When In ROM

I failed to write this past month due to depression. Let me get specific. I suffer from Bipolar II, and this last month is what shrinks like to characterize as a major depressive episode. For me, this condition means waking up each morning at 2, staring at the ceiling, and forcing myself to move. Not moving risks getting stuck in bed for a week, so I do eventually move. This is the good state of livable tolerance I experience under heavy medication. I will call the medicines fun names: gigglatitol, smileadram, donasnuffix, and (my favorite) cannaegetiupnaemore (now available as a chewable tablet).

Bipolar II is a mother fucker. I mean literally that it fucks mothers. If Bipolar II Disorder possessed a mother, the condition would fuck it, committing the ultimate Oedipal assault over and over. Also, bipolar disorder would seek out other mothers and fuck them as well. Who knows? Bipolar II could be fucking your mom right now. 

Let's take a short break from mother fuckery to look at what scientists used to call this condition. Like an Amway representative, internet pornographer, or cheap huckster, bipolar disorder bore many names: folie circulaire, mania, melancholia, schizophrenia, hysteria, manic depression.

Right now bipolar disorder is a glistening rainbow of horror. You have types I and II, cyclothymia, and NOS. Bipolar II means that I experience hypomanic episodes that extend into depressive episodes. Golly gee! What the fuck does that mean?

My shrink's office offered up many pamphlets to explain to me, in no uncertain terms, that several well-dressed, good-looking, white men and women lived perfectly normal, productive lives while dealing with this mother fucker. "Look," the pamphlets said, "normality is just within reach. Make sure to drink plenty of water when you take these." All the literature your psychiatrist is likely to give you about your lifelong friend is going to accompany an advertisement for a medication to treat the condition. Wee! 

Hypomania is a mild, elevated mood wherein the person is productive, generally happy and maybe even highly creative. Hypomania is also characterized with hypersexuality, compulsiveness, and sleeplessness. 

When The Dickensian is in a hypomanic state, he does not sleep for days at a time. I fucking mean that. I will stay awake for upwards of 48 hours doing things like teaching myself Chinese and Biblical Greek or writing portions of a novel that I will throw into the trash two weeks later. I will print the mother fucker, throw the mother fucker in the trash, and delete the mother fucker from my computer. Why? Who the fuck knows? Not God. God isn't real, so God does not know facts about why I throw mother fucking fiction into the mother fucking trash.

Other hypomanic behaviors I exhibit include making this Tumblr, teaching myself microeconomics and macroeconomics on Khan Academy, tracing very detailed etymologies of words on butcher paper (and throwing the mother fuckers into the trash), and learning enough Kanji and Japanese grammar to read bizarre Japanese comics and ROM texts I would not share with my closest associates (they are unspeakable abominations). My hypomania led me to possess the attention span of a rhesus macaque faced with the choice between having a banana or a larger banana. What a fucking exciting day for that fucking macaque! Two fucking bananas! Shit!

Oh, the irritability and inexplicable behavior. Most shit reeks of death and impermanence to me. When I am in a zone, I can bite your head clean off, spit down your throat, and toss your body into a drainage ditch. If you possess a child, keep that mother fucker away from me. Children irritate, annoy, befuddle, and disgust me. I love childish things, and I possess a perception in which everything is exciting and new like childhood. However, I have no time for the fucking monsters. 

I have been known to dance and perform strange gyrations in my underwear, weaving in intense zigzagging patterns on my tiptoes in front of my roommates while issuing odd humming noises. Yes, folks. This is not hyperbole. It is a grim reality. Look on. It is full of stars.

Most opportunities for sexual activity usually involve complex social parabolas, fractals, and psychological hurdles for me to navigate, so I have learned to live (as many of my friends tell me) as a monk. I lived in a cloister-esque room for two years. The room had a bed, a desk, bookshelves, and a window that opened onto a hallway. I lived in an office that had an indoor window for two fucking years. Fuck! I have lived in a garage in the past year. Now, I live in a basement. Macaques! Two fucking bananas!

All of this behavior will last for as many as two and to upwards of eight weeks. The hypomania is followed with a staggering, stumbling, stunting, shuffle into torpor.

Oh. Depression has many forms. I call mine Pokemon, Star Trek, X-Files, comic books, roleplaying games, food. The clever distractions from the omnipresent, dangerous specter of suicide that hovers around the edges of my perception like a halo of light around a beautiful full moon.

My original intention was to draw all of this out for you in hilarious charts and graphs. X-axes indicating depression. Y-axes indicating captured Pokemon, ice-cream consumed, or number of issues of comics about monsters that issue from and live in swamps read in a month. All of the lines go up graceful arcs that reach another apex of hypomania, and, once again, I get to choose between two mother fucking bananas. Look at The Dickensian caper about. Yes. Yes.

So, "Why are you writing this?" you wonder. Do I want your pity? Fuck your pity. I spit vehemently on your pity. I find that vile. I am writing this because in addition to living as I describe (without a diagnosis until this past year) for my whole life, I also face the challenge of normality versus abnormality. 

The whole mother fucker starts with clinical definitions. After all, the entire field that studies, treats, and examines my state is called abnormal psychology. Every individual with a mental health condition is already categorized under a giant heading that simply reads "abnormal." Fucking wonderful. 

Here's an anecdote about abnormal psychology. When I was a teenager, two other teenagers in Colorado shot and murdered several other teenagers and teachers at their school. I dressed funny in high school. I always read books, magazines, and comics that most other students did not have or show interest in. I listened to music with lots of swears and references to Satan because Satan ruled. The Columbine Massacre led to several students asking me with genuine fear in their eyes, "Are you going to shoot up the school?"

