Scariest D&D Monsters

From Slacker's house of Funt, a list of monsters for halloween.


A slice:



#2-The Lich...The Lich...

In all its various forms (be it psychic, arch, or larch) the lich is always a sad sight for even the most intrepid of adventurer. Liches are the powerful undead versions of really evil wizards. Lichedom is a strenuous and arduous (and let's not forget tenuous) process that only the most determined and high level of bad guys can hope to achieve. They make really complex tombs, filled with hoary hosts of undead...most of which are powerful in their own right. While Mummies try to touch and rot, Liches cast spells at your face. While vampires drain blood, Liches take levels...and not just a few. Wights, Wraiths and Death Knights are pretty spooky, but they usually end up as upper management for the liche's Slave Department. Lichedom: So undead, it hurts.

Yeah!

Either no one got it or no one read it, but for those who do, last weeks post of a picture only is of an EPT, Early Pregnancy Test.

The result is positive.

My wife and I (Mrs. Sugar & Splice) are having a baby! She’s 2 months now, and I’ve been sitting on it for about 2 weeks. Now that’s it out, expect some ‘journey to fatherhood’ posts in the future. If that bores you, check out anime instead.

As it happens, this baby was conceived during our recent trip to China. So, yet another product Made in China and developed in the USA.

We’re extremely happy and crazed. Life is very very different now!

Cheers!

Behind 'o the times

Not much to report. I know I’m behind on my China Chronicles, and for that I apologize. I’m not good with deadlines apparently, I will continue to do them, but many things have made life a little bit crazier.

Nuke'em till they glow, then shoot'em in the dark!

I'm tired of North Korea and Iran flapping their purple lips at America's ass.

I think it's time we did something about that.

They want a Nuclear Program? Let's give them a REAL Nuclear Program. We have the tools, we have the technology, all we need is the will.

Let's Bomb them into hell.

While we're at it, let's take care of the Isreael/Arab conflict and bomb them both. BOTH of them. Enough scorched earth and there will be nobody wanting it anymore. Right?

I mean, come on! We're AMERICA! That's what we do now! Let's bomb them until nothing is left, and THEN we can get some peace and quiet.

-
This message brought to you by the influences and desires of the Glorious Right Arm of the Republican Party (Media Division) and the Christian Coalition. Because remember, if they ain't glowing with God, they'll be Glowing anyway.

Surreal LA

I purchased a new/used Bass amp for myself yesterday. An Eden Navigator Preamp. The joy of LA is that I bought it off Mr. Mick Mahan, currently the bassist for Pat Benatar. He’s finishing the tour this week and managed to get home for a few days off. Yes, this amp that currently resides in my bedroom was christened by “Love is a Battlefield” and “Fire and Ice” before it got to me.

Los Angeles can be a crazy place..

A beautiful eulogy for a Superman, courtesy of YAP.

"
In Memoriam Superman

So many people have been asking me “why?”

I’ve actually received gawping open-mouthed stares. “You? But…but…you! YOU, dude!”

I didn’t want to, okay? What’s the point? Other writers have waxed eloquent…far more eloquently than I, I might add…on the subject and they’ve said all that can be said. We’ve seen the retrospectives, we’ve heard the eulogies and we’ve sung his praises. What more can be said, ultimately? What will my voice joining the chorus do?

What’s the point?

Superman is dead.

The posters all said “You WILL believe a man can fly!” I was seven…maybe eight years old. I believed, man. I believed. Superman was real and he flew and lifted helicopters and there was a powerful force for what was good and right in the world. He was right there! I believed, man, with all my heart and all my soul.

I grew up, of course. We all do. Well…let me amend that. I grew older. I grew older and life kicked me in the teeth a few times, just like everyone else and I acquired some hardness, some cynicism, some “cool” exterior pretensions. Some affectations of disaffection.

But deep down inside, past the biker leather, the Camel Filters, the coffee by the gallon, the beer and the sneer…I believed a man could fly. I believed there was a powerful force for what was good and right in the world.

