For those of you who don't care about my novels, here's the part where you should feel free to stop reading.

So, “What does this have to do with Benton,” I hear you cry. Well, first, it's sweet of you (if not a little ingenuous) to assume that every long winded thing I write has a point, but I swear this one does. Like I said, I remember being thirteen. I remember the eddies of hormones, the lusts and desires and so on. My characters are also thirteen. While Benton is certainly not as comprehending of his own libido as I was at that age, Min is much more aware of it, and Ash certainly is, having gone so far as to actually date people, albeit out of rebellion than any intrinsic romantic desire. What exactly are my limits as a writer when it comes to building the relationships I didn't even want in the first place.

I'm going to be honest. One of my initial plans for Benton was that I was tired of reading stories about a boy and a girl who were friends who always seemed to end up falling for each other. I was going to write a story about platonic friendships!

That... didn't work out, obviously. I mean, I started with the best intentions, but the problem was that I fell in love with my own characters, and by some kind of strange affection mimesis, the pure platonism I was aiming for sort of... went... away. So, now I'm stuck with two characters who are falling in love who weren't supposed too and then, woops, there I go, inadvertently adding a third member to the group and creating that which I hate more than anything: a love triangle. That's not actually the problem, I know how I'm going to handle the generals. The devil's in the details, ja?

What are my limits here? What is okay, and no okay to broach – not just morally, but narratively? I'm not going to be writing much about self-gratification, for example, this isn't that kind of coming of age story. Burgeoning sexuality ought to be addressed more obliquely, not jammed in your face like a shitty Michael Cera film, at least in this book. The answer isn't to eliminate sexuality either, though. My issue is in finding a happy medium between the two extremes, one that is narratively and emotional satisfying without coming off as titillating or exploitive. I'm afraid this particular diatribe isn't going to end with any kind of answers – these questions aren't rhetorical. Ash, Benton, and Min have a staring road ahead of them – how to I express it properly?

There is a place for good eroticism in stories. Even two weeks on, I'm still coming off the emotional high of Katawa Shoujo - not only a beautiful, non-exploitive look at dating in highschool for the disabled, but the few sexual scenes felt right, not just titillating pornography (although, to be fair, I've only played through Emi's path). Now,a re there going to be sex scenes in Benton? No. But again, I remember being thirteen.

It's almost funny. I wrote scenes of torture and no one batted an eye. I outright murdered my protagonist beyond my ability to account, and people said "that's an interesting concept." But if I wrote that "[blank} consensually fondled [blank] to the mutually satisfaction of both parties" - I would open such a can of worms, I can tell you that.

SEX! It exists, except when it doesn't!

These Things Are Important

The other day I received this message in my OWL announcement system:

Please note the following:

1. The location of [Name Removed]'s office is now McCain building 1150a, but the time of his office hour is unchanged.

2. The time of [Name Removed]'s office hours is now Thursday, 2:30-3:30 pm, but the place is unchanged.

3. [John Smith's] office hour remains stationary in space and time alike.

Worried by the implications, I sent my professor the following communique:

Dear Professor,

I'm a little concerned. If, as you say, [John Smith's] office hours are both temporally and spatially fixed, wouldn't that render them completely inaccessible? Our planet both rotates around itself and orbits the sun - indeed, we in the Western Spiral Arm of this galaxy rotate around the galactic core and continue to constantly move outwards owing to the expansionary nature of the universe. If Mr. Smith's office is spatially fixed, it should physically be floating in space about a day or so behind us. Furthermore, if it is temporally stationary then time within it is no longer passing. This leads us to the following issues.

1) Any meetings within the office will, regardless of the time scheduled, never actually take place - not just because time no longer passes within it, but because the costly nature of university tuition makes it unlikely that Dal students could afford a trip into space to reach the office. Not even the one's with scholarships.

2) Although anyone who managed the now unlikely prospect of gaining access to the office would find themselves effectively immortal - untouched by time's passing - they would more pressingly be unable to receive answers for any questions they might have wished to pose to their TA. It would also mean that, should Mr. Smith take the essays that need to be marked to his office, lots of people's hard work would be lost. Once you entered the office, all temporal activity for you would cease, one would never manage to say "hello" much less get down to cases or mark papers or even sit down. Conversely, all of time might occur at once in a spectacular example of simultaneity which, while interesting, would be probably mentally traumatizing.

