I discovered the sunburn in the shower. When the water struck my back, the objections and exhortations of my overly cautious mother came back to me. The words, to this day, are perfectly associated with three visual images of that day—seagulls picking apart an inflatable Disney character stuffed with fish heads (the work of a fraternity), a teenager pissing on a sleeping dog, and a pair of harlequin pants in the hotel swimming pool.

“You are turning bright red. Let me spray you with this lithium based sedative sunscreen gel. It ‘lowers the body temperature while raising fun parameters in the youngster to near lethal values.’ It’s got Blockinol™ and UValene™.”

"Mom, I’m not burning!"

Despite years of outdoor surveillance, my mom always misinterpreted whatever symptoms I happened to exhibit. 1

“My skin is red because my inhibitions are leaving me at a rate incommensurate with my mass and body fat percentage. The anxieties are passing through the skin as the normal means of escape are blocked! It’s metastasizing into a condition not unlike Rosacea but comprised wholly of formerly sublimated desires now grown manifest!”

“How can your coping mechanisms be blocked already? We just had you tuned. What do you think all that classic rock hypnosis therapy was for? Do you think we listened to all that Peter Frampton for our health? Dr. Watts assured us that the sheer power of arena rock riffmasters like Boston, Queen, and in some regards, the underappreciated tonic infections of Edgar Winter, would prevent the social unease that so hindered your earlier efforts concerning transition between interactive spheres. Are you in a peer group that provokes you or provides you with an uncomfortable environment in which to overcome your crippling neuroses?”

“Mom! The guys are right here! It’s just that…It’s just...” This sort of dialogue was not appropriate for the beach, so I stood faltering.

“Spit it out, boy.” My father bellowed, growing impatient and a little pink himself. Every second my mother drew attention to her son’s various distresses, both dermatological and social, was a second she wasn’t mixing him an ovaltine belvedere. (The OB is the drink of choice for all aging men of leisure whose families no longer appreciate the need for hard work, a group with which my father desperately wished to associate himself. What if some aging man of leisure were to stroll past, grumbling about his children and their respective lacks of concern about the future and find my father with an old-fashioned, or worse, a midori sour, or some such communist beverage? My older brother had reminded my father once that a more likely communist beverage would be a vodka and borscht toddy, but the old man hadn’t heard. He was too busy practicing his knowing glances and exasperated sighs in the hall mirror for future use at the clubs where aging men of leisure gathered.)

“It’s just that all my normal coping mechanisms seem a bit contrived out here on the beach.”

I was losing momentum.

One of the boys nearby chimed in, giggling, “Look, I’m coping with the possibility of future trauma by visualizing positive outcomes for the situations that bring me the greatest stress!” He began to tear up from suppressed laughter, and this effort inspired the rest of my friends to join in.

“Hey, check this out!” The smallest of the boys, a blond kid wearing cutoffs and one flipper, put on his most mechanical frown and dropped his voice and his brow, intoning, “Let’s role play. I am an authority figure with whom you’ve taken issue. How do you feeeeel (he stretched it out for over a minute by utilizing circular breathing techniques) about my continued perceived interference?” They all cracked up and fell on the sand, holding their sides, eventually taking turns holding each other’s sides as the effort became too great.

My mother just rolled her eyes and slid her sunglasses back up the slope of that cartilaginous beak of hers. The glasses immediately slipped down a little, as the ascent was well lubricated by mom sweat. I began to count the number of drops that fell into her Tilapia Daiquiri. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven. She dismissed me.

“Go on then, burn. Don’t come crying to me about lotions, salves, and military grade neurotoxins which can be used, in dire circumstances, to damage neural tissue sufficiently to suppress all but the most subconscious distresses .”

Despite her instructions to handle my burns myself, should they occur, I requested her assistance after the second flush-induced ice-water/boiling-water combo sent my way by my brother. She carried me to the nearest bed with only minimal complaint (although I think I might have heard the words “disown” and “grounded” in passing). In retrospect, these whispers may have been a verbal smokescreen, a momentary diversion, to draw my attention away from the phrase “…sold into slavery via the academic black market. Those guys at Cornell are always in the market for a crybaby with a predilection for UV absorption. They’re weird that way. Call Señor Palo Alto and have him set it up.” I recall the sound of a ham radio being tuned and retuned. Whistlers.

