[UA][OT] Virginia

[David M Jacobs]

On 20/04/07, Greg Stolze <gregstolze at comcast.net> wrote:
>
> What bugs me is the cryptic phrase "Ismail Ax" written on his arm in red
> ink.  Was that ever explained?  And that he was an English major, wrote
> weird plays...  "Ismail Ax" is probably a cipher or an anagram or something,
> which is just the kind of weird wordplay I put into my work.  FREQUENTLY.


"Aim is Axl" -- a thing for Guns 'n' Roses?

"Lamia Six" -- something about cannibalistic succubi?

Someone's done a list of anagrams here:
http://anagramme.spieleck.de/app/view/156210, incidentally.

Is it off topic?  Or is it on topic in a larger sense that we rarely
address?  What
> I mean by that is: If you're reading this mailing list, you're pretty much
> self-selected for an interest in weird stuff.  Violent weird stuff at
> that.  Does that give us some kind of tie, insight or sympathy -- however
> miniscule or tenuous -- to this crazyass murdering weirdo?  It's a
> disturbing thought.
>

I'm not sure that it's in the best of taste to start pulling complete ObUA
riffs off it -- it's a little too sore a point just yet -- but I get where
you're coming from.

Whether it gives us a tie to Cho is debatable.  Do Guido Knopp's obsessive
(but brilliant) documentaries on the figures of the Nazi movement make him a
neo-Nazi?  Probably not.  But it does show an interest and an understanding
of the underpinnings of Hitler's regime that is of unusual depth.

The difference is that whilst we're open to violent weird stuff, we can all
tell (I hope) that when we feel like taking a holiday from said violent
weird stuff, we can pack up and resume our normal lives.  For people like
Cho, that is normal life.

Perhaps, in a way, we as a group share some tenuous inocculation against
becoming "crazyass murdering weirdoes" in that we're capable of recognising
when sanity goes out the window; we have a "violent weird stuff" point of
reference by which to gauge the location of our respective realities.
Forewarned is forearmed, after all.


-- 
David M Jacobs
davidmichaeljacobs at gmail.com

"[N]ever hide a gun in a cat box. Some moron cat would manage to fire it."
-- Tim Powers.
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