OSCAR WAO, the main character in author Junot Diaz’ Pulitzer Prize winning novel, is a comic-book/sci-fi/role-playing gamer nerd of the nth degree. Add to that adolescent dysfunction the misery of being grossly overweight, “blacker” than the rest of his Dominican family and neighbors, and raised in Paterson, New Jersey during the 70s and 80s, and you’ve got one poor pathetic little muchacho. His search for reciprocated love runs up against more roadblocks and hostility than even the lesser-heroes of the Marvel Universe face on a monthly basis. He is an idealist, a dreamer, a boy in love with love who can’t escape himself no matter how much those around him encourage a normative change for the better.

Although Oscar’s story holds the main thrust of the narrative, both his sister Lola and mother Hypatia Belicia Cabral also have their stories told at specific points in the novel. Yunior, an outsider who gains a vantage point to the Dominican family by way of mysterious-to-the-end circumstances, narrates Oscar and Belicia’s histories with a profane, pop-hip, heavily Spanish-laden style. A geek god himself, Yunior is a foil of sorts to Oscar; he is as intimate with the worlds of THE WATCHMEN and DOCTOR WHO as his gordo subject, yet gained his street cred by stepping up as a major playa with the ladies of the neighborhood. He stands as Oscar’s personal ideal, hatched from a socially awkward mind full of idealized women to love, epic novels to write, and heroic lives to live. Yunior, in effect, gets Oscar, understands that if God hadn’t given him the looks or the mad game with the women, he could easily have become the boy of this story.

The other narrator is Lola, who tells her first-person story early on, filling in gaps of detail that Yunior doesn’t have the resources to shed full light on. The beautiful and rebellious sister of Oscar bridges the distance between NJ and the DR, forced to spend a vast amount of her time growing up in Santo Domingo and experiencing the heritage she would rather ignore. The style is an abrupt yet welcome change from the footnote-heavy, politically charged, comic-book jargon of Yunior’s narrative pulse. With Lola, the language is grounded, more deeply felt and personal.

Overall, the novel crisscrosses these three distinct-but-connected narratives quite well, peppering in more than a bit of historical background on dictator Trujillo’s decades-long reign of terror on the people of the Dominican Republic. The intimate details and colorful descriptions of the characters (Oscar’s madre, as a violent-tempered youth in DR, “Threw her drink, her glass, and then her purse at him – if there had been a baby nearby she would have thrown that too.”) mesh nicely with the political overview of the small island-state.

There are, however, missteps in the telling, which mostly revolve around its tendency to overtell, to overexplain a given scene or historical event. Conversely, Diaz doesn’t tell enough when heaping mounds of Spanish language into the narration without benefit of a translation or even a proper context to aid the reader in deciphering it on our own. Frankly, it removed me from the flow of the story, made me think that I was deliberately being left out of some vital information because I didn’t know the language. Now, I can see how this could actually serve as an effective narrative tool (making the reading audience feel the confusion or isolation of the characters by placing us in a parallel position of exclusion), but Diaz doesn’t seem conscious of using the non-translated language as a device. Instead, it appears added merely as another ingredient, there to enhance the flavor of the novel.

In fairness, Hemingway did the same thing (see THE SUN ALSO RISES and FOR WHOM THE BELL TOLLS for egregious uses of this offense), so there is clearly a precedent. And, since Diaz admits to naming the book after the title of Hemingway’s famous work, THE SHORT HAPPY LIFE OF FRANCIS MACOMBER, then this storytelling transgression may simply be an affect of imitation.

The ending is very thrilling, and manages to wrap things up not only with an exciting climax, but with an unexpected breadth of emotion. It ends sweetly, yet not sentimentally, and does so in a way that complements all that has come before. It even manages to enhance everything to a palpable degree, with a poignancy and resonance that kept the novel in my mind long after I finished it.

]]> http://ennuimag.com/?feed=rss2&p=925 0 http://ennuimag.com/?p=963 http://ennuimag.com/?p=963#comments Sun, 25 Oct 2009 14:26:46 +0000 Pavlov http://ennuimag.com/?p=963 Hello Cyberspace!

Pavlov here, after an administrative hiatus. It has been a while since Ennui Magazine has been active- a great dispersal has overtaken our writers and editors, spreading Ennui into at least 16 different timezones- that’s not even an exaggeration. However, life is just not the same without this project, and so over the next couple of months, we will slowly be relaunching this website and bringing the amount of our material up to a consistent rate. Like what you read here? Please join our email list, and we will start delivering weekly digests of ennui directly to your inbox!

