Evil Philosophy

Ever since the inception of human inquiry, there has been no short supply of radicals and lunatics attempting to pass off their whim-begotten absurdities as truth and profound insight. There are relatively few philosophers however, who could have been considered not just insane, but genuinely wicked. Among them, I would include both the political philosopher Karl Marx and Immanuel Kant. While Marx’s atrocious political philosophy has already been addressed in a previous post, his evil cannot be overstated. Any historical instance in which Marx’s political philosophy was put into practice resulted in catastrophe and woe. Because all individuals share a natural tendency towards self-interest, communism, as envisioned by Marx is a physical and epistemological impossibility.

However poisonous Marx’s philosophy, it pales in comparison to the heinous vomit spewed forth by the likes of Immanuel Kant. Arguably, Kant was the most despicable figure in all of human history; his philosophy was shot through with a twisted, spiteful hatred and his heart was an aggregate of rotten flesh upon which maggots gnawed and in which evil festered. A consideration of the way Kant lived would stand testament to his hatred of mankind and of life in general. He never left the town in which he was born (modern-day Kalingrad, Russia), and lived a dreadfully complacent lifestyle—following the same rigid schedule every day until he finally died in an advanced state of dementia at the age of 79. Having never truly experienced anything to warrant the slightest of interest, his writings betray the convoluted thoughts of a mind corroded by solitude and a bitter intensity of spite for his fellow man.

In his book Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals, Kant defined his quintessential  theory called The Categorical Imperative. The theory conjectures that an action is only considered moral if it could be set as a universal law for all humanity to follow. According to Kant, the consequences of an action are irrelevant; it is only the actor’s intention that determines an act’s ethical validity, not its outcome. Because all human beings act in respect to independent moral maxims (that which an individual holds as his own moral values), he believed that it is immoral to use another human being as a means to our own ends. To anyone with a modicum of intellect, the glaring lunacy of the categorical imperative should be self-evident.

Just in case it is not, consider the following thought-experiment. You are teleported back in time to 1970’s Illinois and the infamous serial killer John Wayne Gacy is standing right in front of you. You have a gun in your hand. Given a priori knowledge of the depraved crimes he will commit, it would seem like a justifiable act to kill Gacy and thus prevent his future murders from taking place. However, if you were to apply Kant’s Categorical Imperative, killing Gacy, Stalin, Hitler, Pol Pot, Justin Bieber, or any other psychopathic monster would be wrong only because the act of murder could not be safely set as a universal law for all human beings to follow. Because killing John Wayne Gacy would be using him as a means to an end, Kant would have rather let him pursue his killing spree. The sheer lunacy of this logic should be obvious.

An adherence to the categorical imperative as a way of life would lead to the corrosion of individuality. Kant’s philosophy envisions a world in which all men are enslaved to one another—nobody would ever rise above a state of blind, castrated complacency in fear of using another human as a means rather than an end. Immanuel Kant’s philosophy epitomizes human stagnation in a moral sense, while Marx’s epitomized it in an economic sense. Both were vile and despicable and would best be disregarded altogether from the realm of legitimate philosophical discourse. 

Christopher Hitchens (1949-2011)

What else can really be said?

On December 15, 2011, at the Age of 62, Hitchens lost his battle with oesophageal cancer. His contribution to academia and philosophy cannot be expressed enough. He was an inspiration to me as well as to many others; his writings will forever be immortalized as monuments to a great mind for as long as mankind is willing to think. The world has lost a truly valuable human being who will neither be equalled nor replaced. Thank you Mr. Hitchens, you will be missed.

Rest in Peace

The Ethics of Music Piracy

With the controversial Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), there has arisen much debate concerning the ethical implications of downloading music for free. Contrary to what record labels and some conceited artists would claim, filesharing sites like Mediafire and ThePirateBay are not in fact unethical. This is because there exists no finite amount of music files. It would be illogical for any company to expect customers to pay for an item of which there is an infinite supply.

Consider if I were to break into the Roadrunner distribution warehouse and steal a crate of a thousand Nickelback CDs (not that I would want to). This would indeed be stealing, and thus immoral. Because I am taking the CDs, I am in effect eliminating potential profit that would have been made by selling them. However, if I were to download a Nickelback album, (again, not that I would ever want to) I am not stealing any potential profit from Roadrunner because there are an indefinite number of digital Nickelback albums floating about in cyberspace and cannot be profited upon. The cost of producing an online file is zero dollars so downloading an album does not incur any financial loss to Roadrunner Records. Record labels are not satisfying any demand by selling overpriced plastic discs to those individuals who only seek to acquire the digital files therein. Likewise, websites like iTunes must believe their costumers to be imbeciles in order to pay money for something that is readily available for free. It is unfortunate that the US government is trying to shut down or castrate sites like Mediafire.com and ThePirateBay. These sites are not immoral because they are satisfying an economic demand more efficiently than iTunes or your record store do. 

It no longer makes sense to expect consumers to spend money on something of which there is an infinite supply. Just like a business would be unsuccessful in its attempt to get consumers to pay money in order to breathe oxygen, it would be just as unsuccessful in selling movie or music files. With the age of the internet, music has ceased to be considered a finite commodity like Televisions or Computers. Thus, The SOPA does nothing but attempt to enforce archaic and imbecilic ideologies. The fact that record labels are losing money is a result of their own flawed business model.

Unemployment and Minimum Wage

One contributor to large-scale unemployment in urban areas is the minimum wage law. Although it may seem like a benign protocol implemented for the sake of securing worker’s wages, it has a detrimental impact on employment rates. This law removes any incentive on the part of business to hire individuals who cannot justify the payment of a minimum wage. Sadly, in many areas throughout North America, this is the case. Assuming that someone’s physical labour is only worth a fraction of what the government demands that employers must pay them, a business would be employing this individual on a financial deficit.  Many unemployed persons cannot, despite their best efforts, find adequate employment because the skills they posses (or lack thereof) do not justify the payment of a minimum wage.

Consider the hypothetical case of some downtrodden denizen living in the inner city of Detroit. This person has never finished high school, is incapable of doing simple arithmetic, and possesses no employment experience at any legitimate establishment. Undoubtedly, this individual will have quite a challenging time finding employment because he possesses no skills for which to justify a minimum wage. Assuming that his service at a fast food restaurant or a gas station may only justify a wage of say, five dollars an hour, the minimum wage law prevents him from receiving this due payment, and subsequently from attaining a job. This is the case of many people across America who find themselves without a job; their labour is not worth the minimum wage, and businesses have no incentive to hire these people. A wage of five dollars an hour may seem dismal to some, but it is a more desirable alternative than living in a box beneath an overpass.

Some would argue that if the minimum wage were abolished tomorrow, then companies would start paying their employees at dirt-cheap rates. This however is an exaggerated fallacy. Because the work force is competitive, an employer who pays higher wages would have more potential employees seeking to work for them, and would thus be more successful. You, as a worker would have more incentive to provide your labour to a company that pays you better. Nobody with a considerable education would prefer to work for dirt-cheap if another business offered them higher wages.  This is just yet another instance in which the free market prevails over government intervention.

The Fallacy of Karl Marx

Around the world, adolescents have taken up picket signs in order to protest against corporate greed and inequality. These individuals feel disregarded by a system that does not take into consideration their basic needs and intrinsic human dignity. This of course is in reference to the Occupy Movement.  For many misinformed denizens the world over, the Occupy movement has become the new vehicle with which the clamour the downfall of capitalism. It has been rather difficult to criticize the Occupy Movement as a whole because of the ambiguous agenda of all its individual constituents, however many Occupy protestors have cited Karl Marx, among others, as their main political influence. Considering the left-leaning inclinations of many of the demonstrators, it is easy to see how his philosophy could have inspired the swollen aggregate of human flesh that is the Occupy movement. As influential as he may have been throughout the years, many disregard the fact that Marx was a racist, degenerate, anti-Semitic, envious piece of trash and that his ideas represented the epitome of human evil.

