I Heart Satan

Waiter! Two glasses of Chardonnay, please - with
ample space between them!

Greg:

What the hell happened to all the decent Satan worshippers in the world? Seems to me that when we were young, there were scads of them. Remember in 1970 or so, right around the release of The Exorcist, how Satan-worshippers were piled up to the eaves of every house in suburbia? Or was that just in our neighborhood? Or was that just the formerly dry-as-emery-toast Episcopalians trying to drum up business during the charismatic movement?

Speaking of Satan, I was deeply saddened when my television informed me that the Masons - contrary to popular myth - are not cat-buggering Satan worshippers. (However, it seems that certain members of The Royal Navy are.) I had so hoped that they were. According to The History Channel, which in my household is also called The Unimpeachable Voice of Truth, the Masons are nothing of the sort. They were originally a sort of labor union, and then they morphed into a secret society of free-thinkers trying to avoid the ire of the church and the monarchy. Now they're a bunch of well-meaning, bespectacled old farts who couldn't even stab a tuna sandwich in fit of rage.

That's too bad. It would be weirdly comforting to me to know that events such as the invasion and occupation of Iraq were the handiwork of an evil, multinational cabal and not the result of the nexus of blind zeal and staggering incompetence. It would be so much nicer to believe that the NeoCons were genuinely pernicious and not just a bunch of dumbasses with really big guns.

I know what you're going to say. You're going to say that it's a thin-to-nonexistent line between ignorant and evil. Agreed - but! I say that if you're gonna be evil, don't do it by the default of your own ignorance. If you're gonna be evil in my dream world, I want you inverting pentagrams and slamming ham on the altar of St. Mark's Cathedral during a first communion celebration for deaf children. I want you to derive your wickedness from a pure source. I want you to drill down 'til you hit Beelzebub himself. Don't just get put into "office" in an "election" or be "appointed" by the "president". That's the "pussy way out". (FACT: quotation marks are actually a typeset representation of the Hex Against The Evil Eye, but NOT the International Mullet-Wearer's Salute, which is shockingly similar. So for instance, when you say pussy way out or any other quotationally-ensconced phrase, you must, by Washington State Law, make with The Sign already. FURTHER NOTE: making The Sign with one hand is perfectly legal and acceptable if one of your limbs has been lopped off and replaced with a hook or a chainsaw or a garage-door opener or something.)

I don't have much else to say on the subject of evil, so I'll leave you for now with this exhibit of journalistic evil. These two blurbs appeared exactly in this order on the front page of the online edition of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. I crap you negative. You cannot make this stuff up.

Study: Millions have 'rage' disorder
CHICAGO -- To you, that angry, horn-blasting tailgater is suffering from road rage. But doctors have another name for it -- intermittent explosive disorder -- and a new study suggests it is far more common than they realized. Update · 2:00 p.m.

Man attempts to blow up house
A man apparently attempted to blow up his South Seattle home with natural gas after a standoff with police Sunday. Update · 12:02 p.m.

Cheers, and give my best to Marie.

-Thaddeus