The Last True Flea Market

Consumers requiring a finely maintained used magic carpet, carnivore cactus or any other magical antiquites of the old desert have only one place to turn to: the Flea Market of Potar. Here you see Trader Zeno riding in for the annual event from the dust gales. He rides a rare Indignant Dust-Flea. These majestic, sensitive creatures hide on the backs of wild camels until they are captured by travellers such as Zeno. The traders make use of irreverent insults to offend the noble creature until they swell to a great size with indignance and render themselves a fine and speedy flotation device. Without his beast, Zeno could not hope to traverse the Gales to the tiny and remote locales where the last original magic carpets were made or to the great cities of industry where emigrants would sell their old rugs for discount prices; it is thus out of necessity that Zeno berates his mount so incessantly. If they were to make any sort of amends, Zeno's ride would shrink in happiness and he and his rugs would be left alone and helpless in the Gales.

The mouse in the cage is the formerly great sorcerer Moze, stripped of his human form by an old rival and forever confined to the cage. The indomitable Moze overcame his small stature and the limitations of his confinement to open a pawn shop just outside of Potar. He is one of the few merchants who keeps his shop open year round. His maintains his livelihood by animating whatever stray objects traders sell him and selling them as oddities or companions to travelers or keeping them as friends and servants.

On Navigating the Doldrums of School

Could I, should I write a new version of The Language of Peace: Second Language Struggles of a Korean Missionary? For those of you not in the know (everyone), this is the latest in a string of school assignments that I’m not really interested in. The analysis of language has as much interest for me as discussing Egyptian hieroglyphics. It’s theoretically interesting and occasionally colorful but it offers no real potential for dramatic flair. After all I’m talking about the bones of language. Unless I construct a fancy and meaty analogy to sustain me through the whole ordeal I’m stuck with a dry, abstract subject with very little at stake, in terms of both GPA and ideological importance.

Such is the case with so much of my schooling: I must master the basic forms before I can move on to the dynamic stage of creation - drool with the dogs before I rule with the gods, if you will. I must prostrate myself before the supposedly foundational pillars of knowledge. Yet I have a rebellious disposition. For all I lack in discipline and in spite of the glaring absence of a few organs in my body of knowledge, I think I have a critically thinking mind. That should be enough to begin a creative endeavor and forsake all these academic fitness exercises.

‘Patience, eager heart,’ comes the warning of my melodramatic inner voice. I remember that my mother told me to make each professorially mandated postulation (I don’t want to say school assignment) a creative project of its own. She believes each superficially dull assignment can be mined for glittering bits of dramatic inspiration and that the useless rubble surrounding it should be ground into mortar to build a showcase for such gems. In Psycho, trusty old Norman Bates assures us that ‘a boy’s best friend is his mother’ and despite that man’s deficiencies, he did have a point. Mothers are the best people to turn to when in need of coping mechanism, and what do schoolboys need more than coping mechanisms?

With maternally-bestowed moral compass as my guide, I shall return to those ventures previously curtailed by extended stays on the sickbed of severe boredom and more appealing prospects in the great land of Procrasti-Nation. I urge you to do the same. Who knows what treasures we shall forge from the dross of academia?

Ron Paul-ism

I may stealing from Pieter (Friedrich) to pay (Ron) Paul a compliment, but I'm going to anyway. Paul does the world a service by demonstrating that integrity can and shoukd be a wide and sturdy plank for any campaign platform.

I'm a surly critic by nature, so I discovered this with some reticence. I hadn't discovered this Ron Paul guy and I certainly didn't want to jump on the bandwagon late, so I've been trying to feed my ignorant skepticism with meaty question marks about the man. Once obtained, I could lord my knowledge over the frenzied Ron Paul supporters until they broke down, at which point I would comfort them with a wet blanket.

But Ron has too much integrity to make this an easy task. Basic moral integrity is something a few other candidates in the race can claim to, but none can boast of the immense doctrinal integrity Paul has shown over his many years of Congressional service. If there's an issue he's making a fuss about in a debate, you can be darn sure he's been making the same fuss for the last 30 years, by word and action.

In keeping with my curmudgeonly ways, I'm much more interested in pursuing a few more potential chinks in Paul's armor than ceding him my vote. For now let him be a proud man to have earned my praise.