Karl Marx, a racist? Indeed, from observing his private correspondence with friends and family members, one could conclude that Marx was an ardent racist and anti-Semite (although Marx himself was an ethnic Jew). Marx’s racist views have been brilliantly summarized in Nathaniel Weyl’s 1979 book Karl Marx, Racist. Concerning the adherents of the Jewish faith, Marx had once said “What is the object of the Jew's worship in this world? Usury. What is his worldly god? Money”. In regard to one of his contemporaries, Marx wrote "it is now completely clear to me that he, as is proved by his cranial formation and his hair, descends from the Negroes from Egypt, assuming that his mother or grandmother had not interbred with a nigger”. Although by no means does this ad hominem attack discredit his philosophy, Marx’s bigotry paints him in a different light than the ardent lover of the people as he is so often portrayed.

His diverse opinions on human nature set aside; his philosophy itself is the greatest testament to Marx’s lunacy. Essentially, he conjectured that one day in the unspecified future, the proletariat would be fed up with the unequal wealth distribution and topple the establishment of the evil bourgeoisie. From this point forward, the proletariat would be free to recreate a presumably more wholesome means of existence, free of their greedy brethren. Marx’s ideal state would function on the principle that everyone would work according to their ability and the wealth would be pooled and then distributed according to everyone’s needs. However, Marx’s idea of from each according to his ability to each according to his need contains some of the most destructive undertones to human development. It is fundamentally irrational to reward individuals on a basis of need instead of what they contribute. Nobody would be willing to put forth their maximum ability into their work if they did not expect to be adequately compensated for that effort. A society which would be allowed to persist on such a principle would end up with a disproportionately high amount of people with needs versus those with abilities and would eventually become unsustainable. Karl Marx was envious of those who possessed genuine talents, and this twisted political philosophy was a manifestation of his hatred of successful men.

It is somewhat ironic that the term capitalism was defined by Marx and Engels—the very people who sought to destroy it. Capitalism never ceases to be misrepresented by those eager to point out all its glaring flaws and supposed moral bankruptcies. Socialists (like those of the Occupy Movement) revel in the romanticised notion of fat corporate tycoons sitting around the board room, conniving and elaborating new plots to undermine the core of human innocence. This is not an honest representation of capitalism. Capitalism has nothing to do with keeping down the proletariat, slavery, repression, or waging class warfare. The subsidies and bailouts given by the government to prolong the inevitable disintegration of big banks do not represent the ideals of capitalism either. Private ownership of means of production and a free market with minimal regulations are the two aspects that make Capitalism the most ethical and successful social-economic policy ever implemented in human society. Private institutions owning the means of production (for example, factories or textile mills) are forced to compete with each other for consumers and are thus forced to accommodate the interests of the public, increasing the standards of living for all. Those institutions that become successful do so by discovering new technologies, finding more efficient ways to do things, and providing cutting-edge medical developments. A socialist “utopia” like the one that Marx’s philosophy alludes to provides the public none of these things and would likely lead to gross technological stagnation if ever implemented.

 Capitalism has produced higher standards of living across the board ever since its inception. During the industrial revolution, those individuals previously destined to lives of peasantry and destitute were given menial jobs in the industrial sector. Those already enjoying middle-class employment were provided with luxuries and amenities for which no prior generation could have ever dreamt. Sure, some kids died in some coal mines, but that stuff happened in communist countries too. Any man is better off working at the assembly line in an auto factory than he would have been dragging his knuckles across the forest floor in search of berries and kindling.

On a final thought, a government has no obligation whatsoever to supply its citizens with employment. It is an expectation of many Occupy protestors that the government ought to magically ensure the employment status of all its citizens. However, it is the personal responsibility of the individual to develop the skills that are in demand by the job market and will thus result in a sufficient living. Those who choose to attend college in order to study obscure topics and pursue useless degrees are ultimately the ones who ought to stand accountable for their own lack of employability in the end. It is not viable to give somebody a job if they have no skills or abilities worth paying them for (women’s studies is not a skill). The individual must develop the respective skill-sets appropriate for the line of work to which they aspire to pursue. It is thrust upon the individual to achieve his/her maximum potential through their own respective efforts and values. A job is not a right. Instead of adhering to Marx’s idea that it is society’s responsibility to accommodate people’s needs, the individual must accept that only he ought to provide for his own needs. This is just common sense.

A Treatise On Alcohol

In nearly every high school wood-shop class, there are always one or two delinquents who cannot, despite their best efforts, refrain from fooling around and subsequently injuring themselves on the machinery. In a state of nature, these individuals would conveniently be removed from the gene pool by a process of natural selection. Whether they are obnoxiously filing their fingernails on a disc sander, or placing their digits within close proximity to a band-saw blade, the end result of such incidents usually involves a lost appendage and the teacher having to wipe the arterial spray off the classroom equipment.

The reason why some individuals injure themselves on otherwise benign machinery is because they lack a fundamental respect for the function and power of the tools they are using. Just like disc sanders, band saws, needles, matchsticks, assault rifles, and plutonium-core implosion type nuclear weapons, alcohol is a tool. One who lacks the respect for an alcoholic beverage and the effects it has upon them will likely abuse the function of alcohol at a detrimental impact to themselves. Someone must have a clear understanding for the function of alcohol in order to enjoy it safely. Those who lack this understanding will never cease to injure themselves as well as others when they consume it. They are no greater than those demented cretins who slice off their pinkie fingers in tenth grade with a table saw.

Modern Art and Diabetes

The first great triumph in the history of visual arts was when it monumentally dragged itself out of the degenerate pit of despair known as the dark ages. From that point on, artistic talent would no longer be squandered on producing Byzantine depictions of Aramaic folklore. During the Renaissance, portrayals of the Madonna and Child were largely replaced by three dimensional figures, secular subject matter, and a more accurate perspective of human existence. With the Baroque movement in Italy during the Seventeenth Century, artists finally mastered the depiction of motion in their art. During the Romantic Period, art reached a new height of beauty.

Depicted Below are some examples of the Baroque Movement. Notice the strong impression of movement in the figures.

The Hippopotamus Hunt, by Peter Paul Rubens, 1616

Judith Slaying Holofernes, by Artemisia Gentileschi, 1612

The Shooting Company of Frans Banning Cocq, by Rembrandt van Rijn, 1642

The Revolt of Cairo by Girodet, 1798

With his technically superlative depiction of the human form, French painter William-Adolphe Bouguereau was considered for a brief time to have been one of the greatest artists to have ever lived.  Theodore Gericault and Ivan Aivazovsky were also products of the Romantic Movement, and painted the Raft of the Medusa and the Ninth Wave, Respectively. 

However, at the dawn of the Twentieth Century, there was a paradigm shift in terms of what art was revered and what was brushed aside. Tragically, those artists who possessed genuine technical ability such as Bouguereau were dismissed by critics, who suddenly favoured the work of talentless charlatans such as Marcel Duchamp, Piet Mondrian, and Jackson Pollock. While Bouguereau and Gericault were looked down upon as exemplifying elitist and Bourgeoisie taste, Pollock, Duchamp, and their ilk were praised for their daring ingenuity and abstract ideas. While the artists mentioned above went to great lengths to express beauty and might in their artwork, modern artists went to great lengths to express nothing at all. A notable attribute possessed by many of these modern artists is the disregard for the subject and content in their crafts.

This disregard for subject in modern artwork is epitomized in the movement known as abstract expressionism. This putrid ideology conjectures that one paints using their subconscious. Wherever you feel like flicking paint, etching chalk, smearing ink or splashing glue is entirely contingent upon one’s mood or arbitrary postulate of the given moment. The blind praise of this filth among the art community is responsible for the destruction of contemporary art and the decline in its technical proficiency over the last century or so. Just like writing a book, contriving a piece of music, or building a house, the creation of a piece of artwork demands a process of forethought, deliberation, and precise execution. Art is a discipline that requires more than one’s irrational whims and urges of the given moment. The artist must have a clear image of what he intends to portray (the subject), and how he is to go about portraying it (the medium). Nobody sane would want to live in a house that was created by the same process that Jackson Pollock produced one of his paintings. No one would ever want to read a book written by some unreasonable fool who insisted upon scribbling down whichever disconnected words sprung into his psyche as he was writing. Then why would anyone regard the likes of Jackson Pollock to be anything more than the deep, yawning chasm devoid of artistic talent that his paintings would suggest him to be?