My father comforted me in the only way he knew how (or at least was willing to attempt), he told me a story from his youth, presumably to instill in me the sort of grit and guts he felt I was lacking.

Sunburn Footnote 1

I spent several of my young summers at various child depositories masquerading as wilderness retreats. During all my years of summer camp, I only wrote my parents once. I had developed a couple of blisters during a forced march from the mess hall to the state-sponsored rifle range/planetarium. The terrain was pockmarked from the periodic landfall of mortar shells and a tunnel complex being daily expanded by the resident population of moles and gophers (also state-sponsored, genetically altered, and prone to hyperbole—liars every one). This rough and ready landscape was difficult to navigate and many campers slipped, fell or were otherwise laid low. We finished the march muddy, upset, and in my case, blistered.

I mentioned the blisters in passing, focusing instead on the porridge-heavy menu and my partial exclusion from the mile swim. My mother decided that the letter was an encoded plea for intervention on behalf of my ravaged feet. Although I had clearly explained the origin of the blisters, she sent a series of telegrams to the camp, demanding the release of her son (who she failed to name) and declaring in each that the methods of interrogation employed by the counselors were not only barbaric, but needlessly expensive.

Sunburn 2

I had to the pay the Medical Examiner $100 to let me have the papers from my brother’s belly. I snapped up the journals right after I called the ambulance. No need to give the emts anything to worry about while they tried to loosen his limbs and get him onto the stretcher. The notes from the stomach made little sense, however, to the examiner. I don’t know why I expected them to, but those guys are trained, so connections should have been made. No trained professional should fail to connect fairly prominent dots and conclude something. For example, if I had found the notes, my conclusion would have been:

Excerpt from autopsy report (audio):
The victim’s life’s work, 30 odd years of epistolary detritus reaching outward in two Archimedean spirals from the breach in the abdominal wall. The entry wound is obscured by what appears to be paper. A slight peeling away of the wound surface reveals a series of wadded papers…wait, folded papers. The first is a tightly wound cylinder with a swelling towards the outer end. It is a plug, in both form and function. Gunshot may then be work of origamist of league quality or better with penchant for .38’s and a Dutch-boy fixation. My best guess is the victim, in his dying hours (of which there were several), attempted to reconstruct the circumstances of his attack using the items within easy reach—notebooks, paper swans, assorted visceral elements and virtually all of his blood.

Reconsidered: It may be unfair to expect this level of deduction from the post-mortem investigators since they did not have access to the notebooks. When I found my brother, I bundled up all the papers and bits of wood, metal and paint that comprised his journals and hid them. When the cops and emergency folk got there, all they saw was a dead guy with two holes in him (one in, one out) and enough blood to satiate any manner of large animal with a desire to consume blood, provided the animal’s size didn’t necessitate an unreasonable amount. The papers from the wound itself are in my room, and I am almost ready to move the furniture back in. The cleaning crew left about an hour ago and forgot to do it. They were thorough in every regard, save one. The room is spotless but bare. Ammonia and bleach (dangerous together) may be used in small quantities to remove dark stains of almost any description, even those left by standing blood. The smell is making me dizzy.

This isn’t the first time I have felt like this. I got badly sunburned once before, and my father told me a story to make me feel better, or at least put my pain in perspective. I couldn’t go back to the beach until I was healed, so I sat by myself in the rented house and varied my schedule by alternating my shifts of moaning, reapplying lotion, watching TV, and staring plaintively at my family as they pranced about on the beach, unconcerned and forgetful of their son who lay, alternately moaning, reapplying lotion and watching TV.

Sunburn

I was sunburned the day my brother shot himself. The beach where we had been playing football and smear the queer was relatively free of debris: seaweed, jellyfish, and vagrants. I remember every aspect of the day with Waterford clarity. The images remain vivid because it was this morning.

He didn’t do it like in the movies.

The troubled character sweats profusely and weeps. His hands shake as he raises the firearm (generally a revolver) and struggles over potential target area—trying the temple, the jaw, and usually settling on the barrel upturned in the open mouth. Finally, with his friends shouting that he is indeed loved and that this is not, is never, the answer, he gags out some heap of indecipherable gibberish pertaining to his reasons for the dramatic and awe-inspiring exit—his job, girlfriend, or guilt over some perceived wrong.

