"Some modern travellers still pretend to find Acephalous people in America."
Ephraim Chambers, Cyclopædia; or, an universal dictionary of arts and sciences, 1753
The man you're about meet is named Oliver Crangle. Mr. Crangle is a dealer in petulance and poison. He's arbitrarily chosen four o'clock as his personal Götterdämmerung, and we are about to watch the metamorphosis of a twisted fanatic, poisoned by the gangrene of prejudice, to the status of someone who wrongly considers himself an avenging angel, upright and omniscient, dedicated and fearsome, despite being a twisted fanatic, poisoned by the gangrene of prejudice. Whatever your clocks say, it's four o'clock—and wherever you are, it happens to be The Twilight Zone.
Crangle picks up the Internet and begins dialing an email.
School superintendent? This call is about a teacher in your employ. His name is ... William J. Farwell. The man is morally objectionable. What? Never mind who this is. I happen to be giving you facts, and these facts are what are at issue. You best check on him. Immediately.
Nut!
Crangle places a nut in Pete's bowl, then paces the room, first visibly agitated, then clearly enthused. He consults Wikipedia.
That's it!
That's it! Four o'clock! That's when we'll make it occur. At that moment, that precise moment, we shall destroy evil. This is both my charge and my obligation, to destroy evil. And we shall do it at four o'clock! I'm not quite sure of the method yet. It will be the expiration of immorality.
Enter Crangle's landlord, Mrs. Williams, who has recently received numerous complaints about Crangle's vigorous support for Ron Paul from the proprieters of Obsidian Wings, Political Animal, and Instapundit.
Is that what you do all day? Threaten people online about Ron Paul?
I don't threaten people, I compile them, investigate them, analyze them, categorize them, and then I judge them. If they're impure and evil they must be punished. If they are misled, or naïve, or unsophisticated, I point them the right way. I will not countenance evil, I absolutely will not countenance evil. There's nothing complicated about that. They're evil. All those little bugs out there, bacteria, that's what they are, those little—
That's it! That's precisely it! I knew I would get the clue. Little people! That's what I'll do. I'll turn all the evil people into little ones. I'll make every evil man two feet tall. At four o'clock every evil man and woman will be precisely two feet tall. They'll all be two feet tall!
Nut!
Fades to black. Return to capture Crangle editing the Wikipedia page on the Gettysburg Address.
There is a knock at the door. Crangle crosses the room and FBI Agent Wood enters.
You dialed the Bureau an email about something big happening?
I did, I did. All the evil people in the world have banded together, Communists, subversives, thieves. Now you see, I've spent many years, doing this kind of work, I've made a complete study of evil. I listen to the radio, I watch television, I cut out newspaper clippings, I write emails to employers, I send them text messages late at night.
There's a most efficient method right there, texting these terrible people constantly late at night, waking them up, writing my charges, then doing it again. Very frustrating for them. They go out of their mind with fury. They don't like to be woken up late at night.
Agent Wood squirms in annoyance.
To the point, to the point, it is now precisely three twenty-seven. In exactly thirty-three minutes, all the evil people in the world will become half—no, a third their present size. All the uncaught murderers and the tyrants, all the bullies, the wrong-doers, all of them, every one. All the evil people will be little ones.
How do you go about doing this, shrinking people?
Why, I merely will it. That's all. In the past, several other methods of stopping evil from spreading occurred to me. How does evil spread? By public transport, so I had in mind removing all the stiffness from propellers, you understand, props hanging limp like empty banana skins; then it occurred to me I might change all the wheels in the world from round to square, or perhaps, triangular, so they'd stub in the asphault and stop.
Nut!
Exeunt Agent Wood with urgency. Thirty minutes pass.
It's happening right now, everyone, all the evil ones, they're all turning into tiny little gnomes.
Nothing happens. Fade to black. It is now tomorrow morning. Crangle picks up the Internet and begins dialing another email.
I'd like to speak to Mr. O'Connor please. Hello, is this Mr. O'Connor? You have a man working for you, a young man named Alfred Brewster, been with you a year and a half? The man's a Commuist. That's right, a subversive, a menace to our society, he should be discharged immediately. Nevermind how I know, I just know. I'm going to check back with you in a few days, and if he has not been discharged, I'm taking this whole matter to your superior.
Nut!
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Indeed, Pete, indeed. At four o'clock, an evil man made his bed but did not lie in it; a pot called a kettle black but no one noticed; and a stone-thrower threw a stone in his glass house to no effect. They say on the internet, no one knows you're a dog, but you don't have to be a dog to yap like one. You can look for this one under "F" for "Failed," "J" for "Justice" and "T" for "Troll"—in The Twilight Zone.
NEXT POST
The Cat Post (Because I am both a blogger and an academic, it is incumbent upon me to write a cat post. This will be that post.) In the Spring of 1996, I moved out of my parents' house and into an apartment closer to campus. My apartment, unlike my bedroom, had many rooms: a living room, a bathroom, a kitchen and a bedroom. They were all mine and empty and quiet. The emptiness I could fight: I quickly populated every available surface with books. The quiet was another story. I could make noise, but the noise would be either too meaningful (music) or not meaningful enough (automated pot-banging). What I needed was the pleasant hum of another consciousness, the uncertainty provided by something acting on its own accord. I had never owned a cat before and decided I needed one. I drove to the East Baton Rouge Parish Animal Control Center and looked at the kittens. Most played in cages under their mother's watchful eye. One litter, exceptionally small and shockingly pink, slept unsupervised. They had been orphaned, the caretaker told me, and were only two weeks old. They would require more care than a normal kitten. I had told myself on the drive over, "I will not choose the kitten: I will let the kitten choose me." I didn't know quite what that meant until one of the orphaned kittens stumbled toward me, eyes half-open, and mewed. I had been chosen. The caretaker asked whether I had ever cared for a kitten before. I told her I had not. She struggled to convince me to adopt a more conventional kitten. I wouldn't budge. I had been chosen, I told her. I had no choice. She went to fetch the paperwork while I played with my new kitten. When she returned she asked me for the kitten's name. I told her I didn't know it. "What I meant was, what are you going to name her?" I told her I didn't know. "Well, I have to write something down." I thought about it. I was filling out a form, not performing a christening, so the name would only be a placeholder. I had been reading Thomas Pynchon's V. and so I said, "Her name is Rachel." "You're naming your cat 'Rachel'?" "For now," I said and thought I meant. The name stuck. The kitten was Rachel. But the caretaker had been right about how difficult it would be to raise a two-week old kitten: nipples were sterilized with great patience; backsides were massaged with warm rags; tongues were impersonated with aplomb. Rachel formed an unnatural (but expected) attachment to me and only me. Kittens separated from their mothers this early form unusually strong attachments to their surrogate mothers. They are needy and possessive. Rachel is needy and possessive. My lap is a Rachel-perch. My feet are Rachel-warmers. My wife is an interloper. She must be eliminated. She must be pounced upon from shelves unseen and cornered in the bedroom. She must be...
This was pretty damn funny.
Posted by: Sisyphus | Monday, 12 November 2007 at 12:36 AM
flap flap
Posted by: Red | Tuesday, 26 January 2010 at 01:53 AM