Angry Crying Woman Sketch

I like (some) graffiti

DUI Guy

Cholera

Celebrate your favourite disease with a personalized license plate.

Starbucks Moment

The man in the suit, sitting in the window, talks to himself. That's what makes me notice him. I can't hear what he says. He's older, with deep lines in his face. Gray hair on the sides, bald on top. He looks slumped and sad. He has a Starbucks coffee in a paper cup.

When he gets up to leave, he pick the cup up by the rim. The cardboard heat sleeve falls off the cup, landing on the floor. He doesn't notice, and walks over to the trash and throws the cup away. He heads off to the bathroom.

Someone is going to have to clean up his mess.

While he's gone, like magic, a Starbucks barrista sees the sleeve on the floor. She walks over, picks it up, and throws it in the trash.

Order is restored.

A young woman sees the table where the man once sat. It being free, she sits down in the chair. There are crumbs on the table, and she brushes them off and on to the floor.

Now there is no trace of you left, suit man.

Suit man comes back a few minutes later from the bathroom. He now has sun glasses on. He looks at the table where he was sitting once, sees the woman sitting there, and has a flash of, "But that's my table!" on his face.

Then he rememers he's leaving, that it's not his table anymore, and he goes out the door.

He leaves, and there's no visible trace that he was ever in the Starbucks at all.

I found all of it breathtakingly beautiful.

Rize Up 2012

Fat Face

Face (watercolour sketch)

Open Email to ZeniMax Media

Dear ZeniMax Media Inc,

A friend recently told me your company purchased ID Software back in June of 2009. Perhaps you can help me with the following.

Email to Id Software:
http://killeverything.blogspot.com/2009/11/my-email-to-id-software.html

Email to Activision:
http://killeverything.blogspot.com/2010/03/open-email-to-activision.html

I want to buy Doom 3. Specifically, I want to pay money, and download Doom 3 for the Mac to my computer. If you read the above emails, to which I have received no replies, you'll see that this is proving to be next to impossible. Doesn't that strike you as bizarre?

Think of it: I downloaded the demo of Doom 3, played it to completion, and found myself enthralled. I want more. The demo itself failed to provide a valid link for me to buy the game. Since then, I have been wandering the Internet like an idiot, credit card in hand, looking for someone to sell me the game.

And no one will give it to me. I suppose I could go to a mall and buy Doom 3, but I'd much rather just pay cash and download it, the same way I regularly download music, audio books, movies, and so on.

The thing is, if I wanted to download an illegal copy, I could be playing Doom 3 RIGHT NOW. The pirates are, at this moment, offering me better services that either Activision or Id Software. Doesn't this seem insane?

I'm not a particularly avid video game player. All the same, I'm surprised at how poorly organized these websites seem to be. Paying money and downloading a game immediately strikes me as a fairly basic business model. It's working for videos and music. You think makers of COMPUTER GAMES would be on board.

Where is the iTunes of the video game world?

In any event, I expect this email, like the two other emails I've written, to fall entirely on deaf ears. And that appears to be a part of the problem. As far as I can tell, someone at Id Software cleaned the website of the glaring errors I found, and did nothing else. Although I emailed Activision yesterday, I expect no reply. I am screaming into the void.

Echo! (Echo-echo-echo...)

Any sort of response would be stunningly surprising at this point.

Sincerely,

Nikolaus Maack

Open Email to Activision

Dear Activision,

I was on the ID Software website, and they told me to go to Doom3.com to buy Doom 3. Entering that URL takes me to your website -- but not to any page related to Doom 3. So I searched your website for the game.

And, yes, your website lists Doom 3. When I click on the "BUY" button, I am taken to a website that says "Your search for "doom 3" did not match any products."

Which means I can't buy it.

My dream -- and I'm starting to realize it's just a dream -- is to go to a website, pay money, and download Doom 3 for the Mac. I know, I know. It's insane. I must be on drugs.

When I clicked on the "contact us" button to tell you my purchasing problem, I was taken to a menu to fill out a query. There was a drop down menu to say who I wanted to send the email to. When I selected "customer support", your website immediately took me to the customer support section, as opposed to letting me fill out the form to submit my comment. Wow. Why does it do that?

[Edit: I neglected to mention that the ONLY option on that drop down menu is "customer support". Selecting that takes you to the support page. This means the form is entirely useless.]