This is not how my brother did it. Not at all. He sat in the dark and shot himself in the stomach. They told us he bled for hours. He spread his journals around him in concentric spirals and covered the pages in bloody hieroglyphs. The symbols were written neatly, and with great care. Some of the pages had been enumerated specifically for order. Assorted pieces had been given new titles. The title page, with associated table of contents, identified as such by the carefully scripted “Title Page, with Associated Table of Contents” was found later, by an emt, folded precisely inside the gunshot wound. According to the examiners, that page was only one of many. My brother had literally filled himself with papers.

I can feel my skin tightening. Aloe hasn’t really affected the skin since I am so recently burned. If I arch my back too far, I am sure I’ll split. Molting is not a great concern of mine, but perhaps it should be. Maybe I’ll try some of that cooling gel. The commercials assure me that it’s 120% more effective than aloe-vera for the relief of sunburn pain and the dryness that accompanies careless overexposure to the “sun’s harmful rays.” First I have to shower. The water hurts, regardless of the pressure or temperature.

Marshall Dillon tackles sexual dysfunction

My trip to Tiffany's Waikiki went better than I expected. My fiance impressed me with her choice of wedding jewelry--a pair of mirror-bright Barrington brother's 70 caliber game rifles trimmed in ivory and standing attentive in quickset florists foam with a splash of baby's breath.
“They're beautiful.” My lover struggled to remain composed but nearly wept at the weight of them. The attendant smiled politely. “They have hair triggers and a set of 100 cartridges is included. “

As she handed one of the display cases to me, it was my turn to fight tears. The chamber was surround by a metallic starburst of precision machining. What I'd thought was a setting fixture for the rifles was instead a wreath of 700 nitro express rounds. I was beginning to hallucinate the scent of cordite filling the display cases and spilling into the street, telling the world of our love.

“For two young people like you,” he all but winked and nodded, “I'll throw in a pair of tooled gunbelts that belonged to James Arness. I was skeptical and it showed, but I owned leather from virtually every James Arness vehicle, and I had never seen anything like these. I figured I could get the price down if I expressed my doubt firmly, but politely. “I'm skeptical and it shows, but I own leather from virtually every James Arness vehicle, and I have never seen anything like these.”

He seemed to relish the banter and continued, “Remember the episode of Gunsmoke where Miss Kitty has to convince a Pinkerton that she and Festus are father and daughter? Remember just before the inevitable failure of the plan in a hail of Festus's frontier jibberjabber when Marshall Dillon breaks in and catches the three of them in the parlor and threatens to shoot them dead unless they perform forbidden and thoroughly unpalatable sex acts at a sideshow in a nearby town while the marshall sells sniffs of Miss Kitty's petticoats as a cure for impotence? You know how he drew on the angry mob when they knocked out the Pinkerton with a head of cabbage, interrupting the delicate finishing sequence of the “Golden Lotus”? Right when he starts firing indiscriminately into the mob, accidentally winging Miss Kitty's niece, these very holsters are visible for a couple of frames. Then they get soaked in gore and are unrecognizable for the rest of the scene.”

He obviously knew his Gunsmoke, because I did remember that scene. However, I was determined to haggle a little more.

“How are we supposed to keep large-bore rifles in holsters meant for sidearms?” I asked. My fiance seemed mortified, as though I'd asked permission to relieve myself in the man's jacket. He smiled the cloying rictus of all salesmen and closed the deal. “The stocks are removable and may be custom fitted by our in house weaponsmeister.“ He was already helping me into a belt and showing me how to balance the dread firearms into the holsters.

“See?” he noted,” perfect for young lovers.”

From his other side, my lady chuckled, “I couldn't agree more.“

My better half shouldered her oil-wet dowry, already loaded, and leveled it at the salesman's chest . Pressing him slowly into the wall behind the display case, she smiled and swiveled her good eye towards me. She took a long, slow breath. “Do you smell that, baby? It's like the whole island knows we're in love.”

your mouth is full of steel wool

Normally I don't stress out too much about how much time has passed since I accessed some forgotten skill, but I have to play at my friend's wedding in about an hour. The groom, who i met yesterday in a sir arthur conan doyle reading circle (we focus on his forgotten mathematical work, as opposed to his "Holmes and Watson" rubbish. I move almost exclusively in circles with a pathological bent towards the hatred of detective fiction). I put down my pipe to comment on an unclear passage in doyle's "Circles and Stuff: Figure That out, bitch" when I noticed the chap to my left. He noticed me noticing him and asked me to play at his wedding.