Looking forward to writing for you again!

Love,

Pavlov

IN

At the novel’s start, Ike “Vikar” Jerome, a cipher-esque, idiot-savant film fanatic, arrives in Los Angeles during the summer of 1969 and quickly sheds a Philadelphian past to embrace his new home. With a huge tattoo emblazoned on his bald head — of Montgomery Clift and Elizabeth Taylor from a scene in “A Place in the Sun” — and anger coursing through his body without restraint, Vikar hits the local art houses and Grauman’s Chinese Theatre in an effort to discover his own destiny. He visits the famous Roosevelt Hotel, where he searches for the ghosts of D.W. Griffith and Monty Clift himself; gets hauled in by the cops while camping out in the canyons, a suspect in the Manson Family’s horrific Tate-LoBianco murders; talks film theory with a career burglar tied up in Vikar’s new Hollywood pad; and is swept into the drug-addled, free-love, film-obsessed Next Generation auteurs plotting their movie industry revolution from the sandy beaches of Zuma.

Vikar’s story spans a decade, with a very Chance the Gardner-like main character, swept through Hollywood, Madrid and Cannes by outside forces who find themselves intrigued and spellbound by his presence. His bizarre physical appearance, his vexing, non-sequitur-heavy dialogue, and his earnest, “I like to watch” approach to the movies attracts figures great and small, famous and infamous. Verisimilitude mixes with literary license as Erickson’s fictional creation Vikar befriends thinly veiled Hollywood luminaries like John Milius, Margot Kidder, Brian DePalma, and even a pre-“Taxi Driver” Bobby DeNiro. The author is coy about some of the real life characters, discreet about others, and blatant as hell about the rest of the filmmaking crowd, all in his efforts to blur the lines between reality and fantasy, truth and conjecture.

While there is much satisfaction in the guessing game of “what’s that film?” or “who’s that actor/director?” which Erickson offers throughout the book, there is also an abundance of movie references that became tiresome even for me, a fanatical movie freakster. When everyone Vikar encounters knows the difference between a Howard Hawks and a John Ford picture, or identifies themselves as a cineaste with the ability to pontificate for hours on the slightest minutiae of a Bunuel film, the book becomes the literary equivalent of a Tarantino movie. There is storytelling skill, fantastic dialogue and compelling action within, but there is also unfortunately a level of showing off that the author indulges in which strips the novel of its fun and magic.

Those criticisms aside, ZEROVILLE is overall a remarkable novel that attempts to blur the lines between how reality shapes the movies and how the movies shape reality itself. The ideas are potent, the characters are engaging, and the ending manages to be mysterious, inconclusive and completely satisfying all at the same time. A Fade Out worthy of Fellini or Godard’s best.

In trying to make sense of the famous ticking time bomb scenario in which a terrorist has planted a bomb and refuses to reveal its whereabouts, David Sussman suggests the following analogy. A particularly sadistic fat man has wrestled his victim to the ground and, while no longer fighting (just as the terrorist is no longer planting the bomb), the fat man is sitting on him and waiting for him to suffocate (just as the terrorist waits for the bomb to go off). Sussman concludes that self-defense principles justify the police in physically harming the fat man.

In Judith Jarvis Thompson’s version of the famous trolley problem, we debate the permissibility of pushing a fat man onto the trolley tracks in order to stop the runaway car from killing five others.

In Judith Jarvis Thompson’s version of the famous trolley problem, we debate the permissibility of pushing a fat man onto the trolley tracks in order to stop the runaway car from killing five others. Thompson’s position is that we may not push the fat man—such an act would be killing, while watching the trolley pass is merely allowing deaths to come about, things that are, on her view, very different. But the question remains: why specify that the man is fat? Why not push, say, a man of unspecified weight with a powerful magnet in his pocket?

Others reject this distinction between doing and allowing, pointing to the impersonal value of the lives that could be saved. Many of these are consequentialists, those who judge the rightness of an action solely by the outcome it produces. There is also disagreement about whether the intention of the person pushing the fat man matters.  Is he doing it in order to save the five innocents or in order to kill the fat man? On accounts that do not give moral weight to intention, like Derek Parfit’s, one is doing the right thing even if one’s intention is fat man murder.