The Subject is that which the artist seeks to depict through their artwork. As their subject, many great artists have chosen to depict heroic figures, enthralling landscapes, or scenes of glory, strength, and triumph (see the artwork above). However, when it comes to most modern art, including abstract expressionism, artists now see fit to depict the ugly, the sickening, deformed, weak, twisted, and the bland; producing what Ayn Rand called crawling specimens of depravity.  For instance, Willem de Kooning’s disfigured portraits of women epitomize this degenerate regard for the human form. The subject of Marcel Duchamp’s critically acclaimed work The Fountain is just a urinal placed on a pedestal. One would have to be functioning at the lowest base operations of their cerebral capacity in order to consider Duchamp or de Kooning artists who are comparable to those truly committed to the discipline.

During the Renaissance, the ability to accurately depict the form of the human body in a piece of artwork was a highly valued skill. Artists such as Michelangelo and Leonardo de Vinci trained strenuously for decades in order to produce the awe-inspiring artwork for which today they are renowned. The decisive coordination necessary to perfectly depict the proportions of the human body has been ameliorated for millennia. Nowadays, because this technical ability is no longer regarded as essential for creating art, the standards of talent set by critics have significantly dropped. Extensive dedication and self-discipline are no longer traits possessed by modern society’s artists. Any mentally-deficient individual with a writing implement and a canvas may contrive a widely-praised piece of artwork, just as long as the subject he conveys is ambiguous or mediocre enough not to offend modern sensitivities.

Some crawling specimens of Depravity/modern art

A Painting by Jackson Pollock

A Painting by Willem de Kooning

Marcel Duchamp’s urinal 

Modern art by Pablo Picasso

Another facet of modern art that deserves some final consideration is graffiti. Just like the Duchamp exhibition of his urinal, graffiti relies in its abuse of medium at the expense of substance in order to provoke a reaction from its audience. Some may argue this point by attempting to prove deep substantial content in the work produced by a graffiti artist like Banksy. Although Banksy’s paintings do exhibit some minimal artistic content, the message they allude to is largely political or ideological in nature. Art that is created for the sake of conveying any kind of political or moral agenda is at its essence little more than propaganda. While the work of Banksy may not be as aesthetically revolting as that of the abstract expressionists, the concept of graffiti and the means in which it is presented to its audience is less than honest. Banksy would never be as popular as he is now if he had presented his work on paper or canvas instead of defacing private property. The full analysis of the ethical implications of Banksy’s vandalism has been discussed in a previous post.

The German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel once spoke of the death of art. Hegel believed that once art had passed through several crucial stages in its history, its evolution would become stagnant and it could not develop any further. If one considers the progression of contemporary art from the dark ages towards the present day, it is not difficult to make such a conclusion. Indeed, there has been an acute regression of talent, beauty, and overall composition in most art since the mid nineteenth century. Hegel lived at the height of the Romantic period in art, and it is remarkable that he could have had such accurate foresight into the fate of the artistic discipline.

The Aesthetic height of art was arguably during the Romantic Movement, and then declined sharply in the mid twentieth century. The world is not without some competent artists today, however they have generally been disregarded by mainstream tastes. Today, the fashion in art is to exploit the medium of artistic presentation at the expense of its content and substance. This is particularly true in abstract, minimalist, postmodern, and most avant-garde art. Technical ability and forethought are not traits that are revered in the production of these so-called art forms. However, humans require a certain aesthetic standard when appreciating art. One is not fulfilled at the sight of a Jackson Pollock painting as they would to behold a piece of artwork created by a logical process of creativity and self discipline. Abstract art may be appreciated but never truly respected. In this sense it is like artistic sugar. One who over consumes sugar will be rewarded with type 2 Diabetes. Likewise, one who claims to enjoy abstract or minimalist art will never truly be aesthetically fulfilled. It is as though they have given themselves diabetes by consuming saccharine, pseudo-artistic trash. This condition has blinded flatterers of modern art from ever appreciating true beauty. Art should never be gruesome, provocative, or minimalist for its own sake. There must be content and purpose in artwork in order to truly appreciate it.

Hegel was entirely correct in his prediction that art would die after the Romantic Era. Where a society can praise the antics of Jackson Pollock at the expense of those who produce real substantive art-- that society has failed to uphold any kind of aesthetic standard. A civilization that glorifies the mediocre will inevitably become mediocre itself.

Hang Banksy

The world-renowned criminal and street artist known only as Banksy has been active painting the streets of London and elsewhere with his nauseating brand of stencil-craft for more than two decades now. One would be hard-pressed to determine the precise monetary toll that this charlatan’s vandalism has inflicted upon London’s graffiti removal budget as of present. For those unacquainted with Banksy, some commonly-flaunted examples of his work include the painting of the protestor throwing a bouquet of flowers (depicted below), the image showing a young girl frisking down a soldier, and a large nude man hanging onto a windowsill. His work exemplifies the kind of post-modernist pseudo-art that would have William Bouguereau convulsing in his tomb. Banksy’s paintings can barely be considered art, but merely a sad agglomeration of provocative symbolism and vaguely correlated political and corporate imagery. His civil-disobedience has earned him the admiration of many leftist goons and liberal arts students. Fortunately, there are some who still regard Banksy as the criminal he is. Political inclinations aside, there is no ethical justification for what he does. The deliberate destruction or defacement of someone’s stuff is a crime and his actions convey no regard whatsoever for the institution of private property. His craft is an eyesore upon the city. His message provokes neither thought, nor consideration—just vomit. When this miscreant is finally unmasked (and he will be), he shall be subject to the most swift and unmerciful of judicial procedures.

From his defacement of the West Bank wall, to his desecration of a sexual health clinic in Bristol, the most glaring injustice perpetrated by this individual is his disregard and vandalism of private and government property. The institution of private property is not merely some kind of capitalist plot to undermine human innocence. Its purpose is to ensure that one’s material assets are not at the mercy of the first thug who wishes to destroy them or take them away. Every human being has an obligation to respect the physical property of others and no circumstance or condition may override this obligation. A burglar who breaks into your house and smashes you crystal chandelier is not justified in doing so as an act of free expression. Likewise, it could hardly be argued that a bigot who paints a swastika in blood on one’s front door is just exercising his right to free speech. Then why is a common vandal with a few stencils and some spray paint so revered for defacing the property of business owners and governments? Why is this nonsense allowed to persist? One could not conceivably propose an ethical justification for Banksy’s graffiti without disregarding the universal right to personal property.

The overwhelming support for the actions of this criminal come from Banksy’s fellow miscreants and angsty revolutionaries who identify with his ambiguous, yet anti-capitalist inclinations. It is evident from observing his graffiti, that Banksy is a fervent adherent to the  leftist agenda. The man has a stick up his ass when it comes to issues such as globalization, profit motive, rich people, industrialization, factory farming, and fast food, among other things. Not only is Banksy a hypocrite for demonstrating against such things as industrialization and capitalism, but he is disregarding some fundamental facts about reality and the world in which man inhabits. Take his two paintings depicted below for example. Both contain strong implications that industrialization is undesirable as it has replaced a landscape of trees, meadows, and parks with highways, parking lots, and factories. However, this is just impractical idealism, as urbanity is merely the most convenient and efficient means for large densely populated communities to survive. The paint Banksy uses, the clothes he presumably wears, and the affluent dwelling in which he inhabits were all created by a process made possible by industrialization.

Fast food may be disgusting, but many people would be unwilling to give up the convenience of cheap/fast service at the expense of some loosely defined moral ideologies such as those that Banksy’s paintings allude to. Likewise, most people (likely including Banksy himself) would also be unwilling to forfeit all the luxuries and amenities that globalization has brought them at the expense of an environmental or subjective moral initiative. Thus, Banksy is not merely an undesirable for his destruction of property, but also for his dissemination of irrational views of existence.

Considering the immense public support for his lowly incursions, Banksy’s actions will most likely encourage copycats if he is not made an example of. It ought to be communicated to his ilk that defacement of private property and distasteful displays of art are not to be tolerated by a society that already allows free speech and an open marketplace of ideas. It goes without saying that Banksy’s art would not be as popular, nor would it have sold for thousands of dollars if it was not presented in such a dishonest, shameless fashion. In order that we rid society of its lowest contingents—so-called graffiti-artists, Banksy ought to be hung by his neck in Trafalgar Square. This method of deterrent has already proven successful throughout the course of history by reducing the conviction rate of witchcraft and piracy. Perhaps Banksy’s bloated and rotting corpse will send a duly-needed message to any further aspiring vandals.

