Ah, xanga.  I come not to purge myself of any turbulent emotional waters, but instead to pontificate (which, by my spontaneous speculation, has its root in the word for river.  how about that.)

What grand question will the Oh Great and Pretentious Teenager attempt to answer with absolute authority today? (instead of doing her polisci reading)

Why are all our heroes so imperfect? -(I'd give it to Jill Sobule, but that'd probably be ignoring millions before her)

The easy (and most often given) answer is that our heroes are human.  And humans are inherently imperfect, nobody escapes that grand dice roll that is human genetics (though, by probability somebody should...)

But the imperfections we attatch to our heroes tend to go beyond the pedestrian: professional discontent, procrastination, marital problems or strained relations with family members.  Those problems are for non-heroes, for us to deal with in the course of our lives.  No, great men have great issues (the latter "great" as in large or immense, I mean it in the pejorative sense!).  Anyways, according to biographers our heroes had issues that bordered on (And sometimes just plainly wore, crippling diseases.  Alcoholism; Pederastry; Schizophrenia; Syphillis - the list goes on.  Give me a hero or heroine, ten minutes on the internet, and I can tell you what's wrong with him or her (with perhaps the exception of Jesus, though only when viewed as genuinely holy.  Some biographers haven't even exempted him.)

Why, you ask?  Because (1) it comforts us, and (2) it entertains us.  If a man has to be inhuman (or superhuman) to do great things, either by sacrificing his humanity for a cause (jesus and...superman.  wait, superheroes don't count, they're fictional), or by having some grotesque, psychically disfiguring disease, then it makes us feel better, not about our own mistakes (as the most commonly given answer purports to), but about our failures; or, more accurately, our non-quests, our non-stories.  It gives us an excuse not to do great things, in the guise of acting morally.  We turn down our nose at fame and fortune, saying that all aristocrats are corrupt, that she's cheating on him, that he has a drug problem.  But I would bet that there are just as many, just as sinful poor and unknown people.  We have vice, lechery and decay attatched to heroism, not so much because of its veridical attatchment to heroes, but because of its attatchment to the human condition.  We highlight these problems in our heroes because of jealousy.  We punish their memories for the greatness we never achieved.

Also, as noted before, the heroes' "imperfections" add a degree of drama to their histories.  By this interpretation, the imperfections go tos save a personality from the only fatal imperfection - dullness.  Dullness begets forget, which spells death for a person's memory in the public mind.

Would we gossip so much about Dodgson (Lewis Caroll) if we thought the most interesting things about his personal life were his discomfort in stiff Victorian adult society, his stutter, and the fact that he liked children.  Of course not!  Just look at Barrie.  Compare the Wikipedia articles, if you have to.  But when it emerges that he may actually have "liked" children, its high news!  Who cares if its true?  Its interesting!  They'll eat it up!  Besides, its probable.  Just look at these pictures, of course he's a paedo.  I smell advocacy group donations and hundreds of thousands of dollars in book deals for biographies!  That picture of Alice Liddel in her slip may be a little too old for the Tabloids and a little too questionable for the skin mags - but that doesn't mean we can't put it on our cover!

The dollar writes history, and sex (drugs and alcohol) guide the dollar.

hey there xanga, long time no entry.

um, i almost brok my 'once a month' rule.  but i don't know if i have anything i watnt to say, in particular.  lately i have been overcoe by the (inexplicable) desire to write.  maybe even a novel if i can overcome my fear of long fiction.

okay honestly, its six am and my history homework isn't done.  maybe i'll write more later.

happy halloween.  i'm a farmer - because its easy.