Requiem Aeternam

I have a group of friends who throw a themed Halloween party every year. Normally I’m not too interested in such things–my family didn’t celebrate Halloween at all, and I don’t have much appreciation for a lot of the amoral and immoral themes that generally go along with Halloween.

However, the theme for this year’s party will be literary characters–that changes things a bit. I’m still not sure if I will go, but it is certainly fun to think of good literary Halloween characters and costumes.  Here are a few ideas I came up with, but I’m sure there are plenty of others I haven’t thought of.

R. M. Renfield: A bizarre asylum inmate in Bram Stoker’s Dracula who eats live creatures to obtain their life force for himself. He begins with eating flies, then feeds flies to spiders and eats the spiders, then feeds flies to spiders to birds in order to accumulate more life. He serves Dracula (who provides him with delectable critters) for a time before betraying him in a moment of conscience. Dracula, of course, kills him for his betrayal.

Costume: A straight jacket. Plastic spider or fly half protruding from mouth.

Edward Cullen: I hesitate to call Twilight “literary,” but few costumes could be more horrifying than this ultra-preppy squeaky clean vampire. Roll all the terrifyingly annoying qualities of teenage girl romance movie/book heros into one person and viola!

Costume: Sparkles. Lots of sparkles.

Bradley Headstone: The creepy tragic villain of Our Mutual Friend would make a great Halloween character. Driven insane by his love for Lizzy and lack of emotional control he turns into a homicidal nervous wreck, nearly killing Mr. Eugene Wrayburn, and eventually perpetuating the murder of Rogue Riderhood and his own suicide by drowning .

Costume: Victorian clothing, a broken oar, and a bloody handkerchief

The Crazy Lady who Burns things: There are many examples of crazy women in English literature (I can’t imagine why . . . ), and one particular favorite subcategory includes women who burn down ancestral homes around their own heads. So go ahead, take your pick! Whether you choose Rochester’s wife from Jane Eyre or the crazy lady from  Ivanhoe, you’ll be sure to light up the party!

Costume: Once fine garments reduced to rags. A torch.

Variation: Lord Denathor, the crazy old man who spent most of his time in a tower and tried to burn down his son and himself in it.

The Wall: Dress up as the character playing the wall in A Midsummer Night’s Dream’s version of  Pyramus and Thisbe. Proceed to stand between people trying to have conversations.

Costume: A box painted gray. With a chink in it.

Dorian Gray: The handsome young man sells his soul so he will never age. Instead, a portrait of him ages in his place, revealing the effects of Gray’s severely hedonistic lifestyle. He is immortal unless the picture is harmed.

Costume: Late Victorian style clothes. A printed picture of yourself photo-shopped almost beyond recognition.

Any Shakespearean villain: No explanations needed.

Paris: Reviled by Greeks and Trojans alike. Hire one of the male societies from BJU to lay siege to the Halloween party. Then find a girl and ask her to make out with you while your other friends fight and die to defend the party.

Costume: Greaves. No need for a spear or sword though.

Disclaimer: Don’t expect this one to turn out well.

The Potsmaster: A shadowy anti-postmaster from Pynchon’s The Crying of Lot 49 who may or may not exist. Run your own underground postage system to undercut (or support) the government run postal service. Leave drawings of muted trumpets in random places like on the bread box, scrawled in chalk on the sidewalk, or with permanent black marker on your friends’ faces.

Costume: A large plastic garbage can with leg holes and the letters W.A.S.T.E. (We Await Silent Tristero’s Empire) spray painted on.

Medea: Perhaps the ultimate crazy chick in all of literature. She is a powerful sorceress who viciously killed her husband, the girl he wanted to marry (oh the foolhardiness of polygamous cultures), the girl’s father,  and all the children she had had with her husband before being whisked away in a golden chariot pulled by dragons.

Costume: Grecian robes. A knife. Some poison. Probably a pistol and ammo belt. Nunchucks. Two halberds. A mace. Fully loaded marshmallow gun.

