Stress level => 0
You wake up…
A. On the wrong side of bed.
B. In a dumpster for the second day in a row.
C. Under your bed.
D. Next to a hideous goblin.
E. Clutching the arm of the hooker you partially hid in your trunk.
You chose C. Stress level => 1
Darkness, a world inverted and a morning not at all promising. Sunlight pierces your peripheral vision, framing a very real sense of claustrophobia. Your alarm clock suddenly rings, so you…
A. Promptly begin salivating.
B. Reach for a pillow that’s actually where it’s supposed to be.
C. Emerge from under the bed and turn off your clock in one swift motion.
D. Sigh.
E. Bang your head so hard, your clock falls off the ledge, thereby silencing it.
You chose D and E. Stress level => 5
“Shit. Monday,” you mutter, rubbing your forehead painfully.
You stumble into the bathroom and…
A. Promptly begin salivating.
B. Mistake the Lysol for shampoo.
C. Can’t be bothered with raising the toilet seat, let alone the cover.
D. Conserve water by not showering.
E. Have a flashback filmed at 60 fps to heighten tension.
You chose A. Stress level => 5
The social construct of “showering,” flimsy as it has always been, crumbles beneath the voracious might of your hunger. You compromise by splashing some water on your face and flossing your favorite teeth. Now it’s time for breakfast. Monday is…
A. Just like Friday, only not.
B. Pop Tart day.
C. The day you pay homage to the Burger King.
D. Who also lives in the White Castle.
E. When you have that biz dev meeting earlier in the morning.
You chose B and E. Stress level => 15
You can already picture it in your mind.
“Strike three, buddy. Congratulations, this is the first day of the rest of your unemployed life,” your boss will say in front of everybody else.
Out the door you dash in a frenzied rush to prove him wrong, wallet and keys in one hand, Pop Tart in the other. You run straight into your neighbor, who for some reason is watering your lawn in his Panama Jacks and obnoxious hat. The Pop Tart lands frosting-first onto the grass.
“Look who’s late again!” he declares in that loud, chummy voice. “Hey, did you catch the game last night? Great time to be a Sox fan, eh?”
You look him in the eye and…
A. Run straight back to your house.
B. Invest five minutes in mindnumbing conversation.
C. Give the hooker in your trunk a new trunkmate.
D. Pretend you’re deaf and maybe a little blind.
E. Ignore him.
You chose E. Stress level => 20
“I used to love wrestling,” you reply, “until I found out it was all fake.”
You make it to your car. Safety. It’s time to go. You turn your key. But the car doesn’t start. The battery died.
Stress level => 50
Oh, mang. That sound you heard? It was as if a million nerds cried out–and then scurried back to their favorite online forums to debate in true Internet fashion. Peter Jackson looks different these days. Previously he boasted an eccentric yet huggable quality, like a bespectacled teddy bear who could capably direct movies and cuddle your children at the same time. Judging from interview footage I saw recently, he looks and dresses like a proper auteur now, and if he came anywhere near your children you’d have him properly arrested.
So, H5N1. A decade ago, could you have attached implications so dire and remedies so urgently needed to this jumble of consonants and numbers? Whenever I hear about epidemics, particularly those involving the flu, my mind procures a woefully inadequate picture from Dr. Quinn, Medicine Women in which many people die. But the numbers you hear today–50 million, 150 million, even a billion–are the type that wouldn’t fit so neatly into an episode. A billion. That’s a tsunami with hydrogen bombs attached to it.
They’re having a luncheon or a meeting or something at the White House, I don’t know the specifics, and really I’m not one to judge. My own deliberations take the form of deciding what meats are still safe to eat. Quarter Pounder? It’ll liquefy your brain. 9-Piece? You should just ask for a coffin in your Happy Meal. Thank goodness the Fulminating Fish Plague isn’t due for at least another year.
Today I picked up Cinderella for my mum, and while I was waiting in the checkout line it dawned on me: if I were five years old, I could watch the movie a dozen times, possibly in the span of a week. That’s the kind of tolerance you possess as a kid, I guess, but the real question is why, 18 years later, the drop-off for my enjoyment of cartoons is so severe.
Certainly my mum doesn’t subscribe to a strict regimen wherein she must have Disney, lest she burst into song and computer-generated dance. I imagine she’ll appreciate the nostalgia when she receives it. And before you even think it, no, I didn’t purchase the movie for myself. I’m not trying to brown wrapper the situation. Hey, I’m man enough to admit to watching Bambi this year and failing miserably. I remember making it to the part where the titular character learns how to walk, but then I had to fast-forward to the sequence where the titular character’s mother dies. Then I ejected the DVD.
What was the problem exactly? When I unearth other relics from my childhood, such as an action figure or the old Nintendo, I can still evoke a sense of charm and slight amusement if I try hard enough. But cartoons, especially Disney cartoons? Pure loathing. I’m talking abject disgust.
I began formulating the most complex rationalization for this feeling, ultimately constructing a multi-tiered argument involving thresholds of suspense and the unique demarcations of juvenile entertainment. Wrong, wrong, wrong. Suddenly it struck me. It’s the eyes. More to the point, it’s the ratio of the iris to the white.
Let’s start at a happy place. The animated Batman series.
“Commissioner? I don’t even know her!”
Notice how Gordon is modest, even lacking, in the ol’ peepers department. Heck, Batman doesn’t even have eyes. I could honestly sit down and watch a few episodes right now. I’d probably even enjoy them. Now let’s move on to something more sinister.
Borderline appropriate.
This is a symbol, really, for the struggle between Disney and Pixar, crassness and taste. The whites of their eyes are valiantly holding against the encroaching darkness, which lends them some reprieve. It’s time to enter the Danger Zone.
Something’s wrong here.
The white is losing. Gus apparently woke one morning and decided his eyes needed perverse alteration, right after embarking on his daily cheddar binge. I don’t remember the names of the other mice, though the short one looks like an enabler. Before we plunge straight to the ninth, let’s pay a brief visit to a token anime character. I have no idea who she is. I found her on the Internet. She could be a man, you can never tell with these things.
“Super-charged, ultra-fusion-powered pupils are hot. Am I right?”
No wonder her hair’s totally white! Her eyes clearly drained directly into her scalp. I’d also like to point out the– Wait, what was that?
Oh hells no.
I don’t see an annoying, easily marketable bunny looking at me. I’m actually beholding two vacuous windows into a soulless shell, twin portals to the screaming, dilated depths wrought by Drizzt Quel’Gorath expressly for his dark knights of Sepulchrion. Bambi euphemistically calls this “Thumper,” but–
Holy fucking shit.
“Eating greens is a special treat, it makes long ears and–” paused Thumper. “And I’m going to make a gun using carrots and maybe pieces of the Wise Owl so I can kill you and your eyes, Bambi!”
I know you look to me for my prescriptive capacity, so here you go. When you witness such abominations, such grotesque exemplars of cuteness, there’s only one thing to do.
Shrink your pupils.