This is a fantastic idea. There are always flies around a horse farm, and fly abatement is one of the things we spend a fair amount of time (and some money) dealing with. It's necessary, but never fun... until now.
You know, it's funny that we have inherited that standard from the Japanese. When John Wayne was coming up and making movies in the 1930s, the standard for heroic behavior included a certain amount of loud flamboyance: gun-spinning, breakneck horse tricks, shouting and shooting and bar-fighting.
Because of the influence of Japanese cinema after the war, though, we now agree that a hero is unemotional and quiet, and demonstrates his extraordinary physical prowess in the smallest possible degree necessary to make his point. Clint Eastwood's Spaghetti Westerns make the point. He was never angry, he always spoke softly, and he shot just one bullet into each man -- perfectly. You see the same standard at work in The Magnificent Seven, and other works inspired by Japanese originals. It's become quite pervasive, even in sillier stuff like the new Star Wars movies. There's no Han Solo in those films, the old kind of flamboyant American; the Jedi are all silent, serious, and Japanese in their standards of conduct.
Who would have thought in 1950, with the Japanese a defeated nation, that Americans would adopt their standard for what heroes looks like? Who would have thought we'd decide that heroes were not the loud, laughing, gambling Marines who won the war, but the silent samurai who lost it?
Yes, and in the spy genre, look at the humorless, buttoned-down, morose loner Jason Bourne as a successor to James Bond, who never missed an opportunity to drink, flirt, smirk at the bad guys, and dress up in a dinner jacket? We seem to have gotten more afraid of looking silly or unsophisticated. I blame it all on David Carradine and "Kung Fu."
I wonder whether the range changes much if you load it with coarser salt. It probably won't be too welcome in the kitchen, and demand a lot more floor cleaning. About half the flies seem to get a little skittish when a human brandishing the swatter of death approaches to within 3 feet, but perhaps this will seem less menacing.
Musashi was an interesting guy- the story is he killed 60 odd men in single combat. Eiji Yoshikawa's book is quite good, it follows him from a callow youth awakening on the blood drenched battlefield of Sekigahara to his evolution as an artist and writer. He lived in a particularly unsettled period in Japanese history, before the Tokugawa's had established their 250 year police state.
8 comments:
heh...
Oooooo, the Dark Lord wants a coupla those. Cuz, yanno, that kind of fun is best shared.
heh
0>;~}
Absolutely
Eric Hines
There is an alternate method illustrated here.....
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JMmQ8jHquB0
You know, it's funny that we have inherited that standard from the Japanese. When John Wayne was coming up and making movies in the 1930s, the standard for heroic behavior included a certain amount of loud flamboyance: gun-spinning, breakneck horse tricks, shouting and shooting and bar-fighting.
Because of the influence of Japanese cinema after the war, though, we now agree that a hero is unemotional and quiet, and demonstrates his extraordinary physical prowess in the smallest possible degree necessary to make his point. Clint Eastwood's Spaghetti Westerns make the point. He was never angry, he always spoke softly, and he shot just one bullet into each man -- perfectly. You see the same standard at work in The Magnificent Seven, and other works inspired by Japanese originals. It's become quite pervasive, even in sillier stuff like the new Star Wars movies. There's no Han Solo in those films, the old kind of flamboyant American; the Jedi are all silent, serious, and Japanese in their standards of conduct.
Who would have thought in 1950, with the Japanese a defeated nation, that Americans would adopt their standard for what heroes looks like? Who would have thought we'd decide that heroes were not the loud, laughing, gambling Marines who won the war, but the silent samurai who lost it?
Yes, and in the spy genre, look at the humorless, buttoned-down, morose loner Jason Bourne as a successor to James Bond, who never missed an opportunity to drink, flirt, smirk at the bad guys, and dress up in a dinner jacket? We seem to have gotten more afraid of looking silly or unsophisticated. I blame it all on David Carradine and "Kung Fu."
I wonder whether the range changes much if you load it with coarser salt.
It probably won't be too welcome in the kitchen, and demand a lot more floor cleaning.
About half the flies seem to get a little skittish when a human brandishing the swatter of death approaches to within 3 feet, but perhaps this will seem less menacing.
Musashi was an interesting guy- the story is he killed 60 odd men in single combat. Eiji Yoshikawa's book is quite good, it follows him from a callow youth awakening on the blood drenched battlefield of Sekigahara to his evolution as an artist and writer. He lived in a particularly unsettled period in Japanese history, before the Tokugawa's had established their 250 year police state.
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