Somehow, after much digging around, I found this OTHER form, which (so far) appears to be allowing me to submit these words. I am skeptical the process will actually work.

It may amuse you to know that I originally went to the ID Software website, looking to buy Doom 3 there, and experienced a nightmare of confusion on their site too.

I sent them this email...
http://killeverything.blogspot.com/2009/11/my-email-to-id-software.html

...and never received a reply. That email was sent in November of 2009. Don't ask me why I'm trying to buy Doom 3 again. Maybe I'm just a masochist, and enjoy poorly designed websites.

Thank you for your time. Feel free to contact me by email, or phone -- [phone number deleted].

Nik

Masochism, Reik, and You

I’ve been reading a few different psychoanalytic books on masochism. One such book is “Masochism in Modern Man” by Theodor Reik, published in 1941. It’s brilliant. I want to give copies to all my friends – particularly the ones who are seriously fucked up.

Reik makes a distinction between “sexual masochism” and “social masochism”.

Sexual masochism is the one we all know about. A persons wants someone dressed in leather to spank their ass and whip them and call them a worthless piece of shit. Outside the bedroom, sexual masochists lead fairly okay lives.

Social masochism is weirder, more pervasive, more complicated. People are guilty of it when they sabotage their own lives. They pursue a life of suffering and misery without any sense that they derive a kind of pleasure and power out of it.

For the purposes of this little rant, I’m going to focus mostly on social masochism. So if you get off on spanking, look elsewhere.

Reik sees masochism as having three qualities:

1. Phantasy: “I will engage in lots of daydreaming, imagination, and speculation about all of this.” Reik claims only intelligent people are masochists, because only intelligent people are capable of engaging in phantasy. (It’s spelled with a PH and not an F because it’s not always sexual, and it’s not always a positive.)

2. Suspense: “There is pleasure in my life that I want, but I am going to put it off for as long as possible, by dwelling in pain.” By delaying pleasure, and embracing pain, the masochist gets off.

3. Demonstrative Factor: “It’s not enough that I suffer – I require an audience. I will brag about my pain. I will make others participate.”

4. BONUS quality! The Provocative Factor. Reik sees this quality in a lot of cases, but not every case. That’s why it’s the fourth of the three qualities. “I want to suffer, goddamn it. Who is going to hurt me? You, maybe? I’m going to poke you with this stick until you beat me in the way I so richly deserve.”

EXAMPLES

Have you ever met someone who brags about how unlucky or stupid or doomed they are? I knew this guy, Chuck, who loved telling stories about his own incompetence. He particularly liked to talk about how he couldn’t cook.

“I once burned Jell-O,” Chuck boasted.

He boiled water on the stove top, only it didn’t quite reach boiling. He poured the hot water into the Jell-O powder and it wouldn’t dissolve. So Chuck poured the sludge into a pan and put it in the oven. Then he forgot about it, and the Jell-O got burned. Ta da!

Chuck had tons of stories like this, and when he told them, it really was like he was saying proudly, “Let me tell you how pathetic I am.”

He genuinely seemed to delight in his own incompetence.

***

Some people, when given an opportunity, always find a way to screw it up. David does this every day.

A friend emailed David, and said, “I know you’re having financial difficulties. I want to give you $50 to help you out.”

David couldn’t even bring himself to answer the email. The guy wrote David several times, finally saying, “Just send me a reply, yes or no – can you use the money?”

Through great effort and concentration, and partly by distracting himself with something else, David managed to email a reply that read, simply, “Yes.”

David is always happiest when he’s miserable. He called me once to say:

1) He was living with crackheads who weren’t paying their share of the rent or bills.

2) These roommates were stealing from him – both money and objects from his room.

3) The electric company just turned off the power in his apartment because he hadn’t been paying the bill.

I told him, “I have never heard you sounding happier than you sound right now.”

And it was true. He sounded practically giddy.

Pointing this out seemed to confuse David. “Really?” he asked. And even as he asked me that, his delight went up a notch.

***

I’ve had migraines since I was a teenager. My coping strategy was always to hide in my room, lie down, and wait for the pain to go away. This became my strategy for coping with all pain.

At one point, I was having “digestive problems”, and my guts would ache and throb. Doctors couldn’t find gallstones, and I now wonder if it was just severe constipation. But my strategy for dealing with the pain was to just lie down and wait for it to go away.

