Where the Wild Things Are Study Questions and Thought Experiments

1. Describe the parenting philosophy demonstrated in the story.

2. Is Sendak giving an accurate portrayal of the imaginary life of a child, or is he giving a lesson on how to handle tantrums?

3. Have you ever been taking care of a child, and suddenly felt as though you were in charge of a feral beast? What triggered that feeling? How did you deal with it?
4. Is Max’s voyage objectively real, or is it all in his imagination? Give evidence from the text and pictures.
5. What lesson does Max learn?

Watchmen Study Questions and Thought Experiments

Watchmen Thought Experiments

(Drafted before seeing the film)

1. Do you believe the course of history is managed by secret cabals, shadow governments, or other conspiracies?

2. How are police officers distinct from government sanctioned costumed superheroes?

3. Of the liberties and freedoms you enjoy, which are preserved through your own vigilance?

4. Which are preserved and protected by forces outside yourself?

5. Does the human capacity for violence, hatred, and other horrors result because of childhood experiences?

Pastoral WHERE of the road?

For all the news articles and web posts about the Pope’s new edict on Pastoral Care of the Road, I can’t find any links to the actual document. How am I supposed to print this out and put in my car if I can’t find it? What good is the news cycle about the novelty of this thing if it doesn’t actually direct people to the thing itself?

“Everybody needs money! That’s why they call it money!”

That’s a David Mamet line, delivered by Danny Devito in the movie Heist.

Tell you what, how about you go into that McDonald’s bathroom and spend 3 hours cleaning it.  In exchange, I’ll give you a brand new CD from Tower Records.

Not interested?  But the market says these two things are about equivalent–they each sell for roughly 15$.

That’s the power of money–its action as an exchange medium allows us to compare values across the whole spectrum of our society.   The comparisons may be flawed, warped, crude, or otherwise shadowy forms lit up on the wall of the cave, but if it weren’t for money, we wouldn’t be able to have the conversation at all.

Would we?

Where are them kids at?

Do you teach to where they are going?

Do you start by figuring out where they are?

Are they reliable consumers for their own education?

Or is it all about what you want?

Late to bed and early to rise leaves me still feeling silly about forgetting the wrench in my car, and perfectly willing to remain obscure. 

V for Vendetta thought experiments

1. A sustainable society only has to be built once. What unsustainable methods would you support in such an endeavor?

2. How much a fascist will you become in service to the revolution?

3. Name your top 3 worst things our current administration has done. Imagine that somehow these were part of a long term, insanely subversive plot to do good… How good would the good have to be to justify the wrong?

4. What things distinguish the criminal from the civilian from the citizen?

5. Do Hollywood movies ever serve anything like a true revolution?

6. Which of your most sacred, life-affirming beliefs, could be based on complete fiction and still be as powerful?

7. Can people transcend their class, their zeitgeist, their circumstance, without literally torturous levels of brainwashing?

8. Does calling it "counter conditioning" actually alter the coercive, fascist act of imprisonment and forced psychological manipulation?

9. Given sufficient design and brilliance, could a bombing campaign alone, ever be more than a destabilizing influence? With Unified-Field-levels of knowledge, could bombs be sufficient to move society in a productive direction?

10. Would it actually be possible to build a redeemed society in the aftermath of a successful genocide? After how many generations?

11. Compare V's London, before and after the failure of the senses, to the Matrix's Zion, before and after the arrival of the One (think inside and outside the orgy cave).

12. At what point are you responsible for your neighbors' miseries? For their oppression?

13. What do you know about the Thatcherian England that gave rise to the orginal comic? How do you think it differs from the Reaganian America that gave rise to Max Headroom, and RoboCop?

14. Without V's intervention, how would the portrayed London end up?

15. 1984. Brave New World. Erewhon, Logan's Run, and Code 46 if you like: What aspects of each dystopia are most liveable?

16. What series of political events could move us from our still somewhat liberally free society to that of V's London?

17. Which of your friends and acquaintances would gladly go along with a new fascist regime? Which would be killed in the first wave?

18. If you decided tonight to throw yourself fully against society as V has, what could you accomplish? What do you know how to do? How to break?

19. Pure comic geek question: What's your theory for how Alan Moore and Grant Morrison can exist in the same universe? Is their supposed quiet feud a cover for the fact that they are actually the same person? Or is Grant the Silicon Age version of SuperCollider Alan? The rockstar's Hyde to the raconteur's Jekyl? Or did Moore use ancient magic of some occult kind to purge his most commercially appealing and yet absurdly phantasmagoric self, unleashing Morrison on the world without any sorcerous superego? Can you make heads or tails of this barbelithian exegesis?

Like I said… Comic geek.

20. What music speaks most directly to your personal political philosophy?

21. If you haven't read the comic–could you tell you were watching a comic book movie? If you have–on a scale of "Sin City" to "A History of Violence," what kinds of adaptation did you see?

22. Does this movie rate with Bladerunner, as a thought provoking dystopian vision? Matrix 1? Matrix 3? Demolition Man?

23. Pure comic-movie ridiculosity: Compare the costumes and effects to these other comic adaptations: Demolition Man, Hellboy, Men in Black, Barbed Wire, Time Cop, Judge Dredd, Aliens Vs. Predator… Need I continue?