I finally got my computer back from the shop and I’m treated with a new picture of Mars. Click here for more pictures and a proper article.

I remember reading about 2 years ago that NASA or JPL were pretty sure that they found evidence of water currently flowing on Mars. The pictures were of a dry stream bed, but they said it looked like water was very recently flowing from underground.

I wish kids these days were as excited about space as they were back in the day. Maybe NASA will finally wake up from their slumber and start doing missions that are cool again so our manned space program won’t die in 2012.

Jericho, NY
June 9, 2008

To Whom It May Concern:

In the past two and a half weeks, I have used your services to travel to and from Ireland. Now, let me say that I don’t make a ton of money and had to save for quite some time to go on vacation to the Emerald Isle. If I made as much money as say, Hugh Grant, I probably wouldn’t be as upset as I am. But more on that later.

On Saturday, May 24^th, I tried to catch a connecting flight to Shannon from New York’s JFK airport. Thinking that since I had paid for this flight four months in advance as well as having checked less than a day beforehand to make sure that the flight was still on time, you can imagine my Bruce Banner-like rage when I got to NYC and found out that my flight to Shannon had been canceled. The first thought that ran through my mind was that I was going to end up spending my two week vacation in the Big Apple. This poses a problem for me because I am not particularly fond of New York City. It’s the Yankees, really, that is the source of my hatred. Derek Jeter is just okay and Jason Giambi looks like the damn missing link. There, I said it. Also, I did not want to smell hot garbage for two weeks. Eventually, I was re-routed to Dublin where I was able to catch another flight over to Shannon and everyone who was re-routed was able to get on that flight over to Dublin. I’m thinking that you guys just didn’t send the plane over in the first place because it wasn’t economical. In college, I learned that “if it isn’t making dollars, it isn’t making sense.” It only took me six years to graduate if you can believe it. On with the ranting… The cancellation of the flight delayed my vacation time by eight hours. That’s a lot of Irelanding if you ask me.

Two weeks later, I was set to return to the States. I love it here. We have delicious burritos, freedom of speech and I’m sure some other stuff that I really enjoy. But mostly, it’s the burritos that I enjoy. With cheese. And sour cream. And guacamole. And when I get a hankering for a burrito neither man nor beast is going to get in my way to stop me. Airlines, however, are neither one of those things, as I am about to point out to you. Also, if CENCORED were a living and breathing beast, we would have to do battle and given my skill with medieval armaments, I am sure that I would win. I’ve seen “The Lord of the Rings” about 50 times so I’ve got all the moves down.

Saturday morning, June 7^th: my flight to JFK was delayed three hours. This three hour delay caused me to miss my connecting flight and kept me in NYC city much longer than I had anticipated. Had I had one of those “Sex and the City” lifestyles of drinking flirtinis (or whatever those dames call them) and looking like the underside of a foot (see: Sarah Jessica Parker), I would have rather enjoyed myself for a few hours. That is not the case, though. I enjoy beer, hockey, and being awesome.

Long story short because of your delay, I spent an extra 14 hours getting home. Add that to the eight hours that I spent in getting to my destination in Ireland and you’ve got 22 hours total.

Here comes the fun part for me: what could I have done with 22 hours?

– Organized a Habitat for Humanity crew and built a house for some deserving homeless people – it’s entirely possible that a family of four in Des Moines, Iowa, is sleeping underneath an overpass tonight because of you folks.

– Found Keira Knightley. You never know.

– Driven my Chevy to the levy.

– Etc..

But I think that the best thing that I could have done with those 22 hours is work. And since all of this time was spent in New York City, I am going to use their pricing system… stay with me on this.

According to salary.com, the average Human Resources Manager (which happens to be my profession) in New York City earns about $92,000 per year. If you average that out, that’s $44.23/hour. 22 hours @ $44.23/hour would yield $973.06.

That’s a lot of money. And that’s what I expect to be paid to me by you folks for wasting almost a day of my time.

Oh, and I must tell you that you folks could really use my HR expertise… ’cause the customer service representatives that you have hired and are working for you at JFK airport perform service as well as a CENSORED. I’d like to add that there was a flight that my mom (who was traveling with me) could have caught on Delta that night to her home but I’m sure that you’ll be hearing from her, too. Anyway, if you want to hire me, we’ll start near six figures and full benefits and then work something out from there. Just a thought. I’m even going to include my resume to let you know how serious I am.

But back to the issue of money. I’ll take the payment either in cash (preferred), certified money order(s), or in (your American partner) American Airline vouchers. I don’t have any plans to fly to Ireland again anytime soon but I could fly back home to see my folks a couple times on your dime.

I’m anxious to hear a response from you. You can get in contact with me anytime. Or you can just send me a check… whichever is better for you.

If I do decide to go to Ireland again and have not been satisfied with the way you handle this matter, I guarantee you that I will be flying on RyanAir. I’ve held a grudge against the fast food giant Wendy’s for two years for not reimbursing me the $3.17 that they said that they were going to and I haven’t been back since. So don’t think I’m kidding.