Al Roker and the Lexicon of Tomorrow

Although by no means do I consider myself interested in nor acquainted with the culinary arts, my eye happened to stumble upon a copy of Al Roker’s The Big Bad Book of Barbecue while browsing the public library. It was not Mr. Roker’s venture down the avenue of literature that provoked my inquiry, but rather the crudely-contrived title of The Big Bad Book of Barbecue that was of particular interest to me. The context of the word Bad used in the book title represents a growing trend in the modern English lexicon concerning how certain adjectives are used in proportion to their intended definitions. I am sure that Mr. Roker, a popular TV meteorologist turned food connoisseur, does not intend for his readers to believe that his book is terrible or bad in any sense, but rather appeals to this aforementioned trend in order to satisfy the alliteration contained within its title and to perpetuate the reckless and disobedient stereotype associated with the demographic of individuals who eat grilled food.

There are those of us who continue to use the word bad for its intended definition, which denotes something to be of poor quality, inferior, or defective. Then, there are those such as Mr. Roker, who would prefer to use the word in reverse proportion to its intended meaning. Such negligent use of adjectives is part of what contributes to the downfall of the English language. The ocean of language is truly shaped by those individuals who use it, and thus stands to be desecrated or even destroyed at the hands of whoever poisons its precious waters with their illogical nonsense.

The existence of a word which represents both an idea and its own antithesis is a fundamentally illogical notion. The word bad has come to represent in colloquial dialogue, the polar opposite of its dictionary definition (as observed in the title of the aforementioned book, and in the common idioms badass, and bad to the bone), and is thus a contradiction of terms.  Consider if I were to use the word hot in order to refer to a boiling pot of stew. Only a fool would assume that by using the word hot, I actually meant cold and then proceed to eat a large spoonful of said stew, scalding his palette profusely. A differentiation between the words hot and cold is necessary in language simply because both words represent two respective ideas. The use of the word bad, thus representing the antonym ideas of both inferior and desirable is an illogical and poisonous notion in any language.

Therefore, just as Aristotle would scarcely be remembered today if he had published The Big Bad Book of Metaphysics, I would encourage Al Roker to consider naming his next incursion into the literary arts in more accurate proportion to the content found therein. 

The Denizens of Gethsemane

1.

Thousands of years ago, in the northern regions of present-day Palestine, there was a town called Galilee. In a small, mud brick house on the outskirts of Galilee lived two humans named Mary and Joseph. They were engaged to be married and were fervent religious adherents. Mary and Joseph had few friends, namely their neighbours Elizabeth and Zachariah, with whom they often talked and drank wine. According to some obsolete and archaic tradition, Mary and Joseph, had never fucked each other because their nuptial bonds had yet to be tied. Of course, innocent Virgin Mary didn’t mind her seemingly boring celibate existence, as much of her teenage years had been spent singing with birds and baking pies. However, Joseph lived in perpetual agony. Joseph would lie awake many nights of the week on his tick-infested straw mattress trying not to think of how much longer he needed to wait to fuck her. He was consumed by pulsating sentiments of bestial lust whenever he gazed upon her tits or her ass, knowing that it was only a little while longer before they were his.  There came a day when Joseph reached a breaking point. He told himself when he saw her ass on a really good angle when she genuflected at the temple one morning:

“I’m going to fuck Mary today!”

Joseph knew of an old, homeless cynic who lived on the shores of the River Jordan. He disregarded wealth and status and fulfilled his dietary obligation by feeding upon locusts and honeycombs. He usually wore a cloth of bearskin and from time to time, locals knew him to baptize unsuspecting people in the River Jordan. The whispers that Joseph heard around the marketplaces in Galilee led him to believe that this man  could help him bust his nut into Mary. He came upon him one day bathing nude in the River Jordan.

The cynic didn’t appear to be looking at anything in particular but seemed to be captivated by an object that may have been right in front of him. The man grabbed at the air before his face- Joseph knew that he was drunk. Joseph watched him bath naked in the river and yell obscenities at passersby. Locals named him John the Baptist.

John waded to the shore and approached Joseph after a few minutes and knew immediately what it was Joseph sought from him. He retrieved a small burlap sack of psilocybin mushrooms and gave them onto Joseph. John said to him,

“Feed these unto thine beloved and she will succumb to a hypnotic fervour which shall submit her to your every suggestion.”

Later that evening, during the last supper of their celibate lives, Joseph put the fungi into Mary’s meal. To his surprise, she consumed the whole bag of mushrooms without noticing them. She began to betray her submission to the effects of the tryptamines about half an hour later and he began loosening his rags. Through the onset of her trip, Mary’s eyes were trained on her fiancé, with an odd, drug-induced perplexity, empty of all intent.

“Who are you?”

Joseph panicked. Standing nude and erect before her, he rummaged through his psyche trying to satisfy his wife’s peculiar question.

“My name is umm, Gabriel! Do not be afraid, Mary; I intend to do you no harm.”

“Are you really Gabriel? Your wings are awfully small!”

“My wings?”

He remembered that she was most likely hallucinating.

“Yes, I am an angel of God, my name is Gabriel. God sent me here to, uh, examine you.”

                He started undressing her rags. For the past 25 years of his miserable virgin life, Joseph had been waiting for this very moment. Mary seemed so much more sexually enthralling than any of the times he had seen her clothed. They fucked furiously for hours on Joseph’s straw mattress, frightening away all the household pests in doing so. It was moist passion. After he had ejaculated into Mary several times, he contemplated the possibility that he may have inadvertently impregnated her.

“Mary, The Lord Yahweh has instructed me to dowse you with his holy sperm as part of his heavenly insemination program. You may bear the son of God in about 9 months. This is non-negotiable.”

“Oh yes Gabriel! Thank the lord for he is good, for his lovingkindness is everlasting. Let the redeemed of the lord say so, whom he has redeemed from the hand of the adversary!”

“What the fuck are you talking about Mary?

“Did I pass the examination Gabriel?”

“What? Oh yeah, you pass.”

Joseph’s intuition had been correct. Mary eventually came down from the mushroom trip and after about 5 months, her expanding womb began to betray signs of pregnancy. He was frightened at what the gossipy Pharisees at the marketplace should whisper once it had been made general knowledge of his wife’s pre-marital child-bearing. They hid in shame. The rapist made the necessary arrangements for the two of them to flee to the nearby city of Bethlehem once the child was to be born.

2.

When the time had come for Mary to give birth to her rape-conceived bastard child, the couple gathered together what meagre possessions they had and fled their mud house in Galilee on a donkey to Bethlehem. In a bizarre twist of circumstance, Mary’s neighbour Elizabeth had been pregnant at about the same time, and being at the whim of various unpredictable hormone fluctuations, was unable to keep secret the word about Mary’s fertilization, which spread faster than the fire that consumed non-believers. Elizabeth later gave birth to a boy she named John.

It was about the time at which Mary and Joseph reached their destination that word of mouth concerning their bastard baby ascended up to the throne of one Herod the Great, King of Judea. King Herod the Great was a psychopathic, megalomaniacal pedophile and a false king; known by his people as an insane puppet ruler ripe with political corruption. Evidently, he was not warmly taken by the news about the couple whose child had been conceived out of wedlock, so he ordered three of his opium-inebriated assassins to travel to Bethlehem and apprehend the bastard child so that he could fulfill his depraved desires upon him. However, once the three assassins had come down off the opium and had run out of wine, they found themselves lost hopelessly in the desert, having been chasing after stars for two weeks.

Mary and Joseph had come to Bethlehem in the midst of its tourist season, which filled up all the local hotels, inns, hostels, and boarding houses with an unsavoury flavour of Thracians and Armenians. There was not one suitable place in the whole city for the couple to stay, so their son was birthed into a swine’s feeding trough. The baby was not well. Due to a combination of being born into a bacteria-ridden slop puddle, and possessing the extensive medical knowledge common to bronze-age desert serfs as his sole means of thwarting off illness, Jesus of Nazareth, as he would come to be known, developed a plethora of infectious diseases; among them, a prevalence of both syphilis and gonorrhoea. Furthermore, despite being born to Levantine parents, Jesus appeared mysteriously Caucasian. Once he had reached adulthood, Jesus became a carpenter by trade. He had very few friends and spent much of his time in his parent’s basement whittling cedar dildos.