3) Mentally traumatizing students might lead to lawsuits or academic censure.

4) It seems a poor use of the Classic Department's doubtless limited budget to enact such rigid spatiotemporal restrictions on such a small office.

5) It further seems rude to the janitorial staff, who run the risk of being temporally imprisoned should they go to clean it - not to mention the overtime they'd need to be paid if we take the cost of space travel into account.

6) Although I am a Classics and History student, not a Physicist, I worry that this course of action might in some way violate the laws of thermodynamics. As you may know, the Dal Student Handbook frowns upon students violating legal laws, and we must assume that frown extends to the violation of the laws of nature

Perhaps a different tack is in order? If there is such a worry about the continued existence of the office as it exists within the flow of time, might it not be easier to re-locate the office into its own pocket dimension, one's who parameters were more securely controlled by the Department of Classics, or at the very least the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences? Although Mr. Smith is not my TA, I am concerned for the welfare of all my classmates. Potentially condemning them and a grad student to a potentially trans-finite existence that might out-live the heat death of the universe just to save wear-and-tear maintenance costs on a single room seems extreme, even by the standards normally adhered to by academia.

I hope this issue can be resolved with further harm to the fabric of the universe or loss of life/temporal-expression-of-one's-place-in-reality-as-a-conscious-creature.

Yours faithfully,

James Campbell-Prager

Benton And Music

The writing of Benton and its sequel would not have been possible without the hyper-reliance I have on musical leitmotifs, both for scenes and for individual characters. Spoilers follow, obviously, but here is a small selection of the tunes that I write too. Character's themes are first, followed by some comments on the music for individual scenes. The songs are either significant lyrically, musically or thematically. Ash's, for example, is musically significant more than lyrically, Benton's changes as his personality does, and so on.

Asha: Cornership's Brimful of Asha (Fatboy Slim Remix)
Mai Yamane Gotta Knock A Little Harder

Benton:

Book 1: Nelson Riddle's Your Zowie Face
Ben Folds Evaporated

Book 2: David Bowie's Quicksand (1972 Demo).
Harvey Danger's Flagpole Sitta

Efah: Maroon 5 (Kara's Flowers) Control Myself

Helena: ENOZ's When I Was Love (The guitar line more than the lyrics)
The Seatbelt's The Real Folk Blues

Note: given the connections between Farose and Icelandic, I would say that Sigur Rós' Starálfur is a song that Helena sang to her children to get them to sleep.

Líadan: A mix between Dare and Wo Qui Non Coin. And when I say "mix", I mean play them simultaneously. Do it.

Min: Matsuoka Yuki's Matsutte Matsutte! Irassha~i!

MIWP: Garry Schyman's The Ocean On His Shoulders

Queen Cordelia: Ben Fold's Selfless, Cold and Composed.

Perdita: The Delagdo's The Light Before We Land

Rob: The Seatbelt's Ask DNA

Andrew Cassiel: Gabriel Faure's Requiem in D Minor "Agnus Dei"


The songs Asha heard in her head when fighting the Kapnoi are first, Radiation Fox's Descend and then, most importantly, David Bowie's Bombers.

Ash's rainy day song is, natch, Sunao na Kimochi ~Aru Ame no Hi~ Haruhi no Omoi (Obedient Feeling ~That Rainy Day~ Haruhi's Thoughts) by Satoru Kousaki,

Benton passing through the pool and back into his world, all that sequence was inspired by Mai Yamane's BLUE (You're Gonna Carry That Weight). Actually, the importance of that song to the book as a whole can not be overstated.

The scenes in the mall came about by listening to The Divine Comedy's The Lost Art of Conversation more or less on repeat, along with most of the album Bang Goes The Knighthood.

Reposting my Facebook Rant That Was Then A OWL Rant and now a Blog Post.

I would like to highlight a problem I had with Bend It Like Beckham, specifically a false assumption in holds about character and sexuality. I have phrased my problem in the form of two rambling letters.

Dear Movies, 

Just because you have a gay character does not automatically mean I will care about them, their hopes and dreams, or even like them. There appears to be this harmful idea that “being gay” is a well-defined character trait. I can call a character "energetic", "zany", "sinister", all of those come with their own expressions of modality that are the hallmarks of any trope. But if the only thing I can say about a character is that they are "the gay one", that's Very Bad Writing, akin to a character being there to fulfil the role of “woman”- it's treating a noun as an adjective. 