It’s not as if this is just an in-joke in the literature and all thought-experiment characters are going to be fat. Think of the five innocents ahead on the track that many are so concerned to save. If they all fit there—stuck in the trolley’s way together—it’s clear that they’ve all been dieting.

Clearly, the philosophical world is a dangerous one for the overweight. As a person who has a hard time motivating myself to go for a run, this pattern worries me. What if I’ve chosen the wrong field? I can see it now… I’ve just finished my thesis and am getting ready to defend it when a consequentialist pushes me in front of a trolley.

Ebony and ivory... killing zombies.

IT was almost two years before Resident Evil 5’s release that concerned parties had already protested outrage over racial issues in the title, a video game that puts you in the shoes of white protagonist Chris Redfield, running and gunning through an infected population somewhere in Africa. For a game that reads as a simulated racial cleansing, anger was inevitable. Upon release, the survival horror’s racial motifs panned out to be no more than a few questionable tribal levels. But in lieu of suggesting a tradition of white supremacy, the zombie shooter suffers by stubbornly clinging to gameplay traditions that frustrate and inhibit what could have been the next development in the genre – complete with a hint of race war.

The survival horror genre has seen a lot of inspired variation in the past few years – Dead Space proved you can shoot while moving and check your inventory without asking monsters to kindly pause, and Left 4 Dead finally gave the living dead a gait more pressing than a feeble limp. While the Evil franchise played an important role in the development of the genre, other attempts at bringing survival horror back to life have recently stirred fresh dirt.

But RE5 seems to have a fickle relationship with this recent history. Sure, its developers adopted an inventory system similar to Dead Space’s; however, they still insist that as overly masculine as Chris is, he can’t walk while shooting or knifing zombies. And though RE5 plays much more like an action game than horror – real-life Africa surely more tense than any moment in the game – defending yourself boils down to pouring bullets into an awkwardly animated enemy and rushing in for an ungainly quick-time melee move. But these are hardly seamless, so thwarting the undead horde is frustrating and brainless. Scenarios present you with big boss fights and motorcycle chases à la an action game, but foist upon the player limited mobility and scarce ammunition.

And the game’s most touted novelty and selling point – cooperative gameplay – does little to smooth complications. Making your partner Sheva a light-skinned local probably had something to do with the expected cries of racism, but nonetheless the co-op experience only manages to further siphon the tension found in other Resident Evil titles. Its most beneficial quality is that it gives the player some shoulder to lean on after the umpteenth time a zombie dog chews your face faster than you can jam on the controller, or in suffering through the banal plotline. The story is understandably campy and irrelevant; I would have used narrative parts of the game as a bathroom break were it not for the inane inclusion of quick-time button presses during most cutscenes. Still, the flippant mood of the game brought on by the co-op and weak story further contributes to the feeling that RE5 just doesn’t know what kind of game it wants to be, neither in its context as a Resident Evil game nor that of the survival horror genre in general.

The game’s most egregious insult is that it come off as a stubborn refusal to evolve. While other games in the genre have demonstrated new ways to reinvent the boomstick, RE5 clings to its tradition with great austerity. Players can’t move while shooting or crouch? Blame it on tradition. I walked away from my experience with RE5 wondering if the developers had any idea that Resident Evil 4 exists, a game which managed not to only adhere to Evil tradition but retrofit its gameplay to a newer style of survivor horror. Video game tradition is a powerful force – after all, Sega continues to create absolutely awful Sonic games with years since the last decent release. But RE5 in its best moments is a poor carbon copy of RE4 with little to show for the several years between their releases – not alive, not undead, but merely lifeless in its refusal to push the genre.

]]> http://ennuimag.com/?feed=rss2&p=866 0 http://ennuimag.com/?p=855 http://ennuimag.com/?p=855#comments Thu, 04 Jun 2009 02:56:57 +0000 Illiterati http://ennuimag.com/?p=855 IN the Beginning, there was “Superman: The Movie,” and it was truly divine.  Then came “Superman III” and “IV” and an icon became a joke, the comic-book superhero a mere soulless commodity.  Flash forward thirty-one years from the day we believed a man can fly- back when taglines actually meant something- and “X-Men Origins: Wolverine” opens to big box office, but little critical or fan-boy acclaim.  Is it too much to ask for something akin to perfection in our filmic adaptations of the illustrated gods of geek?  What happened between the emergence of Krypton’s son on the silver screen and the adamantium-clawed mutant leaked to the omnipresent internet?  Herewith, I offer a look at the celluloid landscape of the good guys, the bad guys, and those freaky in-betweeners who serve as metaphors for every misfit or outsider who insist on searching for life’s deepest truths in a goddamn comic book.

