personal sovereignty in scarequotes civilization

When you hand over your personal sovereignty to anyone, ANYONE, the risk is always there that your trust will be abused and the power they collect as millions all hand over their own personal sovereignties in turn will be utilized in things you personally would want no part with. It's virtually impossible to hold onto ALL of your personal sovereignty, and I wholeheartedly recommend rendering unto Caesar and all that, but no one should ever be surprised when human beings -- untrustworthy and awful -- turn around and do untrustworthy and awful things. At any level of what we might call scarequotes civilization.

Who was Jesus? Glad you asked! (an overly long response to a somewhat flippant question on Facebook)

Jesus was a revolutionary and visionary from thousands of years back who, despite growing up in a backwards time and among a more or less backwards people, looked out at the mass of injustice and hypocrisy in the world and how cruel people were to one another and assembled a different view of how things could be and how people should behave towards one another. The people who are on top today, he said, will be on the bottom when the reckoning comes. And those who have lost shall be comforted. He suggested letting go of an attachment to physical possessions, especially when in comparison to the worth of any human life. He strongly renounced self-righteous hypocrites.

No one at the time knew what to make of him. Some thought he must be some sort of god himself because he was so clearly ahead of his time. Others, threatened that someone so simple and poor and humble could yet be so vastly superior to them, had him executed in one of the most grisly and sadistic manners "humanity" has ever devised. Immediately afterwards, or soon enough as dammit, the same sort of status quo wealth-and-power assholes who had him killed latched on to his name and his movement, had him declared a god for reals, and have ever since done all sorts of terrible things in his name, becoming exactly the kind of self-righteous hypocrites the dude spent his life denouncing.

Meanwhile, there are those have still managed to pick up the greatest portion of his message, undiminished across centuries, and are still working steadily to make his dream of heaven on Earth a reality. Or so they say. In any case, he prophesied that one day the dead would rise again, and while the loopy superstitious cats who wear his torture device on their necks believe this will be some supernatural divine shit, I am pretty sure it will be good old fashioned human know-how that eventually makes this miracle a reality. Those with ears, let them hear.

A quick look back at Jay-Z's post-Black Album discography:

Kingdom Come? More like Kingdom Dumb.

American Gangster? More like American Wankster.

Blueprint 3? More like Doo-print 3.

Watch The Throne? More like Watch The Porcelain Throne.

Magna Carta Holy Grail? More like Massive Shart, Holy Fail.

Duck Anus and the Seven Woes of Matthew 23

So Phil Robertson from the show Duck Dynasty popped off his mouth and said a lot of ignorant illiterate inbred hillbilly shit in an interview and suddenly the world, which heretofore was inexplicably entranced by his ignorant illiterate inbred hillbilly antics and had elevated him to a television star and face on t-shirts, became shocked and dismayed by the revelation that an ignorant illiterate inbred hillbilly may hold views that are a bunch of ignorant illiterate inbred hillbilly shit, and the ignorant illiterate inbred hillbilly was suspended indefinitely from his ignorant illiterate inbred hillbilly TV show.

That should have been the end of the story. Another sign of the shifting of the times. But then, the people who are most terrified of the shifting of the times, because the times are going to make them and theirs irrelevant -- ie, the conservative wingnut faction that only SEEMS like they suddenly became a force to contend with in recent years when my own memory is these assholes have been around my whole lifetime -- decided to seize on the moment as a rallying point for their culture wars. I guess to take a break from all the War On Christmas crap.

(Here's the War On Christmas in a nutshell, future historians: This is, right here and now, literally the first time in the history of this society that the voice of the Other has been able to be heard above the roar of the smug and entitled majority, and to a certain subset of said smug and entitled majority it is TERRIFYING. The idea that there are people who celebrate their own different winter holidays or indeed celebrate none at all is threatening to people who believe it is their god-given right to shove Christmas down everyone else's throat. Any attempt at getting them to respect or even acknowledge the existence of other traditions or non-believers, is perceived as an attack. The War On Christmas. Now back to our program.)