Really. Several, fucking times. I was eventually hauled into the counselor's office for several conversations about my mental state and whether I possessed any aggressive thoughts. Jesus, fuck. My response: "I never felt an ounce of aggression until you took me out of my AP English class to grill me about whether I felt any aggression."

Look back at all of the behavior and conditions I have described. Go on. Just skim it, even the part about dancing in my underwear. Now. I will tell you a fact. I do not own a single gun. If my depression were on an X-axis and the number of guns I owned on a Y-axis the graph would be a straight fucking line because I have never and will never own a firearm.

After the Colorado theater shooting and Sandy Hook, articles pop up time and again about mental health in relation to criminality. I have read shit written about people with bipolar disorder that makes me want to fucking vomit. Correlations with violence. Correlations with murder.

Mother fucker.

All my bipolar disorder correlates to is Pokemon, lack of exercise, and re-reading Philip K. Dick novels. Normality rears its ugly, mediocre, insipid face over everything glorious like some sort of babylonian, hideous colossus. 

What is normal anyway? Can you point to normality? Describe normality to me. Is normality the American way? Is normality your way? Is normality your family's way? Your religion's? Your doctor's? Your shrink's? Shit.

Normal and abnormal are relative quantities, and neither is a quality. You can measure a fucking quantity, and you assign qualities. I'll get very direct. Reality is one thing. There is only one reality. However, every object and perceiving intelligence in reality emerges from co-dependence.

This is not an argument for some hippy-ass solipsism, so if you want to counter with that go out into the pussy and dick fields I cultivated for you and munch on a whole crop of both. Eat pussy and dick until your mouth runneth over with genital honey.

Here is the Buddhist view on it. Co-dependent origination explains why normal and abnormal exist. There is one reality, but each being in it exists only because of all the other states that surround that being. Each thing only exists because of its dependence on all the causal forces that made that thing. Normal and abnormal. Fuck. That ain't shit. You are only you because everything before you happened and made you. Change one thing, one fucking thing, and you are not you anymore.

We want to think that normal is a state that levels the field. Normal is what most people are. Normal is desirable because normal means everything else. Abnormal contains all the traits and behaviors that society does not want. However, normal and abnormal are just vantages that are co-dependent. Normal now is not normal 50 years ago. Normal now is not normal 5 years ago. Normal behavior now will appear as madness in 100 years. 

Does that mean my psychological condition does not exist? Fuck no! That shit is real. I deal with that shit. I take medicine, meditate, and get psychological treatment for that shit. Dealing with that shit is hard work.

What I am saying is that standards of normal and abnormal, mental health, and our culture's massive, continuously emerging gun tragedy are all interrelated problems. A child was suspended from school for pointing his finger like a gun and making noises. A teenager gets suspended for six weeks while a suspicious Facebook post is scrutinized to ensure that the poster is safe enough to return to school. Two kindergarten age girls are denied access to school for talking about shooting each other when they were referring to Hello Kitty bubble blowers. I describe life altering events for these kids, and it all emerges from poor perception, a lack of reason, and fear.

America thinks that the murder simulation in Call of Duty is normal, yet America cringes in horror at a mosque built in New York City next to Ground Zero. America thinks that Five Guys is normal, yet America cringes at the idea of reevaluating its agricultural system to feed the developing world. America thinks that owning an AR-15 is a normal right while America believes that it needs to protect itself from an ill-defined cancerous, mental health dilemma America cannot address with its resources sapped from misappropriation, war, and corruption.

Madness and sanity shift like water flowing over water. All that is real is what is real. Everything else is just a perception or an idea, ephemera. Mao said, "Political power grows from the barrel of a gun." Real power comes from staring down the barrel of reality and spitting in its vile fucking face. Join me in that wild, blue morning. For, the meek shall not inherit the earth, it shall be the weird.

Other labs repeated Rachel's results. Humanity could reverse the onset of widespread and immediate agricultural failure. Soon, food could grow under the real sun again. 

Excitement over Rachel's discovery swelled to a fever pitch. Revelry at her laboratory became the norm over the next several weeks.

Stop test pattern.

Scene missing.

Rewind the reel and adjust for delay.

"Ask for more money, dear," Dr. Hawthorne advised. He sipped his gin, served neat. "I want this handed off to you to refine the virus. There's no guarantee of the treatment's longevity."

"But," Rachel began, "those people from the military were in here not two hours ago. I can't in good conscience..."

"Good conscience," said Dr. Hawthorne, "is a luxury. It is at a severe premium. It's rarity makes it doubly valuable."

Rachel slowed her breathing. Om mani padme hum. She thought the mantra did her little good, but she/it/theworld ended up in her head anyway, crawling back under its rock. 

"This is reality. You've attracted the interest of several domestic and international agricultural combines as well as all the major pharmaceutical firms." He gestured grandly at the assembled revelers beyond his office. "You also made that happen." He finished his gin, set the glass down, and produced the first of what would become several voluminous contracts.

"Remember," he said as he produced a pen, "your work is not your property. This will go ahead without you. If your concern is ethical, you may as well be involved to at least control the direction of research."

Rachel began signing contracts. Om mani padme hum.

"Tests on human subjects will begin in two weeks."

The Neutralist looks very, very excited about this confrontation. Look at all that sweat just lash down his face. If he doesn't get a chance to get Neutral up in this piece, I'm afraid he'll blow right there.

Ditko brings the hammer down on homeless people in a way I never thought possible. Look at how he gets right inside the head of that homeless person and luridly paints a picture of his thoughts. Homeless people languish and ruminate on how the world owes them a handout. There. If you ever wanted to know anything else about homelessness or its root causes, you need not ever pursue it because Steve Ditko has just presented it to you in a nutshell right here. Wonder no more!

