Bond

Bond, James Bond.

If you could be a character from literature, why not this one? (H/t: Arts & Letters Daily)

What, after all, is a man's deepest wish? Freud talked about "honor, power, riches, fame, and the love of women" — and Bond certainly encompasses all those. Still, that libidinal litany can be boiled down to a single desire, half hidden in the shadowy reaches of the male psyche and more clearly delineated in world mythology: As Joseph Campbell would say, men long to be heroes. No doubt about it. And yet I think the masculine ego also hungers for something a bit more noirish, if you will. At least some of the time, guys want to be thought of as … dangerous. While it's gratifying to be called a hard-working professional or a good provider, those admirable traits don't make our hearts beat quicker. By contrast, to overhear oneself described as "a man not to be trifled with" — that's quite another matter.

There is nothing quite like it, to be sure.

Though, I might choose Indiana Jones, given all options. I do envy his capacity to speak every ancient language he encounters. I can pretty much do the rest of the stuff, but I mostly "get along" with languages. I can handle written Modern and Middle English, French, Spanish, and can work in German, Dutch and Italian (Latin, Old Norse, and Old English), but I can't really speak any of them except Modern English.

That's an annoyance. I never seem to get any better. Indiana Jones doesn't have this trouble: wherever he goes, he can speak and read whatever it is. Hieroglyphs? Spoken Hindi dialects? Ancient Mayan? No problem.

I've got a good hat, a .45 and a few knives. I could learn the bullwhip. It's really the languages I wish I had. Bond can keep his toys.