So first the governor of Louisiana comes out and immediately demonstrates that the governor of a state in this Union, right now today, has no functional understanding of how the First Amendment works. Not to be undone in idiocy, the inexplicably still-relevant Sarah Palin comes out to show that she, who was once almost the Vice President of the United States, also has no clear or cogent comprehension of the concept. And then every idiot fucking Republican tea bag motherfucker has to swallow the party line and parrot this same lame line about freedom of speech, or even better, freedom of religion. Because Phil Robertson is a Christian. So obviously whatever dumb shit this dumb ass says about the undesirability of anuses or how black people were more godly before civil rights came along is clearly motivated by his faith in Jesus.

Cue a bunch of snarky articles defining the constitutional guarantee of freedom of speech and how it does not insure one continued employment if said free speech should become a threat to the employer's livelihood. And then a bunch of people wondering where Sarah Palin was when Martin Bashir got fired a few weeks ago for making the completely reasonable suggestion that someone should shit in Sarah Palin's mouth. Those with longer memories chuckle and remember when Bill Maher got fired after 9/11 and how no one said boo about free speech. Cue more snarky articles reminding Republicans that the right of an employer to fire an employee in a free marketplace is actually about as Republican as it gets. Some also draw parallels between the right wing rushing to defend the right of some duck fuck to express his Christian faith and values, and the recent condemnation of Pope Francis by many of these exact same people when he freely expressed HIS Christian faith and values. Meanwhile, on the comments pages of any article about this topic, ignorant and illiterate people of all kinds line up behind the inbred hillbilly and express views that can be charitably described as on the wrong side of history.

Somewhere, an array of computers has been keeping track of all of this. Bombs are dropped by remote control death planes, precipitation seeding and nourishing more terror and violence for years to come. The spaceships are nowhere in sight. And I'm going to bed.

The Bible Is Worse Than Grand Theft Auto

The Bible is, in terms of objectionable content, far far worse than any video game ever made to date. Within its pages there is incest, infanticide, rape, mass murder, animal sacrifice. A woman drives a tent peg into a sleeping man's ear. Actual murderers in the real world have directly cited passages from the Bible in justifying their actual murders committed in the real world. And yet, among all the cultural watchdogs, to my knowledge not one has made a movement to ban the Bible, or make it illegal to sell, or even to put some kind of rating on it to prevent children from having access to such horrible and clearly influential material. Rather, and in direct contradiction to their stated goals, many of these people look at the Bible like it some sort of moral guide. All I'm saying is, I'm hiding the tent pegs before I go to sleep.

I Am A Chinese Room

I am a Chinese room. Or, if you prefer more accuracy, an English room. Because, although not a single cell of my body understands the English language, somehow enough of them together in meaningful complexity can comprise a system that DOES understand the English language. My mouth and vocal cords call this system "me;" my fingers assert that it is "me" that types while my eyes watch letters appear on a screen. Not a single cell in my body understands English, understand. When I scraped cheek cells for middle school science class microscope labs, I did not accidentally murder poets and journalists. They're just cells. They're not very smart. And before cells even, they're just chains of molecules that describe the creation of the cell and the patterns they form in congregate. No ability to comprehend the difference between "hermetic" and "hermeneutic." But somehow, those cells and the patterns they form in congregate -- me -- does. My hands appear to understand English as they move across the keyboard, hastily backspacing over irrelevant digression; remove them from the system (i.e., chop them off) and suddenly they are useless.

I am a Chinese room. I have no idea where my thoughts come from. From my perspective they just... come to me. After they have come I can look back and sort of see where they came from, or guess where they come from, but when they come they come unannounced. Some thoughts I can hold on to and manipulate a little, some thoughts I shove away as swiftly as I can; but this is the description of someone experiencing thoughts, not thinking them. I have never seen my brain. I am only accepting as the most likely model that what I have been told is correct; that there is a brain inside my skull that thinks these thoughts that come to me. But I have never seen my brain. I have never seen my skull either but I can feel it. Never seen my brain. If it turned out that I was literally a Chinese room, that there was a tiny homunculus with a huge book and a filing cabinet and a pen and paper in my skull, and the sensory inputs from the outside world come to him to compute and process a response to, that would only be slightly weirder than the model I'm supposed to accept, the model I more or less do accept.