Might as well call him Midas Wells

Lajos Egri says every drama must have a premise. Premise equals purpose, theme, root-idea and a bevy of other terms invented by writers to describe the same thing. I'll try not to add on to the pile. I'll just make myself an Egri acolyte and call it the premise. Which leads me to ask myself a question: what is the premise of Midas?







Character defeats thuggery? Sincerity prevails in the face of conformism? I think these are pretty straightforward premises. Midas and Charles represent the character, D represents thuggery. Can one have a complimentary premise? I haven't advanced far enough in Egri's book to know for sure. If so racism and cultural identity are definitely good material for a secondary premise. Something simple along the lines of "love determines family over race."







It's surprisingly deflating to know exactly where we're going with this story. Still, it's nice to feel a strong handle with which I can direct the plot.







Jimmy and I have differed on the opening. I favor the functional opening at the park. I might favor a montage of inner city festivities. A barbeque here, some kids running around, guys staring each other down, competition on the asphalt jungle. A gospel soundtrack. LA's inner city's got needs. Big ones. And if rich white folk are willing to come in and live here and try to make a difference, more power to themm. But you got to understand. This is a whole different world than you're used to. This is an asphalt jungle and there are rules in this jungle. Much different than the country.







Brother, you know that and I know it, but that don't change the fact that we need all the help we can get. And this family is solid. I've know John for years and the man does not back down from anything. When a man like that comes to you offering, you don't turn him down. So let's give these people a chance, throw our weight behind them. Besides, I think you'll find them a little different than your average white family.







Character. Do I know my characters? Midas. 6'4, black, athletic build. Christian. Born and raised in Bakersfield. Moving in to LA. 756Raised by a white family. His father is a preacher/real estate agent. He's made a bun565dle selling homes and now765 he wants to get back to preaching, in his old neighborhood. Midas was 68rdening, feeding 7. He667 also like playing piano in the church, reading, talking philosophy with677 his556 dad, talking music with567 his sister, wrestling with his brother and cooking with his mom.



and discipled under them for a few months before suffering a breakdown and committing suicide. The immense trauma of those two events and the young ages of the children prompted the Fergusons to move to new territory and sr56878685e6tart afresh.





The Midas bandwagon breaks down as they enter into the inner city. They push the old wagon into Walker Bros. Mechanics. Charles p[9088t67side and pops the hood. He means to check the oil but instead pops off the water lid and gets some hot dirty water spraying up in his face. Alicia looks away a little sheepish876869897890870ly. M7687idas pops up ea768gerly78 by Charles' side, asking what the problem is. Charles comments on Alicia's "fineness." Midas089098 reveals to Charles' embarrassment and amazement that Alicia is his sister.

Falling Skies

Is the market crashing? As an American, I've long taken for granted that I control my own destiny. Hard work, talent and unrelenting commitment make dreams happen. That's the formula for the American dream. If making dreams come true is difficult in an economic boom with no major security threats (no Cold War or fascist dictator clouding up my career fantasies), how much harder would it be when the market bottoms out and terrorist attacks come in droves? Perhaps a little easier?

When an environment is static, the general apathy and lethargy of the populace plays into the hands of the powers that be. In regards to the entertainment industry, they just keep on turning out the same potboilers, hoping to duplicate the success of past innovators. Yet the entertainment industry has always done this. Can there be any crisis that effects the entertainment industry. All I have to offer is to conjecture and baseless speculation, but the answer that leaps from my tongue is no. Hollywood has always been the same. Maybe the mood changes, but the films just keep on coming. There were a ton of movies that came out in the 30s. Gangster movies, detective movies, screwball comedies, safari adventures, Garbo flicks and smalltown romances spawned in numbers comparable to those in prosperous decades. Maybe they were a bit louder, cruder and more fantastical then the ultra-conservative, patriotic offering of the 40s and early 50s, but they were all just entertainment at their cores, and often employed the same people.

Entertainment changes only with the tastes of the people. People will always crave entertainment. In bad times, they may want some outrageous flavors to distract them, in sad times, some sugarsweet stuff to release the seratonin, in boring times something spiked to give them energy, or entirely new to give them direction. The entertainers are just chameleons.

The Evolution Jihad

The powers of entertainment and evangelism work side by side to engage the fickle attention of American youth, challenge their vacuous moral commitments and offer them the hope of true freedom in Christ. In this culture, a successful invasion or crusade cannot be made without either of these two elements. You must win the people and then you must show them the truth.

