Kentucky Fried Kung Pao
Kentucky Fried Chicken and its iconic founder and spokesman Col. Sanders shows up in this story. And with the addition of a little bit of whimsical imagery that reveals the way a common and familiar brand name can be tweaked int something distinctly alien:
“The House of the Venerable and Inscrutable Colonel was what they called it when they were speaking Chinese. Venerable because of his goatee, white as the dogwood blossom, a badge of unimpeachable credibility in Confucian eyes. Inscrutable because he had gone to his grave without divulging the Secret of the Eleven Herbs and Spices.”
Size Matters
Imagery is vividly called into action to reveal the truth that in certain situations size most definitely matters. The imagery gains power from juxtaposition between human and creature, between big and small, and between maturity and immaturity:
“Most of their children had reached the age when they were no longer naturally endearing to anyone save their own parents; the size when their energy was more a menace than a wonder; and the level of intelligence when what would have been called innocence in a smaller child was infuriating rudeness. A honeybee cruising for nectar is pretty despite its implicit threat, but the same behavior in a hornet three times larger makes one glance about for some handy swatting material.”
A Big Stupid Century
The 20th century is given its due through comparison to downsizing of everything with the evolution of technology. History really is, when one considers it from a certain perspective, just a story of a species doing everything they can to make the things they really depend on fit into the pocket. Given enough time and knowledge, one day that will even apply to those necessities which remain large and bulky today, including modes of transportation and sleep furnishings:
“The whole operation had been touchingly hapless, in an age when a hand-size battery could contain as much energy as all those cylinders of gas. It had a quaint twentieth-century feel and made Nell oddly nostalgic for the days when dangerousness was a function of mass and bulk. The passives of that era were so fun to watch, with their big, stupid cars and big, stupid guns and big, stupid people.”
What about Loki?
A discussion of the universally shared mythology of the archetype of the Trickster reveals through imagery why this figure is so quick to get away with pranks. He is hard to pin down physically. Although, apparently, one should always be suspicious of furry little hopping mammals. Somehow, Loki gets left out:
"many cultures have a Trickster figure, so the Trickster may be deemed a universal; but he appears in different guises, each appropriate to a particular culture's environment. The Indians of the American Southwest called him Coyote, those of the Pacific Coast called him Raven. Europeans called him Reynard the Fox. African-Americans called him Br'er Rabbit. In twentieth-century literature he appears first as Bugs Bunny and then as the Hacker.”