My partner Michelle watched me literally writhing in agony in bed, and said to me, “You know, you don’t HAVE to be in pain. You can go to the hospital and ask for drugs.”

This sounds obvious, but when Michelle said this to me it felt like she’d made a brilliant leap of logic. It would NEVER have occurred to me on my own. Instead, I would have just writhed in pain until the pain stopped.

***

So why do people sabotage their own lives? Why wallow in pain? Why avoid pleasure?

THE FLIGHT FORWARD

Reik theorizes that social masochists see their goal in the distance, get stressed out by it, and want to end the anxious situation as quickly as possible. What’s the quickest escape from a stressful situation? Grab the wheel of the plane and steer it straight down in a nose dive. Reik calls this the “flight forward”. Masochists, in their rush to escape a tense situation, sabotage it.

Say there’s a single man named Lenny, and he sees a beautiful woman he wants to talk to. She’s the sort of woman he wants to marry. He aches for her. He decides he’ll just walk across the bar to talk to her, but it stresses him out. So what does Lenny do? He fucks up the situation. And there are many ways to do that.

Three examples:

1. Lenny says, “Aw, she’s a fucking bitch. I can tell. I’m not going over there.”

2. Lenny starts walking over there, trips over his own feet, and lands with a crash. Humiliated, he slinks away.

3. Lenny goes over there, and blurts out, “You’re sexy and I would like to fuck you,” and the woman slaps him across the face.

Each choice is a flight forward, killing the situation. Lenny can fuck up without leaving his chair (#1). He can fuck up on his way over there (#2). He can fuck up when he talks to her (#3). In each case, he takes the steering wheel and flies the plane into the ground, killing his anxiety and escaping the situation. If Lenny is a true masochist, you can be sure he’ll share the story of his failure with all of his friends, as if he was boasting about the experience.

Why does Lenny do this? One possibility is his upbringing. If you grow up in a world where everyone shits on you, never gives you what you want or need, reaching out to someone causes intense anxiety. Self-sabotage is a perfect way of protecting yourself and maintaining control. There was never any real risk to Lenny’s ego, because Lenny never made a real attempt to woo the woman.

Part of Reik’s take confuses me. The “flight forward” seems to contradict his description of masochism involving “suspense”. How is Lenny prolonging suspense if he’s flying forward to end anxiety? I find this somewhat contradictory. But I think what Reik means is this:

Lenny the masochist genuinely wants this woman, or someone like her. He could have a woman, if he made the effort. Lenny delays that pleasure through self-sabotage, and prolongs the agony of not having a woman in his life. In a sense, the delay will make the eventual pleasure of landing a woman all the more sweet.

The real question is, how long can Lenny “suspend” his pleasure? Will he ever allow himself the release? Or will he always sabotage himself?

SUSPENSE PROLONGED INTO THE AFTERLIFE

If Lenny were religious, he might delay pleasure until after his own death. Maybe he thinks that if he never has sex with a woman, he’ll be rewarded in Heaven. For an atheist like me, this seems insane – but many people deny themselves all sorts of basic pleasures because they believe in an afterlife.

Reik spends several chapters politely ripping Christianity a new asshole. While he never comes out and says that Jesus is a masochist who has spread masochism and sickness in the world, Reik does say that many of Christ’s sayings contain strong masochistic elements.

“The meek shall inherit the earth.”

“The last shall be first and the first shall be last.”

“Turn the other cheek.”

“Love your enemy.”

All of these expressions contain a masochistic element. Strip them of their religiosity, and they basically say, live small, pain is good, suffering is good, don’t fight back. Do all of this and you’ll be rewarded – after you’re dead.

Then there’s Jesus dying on the cross. What could be more masochist than that? He was whipped, crucified, and stabbed with a spear. If he was just a regular person, it would simply be torture. But because he was the son of god, there’s a meaning to it. This “torture” made the world a better place. It wasn’t a meaningless death. Somehow, it was magic, and cleansed everyone of their sins. Thus pain itself is portrayed as divine in nature. Won’t you follow Christ’s example?

Many martyrs did. What could be more glorious than dying for Christianity?

Reik amusingly asks, do the martyrs meet his criteria for masochism?

Phantasy? Check. They imagine a glorious afterlife where their pain will be rewarded.