For some time now a battle has raged over the relative merits of oatmeal and grits. In this post, I intend to examine indisputable facts in order to settle once and for all the question of which cereal makes a better breakfast food for prospective evil overlords.

First, let us examine the history of grits. The cereal was developed by Native Americans and adopted by European settlers. Eventually it became a staple food of the American South, especially in the Southeast from Virginia to Texas.

Now, I do not mean to imply anything about the people who currently consume grits nor do I mean to insult anyone’s heritage. However, facts are facts. Have you noticed something these two great grit-eating cultures have in common?

Well, the Native Americans were soundly trounced in a series of wars and oppressions and were crammed into reservations or forced to move ever farther west.

The southern American states, after forming the Confederated States of America, promptly found themselves on the losing end of the American Civil War. Oatmeal fueled northern armies under the command of men like Grant and Sherman cut through the South all the way to the coast.

You may think that the defeat of these grit consuming cultures is merely coincidence, but can it really be coincidental that every single one of the world’s grit dependent civilizations have been defeated? Look again at line demarcating grit popularity–every Confederate state falls within the line, and every one of the victorious Union state falls on the oatmeal side. The facts are simple. There is a 100% correlation between a culture’s grit consumption and subsequent military defeat.

The reasons for this are not readily apparent, but with some research one may uncover the underlying cause. Consider the words of Charleston’s News and Courier newspaper in 1952: “Given enough of [grits], the inhabitants of planet Earth would have nothing to fight about. A man full of [grits] is a man of peace.”* These words from grits supporters should sound like an alarm through the lairs and dens of evil overlords everwhere. Of course grit consumers suffer military defeat since their food takes away the inner fire and their fighting spirit. The same thing would happen to any evil overlord who does not heed this warning.

The evidence does not stop there! We have seen how grits contributes to demoralizing defeats; see now how oatmeal causes precisely the opposite affect.

In his dictionary of the English language, the great Samuel Johnson called oatmeal, “a grain, which in England is generally given to horses, but in Scotland supports the people.”

Although he intended to disparrage oatmeal as a food, he of course failed (as oatmeal is undisparrageable) and, in fact, greatly contributes to the theory of oatmealic superiority.

Through the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the British Empire expanded to epic proportions, not due to the normally accepted causes, but due to two facts concerning oatmeal. First, the British horses referred to by Johnson became great weapons of the British military. One must only read Tennyson’s poem “The Charge of the Light Brigade” to see what heights of heroism and valor oatmeal enabled British horses and their riders to obtain.

The second event which enabled the expansion of the British empire was the cessation of the silly English habit of vainly trying to fight oatmeal fed Scottish humans. Men like William Wallace and Robert the Bruce who ensured that Scotland would be the only division of the United Kingdom not to join England via military defeat feasted upon oatmeal, and that is where they got their strength.

So once Britain stopped fighting against those buttressed by oatmeal consumption and started using oatmeal in their own war efforts, the Empire became nearly invincible. In the twentieth century, however, the declining use of the British oat devouring horse as a war weapon directly caused the decline of the British Empire. The link is undeniable. As tanks and infantry, neither of which being fueled by oatmeal, grew in importance, the British Empire faded. Further extenuating the decline of England was the continued edition of northern American states and their superior oatmeal preparation techniques (see bonus section at end of post).

Three conclusions then present themselves to budding evil overlords.

1. Oatmeal is clearly the superior choice for world domination. Its prowess is well documented, being rivaled only by certain types of rice as fuel for empires and dictatorships. Grits may be perfect for lovers of peace and harmony, but that is not us!
2. Stay away from grits. They will sapp your determination to conquer and your will to fight. You will find yourself carrying daisies rather than war hammers and wooing females rather than scheming nefariously (well, there may be some of that involved still, but it will be less violent. generally).
3. Give grits to everyone else.

Bonus Recipe

If this oatmeal variant does not make your mouth water and your heart beat valiantly, nothing will.

