Everything Bad is Good For You

With the difficulty in modern literature finding an audience, it is no wonder that classic literature is having an even more difficult time connecting with readers. Results from marketing research performed by Orion Group publishing were “near-unanimous” in revealing that people thought classic literature to be “long, slow and repetitive” and “many respondents admitted to having an interest in the stories when they had come upon them in another way, like watching a TV adaptation or film that brought alive the story and characters.”

This lead to Orion to consider publishing condensed versions of classic literature:

“Literally, life is too short. Once you get to a certain place in your life, you realize that there is a finite number of books you’re going to be able to read,” [Malcom] Edwards [of Orion] says. He admits to “bouncing off” Moby Dick several times, even though the whaling, the quest and the biblical aspects of the book all sound appealing. Would he have had more success with a shorter, snappier version?

The condensing of classic literature can be seen as a beginning. How long will it be until modern literature is viewed as being slow or repetitive? Already English teachers are using film at some point “as a replacement for a long text, or as a supplement to a written text or thematic unit.” How long before teachers exclusively use movies as an alternative experience of the text, especially when taking into account the finite amount of classes and the seemingly infinite amount of available material? How long before the idea of the text becomes just as important – if not more – as the text itself? (more…)

A co-worker recently purchased a Dairy Queen chicken fingers basket for her lunch and brought it in to work. If you have never had a DQ chicken fingers basket I recommend trying one. Not highly recommended mind you, but if you are looking for something relatively inexpensive and borderline tasty you can do much worse.

But what interests me most about the DQ chicken fingers basket is the make up of it. Now of course you get chicken fingers, your choice of 4 or 6 depending on how much of a glutton you are. Me, I’m a 6 finger fatty, but that is straying from my rather ambiguous point.

Now along with the chicken fingers you of course get your choices of sauces to eat them with. By my last count you had something in the neighborhood of 239 different varieties. I’m a honey mustard man myself but occasionally dabble with barbecue sauce or ranch if I am feeling particularly saucy that meal. Along with the fingers and the sauce you get what appears to be a rather large fistful of fries artfully tossed in the general direction of the basket. I’m sure by this time you have absolutely no idea where I am going with any of this, let alone how I could possibly tie it in with my latest review of Time After Time, but I promise you, my thesis shall be made clear quite soon.

Now we come to the pièce de résistance of the meal which, rather ironically, is a piece of toast. Now I don’t know why they would include a piece of toast with the meal, or why they choose to butter it beforehand, but dammit if it isn’t just about the perfect compliment to the meal. In spite of being completely ridiculous, and improbably illogical, it rather simply makes the entire meal work.

And in light of such a ridiculous combination of foodstuffs somehow conjoining to create a meal far greater then the sum of its parts, it is my hope that you see the connection to tales like Time After Time, in which several notable characters are combined in an unlikely, if not utterly ridiculous, situation in the hopes their struggles will entertain the audience.

(more…)

It’s a story you thought only Alan Moore could think up, but here it is. H.G. Wells is forced to travel through time to 1979 in an effort to track down Jack the Ripper, whom he has unwittingly unleashed upon the modern age. Starring Caligula as H.G. Wells and the Master Control Program as Jack the Ripper. Co-starring McDonald’s jokes that Coming to America would inevitably rip-off.