I am a Chinese room, and if you're not one too, you might just be a p-zombie.

Conservatives In America: A Continuing Exercise In Contradiction

Conservatives in America: It's completely unthinkable that any human activity could in, any way shape or form, impact the Earth's environment; but allowing same-sex couples to marry will have a direct, deep and negative impact on the lives of everyone.

Conservatives in America: Easy access to real guns and their ubiquity in public places in NO WAY increases the likelihood of gun violence, but easy access to virtual guns and their ubiquity in video games GREATLY increases the likelihood of gun violence.

Music Box

I just remembered this music box I used to have. I had it from the time of childhood that memory is mythic and symbolic and not literal and factual memory, so I have no idea how I came about this music box or when. And it was this small wooden box with a long extended handle, and it had a crank, and when you cranked it, it played the theme from Love Story. Which seems kind of random for a childrens toy, in retrospect. But the coolest thing was, it had a clear plastic window covering the machinery on the inside, so as you turned the crank you could see the gears turn. There was a little cylinder with little braille bumps around it enmeshed with this rake-like instrument with many tines, and as the cylinder revolved the bumps plucked the tines and made music, note by note. I would crank it slowly and watch the cylinder painstakingly move around, how the bumps on it would gently lift the keys of the instrument up, up, up, and then continue to turn away and the key would plink back down and make a distinctive tone. A moment later another one gets hooked. And then spin it faster and hear the individual plinks blend into a melodious lullaby, the cylinder spinning around the keys and making them move like a player piano in a cinematic saloon. I had it for years and I loved it. Even into early adulthood I held on to it as a rare and precious talisman of my childhood. Until today I haven't thought about it in years, years, and I have no idea where it is now. I have no idea of how I lost it.

backlash

It seems to me that humanity is self-correcting, after a fashion. The pendulum has swung pretty far in the direction where a small handful of people own almost everything in the world and everyone else struggles and strives; it is absurd to imagine it can go in that direction indefinitely. Sooner or later the pendulum has to swing back, and when it does, it will swing almost as far in the opposite direction. At least if the pendulum metaphor is valid, it will. Regardless. The further it goes in this direction, the stronger the eventual backlash will be, because it's impossible that it goes this direction forever.

The Memory Hole: Some random post 9-11-13 thoughts

Remember that time in the 1990s when the face of terrorism in America wasn't Muslim Arabs, it was white right-wing Christian Americans? Of course not, because the Oklahoma City Bombing has disappeared down the same memory hole as every other unfortunate fact that does not fit our constant mythologizing. Did you know that  the World Trade Center would have only been forty years old now if it had stayed standing? People talk about it like it was some timeless and long-standing Wonder Of The World, like the Great Wall or Colossus Of Rhodes except American, so better. Less than thirty when it came down. At thirty-five, I have now had a longer life-span than the World Trade Center. Just saying. I'm getting distracted. The point is the memory hole that American history disappears into before being replaced by American myth. People can get on television now and imply that all Muslims are terrorists and that all terrorists are Muslim, when it wasn't that long ago at all (still less than 20 years!) that the most grievous, despicable act of terrorism on U.S. soil came not from some turbaned jihadists dead-set on their seventy-two virgin reward, but from some crew-cutted Caucasian conservative Christians who "wanted their country back." This has been forgotten to the point where in the 2008 election, people could bandy about that "Obama" sounded like "Osama" but no one pointed out how similar "McCain" and "McVeigh" were as well. So: terrorism is once again embodied by scary foreigners with a different religion and a different language, calling to mind the "all immigrants are bomb-throwing anarchists" crap of the 1920s. And who was it that was responsible for shifting the dialogue, for changing the public's perception of terrorist away from right-wing Christians? Right-wing Christians. Just saying.

Racism In America, Still

There's basically three reasons why someone would deny the existence and/or extent of racism in America:

1. They're a racist and they don't want to give the game up.
2. They're not a racist but it makes them so uncomfortable realizing how racist everything still is that they ignore it or downplay it.
3. They're just a fucking idiot.