I believed in Superman.

It actually hurt when Christopher Reeve broke his neck. Intellectually, of course, I knew that the man was not the Superman. That he was mortal…vulnerable. Just like us.

But it stuck in my heart like a little shard of hurt. The disappointment on a cellular level that you can only truly feel as a child. It hurt when Chris Rock reminded us “Superman can’t walk!”

And that’s when the man became the Superman.

Everybody talks about Christopher Reeve’s determination, his indomitable will. His unbending conviction that he would walk again. Not only would he walk again, but everybody afflicted with this sort of grievous injury would, by God, walk again. The word “inspiration” is being tossed about willy nilly these days, but that man inspired me in ways that the “S” shield never could. It was real, man. He was right there, telling me he would walk, telling me it could be fixed. He was a powerful force for what was good and right in the world.

I believed, man.

Well, now the man is dead. His dream, I should hope, shall live beyond his time here with us. He leaves behind his family, his friends and little children like me who believe.

You will believe a man can fly.

I believe a man can walk.

http://www.apacure.com/"

Ok! I admit it. I hate america. After reading countless articles by respected republican and pro-bush writers I've come to the conclusion that I've been deluding myself and my country. I hate america. I am a terrorist and most likely, I deserve to die. I wish to cast my vote for Kerry, who is obviously a deeply stupid man who only wishes America to destroy itself in the flames of Islamist hatred that currently consume the middle east. He hates the US military and wishes it destroyed. He only is concerned with what our enemies abroad think about the US. He wants to give North Korea what it wants just as he gave the North Vietnamese what they wanted. So obviously, for me to vote for him shows the fact that I am a Godless flag-burner who doesn't deserve to walk on this land that my forefathers shed lakes of blood for. If Kerry were to win the democratic-party-rigged election, then within 3 years America would be gone, split up by the invading forces of socialism, islamism and france. This would happen while Kerry sit idly by, concerned that fighting back would piss off Poland.

So I finally admit it. As countless pundits have reminded me, this isn't a case of different opinions, not a place for dissent or arguement. A vote for Kerry is a vote against america. And I should be burned at the stake along with all those copies of Farenheit 911 and Gore Vidal.

But maybe I should instead adopt the views of those same pundits. Maybe I should come to see Counselor and Ian as objects of vile vile hatred, instead of dear friends whose differing opinion I rely upon to constantly question my own convictions and keep my senses sharp. Maybe I should think that if Bush won 4 more years, it would be cause for revolution. Maybe I should look at that map of blue and red and mark in ink all the cities full of people I should HATE HATE HATE HATE.

Because nothing is ever personal in this race, isn't it?


Or maybe I should do what most of America probably will do, and rely on mass media to make up my mind for me. So I ask you, my faithful viewer, to tell me. What should I do? Should I hate all who oppose my views with the vile vitriol espoused by both sides of this debate? Or should I continue trying to believe that dissent can co-exist and create real progress, that 4 more years of anything is 4 more years of trying the great experiment of America.

Tell me, because in this day and age, anyone who listens to the media has a hard time defining what it means to be American.

Superman is Dead.

RIP Christopher Reeve. I met you once, when I was 5 years old. You were nice, and I asked you if the baby in your stroller was "Superbaby".

I remember it today.

Yay! the server is up again. Thanks to the technological day and age in which we live, my neighbors had two CRT monitors sitting next to the trash.
"They were from one or two tenants ago. Dunno if they work, worth a try...?
Well, grunge-monkey that I am, I borrowed the 14" and the crazy thing worked on first try. Worked well actually; it's one of those old NEC monitors that have all the calibration controls as knobs in the bottom of the monitors (unlike todays On screen display buttons, which really do more harm than good by obscuring the display you're trying to correct. And we all know they make them that way only to save costs on cheap components)

So I re-fired the server and discovered the single reason why it has not loaded the entire week.