"Play what?" I asked.

"Well, the piano, of course." He looked around as though he was missing the joke. Ever the good sport, I decided to play along.

"What song then, on this piano? " He laughed and pointed to the piece of furniture in front of me.

"What You're playing now, sir."

It turns out that rather than rummaging around in an antique humidor for a specific blend of gentleman's tobacco, I had been playing a dead on cover of Iron butterfly's Inna godda da vida for almost an hour. Anyone else would be forced to conclude that, in spite of the fact that it occurred during a brief blackout, I had evidently learned the song somewhere and could play it again if I wished. I knew better though. I live my life with a single rule in mind: Assume nothing. Especially if pscychotropic orchestral pieces are somehow involved. I told him I wasn't sure about the situation.

"I haven't played piano, or any keyed instrument, since I was 12 years old."

He refused to be put off. You mimic the gravelly vocal stylings of Doug Ingle, slurring like your mouth is full of steel wool,

Oh won'tcha come with me,
and take my hand?

once at a reading group and people evidently want to take your hand. They drop their frayed and tattered copies of Sherlock Holmes and the Antibiotic Resisant Strain of Tuberculosis and reach for you, knocking over 60 year old cognacs without noticing. They are not shy about sneaking these blatant works of detective fiction into the meeting. Shame has become a theoretical construct in the in the face of my playing. They stumble toward me like they've been tranquilized, beginning to mirror the lyrics which I don't even realize I'm growling at them. They are slurring, partly in response to the my impersonation of the already lovecraftian vocalist Doug Ingle. However, the bulk of their state has to be blamed on the inexorable weight of my organ on their poor brains. Bar after bar of unforgiving of hammond driven solo keywork have finally taken their toll on the reading group. Their eyes are rolling like loose marbles on a muddy playground. In addition to my unconcious keyboard playing, I have been kicking the floor in time with a phantom bass drum and using the song's lengthy lyric-free expanses to bellow the low-end accompaniment. It's just too damn much for them, I guess. There's no way I'm getting out of this wedding. Not even the reception, but a musical escort to the service itself. They are timing the liturgy to fall in time with the drum solo and have written their own vows.

Oh won'tcha come with me,
and walk this land?

I will.


In-a-gadda-da-vida honey,
don'tcha know that I love you?

I do.

In-a-gadda-da-vida baby,
don'tcha know that I'll always be true?

I do.

hilarious onstage massacres

I haven't played piano, or any keyed instrument, since I was 12 years old. It's not fair to include my summers volunteering at various Zydeco halfway houses, referred to collectively as Chez Boozoo. They are chain of nonprofit reacclimation programs for musicians who, depite their best efforts and the washboard maddened entreaties of the crowds, shouting, grunting, frothing and moaning in time with the gyrations of the band, "Insert Name Here, don't hurt 'em!" managed to get hurt. Although lots of bands used the public safety cry, it was originated by Frozine "Insert Name Here" Benoit, who handed it off to Beau jaques, who lessened its severity. Benoit's original cry was the more lethal "Please mister, don't kill 'em with your bare hands!" The call and response continued with the rest of the dancers shouting back "Cuz if you do, you won't be able to play any more rip-ass zydeco music, as your hands will not so much torture that poor accordian but dangle insensate from arms humming with fatigue and the initial stages of alcohol poisoning!" The great irony about those days is summed up by Frozine's bass player, Kenneth "K-Naught" Pelican. "Anybody who remembers the early shows of Frozine Benoit wasn't there. Or at least wasn't driven into shock induced amnesia by that hilarious bastard's onstage massacres. " Blood, screaming, washboard percussion. C'est Zydeco, baby.

What I did to comfort aging zydeco frontmen in their time of need is nobody's business by mine, theirs, and that of accordian repairmen who had to perform triage on the remnants of our impromptu jam sessions.

The Truth about Ghosts I

As a scientist, I feel it is my responsibility to set the record straight on ghosts and science.

