den_down_unda, posts by tag: evil - LiveJournal

So, I'm going to be horrible this morning. This morning'sMetro featured some of the details of Whitey Bulger's conviction. For example, he was convicted on 11 of 19 counts of murder, with the other 8 declared Not Proven—i.e., we know you're guilty as sin, you sonofabitch, but the proof isn't there. And apparently, some victims' families are unhappy about the Not Proven verdicts. One even went to far as to say, "My father was murdered again today, 40 years later."

To which I say, "Nuts." This isn't a matter of a criminal getting away with his crimes. Justice, long-delayed, has finally caught up with James Joseph Bulger. He's going to spend the rest of what's left of his life in jail, and the only complaint should be that they didn't haul him in until he was 83, so he'll have less time to rot. It's a matter of having your own specific concerns, your personal feelings, addressed and soothed. And you know what? That ain't what the law is about. It should be about protecting the innocent and punishing the guilty, but it don't really get close to that either. In fact, I'm not sure what the law is about, but I know it's not coddling people's pwecious fee-fees, even if those people happen to be the family members of murder victims.

This may make me something of an ass, but I feel like the people in question should be grateful that a killer is going to jail, rather than splitting hairs about whether their long-dead relative's grievance was perfectly addressed.

I just Rickrolled someone. I'm going to Internet Hell, where all the modems are 3600 baud and the only webcomic is Family Circus reruns.

Now you know I had to do this quiz:
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The New York Rangers clinched a playoff spot last night. The New York Islanders did not. I'm very, very happy about this.

And I'm probably not making a lot of friends back on the Island. But you know, I grew up a Ranger fan in the middle of the Islanders' four Stanley Cups in a row. Hence the schadenfreude now.

This week is the U.S. Open Golf Championship. Confession time: I like watching golf on tv. I realize this makes me weird, even in the era of Tiger, but there it is. U.S. Open week is special, as it's the one week I don't root for a player. I root for the golf course. The USGA, golf's governing body in the U.S. and the organization that puts on the Open deliberately sets up Open courses to play as difficult as possible. They use a different course every year and take a year to prep, lengthening holes, deepening sand traps, and letting the rough grow thick and long. The net result is that the tournament is usually brutal.

Which is, to my mind, a good thing. It's nice to see the best in the world look like your average duffer once a year. Keeps 'em from getting complacent. Gives me an opportunity to laugh my ass off. Good stuff all around (well, except for the 155 guys who leave on Sunday, bruised and beaten; they're probably not so happy about it). So far the golf course—Winged Foot in Westchester—is kickin' ass and takin' names. The 1974 U.S. Open is referred to as the Massacre at Winged Foot, as the winner was 7-over par, which is good for somewhere around last in, say, the Hawaiian Open. Here's hoping for at least a mini-massacre this week, and plenty of schadenfreude to go around.

It wouldn't be so bad if I wasn't taking a How evil are you?" test at the time.


How evil are you?

So, Slashdot had a poll last week asking who would take over the world first. It had some of the usual suspects, like Stewie from Family Guy and the Brain, who actually has succeeded in taking over the world on occasion only to give in back immediately, usually out of pique at Pinky, and some others I don't remember. They also had Skeletor, from the He-Man action figure set/cartoon/really dreadful movie/new cartoon for people who remember loving the old cartoon, but are well aware how badly it will have aged and won't feel quite as silly if they're watching a cartoon that seems to be trying a little harder.

I always felt bad for Skeletor. I know I wasn't supposed to. After all, he was the prime force of evil, not just in the world, but in the universe, and only He-Man stood between him and total universal mastery. It wasn't quite clear what he'd do with the universe once he got it—he might simply destroy it rather than grinding us all under his boot for all eternity—but it wasn't going to be pleasant. And he had a skull for a face. On the list of "facial features that tell everyone you're not here to help with the Christmas decorations," a skull for a face is right at the top of the list, even above fiery red eyes. In fact, I think Skeletor had both, so you know he meant business.

On the other hand, he was kind of a nebbish. It's not as if Eternia was ever in real danger from Skeletor's minions. For one thing, his minions were just awful. He had the stupidest collection of henchmen and lackeys since the old Batman TV series from the '60s. And even on Batman, they got to change minions every episode. Poor old Skeletor was stuck with Beast Man and Evil-Lyn and all the others every damn day. I could imagine him going back to Skull Castle, or wherever he lived, every night, another plot squashed by He-Man with the unwitting aid of his incompetent underlings, and just drinking himself to sleep so he wouldn't have to dream of a universe where he got the talented sidekicks for a change.

And it's not like he was in charge of anything. Yeah, King Zarkon and Prince Lothar weren't very good strategists—Hmmm... my plan of making a big Row Beast and having it eat Voltron didn't work; guess I'll make a bigger Row Beast and have it bring paprika!—and got their asses kicked every episode, but at least they had the entire rest of the universe to rule. If they'd have gotten over their fascination with that one stupid planet, they could have had quite a nice time being tyrannical, taxing hungry peasants, exercising their droit de signeur, and all the other fun stuff that evil Emperors and their Crown Princes get to do. Not poor old Skeletor. He had to take over Eternia before he could get to the rest of the universe. So when He-Man crushed him yet again, there was no ruling for him, just long nights of Solitaire and cheap liquor.

I don't know that I ever went so far as to root for Skeletor, but I did kinda hope there was a middle ground somewhere between universal enslavement (yeah, it was a fictional universe, but even made-up people don't deserve that, with the possible exception of She-Ra, who was just stupid) and total humiliation. It was the same thing with Wile E. Coyote and the Roadrunner. You knew that if the coyote ever caught the roadrunner, he was just gonna eat him, and where was the fun in that? It's not like Iron Chef had come out yet. On the other hand, you just wanted to see the poor bastard win for once, to beat that smug, skinny-necked nightmare with his rocket speed and his sadistic beep. Just once! Would that be too much to ask? Well, yeah, because there'd be no more cartoon.

I'm not sure what all this means. Perhaps it's a coded rumination on real life, the Sisyphean struggle to exist from day-to-day, hoping and praying for the win that's never gonna come. More likely, though, it's just where my head is: Thinking about cartoons from twenty or more years ago, just like a cliche in a Kevin Smith movie. Because, well, I like cartoons, and most cliches have a basis in truth. So, even if Skeletor never got to unlock the secrets of Castle Grayskull and make himself absolute ruler of the universe, and his movie, unlike Sauron's three, tanked, at least he'll get to be the Official Prime Force of Evil for this Live Journal. Just like Erik Estrada, he probably needs the work.