One day, in an attempt for some privacy with Mary, Joseph demanded that his thirty-year-old son leave their home so that he could make his own living. Lonely and rejected, Jesus walked along the shoreline of the River Jordan when he heard an unknown voice calling out his name. He saw a man jumping around gaily in the water, yelling at passersby and making obscene gestures.

“You there! The long-haired, neck-bearded bastard!”

Curious, Jesus walked down to the tide and confronted the crazy old man. The man was covered in thick mud and bearskin and was snacking on a handful of honeycomb. He motioned for Jesus to wade out towards him. Before he was able to introduce himself, the man grabbed Jesus by his long hair and dunked his head beneath the murky water. When he let go, Jesus sprung back up, gasping heavily for air.

“Hahaha! You ought to thank me for baptizing you Jesus! I’ve been preaching to all these good people for years about the day you would finally emerge from your solitude and come see me!”

The man motioned with his hand to the bystanders watching along the shoreline.

“You should know, I was acquainted with your father Joseph. It was I that gave him the drugs which resulted in your conception.”

Jesus was perplexed. He looked deep into the crazy man’s eyes.

“Wait, aren’t you John the Baptist? Son of Elizabeth and Zachariah? How could you possibly have been around before I was born to have met my father?”

John the Baptist let out a deep, bellowing laugh. He took another bite of his honeycomb and rested his right arm around Jesus’ shoulder.

“Jesus, my friend, you are over-analyzing things! You mustn’t interpret what you hear so literally. This is all occurs on a biblical timeline after all-- shit doesn’t need to make sense!”

The both of them shared a hearty, friendly chuckle, and what John had left of his drug stash. Jesus and John made their way back to Jesus’ house, where they laid with one another.  John, who was already in possession of just about any venereal infection known to man, didn’t seem aversive to Jesus’ bloody ejaculations or his grotesquely deformed genitalia.

3.

“Jesus, do you want to go to an awesome party tonight? One of my mushroom dealers is marrying this girl in a town just a few miles over called Cana. From what he’s been telling me, there should be a ton of liquor and supple, young boys there.”

Jesus agreed to go to the wedding.

“You’ll have to meet these guys Jesus, they’re fucking crazy, man!”

“But do they uphold the scriptures?”

“Do they uphold the scriptures? Shit they do! You’ve never seen anybody as Jewish as these guys, but they’re crazy man! They do tons of drugs and fuck tons of girls too. There’s Peter, and Luke, and Bartholomew, and fuck man, I’d be hard-pressed to list them all, but you’ll meet them all at the wedding!.”

Excitedly, Jesus put his rags back on.

 His father then burst into the room, chasing him and John back outside.

“Don’t ever fucking come back here Jesus! You and your sick little boyfriend can go live elsewhere! I and your mother didn’t raise you to be a drug addict!”

Mary was weeping heavily and screaming incoherently at the two men and then to her husband. Joseph took her into his arms and she slammed the hut door behind them.

Jesus and John travelled the tens miles to nearby Cana; which they walked because they weren’t pussies like people living in the 21^st century. He met John’s eleven other friends at the wedding reception. They feasted on the lavish cuisine and wine that was offered to the guests until all of it was consumed. The other guests, who were all still sober and hungry, began to clamour for their removal if Jesus and his friends could not compensate for the wine that they stole. He gathered his twelve disciples in the restroom. John had been eating mushrooms during the whole ordeal and was now so disassociated from reality that he was barely able to maintain an upright composure. Matthew, James, and Judas Iscariot had all been quite inebriated from drinking cheap wine and happened to be vomiting on some of the other guests, fomenting a climactic insurrection. Jesus knew exactly what to do.

“My friends, there is no need for us to leave; I’ll have these vases filled with wine in seconds.”

One of the men among them, Thomas spoke thusly,

“I don’t believe you Jesus! You’re bullshiting us! I doubt you! How are you going to get the wine?

“Please, just turn around, all of you for like one minute!”

The men did as Jesus had commanded them. Iscariot collapsed drunk on the restroom floor. Jesus then proceeded to urinate into all three of the wine vases. When the apostles turned around to see that the vases had been filled up, they were much too drunk and high to have questioned that the bloody, gonorrhoea-infected piss could have been anything else but wine.

Jesus and his friends burst monumentally back into the reception hall, carrying the giant clay vases on their heads. The Canaanites, who had grown desperate to consume the smallest bit of alcohol, chugged  the swirling froth of disease and all became intoxicated from the ammonia. John introduced him to all his acquaintances at the party, who praised Jesus for his “water into wine” trick, as they called it.

4.

One of Jesus’ least repugnant disciples, a strapping young lad by the name of Peter Simon had acquainted himself with 2 young female parishioners named Martha and Mary (no relation whatsoever with Jesus’ mother) at the Cana reception, along with 2 of her friends. Having met them in such a hopelessly intoxicated state, managed to arrange for himself, Jesus, Matthew, and Luke to participate in an epic eightsome with the four young ladies (unbeknownst to  the apostles, one of the four, Lazarus,  was merely a very convincing transvestite). John, having been offered to go with them, had declined because he was really, really gay. Jesus was bisexual.

The women with whom they were about to lay lived in a small house in the neighbouring village of Bethany. Bethany was a small, desolate space with few landmarks and inhabitants. “This is perfect”. Said Jesus, ”There’s nobody around for miles. We can make as much ruckus as we want.”

Once they arrived at the home of Mary and Martha-- a small wooden hut at the summit of an olive valley, Mary and Lazarus opened fresh bottles of wine. Peter Simon produced a bag of cannabis he had purchased from a gang of Scythians days prior. A fantastic and bombastic time was had at the orgy by all. The writhing mass of bodies, glistening with perspiration fornicated for what seemed to them like days; each constituent thrashing limb appeared indistinguishable from one another in the fornicating flock of Christ.

Lazarus, who was the brother of Mary, had joined in the sexual escapades against the advice of Bethany’s medicine man, having warned him/her than any aggressive sexual activity could potentially aggravate his/her heart condition. Evidently, this was to be the case, as the misshapen cross-dresser collapsed lifeless upon the ground after a good hour of alcohol-fuelled fellatio. His/her sister was traumatized.

“Please Help Lazarus! He’s not breathing! Matthew, seriously, get that fucking thing out of my ass! My brother is not breathing!”

“Your brother?”

She began frantically pressing down on his chest. Lazarus did not wake. Jesus motioned Mary away and took hold of her brother.

“I believe I know what the problem is.”

He turned Lazarus onto his stomach.

“Are you sure you know what you’re doing Jesus? What if you hurt him more than he already is?”

“Positive, Your brother isn’t the first person to choke on one of my cedar dildos!”

Jesus recoiled his fist and then shot it directly into the deviant’s spinal column, dislodging the giant 10-inch dildo that had obstructed his/her breathing. Lazarus coughed up some cum and some phlegm and thanked Jesus for raising him/her from the dead.

“There. Problem solved.”

5.

It was not until several weeks later, did the good news about Jesus’ resuscitation of the filthy freak Lazarus make its way back to the party guests in Cana. Due to the absence of mainstream media in the lonely bronze-age, exaggerations and hyperboles that had been contrived from the tale of Jesus travelling from party guest to party guest went unexamined. Some said that he was divine; others alleged that he healed lepers and the blind. Some said that he was even the son of Yahweh the most high! A modest cult following arose shortly thereafter, proudly upholding the divinity of the one they called Jesus of Nazareth (the plebeian class had little else to do with their lives back then). Idiots and inbred fools congregated like insects at the sermons and meetings of the cult, all eager to profess their own unfounded claims of the alleged miracles witnessed by the rape-conceived bastard of Nazareth. 

The Pharisees had reiterated countless times that Yahweh alone was God and it was blasphemy to propose that there could be any before him. In the eyes of the Sadducees and the Pharisees, and of a county preacher in particular named Caiaphas, this Jesus fellow was naught but a divergence of their duly-earned attention. Those of the spiritually enlightened demographic had always regarded Jesus Christ as the false idol he was. Like their hero Moses, who had smashed the golden calf on the summit of Mount Sinai in the harsh, yet enduring tales of the Old Testament, there was no question about what had to be done to rid the earth of such idols. In a petty attempt to wash their hands of the nomadic sodomite of Nazareth, the Pharisees had devised a plan with the compliance of the Roman Government to put an end to this heretic cult for good.

