Wannabees

[LARSSON at vax1.mankato.msus.edu]

grip writes:
"I think a lot of this is analogous to a girl scout camp's evening
campfire scary story. Yes, it did happen. Yes, there are crazies out there
(and in here too!). But we seem to enjoy the spectacle, at a distance,
and are fascinated and intrigued by the idea of SOMETHING happening to
break us out of the rather dreary mode of living in which most of us find
ourselves. A shudder along the spine as we view the wreakage in OKC and
at the same time a bit of regret, carefully hidden, indignantly denied,
that we ourselves weren't more closely involved. Who, if we're honest,
didn't fantasize a bit about being in the building, escaping death with a
few scratches, and heroically carrying out the injured to safety or being
rescued after a time. Ah, the stories we could tell!
 
Is it akin to our yearning to be able to create a masterpiece like GR?
(I had to have some Pynchonic reference. :)  )"

Actually, TRP has rather anticipated all this as well.  Consider Pokler's fascina-
tion with Klein-Rogge's film roles as the prototypical barbarian/gangster/
mad scientist who would rather seem everything burn up or blow up than to accept
defeat.  Blicero too has such yearnings.  All this, though, is out of the last
degraged perversions of German Romanticism.  The home-grown product is, perhaps,
something else.  Again, though, the Tristero is an ambiguous savior (at best),
portending destruction as much as any more humanistic act of rebellion.

(And consider the interesting phenom of the Vietnam wannabees--those conservative
spokesfolks, the Newtser and Tush not the least among them, who have expressed
regret that they managed to weasel out of the draft and couldn't taste the thrill
of living with alternate moments of boredom and terror.)

Let's all step back and chant "m'ba kayere," remembering that Passover is a
salvation and not just ensurance of preterition!

Don Larsson, Mankato State U (MN)