The oats are soaked overnight in cold water, salt and maple syrup. Early the next morning, before beginning farm chores the cook will add ground nutmeg, ground cinnamon and sometimes ground ginger. The pot is placed over heat and cooks for upwards of 90 minutes, being served after the chores with cream, milk, or butter.

Now there’s some fuel to keep you going as you study tomes of war wizardry in halls of ice, or battle undead hordes on tundras at the edge of the world!

* http://www.scstatehouse.gov/sess113_1999-2000/bills/4806.htm

Pretty simple. The ten best movie villains (in my opinion), only I cheated and actually included thirteen villains in my top ten list. There’s just one rule to remember–I have to have actually seen the movie. This keeps guys like Hannibal Lecter and Norman Bates (from Psycho) off the list (oops, I sort of cheated again–up to 15 bad guys now!)

Without further ado:

10. Ratigan (The Great Mouse Detective)

Disney has had some pretty good bad guys including Gaston, various wicked stepmothers, Cruella Deville (though she was mostly scary to animal rights activists), and Scar, but Ratigan takes the cake as the smartest and scariest of them all. Suave (until the very end) and utterly callous towards the lifes of others, he feeds henchmen and enemies alike to his pet cat–who is very fat. The intellectual and physical match of  Basil of Baker Street, he finally meets a Gollum-like end, falling from the Big Ben clock tower after a very intense and scary fight scene.

Quote: “You fool! Isn’t it clear to you yet? The superior mind has triumphed! I’VE WON!!”

9. The Balrog (Lord of the Rings)

For a story where evil is everywhere, LoTR has very few personal bad guys. Most are vague shadowy terrors, and the Balrog isn’t really an exception to that, but I picked him because of his sheer flaming awesomeness. Balrogs were some of the most powerful evil still living in Middle Earth. Servants of Morgoth, very few ever succeeded in killing a Balrog, and even fewer killed a Balrog and survived. A Balrog would be at least as powerful as the ring wraiths. Probably only the witch-king would even come close (yet another reason the witch-king should not have been able to defeat Gandalf the White in the movies *). Not just anyone can kill a powerful wizard like the Balrog did.

Quote: umm . . . “Rawr”?

8. Agent Smith (The Matrix)

It’s hard to explain the exact nature of Agent Smith to someone who hasn’t seen the Matrix. It would require a lot of explaining because the movie’s concept is so weird. An agent of the machines whose job it is to ensure that humans remain trapped in the matrix, Agent Smith is one of those scary bad guys who you know will always manage to turn up at absolutely the worst time and ruin everything. He also takes part in some of the most revolutionary fight scenes in movie-making. Not bad for a pointy-eared elf (Elrond).

Quote: “”You hear that, Mr. Anderson? That is the sound of inevitability. That is the sound of your death.”

7. Khan Noonien Singh (Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan)

Genetically engineered to be smarter and stronger than everyone else, Khan’s main weakness is his sense of pride  (a rather traditional weakness for bad guys). Like many other bad guys on this list, Khan places human life considerably lower on his list of priorities than whatever his goal happens to be. He’s very similar to Captain Nemo, but his hate and ambition have kept him from being the great man that he could have been.

Quote: “No. No, you can’t get away. From hell’s heart, I stab at thee. For hate’s sake, I spit my last breath at thee.” (quoting from Moby Dick)

6. Darth Vader and Emperor Palpatine

My first cheat. But really, it is difficult to seperate these two. Darth Vader may have been the face and the muscle of the empire, but Palpatine was the greater evil and the impetus behind Vader. What makes them interesting is the tenuous control Palpatine exerts over Vader and their interactions with Luke Skywalker (not to mention the whole brutal world domination thing). Of course, in the great Star Wars climax, Darth Vader turns on the emperor to save his son, but for ninety-eight percent of the original trilogy, these two combine to form one of the baddest duos of bad guys around.