The Value Of Words

We've been using words now for so long that I think we've kind of forgotten that they're just some shit we made up. Words are not inherent in nature, nor do they have any existence independent of our minds and this world we have made for ourselves. There's no such thing as good words or bad words. They're just words, sounds, wavelengths of vibrating air and symbols in our brains. I used to play this game with my dog, where I would scold him horribly in a melodious "good dog" tone: "You're such a bad dog, Max, I hate you." His tail would wag and he would get all happy. Then I would praise him in a "bad dog" tone of anger: "You're a GOOD DOG, Max! Such a GOOD DOG!" and he would shrink up in shame.  He didn't give a shit what words I used. The TONE and FEELING of the words was what he derived meaning from. Words have no inherent value.

The Spiritual Function Of Technology (Another Swipe From My Twitter)

Sometimes I think the real primary function of technology is to give us better metaphors to understand ourselves with. How can you appreciate the Great Wheel of Life until you've invented the wheel? How can you comprehend the Great Chain of Being till you've forged a chain? How can you think "I wonder if this is just a computer simulation" without first creating a computer? Technology is not necessarily a false merkaba, it is just applied incorrectly in a spiritual sense. Technology is still valid.

Spying vs whistleblowing: a quick breakdown

The government on spying: If you haven't done anything wrong, you have nothing to worry about.

The government on whistleblowing: It is of the utmost importance that none of our secrets come to light.

Morality Without Religion

When someone says "you can't have morality without religion," that says more about them than it does morality or religion. Specifically, it says "I only do good because I'm afraid someone is watching and judging me." That's not being a good and moral person. That's an asshole trying to hide what they are. Good people do good because they know its right, not because some book says they'll be punished forever if they don't. Relying on a supernatural carrot-and-stick isn't actually a good foundation for morality. Only the ethically disabled need to rely on a series of threats and rewards to do the right thing. Real people never did and never will.

Ben & Jerry's Cotton Candy Ice Cream Misses The Point Of Being Cotton Candy Ice Cream

This Ben & Jerry's cotton candy ice cream is like cotton candy ice cream for people who feel ashamed about eating cotton candy ice cream. It's all muted and understated, and a nice reserved white color, and like, I'm already eating cotton candy ice cream, you may as well make it loud and colorful. This isn't ice cream for a serious occasion. This is not ice cream that is served at a funeral or at the selection of a new pope. This is not ice cream that will be presented to some fancy debutante on the occasion of her coming-out party. It's cotton. Candy. Ice cream. For fuck's sake. There's a time for restraint and moderation, and there's a time for cotton candy ice cream. To every season, turn, turn, turn. Leave it to the tree-hugging hippies at Ben & Jerrys to miss the point. Probably want me to wear a bike helmet while I eat it too.

All that said, though, it's pretty good and I can't stop eating it. No restraint or moderation here.

Niko It's Your Cousin, Fear Of A Twerk Planet, And The Dubstep Gun Blues

A kid shot his grandmother after playing Grand Theft Auto IV; if the game had REALLY influenced him he'd have shot his cousin. We went through this shit with Beavis & Butthead and that little moron that burned his trailer down, like 20 years ago. When Columbine happened it was because of Doom, and Marilyn Manson. But when religious nuts cite scripture to justify murdering an abortionist, no one wants to blame the Bible. No one blamed Son Of Sam's crimes on his neighbor's dog, or pets in general. It's because people (and I mean OLD people) are frightened of a culture that has left them behind, calcified and irrelevant. They fear what they don't understand, and they no longer understand ANYTHING. Look at the furor over last night's VMAs. Newsflash: stupid teenagers like stupid things, and especially like shocking old people.

So now we can start talking about what violent video games, and violent entertainment in general, say about us as a people, when the very fact that violence has been largely relegated to the world of fiction and entertainment is an amazingly positive thing. Study history. Human beings are some brutal ass motherfuckers. All of us today live in a world built on bloodshed and suffering. Today most people get that need out of their system through vicarious entertainment, instead of wantonly killing each other. But no, it's easier to say that fictional representations of reality CAUSE that reality than to admit that it reflects our true nature.