To look at it another way, let's look a group most people are familiar with: the trio of Harry, Hermione and Ron from the ubiquitous Harry Potter series. Each character realizes a particular role in the films/books. Harry is the one who is “brave”, the hero and driver of the narrative. Hermione is there to be the “smart” one, to have the expeditionary/expository knowledge to help Harry be able to drive where he needs the story to go. Ron is there because every story needs a buffoon, and to keep Neville from being a main character and thus ending the series by the end of the first book by sheer bad-ass awesomeness. But what if we changed how we define a character? Harry: Brave, Ron: Supportive(I'll be nice), Hermione: Woman.

One of those things is not like the other. That kind of phrasing is not only a sweeping generalization of everything a woman could potentially be, it's sexist and disingenuous to boot. Tokenism in the worst way, and it spreads a harmful worldview that you can be completely defined by your gender. 

“But James, you snarky and slightly patronizing comment poster, you, what does this have to do Bend It Like Beckham, and why didn't Neville get his own spin-off?” I hear you cry. Well, the second question is far beyond the scope of this post, so I'll just stick with the first one. In the best Socratic tradition, I will answer this by posing another question, albeit one directed at the film as opposed to you, gentle reader, who patiently awaits enlightenment.

Dear Bend It Like Benton: 

You have a character who admits he is gay. Explain why, at any point in the movie, I ought to care about him. No one ever expects me to root for "the straight one" just because the character is straight. Since he is not the main character of the piece, having him come out to our protagonist must serve some sort of purpose in the story, right? Was it to prove that Jess wasn't prejudiced? It... might, but she seems like a pretty forward thinking young woman, I don't think that was ever called into question. That can't have been the function. So it had to be that it was important we know that Tony was gay for our understanding of Tony's character. It must be important to the story that we know who Tony is. 

Who is Tony?

He is friends with the main character. He has a crush on David Beckham. He likes soccer. He thinks the coach is cute.

And...

Um.

That's it, really. I looked it up on IMDB, Tony doesn't have a last name. He's just Tony, “the gay one”. Huh.


Why don't we play a game? It's called "Remove the Coming-Out Scene." First, you cut the scene where Tony says he's gay. Then, watch the movie and tell me if losing this scene has any impact on the story in any meaningful way shape or form.

If there is any change, its on how we interpret his gesture to enter into a sham marriage so that Jess can play soccer in America. But for me, his sexuality doesn't really change the nature of the gesture (which is a noble one, which we could add to his character list if I was in a more charitable mood, but since it's this fake-out deus-ex-machina that is immediately dropped, I'm not going to). Let's say we didn't know he was gay. He;s still entering into a (romantically) loveless marriage of connivence to help a friend. And had it gone through, Hollywood probably would have forced a sequel where they really fall in love and please all those Tony/Jess shippers out there, but realistically we have to take the movie as a complete package, concrete in its habitus (isomorphically emergent with its own structural conditions). At the end of the day (and end of the move), straight, gay, bi, non... hell, the guy could only be attracted to bumblebees; his sexuality in no way changes the nature of the gesture. He is willing to enter into a lie to help a friend.

(And regardless: that's nice in all, but for a sacrifice to be meaningful, I have to think that he's giving up something worth while. “Oh no, he's giving up his life of... really liking David Beckham?” Seriously, movie. Who is this guy, why should I care? What does he do for a living? Does he have a job, other friends, does he like movies, music, anything at all besides David Beckham? Will his sham marriage keep him from really liking David Beckham? Because I'm pretty sure Jess also likes David Beckham.)

If he was gay, and it was just accepted (i.e. no coming-out scene), then that would be great. I love to have gay characters who's sexuality isn't used as way to milk pathos from the narrative. As is, its used as disposable emotionality. “Huh, this bit of the film needs punching up, let's cram an awkward-yet-endearing “I'm gay” scene to pad out the run time and make us seem topical.” Who is Tony? It doesn't matter, he's just there to help the protagonist go kick a ball in a country that has an entirely different definition of the word 'football'. I need to know that Tony is something other than a manifestation of the main characters subconscious need for a perfect male friend who loves everything she does (Soccer. David Beckham. Soccer) without wanting to get in her pants.

There's a lovely test called the Bechdel Test, which a movie only passes if it meets the following criteria: 

1.It has to have at least two women in it,
2.Who talk to each other,
3.About something other than a man.