Suspense? Check. Their pleasure is being delayed, to the next life. (Some theologians actually suggest that the amount of suffering you experience in this life is directly related to the amount of pleasure you’ll have in the next.)

The demonstrative factor? Check. Martyrs want to be martyred in public, where everyone can see their sacrifice. Die quietly, in some back room? That’s not martyrdom. It has to be a real big show. And there's the most important audience member of them all, God.

Even the provocative factor plays a part. Often martyrs provoked authorities into killing them. Saint Sebastian, for example, was shot full of arrows and miraculously survived. What did he do, after being nursed back to health? Sebastian went up to the emperor who sentenced him to death and preached to him. Not surprisingly, the emperor ordered Sebastian be killed, again.

***

You don’t have to be religious to think you’ll get your reward after you die. David, who I mentioned as an example earlier, is convinced his sufferings are helping to bring about an anarchist utopia. He’s sure he won’t be around to see it – he’ll die in the upcoming struggle – but after he’s dead, the anarchist utopia will take place. And that will be his reward. All his pain will have been of use.

Interestingly, David doesn’t make any real distinction between the pain he experiences as hard work for this cause, and the pain he experiences in general. All of his suffering somehow assures an anarchist utopia.

On top of that, I'm pretty sure David sees his suffering as proof the utopia will occur.

"I suffer, therefore my dreams must come true."

Some struggling artists convince themselves that, while they are misunderstood in their own lifetime, they will gain celebrity after they die. I paint portraits, and this is one myth I actively try to avoid. For every artist who dies and becomes famous, many just die, and their work goes to the trash heap.

Even some suicides contain an element of delayed pleasure. Some people kill themselves in order to punish people around them.

“You’ll all be sorry when I’m dead!” yells the angry adolescent.

The hidden message in those words is, “Once I’m dead, you’ll have to pay attention to me.”

And so, after death, the teen imagines getting the attention they craved all along.

IS MASOCHISM RIGHT FOR ME?

Do you like pain and misery and enjoy feeling like you're misunderstood? Sign up now.

Or maybe you're already a masochist. Keeping your mouth shut, your head down, and thriving on misery is exactly what most employers want out of you. Or so the cynical bastard in me chooses to believe, thus making my day at work all the more unpleasant. And, ironically, this plays into my own masochistic streak perfectly.

Wait. Is that masochism or a strong work ethic? Is there a difference?

There are times when delaying pleasure and enduring pain is a good thing. It's when we overdo it, and for no purpose, that we become mentally ill. Climb a mountain, and suffer for it. That's good. Lie at home suffering in bed because you want to climb a mountain, but can't bring yourself to do it? That's bad.

Reik acknowledges this. Masochism benefits society. Your pain is our gain.

"For God and country," says the man who goes off to war and gets his nuts shot off.

Maybe I'm reading too much into Reik. He was writing in the 1940s, so he couldn't just flatly say Christ was into leather and social pressures crush us daily. But somewhere in all his verbiage, I get the feeling that's exactly what he wants to say. We often crush our own desires for others. Sometimes it's good, sometimes it's bad.

Reik believes every masochist is a frustrated sadist.

"Masochism is sadism in retreat, but with the inner expectancy of the ultimate push forward. It is characterized by unconscious defiance in defeat and by the secret foretaste and foreknowledge of coming conquest."

So which is better for society? People enjoying their own suffering? Or groups of sadists taking out their pain on the world at large?

I know which side the priests are rooting for.

Which is why Jesus is our role model.

Oh, Saint Sebastian, you moron. Next time you get shot full or arrows and manage to survive, lay low for a while. Don't run up to the emperor and say:

"Oh yeah, motherfucker. That's right. I'm alive, thanks to the grace and glory of god. Fuck you. Booyah!"

(And then they crushed him with stones and threw him in a privy. And that's why Sebastian is patron saint of outhouses.)

Watercolour Face Man

Clark Kent's Big Secret

I’m Clark Kent. And no one must ever know that I’m also Superman.

When I walk down the halls at work, or down the sidewalk of busy streets, no one gives me a second look. To them, I appear perfectly ordinary. Little do they realize that beneath the cheap suit and the discount glasses is their saviour, their god, their master. If I wanted to, I could destroy this puny little planet. It would be easy.

But I don’t. I keep quiet. I keep up appearances.