Ditko also understands working people. He understands that work involves a room filled with strange, nightmarish machines that serve no understandable function. Work also involves your boss coming out to pay you in cash announcing each payday that you are being compensated for your time and skill with cold, hard cash. Something for something. Oh, real work also involves only white men. Sorry, women and non-white men, anything you do is not real work.

What's the payoff for each side in this Ditko-esque false dichotomy? Well, the homeless guy crafts some sort of club and decides to rob the hardworking white guy (who is walking around counting his money on streets full of cash-crazed bums wielding clubs).

However, The Neutralist intervenes to ensure that this morality plays reaches a conclusion you probably guessed already:

Great writing tip if you're an aspiring Randian drone like Steve Ditko: have your characters explicitly explain what they represent in case the people reading your tripe are dumb enough to buy into it.

Woah! Look at The Neutralist Neutral it up Neutral style! Have you noticed that I stopped editorializing and refuting Ditko's points? Yeah.

Every sane person reaches this point in stupid, pointless arguments. Let's say you're arguing heatedly about poodles. You are decidedly anti-poodle, and your opponent is an outspoken poodle-crat. Both of you do the equivalent of a silly-slap fight in terms of repartee and find yourselves getting nowhere. However, you look at the clock and notice the extreme passage of time that you, a born anti-poodler, wasted arguing about something you already did not care for. Think about it. You hate poodles, but you just spent hours talking about something you dislike. You must eventually cede ground in order to move forward. You put on big girl or boy pants and just stop arguing. No last words. No final jabs. You declare that the poodle conversation reached its terminus ages ago, and it is now collapsing on itself to form a new universe of stupid, pointless conversations.

Ditko presents an interesting problem for my method because this piece is essentially one long tirade against another long tirade. However, I am going to strap on those big boy trousers and let those last two pages speak for themselves. 

No panel by panel refutation. No philosophical analysis. Ditko's insanity passed that point in these pages. It's like having a discussion with a recording of half of a discussion in which the recorded half is the opus of a deranged misanthrope spouting hackneyed disinformation about class relations (on speed).

I will leave these two pages with the precious gift of silence.

Welcome to the irony of an image equaling the irony of wanting to stop looking at the image. It's Zen and the Art of shutting your fool mouth.

Is this copping out? Fuck you. Go write several thousand words about this diarrhea hemorrhage of a comic and talk about copping out. Jesus, fuck.  

Oh, here's a blow up of my favorite panel before I go. Next time, the awful conclusion to this atrocious comic.

I must admit that I do not follow the chains of this argument. Is Ditko arguing that because all rights issue from a source other than the self that rights are insufficient protection against tyranny? Is he saying that people who are neutral will turn their heads when this unbearable rights-taking-awaying goes down? As the Superdude bursts forth from the oppressing chains of communism and religion to relish in his brilliant, illuminating nudity (so very, very nude), Ditko counters that there is an inalienable right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

Let's stop for a second and think. My government, that's the U.S. government, has a founding document. It's the U.S. Constitution. I am going to post its fucking preamble:

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

Let's do a quick check of what is there and what is not. We learned to play this game in time. You reach out into reality with whatever senses you possess and determine if a thing is there or not. Now, using your sight, determine if life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness are in that preamble. They're not? O.K. Is that phrase found anywhere in the Constitution? It's not? Oh. Where is it? Oh, yeah. The Declaration of Independence. 

Now. The Declaration of Independence is a mighty fine document, leading to some mighty fine changes. It's a sea-change that incorporates Greek and European philosophy to create a monumental step forward regarding the relation of humans to their government. However, I think Steve Ditko may have, once again, gotten it wrong.

Let's go back to my buffet analogy. When you pick and choose what you believe from the beliefs buffet, you're going to get belief related salmonella. You're going to look down at your plate and realize that some beliefs don't work right together to create the flavor profile you need, so you put some stuff back and take stuff out. You're going to get serious belief food poisoning. Get your fucking hands out of that belief buffet.

Ditko wants the reader to accept he has not done this through his insistence on A:A, essentialisms, and lambasting neutrality. However, he fails to grasp that what America promises in the Constitution is Justice, peace, the general Welfare (you tear each other to shreds figuring that one out), and to secure liberty for the founders and their descendants. That would be us. The U.S. Constitution does not promise life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. 

"The Dickensian," grumbles some fuck in the crowd, "that's not what Ditko was saying. He was arguing that the government, God, and elections promise those things but they can take them away because they issue from the individual and not from an outside source." Shut-up you fucking grumbler. I totally already know that. God.

Since all rights are granted, all rights can be taken. Ditko shows you who will take those inalienable rights from you. Lawbreakers, the poor, the disenfranchised, the violent, socialists, the entitled, the government's hand in business. The Neutralist bewails the fate of all these people. What's Ditko's solution? He shows a white dude studying and trying really hard to improve his fate despite whatever is in his way. The Neutralist flips out on this guy like an evil disembodied force that bears down on all hardworking, studious white people and screams about the inhumanity and selfishness of self-improvement.

My laptop begins to fly into pieces as I carve into that dead horse like a slab of the softest and most delicious standing rib roasts.

The best philosophical questions are really simple to ask, but they are a mother fucker to answer. Where do rights come from? 

Ditko presumes there exists an inalienable right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. He borrows this from Thomas Jefferson. Jefferson's statement is ironic given his ownership of people, but I won't open that up. Let's get into why Ditko's taking this idea from the belief buffet is ironic.

It's ironic because for Ditko's argument to stand the source of the right must come from the individual. Individuals produce this right from the sheer fact that individuals are individuals. A:A.

Now, I'll ask my question. Where do individuals come from?

Fucking. Simple as that. How many do you need to fuck? Masturbatory fucking requires one. However, you get into a complicated position if the masturbation involves fantasizing, pornography, another person, toys, etc. because all of that requires the existence of others. Even masturbation requires someone else. Masturbation can even lead to the production of individuals with modern technology.