Unfortunately, the attention span of American young people, in college and high school, has shrunk. The window of communication has reshaped itself to be less and less compatible with the full Gospel message as traditionally presented. Shorter sermons, jazzed-up outreach events and increasing outputs of youth-oriented Christian multimedia haven't kept the church in line. More than 80% of young people raised in church will leave, heart and body, before they're done with school.

If Jesus's parable of the single lost sheep out of the 99 can be applied here, the appropriate response is to follow the wayward sheep out of the fold, identify the snares and fetch them back, bringing along those yet to be found. How much more vital is such an expedition if 80 of the flock are gone and countless others linger outside the walls of the fold?

The success of such expeditions has been limited by the cynicism of the flock. This culture has been saturated with Christian-related media, with accurate and inaccurate gospels. Church signs spring Gospel-in-a-box catchphrases on passersby, TBN broadcasts steal 5 seconds of time for the Gospel even from the most disinterested channel surfer, Rick Warren bombards the culture with hope in the form of millions of books sold; Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins even got millions to think of the "End Times." Add to those far-reaching outpourings of Christianity the generally unfriendly attention of Hollywood, where Christian symbols, preachers and slightly skewed renditions of the Gospel make constant appearances as stylistic motifs for movies and television shows.

As a result of this information overload, most young people feel that they know the gist of Christianity. Not only are they sure to know a church-goer, they've seen representatives on book covers, TV and streetside signs. Hence their hesitance in the face of evangelism.