In all fairness, Chris Reeve wasn’t the first to break out of the colorful panels on the page and into cinematic grandeur.  Adam West, the pudgy, mannered actor who played the original Dark Knight on TV’s “Batman” series, initially graced the movie screen back in 1966 in a silly little piece of caped crusaderism.  Piggybacking off of the highly successful Warhol-esque TV show, the movie gathered all of the most memorable villains- The Penguin, Catwoman, The Riddler and, of course, The Joker- and pitted them against the Lycra-clad, bad-pun-spewing Dynamic Duo.  It was cheesy and, yes, kind of fun, but knowing Batman creator Bob Kane as I do (I don’t know him), it was far from a true representation of the comic book that inspired it.

But then came Richard Donner’s “Superman” in 1978, an epic telling of Kal-El, his Smallville life as Clark Kent, and his eventual lovesickness with Margot Kidder’s ballsy, batty Lois Lane.  It quickly became the template, the litmus test, against which all other comers — DC, Marvel or indie press comic-book hero movies — would have to follow.

Sadly, they didn’t, choosing instead to do whatever the hell they wanted with the hallowed characters, in favor of franchise fiefdom.  How else to explain “Conan The Destroyer,” which took Arnold Schwarzenegger’s bad-ass barbarian and put him on a senseless journey with Wilt the Stilt Chamberlain (??!) and Grace Jones?  Or “The Punisher,” which cast Dolph Lundgren, he of the indecipherable accent and freakishly large jawbone, as the American-as-apple-pie Frank Castle?  Sure, they cast an American in a lame re-launch of the character (Thomas Jane…what the? who? huh?), but then tried again last year with a Brit who was all muscle and no Method.  And if you even so much as mention Shaquille O’Neal in “Steel,” I swear, my head is gonna explode. (Note to producers contemplating their next action hero – just because someone can dribble a ball does NOT mean they can carry a movie!  Got it?)

But all is not dire in the world of comic adaptations.  For every “Daredevil” embarrassment, there is a Sam Raimi-directed “Spider-Man” or Chris Nolan-helmed “Dark Knight.”  Halle Berry crashed and burned as “Catwoman,” but Robert Downey, Jr. breathed kinetic life into playboy and industrialist Tony Stark, a.k.a., “Iron Man.”  The “X-Men” series had two decent entries, with a third film that left a stink worse than Nightcrawler’s pointy-toe jam.  Speaking of sequels, how come anything including and after the third movie invariably makes me want to go all Galactus and destroy the whole damn superhero universe?  Spidey number 3 offended by being so freakin’ boring, Superman took on an unfunny Richard Pryor, and Batman suffered horribly for letting Joel Schumacher get anywhere near his latex nipples.

Ironically, the best comic-book movie isn’t based on an original group of superheroes, but on Pixar-inspired brilliance.  “The Incredibles,” from 2004, is hands-down the best good-guys-in-tights movie ever made, with an animated extravaganza that puts all of the live-action adaptations to shame.  However, with upcoming movie versions of “Thor,” “The Flash,” “Green Lantern” and the “Avengers” on the superhero horizon, I could eat that last, possibly blasphemous statement I’ve written.  But I’d bet my untapped mutant ability against their Hollywood ham-fistedness any day, that all these films will only represent more exercises in fan-boy futility.

How do I know?  My Spidey-sense is telling me so.

Guess the price of this knuckle sandwich!

LAST week, a panel of doctors at the Center for Disease Control announced that they have discovered that some people have a natural immunity to swine flu. These people are the elderly. Yes, my good friends, apparently many old-timers can’t get the H1N1. This is shocking and frankly a tad appalling to me. I like old people, but the idea that their bodies are better apt to handle a “deadly new virus” seems to run contrary to any common sense I thought I might have gained over the years. In nature- and more importantly on the Discovery channel- the more along in years a member of an animal group is, the more likely it gets thinned out. That’s the way the world works, right?