Now.

If we start with the basic premise, that individuals arise from fucking. We accept that multiple persons are involved. What we have here is a small problem. Inalienable right comes from the individual (and it must because rights that come from anywhere else can be taken away), but individuals come from other individuals. Oops. A paradox. A is not A. If you take this argument to its fullest extreme, no mother should ever keep a baby to term because time spent on allowing the baby to gestate would be time spent allowing a tiny need machine to suck the life out of its host. Babies are the ultimate Ditko-Neutralist enemy. They require another person to survive.

Steve Ditko illuminates what must be a very cold existence. He rejects the solace and protection of any government because governments can take the rights they give back. Only self-work leads to self-progress and fulfillment. 

I'm not going any further with this page. If Ditko actually leads the life outlined in this stupid comic, his life must be very lonely and lacking fulfillment. Even the rewards these super hardworking white guys earn, money, requires other people around. This is money earned and success earned regardless of the cost. The perfect-white-dude asks rhetorically, "Why hold myself back?" If you never hold yourself back you end up doing all the things Ditko is afraid that the sheerest drop of communal, giving, or charitable thinking will produce. Never holding yourself back ultimately means breaking any rule that stands between you and success. Yes, many of those rules are stupid. However, I am glad many of them exist. The right to unchecked success for horrible assholes should not be the foundation of any society. 

Ditko's philosophy only leads to the right to pursue death, slavery, and the pursuit of sadness.

Who actually argues the way The Neutralist does in this comic? Only the very crazy. Ditko's depiction is as fictional as phrenology, pure fucked up quackery. He takes a very extreme, rare viewpoint and bandstands it for all to see as a regular occurrence. 

Look at the smirk that Ditko draws across the grinning goblin's face. Gaze in wonder at the unsubtle symbolism of his suit jacket colored as both black and white. Witness the Freudian glory of Ditko rendering his miscarriage of logic as being bent over and ready to receive his ham-handed criticism (with hands of pure honey glazed ham) in the seventh panel.

War atrocities. The Holocaust. Injustice. Justice. The Cult of Pure Reason vs. Truth. The Neutralist hiding under his hands and smiling vs. The Accusing Stare of The Avenging World.

Fuck you, Ditko.

O.K. Let's play it your way, Ditko. Let us assume that any time a person refuses to take a clear, defiant stand on an issue they condemn victims, destroy the good, and aid evil. Let us assume there exists a large population of True Neutralists out there that openly express the view that it is not their place to judge anyone for anything at any time and that all viewpoints are equally valid no matter how crazy. All victims of injustice, war atrocities, and crime receive indirect condemnation. Religion and spirituality run rampant despite desperate cries for attention from those who know better because they have reason on their side.

Who aids the downtrodden? Who fixes the miscarriage of justice? Who holds criminals and perpetrators of atrocities to account?

Is it the good people, Ditko? Wait. Good people cannot bother to involve themselves in the problems of those who are victims of all that nastiness because if they do they screw up the world.

Remember your thesis at the beginning, the point you are trying to prove in your fucking brain curdling argument? The Avenging World steps out from a sea of newspaper ink to indict the world that all of its problems are the result of individuals, and individuals must sort out their own shit to solve their own problems.

Wait-a-minute. If that's true, why are you talking about people aiding the victims of injustice? Ditko's view taken to its logical conclusion necessitates that victims stand up, dust themselves off, and go about their merry way earning money after they've sucked in a lungful of Zyklon B. Grab those bootstraps, folks! Hoist yourselves high and forget all your cares as you rebuild yourself with no one else's help. 

Second, justice is supposed to be blind. The representation of justice as blind means that justice is not supposed to serve either side in civil or criminal disputes. Justice serves all through actively serving no one. Justice, by its very ideal nature, is supposed to be (Oh, My, God) neutral. 

Fuck you, Ditko. 

With shaking hand, I turn the page, staving myself for whatever comes next.

Jesus, fuck. The Belligerent Protester. Ditko. Why the fuck did you put a blurb about police quelling the Watts Riots up there in the top right hand corner? Why do you represent dissent with a barefooted, disheveled hippy that loots and thoughtlessly attacks others with the intent of demanding the right to violate other people's rights? Why did you make a huge fucking deal of justice and injustice and draw a jack booted thug of a cop getting ready to hammer into that crazy ass hippy with sweet, sweet police brutality?

Ditko is crazy. You see; I keep forgetting. Here's the thing. This page reflects deep, deep paranoia about race, class, and the global 1968 student protest movement. Ditko's demented caricature of dissent reflects a viewpoint steeped in both white, middle-class privilege and absolute doggerel.

I will play the game, Ditko. All dissenters violate the rights of the people they protest through a twin pronged assault. They demand special rights and privilege, and they harm others' rights through the violence and vehemence of their assault, looting, and social disorder.

Ditko's problem here is that he forgets that he's establishing this beautiful double standard. Rights are great for people that act the way Ditko wants you to act, but if you transgress or actually fight for your actual inalienable rights, it is cool when the cops kick the shit out of you.

Wait.

Rights for certain people is called privilege. Ditko. Didn't you lambaste privilege with your smiling little toad earlier? Yeah, yeah, you did. Please, please stop.

Oh, you're going to keep going. That's cool, you friendless fucker. I'm armed with a high caliber brain and the word fuck. I will continue to go out of my way working to aid people in need and getting paid with other people's taxes to do it. I will pay my taxes and enjoy their sweet fruits as I function in a society with maintained infrastructure and social safety nets. I will continue to hammer into this garbage with every ounce of outrage I can muster because to do otherwise would be to live like the very Neutralist you depict with this fucking abortion of your own deep, deep gift for comic art. Keep it coming, Ditko. The Dickensian relishes in hating you.