All that said, if the dubstep gun were a real thing, I would be on the national news by tomorrow night: "THREAT OR MENACE?"  And having started with a Grand Theft Auto IV reference and ended with a Saints Row IV reference, this armchair soapboxing session is now over.

Take Your 80s Nostalgia, And Blow It Out Your Ass

Look, I recognize that for many people, the 80s was the last time you were good looking or were able to convince good looking people to have sex with you. Now you look over at whatever harpy or troglodyte you're stuck with for life, hear your little brats fighting upstairs and think, man, I miss the 80s. I'm sorry to tell you that you are correct to miss the 80s, but that they still sucked.

A quick comment about Beware The Batman

There is some folk wisdom that says that if a Batman show has a "The" in its title, its relative placement before or after the word "Batman" could determine the quality of the show. If it came before, the show would be inferior; if after, superior. This is why Batman: THE Animated Series and Batman: THE Brave & THE Bold are classic television programming while THE Batman and THE New Adventures Of Batman are essentially warmed up doo doo butter.

Now it appears that Beware THE Batman might force us to throw this conventional rule of thumb out. It's pretty fantastic so far.

Neanderthals: An Ontological Fable

The Neanderthals were like us. They had beliefs, and thoughts. They buried their dead and laid flowers at the grave. Now they're all gone and no one really gives a shit. There's a lesson here somewhere.

the bit about imprinting

Like baby birds that imprint the first thing they see as their mother, even if it's a ping pong ball, most people seem to take the imprint for their conception of reality from whatever crap they were told first. Almost every assumption of the human-created world accepted without question or introspection.

The bit about Tauriel

I imagine the conversation went something like this:

"Holy shit, we're turning The Hobbit, a 300-page book, into a NINE HOUR TRILOGY, we'll have to pad it out A FUCK OF A LOT."

"Well we already dumped all the shit from The Silmarillion in and we've still got hours of dead time to fill."

"Well, what about inventing new characters and plotlines?"

"New... characters?"

"Sure! Other adaptations do it all the time! What, you thought 'Rachel Dawes' was a real Batman character?"

"Okay, I guess.... what did you have in mind?"

"Well I was at a convention and I saw this chick in Robin Hood cosplay..."

THE END

An opening line I wrote years ago and then lost for years. Reconstructed from new memories at last.

The sound of the teakettle is pure Americana, somewhere between steam engine whistle and lonesome prairie harmonica. Take it from the stove and its squeal is strangled into silence.

The Cicadas Are

The cicadas are a bad nitrous trip, brittle vibration in a white noise loop.

The cicadas are a busted theremin or a b-movie UFO, omnipresent and just out of sight.

The cicadas are external tinnitus, the hum of ambient machinery at the base of awareness.

The cicadas are a rushing faucet in an empty house, a mass of insect acoustics with no clear center.

So I Wrote A Paper And I Cited Batman #1 (AND got an A+)

(The assignment: Rely on “The Cask Of Amontillado” and “The Tell-Tale Heart” by Edgar Allen Poe to explore the theme of madness. Carefully examine the details of the stories provided by each narrator in their efforts to convince readers they are sane and reveal why and how those very stories convince readers they are mad. What does each narrator say about the stories they tell that makes them believe their stories will prove their sanity? Furthermore, what is it about the tone, voice, and details of each story that makes it impossible for us to think they are sane? A minimum of ONE print sources in addition to the stories that you are analyzing. Sources should be used to support the discussion and exploration of your thesis.)

(All original typos and mispunctuation kept for the sake of verisimilitude and laziness.)