I'd like to compliment the Bechdel Test with something I call The Prager Test. A movie passes the Prager test if:

1.It has a homosexual character
2.Who talks to the main character
3.About something other than a crush, or the main character's interests and problems.

Your character is gay? Fine, that's great. But it's not enough. Work with that, do something with that, define your character as, well, someone more than a one-dimensional plot point. Please. This heteronormative indifference is ever so aggravating. 

Anyone needs me, My Little Pony Season 2 just started up, so I have to re-watch the premiere and finish my twelve volume series “Why Glee is the worst thing on television since My Mother The Car” 

I remain, yours &c.,

James Campbell-Prager

(Corollary: Putting the gay character in peril does not mean I have any interest in seeing them live over dying. This holds true of "adorable" yet bratty children. If I simply hate them, I may be thrilled that they died. This is what's known as “Adric Syndrome” )

tl;dr: You're in university now. If you can't be bothered to read long things, drop out. Now. I'm dead serious. You will be crushed without mercy by an uncaring education structure that expects your reading skills to be at least at a grade eight level.

If On A Costal Street A Traveler...

A Poem, aware of its pretentions. Apologies and defiance.  

Tonight,
For reasons all my Own
I walked the darkened streets that are
a minor city's passageways.

To satisfy my cravings for a summer's wish
still unfulfilled,
I purchased late at night
two sandwiches of ice cream,
And continued out into the cool September air.

In my endless search for symbolism
I said why I had purchased two.
It was not just the sale.
The other was for absent friends.

The fool's gesture impressed no one
And none.
In any case I ate them both.

Eblis O'Shaughnessy
Could never dream or destroy.
To him I stand in opposition.
No skill or trade have I,
Merely endless dreams,
And the personal destruction that is creation

The living worlds
Lately writ by me
Have in their antecedent
A thousand others
That I failed to bring to life.

I have given up much of myself
Of late.
If only to give the flood of words
A fitting resting place,
Perhaps to give my tired mind
A little breathing space.

The phrases that seem so profound
Written in the moment on a chill autumn's night
(Whilst eating colder-still ice cream)
Once put to paper seem paltry things.
A dumb show filled with noise
Concealing empty meanings.

In lieu of absent, distant friends
I turn to doggrel verse.

Fairy Logic

Fairy Logic, at least in the Craicéailte School, is unifying rather than fragmentary. To the largely Sylphic disciples of Craicéailte, there is no paradox in Zeno or rather, nothing of concern. That Achilles will never outrun the Turtle, while at the same time will naturally outpace it in seconds is not an issue that needs fixing. To many of the fay, accepting the contradictory is as natural as breathing, both statements are true. A paradox is not something to be solved but celebrated. To a Craicéailte, that you can empirically disprove a paradox of Zeno is irrelevant. In their fashion, Craicéailtes reject the idea of repeatable causality. Solvitur ambulando might have given credence to one point of view a one particular moment, but that is no indication that it will do so ever again. Holmes' maxim has no place in their world. Why rule out the impossible, when it so often occurs?

This is best expressed in the central Craicéailte concept known as Liused's Apophthegm, for which we shall take a brief detour to first contextualize before discussing its impact.

There has been no more enduring figure of second wave Craicéailte thought than Doctor Mell Liused (1693? - 1740). Liused was both a logician and temporal physicist, although it is the second discipline for which she is best know. Her work in that field was so revolutionary that next to none of her contemporaries grasped her mathematics or gating theories. Her work was to remain forgotten and ignored until it was rediscovered by Adalmar Wesserman in the late 1940s, who would both expand upon it and restore the good doctor's position in the eyes of physicists.

However, it is not her work on gating mechanics that is of interest to us. She remains a “patron saint” to Craicéailtes after her death owing to a series of documents know as the Gwrn-Mell Letters. In her youth Liused had studied under Dr. Gwrn Hywel (1651-1742) at Glorianna University in Gyre-Carling, and afterwords worked with him for a number of years. After Cordeilla III founded Ard Rí College (Fairy's first institution devoted purely to the study of worldgates) in far off Andlang, Liused did what was unthinkable in those days and travelled all the way to its Endymion chapter in Dome, where she would remain for the rest of her life. Until her early death, she would remain in constant correspondence with Dr. Hywel, and from the letters that survive we have a fascinating look at the life and times of intellectuals of the period.

