Inside the Mind of a Troll (an inevitably short trip)

So, to the one cricket chirping in the dark corner, here's your customized glimpse inside my mind:

In the process of ignoring an unformed notion regarding Strato of Lampsacus I started to think more about the peripatetic school of philosophy, so I began to walk about without making the conscious recognition that my body was playing out the very definition of peripatetic in an attempt to puzzle out the thing I didn't know I wasn't thinking about.

I decided right there that my walking should have a purpose, so as not to appear mad or distracted, I went to get some crackers, because if I know one thing it is this: food has purpose. One cannot be mad in its quest. The only crackers I could find were Frito-Lay's "Cheetos" brand, the kind with "golden toast" flavor crackers and a pseudocheese colloid wedged between the sections.

Although instead of reading "golden toast" on the package, I thought it said "golden toads" and I thought how much more interested I would have been in an animated version of the Henry Fonda/Katherine Hepburn film "On Golden Pond," which, of course, would have been named "On Golden Toads."

Therefore I was thinking about movies and Cheetos and I thought of galactically famous movie star/internet mogul Felicia Day* who combined my favorite contributions to human culture of the last fifty years: television commercials and artificial food packaging in one masterful stroke in, of all things, a Cheetos advertisement.

In attacking hunger I thought more deeply about hunger, and that sensation's dependence on the hypothalamus to alert the body of its cravings, and how hypothalamus basically means, in Greek, "below the chamber;" the chamber, of course, being the "thalamus" of the brain, and how the folks who invented the Greek language had a descendent named Strato whose, ahem, pedestrian, if not downright non-existent contribution to the philosophy of virtue, was responsible for this entire vapor trail of thought.

So now you know. And knowing is half the battle. Which reminds me...



*Felicia Day is once removed (i.e. 2 degrees) from Kevin Bacon, by Ingrid Oliu - i.e. the original Officer Montoya in the animated Batman series. The Montoya character has eventually become a latter-day incarnation of The Question, a character who first appeared in Blue Beetle #1 and was the inspiration for the Watchmen character Rorschach, whose viscous mask resembles a "living" Rorschach test. I believe Hermann Rorschach studied under Carl Jung, who is responsible for the development of the modern concept of psychological archetypes. According to Jung, the hero archetype was nearly universal in all societies, and depicted a person who defeats evil, suffers punishment for the sake of others and rescues the vanquished. Which basically describes Codex in The Guild, a character played by -- of course -- Felicia Day.

The Gullible Kid Revolution

When I was just a little shoat*, I could get suckered a thousand ways, but I prided myself on my ability, at a very early age, to identify the wholesale fraud perpetrated on the last page of every comic book. Whether the final ad was promoting x-ray specs or a life-sized Frankenstein for $1.00, something in my bones assured me that I'd be disappointed if I ever defaced my precious comic by clipping out the order form and sending my check, money order, or loose change to the company.

Even my impressionable young mind could comprehend that Frankenstein did not come to your house for a dollar. So I contented myself with simply imagining how great the toys looked in the ads, realizing, deep down, that anything you got for a dollar was probably made out of paper and mailed postage due.

My favorite dream ad that never suckered me was "204 Revolutionary War Soldiers - Only $1.98." The layout was similar to the "100 Piece Toy Soldier Set with Footlocker - $1.25": rows of army men engaged in bloody combat. But, the WWII motiff, while engaging, was not as substantial as the Americans and Redcoats. This isn't entirely due to sheer numbers (204 Revolutionary soldiers obviously being more than twice the number of WWII guys. The key to understanding a boy's heart - quantity - notwithstanding, there was something more "believable" about the 204. I think it had something to do with the battleships - their mere presence in the WWII ad made it too obviously impossible to deliver.

I could get gypped a lot of ways in life, but there was no way I was ever going to get snookered by an obvious shell game, and I secretly gloated over the stupid kid who I imagined falling for it, and upon receipt of the order, being instantly crushed by both the chintziness of the crummy toy (which I imagined to be cardboard or paper-thin plastic cut-outs - that you had to cut out yourself - as you might find on the back of box of cereal. And not a good box of cereal - something like King Vitamin or generic corn puffs) and the poor kid's own sense of self-worth plummeting like a stone.

I might not have been exactly master and commander, but at least I knew who I was better than: the dumb kid who bought the promise of re-enacting the Revolutionary War in his bedroom for less than 2 bucks.

Until I came across this: 204 Revolutionary War Soldiers, as ordered back in the day, complete with shipping box.

It's...it's...it's more than I could have ever imagined.

And, I dunno, I can imagine quite a bit.

But here they are - real plastic soldiers in two different colors that are almost three-dimensional and cannons that are nearly 4 inches long! These are better than the cool drawing.

The ad artwork was indeed misleading, but not in the way I thought: it underpromised.

So here I sit, nearly thirty years after the fact, wishing I had allowed myself to be gullible one more time, to take a shot at losing two bucks in exchange for the promise of an army set that would have stretched across the concrete of the bedroom floor, conquering it.



*Que sera sera.