Second Place Winner in Creative Non-Fiction Category

Johnathan C. Blunt
Darth Vader versus Fabio: For Dave Barry

It happens to every guy. You’re sitting at home sifting through the crap on television enjoying a night with your wife, girlfriend, Star Wars action figure of Princess Leia (in slave outfit), or significant other. She snuggles close and you may wrap yourselves in a blanket and share a tall mug of mint hot chocolate when she turns to you and asks, “What do you want to watch?”

Now if an action figure just talked to you, you need to seek some help. If not, you are now faced with a choice. You could flip it to Spike TV and watch the phenomenal Patrick Stewart in yet another rerun of Star Trek: The Next Generation, or you can find a charming yet utterly pointless romantic comedy. Now, if you’re like me, you want to see Star Trek. You would like nothing more than to see the Enterprise blow some Romulan ships into space dust. However, your other half is sitting there full well expecting you to find that romantic comedy, or else. You see, “What do you want to watch?” is actually code for, “You better find something I like on this television right now, and it sure as hell isn’t going to be The Matrix Reloaded.”

Women, as a general rule, do not enjoy science fiction. They don’t enjoy travelling to other universes or running from stormtroopers or kicking some alien tail. And, as Dave Barry suggests in his essay, “Beauty and the Beast,” it all goes back to childhood (371). Guys, you remember the elation you had when you got your hands on a new Transformers action figure or a toy lightsaber to beat up your friends with. It was all about the action and the technology. The future was cool and you wanted nothing more than to be there. In fact, I’m going to go so far as to say that you were supposed to be there in that future, and somehow you got transported back to the past where there are no new problems to solve. No damsels to rescue, no planets to save, no aliens to defeat. Girls, on the other hand, had toy dolls with their dreamy prince companions, cars, dollhouses, ovens, mops, brooms, fake food, and other such nonsense. Girls are groomed from the get-go to be grounded in realism which explains their need for verisimilitude versus lasers, aliens, monsters, massive Hollywood explosions, and space ships. You start to see a pattern in development. Already, guys are being conditioned to look to the future as their mode of escape whilst women are encouraged to look to the past or present.
But the pattern isn’t exclusive to childhood toys or movie choices. Next time you’re at your local Wal-Mart, take a walk down the small, poorly stocked book aisle. It’s end to end filled with titles like, “Midnight Passion,” “A Lover’s Kiss,” or “Insert Generic Smut Title Here.” Women are reading Nora Roberts when guys are more inclined to read Robert Heinlein or Richard Matheson. Women are reading about muscle bound, irresistible yet intelligent men they could never find much less have while guys are reading about sexy robot space girls with green skin.

You might think, what’s the difference? Guys and girls both want something they can’t have. But there is a difference. There’s this illusion, this fairy tale ending, that gives women nice warm, fuzzy feelings while guys roll their eyes. The princess is swept away by her prince charming and they live happily ever after. Blech. Guys want conflict, and it doesn’t even have to be resolved. Guys want a problem to solve, and their groomed to put themselves into any situation and say, “What could I have done better?” Take a look at The Empire Strikes Back. Han Solo is frozen in carbonite, Luke finds out the most evil man in the galaxy happens to be his father (and he gets his hand chopped off), and Leia is left with the realization that she’s now in love with a newly formed hunk of rock. Bummer, right? No happy endings there, and that lack of resolution is enough to drive women mad.

And that is because women seek simplicity. They’ve been groomed to seek simplicity from day one going all the way back to their plastic kitchens and bubble gum ironing boards. Up until about thirty or forty years ago, it was expected of women to be simple. They were to cook for the man, clean the house, raise the children, and tend to the mundane tasks that men didn’t want to do. And men don’t want to do those things because they’ve been conditioned to think ahead. Look to the future. This world is man’s world to inherit, so they thought. Today, the world has been turned upside down, and though it may be for the better, we still have strong undercurrents of our past affecting our development. You don’t see too many Barbie dolls with gauss rifles and sonic grenades, and you certainly won’t find a GI Joe wearing an apron including an all-new action mop. It’s not going to happen. We’ve got these roles placed upon us by gender that have been so engrained generation after generation that we’re going to see this sort of thing for many years to come. Girls will seek simplicity. They will look to the past or present as their mode of escape, and guys will look to the future. It’s just a fact of life, and it may cause some minor conflicts on the home front.

So next time you’re faced with the question, “What do you want to watch?” just do what I do. Hand the remote to her and smile.
“Whatever works for you works for me, babe.”
















Works Cited
Barry, Dave. “Beauty and the Beast.” The Longman Reader. Ed. Eliza Comodros, John Langman, and Judith Nadell. 9th ed. New York: Longman, 2009. 371. Print.

Winners of the Fall 2009 Writing Contest Announced

The English Department is happy to announce the winners of its Fall 2009 Writing Contest. Our judges noted that this year’s decision was the toughest yet. We had over sixty fiction and creative non-fiction entries, and they were all of very high quality.



We would like to thank all those who submitted in this semester’s contest. You should be proud that you made the first step in making your writing count. We hope that you continue to submit to contests in the future.



Fall 2009 Creative Non-Fiction Winners:


1st Place: Edward Smith for “The Happy Road”………………………..........$100

2nd Place: John Blunt for “Darth Vader Versus Fabio: For Dave Barry”……..$50

3rd Place: Bethany Joy Swoboda for “The Deer”………………………...….$25



Honorable Mention: Ryan Theissen’s “Inside of a Barn” and

Melissa McMahon’s “Burning Bras and Losing Hair”



Fall 2009 Fiction Contest Winners:


1st Place: Shawn Sullentrup for “Mr. Jones”………………………………… $100

2nd Place: Brian Farrar for “Willful Drowning”………………………………....$50

3rd Place: Elin Feldmann for “Prophecy”………………………………………$25



Honorable Mention: Nathan Krealmeyer for “The Life and Tragic Death of Patricia Spillsmore” and Fred Davis Jr. for “The Daoist Tale”



If you see these people, please give them a round of applause. They deserve it.



I would also like to thank our judges (Linda Barro, Sue Henderson, Leigh Kolb, and Lissa Rosebrough) and all those who helped promote this contest. You helped make this year’s contest a success.



All contest winners are automatically published in the Spring 2010 edition of the Literary Review, so everyone will get a chance to read the winning entries in April. Please look out for the Spring Poetry Contest next semester. Details: TBA.



Thank you for supporting the written arts!

The Cornerstone and the Literary Review's November Poem of the Month

Tyler Florence

No Home

How odd to enter a house with no doors,
no fair faces found to flirt over floors,
no shadows seen stretching along stand still walls,
no farewells cried out, nor whispered, nor called.
No windows skinny, caressed sight shudders,
no basements bone bare, stripped sick lovers.
No roots over head or space under stairs,
no delicate brush of soft flowing hair.
Know, nothing is air of a lonely hall.
No home is no house of no building at all.