"Non-system disk, please remove and press any key"

A frickin floppy disk in the drive was holding up everything. I curse myself for not seeking the simplest solution first, then curse PC's for STILL hanging on an issue like this. Please tell me if there's something I missed in the new BIOSes that make the computer act like a macintosh and do the right thing: if there isn't a system disk in the floppy, then move on to the next disk and load it!. Well, I can't fault myself entirely on that note. I am the 'power user' who knows how to upgrade a motherboard BIOS, but that falls in the realm of 'no casual user ever does that', which is what I always try to be- a casual user. And this is another thing about PC people I enjoy. They, (being the geeks, not the 89% of the world that just uses a computer), always bitch about how Mac's aren't 'customizable' enough, and how with PC's they can tweak and upgrade and fix anything. Now most of them NEVER DO THAT, BIOS upgrades included. My Mac can do a command-line unix and that's more customizable than any WinXP installation, thank you. More customization than I need actually. I subscribe to a simple analogy most of the time. My computer is like my car- i prefer to get in, turn the ignition, and just go.

So the point of this long wind is that the server is up, so my photos on this blog are also up. If any of you had not read the China Chronicles posts, the pictures are restored. The last edition will be re-uploaded with pics of Hangzhou in a matter of days.

Cheers
-d

China Chronicles 8/16

My webserver is STILL down, so I have no way of posting pictures. Which sucks because Hangzou is beautiful. I promise to repost this once everything works again. In the meantime, here's the text dump. Not as pretty, but put the xbox down and use yer imagination. enjoy!

-
Hangzhou

The day started piss and ended vinegar, (which was a good thing). Angela and I got into a spat over the possibilities of working in China. I'm for, she's against. That put us both in a mood that continued in me. Next we were too late in packing to grab a bite to eat before leaving the hotel, and we were out of money. The 24 hour, all convenience Bank of China ATM's were out of service, for the second day in a row! and the hotel apparently only exchanges money from a Mastercard once. A cash only economy is a good thing, but come on! Rick graciously offered to cover until we could get some more, so we heading out into the hot humid air to meet our bus.
Our taxi driver was insane. He was pissed because the head bellhop is friends with a rival taxi driver, and skipped his friend over to get the fare for Pu Dong airport, an easy ride 40 KM east, with maximum fare potential. Our driver was stuck with us. 3 americans with large bags and one chinese woman to hear the vent. he took us to the bus terminal, narrowly meeting death numerous times for ourselves and passerby, and still managed to hock 3 balls of mucus out the window. i was in the front seat and had great difficulty deciding which danger to shy away from.
We make it into the bus terminal, successfully ignoring the legion of entrepreneurs demanding they drive us to hangzhou. 20 minutes to departure and we're hungry. rick is going lo-carb, so he has jerky. angela and i hit the concession stand. Hmmm, do we have the boiled hotdogs on a stick and throw up later, or the boiled bean curd and throw up on wednesday. Angela settles on some pistachios, and i spend more useless minutes trying o decide if the pretty pink packages contain meat or insect or both, and if meat, is it meat i'd want to consume?

7-up and pringles. breakfast of champions.

