To make one of those "meme" quizzes where the quiz gives you quotes from Mao and possible responses in multiple choice format and asks questions about how you and your parents and grandparents made their living. It would be a Cultural Revolution quiz to determine who would be in big trouble. Because I'm always snarkily saying "Well, when the cultural revolution comes, you'll be up against the wall too, just as I will, you self righteous twit." Perhaps it would give the number of years into the revolution that you'd be toast, and the manner of your demise. Skin cancer and pneumonia in year 6 of your reassignment to a Voluntary Farm picking and canning tomatoes? Or forced to kneel on nails with a sign around your neck all day and then shot?
I shouldn't say things like this out loud, should I? It's so disrespectful to the dead and the survivors. But I mean well with my dark humor, truly.
There should be a video game about it, in the style of the Grand Theft Auto games. With a "Republicans" mod.
Do you end up on a farming collective for espousing counterrevolutionary thought in your novels or do you stick it out as a minor committee functionary? Off to the gulags with the undesirables...
All I know is that GW will be forced to endure some humiliating punishments indeed.
Posted by: bri | August 16, 2004 at 05:23 PM
Think Georg Grosz. Think Günter Grass. Think Catch-22 and Gravity's Rainbow. Think Salman Rushdie. Think Art Spiegelman's "Maus". Sometimes humor, sacrilege, and "low" art are a better response to horror than piety and deadly seriousness would be.
Posted by: Prentiss Riddle | August 16, 2004 at 06:55 PM
I'd always assumed (from watching films)that those who will rise to the top will probably be completely deranged. So your survival rate monitor should have a random factor where you are suddenly killed for no apparent reason. I'm sure I read some horrible real account where every 3rd person in line had to step forward and then ...
Posted by: Iris | August 17, 2004 at 01:12 AM
And then there's the Black Bean Episode.
Posted by: Prentiss Riddle | August 18, 2004 at 01:30 PM
I just read the above.Is Shepherd one of the unluckiest men in history? Do you ever have a 'doomed' card that is handed out at the start of a game?
Posted by: Iris | August 19, 2004 at 01:12 AM
And was Bigfoot Wallace a traitor and a cheat for improving his odds at the expense of his comrades?
Posted by: Prentiss Riddle | August 19, 2004 at 01:35 PM
Of course not.It was the survival of the fittest.Where are his descendants now? Are they doing something really, really cool?
Posted by: Iris | August 19, 2004 at 02:04 PM