Well I just couldn’t accept these new swine flu findings, and after hours of grueling research- specifically, five to ten minutes- I had come to the conclusion that these quacks at the CDC could be onto something. In the US, 64% of diagnosed swine flu cases are in persons between the ages of 5 and 24.  That’s the demographic of people who think poop is hilarious. On the other hand, the percentage of diagnosed swine flu patients 65 and older is just 1%. I hope it’s clear that this, ladies and gentlemen, raises new and very troubling questions.

As I have learned, the truth of swine flu is far more devious then anyone could have dreamed. Apparently, the AARP designed this virus to attack the younger members of the human race. Whether this is a spiteful strike against the kids who walk on their yards, or a misguided plea for attention, is not yet clear. Put the pieces together though, and you’ll find that they fit like a pair of Depends. The idea for swine flu has floated around retirement communities for years, but any real advances have been thwarted by the need for naps and local diners offering early bird specials. However, finally the day would come, when H1N1 would be ready to be unleashed on the MTV generation. But who amongst the arthritic schemers would be the triggerman? He would have to have savage cunning, the ability to think on his feet and an unbreakable ‘never say die’ work ethic. The choice was clear. Only one man could pull off that which needed to be done. That man was Bob Barker.

The call went out that day and Bob quickly signed on. Shortly thereafter, he quit The Price is Right and hopped a plane for Mexico, the test site for swine flu’s effectiveness. The plan worked perfectly, and no one even suspected the real culprits. Until today.  I have put my life at great risk imparting this tale to you. I know I will not be here to see the end result of this age war— I can hear the walkers scratching their way to my apartment door even as I type these words. I ask only this: don’t let my sacrifice be in vain! Find Bob Barker and the mature minds at the AARP, and make them accountable for their nefarious plot!

Oh, the irony! 

Most people would agree that a little bit of self-involvement is healthy, that being self-involved indicates knowing—and advocating for—one’s self-worth.  However, the situation has gotten me to thinking—how self-involved is too self-involved? 

In my experience, the term “self-involved” is often used negatively, usually to label someone as narcissistic or conceited—in other words, only concerned for one’s self.  Yet with social networking sites taking up our lives, the “only” in that description seems a bit fishy.  It’s no lie that the ability to stalk—er, keep up—with the lives of others is one of the primary reasons these social networks exist.  Yet it’s also no lie that we want others to keep up with us.  And is that such a bad thing?

Are we overfeeding ourselves with our own online feeds?

Certainly, with the internet, being self-involved in this respect has become more socially acceptable.  Blogs, Facebook updates, Twitter feeds—we’re all trying to advertise ourselves in some form or another. 

But for some reason, it seems more socially acceptable to be self-involved on the internet than it is in real life.  Person A wouldn’t necessarily accuse Person B of being too self-involved if Person B kept updating his Facebook status, for example.  However, Person A might very well make this accusation, should Person B translate his writing into a physical reality—i.e., spend an entire night talking about himself.

Perhaps this has to do with the fact that when something is written for the internet—or for any other publishing outlet, for that matter—the audience does not yet exist.  A thing has to be written before someone can read it; hence, quite literally, a writer is alone.  When we are in the company of others, on the other hand, we are not alone, and so a two-way conversation is the norm.

Many people claim that connecting with people online is just as good as connecting with those people in real life.  Maybe this is true for some of the more instantaneous forms of online networking such as chatting, but the risk of appearing too self-involved is certainly there.  And unless we keep ourselves in check by having face-to-face conversations with others—and thereby the inclination to talk about more than ourselves—maybe self-involvement is too much of a good thing.

As for me?  Well, I think the fact that I was concerned about being too self-involved shows two things: 1) I am definitely self-involved, and 2) I am probably not as self-involved as I think. 

So what should I do now?  Well, writing, especially for Ennui, is a supremely self-involved activity.  And of course I’ll Twitter about this too.

So, this is what’s it’s come to: a sensational, man’s best friend vs. man’s undomesticated menace struggle for life and death is relegated to simply filler in a huge metropolitan newspaper.