ENGL 222
Professor Bonca
Sam Lively
18 May 2007
The American Man-Eater
The seductress weaves a fatal web of enchantment for her victims, but for the unravaged onlooker her illusionary powers are pleasantly intoxicating. In The Great Gatsby and Death of a Salesman the seductress is the “American Dream,” and even as she robs her victims of life and fortune, their commitment to her is undying. Though her wake is cluttered with their broken hearts, many of the survivors gladly carry her train in spellbound reverence. The secret to her reason-defying success lies in her victims and her audience’s capacity to dream. For Jay Gatsby and Willy Loman, Nick Carraway and Linda Loman, the victims and their audience respectively, the greatness of their improbable dreams far outweighs the opposing facts of reality.
The American Dream is a loaded and a little misleading name. Dream is a collective term in her case: she welcomes all dreams, so long as they are attached to dreaming men. No dream is too grand or subtle for her if it is fervently wished for. Yet Dream is a misnomer for her; it does not express her complete nature. A mere body of wishes, however vast and beautiful, does not move men as dramatically as she does.
The promise of fulfillment animates her body, and flaunts it before the lusting eyes of men, like the naked blonde in Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man. American Promise fits her better than American Dream. Men are drawn to her not just as a representation of their desires, but because she appears to be an extravagantly generous benefactor.
The promise of so many dreams demands an impressive substantiation to win the skeptical hearts of men. America fits the bill. When Nick Carraway views New York through the imagined eyes of its first settlers he sees a “fresh, green breast” (Fitzgerald 180). America’s breast drips promise that triggers the voracious appetites of ambitious dreamers.
Carraway goes on to describe the full effect of beholding the American Dream, the American Promise for the first time: “for a transitory enchanted moment man must have held his breath in the presence of this continent, compelled into an aesthetic contemplation he neither understood nor desired, face to face for the last time in history with something commensurate to his capacity for wonder” (…).
Jay Gatsby and Willy Loman have an immense capacity for wonder. Neither restrains their hopes to the stuff of earth, nor lies content in abstract contemplation; both desire physical, financial, emotional and spiritual satisfaction within the time frame of their stay on earth. Gatsby expects to be able to “repeat the past.” When Carraway gently reminds of the impossibility of that hope, Gatsby responds, incredulously, “Can’t repeat the past! Why of course you can!” (Fitzgerald 110). Loman thinks he can be well-liked, rich, enjoy a Hollywood-style funeral upon his death and have his glorious legacy extended and expanded by his sons.
This shared characteristic draws them both to the “fresh, green breast.” For each, the unveiling of that sight is a powerful moment, akin to the settler’s first view of the new world, though the sight comes in remarkably different manifestations. Gatsby sees “out of the corner of his eye… that the blocks of sidewalks really formed a ladder and mounted to a secret place above the trees- he could climb to it, if he climbed alone, and once there he could suck on the pap of life, gulp down the comparable milk of wonder” (…). Gatsby would never shake this image from his brain. When he pours this euphoria into his relationship with Daisy, that relationship becomes his life.
Loman’s experience lacks such a cosmic scale of description, but it pulls with equal gravity on his life. He tells the inspirational story of super-salesman Dave Singleman: “Old Dave, he’d go up to his room, y’understand, put on his velvet green slippers and- I’ll never forget- pick up his phone and call his buyers, and without ever leaving his room, at the age of eighty-four, he made his living. And when I saw that, I realized selling was the greatest career a man could want” (Miller 81). Singleman is a shriveled form of the breast, but those velvet slippers are more than green and inviting enough to become Loman’s most sought-after prize.
Sadly for these two men, the ladder of Gatsby’ dream is not as concrete as the sidewalk and salesman career produced only street-worn leather for Loman’s velvet appetite. Gatsby’s fantasy of marriage of Daisy collides with the too-solid frame of Tom Buchanan, her husband. Though he invades Daisy’s life bearing the spoils of financial conquest she had demanded of him, he can not drive the love of Tom from her heart.
Loman fails even to approximate Singleman’s success. His sales fall short of paying even the mortgage. As he ages, his boss refuses to free him from the taxing roads to work from the cushy confines of his own neighborhood, effectively exiling him from the comfort he worked his entire life to achieve. His fallback plan of raising a Singleman from his sons burns from flames ignited by his chosen prospect, Biff. Biff urges his father to join him in the arson: “Will you take that phony dream and burn it before something happens?” (Miller 133).
Gatsby and Loman are not willing to acknowledge or escape their escalating funeral pyres. Both aid the seductress by accepting hallucinogenic reproductions of her promises when reality has rejected her originals as counterfeits. The grim specter of Death cannot break the spell she has bound them within. Gatsby waits stubbornly in his pool for Daisy’s phone call, even as she and Tom set events in motion that bring about his death. Loman one-ups Gatsby by killing himself in a sort of desperate Plan C, hoping that his life insurance money will propel the downward spiraling Biff to glorious heights.
In perhaps an even greater feat than her destruction of Gatsby and Loman, the great seductress charms two individuals who would have the greatest reason to denounce her as a tramp. Nick Carraway and Loman’s wife Linda rarely find fault with their companions’ infatuations with unattainable goals, before or after their tragic deaths. On the contrary, they often applaud their willingness to attempt impossible ventures. Carraway gushes of Gatsby’s greatness, his “heightened sensitivity to the promises of life” and the “romantic readiness” (Fitzgerald 2); never mind that these fine qualities helped condemn him to a grisly murder.
Linda never faults her husband for his failure; she only faults her sons’ failure to acknowledge the greatness of their father. When they jointly question him, she berates them. She asks, “And you tell me he has no character? The man who never worked a day but for your benefit? When does he get a medal for that? Is this his reward- to turn around at the age of sixty-three and find his sons, who he loved better than life” questioning him (Miller 57)? For a mother to turn on her own sons rather than acknowledge the error of her husband’s actions testifies to the extent of the seductress’ entrapment.
Carraway and Linda Loman have a fervent appreciation for their grandiose dreamers. They do not separate their loyalty to the man from their loyalty to his dreams. They do not want one without the other. If death comes, let him take the whole package, and not leave an empty husk of a man. Carraway says that “Gatsby turned out all right at the end” (Fitzgerald 2). He blames the unpleasantness on the “foul dust,” i.e. the friends who did not appreciate him, that “floated in the wake of his dreams” (…). Linda doesn’t mind the grave if it is not left unattended. Her prominent desire is that respectful attention “be finally paid to such a man” (Miller 56).
Out of the wake of inattentive and indifferent dust emerges the form of the seductress, the American Dream, the American Promise, the American Man-Eater. Amidst the ruin and heartbreak, her illusions vividly depict the ached-for desires of a man’s heart. Her call inspired men to accomplish deed mighty enough to leave a wake, foul or otherwise. These are the attributes of the sly snake and the majestic lioness that whisper for humans to stretch trusting hands into the beautiful asps’ den or lie beside the gently heaving side of the lion. Jay Gatsby and Willy Loman, and their ardent devotees, prefer the fatal kisses of the snake and lion to the calloused lifestyle that ignored such delightful whispers.
Works Cited
Fitzgerald, F. Scott. The Great Gatsby. New York, NY: Scribner, 2004.
Miller, Arthur. Death of a Salesman. New York, NY: Penguin Books, 1976.