Darth Thurber
2005-06-08,

How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live.

- Henry David Thoreau

It makes me wonder what the hell I'm doing here. Is journal writing contributing to the watering down of the importance of language, or opening the universe to examination, finding the world's answers in even the minutest of details?

I think that, by asking the question, I have, in turn, answered it.

Commas. James Thurber said (paraphrased) that they are like so many upturned chairs, taking up space, useless. Others say that they (like other punctuation marks) are like signposts, directing the reader's pacing through a medium that doesn't lend well to inflection. Personally, I see commas as dance steps, each one being like those footprint-and-arrow jobbies that show beginners how to jitterbug. (I'm disturbed to find that 'jobbies' has been accepted by Word as valid English. Go figure.) Get good in their use, and you can become a Fred Astaire of prose, dancing on and with an air of literary conceit. Considering I can't dance worth spit using my actual feet, this may be as close as I can muster to elegance. Not that I consider anything that I've ever written elegant.

I spent a few moments staring at my little plastic Darth Vader that I got from BK (yes, I got a toy from BK; it was part of a meal dealie thing - and as I only go there about 1ce a month or so, I don't feel bad about it), and started wondering about just what it was that makes him scary/intimidating/evil looking, other than he's big and wears black and is the Antagonist, which brings along with it its own preconceived baggage. At first glance, there's the obvious Nazi-esque tone, with the high 'cheekbones' and angular facial features of the stereotypical Aryan ideal. But after a little mulling, I notice that his body suit suspiciously resembles ancient Japanese organic armor, and the outward angle/curve of the helmet isn't too dissimilar to that of a samurai's - it just needs a clich� crescent moon shape on the front. And, lo and behold, suddenly DV could easily pass for a cheesy samurai demon in a 70's martial arts/swordplay action epic. I started rewriting the story of Star Wars in the context of ancient Japan - Darth as evil overlord, Obi Wan as old samurai teaching a promising student while taking an important info they received from two escaped slaves to rebellion headquarters, under the protection of a Ronin guide. Seems the overlord's minions have built a magical device that can destroy whole villages in a shot, and is keeping everyone in line with this massive threat... you get the idea. It makes me wonder whether there isn't already something out there in movie or story form that's similar. Oh to have a team of Japanese scholars at hand.

-- End Transmission --