lucky us, we get front row on the bus and it's not that bad. pretty good actually. good a/c, quiet (everyone was watching the karaoke on the TV) and smooth comfy seats. I'm still brooding over the spat with angela, and that turns into a heated, hushed conversation that colors the first part of the trip. we finally make up, and by this time I'm exhausted, letting the jet lag in. I sleep intermittently, awakening to close my mouth and notice that the countryside outside of Shanghai looks like southeast texas.
we arrive in hangzhou, exist the bus, then walk to the opposite side of the tarmac to await Krista, as she tries to get us tickets to Wenzhou (our destination tomorrow). As is becoming the norm, we attract a crowd by our very anglo-prescence. I'm still sore inside, so i shoot dirty looks at every local in his 20's who decides to stand by my luggage, and i end up holding all of them in stacks. The tickets are no dice, wrong station for Wenzhou, so we exit into a parking lot that is part lot, part bazaar, part human stock exchange. people can't stop staring or demanding we sign up on thier all day Hangzhou tour. After waiting while krista negotiates with numerous would-be's (have i mentioned that krista is amazing?), we pick a guy and start following him and his umbrella towards his car. out the lot, across the sidewalk, across the freeway, weaving and stepping through 11 lanes of both-ways traffic. ("stop for the bus, the bus always wins"). We make it to the other side, and miraculously, so does our luggage. more hasty negotiation as the driver realizes stupid americans brought house in luggage, and it al cant fit in his trunk. Well, it can't with the trunk closed, but it will fit with the trunk wide open. Solution! Next! we pile in and drive off through blast zone hangzhou. During the course of our day, we will see 6 separate Hangzhous. The one containing bus station #1 looks like Saigon, circa Stanley Kubrick. There's rubble in the streets, buildings will be half collapsed, with fronts blown out and walls hanging in shards while the other half is open for business. Cars and mopeds play chicken with bikes and pedestrians. the air is oppressively hot, near 100 with 100% humidity and no breeze.
As we near our hotel, progress begins to rear. Entire buildings are now being reworked, their inner spines intact while workers scrape off the skin of an old building and begin to build anew. Hangzhou is apparently next on the next great leap forward, and everything older than 1972 (which is a lot) is falling under the pickaxe.
we arrive at the Jin Lin hotel and check in. it's not as fancy as the equatorial (gui du!)! but the price is right: 248 RMB or about 30 bucks a night, breakfast included. the room is somewhat clean, and the shower is futuristic, so we're happy. we throw down, clean up and regroup outside to head off to hangzhou's main attraction, the west lake. it's decided to get cash at the spot, as the bank around the corner did not accept mastercard.
we arrive at the lake and i hit a 24 hour atm. card declined. i hit the other machine, card declined. i try another card, declined. angry, (this better not be MBNA fucking with me!) we decide to hit the lake, and get money later. by now I'm jet lagged, angry, and slowly starving as my pringles and 7up is quickly being eaten away by the heat and humidity, which by now is visible by a foggy cloud laying over the entire lake. Houstonians willl know: if it's 100 degrees at noon and it's foggy, you're in trouble.
thankfully, here's where the fun began. we embarked on a bamboo boat, facing each other, two on each side, and the driver gets out a paddle and starts to row. this single large plank of wood will ferry us in our small craft out into the middle of the lake, where it is absolutely gorgeous. apparently those ink and silk paintings of chinese landscapes are not imagination. west lake has been a spot for generations, the imperials court once having resided in Hangzhou after the mongols kicked them outta bejing. we stopped at the island of the three moon pools: a man-made island in the middle of the lake that was constructed by 200,000 workers in 800 ad by order of the emperor. I say, they just don't make islands like this anymore. the walk around the thru takes 45 minutes and is filled with picturesque views, tranquil pools of coy and pagodas of peace. oh and cold tea, immediately cook coffee. on the return trip, we practice english with a teenage group from another boat. by this time I'm enjoying the breeze on the lake, the views of the antediluvian pagodas on the shore and the gentle lull of the rowing boat, but i'm not showing it as I'm totally without glucose in my overheated body.
we walk the streets looking for a atm to no avail, apparently we're in the third part of hangzhou, the art district as we pass the prestigious school of fine art (where krista studied) and numerous galleries. we find an ATM, but alast, ncad declined. starving, we ask for advice and are directed to a hotel restaurant where we are the 2nd table seated and the only foreigners. next to us is a big table of loud, boisterous men, and in the corner a mother with her child, watching chinese tv.