1. They are real.
   
   • Proven to exist in 50's by team investigated role of Thor in Philadelphia Experiment.
     
   • Existence further explored by Lockheed-Martin and Grummond (prior to dissolution) for possible use as light ordinance (extremely light, since they are spirits). The ghost's capacity for weapons application was limited, however, to chain rattling and moaning.
     
   
   
2. They are the cause of the boom in delivery companies (Fed-Ex, UPS, etc) because of their teleportation capabilities. They could actually have the package there for you in the literal wink of an equally literal eye, but that would violate trade sanctions set against ghosts by the U.S. governement (see Federal Trade Commision .v. Denizens of Afterlife, 1971).
   
3. They take your socks.
   
4. Angels are not ghosts, but are directly responsible for the incident at roswell.
   

There is so much more to tell, but the CIA listening devices are telling me to wait. More later.

Josh

Jesus and Spiderman: An exercise.

One of the biggest problems facing religious discourse is the emotion inherent in the positions taken. An interesting method of separating the passion from the logical structure of the arguments beings hurled across the coffee shop gift table or bus station urinal is a simple substitution. Instead of Jesus/God/Saviour/messiah, etc. simply say Spiderman. Instead of The Bible, say Amazing Spiderman, issue 323. Stripped of its irrational religious power, most statements are seen to be ludicrous. This also applies, by the way, to poorly structured arguments in general. Improper appeals to authority and blind devotion to a specific scientist's work can also contribute to the ambient level of stupidity in the universe.
For example,

• How do you know the bible is true? Because it's the word of god.
• How do you know that? It says so in the bible.

Religious arguments are lousy with this kind of circular reasoning. The problem with the statements becomes obvious to almost everyone if you spiderize them:

• How do you know Amazing Spiderman, issue 323 is true? Because it's the word of Spiderman.
• How do you know that? It says so in Amazing Spiderman, issue 323.

Give it a shot. More examples to come (The bible is full of them. So is Amazing Spiderman, issue 323, for that matter).

Josh

Vatican Attacks Fictional Work

I am consistently amazed by the odd things religious organizations choose to attack. The vatican devoted time and manpower to check into the DaVinci Code and construct not only arguments against it, but formulate an official response to it. How much of the Vatican's underground treasury was looted to garner funds for this research? "

"Bishop Valencia...melt down the ruby chalice of St. Andrew. Yes, the whole thing. It turns out we need to hire some temp help to find out exactly how to address the DOAT issue."


"Right....I remember. Dragons of Autumn Twilight. It's a foul tome whose only purpose on this earth is to further the causes of darkness. Dragons! And twilight. Darkness and all that. Can you imagine such horrid work existing in the same world as the holy father?"

"Let's see what Cardinal Ecco thinks. He was the guy who brought me as a contract hire during the late 90's when all those sinful programming language tutorials came out."

"Good idea."

Madness...sheer unabashed madness. By madness I mean mental instability and not the band Madness, whose liner notes for The Rise and Fall were denounced by the Vatican for

...failing to explicitly address the divine nature of the son of man in a work whose very existence is due to the fall (crucifixion) and subsequent rise (resurrection and eventual ascendence into heaven) of the holy savior.

Sensory Deprivation II

Most of the senses and their corresponding administrative functions reside in the head, so head-covering has always been an effective first step deprivation of the subject's senses, i.e. cover the head with some sort of sense blocking device. Blindfolding is a time-honored way to stop sight, and enlarging the fold to cover the nose greatly inhibits sniffing (scent-acquisition). I have, on occasion, combined these techniques with a pair of cleverly placed cod-liver oil soaked cotton puffs in order interrupt the hearing function as well.

However, as a scientist/designer/man-about-the-Hague I wish to minimize equipment spending while simultaneously maximizing subject disorientation and overall project unity. To this end, I combine all pertinent sensory deprivation criteria (save touch) in a single, formerly modular, design. My designs have been called revolutionary, inhuman and, on occasion, darkly inspired. Despite global disagreement on the relative Genevate' of my creations, all agree on one aspect. My sensory deprivation helms are delicious.

