Month: December 2002

The other day, I was leafing through my neighbor’s mail when I came across an interesting advertisement for a medical research study. The study, for which participants would receive $300 in compensation, was being conducted on behalf of the local university in order to discover what effect, if any, a strict diet of walnuts would have on adult male prostate health. Not terrifically fond of walnuts myself, I decided not to enquire further, but as I crumpled the advertisement into a little ball and set fire to it along with the rest of the mail behind my neighbor’s bushes, I had to wonder: could I start my own research study, and what exactly could I get people to eat for $300?

This merited further investigation. Having already cashed my neighbor’s social security check earlier that day, I had a little money to spare, so I phoned the campus newspaper and asked to place an advertisement of my own. I was, I said, just beginning a new research study to discover the effect that aquatic water fowl had on urinary tract infections, and I would be willing to pay anyone with such an infection $300 if they would eat an entire live duck.

I should note at this point that ducks have become increasingly easy to find around my house. This is thanks in large part to the small pond that formed in my backyard when, in a fit of what I now jokingly refer to as homicidal rage, I accidentally took a pickaxe to my neighbor’s swimming pool. I had no doubt, as I discussed the content of my ad and mentioned just how fond I am of the Times New Roman font the newspaper has been using lately, that I would in fact be able to acquire at least three or four ducks for use in my study.

Once I had assured the nice gentleman on the phone that I had all the proper licenses (or at least enough money to cover my ass if the police discovered that I didn’t), I hung up, grabbed a bag of stale bread from the kitchen, and wandered out onto the deck to catch me some mallards. However, as I later learned, ducks apparently fly south for the winter which hardly seems fair, all things considered and it’s just about impossible to find one at this time of year.

Man, I hope I won’t still have to pay for that stupid ad.

Under the auspices of a lesser director, watching the film could be like watching a freight train go by. This happens, then this happens, then this happens, then this happens — as our characters are tossed from action scene to action scene. Tolkien got away with this in the books because his writing was extraordinarily boring. You could never really tell you were being overstimulated.

I admit, I’ve never been especially impressed with Tolkien as a writer. The story itself is interesting, but there are long, boring stretches where characters are introduced and reintroduced to one another. Rarely have I come across a passage I could enjoy simply as a piece of writing, simply for the way the words were put together. Tonight, though, I did:

A strong place and wonderful was Isengard, and long had it been beautiful; and there great lords had dwelt, the wardens of Gondor upon the West, and wise men that watched the stars. But Saruman had slowly shaped it to his shifting purposes, and made it better, as he thought, being deceived — for all those arts and subtle devices, for which he forsook his former wisdom, and which fondly he imagined were his own, came but from Mordor; so that what he made was naught, only a little copy, a child’s model or a slave’s flattery, of that vast fortress, armoury, prison, furnace of great power, Barad-dûr, the Dark Tower, which suffered no rival, and laughed at flattery, biding its time, secure in its pride and its immeasurable strength.

Remi Treuer writes: “Why do I get the feeling that this whole Kissinger thing was just an elaborate ruse to make Oliver North a more palatable candidate for the job?”