Judas Iscariot had not been on friendly terms with Jesus lately. He had contracted syphilis from him at some point during the past few weeks and was cross about not being invited to his orgy in Bethany. Caiaphas, who was known by his devote congregation as a disgruntled old celibate who hated life, bore a particular disdain for Jesus and saw Judas’ wavering loyalty to work very much in his favour. Judas was offered 30 pieces of silver, an offer he could not possibly refuse considering his immense poverty, to turn his former associate over into the hands of the Roman Government. Iscariot later spent the money on some crack, got high and hung himself on a tree out in the desert because he was smoking extremely potent crack and it gave him paranoia. Caiaphas, having finally captured Jesus, took him before the office of the mighty Pontius Pilate, governor of something.

“Sir, I have brought before you a man who refuses to pay taxes unto Caesar and claims he is King of the Jews!”

Unfortunately for Jesus, Caiaphas and his centurion bodyguard had arrested him in the midst of the autophagous orgy which  he orchestrated with his disciples. He cut pieces of his flesh off with and knife and instructed his followers to eat it. They drank his blood and bowed before his knees, surrendering their wills to him. It was a dirty and disgusting affair that had drained Jesus of enough blood to have impaired his judgement. He would have died had Caiaphas not stopped the bleeding in time.

“Are you King of the Jews as this man claims?”

Jesus fumbled around. He did not answer him.

“I will ask you a final time, are you the King of the Jews? Son of David the most high?”

“It is as they claim.”

Pilate was aghast. There was not a man in all of Bethlehem who would dare not cower in sheer inferiority before the presence of Pontius Pilate. He had men put to death over nothing.

“You Blasphemer! You Heretic! You and all your disgusting friends shall be subject to the most excruciating punishments conceivable! Caiaphas, take this scoundrel away and nail him to a piece of wood for misleading the religious inclinations of my people—such is the punishment for false profits. I only pray that misled fools will forget your name in a thousand years from now, though I’m sure that this Christianity you’ve inspired, being no more than a passing fad, shall be lost to the history books forever. Those plebeians you’ve inspired with your despicable nonsense and unsanitary rituals will die and leave no word or influence upon future generations, so I pray. ”

Jesus, still very much intoxicated from the blood loss, did not fully understand what the governor was saying, and when he was taken away by a guard of Roman centurions and crucified, he was in no state of mind to resist their punishment and fight back.

When Jesus was taken away, Pilate turned to his historian.

“When all this is said and done, make the history books seems as though I was a nice guy in the midst of this whole affair. Write that I tried to give that Jesus character a chance.”

6.

After Jesus’ death upon the cross, Pontius Pilate ensured that all of Jesus’ apostles suffered a similar fate that he did. John was beheaded and two thousand years later, the portrait of his severed head was used as the cover art of Cryptopsy’s None So Vile album (a landmark release in the genre of death metal that is mandatory listening to all who have not had the fortune of doing so already). Peter, also having been crucified, requested that his cross be hung upside down because Peter was a fucking hipster and had decreed that upright crosses were far too mainstream.

Three days after Jesus was buried in a tomb, a necrophiliac by the name of Barabbas dug up his half-decomposed corpse and had his way with it. The Christians however, did not desist in their blind worship of the fornicating carpenter, and proposed that the disappearance of his corpse was proof that their master has raised from the dead and ascended into heaven. Much to the plight of Caiaphas and Pontius Pilate, the cult of Christianity did not dissolve, in fact after Christ’s execution; the following grew stronger thanks to the glorious Justinian I. Every Springtime to this very day, they still celebrate the ascension of Jesus into heaven and look forward with meek anticipation to the day when he will return once again to forgive their trespasses and fuck them all in the ass.

Amen.

Incursions

Napoleon Bonaparte: So George I hear your country needs my assistance with your military campaigns?

George W. Bush: Yes Napoleon, come in and sit down. I’ve just had the oval office reupholstered with the taxpayer’s money. They think it’s gone to fund our drinking water purification initiative, but nobody will be the wiser. In my hands I carry the most flawless battle strategies ever devised by man. I plan to carry them out on our new campaigns in the middle-east.

Napoleon: Ah, so you’re finally going to quell those miscreants in Israel are you?

George Bush: Better yet—we’re going to invade Iraq!

Napoleon: Wait, what? That shithole? Why?

George Bush: Hey, hear me out alright? I was up until 3 in the morning configuring the fine-tuned aspects of this most genius plan of mine.

Napoleon: Okay George, what are you doing in Iraq?

George Bush: Well first, we’re going to run bombing raids over Baghdad in order to establish a good resistance to our occupation. You know; we don’t want this to be too easy now.

Napoleon: Okay...then what?

George Bush: Then we siphon their oil supply and subvert all the profits back to the United States!

Napoleon: That sounds incredibly malicious and unethical George, even for a war. I’m not sure I want any part in this.

George Bush: Wait! It gets even better. While we loot their natural resources, we’ll train a few of the local police under the guise that we’re there to promote peace and stability.

Napoleon: George, I really don’t see why any of this is necessa...

George Bush: Hold on, I’m not done yet. Next, we’ll blow up some of our own troops—you know, to make sure our guns work properly. Then we turn them onto the civilian populace. I’m talking complete devastation here Napoleon; photographs upon photographs of US soldiers posing with their bullet-ridden corpses, mosques and coffee house gutted and burned to the ground. We’ll patrol the streets everyday to instil fear into the hearts of the Iraqi people! Ha-ha! That will show them the almighty power of the United States of America!

Napoleon: Wait, you’re going to patrol your armies down the streets of an enemy country? That doesn’t sound wise. Didn’t you guys learn your lesson in Vietnam that that’s no way to fight a war? Even if they lack the manpower to fight you back, your unwelcome presence there could rouse suicide bombers and insurgencies.

George Bush: We’ll keep our fingers crossed and hope that doesn’t happen. Anyways, I’ve considered that this Incursion is going to make me extremely unpopular with my electorates back home, so here’s what I’m going to do: I’ll hire one of my black henchman to run for office under the false premise that he will end the war, but once he gets elected, I’ll be free to keep the war going for another four years after both my terms are up.

Napoleon: I’m sorry George, but this plan of yours is convoluted and fucking nonsensical. I will have no part in it. How long do you expect to keep this facade going on for?

George Bush: I don’t know, I haven’t thought that far ahead yet. Maybe ten or fifteen years—twenty if the American people are stupid enough to elect my black henchman for another term thereafter.

Napoleon: Goddamn! I conquered Egypt in fucking 5 days! I defeated the entire Prussian army and became Emperor of France and you can’t defeat some lowly peasants armed with nailbombs?! Fuck, people in the twenty-first century are fucking stupid as hell. I’m going back to being dead now. Bye.

A Leaden Stride on The Chocolate Expressway

Meursault flipped the channels up and down, giving way to an intoxicating mess of the occasional infomercial drowned out in a sea of blaring static. Not much of interest was on the air at 3:30 am, nor had there been for the past three hours or so. However, numerous weight loss ads and an Oreck Vacuum cleaner commercial ago, something caught Meursault’s eye. It was a timeshare ad, though unlike many of such advertisements Meursault and his jolly friend Proudhon saw frequently while wasting their early morning hours gazing blankly at the television. This particular commercial was perhaps a bit unlike the rest of the boring and superficial infomercials, as it demanded Meursault’s due consideration, and caused him to raise an eye from his drunken, 3am disgrace. It advertised a time-share opportunity in a newly developed housing bank in west Israel. Housing had been overabundant for undisclosed reasons in Israel’s West Bank area and was currently selling for extremely low, low prices-- as was indicated by the advertisement. Even in his miserable, drunken state, Meursault knew he would have been a fool to pass up this one-time opportunity, also as indicated in the advertisement, and that if he escape America to start new life in Israel with Proudhon, he could surely escape his many creditors, as finally indicated by the advertisement. Although Meursault was certain Proudhon would be as interested about the Stolen piece of Palestinian land as he was, he decided not to awaken the piss-drunk Proudhon at that hour, for he had a rally to go to the next morning and needed his sleep. Throughout the past several months, Proudhon had been associating himself with a series of extreme-left syndicalist organisations, or “dumbass-clubs” as Meursault knew them. He claims to have been the one to set fire to the police car during the Toronto, 2010 G20 demonstrations. Either there was big money to be made in social destitute, or Meursault had invested in another pyramid scheme, for despite being recently jobless and credit less, he still managed to provide an income steady enough to keep him and Proudhon alive. And no, they weren’t gay....

