Thomas Wictor

Do you ever have one of those days in which you ask yourself, “Is it just me, or has the planet lost its collective mind?” One of my favorite films is Miller’s Crossing. It’s very violent, so you’ve been warned. I didn’t understand it until recently. It’s a movie about coming to sad realizations and having to act on them.

There are millions of great lines in the movie, but here are two of the best.

I was in the neighborhood, feeling a little daffy. Thought I’d drop in for an aperitif.

Daffy. I’ve been feeling that way since I woke up.

I just concluded a very unsatisfying series of exchanges on Facebook, the topic being the legalization of drugs. The comment that began the exchanges was that the war on drugs was nothing but horrors and a nightmare. I asked a question and got a response, of sorts.

Eventually the author of the post listed what she sees as the horrors of the war on drugs, but I interpreted them as the horrors of drugs themselves: addiction, prostitution, crime… What really confused me was that she said the US has done nothing to stop the Afghans from growing opium, but the majority of the heroin goes to Europe, which has the lax drug laws she supports.

Then there was a very depressing post.

If you want to see the greatest argument against the notion of drugs fueling creativity, watch The Long Goodbye, starring Elliot Gould. Every single person was high, and virtually all of the dialog was improvised.

Nothing whatsoever makes sense. When asked if he wants a drink, Gould says, “Doesn’t matter to me.” And all the stoners in the audience go, “Whoa!”

Those of us who aren’t high say, “Huh?”

It’s a genuinely cringe-worthy film. Poor Sterling Hayden makes a complete fool out of himself, and when people aren’t babbling incoherently, they’re trying to be profound. The problem is, you can’t be profound when you’re high. Your drivel sounds really profound when you’re under the influence, but objectively speaking, it’s poo. Dennis Hopper was tripping on LSD the whole time he filmed Apocalypse Now.

Where’s the creativity? If someone is really tripping, they’re not acting. The outtakes from Apocalypse Now are ghastly. Hopper is barely under control. He’s essentially having a psychotic break. What’s enjoyable about seeing a great actor like Hopper reducing himself to the level of a homeless mental patient? Shouldn’t a good actor be able to pretend he’s high?

I’ve found that the more clearly I can think, the more creative I become. Today, for example, I realized something about the new Firefox: When it’s trying to load a defunct Website, it looks like a gavial.

It’s facing to the left. See the snout and the eye? It’s got “Connecting…” written on its body. Here’s the real thing for comparison.

I’m daffy enough on my own. Drugs don’t help, but neither does global, slow-motion collapse. When I bought a postcard on eBay today, here’s what it said.

No idea what’s going on. The International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR) are the laws that the US State Department uses to implement the Arms Export Control Act (AECA). ITAR has nothing to do with World War One postcards. Is this the result of the eBay hacking, or does the poor postcard dealer actually think that selling photos of weapons puts him under the jurisdiction of the US State Department?

After I receive that card, I’m going to sell it to someone in Europe, just to see what’ll happen. If Special Agents of the Office of Mobile Security Deployments show up to take me away, I’ll let you know.

As eBay was melting down, so was Google. Their new update is a catastrophe. Here’s part of an alert I got.

My own Website was hit hard. Nobody at Google will listen, though. You’ve heard of “too big to fail”? Well, some corporations are too big to care. They make horrendously bad decisions and crap in their own nests. That’s why you should all support free-market capitalism. It’s a self-correcting system. Consumers vote with their wallets, which forces corporations to improve. It’s only when the government steps in to bail out jackasses that we all suffer.

Speaking of jackasses, I got another private message from my fan.

Who’s stopping you from ignoring me, you stupid bastard? How many fucking times are you going to flounce out of the room? Go, already.

The daffy day ended with a message from a YouTube fan. About a week ago an evangelical atheist took offense at a comment I made.

“There are no invisible godfairies in the sky,” he said.

I don’t even know what “invisible godfairies” are. He then made a series of utterly inane statements, to which I responded.

That’s easily the most ignorant, superficial view of Christianity in the US I’ve ever read.

There’s nothing in any of the founding documents about “freedom from religion.” There isn’t a single local, state, or federal government agency that governs based on the existence of “godfairies.”

“In God we trust” was officially added to the currency in 1956 as a political move to differentiate the US from the atheist USSR. It was a raised middle finger to communists, not a statement of belief in “godfairies.”

“God Bless America” was written by Irving Berlin in 1918 as a patriotic song. What you obsessive atheists refuse to understand is that the term “God” in this context doesn’t refer to a specific religion.

Your own fanaticism has rotted your brain.

He replied with this.

“Fanaticism” is indeed the problem, but I don’t have any. Being atheist puts me in a neutral position.

I’m not a fanatic for not believing in invisible godfairies; it’s natural to not believe in invisible shit.

No, it’s the fanatics; the god freaks; the ones that put godfairies on your currency; they are the problem.

It seemed to have ended May 18, but today he got in the last word.

Sweetheart, I am banned. And I like it.

Addendum

A late entry has changed my mind. I now support the full legalization of all drugs. How can I argue with this?