Initiating the reader into the higher orders of stupidity, The Neutralist stands ready with his jowly jowls to sit as a soft strawman fallacy for Ditko to fall into after his pure individualism leaves him on a horse so high that the pressure differential in his body begins to cause massive hemorrhagic spasms.

When I began analyzing this piece, I pointed out Ditko's problems with essentialism. Essentialsms are like crack cocaine to Steve Ditko. He is addicted to them. Ditko is getting his philosophy (secondhand once again through his crack dealer, Ayn Rand) through Aristotle.

A:A means A is A. One thing cannot exist as two things. A thing is itself and nothing else. Eating this idea up like a Capuchin monkey munching on a banana, Ditko mashes it around in his mouth for a while, softens it, and bends over to vomit it back into your mouth. That's what reading this comic is to me. Steve Ditko hovers over my mouth on top of a short ladder to wretch this garbage into my gullet like an emperor penguin feeding its squealing chicks.

Ditko uses this tautology to suggest through The Neutralist that being in the middle of anything is very, very bad. Take a gander at what's weighed on The Neutralist's scales of justice. Good-Evil. Truth-Lies. Fact-Fiction. Life-Death. Victim-Aggressor. Rationality-Irrationality. Justice-Crime. Right-Privilege. Honesty-Distortions. Laws-Force.

According to Ditko, all people must choose one side, good or evil. He's basically reduced all of human existence to the simplicity of a terrible video game that offers players the choice to play through as either good or bad. If you argue you are in the middle, you are apparently a pudgy, creepy ass gnome that wears sunglasses and balances concepts on scales.

There's also a definition of neutral there for the reader just so Ditko could condescend to you some more from the heights of Over Man mountain where he sleeps with tissue boxes on his feet and allows his finger nails to grow into nautilus-esque spirals of dead skin.

Here's the deal. A:A is the Aristotelian law of identity. It comes from Metaphysics  ,and Ditko is misusing it with the same gravitas of giving the trigger codes for a 50-megaton nuclear warhead to a toddler. Ditko is ignoring that Aristotle's notion that a thing is itself had nothing to do with saying that all things must be one thing and nothing else. 

Aristotle talked about the law of identity in order to begin a discussion of how things in the world maintain their substance. Here's an example. A candle is a candle. When you light it, it becomes a burning candle. As the candle burns, the flame consumes the wax. It melts. What do you call the remaining substance? A melted-ass pile of wax.

Aristotle was tackling the idea of how everything in the universe is always changing, yet humans still view things as objects themselves with their own substance. However, the candle in my delightful little metaphor (that for once did not involve the word fuck) undergoes a transformation along a continuum from candle to pile of melted-ass wax.

Check it. Ditko argues that any person, at any time must exist on either side of these extremes. If you argue that you exist in the middle, you are, in essence, on the evil side because you are no longer on the good side. Since all things are the things they are at all times, good is always good. Evil is always evil.

The Neutralist is a smelly little cock goblin that wants to equate all of these things.

Fuck you, Ditko. That is stupid.

Aristotle never went so far as to conclusively stop at A:A because things are always changing. The substance never remains the same. Good and evil are dependent upon culture, environment, setting, perspective, privilege, class, history, and many other factors.

Stopping at A:A is like saying that an atom actually looks like the little orbital drawing of it they teach in middle-school. It is that stupid.

All of the things listed on those scales exist on a series of continuums, sliding scales that actually move with the force of who is asking what those things are and at what time. 

Are certain things always evil? Yes, I believe that human trafficking is always wrong. "Why," chortles Ditko, "The Dickensian, I believe I have bested you." 

Shut-up, you lunatic. The existence of certain moral absolutes does not presuppose that all morals are absolutes, you retrograde troglodyte.  

O.K. Is lying always wrong? "Yes, because it distorts the truth," Ditko says. Well, what if I were in Nazi occupied Holland hiding Jews in my attic. The Nazis tromp over and say, "Oh me, oh my. I think you have some Jews up there. Do you?" Is it wrong to lie now? No, it is not. Lying is probably the most awesome thing you have ever done in your life at this point. If you bring up Godwin's Rule, I refer you here. Please, shut your hole.

Extreme? Sure. Is life extreme? Life is as extreme as a dolphin riding a sick-ass wave on a surfboard all the way from the Atlantic Ocean to my house to deliver me a pizza while wearing sunglasses, smoking a cigarette, and playing Marble Madness for the NES on a Power Glove.

Everyone in the world, including Ditko, is The Neutralist. Every person must navigate a fucking minefield of moral choices that range between things that are always, always wrong and many things that are very, very murky.

Fuck you, Ditko. I know I promised page three tonight, but I must forego that pleasure until tomorrow. Thanks for reading. 

And remember: if you believe in Steve Ditko's shit, The Neutralist (that tiny gargoyle) will forever haunt your wretched slumber, tapping his sausage fingers together and weighing out the true measure of you on his stupid, stupid scales.

O.K. Ditko revs up with a scathing critique of the state-of-the-world-as-you-know-it. Ditko already creates a logical problem through making a false dichotomy. Essentialisms spread through Ditko's writing like syphilis through the body of a person with syphilis. Similes rock. 

Ditko establishes that at one end of a spectrum lies everyone fucking up the world. He starts with a very Nietzschean devaluation of standard values. Well, the values that Steve Ditko sees as standard. Ditko diagnoses the ills of the world as drug users, those who want to sacrifice for others wants and needs, lovers of peace, and prayer.

What Ditko is doing is the same thing Ayn Rand does. Getting Nietzsche fucking wrong. I'm going to get knee deep in philosophical shit here, so run and get your rubber boots because it's going to go all over the place.

