Pretty Pictures Make Me Want to Kill

Much furor and fuss is being made over a school where Afghan children were brain-washed to be suicide bombers by looking at paintings of heaven while being taught to wire explosives. I would like to clearly state that I am definitely anti-child-suicide-bomb. In fact, despite some of the applications of my research, I am pretty much anti-blowing-things-up in general.

But what got me about the CNN coverage is that there is no trace of irony when quoting a Taliban expert who says things like:

"I have never seen such elaborate paintings about so-called heaven,"

and:

"They say life is a waste here and if you do a good thing you will go to heaven, immediately to heaven. For someone who does not have anything to look forward to, who does not have any opportunities and is living a wretched life, this sort of thing comes as a big incentive."

It's not just Muslim extremists, folks!

In fact, I think that pretty much sums up "The Last Judgement" panel of the Sistine Chapel.

Notes from Shakespeare's Writing Group

Hey Bill,

Caught Hamlet in the park last night for the sixth time. (Critter had been playing Osric.) Still love the play, but I think there is room for some improvement. Thought you might appreciate some comments:

• The play could use some clarification as to why young Hamlet is not crowned king upon his father's death. Having the king's brother take the thrown in preference to the adult son is peculiar (although not entirely without precedent). A line or two (or, as is the case in this play, a long soliloquy) about the royal ascension practices of Denmark might be helpful.
• It felt really odd that the two men who fight to the death at the end of the play don't actually have a scene together until Act 5. Instead people just talk about how much Hamlet admires Laertes. Consider adding some interaction between the two characters in the first act, before Laertes heads off to France. Remember the old saw: "Show, don't tell"!
  
• Now, the play is already long (I mean really, really long!), so I can understand your resistance to adding the above material. However there is room to cut a few things to make room. For example, that whole bit with Polonius sending Reynaldo to spy on Laertes in Paris does absolutely nothing to advance the plot. Just drop it.
  
• It's really the little things, though, that will streamline the play. The characters are constantly spouting obvious information. For example, you really don't need lines like "Oh, I am slain!" and "Oh, I die..." and "I am poison'd." Just let the actors die. The audience will figure it out.
• One final note. There are a few phrases that sound a bit awkward, and which might be improved by slight rearrangement. For example dangling the verb at the end of "The lady doth protest too much, methinks" sounds clunky. Have you considered "Methinks the lady doth protest too much"?

All in all, a terrific play, though. Keep up the good work!

"Show Me Where It Hurts" or "Why I Make People Uncomfortable"

After decades of searching, I finally found and purchased a copy of Edmundo Vasconcelos' Modern Methods of Amputation. Everything I know about unintended irony(*), I learned from this book. I will be making T-shirts.

(*) cs10 is welcome to chime in on whether it is linguistically possible for irony to be unintentional. She may also chime in on whether, in her experience, this figure accurately depicts the best position to take when extracting all four limbs from a human, with the caveat that the author's intention is that the amputee survive the procedure.

Also, I suck at quitting blogging.