Quote (Vader): “Apology accepted, Captain Needa.” ( while using the force to choke him to death)

Quote (Palpatine): “And now, young Skywalker, you will die.”

5. Ben Wade and Charlie Prince (3:10 to Yuma)

These two make quite the contrast. Ben Wade is a Bible quoting, philosophizing, artist and killer, while his sidekick, Charlie Prince, is just a psychopathic gunslinger. Their relationship is similar to a father and his adoring loyal son (and it parallels and contrasts the relationship between the protagonist and his son). Like another evil duo on this list, one of them ends up turning on the other. Ben Wade’s character makes you think, and one big question is whether there’s any change in his character by the end of the movie. I say no, and that he and Charlie Prince are both as bad they come to the end.

Quote (Charlie Prince): “This town’s gonna burn!”

Quote (Ben Wade): Your conscience is sensitive, Dan. I don’t think it’s my favorite part of you.”

4. The Ghost and the Darkness (The Ghost and the Darkness)

This pair of almost supernaturally powerful lions terrorizes railroad workers in southern Africa. They’re not human, but they seem to display human levels of malice and cunning. They can’t be killed, trapped, or stopped. Every patch of rustling savanna grass and every shadow becomes terrifying in this movie. Not only are the lions terrifying, they are so beautiful and majestic they become thrilling to watch. The movie’s a bit bloody, but other than that, this is a great one to watch, and you’re never sure who’s going to end up winning.

Quote: umm . . . we’ll go with “Rawr” again.

3. Michael Corleone (The Godfather)

Michael Corleone starts as a very sympathetic character. He is a patriot, a WWII veteran, and someone who wants to get out of the family business to make an honest living.  Circumstances, however, inevitably pull him back into the mob, and he becomes a monster, ruining his own life and watching the lives of everyone he loves get ruined as well. You never stop feeling sorry for him, and in some ways even liking him, but in the end he makes all the wrong choices becoming just another murderer and gangster. There’s a reason the Godfather movies are considered among the best ever made, and Michael Corleone’s character is a big part of it. (Note, there’s also a reason I wouldn’t watch these movies except edited for TV).

Quote: “My father’s way of doing things is over, it’s finished. Even he knows that. I mean, in five years, the Corleone Family is going to be completely legitimate. Trust me. That’s all I can tell you about my business.”

2. The Joker (The Dark Knight)

The Joker lacks some of the complex personality and motivational attributes that make some of the other villains so good, but the portrayal by Heath Ledger is one of the best villain acting jobs you can find. The mannerisms, speech characteristics, and writing all combine to make an almost perfect pyschotic loose-cannon bad guy. He’s almost more of a demon than a normal villain thanks to his twisted goals.

Quote: “Do you wanna know why I use a knife? Guns are too quick. You can’t savor all the… little… emotions. In… you see, in their last moments, people show you who they really are. So in a way, I know your friends better than you ever did. Would you like to know which of them were cowards?”

1. Commodus (Gladiator)

Commodus is a very complex and thoroughly despisable character. The heart of Commodus’s character is fear and ambition. His ambition forces him to strive to be great, but his fear forces him to paranoia and cruelty. He wants nothing more than to make his father, Marcus Aurelius, proud (except maybe for his sister to return the romantic feelings he feels for her–ick), so he hugs his father and smothers him to death in order to become emperor. He is manipulative and cunning and proud. Two of the most chilling moments in Gladiator contains no violence at all. In the first Commodus forces his sister to betray Maximus in the presence of her young son by telling the son a “story” containing veiled threats against the son’s life were she to refuse. Later, in the second scene . . . well . . .

Quote: “Lucius [her son] will stay with me now. And if his mother so much as looks at me in a manner that displeases me, he will die. If she decides to be noble and takes her own life, he will die. [To his sister, Lucius's mother] And as for you, you will love me as I loved you. You will provide me with an heir of pure blood, so that Commodus and his progeny will rule for a thousand years. Am I not merciful? [she does not answer, fighting back tears] AM I NOT MERCIFUL??”