Nietzsche does this thing, right? It's called the transvaluation of Western values. He argues that values in Western culture (as they have stood for centuries) are the result of a slave morality that began with culture in the Hebrew bible. This was transmitted to Christianity and leads to an up is down, black is white world where weakness, humility, and guilt trump over the true virtues of strength, pride, and vice. 

Ditko repeats that theme here. He argues that trying to solve the world's problems through helping people is like to trying to put out a fire through fanning away the smoke. 

Get used to seeing this throughout my long, long essay. Fuck you, Ditko.

I'm not taking the time to tackle Nietzsche. What I'm going to do is point my mother fucking finger in the face of Ayn Rand and Ditko and demand they account for this nonsense.

People that love Objectivism get Nietzsche and Aristotle secondhand through Ayn Rand. It's like eating your pasta strained through a filter in a sewage treatment plant. Let me show you how wrong Objectivism gets Nietzsche.

In Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Nietzsche expresses his ideal of the Superman, the perfect human. The Superman embodies all the characteristics flushed out of slave morality in the transvaluation of Western values, so Nietzsche clearly has a serious rager for this guy. The Superman transcends his culture's values, religions, morality, and edicts to reach pure, individualized human potential. As you read this book, you literally feel Nietzsche's erection pressing into your back. It's pretty gross. 

Ditko suggests through his mouthpiece, The Avenging World, that the real solution to the world's problems lie with the individual. All problems are solved on the individual level because all problems are problems for individuals. Each person needs to sort out their own shit, so the world doesn't become a giant pile of shit.

Fuck you, Ditko.

The solution for Ditko is that people become their own Superman to sort out their own mess and the world will be saved for everyone. Hurray! No, do not celebrate. This is dumb, and I mean that with its real meaning. This stupidity renders me speechless. Except it doesn't, so I'll keep tearing this into tiny, tiny shreds until it's a bloody, bloody pulp.

This is the problem. In Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Nietzsche's main character, Zarathustra, undergoes the transition to the Superman. He also has a John the Baptist thing going where he runs around screaming at people that he heralds the coming of the Superman. This is a good book if you like dudes screaming really loudly about philosophical issues and parables.

If Nietzsche had written it today, I guess the treatise would get the all capitalization treatment: I HERALD THE COMING OF THE SUPERMAN. I AM A SMELLY PROPHET OF ATHEISTIC DOOM THAT LIVES IN A HUT MADE OF MY OWN DUNG, AND I BURN MY OWN DUNG FOR FUEL. FOLLOW ME, YOU FOOLS. WHY ARE YOU NOT LISTENING? IS IT THE DUNG SMELL? IS IT BECAUSE THIS IS ALL CAPITALIZED? AM I TOO LOUD? PLEASE DON'T LEAVE ME. I'M SO LONELY!

Yeah, that's how the book reads. 

Zarathustra also makes a really good point, one that Ayn Rand forgot when she was picking and choosing from philosophy like it's a buffet table and cobbling it together with pieces of twine to sell to idiots for money. Fuck you, Ayn Rand. Hey, I could make a storybook out of this. It would be called: Goodnight Moon, Fuck You, Ayn Rand, Fuck you, Steve Ditko. When Ayn Rand made her shit salad from the salad bar of Western philosophy, she neglected to mention that Nietzsche writes in a very nuanced way. It's a really, really crazy way, but it's still very nuanced.

There is also a lot of this funny thing called irony, so Nietzsche sometimes really meant something different than what he directly expressed. Here's the deal. When the part of your brain that critically reasons shuts down, you see whatever you want.

If there's a man in a field pointing an AK-47 at me standing next to a table covered with cheesesteaks, I have a real problem! I love cheesesteaks, but there's this guy with the gun. When you forget to critically think, it's like only seeing the cheesesteaks and running out into the field to get shot. I enjoyed my cheesesteak/AK-47 analogy.

Ayn Rand did not take into account (when spewing forth her ultra-capitalist, individualistic mung from her gaping insectoid maw) that in Zarathustra there's this big section about a thing called the downgoing. Downgoing gets an entire motif in the piece. Zarathustra, like most crazy people, had his huge realization on top of a mountain. Up there, he was the over man, or the Superman. Except, Zarathustra was not satisfied. He felt he needed to run down the mountain and help everyone else become super people as well.

Wait. So Nietzsche did not advocate a blind adherence to pure individualism in a solipsistic nosedive into his own navel? That's right! Ayn Rand is stupid. Steve Ditko gets this shit through her; therefore, Ditko is really, really stupid. It's the transitive relation of escalating, exponential stupidity. 

Ditko and Ayn Rand both misunderstand what pure individuals do. They don't have this sudden apotheosis and become perfect beings that stand above the rest of the masses. Since Ditko and Rand hate religion, I laugh at how slavish and religious their worship of the individual is. That's right. If you believe this stuff, I am sitting here, laughing at you as loud as I can. I laugh at you when I eat. I laugh at you when I sleep. I laugh at you when I give money to the homeless. I laugh at you when I laugh at you.

If these pure individuals were really pure individuals, they would have the fucking sense to help other people reach their potential. Since these pure ones are engaged in the downgoing, they are not spending all their time eating cake on top of Over Man Mountain. They are down here helping regular people become better people. Wait. It's almost like they're part of a social unit that extends beyond their own fucking skin. My, God. It's full of stars.

Fucking morons.  

On the Saturday after Thanksgiving, I arrived at my apartment around quarter of 10 in the evening. Feeling unusually relaxed after spending time with family and friends, I began unloading my car.

Once I entered my place, which is a basement apartment underneath my landlord’s house, I did my usual routine. Taking out my keys, wallet, and phone, I put them in a drawer I always use, so I do not lose anything. I removed my jacket because, even though the temperature was in the 30s, I was getting warm moving my luggage inside. Stepping back to the door, I locked it, stepped outside into the chilly air, and shut the door.