life is now great. a/c, food on the way, and Sijo beer, smoooth and icy. they bring big bottles and small cups, and smaller cups of good tea. hangzhou is famous for it's dragon well tea and it shows. the food arrives and it's simply marvelous. jelly fish salad, picked cabbage, stir fried chicken and vegetables, marinated lotus root, soup with baby lotus leaves, fresh tofu in spicy oil, whole shrimp-on-a-stick (heads will ROLL!) and my coup-de-grace, a sweet and sour fish, turned inside out, deboned and with head looking straight to god. devouring occurs to all.
sated, the owner of the hotel comes over to practice her english, and gives us her number and card, thanking us for coming to her hotel and offering to teach angela chinese! (krista surmises they mistake us for students from the international art school). we thank her, and make our way to the road, where we are almost run over by a marauding audi. from fame to splat, if you're not careful. we hail a taxi and ask him to take us to a bank of china, which i have used before to exchange money and i feel will be a good bet. we then drive through part 4 of hangzhou, 1950's land. small streets with shops and boutiques that smack of 50's communist architecture. even the women are wearing old-style sundresses. we pass a clothing store called "to live in the U.S.", we don't stop. By now, glucose is coursing thru my veins and I'm feeling a lot better. Until we get to the bank, in the middle of Hangzhou's 5th area, the commercial district (currently being rebuilt). the atm's are out of service (same message i got in shanghai), i go inside the bank, it's closing early. fun though how everyone looks shocked to see a daniel in shorts, walking quickly around the room looking for exchange. there's another bank around the corner, so we walk for 5 minutes, find another one, ATM is still offline!! My god! we go inside and take a number, and find another atm that seems to be working. it does, and we get out cash. valuable lesson: acquiring funds the american way doesn't always work in the 2nd world.
with that done, the two big pisses of the day have ended. we're tired, we decide to go back to the hotel to relax and regroup.
now the jin lin hotel offers their guests a variety of ways to relax. the 4th floor holds a huge restaurant, as well as private rooms containing majjohng machines and poker, open all nigh. in addition, a discount coupon for their inhouse foot massage services is offered. not being the gambling type angela and i go in search of the foot massage. and we can't find it. every room is either blocked or contains various people gambling. we go down stairs to get directions...ok we'll try again. we peek thru a window at a what looks like a massage-doctors office, in construction. a guy on a phone notices our coupons and waves us thru, as his assistant un-barricades the door. he leads us down a back stairwell into a hidden level where construction and painting is going on at a feverish pace. paint and drywall chips are everywhere. we are led to a room, where two teenagers are talking and smoking on comfortable chairs, they jump up at the sight of us, hastily put out the cigarette and start cleaning up the chairs. this must be the place. we sit down and are brought dragon well tea and nuts from a very nice teenager who giggles in that teen ohmigosh way every time we speak after a few minutes of waiting, a man and a woman enter the room with big buckets of tea we think, the feet go in and for next hour we're in heaven, foot and e.g. massage, they worked out every muscle and i didn't want to leave. when it was over, we walked back up the stairs and i got a peek outside the window at the courtyard of a high rise apartment, and was reminded of how close packed this country can be. after regrouping with rick, krista and some former students of krista's, we headed out o Hangzhou and found ourselves in number 6, the third street promenade, hangzhou style. great avenue walk street filled with shops of every description. the high light were the woodcarving stores, old antiques and the traditional herbal emporiums. those were cooool. drawers reaching to the sky filled with all matter of herbs and rhizomes. krista bought some herbs for her father, a mixture incased in round balls of white wax for freshness. i dug the tobacco store, and bought a neat looking pipe, some tobacco, and of course, a cuban cigar (I HOPE IT'S CUBAN. it says it's habana, but the price was much much lower than the others. monte cristo, so we'll see. we ended the night in a delightful restaurant second story overlooking the traditional architecture. the manager was pleased to have us there, and even went to another restaurant to get us dumplings (my fault, dumplings are breakfast food only. next i'll be ordering cappuccinos in rome at 5:30 pm.). they bent over backwards and made us wontons of good fortune (speciality of the house ( THE tea was great too.)