Sometimes, in order to perfect my disguise, I deliberately make stupid mistakes. For example, I broke the photocopier at work and Lois had to fix it for me.

“Oh, Clark! You nincompoop! Why do these things always happen to you?”

“Just bad luck, I guess,” I said, and laughed as I rubbed my inky fingers against my pants.

When my dry cleaner gives me the incorrect change, I keep my mouth shut. He’s been short-changing me for years. But if I said anything, he might suspect who I really am. So I let him turn a profit on what he thinks is my stupidity. Little does he realize I could melt his head with a two second blast from my laser vision.

Home from work, I watch hour after hour of mindless sitcoms. I hate every second of it, but I have to keep up appearances. This way, I’ll have something to talk about back at the office. And the neighbours hear the sound of my TV, turned up slightly too loud, and know that I am perfectly normal.

Last summer, I was mugged. Two young toughs threatened me with a knife.

“Give me all your money, faggot,” one of them said.

A mere knife wouldn’t penetrate my powerful flesh if it were shot out of a cannon. But I couldn’t let the two punks know that. I meekly handed over my wallet.

“You got pretty eyes,” one of them said, grabbing my face by the chin, forcing me to make eye contact. “And a pretty mouth.”

They dragged me into a back alley and took turns sodomizing me and forcing me to give them oral sex. For show, I put up the weakest of struggles. I feigned a gag reflex. The tears running down my face were entirely for their benefit. They couldn’t know the real me. My true identity, Superman, had to remain buried.

They were drunk, or on drugs. No matter. Had they been stone-cold sober hit men armed with chainsaws, I could have easily destroyed them. A blast of my super breath would have sent them flying. With a flick of my little finger, I could have broken their spines.

Instead, I meekly lay in the dirty alleyway, next to overturned garbage cans, letting the two toughs sodomize me, punch me, kick me, abuse me. Oh, if they only knew who they were fucking with. If they had any inkling at all…

When they were finished, they pissed all over me, laughing, and then left me there. I snuck home, hiding my battered face.

It’s not easy, keeping my identity secret. I’ve been doing it successfully for years now. No one knows I’m Superman.

My parents never guessed. They weren't interested in me enough to figure it out. All they did was fight with each other. They left me on my own. I spent most of my time in my room, reading comics.

None of the kids at school had a clue. Not that I had a lot of friends, growing up. I was in the chess club, for a week or two, but the other kids kept beating me, and I got discouraged and quit.

My wife doesn’t know. My kids don’t know. They have no respect for me at all. As far as they know, I’m a sad, bitter, middle-aged man who works for the government, pushing papers around a desk, a mere bureaucrat.

Little do all of these people realize that I am goddamn Superman. I can fly, I can shoot lasers out of my eyes, I have super strength, super hearing, super vision, super everything.

Oh, are they going to feel stupid if I ever slip up and the truth gets out.

“Clark Kent? He’s Superman? No way! I sat next to him in Calculus in grade ten. He was this snivelling little perv who was always trying to look up my skirt. Tony, my high school sweetheart, used to kick his ass every day after school. Holy shit! Clark is Superman?”

“Our son, Clark? That’s not possible. He was always such a quiet boy. I never thought he would amount to anything, and he’s Superman? No, no. It can’t be true. Can it?”

“He was a worthless employee, never getting his paperwork done on time. And you’re telling me the little shit was hiding the truth from us? Superman. No way. Amazing!”

And once the secret is out, there’ll be no reason to hold back. I’ll kill them. I’ll kill all my enemies. Everyone who ever fucked with me, who looked at me wrong, who gave me shit. I’ll kill the dry cleaner who short changed me. I’ll kill Lois for laughing at me over and over again. I’ll kill those muggers who fucked me in the alley – only I’ll rape them first, reducing their assholes to hamburger with my super cock. I’ll kill every single one of those stupid fuckers, then chop them into little cubes, fry them in a deep fryer, eat them, and shit them out into an unmarked grave.

And I won’t even hide the murders. Why should I? I’m Superman. Bullets can’t hurt me. Bombs can’t hurt me. I’m indestructible and from outer space. What are the police going to do? Nothing!

But, so far, my secret is safe. As far as anyone knows, I’m not Superman. There is no Superman. It’s all just silly stuff in kids’ comics.

Let’s just hope it stays that way.