Oops.

I immediately understood that I just locked my wallet, phone, and keys inside the apartment. Quelling my panic with some deep breathing, I walked up the lawn to my landlord’s door. His dogs barked with excitement. The landlord’s SUV was parked in his spot, so I hoped he was in. I rang the doorbell several times. No answer returned except the baying of hounds. Gulping, I knocked with some force on the door. The sound of mutts’ paws scratching across hardwood floor was all that greeted my calls. Muffled howls and barks blasted through the walls of the house.

Shit.

Sucking in another deep breath, I thought of my options. If nowhere had a middle, my apartment was right there. I figured it was close to 10, so knocking on doors for help was out.

My apartment is close to a mile and a half from a gas station near the county’s road. I say the county’s road because the county really has one main road. This is a fairly rural place except for stripmalls and other suburban wastage. Running north to south, the county’s road is two lanes on either side, and all roads around here lead to it like all roads going to a pathetic rural American Rome.

I concluded my best option was to hoof it up to the gas station and beg to use their phone for help. Breathing steadily, I rubbed my numb arms and started up the road to the gas station.

There is no shoulder on this road. It’s a twisty, country thoroughfare that dips and winds its way over small rises as it cuts deeper and deeper into woods and fields.

Warming up as I walked, I began to see this as an adventure. This pathetic positive spin would soon get dashed. Blue and purple nighttime trees hung over the road making a tunnel through which I tromped. Graceful power lines sliced through the air overhead making pleasing parabolas that guided my way. Several cars passed, and I waved to each one. I was unsurprised when no one stopped.

Passing farmhouses and crumbling tobacco barns, lit homes and dark houses, I soldiered on to the gas station. Reaching the access road that the gas station sat on, I turned right and made my way to its lights that blossomed into view like welcome beacons. Quickening my pace, I slapped at my face to dispel the numbness that crept over my jaw, nose, and cheeks. I reached the parking lot, and I discovered the gas station was closed for the night.

Fuck.

Passing cars hummed and roared on the county’s one road. The access road sloped down and to the left where it met the county’s one road at a stoplight. Reevaluating my options, I imagined this as a Choose Your Own Adventure scenario. Did I turn to page 38 and knock on a house with lights on? Did I turn to page 145 and go back to the house to wait for the landlord? Did I turn to page 78 and walk to the sheriff’s office in the next town which was five miles up the county’s one road?

I flipped to page 78, and I started my hike down the slope to the county’s one road in the hopes of getting assistance with the sheriff’s office. I halted at the highway. Cars flew north and south. The road quieted, and I froggered across the highway. On the other side, another road dumped onto the county’s one road at the traffic light. I wanted to go north, so I made sure I was walking against traffic.

An SUV glided down this road and slid to a stop at the light. My thoughts tumbled as to whether I should ask for help because I was alone on a cold night in a t-shirt, and I assumed I looked crazy.

I should pause to describe myself. I am short, cresting around five foot five. My build is that of the common marshmallow, so I am physically nonthreatening. I wore jeans, and the t-shirt I had on was a forest green with a white triskelion pattern on it. I recently shaved my gigantic beard, so I was clean shaven. Also, I keep my hair long, but I had just had it cut. I was not disheveled, but I did not look dressed for the weather.

Tossing my concerns aside, I hopped up onto a concrete embankment that made a turn lane for people coming off the county’s road going south. I waved to the SUV’s driver and hoped he did not drive off when the light turned. He lowered his window. The man gave me the look people give crazy folks when they ask for money. “Thanks for stopping to listen,” I said, “I locked myself out of my apartment and need to get the sheriff’s office up the road for help. I know giving me a ride is out of the question, but if you have a phone, could you call them and say I need help?” His eyes scanned me up and down, and his, “I just stepped in dog shit,” expression remained unchanged. A woman in the front seat next to him stared at me, her face a rictus of pure terror. “I’ll tell you what,” said the man, “I’ll call somebody, and they’ll get here soon.”

I thanked him with genuine gratitude and began my wait.

Cars careened through the night and paused with the rhythm of the traffic light. When the light turned green, the cars zoomed into the evening, leaving me on the embankment. I cradled my arms to stay warm. Making no attempts to flag down another car, I thought it best to wait for a while and see if a police car would come. One police car drove through the light with a bike strapped to its trunk.

Waiting for around what I guessed was twenty minutes, a police car eventually pulled off the county’s one road into the turn lane. Without stopping, the driver lowered his window and a hand emerged gesturing for me to come off the embankment and to follow the car into the darkness that swallowed the side road that led to the highway. “Get down from there and come up the road!” a voice shouted from inside the police car.

I obeyed and scurried into the darkness. Knowing that I was a stranger to the police, I stopped ten feet or so from the back of the car. It had pulled over onto the road’s shoulder. Two officers exited the car from the driver and passenger side, and one shined a flashlight into my face.

This I expected, wincing at the blinding glare, but I did not raise my arms or turn away. “What are you doing out here?” barked the officer with the light. I explained my situation, where I walked from, and that I needed help. “Why did you walk up to the highway?” barked the officer with the light. I said, “I tried the gas station on the hill over there, but it’s closed. I flagged a car down and asked them to call you for help.”

“Turn around,” said the police officer, “and put your hands around your back for our safety.”

Swallowing my growing fear, I felt it land in my gut like an exploding tank shell. I turned my back to them, and put my hands behind my back. Here, I must interject. I have never been arrested, so this procedure was totally new to me. I must have not done this the right way because the police officer shouted, “Get on the ground! Now!”

Falling to my knees, I lowered myself onto the country asphalt and stretched myself out on my belly. My lips gently kissed the hard packed black pavement. I kept my nose to the pavement, and I clasped my hands together over my lower back. A strange calm descended onto me. I knew this could not get worse.

