You Hate Words

Most of you have noticed that my posts have become smaller as of late. I've traded in the old essay-length model for a shorter -- yet more frequent -- three to four paragraph model. I believe that this new model has at least one distinct advantage over the previous one: it requires you to read less. It also requires me to write less, which gives me more time to think about all of the world's problems, but do nothing about them.

While I'm sure most people prefer less words in their blogs, I'm quite sure that the Utah Legislature prefers less words period. My proof can be found within Utah's education budget as designed by the legislators, which has Utah's students ranked last in America in per capita spending. In fact, our legislature would have to spend over 1,000 dollars more per student just to move into forty-ninth place (that's out of fifty, in case you're stupid). As many of our children are learning, it's hard to like words when you can't read them. At least they're learning something.

All the Utah Legislature wackiness aside, it may be the case that Americans in general don't like reading words. Take subtitled films as an example. When a foreign film finds modest success at the American box-office, Hollywood buys the rights to it, remakes it, and shoves the same thing down our throats minus those annoying words that appear at the bottom of the screen every time someone speaks. A good example of this just happened with the popular 2009 Swedish film The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. That original film, based on Stieg Larsson's Millenium Triology, takes place in Sweden, features Swedish actors, and was not American. The 2011 version has all the same stuff as the original film minus all of that un-American jibba-jabba all those foreigners speak.

Of course there are those that won't like or understand something regardless of the amount of words it has. Take the above-mentioned remake as an example. We recently watched this film at our local multimegagigaplex and found it mostly enjoyable. However, at one disturbing point during the film, the female lead gets tied up and sodomized in a very brutal and extended scene prompting this exchange from the middle-aged couple in front of us:

               Lady (whispers to her husband): What's happening right now?

               Man (not whispering as much as he should): She's getting anally raped.

I can understand her confusion considering there were no dueling banjos playing in the background. The Utah Legislature likes a bit of music before it gets down to business.

Ned Beatty as a metaphor of our children. Their future is squealing like a pig.