perfidy

I am back from the dead.

Over the weekend I spent some time under the care of the Ministry's crack team of gnostic chirurgeons. Most of them are refugees from our now-defunct Babylon office, and others are... well... let's just say they don't get out much and that's lucky for us all. After exhausting all the powers of modern medical science to no avail, the Ministry's medical staff went to work. Twenty-four hours later, I was miraculously on the mend. Though not without a fight, our in-house healers were able to draw a quantity of fluid from my chest cavity (not without a fight... Linda Blair vomited less than I did... the powers of the old ones are strong... I wonder if this was all to do with that aging invoice I hoped they'd forget...), and I am feeling stronger by the day. Soon, once again, you shall all cower before me.

In my absence, I am both gratified and saddened to see that the innate pettiness of the human spirt has rolled on unabated. In this week's quickie edition of This Week in Exemplary Human Behavior, we focus on the unremarkable: those stories that we could recycle at least twice a year without even trying. Perhaps next week we will see humankind aspire to greater heights of creative cruelty. Or perhaps we will not have to write this feature at all for want of suitably exemplary material. Suit yourself; I know which one I'd put money on.

Spotlight: Massachusetts- Defrocked priest Paul Shanley will die in prison after being convicted of repeatedly raping a young parishoner in the 1980s. Despite the ultimate thinness of the prosecution's case (only one of four victims made it to the trial phase without either being dropped from the case or going into hiding), a jury convicted Shanley on the strength of reportedly repressed memories recovered by the plaintiff. The Boston Phoenix has spent a good amount of time documenting Shanley's deep, deep weirdness-- including, for example, his perplexingly thumbs-up attitude toward bestiality and pedophilia-- which makes a good circumstantial case that the former "street priest" is at least a hobby-level sicko, but one witness' recovered memories do not a case make.

There's so much here to love: a creepshow priest; a jury willing to accept "memory recovery" as ironclad evidence; a diocese who, regardless of this one priest's record, aided and abetted a casual kiddie-toucher ring for decades, privileging their own institutional comfort over the anguish of generations of helpless victims. Nice.

Spotlight: Los Angeles- Home of The the Angels Angels of Anaheim. What is it this time? Natural disaster? Mouthy limo-lib celebrity? Dead rap star?

Nope! It's that old chestnut, appalling police brutality! In a story that will be no surprise to anyone who has ever driven I-5 at rush hour (or seen the Steve Martin classic, "LA Story"), the LAPD ended the stolen-car joyride of thirteen-year-old Devon Brown by shooting him. The Department's defense is that Brown, at the end of the chase, backed his car into a police cruiser in a maneuver that we in Boston like to call "parking a little close." The police chose to signal their displeasure at Brown's novice attempt at full-contact driving by shooting into his car ten times, thereby stopping the car. Oh right-- and killing Brown too.

Like Uncle Jimbo said, "it's all right to shoot anything, as long as you make sure to yell, 'oh God, it's coming right for us!' first."

Spotlight: Iraq- Suicide bomber kills 21. Nothing to say that wasn't said the first 200 times.

Spotlight: Saudi Arabia- Security officials from 50 countries elected to put the fox in charge of the henhouse this week, with the establishment of an international counterterrorism center to be based in Saudi Arabia. Now, I understand that the Royal House of Saud 'n' Waffles has a vested interest in quashing terrorism in their country because all those grassroots terrorist groups kind of suck the wind out of their own state-sponsered terrorist groups but really... do you put the fat guy in charge of the buffet?

Spotlight: Sudan- The UN continues to waggle the Giant Finger Of Blame at Sudan, charging that the Sudanese government really doesn't give a shit about the ongoing genocide within its borders. If the Sudan does not respond to waggling, the organization is expected to move on to Sighing Aggressively. In other news, a new study by the United Nations Commission on Self-Justification shows that sighing saves, on average, 300,000 children a year from dying by machete or Kalashnikhov.

[wik] Did I really say we might never have to do this again? What was I drinking?! Here's some more for you.

Spotlight: Florida- Via Julian Sanchez at Reason.com comes a chilling story of a Tampa couple who systematically tortured their seven adopted children. The official reports cite that the children were, among other things, were "subjected to electric shocks, beatings with hammers and having their toenails yanked out with pliers." One set of 14-year-old twins weighted 36 and 38 pounds respectively, or about a third the normal weight of boys that age.

This height of depravity against children strikes me as a strong argument against God (what God would let this happen?), against evolution (what process of evolution would retain this impulse?), and in favor of enforced eugenics. But ultimately, I think this episode sits alongside many, many others of various stripes, flavors, and varieties as an incontrovertable, ironclad, and urgent argument against Florida.

(A fun final note: According to Florida law, the real threat to adopted children comes from the queers.)