So, this is what’s it’s come to: a sensational, man’s best friend vs. man’s undomesticated menace struggle for life and death is relegated to simply filler in a huge metropolitan newspaper. President Obama scores two front-page headlines on this same day, which is, I suppose, only right. Yet what about this story: “Drug violence may bleed into U.S.” Ooh, it may, might it? Well, this bad-ass mountain lion definitely ripped that little Orange County doggie into a visit upon death’s door. Sweet Hoagie made it through four horror-filled hours of surgical patchwork, and may have died, but his actions were deliberate and the facts were irrefutable. So wait…there’s a chance the Mexican druglords could bring their brutal violence across the border to fuck up our American lives of leisure and lordliness? Yeah, well, like the swine flu and the killer bees before it, I ain’t buying it – even if it is on the front page of the L.A. Times. But that “marauding” mountain lion out in Lake Elsinore – that hombre meant serious business so Hoagie and his master stepped up and took nature’s Satan to task.

It’s this kind of poor editorial oversight on the part of the nation’s newspapers that are turning readers away in droves and sending them online for their sensationalistic updates of human – and animal – dramatic triumph. I want absolutes on my front page, not fear-mongering “what ifs” that concern countries that don’t even speak the Queen’s blessed English. If the print trade wants to stay in business and not hemorrhage ink all over the increasingly indifferent reading public, then it needs to highlight the kind of news that makes Americans stand up and pay attention. Steroid-abusing millionaire athletes and North Korea threatening nuclear devastation for the lost-count-how-many-times time are certainly stories that are fit to print, but for how many columns? Are they headline-worthy, when they don’t truly affect the average citizen’s day-to-day life?

Personally, I’ve never been to Lake Elsinore, but now that I know there are mountain lions up there attacking man and canine alike, I want to go to there. Yet, because of the L.A. Times’ disregard for those of us who desire the “real” news of our world, how many others just like me will never know the pleasures that await them in chaotic canyon country because the story was buried in the middle of the paper? Frankly, it’s irresponsible journalism when the genuine blood-thirsty interests of the common man are tossed aside in favor of the fake “bleed” of foreign drug cartels. Who can’t even speak English.

ANYONE

Who among the minimum wage slaves hasn’t fantasized about giving a vilely abrasive old man the finger as he berates you, the lowly K-mart employee, about the Un-American practices YOU are responsible for, in only stocking PLASTIC FUCKING HANGERS!

Or maybe you have worked at one of this country’s zillion fast food eateries. I paid my dues at a Taco Bell. Let me tell you- there is nothing in this world more agitated and enraged than a four-hundred-pound, trailer-park-dwelling, mother of eight, when the diced tomatoes she forgot to mention she didn’t want are discovered on her Mexican pizza. If ever there was a time for a “shut the fuck up lady, your body could use any vegetable it can get its fat little hands on- and how about some pants to go with that car-cover-size shirt?”… But what can be done… you need the job.

Well, let me inform you of the goings on in Norwalk, Connecticut. A woman- identity withheld- was recently bombarded by strange phone calls. “….I started receiving phone calls. Men calling, looking for a good time. And I said, ‘You got the wrong number.’ I hung up the phone, got another call, another call,” the woman stated. After numerous nasty chats the woman was able to get to the bottom of her sudden rise in popularity. A sex ad had been put up on Craigslist..com containing her phone number.

The woman’s mind raced as she tried to pinpoint the slanderous troublemaker responsible. Then it hit her. She had a run in with a CVS pharmacist whom she threatened with a bad service complaint not too long ago. She quickly reported her situation to the police, as well as her assumption of the man culpable.

The manhunt was on. A strike team was assembled. Lo! and behold, it was soon discovered that the party responsible for the phony sex ad was none other than… the CVS pharmacist! Charges have now been filed against the CVS man, 38-year-old Jonathan Medina. Now here’s where it gets interesting- Medina is now a wanted man as he has skipped town to parts unknown.

I hope no one out there is taking the side of the lady in this tale. But at the same time don’t take this as a praise of unlawful activity. Medina’s actions are arguably identity theft, and fuck identity theft- it messes up lives. However, let us look at the facts for a moment. Medina stole a woman’s medical records because she was rude to him. He very well could have used this information in various degrees of sinister ways. What did he in fact do with it? He pulled a masterful prank, that a.) hurt no-one and b.) resulted in no loss of money. Hopefully this will open some people’s eyes to the way they treat others. Now, maybe next time you’re in 7-11 and the Slurpie machine is out of berry-kiwi-mango-snickers bar, you will think twice before cold-cocking the clerk with an insult.