*shudders*

I have no idea how he didn’t make it on AFI’s list of 50 movie villains. He should definitely at least beat out Cruella DeVille . . . or “man, in Bambi”

___________________________________________________

* Apparently the film makers forgot Gandalf the White told Gimli “[I am] more dangerous than anything you will ever meet, unless you are brought alive before the Dark Lord himself.” That includes the witch-king!

Lord of the Rings is, and probably always will be my favorite fantasy story. Tolkein certainly had his flaws as a story teller (though to his credit, his intent was more to build an in-depth mythological world rather than a literary masterpiece), but the modern fantasy writers I’ve looked at cannot come at all close to Tolkien’s ability to use language and writing style to enhance the atmosphere of epicness.

Now the movies get a lot of this right–in fact, pretty close to perfect. The battlefield charges–Theoden and Aragorn at Helms Deep, Eomer and Gandalf at Helms Deep, the charge of the Rohirrim on Pelannor Fields, and the final charge in front of the black gates– and the speeches that go with them are some of the most beautiful and epic battle scenes in movies.* Some of the non-battle scenes are no less beautiful as well, the sequence where the black riders enter Bree and the inn, and the sequence in the third movie where Arwen sets out to leave middle earth, sees the child, and turns back are also favorites of mine. As well as almost anything on the battlements in Edoras ^_^

However, between these amazing scenes lies something that bothers me every time I watch the movies, and it really increases with each viewing as I get more acclimated to the awesomeness of individual scenes.

It’s not really the plot additions (though the warg attack and Aragorn getting pitched off the cliff on the way to Helm’s Deep was a bit silly) or all the changes made to increase tension (Ents initially deciding against fighting, Frodo sending Sam away, Faramir taking Frodo toward Gondor, the exagerrated hostility of Sam toward Gollum, the shouting match at Elrond’s council in Rivendel, etc), though these things don’t exactly help.

The biggest thing I don’t like though, is the large amount of cartoonishness injected into the movies. Gimli is not in the story for comic relief, and Legolas is not a refugee from the X-games. The books contain enough humor with witty banter back and forth between the two, but there’s no need to have Gimli lose control of his horse and fall off, or show him belching with beer/mead/ale dripping down his beard in the middle of an important council, or thwacking orcs in the groin with his axe. The Harry Potter movies are about junior high and high school aged kids and it seems like there’s hardly more physical humor in those movies than in LoTR–and where HP includes physical humor it’s generally of a more intelligent nature and doesn’t stand out as badly as it does in LoTR (probably because of the setting).

Even Gandolf gets in on the physical humor in the third movie with his staff-bonking antics at Denathor. In this case, not only is it out of place atmospherically, but completely out of character. Despite Denathor’s despair and mistakes, Gandolf would display more respect for the Steward of Gondor. Additionally, it makes Denathor more comic relief, distracting from the incredibly tragic story of the downfall of a once great man.

Then there’s Legolas, who stays away from the unwanted attempts at humor (except for the drinking contest with Gimli), but seems to be constantly flying around in ways that defy physics and common sense. I guess a lot of it can be explained away because he’s an elf, but it still looks cartoonish and distracting in my opinion. And the references to real life things like him skateboarding/snowboarding/surfing the shield down the steps at Helm’s Deep breaks the separation I like between a fantasy world and the real world.

I think the blame lies largely on the personalities of the director and actors (mostly in the case of Legolas–Orlando Bloom is an extreme sports nut) showing through to make their marks on the story. But again, that breaks the illusion of a separate fantasy world untouched by ours. I think the real-world references and juvenile physical humor both really take away from epic atmosphere that really separates these books from other works of fantasy fiction and make them what they are. Therefore the movies lose a lot of watchability in my opinion. I will always love the epic scenes and scenery, but a lot of the rest I have lost interest in sitting through.

