The Hunger Games: A 150th Post Extravaganza

That's right! I'm delaying talking about Fantasy Football to finally talk about the Hunger Games! I have no idea how I'm going to broach the subject, but I'll do this the EMPH way: with very little forethought and a great deal of digressions with the illusion of order!

I'm partial to this logo. It's simple, classy and has meaning to the story.

What I Think of the Series as a Whole

I'll start this off with a bold statement: I think The Hunger Games is significantly better than Harry Potter. For starters, Katniss never uses a time machine to solve all her problems and then never mention it again. Secondly, The Hunger Games brilliantly use Latin and classical history and Harry Potter has all the subtlety of a freight train with Latin. Seriously, the main evil family is led by Lucius Malfoy (translated: Satan McBadguy, because Lucius is one step away from Lucifer) and his eldest son, Draco Malfoy (translated: Satan McBadguy Jr., because Draco means dragon and dragons historically are the very incarnation of the Devil). I will talk more about Latin later, because this is really one of the highlights of the book. But back on point, I think The Hunger Games is substantially more relatable than Harry Potter and its story is much more focused and relies less on deus ex machina to resolve the plot. For starters, Katniss's unhappy starting place is a lot more believable and a lot more sad than Harry's. Her family lives in poverty and was pushed to the brink of starvation due to the untimely death of her father in a mining accident, which forces her to assume more responsibility than a teen girl should. Harry's sad place is an evil wizard killed his parents before he ever met them and now he must live with his comically abusive aunt and uncle where they force him to live under the staircase instead of one of the extra rooms they have, because they are jerks and Child Services doesn't exist in this universe and literally no one has ever asked Harry about his well-being. Then one day, Hagrid shows up and tells Harry that he's a wizard and also he's the wizard of destiny and also his parents left him a fortune in wizard gold but lacked the foresight to convert any of their money into wealth their son could use OR consider leaving him in the care of someone who wasn't estranged from the family. Whereas Katniss has to overcome her obstacles by playing things smart and surviving, at least until thefirst half of Mockingjay, Harry overcomes his obstacles through things he had no control over. Boy, it sure is fortunate that it turns out that Harry's very touch kills Voldemort and that Voldemort forgot about this. One good avada cadavra spell from Quirrell and it's a 1 volume story. It's also a good thing that Dumbledore's phoenix can apparently find its way into long hidden and forgotten chambers so that Harry can literally pull a magic sword from a hat. I could do this all day, but I won't.

The Smart Ass Creed

As many of you know, I enjoy reading (when it's not forced down my gullet and regurgitated by mandate into essay form). I was excited when Murfreesboro got a Barnes and Noble because it finally gave us a reliable outlet of literature and it gave me an outlet for approximately $100 in gift cards.

Also, a brief side note before I go on, I have not abandoned Da Vinny Code. However, it is long and complex and tricky for me as I have never read The Da Vinci Code (which, in retrospect, I ought to have bought tonight... or borrowed from my dad... or borrowed it from my local library). But since I decided to write shorter posts more frequently, I figured you would be able to make do.

Now, as everyone who ever heard of me knows, I'm a smart ass. Always have been, always will be. I'm all for punchy, succinct remarks (which further enhances the irony of my long winded blogs). However, there is a standard for smart assery and I will not tolerate sub-standard sarcasm. What do you get when you take the "smart" out of "smart ass"?

Precisely. You get a sociopath.

Now, you, the confused reader, are wondering what in blazes this had to do with anything. So far I've been all over the place with no real unifying theme or purpose.

Well let me tie everything into a nice little bow of hatred.

They had a section of employee recommended books and on the top shelf was seated America the Book by Jon Stewart back when Jon Stewart was funny. What drew my ire was the card the employee filled out to tell the consumer why they ought to buy the book. This card read:

"This is the funniest book written about American Goverment since The Wealth of Nations."

The joke being that a serious essay is actually quite silly. Now why did this attempt at humor draw my ire so much that I bothered to remember it verbatim?

It violates the tenets of The Smart Ass Creed.

The tenets of this secret society of smart asses are as follows:

1. Everything is mockable, nothing is perfect.
2. Never mock anything lower than yourself.
3. Always be right

Easily, the most important tenet is the last one as that is the underlying strength of all things smart ass. The comment card was troubling on three accounts:

• First, The Wealth of Nations pre-dates any sort of organized American government as it was published a solid four months before the Declaration of Independence was signed. I suppose Adam Smith could have the type of clairvoyant space mind powers to write a ringing endorsement of a government that would not take any organized form for another 11 years. Perhaps he was a time traveler. However, barring my fantastic explanations, it falls short on that account.
• Second, The Wealth of Nations has nothing to do with any government working. It is an economic essay which founded capitalism. So the comparison isn't even apt on the most basic level.
  
• Third, it uses standard Family Guy lame jokery wherein you say "this is the best something since some vaguely pertinent pop culture reference". That offense is in violation of all I hold dear.
• Fourth, I think the point the employee was trying to get at is "Capitalism is a joke", but that rings hollow as they work at a Barnes and Noble, which started the Starbucks trend. Between the combined might of frappuccinos and literature, they have crushed thousands of small businesses (which, in retrospect, should not have been built to be so easily crushed). Apparently, for the all the foolishness of the free market, this employee has no qualms cashing a paycheck from the corporate empires.

The point I'm laboriously striding towards is many smart ass wannabes are just sociopaths who have no other way to validate their existence aside from embracing counter-culture for no other reason than to embrace it.

As a genuine smart ass, it saddens me to see the art of sarcasm abused so.

P.S. The other books on the top shelf of the recommended list were The Golden Compass and The God Delusion. So it seems as though the unifying theme amongst Barnes and Noble is "Screw you, popular opinion of local residents who are the lifeblood of our industry and, indeed, the very source of the income I so cherish!"

P.P.S. This post weighs in at over 750 words, which is not terribly more succinct than Da Vinny Code.

P.P.P.S. Also, in less than a month, the English Muffin Power Hour has produced more content in terms of volume of posts and length of material than the One Blog to Rule Them All did in 9 months. And yet, I don't have nearly as many comments.