It has been said that “criminals are a superstitious and cowardly lot.” (Finger 1) Of course, this is a bit of a broad overstatement. It is impossible to say anything definitive about criminals as a class of people because there are many different reasons for being a criminal. Social laws are not universally valid like mathematical laws or scientific laws but merely reflections of the contemporary social values and political climate. Someone may be a criminal out of ignorance of the law, or out of desperation and need, or for greed, or for convenience, or for civil disobedience, or out of some severe emotional imbalance. Thus, it simply isn't possible to generalize about the particular psychological makeup of “criminals” as a whole. And yet, certainly, many criminals are superstitious and cowardly. Superstitious in that the crimes they commit are without rational cause, without any clear motivation. Cowardly in that their crimes are secretly plotted, carried out with intrigue and subterfuge, and done with the intention of concealment. These are criminals that would be considered insane by the standards of present day society. The narrators of the short stories “The Cask of Amontillado” and “The Tell-Tale Heart,” by Edgar Allan Poe, are arguably both examples of this kind of criminal.

“The Cask of Amontillado” is written from the vantage point of fifty years after the events it describes (Poe “Cask” 10). In it the narrator, Montresor, describes in a very clear and detailed fashion the time that he murdered an acquaintance of his and how he got away with it. He is extremely eloquent when it comes to describing his preparation (Poe “Cask” 3). He is downright exuberant when he recalls his cleverness in luring his friend Fortunato to his doom (Poe “Cask” 4). He even mentions how, during the final process of bricking Fortunato up in his cellar, he stops and sits down for a few minutes to listen to Fortunato's futile struggles to free himself: “...that I might hearken to it with the more satisfaction, I ceased my labors and sat down upon the bones.” (Poe “Cask” 9) Montresor is clearly an intelligent and eloquent man who is able to express himself in a clear and rational manner. He is so verbose in describing his crime that his inability to properly articulate why he would commit the crime in the first place is quite telling an absence. All Montresor will say is that “[the] thousand injuries of Fortunato I had borne as I best could; but when he ventured upon insult, I vowed revenge.” (Poe “Cask” 3) He also describes it vaguely as “a wrong.” (Poe “Cask” 3)The same man who can so vividly describe the underground crypts beneath his home in florid prose is reduced to terse one-word descriptions of his justification. An “insult.” A “wrong.” Because of course, there is no real reason. Montresor is insane. Is there a better word to describe someone who is willing to plot a meticulous murder – and more to the point, to carry it out – over some perceived slight? It is the lack of sensible motive that moves Montresor from the realm of the mere criminal into the realm of the mad. While luring someone into your basement and murdering them is probably always going to be illegal, it's not hard to imagine some horrible crime or unimaginable sin that someone might commit which would make luring them into your basement and murdering them seem like it makes sense as a response. Perhaps if that person murdered your parents, or your children, say, or something of that magnitude. As much as people respect and value the law, they understand that it has its limitations and they can feel frustrated when confronting these limitations head-on. This is probably why human culture is littered with tales of those who take the law into their own hands in pursuit of a higher justice. Often they are portrayed as the heroes of their own stories (Finger 1-2). But to go through all that preparation, to take such sadistic glee in your victim's struggles, to still look back on it as a fond memory fifty years later; for a mere insult? That is not a sentiment or an experience that I would hope most sane people would easily relate to.

“The Tell-Tale Heart” is structurally very similar to “The Cask of Amontillado” in that both concern themselves with first-person accounts of crime and madness dictated by the criminals concerned, but there are some chief differences as well. Superficially, the narrator is nameless. More relevant is a difference in tone. Both narrators, in being authored by Edgar Allan Poe, share his flowery and precise style of writing, but the narrator of “The Tell-Tale Heart” is much more frantic and animated in his prose. He is seemingly aware of this himself, opening up his tale with “Nervous – Very, very dreadfully nervous I had been and am.” There is a greater usage of exclamation points, and of italics for emphasis, and indeed at some points the narrator interrupts his own narrative to laugh to himself (Poe “Tell-Tale” 67). The narrator is also trying very hard to convince the reader that he is not mad. Both the frantic tone and the protestations of sanity can be attributed to the narrator's being discovered for his crimes, in contrast to Montresor's scot-free reminiscences fifty years after the fact (Poe “Tell-Tale” 71).