I think, given the potential of the materials they were adapted from, LoTR comes out below both Chronicles of Narnia and the Harry Potter movies. Although they change some things around, the Narnia movies end up being fairly entertaining and consistent movies, and the Harry Potter movies vastly improve on the HP books by cutting out a lot of JKR’s repetitions and redundancies.**

I don’t really care if movies “stay true” to the books, but I wish the LoTR movies had done a better job of consistently sticking to the atmosphere that made the books different and so great.

* I think the fight scenes in “Hero” might be the best that I have seen for visual martial arts beauty, but the LoTR battles take place on a far grander scale and with better music. Here’s my favorite fight from “Hero” for your enjoyment.

**Yes,  I know what I did there.

Rebellion.

The air is rank with the smell of it. Swamp gas fueled army camp fires pollute the air with their sooty smoke, rebel yells swarm the mason-dixon line, and the ghost of Jeffy Davis rides again.

Has so much time elapsed that the supremacy of ice and snow has been forgotten? Does Johnny Reb think that the wizards of the North  slumber? He is sadly mistaken if so, for they do not slumber but keep careful watch in their icy halls, nor has their strength, drawn from the iron hard earth, diminished.

After the Northern Wizards sweep across the South, crushing the foolish uprising and leaving rebel ranks frozen midstep from Gavelston to Charleston, there will be a second period of reconstruction. And this time, we will ensure that there will be no more forgetting.

Phase 1 (Compensation)

• Each state south of the Mason-Dixon line will pay a yearly tribute of seven young maidens. These maidens will be taken North and ceremoniously dumped in snowbanks as a metaphor for the North’s victory. South Carolina, as instigator, will be required to send an additional seven maidens, all from the town of Early Branch, the birthplace of the second rebellion.
• There will be a 97% tax (the average Southern summer temperature) on all teas containing sugar and/or artificial sweeteners. Teas served hotter than forty degrees Celsius are exempt from this tax.
• Representatives of the Southern states will sign a statement admitting responsibility for whatever atrocities (such the use of peanuts to create boiled products) the rebellion causes and binding the South to make financial reparations for the war.

Phase 2 (Readjustment)

• Oral exams will be administered to determine competency in Standard American English pronunciation and phraseology. Those with low scores will be restricted to making fried chicken, tobacco farming, and demolition derby driving.

Note: this item is currently being reevaluated by the powers that be (TPTB) as it is not expected to actually alter the current situation.

• Air Conditioners will be outlawed.
• Grits will be replaced with oatmeal in all stores.
• Rather than mandatory military service like some countries, beginning at age 4, all male children will be required to participate in hockey leagues. Additionally, parents or other spectators heard asking questions like “what quarter is it?” or “when’s halftime?” at hockey games will be flogged with a combination of live salmons and wet noodles (as will you if you don’t understand why those are bad things to say).
• All girls found complaining about the heat and lack of AC while wearing knee-length skirts and nearly sleeveless shirts will be required to wear full dress suits during summer activities and on Sundays.
• Those too old for the mandatory hockey program will be forced on a rotating basis to take mandatory vacations in Alaska and the Yukon Territory, including mandatory swim time in lakes fed by water from glaciers.

Phase 3 (Integration)

• Those who fail the Standard American English test (see phase 2) will be relocated to snow-making machine factories.
• The machines manufactured in this manner will be distributed throughout the South and used 24/7 to bury the South in glorious white flakes allowing everyone to enjoy white Christmases, sledding parties, and daily snowball fights.
• A large screen will be launched into space to reduce the amount of radiation reaching the South, causing a 30-60 degree drop in temperatures throughout the South. This is expected to be greeted with much rejoicing due to the previous termination of air conditioning (see Phase 2).
• The status of hoodies will be changed from “unprofessional and slobbish” to “appropriate for all settings.”

Disclaimer: should any Southerner find this post offensive, I completely understand given the amount of fire present in Southern blood rather than ice and hardness. However, I would like to also refer any such offended personages to the link at the beginning of this post and remind them that this was started by a Southerner (some things just don’t change . . . ).

^_^