            They always wondered why it was I can endure a job so horrible and tedious, put in long and hard hours, yet remain completely unstressed or unphased by the work load. “You seem so happy, so laid-back, what’s your secret?” I’ll let you in on my little secret here. Every morning before work, I crush up two extra strength Demerol tablets and mix them into my coffee. They’re not quite enough to get me totally incapacitated, but more than enough to make all those work-time Asteroid games that much more amazing. The caffeine ensures I stay focused as well as happy and the pills maintain an observable crescendo effect throughout the day. Feel free to use this one for yourself. I like to share my saviness.

            Proudhon woke Meursault with a phone call at noon the next day from prison. Earlier that day, he had among others, been taken into custody by Lowell Riot Police after the demonstration he had attended went violent and he kicked a police dog in the jaw. The protest, which had been against the perceived injustices encountered by the city’s workers union, would make the third page of the Boston Globe, with a picture taken of Proudhon dawning his oversized black and red anarcho sweater shamefully being led into a police truck beneath a title “From Constructive Dissent to Social Disgrace”. Meursault felt this incident with such frustration, for the money he would have used in order to plan a lavish migration to Israel was now being put forth to bail his idiotic friend out of prison, and Proudhon, who was understandably upset by the whole state of affairs, had his reputation tarnished, his character besmirched. The dog Proudhon kicked had to be put down. Evidently, the cost for the surgery to fix it’s jaw fracture was more than enough the Lowell Police Department were willing to dip into their donut fund.

            Proudhon starred shamefully up at Meursault from his cell, cuffed and beaten. The area in which Proudhon was being held was relatively small, the walls were slathered with graffiti and the air smelled of almonds and paint-thinner. There were a few other inmates in there with him, despite the cramped space. The pigs had tased and beaten him profusely following his arrest. Meursault handed over two thousand dollars bail to the officers and they let his friend free.

“Your anarchy sweater smells like shit dude, you need to take a shower when we get home.”

“It’s probably you, you idiot, sitting around drunk all day without a job or any friends!”

“Shut up! You realize I just spend the last two thousand dollars bailing your ass out of jail, you could express a bit of humility.”

            When I was younger, after my parents had gone, I moved in with my grandmother in her small, one bedroom-apartment on the industrial outskirts of Boston, Massachusetts. Needless to say, there wasn’t too much to do there, but I managed to find ways to keep myself busy. So far from urbanization, there was no shortage of open fields and industrial sectors which provided for long walks and childhood exploration. One thing she told me that I’m likely never to forget was to always take the time and pick up pennies I saw lying on the road. They were good luck apparently? Nothing more than superstition, I’ll never know why to this day, I still do this, but I do.

            Meursault sat down, still being somewhat drunk from the morning and eyed several travel brochures scattered on his desk. Israel almost beckoned him, teasing him perhaps. He knew that between his enormous debt and Proudhon’s now defeated honour, there existed only the one solution. Proudhon strolled into the room; still wet from his shower that drips of water dotted his trail across the carpet. He eyed the travel brochures Meursault had ordered on the desk.

“You can’t actually be considering that idiotic commercial you saw? I think that all this whiskey is starting to drown your brain neurons.”

            Meursault leaned further back in his chair and lit up a cigarette.

“What do you have keeping you in America? You have nothing for you in this country. You cannot deny that it is far cheaper, safer, and smells less putrid in any other country in the world. Do you not want a change of scenery?”

            Just then, an overwhelming feeling of shame overcame Proudhon as he gazed around their ravaged, nicotine-stained apartment. The amount of 40 oz. bottles littering the ground outnumbered the shades of colour in that room. A few cigarette ashes floated around in an pool of water that had dripped of his towel atop an empty, crumpled Ruffles bag on the floor. 7 years: It’s how long it had been since Proudhon was able to hold down a real job.  He looked up at the cracked and stained ceiling. Proudhon contemplated what had just happened, the roar of the riot, the barking dogs, the police and the rubber bullets they shot at his abdomen. He thought about how he was broke and unemployed and he thought about how his mother would react when she discovered her son was a politically defiant dog-beater.  Him and Meursault had struck the under most depths of social hierarchy, and besides basic cable and a barely usable dial-up internet connection, they had few possessions in America for which they would stay. Meursault was almost done his smoke; he flicked it in Proudhon’s direction. The two of them booked a travel agent that night.

            As he regularly felt during points in his life that demanded any sort of radical change, Proudhon felt slightly unnerved. Meursault was sure to slip a pill of something in his coffee the morning of the meeting to calm him down. As plainly as the presumably genuine college degree that hung in her lobby indicated, they were in the hands of professionals.  The travel agent was relatively tall, slender, plain looking women in her mid-40s, whom neither of the two could have possibly said anything more about. Her office was of a dull shade of grey, with drab decor and a few maps and flags pinned up about the room. Meursault did much of the talking during the meeting while his counterpart starred at his hands and hallucinated for the most part. You see, Meursault hadn’t planned to get the best deal he could, nor a mediocre, or even satisfactory one, he just desperately needed one: a flight for two to the holy land based on whatever money he could fiend off his friends. The travel agent starred confused for a few moments when he pulled out a few crumpled twenty dollar bills from his back pocket and slid them onto her desk.

Just get me the hell out of here, I don’t fucking care how.

She picked up the phone after a few moments, maybe to call security, perhaps the lunatic asylum; instead she did what some might consider a terrible gesture of kindness, and others, given the circumstances in which it happened, a terrible mistake. Over the next few minutes she made a series of phone calls; airplane companies, travel agencies, immigration agencies, lawyers, pilots, sailors, mercenaries and elite human traffickers, everyone she knew could possibly fly two people to Israel for $42.16. Others might have found it more bizarre, is the fact she actually came up with someone. They were a group of four people who claimed to be members of the militant-Christian missionary force, one of the ever growing number of sects of post-modernist Christianity. For some unapparent reason, Protestant and Anglican churches denied all association with their particular practise of Christianity and refused to acknowledge it canon to the Christian faith, but they were planning to show off to the local bishops, with whom they shared an ongoing rivalry, by organising what they claimed would be the brutalist, most hardcore religious pilgrimage of all history. They demanded a sign-up fee of $50 which would fly them in the hull of a cargo plane into undisclosed location in East Africa, and then another 15$ for a train-ride that would take them through Africa, through Egypt to Jordan, where Meursault and his friend would depart into Israel and start their new life. The whole trip, which would never have been considered by any sane individual, would take about 2 weeks. The Travel agent sighed.  Meursault, excitedly, looked over to Proudhon, who was busy examining the thread count in the office pillows.

            Sometimes I think that this whole ‘smoking is bad for you’ card has been played to death already. Tobacco has been smoked by humans for hundreds of years; it can’t possibly be as bad as the media makes it out to be. I know a good handful of people who have been smoking for their entire lives, yet appeal totally unscathed from it. I mean, look at a country like Japan. Statistically, 45 percent of the population in Japan smokes, yet they have the highest life expectancy of any country in the world, figure that.

Meursault and Proudhon rendezvoused with the four missionaries early the next morning in a foggy airfield whose visibility no further than one could spit up. Their four figures stood like ghosts in the fog. As they came closer, they could make out they consisted two men and two women. The first one from the left, women named Анастасия-Гроздана was tall, well fit, with long reddish-brown hair and a leather jacket. A gold, oversized crucifix hung awkwardly around her neck and she spoke with a thick, barely decipherable accent. Next to her were two taller men, Michael and Randal, both wearing leather jackets with the church’s logo on them. One had his hands bandaged up; blood seeped through them and stained his sleeves. Michael, the other one, who was the church’s equivalent to a priest, had hands and arms enveloped in tattoos, untasteful ones at that, and his hair was dyed bright blue. The fourth was a small asian girl, certainly no older than 15, who wore large, horn-rimmed glasses and spoke not a word of discernable English. She carried around with her a giant plush anteater about half her size. Michael called out to Meursault through the fog.

“We won’t be able to take off until this fog clears up mate, but you might as well make yourself comfortable, we’ll be up in the air for a while.”

The Six introduced each other and made their way to the aircraft.