'Two phone calls and it's done.' This is my motto (among others). It sums up my ariadnic network of spies, cut-throats, doers, movers, thinkers, shakers, and in the present case, wholesale confectionary distributors. The first of my two calls was to a contact in Belgium who was able to lay hands on 30 tonnes of weapon's grade chocolate. The first shipment, 15 tonnes of a bitter chocolate called Serge's Delight, was used to construct the circuitry of the helms. One of our greatest advances in the relevant technologies was the realization that chocolate liqueur (of which Serge's delight was 38%) is an excellent conductor and provides the cocoa infrastructure a higher tensile strength than milk or dark chocolates. The remainder of the shipments were a series of tiny arrivals via local messenger and merchant post--15 tonnes of couverture, referred to on the martial confection black market as Angel's Blood. The beefier cocoa content in this softer and more elegant strain of chocolate allowed us an unprecented interface capability--people can't wait to put the helmets on.

Unfortunately, I got all the chocolate with a single phone call, so in order to maintain my two call rule, I re-contacted the Belgian and thanked him for his role in a previous shipping project involving a marscipone stag being pursued by an olde-worlde hunter. As the hunter approached the prey, the stag turned and gored the hunter, whose wounds would cover the entire piece in a layer of raspberry reduction blood. The confectioner claimed no memory of the sculpture but added that if such a sculpture were to exist, he would not be the man to trace it. He said I should call Heinz-Karl, whoever that is.

Sensory Deprivation I

I have begun the design of a sensory deprivation apparatus that will rival any in prior or concurrent development. Rather than focusing on the benefits afforded during meditation or the detrimental effects afforded the unruly child or surly barfly who finds himself, inexplicably, in the care of a criminal mastermind or cartel lord, my team is concerned with the underlying nature of sense...and deprivation. You may have noticed that we have already deprived the term sensory of its -ory. Believe me, this is only the beginning.

First, the subject is placed in an accoustically isolated chamber. Do not fear, however, for the sanity of this poor bastard's ears. He will not be deprived of all sound. A significant portion of our funding has been devoted to the construction of a massive FM transmitting tower which will occupy all broadcast frequencies below 90.5 MHz. In the manner of many such stations, our research broadcasts, under the station ID KMAD (K-Mad radio, where we offer ...what's that? Mad you say? I'm not mad...it's you! All of you who are mad! Behold the glory of my creations and tremble!) 24-7 tremble--that's our unofficial motto.

This station (KMAD) will provide all the best easy-listening adult-contemporary fundamentalist glossalalia from the 60's, 70's, 80's and beyond. The subject will have all his thoughts involuntarily translated into the heavenly languages of various christian, vodun and usu zombe' sects until all will to resist our implanted (i.e. repressed) memories are allowed to flourish.

Next time...Material advances in helmet construction. Why is chocolate such a good conductor of human fear?

Fear

Recently I have become fascinated by the nature of fear, as opposed to my youth when I was fearful of natural fascination. Actually, I spent the whole of one summer feared, naturally, by a chap named Random Fascine (but that is a subject for his letters, not mine). By fear I mean any of the various combinations of horror, terror, frison, fright, unsettlement, troubletation, and botherism--to limit my definitions to a strictly observed caste of negatively connotated human flight responses would be a frightful (oh dear) oversight on my part.

If we are to use horror fiction, whether books, movies, freelance live-action park performances or state-funded FEAR installations (held over for three weeks due to suspected pornographic imagery in a series of diagrams from Foxe's Book of Martyrs) as any indication, people are most frightened of scary things. Conventional wisdom supports this thesis, and I am loathe to disagree, given the definitions of the words in the press release sent to me last week from L'Academe du Peur. (They have an entire department devoted to the role conventional wisdom in the statement of fact, "insofar as the human mind might comprehend.")

Personally, though, the scariest things to me are not necessarily "scary." Sometimes I find myself unable to sleep simply because I think I might not be alone in my room. The spectral inhabitants of my various armoirs and wardrobes assure me they are in fact "so not here, you can't even not see us or hear us for that matter." For some reason, their promises only make me suspicious.

"If something were hiding in my closet, isn't that what it would say." According to the things, no.

I asked around a bit, attempting to access some of this conventional wisdom and observed a remarkable phenomenon--people are afraid to talk about being afraid. I was told, on more than one occasion, "I am not scared of anything, really, and if I was, I wouldn't be afraid of that either." People, on the whole seem frightened of those things that frighten all living things--threats to safety. Everybody is afraid of damage. Well, everyone, that is , who doesn't start the afternoon with a bit of the old Thorazine.