Stones skittered across the road as the officer moved from the car. The light bounced ahead of him, and when he reached me, he centered it on my prostrate body. He tightly gripped my hands together and put his weight down onto my back. His other hand frisked me, pawing at my sides, back, buttocks, and the length of my legs to the ankles. “Get up, and keep those hands where they are,” he commanded. “Keep facing away from me.”

I stood up, and he completed his search, tapping at the front of my jeans and belly.

“O.K. You can face me,” the officer said. I turned around.

These men were both over six feet tall and were young, well-muscled policemen. The one without the flashlight wore a knit cap over his head and ears. Each had their hair shaved down to a crew-cut, military style. The officer with the flashlight kept it shining in my face for the duration of what follows.

I was interrogated for fifteen minutes about why I walked up to the county’s one road. We kept returning to why I had no phone or wallet. I answered each question as it was asked, and I gave the same answers when they asked the same questions. The officers grilled me about remembering phone numbers. I explained my phone was locked in my apartment, and I had none of them written down or memorized. The officer with the flashlight kept returning to why I walked the distance from my apartment to the road, and I kept repeating that I walked up here for help.

Smacking my dry, numb lips, I eventually asked, “Why don’t you take my information and run it? Won’t you know I am who I say I am and that I live at my address?” He paused for what felt like a full minute. He sighed in exasperation and agreed. I gave him my name and address.

The officer finally lowered the light and called my information to his dispatcher over the CB radio attached to his chest. Garbled responses issued from the radio back to the officer, and he eventually said, “No, he’s not converse. He’s locked out of his apartment and cannot give me phone numbers. Yeah. Uh-huh. No, he’s unarmed.”

He told me to get into the driver’s seat of his car. I stepped into the car. The officer with the flashlight got behind the wheel, and the one wearing the cap got in behind me. I put on my seatbelt, and the officers drove me back to my apartment.

In what happened so far and what follows, the other officer spoke not a single word.

I directed the officer to my landlord’s house, and we arrived in less than five minutes.

As the car pulled into the driveway, the officer commented, “Looks like you lied. Your landlord is home. I see there are two cars here.”

“That one there is mine,” I said, “but I knocked before I walked up to the gas station. There’s no one home.”

“We’ll see,” the officer said as he pulled the car to a stop next to my landlord’s SUV. All three of us disembarked. The officer in the cap stood next to me while the other officer knocked with what seemed like full force on the front door. Hounds bayed insanely within.

Going around the side of the house, the officer opened a gate and went onto my landlord’s porch. He pounded on the side door. The dogs inside answered with mad howls. The officer took out his flashlight and shined it into windows. He stormed around to the yard off of the porch behind the house and shined it into windows on that side. I heard what sounded like the officer banging on windows.

He marched back up to me and his partner.

“There isn’t anything we can do for you,” he concluded. “Since you can’t remember your landlord’s number, and he is not home. I cannot let you into the house.”

“Can you call a locksmith and wait for him to come and let me in? You know this is my address. If you vouch for me, the locksmith won’t have a problem with unlocking my door,” I pointed out.

“No,” said the officer, “we don’t have time to wait for a locksmith.”

The officers left me alone for a moment. Both reentered their squad car, and I stood in the driveway, shivering. Several minutes later, they reemerged and the officer handling the situation said, “We called dispatch. I am not allowed to let you into your home.” Pausing for effect, he finished, “However, I will not stop you from breaking into your own place of residence.”

Mother of fuck.

“Can I ask you a question?” I said.

“Sure.”

“I have never broken down a door. How do you do it?”

He explained that I just kick it as hard as I can near the knob. Simple as pie.

All three of us strolled to my door. I kicked, shouldered, and battered at my door for ten minutes. Several times the door almost gave, but it never broke in. The deadbolt was unlocked, so I eventually got the door to a point where if I leaned on it I could see the lock’s latch. While I hammered on my door, the officers began snickering.

“Here,” the officer who did the talking said. I hear a click.

I turned around, my leg and shoulder aching. My eyes bugged out. The officer was offering me an opened, glistening hunting knife.

“Try moving the latch over with this,” he said.

Here my patience faltered. I wanted to say, “I am not fucking McGuyver. You need to help me.” However, they were impatient men with guns, so I kept my fool mouth shut.

I took the knife and tried to jimmy open the door. After a couple of attempts that looked like they were going to unlock it, I gave up. I carefully returned the knife and said, “You know what. I’m just going to wait for my landlord. Thank you for your help."

The officer tried convincing me to smash in a window. I repeated my thanks and intention to wait it out. The officers shrugged and returned to their car. Before leaving the officer who did the talking suggested I look for somewhere warm to wait. They drove off.

Next, I spent an hour poking around outside of the house looking for a spare key. The cold started to get intense. My breath made puffs of chilly smoke in the air, and my teeth chattered violently. I stood in front of my apartment’s basement window looking ruefully at it. I weighed the costs and benefits of waiting, and I concluded I would freeze if my landlord did not come back until morning.

I moved over to a woodpile my landlord kept next to a shed. Hefting a log, I returned to my window. I smashed the mother fucker in, cleaned the glass away from the edges, and gingerly lowered myself into the apartment.

I collected myself and spent the next hour cleaning up glass inside and outside of the apartment. All the while, the hounds barked. After I did the best I could with the broken glass, I collapsed into my bed and waited for sleep.

It never came. The dogs howled and darted around upstairs for hours. I texted my landlord and told him that I locked myself out and needed to bust a window to get in. The dogs never stopped barking. He returned around 8:30 that morning. As I lay awake in bed, the sounds changed from barking to him shouting at the dogs to shut-up to the muffled squeals of the dogs.

At 9:45, I drove out for some coffee.