In many ways, both doctors were of among the last of their era. Although he would die before the pogroms started, in Gyre-Carling Dr. Hywel was witness to rise of the neo-glamour movements that would see the deaths of thousands of academics and students in the century to come. To the neo-glamourists, the study of scientific principles was a rejection of everything a fairy was, they considered persons like Hywel to be species traitors. The extent of their destruction and the set-back to knowledge that their reign entailed is far beyond the scope of this book, so we shall touch upon it no further.

While the neo-glamour movement never had any force in Andlang, the economic and social toll of the Ranrike War would decimate the youth of the kingdom. There would be only of handful of young people able to attend universities, and it would be a long time before academic knowledge would be increased and improved by anyone educated in Andlang colleges.

For Liused and Hywel, then, theirs was the last flourishing of intellect before a dark age, and nowhere is this better reflected in Hywel's admonishments to his former student, who had been introduced to Craicéailtism at Ard Rí. For Hywel, Craicéailte thought was a form of scholastic nihilism, a rejection of everything a teacher should stand for. He sought to illustrate this by drawing attention to what he called the Pixie Dilemma. In brief, this is the demonstrative fact that, according to scientific law, a pixie cannot fly. Their delicate, lacy wings simply don't have the power or lift to make a creature of that body mass fly. But pixies do fly, regardless of their size or encumbrance.

Hywel believed that the Craicéailte approach was a destructive one to the pursuit of answers. The paradox of pixie flight, the solution to which (no doubt) lay tangled in science and magic, should be treated as a contradiction and be unravelled and solved. That the Craicéailtes wanted to celebrate the paradox was criminal, a learned fairy ought to find answers, not revel in their absence.

It was in Liused's response in 1711 where we find what we know call her eponymous Apophthegm. Their letters were written in the Vulgar-Carling dialect of south-western Sylphic, I am indebted to Mateo Cwna for the translation.

“A theory that is contradictory in itself cannot begin to explain the contradictions inherent within it. As persons of learning, we are expected to dismiss any such theory on principle. This is also true for any two theories that, should one be “correct”, the other is automatically “wrong”. And yet on the emotive, psychological level we accept both the reverse and the obverse all the time.

Do we not often hate one we love the most? Is there not often lust for one we wish to destroy? Why then can this acceptance of the contradictory not continue onto the physical plane? Why must the impossible be rejected in favour of partisan positions on that most subjective of nouns, the ever elusive Truth?

To accept that they are both true is not say that they should not be examined, debated or discussed. But it is a rejection of the concept of 'impossible'. We celebrate that which is contradictory because it shows that learning is without bounds. To 'take a side' is limiting. To accept both and build upon it is to leave the labels and boundaries of normative thought behind.”

It is important to know that Liused would later note that Craicéailte thought is one that works best in the abstract. Unlike other thinkers of the same school, who went so far as reject not just objective truth but objective reality entirely, Liused stressed that one should never abandon realist practicality. “One can, if one so chooses, build a house in mid-air having accepted both 'theories' that it will both collapse and never collapse. To do so, however, is at best specious and imprudent, at worst, outright fatal.”

An Excerpt From The Beat Betwixt the Pixie's Wings: A Fairy's History of Thought

Dr. Seumas Kermichil

Endymion University Press, 1997

Hollywood, Call Me

[Opening Scene: Superhero in an action-packed costume shows up during a bank robbery. He kicks major ass, throws shit, breaks the criminals against each other, saves the day. As bank patrons look on in awe, a little boy says "Who is that man, and where did he come from" with lots of "dawe"and "awe". We zoom in on the Superhero's chiseled jaw and cut to:]

TITLE CARD:  [SUPERHERO'S NAME, MAYBE A SUBTITLE]

IINTERTITLE: "Six Months Ago"

Cut to: Cubicle in an office. Our Hero works at a computer. His boss comes over, lays a super hero outfit on Our Hero's desk.


BOSS: Bob, here is a uniform. You are now a superhero. Fight crime and do good while still keeping regular hours here.

HERO: Sure thing, boss.

REST OF MOVIE: AWESOME SUPERHERO STUFF, MINIMAL ANGST, EXPLOSIONS.


Fin.


HOLLYWOOD, CALL ME. I CAN SOLVE THOR, GREEN LANTERN AND CAPTAIN AMERICA'S PROBLEMs IN ONE SITTING.