            After my grandmother died, I was left all her money and apartment as her sole heir, the latter in which I still reside. I invested all her money in a business venture in “Pharmaceuticals”, which has to this day been met with moderate success. I can’t afford to keep it going for too much longer, so I’m planning one final, penultimate acquisition. He’s going to give 1 million dollars in cash for it. Neither her, nor I will ever have to work another dreaded day of our lives. The only trouble is getting it there...

            Randal and Proudhon sat across from each other during the flight. As one would assume, a 10 hour commute in the hull of an overstuffed cargo plane barely holds up to luxury. And to make things worse, there was an intoxicating aroma of roses coming from somewhere in plane, the cargo perhaps. He looked up at Randal.

            “How did you hurt your hands bro?”

            Randal starred back and without saying anything, began to unwrap the bandages from his hands, grinning slightly in resignation the entire while. Most of the bandages were completely soaked in blood. They began to pile up on the ground, as Randal unwrapped layer after layer of bloody gauze from his hands. As he got down to the final layer of gauze, Proudhon almost choked in horror at what he saw. The smell of roses was intolerable at this point, as it was clear that it came from Randal’s wound. Анастасия-Гроздана leaned over to the two.

            “He has stigmata. It’s a divinely inflicted mark of Christ’s chosen few; a hole in each hand and one in each foot.”

Randal spoke thusly:

“I woke up Easter morning three years ago and discovered these giants holes on my hands and feet. It doesn’t hurt, and you get used to the floral aroma after a little while. I’m going on this

Pilgrimage in hopes that my divine gift might help turn others to Christ.”

            The six arrived in a small village in Algeria after the most uncomfortable plane ride claimed the last ten hours of their lives. The land was mostly desert with a few distant trees and buildings breaking up the consistency of the horizon. Night had fallen and the air was clear and cool. The train station was a 2-mile walk from there. Meursault and the Russian woman led the way with a leaden stride, Proudhon just behind him.

            “You know, my grandfather used to live in Algiers.”

            “Your grandfather was also a sociopathic murderer as I recall.”

They made the rest of the walk in silence.

The train was a three-car rust bucket, large and imposing, it was something nobody would ever guess would go three inches, let alone take them across Africa. Meursault sat with Proudhon up in the front row, while the Asian girl sat with Анастасия-Гроздана and the two men in the car behind them. The sweet smell of roses would have made a welcome alternative to the reek of urine and sweat on the train. It was overcrowded with the local flavour of peasants and merchants and freaks, thieves, and minstrels. People hung onto the outside of the train, off the windows and roof that reminded Proudhon of a mass of insects hurdling together. Meursault looked out the window, contemplating a good many things. He knew that his new life would be worth any amount of discomfort that anyone could endure. Landscapes whipped by them at an incredible speed. They made their way through miles of savannah, grassland, jungle, marsh, and urbanity. They watched antelope and lions graze off in the distance. The sun rose and set a good many times, but still the train kept going, deeper and deeper inland.

            Proudhon kept busy by reading several books he had brought with him, rarely making conversation with the other passengers. After about a four day train ride, without notice, they made an abrupt stop. It was very early in the morning and the passengers, most of which were still asleep were thrown forward. One would notice it become extremely hot and humid. The air was so heavy that it almost hurt to breathe. Though their destination was heavily obscured by the darkness of night, Meursault and Proudhon could see they had arrived at a train station and the area was largely urban. There was a large sign just in front of the train which he barely found legible.

Welcome to Uganda, Population: pending

            Proudhon looked in shock at Meursault who was just waking from his sleep. As a geographically-aware, pseudointellectual liberal, he knew that Uganda, which lay somewhere deep in heart of Africa, was located about two thousand miles of their charted cause. He began to hyperventilate and felt weak.

“Jesus Christ dude, we’re lost, I knew it! This was a bad idea! We’ll be stuck in this god-forgotten country for the rest our lives!”

Meursault slapped Proudhon out of his panic and the asian girl then reached over to slap him for taking the lord’s name in vain. Oddly enough, Meursault was barely in stress regarding their two thousand mile tangent. He just continued to stare out the window into the deep, black distance.

            It was then, the silence of the night was broken by a thunderous explosion, and the shockwave shock everyone on the train awake. A bright ball of fire lit up the train as two more explosions followed. Panicked, many of those hanging on the outside of the train jumped from the roof and ran. Four heavily-armed men were now visible in the night. They were all armed with large automatic rifles and wore brightly coloured clothing. The passengers in the train began to panic en mass and flee out windows, doors, and rusted holes in the floor. The gunmen were members of one of the twenty-seven warring factions of the local Zambafusamafusoo tribe who had been engaged in a blood-feud with the neighbouring Yamadrdussazo and Zorazofasmozaso villages. The civil war, which had lasted the past twenty or so years, had put a bit of a dent in Ugandan tourist circulation. Negotiations with the tribal leaders to reach peace had been abandoned due to the absolute futility of task, as the governments had decided it would make the most logical solution to leave them to their own devices. Neither of the four hundred warring villages took too kindly to outsiders, and the missionaries knew if the soldiers captured the train hostage, their lives were not likely to be spared.

            Just then, Meursault noticed the faint shine of a coin on the floor beneath were one of the train passengers had been standing. He reached over to pick the penny up, and almost simultaneously, a rocket-propelled grenade struck the side of the train Meursault had been seated and threw shattered glass all over the remaining passengers. Meursault, who was unscratched, would not have been as lucky had he remained seated. Proudhon, also unhurt, was in extreme panic, breathing heavily and covered in dust and debris. The asian girl clutched the plush anteater in terror. The six would have escaped too if the exit wasn’t already crammed with panicking fleers. The last thing either of them remembered was a devastating shockwave that rattling the entire train loose, and then, as according to the trend in every unimaginative literary climax, they all blacked out.

            Proudhon came to beneath an intensely blinding, bright light. The room was otherwise empty, apart from a tall man in a dark suit standing over him. He identified himself as a detective of the Lowell police department. He offered Proudhon a cup of coffee with milk and a blanket, and then sat at the table beside him. He then began to ask Proudhon a few questions regarding his friend Meursault. Proudhon, who was still visibly shaken, was in no mood to be interrogated. He had a few cuts and scrapes on his face but was largely unhurt, but the trauma was crippling. The officer handed Proudhon some documents and photographs.

            Proudhon had no prior knowledge of Operation Chocolate Expressway until the officer told him. He told him how Meursault had not planned to go to Israel at all, that he had hired a fake travel agent and had his friends pose as missionaries to smuggle drugs to African drug cartels. Confused, Proudhon began to look through the documents he had been shown. There were pictures of Meursault and the missionaries stuffing their luggage full of pill bottles. One of the photographs showed the girl’s plush anteater which had been ripped apart, stuffed entirely with Demerol tablets. Another showed Randal’s hands, with several pill bottles inserted into his wounds. and another with Анастасия-Гроздана and Meursault both in an embrace. The officer told them they were engaged to be married. After they planned to sell the pills, they were going to live out their lives in luxury together. Proudhon could not conceive of what he saw. He refused to acknowledge that his best and only friend could have lied and betrayed him so profusely. The police had tracked the party down using the scent from Proudhon’s anarcho sweater he had left behind in their Boston apartment, which left a distinct pungent scent of American cigarettes which police dogs were able to track all the way to Africa. Luckily, they had arrived just in time to save them from the tribal warlords and intercept their drug stash.

            The phony travel agent and the missionaries were all apprehended and dealt with in the harsh Ugandan justice system, the details of which will be sparred for the sake of your stomach. Proudhon looked at one of the documents; it was an ID card that appeared to belong to the asian girl. The other documents revealed she was in fact one of the most-wanted drug smugglers in Southeast Asia. Proudhon slowly began to realize the absurdity of the whole situation, which he would have earlier, had Meursault not mixed borderline lethal doses of sedatives into all his food. What was I thinking? How could I have agreed to move to Israel? I’m not Jewish, I don’t speak Hebrew. Proudhon cupped his face in his hands and let the facts settle in. He then asked the officer what happened to his friend. The officer sighed. Meursault and his girlfriend apparently, had somehow escaped with a few pill bottles during the chaos of the whole ordeal, and were never seen by either of the characters again. He’s presumed to be living in luxury somewhere in the world. somewhere.