UNIFIED THEORY OF LILEKS. They call it the "Eureka Moment" -- the epiphanic insight that takes the intellectual odds 'n' sods one has been glumly trying to piece together and instantly pulls them into a nice, tight bow.

I had mine during today's Bleat, In Which Father Lileks Again Contemplates Children at Play

Then they watched "Barbie Swan Lake," a computer-animated movie that’s all the rage in the tot set. Kelsey Grammer is the bad guy, and his motivation is simple and utterly Blofeldian -- he wants to take over the world. Why? Like that's ever worked. And if you could take over the world, what the hell would you do with it? I know, I know: if you’ve secured control of one hemisphere through necromancy, you’re always going to wonder whether the other hemisphere will challenge your rule, so might as well go for the gold. But it would be easier to just rule a small part and guard your power so you could repel any attempts to puncture your domain.

See also, North Korea.

Even now, to contemplate this fragment stirs my laughter -- but it is Olympian laughter, the laughter of the Gods! Much like the laughter, at the end of Peckinpaugh's Convoy, of Dirty Lyle -- who laughed to see the Rubber Duck resurface at his own funeral, because he knew then that there is no death!

Today's Bleat by itself didn't bring me to clarity -- many Lileks playdates, many trips to Target, many italicized toddler drolleries, led to this Moment. But it was the straw that both stirred the drink and broke the camel's back.

Reading the passage for the first time, I was put in mind of friends who are parents and devote large blocks of their time to their children. As they are intelligent, sensitive people (yeah, I do know a few), they fully enter their children's worlds and follow the simple logic, uninformed by brutal adult experience, of their games. It can be charming to observe -- but only because you know they will come back from such adventures whole and sane.

Not everyone can, apparently. Think how many hours Lileks has spent engaged in this sort of conversation with Gnat:

If you have five Hello Kittys, you’re sad because you don’t have six. And that’s not right.

I have nine Kittys.

Okay, you have nine Kittys, and you’re sad because you don’t have ten. But some kids don’t have any.

Can I have ten Kittys for my birthday?

And so it goes...

Some adults can come out of these mind-warping sessions and, after a faceful of cold water or a snootful of rye, fully rejoin the grown-up world. But Lileks' boundless devotion has drawn him in too deep for that.

Now, whenever he tells his readers that Kim Il Jung has been explained by Barbie, I will be inclined to sympathies rather than rage. I always half-knew that it was some psychological malady of the less offensive type -- not the pure evil that works through such earthly forms as Jonah Goldberg -- that animated his ravings. Now I am sure of it.

As soon as I figure out what's wrong with the rest of these assholes, I can close down this weblog.