The Monster at the End of this Post
Feb. 10th, 2007 03:45 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
create_destinyCertain health care professionals have accused me of having undue anxiety. What's that saying, "If you're not confused you're not paying attention?" How about "If you don't have an anxiety disorder you weren't paying attention to the books you were exposed to as a child."
Take, for example, The Cat in the Hat, a godless recipe for anarchy. This book wrecked me as a child. My hypothalamus most certainly shrank, marinated as it were in a toxic bath of stress hormones, while my mother read this book to me. A trickster cat hops on a ball while performing a circus act of balancing objects. Don't You Realize That a Goldfish Could Die and a Perfectly Good Cake is About to be Ruined? Not to mention the demonic flying of kites in the house by the perverted twins --"Thing One" and "Thing Two!" Holy Christ! Will no one heed the goldfish, crying like a voice in the wilderness, urging the children to chase the Cat out and restore the house to sanity and order?!?
Even worse was Grover in The Monster at the End of This Book. Each turn of the page brings Grover and the reader closer to the monster at the end of the book. Grover desperately scrambles to prevent the reader from turning the pages. He ties the pages together with rope, he builds a brick wall, but nothing is strong enough to stop the ceaseless turning of the pages.
Even as a child I knew this book was written to prepare children for the end of the world. Each passing hour is the turning of another page, bringing us closer to the horror of eternal bedtime. Yes, the monster at the end of the book turns out to be Grover himself, but this was no consolation to me. I knew that was just a sugar-coated ploy devised to trick children into going to sleep, into living an unconscious life where we dare not question God or Dick Cheney.
Yes, give me Wellbutrin and buckets of TrimSpa, Baby. Give me new pills all shiny and green -- striped ones, piped ones and a Prozac machine! For these green house gasses are killing us, Lasses. There's a Bush in the house and our Mother stepped out. Turn the page! Turn the page! Turn the page!
Take, for example, The Cat in the Hat, a godless recipe for anarchy. This book wrecked me as a child. My hypothalamus most certainly shrank, marinated as it were in a toxic bath of stress hormones, while my mother read this book to me. A trickster cat hops on a ball while performing a circus act of balancing objects. Don't You Realize That a Goldfish Could Die and a Perfectly Good Cake is About to be Ruined? Not to mention the demonic flying of kites in the house by the perverted twins --"Thing One" and "Thing Two!" Holy Christ! Will no one heed the goldfish, crying like a voice in the wilderness, urging the children to chase the Cat out and restore the house to sanity and order?!?
Even worse was Grover in The Monster at the End of This Book. Each turn of the page brings Grover and the reader closer to the monster at the end of the book. Grover desperately scrambles to prevent the reader from turning the pages. He ties the pages together with rope, he builds a brick wall, but nothing is strong enough to stop the ceaseless turning of the pages.
Even as a child I knew this book was written to prepare children for the end of the world. Each passing hour is the turning of another page, bringing us closer to the horror of eternal bedtime. Yes, the monster at the end of the book turns out to be Grover himself, but this was no consolation to me. I knew that was just a sugar-coated ploy devised to trick children into going to sleep, into living an unconscious life where we dare not question God or Dick Cheney.
Yes, give me Wellbutrin and buckets of TrimSpa, Baby. Give me new pills all shiny and green -- striped ones, piped ones and a Prozac machine! For these green house gasses are killing us, Lasses. There's a Bush in the house and our Mother stepped out. Turn the page! Turn the page! Turn the page!
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no subject
Date: 2007-02-10 11:58 pm (UTC)Two months apart.
It was EXACTLY as you say here.
no subject
Date: 2007-02-11 12:40 am (UTC)Did you ever see that made-for-tv movie "The Day After?"
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Date: 2007-02-11 01:28 am (UTC)Something like half the adult population of the US saw that film?
I can't reconstruct the subplots of the film without help, but am sure there is some dedicated trauma storage space in my brain just overflowing with images from that film. I'd really like to see it again just to fit the pieces together.