oh and the vinegar? served with the dumplings of course. what's soy sauce?

"Ed Gein at the The New York City Horror Film Festival!!!

The New York City Horror Film Festival

I'm happy to report that "Ed Gein: The Ghoul of Plainfield," produced for New Line's "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre" DVD, is playing at the NYC Horror Festival on Sunday, Oct. 24th. Produced by Automat Pictures, directed by Michelle Palmer and edited by yours truly. Amazing artwork by Rafael Ruiz.

Please see their website for more details.
It's good and gross...

NYC Horror Film Festival

My political post of the day.

No war against terrorism can be won by the barrel of a gun.


It can be fought, surely. But it cannot be won. Northern Ireland and Palestine are examples of this. Because terrorism is not a disease than can simply be 'stamped out'. You cannot kill every terrorist because military actions can only create more. Irregardless of who is 'right', for every man, woman and child killed, there is a bystander or relative who will take arms to avenge. America is not immune to this phenomenon as military recruitment spiked after the massacre of September 11th.

The only way I see to 'win' this war is by ideology. By winning minds and hearts. Not necessarily to convince everyone that America is the saviour, but at least to convince the next generation that the path of terror is wrong. That disputes should not be solved with bloodshed, that more honor comes in valuing life than in taking it.

Therein lies the difficult path, the essential path, the path I feel the world must take.

Bear with, and back to the Surreal LA

Hello again. I ask my faithful readers who have not yet digested my China Chronicles to bear with me as my server is down. Moving to a new place is stressful, and my creaky old frankenstein PC server doesn't like to move at all. Last check it turned on, but was not responding to any requests. I hope to have it troubleshot in the next day or so.

I plan to migrate my entire webserver and FTP prescence over to a Macintosh platform from the current Windows 2000 server configuration. Why? Well, Win2K is great, and the best Windows distribution I've used (I've not used XP), but every so often, it just clogs up and forces me to manually restart the machine, log in, and restart all non-automatic services. A pain, and not the unattended device I need it to be. Macintosh OS X, as you may or may not know, is based on FreeBSD, a variant of UNIX. UNIX is the standard OS for the majority of servers on the internet and is designed exactly for this kind of thing. There are people out there with Mac Laptops running OS X to do all sorts of everyday things like webbrowsing and email and graphics and word processing and CAD etc, with uptime in months. That means no restarting - ever. The uptime would be longer if you realize the only time these guys restart is to install software updates. The rest of the time they close the lid and put the computer to sleep. Now I just want to run the industry-standard Apache Webserver (which runs over 66% of webservers worldwide, and is built into the OS) and a simple FTP (also built into the OS). So I run the mac, turn on both services in the network control panel (yes, that easy) and leave it alone. I'll periodically post my uptime stats. When I migrate it of course.

Surreal LA.

back to the grind, I'm working late tonight. My current job is an infomercial to fill the time between now and Trace Evidence. Extreme Dental Makeovers. Sounds exciting, but this is an informercial with a soul. My good friend Kathy has been editing and supervising them for some time and they go like this: The team goes to town and advertises that two people will receive a complimentary complete dental makeover. Scores turn out and ten finalists are selected. of those ten, two win and are given the works. The before and afters are amazing, and the receivers are duly thrilled that something that caused them much emotional stress throughout their lives has been changed for the best. We're talking hollywood teeth here. These procedures routinely cost in the 10-20 thousand range, and all chosen are people in need. The entire procedure is taped, with interviews before and after from the doctors and the chosen. The infomercial part is that this becomes a half-hour 'show' that advertises the expertise and work of the local dentist performing the makeovers. the soul part is that people's lives are changed for the better. So I'm happy to do it. It's also a good gig in all the usual places (not to mention close to home. I'm in Santa Monica, and can feel the water!)

The surreal part is that Gary Coleman is working a few doors down and David Duchovny pops in from time to time. Oh the joys of local post houses!

Moved!