In fact, a great much of “The Tell-Tale Heart” is the narrator's attempt to convince the reader that he is not mad: “...but why will you say that I am mad?” (Poe “Tell-Tale” 67) “And have I not told you that what you mistake for madness is but acuteness of the senses?” (Poe “Tell-Tale” 69) “If you still think me mad, you will think me so no longer...” (Poe “Tell-Tale” 69) But interestingly, with every attempt to sway opinion, all he does is convince the reader more and more thoroughly that he is, in fact, utterly barking mad. This is, after all, the tale of a man who murdered an old man because that old man had an “Evil Eye;” how he smothered him with his own mattress and dismembered him and buried him under the floorboards; and how he almost got away with it except that he imagined that the old man's heart was still beating and he gave himself away (Poe “Tell-Tale” 67-71). There is no part of that story that isn't completely insane.

There is a line separating purely criminal behavior – which as said above may only be deemed criminal by the standards of the day depending on context – from behavior which is criminally insane, and that line appears to be at least partially determined by motivation. A crime with a clear and rational motive may yet be a crime, but a crime with no clear or relatable motive is more likely to be perceived as insane by society at large (Rogers 157-158). If the narrator of “The Tell-Tale Heart” had slain the old man over a grudge, society would say “that's terrible” but many people would fundamentally understand. To have that kind of grudge, that kind of hate, is relatable. But no: “I loved the old man. He had never wronged me. He had never given me insult.” (Poe “Tell-Tale” 67) Or if the narrator had killed the old man to rob him, again people would condemn it but at some core level they would probably understand. That kind of greed is in all of us to some extent. But no: “For his gold I had no desire.” (Poe “Tell-Tale” 67) Instead we are forced to confront the supremely disturbing idea that someone might go through all this planning – over “seven long nights” – and finally go through with the grisly act, for a completely crazy reason. Over an “Evil Eye,”say, or simply a wounded sense of pride.

The implications of this notion – that some people are just crazy, that they cannot be predicted or accounted for, that by their own lights and in their own minds they are perfectly sane, and that some of them might be clever enough or lucky enough to literally get away with murder – are troubling implications indeed and perhaps best left relegated to the realm of fiction, where they become more abstract and thus less threatening to consider.

Works Cited Finger, Bill (w), Bob Kane (p), and Sheldon Moldoff (i). "The Legend of the Batman - Who He is, and How he Came to Be" Batman #1 (Spring 1940), Detective Comics Inc. [DC Comics]. Poe, Edgar A., et al. "The Tell-Tale Heart." Introduction to Literature. Ed. Kathleen S. Cain. Boston, MA: Pearson Learning Solutions, 2013. 67-71. Print. Poe, Edgar A. "The Cask of Amontillado." Godey's Lady's Book. Nov. 1846. Print. Rogers, Richard, and Daniel W. Shuman. Conducting Insanity Evaluations. New York: Guilford Press, 2000. Print.

Tricksy

"Actually, caves are a good thing."

"Unless they have teeth and they eat you up."

"Like THAT ever happens..."

"Sure, what do you think happened to your brother Samuel?"

"I don't have a brother Samuel!"

"Oh... I guess your parents haven't told you yet. They must think you're too young still. You had another brother. Except he wandered into a cave in Baltimore and it had teeth and it ate him."

"There are no caves in Baltimore!"

"Well not anymore, not after we blew up the one that ate your brother!"

The Chilling Despair Of Pizza

This is the most depressing frozen pizza section I've ever seen in a grocery store. It's like three freezer doors wide, and exclusively DiGiornio and Red Baron. Fuck man, I've been in drug stores with better frozen pizza selections. And half these pizzas? Are only half pizza, and then come packed with "dippin' sticks" or "boneless wyngz" -- about which the less said (or thought) the better. Jesus wept, but if he was shopping for a frozen pizza with me today he'd probably weep again. The big baby.

The SNAFU Principal

One who attempts to lead, without obtaining the respect and confidence of those they would be leading, is building on sand. Fear and intimidation are no substitute -- those that fear you resent you, and they will always find ways of taking out that resentment. Acts of unconscious (and conscious!) sabotage are an inevitable result.