Performing a completely non-robotic system scan on all my *.fear files, I find that I am spookified by things that I can't explain. Not inexplicable in the classic sense, but truly beyond my understanding. I would rather be chased by some Lovecraftian horror into its unspeakably dark, vile, and unforgiving lair than feel like someone is in the room with me when I clearly see that I am alone. When you are fighting something dangerous, at least you are fighting. You have a plan.

"If that thing gets closer, Scoob, you and Shaggy pull the rug, and the rest of us will beat it senseless with this assortment of leaden weather-vanes."

It's a lot more difficult to call your friend and say, "Hey, can you come over here? Something's wrong in the kitchen. I don't know exactly. The dishes, well one of the dishes, seems all...like...creepy. No, I'm serious. Wait....just a ...." and then the dial tone. Regardless of how terrifying the robin's egg blue of that serving platter might seem to me, I can't expect another person to REALLY understand the sort of latent menace I detect. Maybe that sort of fear is a completely personal exercise. I wonder if any research has been done into a paralyzing fear of things being kind-of spooky.

Approxiphobia: a keen or otherwise acute sortaphobic response.

My thoughts on Hegel and the BOOYAH dialectic.

So much has been made of the dialectic (Hegel's three young 'uns) that important aspects of their inter-relatedness...ness have been overlooked. Behold, his dialectic elements, as they appear in the indie-film classic chronicling their respective addictions to talc, salve, and gas station sushi.

• Thesis: an idea
  
• Antithesis (or anti-thesis): A conflicting idea which arises in response to the thesis
  
• Synthesis: The tension between the thesis and antithesis (reports differ on the exact nature of the tension, but most feel it boils down to a sort of alchemical strain, rather than psychic strain, which Hegel decided was at least as likely as not.
  

Given these, the gift of Senor Hegel, we may pose the existence of another tripartite entity.

• Thesisethis: If we view the previous three as axes in an idea-space, thesisethis is a measure of their orthogonality
  
• Thesisethisasis: The projection of the axes onto a new, non-orthogonal axis ( a sort of inner-product)
  
• Thesisethises: A diad composed of idea pairs, anti-idea pairs, and tension pairs.
  

I am glad to have cleared this up. (sigh of utmost relief)

What happens when ghosts pass away?

When a loved one, whether jovial aunt, crotchety 1000-times-great grand pere, or faithful family pet, passes from this life into the next, everyone involved begins to pose the requsite questions.

"What happens when we die?"

"Will it be boring in heaven, since there is no sin?"

"Is it death I fear, or the act of dying?"

A possible solution to these is the existence of ghosts. If they are actually the remnants of people and things we loved in this world, their existence can give aid and comfort to those left behind. Unfortunately, if a person is stuck in this life (e.g. a kind old neighbor who still tucks children in at night, although she has been dead since 1954) they are in a real fix. Heaven is waiting, hell is calling, and they are spending eternity rattling chains and moaning. In this way, we can see that the notion of ghosts gives comfort to the living while simultaneously robbing the dead of any means of escape.

Consider the following. A person passes away and is missed by his family. In order to help them through the difficult time, he sticks around and haunts for a while. He appears to his daughter during times of indecision and discomfort. He speaks to his widow as she sleeps in order that she understand his desire for her to love again. That sort of thing. Well, before you know it, he has been flitting around the old homestead for 4 generations and nobody remembers what or who he is. Also, it is far from inconceivable that he might befriend other ghosts and spectres in the area. They could comfort each other and help other half-beings through the eternal twilight of the aether-bound. Finally, suppose that this ghostly fellow finds, via medium, time, or other avenue, a means of escape. Someone prays the proper novena and he is summoned at last to heaven. Now his ghost friends miss him. They begin to ask the requisite questions.

"Where do you go when you die, again?"

"How will I talk to him now that he is no longer a ghost?"

"Can I have his sheets and chains?"

I like to think that this twice deceased fellow might hang around for a while longer, and haunt his phantomic ex-colleagues, in order that they might be comforted. However, this might be a problem if it is ever discovered that ghosts, like most other beings, are afraid of ghosts.