Far be it from me to contribute any further to the pessimism of our meme-o-centric media culture; still, when 100,000,000 spawn something relevant to our enterprise armed with nothing but the internet and their own twisted Schadenfreude, i would be loathe to miss such an opportunity for
shameless essay-exploitation. (AKA: do I make sense of a massacre from the front seat or the back?) To wit, what our oh-so-clever "nihilist penguin" (no relation, I assure you) accomplishes is funny for the same reason S5 seems so darn disturbing: the post-modern collision of "high" and "low," the tragic and the mundane, is one of the great all time techniques of sardonica: by treating its frivolous subject matter with all the apparent straight-laced seriousness of the academic style, our writer follows in the steps of great satirists like Alexander Poppe, brewing a "tempest in a teapot," or as my Granddad would say, "hanging a silk purse on a sow's ear," to unflattering effect on Purse and pig. Of course, seasoned writers will notice that what makes this satire possible is the remarkable phenomenon of analysis that "if You can see it, describe it, and support it, it doesn't matter what the author intended." If that seems a little disturbing, remember that clarity of judgment, not extravagance, remains the endgame of good academic writers: we indulge in this level of "stretching our source text" to our academic and moral hazard. (Still, this seems a victimless crime, all told...) Anyway, enjoy this model application of academic writing, replete with couched quotes . disclaimer: no pigs or penguins were harmed in the writing or composition of this linked essay. Some resemblance to the academic style is clearly intentional. Names have not been changed, to thereby expose the venial and too-naive-to-know-better. -P'eng-Tzu out LINK If you dare
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