Regards,

Stephen P. Bohn

Basically, postcolonial theory looks at racial and cultural bias towards a conquering element or against a dominated element in a text. I started thinking about Jungle Book in these terms originally because of Rudyard Kipling’s involvement with India as a British colony, and Disney’s tendency to say horrible things in the undertones of their movies. Also, I quite like Jungle Book, and I was just curious to see what I found in it that six-year-old me did not. Before I go into the postcolonial side of things, I would like to note how unashamedly horrible and hilarious the little girl’s song at the end of the film is. I remember hating it when I was a kid, I thought because it was slow instead of the jazz/beat inspired music of the rest of the film, but I think my subconscious was also reacting to the words: “When I’m grown/ I will have a handsome husband/ And a daughter of my own/ And I’ll send her to fetch the water/ I’ll be cooking in the home.” I just thought I’d share that because it’s ridiculous to have a whole song about, even if it was the state of Indian women at some unknown time in animated history.

Though I started the film intending to focus on the story, what jumped out to me instead were the choices in characterization and voicing that Disney made for the different animals. Almost all of the animals are voiced by British actors, with varying degrees of “Britishness” to their accents. The story is set in India, so this is initially bizarre considering that the filmmakers decided not to use standard American English (as they did in Mulan, which is set in China). Even if they were set on depicting character by accents, they did not use an Indian English accent, which would seem most appropriate for most of the characters. This aids in seeing some themes in the movie, as well as comments on the choice of the filmmakers to cast it this way.

The story seems to be centered on the idea that the Tiger’s opinion of how to treat Mowgli differs from the rest of the Jungle’s, but because he is the tiger, they have to give up their beliefs in favor of his position. They appear to be depicting a system of oppression where a minority’s (the tiger) opinion on the world causes everyone else to stop what they’re doing and deal with it or face consequences. Shere Kahn, of course, gets what is coming to him (delivered by an American bear, I might point out), and leaves the Jungle apparently forever (the vultures say they’ll never have to deal with him again). Ultimately it is Mowgli, a sort of symbol of the oppression of the jungle, who gets rid of him, with the help of the American bear and the British-expatriate ¹panther.

There is much to be said for the symbolism in the story itself, a lot of which I actually had to go ahead and write to get out of my system before I got to this. But though the story seems to paint a picture in support of freedom from imperial oppression, the lack of nationality and representation of Indians when the story clearly has reason to include them indicates a problem either with the casting directors or the prospective audience of the film. There are no Indian accents, even in Mowgli or the girl, who both have American accents for no apparent reason other than to create kinship between them and the American children in the audience. While the film seems to depict with it’s story the successful liberation of an oppressed jungle, it seems that the only way to depict this was to attribute success to Americans, and to a lesser degree, other white British people. The only African American voices are the monkeys, another set of bad guys, and not bad in the sense of Shere Kahn, who has different beliefs and is a sort of political extremist, but bad in the sense of amoral, rough kidnappers with intent to exploit and do away with the man cub. Further, the monkeys speak jive or use the diction of swingers (no pun intended) instead of hardworking, common dialects, alienating them as some kind of dangerous, edgy fringe group or counter-cultural movement. There is clearly a preference for the white outlook, specifically the white western-European value system. Perhaps the insinuation is that the native people could not achieve success on their own, or that if they did, they would be following American ideals of independence and freedom, and thus be more like white members of civilized society than natives who cannot speak proper English.

Another possibility is the prospect of an American audience who would not relate to the “foreign” Indian accent. This is different from the British accent, which is common in mainstream American film and television and even carries an insinuation of higher intelligence and refinement. It does seem probable that if there were Indian accents in the film, the audience would notice them as different, where the only British accent that is distinct is Shere Kahn’s, and as a child I remember perceiving it not as a British, but as an intelligent and powerful accent. So the problem could be with the audience’s perception of an “other,” where the other is not a fellow western hemisphere Caucasian, but a brown easterner, or even “Why does he talk that funny way? What kind of accent is that?” I imagine it would have been my first encounter with an Indian accent, and probably my last until I was allowed to watch The Simpsons.

Based on the themes of the plot, Jungle Book seems to be an example of an author intending to convey one idea, which is undermined by the author’s culture and experience. What is interesting in this case is the idea that the undermining subtext could be caused by marketing, which I would guess happens very often in the consumerism-art relationship. It also shows the applicability of these theories to all art and creation, including children-oriented film, books, and art. A bit scary, but being a child in a world that creates all these subtexts in the first place is also scary.

1. I call Bagheera the expatriate instead of the oppressor like Shere Kahn because, though he is similar in species to Shere Kahn and though his accent is a British one, it is not as pronounced as the tiger’s and he has sympathy for the opinion of the wolves that Mowgli is not dangerous. He is, however, the strongest supporter of Mowgli going back to the man village, the closest opinion to that of Shere Kahn, which seems to link him to British citizens sympathizing with the native “them,” in this case, Indians or wolves.

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