Ahh, the feeling....in my heels. Argh! The old place was a 4th floor walkup and the new has 1 inside. At least now I have a ground floor, where ALL of the boxes went. We hired movers, but anything not insured-therefore all the computer and musical gear- went into my car. Today we spent in the old place, cleaning up the dregs in an attempt to get our deposit back. I am thoroughly destroyed, exhausted and sore in places I didn't know I could be sore in.

But the new place rocks. and the Cat is already accustomed, laying as he does on his back in the middle of the hardwood. It was funny to watch him get used to it, sliding when he expected a stop.

Design Redesign Design

Yes, it's different..again!

I love the dots, but NONE of my browsers displayed it correctly. So back to minima while I debate an alternative. At least it will display quicker.

Tomorrow is the big move. I've been throwing things in boxes for almost a week and a half now-which is huge lead time over our other moves- and now the day has come.

finally!!!!

I'll give more reflection later, it's been a tiring day.

Heathers, then and now.

From Horizon.bloghouse.net

http://horizon.bloghouse.net/archives/000233.html

Big Important Fads


Just saw the dark teen comedy Heathers again for the first time in, like, a decade.


For those who haven't seen it, Heathers is about a high school couple who kill off students who bother them. To cover their tracks they invent elaborate backstories for their prey which lead, inevitably, to said prey's unfortunate suicide.


In hindsight the most interesting element of the film is how, by taking their lives, the two teenagers are somehow magically given the opportunity to write a new (secret) life for their victims that transforms them retroactively in death and in the eyes of the other students. In one case they stage the double-suicide of two football jocks and contrive for the police to find them naked with a bottle of mineral water (realizing that, ironically, everyone will think they were gay on account of the mineral water--this is the 80's, remember). Later, at the funeral, the two "gay lovers" in matching caskets with football helmets on, one of the fathers screams pathetically, "I love my dead gay son!"


But Heathers is not as funny as it used to be and I was surprised when I realized why.


When the movie was made the big hot-button Issue of the Day was, of course, Teen Suicide. It was all over the news, every fresh suicide reported with a grim and proper but also unintentionally morbid air. Teenagers at the time were submitted to a pervasive propaganda blitz designed to "raise consciousness" of the issue. Several pop songs pretended to address the problem, including the outrageously idiotic "Teen Suicide: Don't Do It" which I feel confident in asserting never helped anyone.


It was mass hysteria. Teens were offing themselves left and right, they said. One almost had the feeling that we were on the verge of a new society bereft of teenagers altogether. Statistics were cooked up, support groups formed, teachers trained, and a new social disease was born. Like all social diseases it was So Serious that no one could be suffered to question it; so serious that it merited only the most quiet, most respectful, most concerned tones. It was a good time for platitudes and sham solemnity. It gave everyone's life that little extra gravity which we all appreciate now and again, gave us something to be serious about. Any questioning of the idea or use of less than a reverent tone would immediately spark indignation, or course, this being interpreted as showing insufficient concern for the dead and suffering.


Everyone knew it, no one had to say it, that this epidemic was merely a symptom of our sick society. No one was quite sure what this sickness was, but no one could doubt it was there, and of course it would be the teenagers, those most vulnerable of people, who would be our canaries. The cult of the martyr-teen was born.


Yes, these were heady times to be a teenager. Now that I'm reminded of it, it all seems so strange, like the memory of a dream, triggered by some random smell or shade of blue. I readily forgot that I'd ever experienced it until I saw this movie again.


But, really, this happens all the time, doesn't it? At what point, in the past two or three decades (or five, or six), has American culture not been gripped by some overblown fear, some obsessive fixation, some grand theme, some fear of itself, of some inner corruption that will bring us all to ruin? We certainly are not free of it now.
Posted by Alan Hogue at October 1, 2004 03:24 PM

Apologies!!!!!

This friday's episode of The China Chronicles has been preempted by my move into a new apartment. Aplogies for any inconvenience this causes, we will pick up next Friday with the exciting adventures of Team Loyd in the Orient!

Thank you!