Let's Do Something

As a man of independent mind, it has been a hard lesson learned that it takes two, baby.

So let's do something. Yes, we may live in different places. Many things can be accomplished over the internet, by phone, or via weekend visits. It's a new year and I am mentally prepared to cooperate and collaborate.

But what should we do? The hell if I know. Let's talk about it. Surely we have complimentary skill sets. We'll seek others within our friend circles with similar interests. If we all work together, we can accomplish something spectacular. Or maybe not! Maybe we'll just play something. Or maybe form a club or circle?

Examples:
A writing group, an artistic collaboration, a band, a company, a book club, a secret society, a gaming circle, a roleplaying campaign, a short-story compilation, a video-game clan, a child-care coop, or simply a group of drinking-buddies.

Or perhaps you have your own ideas? Get in touch and we'll talk about it.

Book Review of "You Only Live Twice" by Ian Fleming

I have always hated James Bond. 007, the icon, is known throughout the world because of his movies. Since the 60s, he's been suave, cool, irresistable to women, over-the-top and dangerous. I suppose his appeal is that men are supposed to want to be him. He gets any woman he wants and kills anybody he wants. If I met him I'd want to throttle him because he's so unpleasant. Frustratingly, he would kill me if I tried.

So you might be surprised to know that I chose to read a James Bond novel. It's number twelve in the series, You Only Live Twice. I did it out of masochistic curiosity, just so you know. You might also be surprised to discover that Hollywood's James Bond does not resemble Ian Fleming's Bond whatsoever.

Firstly, You Only Live Twice (novel) does not begin with an obnoxious action sequence that is supposed to make you vomit in entertainment. It begins with Bond moping after the death of his wife and a series of professional fuckups. In fact, Bond doesn't actually get into a fight until the end of the novel!

Eventually Bond gets assigned to Japan to uncover some vital information (which is never revealed). We're just told the mission is impossible. Impossible it may be, but Bond gets sidetracked hanging out in brothels with his new Japanese drinking buddy. Then his buddy tells him to go murder some crazy Doctor Shatterhand. But first, they attend some more brothels. He does eventually discover Doctor Shatterhand's secret and penetrates his garden-fortress of death, but that's really only the last fifth of the story. It is such a strange book. It reads like a travel brochure punctuated with anti-Japanese slurs and hookers.

And then there's Bond's personality itself. The literary Bond is not the gadget-laden, smooth-talking product placement we know and hate. Instead, he's hateful in a different way. Imagine if you can a chauvanistic, racist and old-fashioned Cambridge professor trapped in the body of a super-spy. He's also clearly an alcoholic. He wanders around the novel muttering stuff like, "I say, Tanaka, this damned lobster's still alive! Give me a rasher of bacon and hop to it, you damn slant-eyed tosser, wot?" For some reason, the Japanese find this behaviour endearing.

It's not that I entirely dislike the idea literary-Bond. He's real in a way that Hollywood-Bond could never be. To be honest, I kind of enjoyed the exploits of this stodgy booze-hound as he swanks around Japan and I liked even more how much Hollywood could never, ever feature this Bond in a film and expect it to be a blockbuster. The last two Bond films with Daniel Craig have tried to bury the campy 60's Bond and make him more realistic and like literary-Bond. But they don't even come close. This Bond is so irredeemably English that you'd expect to see him stumbling around some high-class function telling off-colour racist stories as annoyed guests tolerate him because he's little, cute and British. After about an hour his mortified wife bundles him off to bed.

So, was the novel good? I guess, kind of. It is the only spy novel I've read and in that sense it's like nothing I've ever read before. I don't think I'll be in any hurry to pick up another Bond novel, but I can say I was glad for the experience.
3 creepy sexual encounters out of 5

As a side-note, another reason I grabbed this book was my interest in comparing movie adaptations with their source material. After seeing this art from the movie poster, I've decided not to bother with the movie for reasons that should be obvious to anyone.

The Ten Worst Fraggers Ever

I shall never be a great fragger of men.

I came to this realization after I decided to stop playing Call of Duty: World at War. It was a game with everything I could have wanted: realistic historical weapons, customizable equiment and a great World War II setting. Yet I had to quit.

It's not that I lack the talent. Nor do I lack the time, although my free time is precious now that I have the little one. So what was it? After many hours online, I keep running into the same personalities over and over again. Some are worse than others and some make playing not fun anymore.

Here they are, my least favourite reoccurring assholes that we've all met and killed a thousand times. What makes these people special is that they are representatives for larger themes within human existence, which I note in each entry. I dislike these personalities so much that I am really not sure if I'll ever play a FPS online again.

10. The Guy who only says, "Aw fuck"
He sounds urban in a vague kind of way, kind of a half Afro-American half Hispanic drawl. I imagine him sitting at his console dressed top to bottom in Nike gear with his cap spun sideways. Regardless of his socio-political origins, his vocabulary is limited. You know this because every time he dies he says, "Aw fuck", "Oh fuck, meeee-an!" or "Fuck, this is bullshit!" And he dies a lot, resulting in a constant stream of banal profanity.

"Aw fuck."

He is the ultimate nobody in a sea of faceless gamers, desperately wanting to be heard but having nothing to say. His pointless expletives are a constant reminder that the coming generation of youngsters is destined to die in obscurity.

9. The Singing Kid
I find attempts to shelter children from mature-rated games to be absolute nonsense. Regardless of your moral stance on this issue, everybody has the issue backwards. Children don't need to protected from content. Adults need to be protected from children.

There should be two internets: one for adults and one for children. The Singing Kid is the ultimate argument in I have in favour of this proposal. The last thing a bloodthirsty adult needs to hear when he's trying to slaughter his contemporaries is some little brat yelping the latest pop song into his bluetooth. He tunelessly chatters on and on. Then he unexpectedly shouts, "What?!" and the last you hear of him before his connection drops is his distant mother telling him it's bedtime.

I've often tried to speculate on the motives of The Singing Kid. At first I thought he was a troll attempting to goad people into telling him to shut up. Now I'm not so sure. The world of FPSs is comparably silent and it has been a long time since I've heard somebody tell a Singing Kid to shut up. I now believe there is no motive, that the truth is much more horrifying. The Singing Kid is an agent of madness, sent to bedevil our games, by some dark power beyond the veil of reality.

8. The Teamkiller
Most games these days, including CoD:WaW have safeguards against teamkilling. In Hardcore mode, in which team damage is "on", one occasionally hears the in-game announcer saying something very satisfying like, "Get that sonofabitch outta here" or "He ain't fit to wear the uniform" as somebody is kicked.

Such safeguards make teamkilling all the more frustrating, confusing and senseless. Teamkillers must dream ways to skirt the safeguards. I'm reminded of an incident where the wife was invited to a team on City of Heroes. Her new "friend" asked to teleport her to his location and she agreed. She suddenly found herself hundreds of feet in the air and fell to the ground with a splat.

The teamkiller is the brooding psycho that lurks in humankind. He delights in sowing mayhem and sneering at his victims. I will never understand the appeal of teamkilling.

7. The Neo-Nazi
Okay, that's a lie. I do understand teamkilling, but not for the standard reasons. FPSs attract a certain section of society, and with WWII games in particular, the Neo-Nazis appear. The other day I played a Team Deathmatch and some asshole called "junglbunnystomper25" was on my team. My goddess, did I ever want to hunt him down and shoot him over and over again. But he was on my team and I was forced to cooperate with him. I was so angry.

His other pasttime.

Then there's the guys that see my online name, YouFang, and assume I'm Chinese. Nope. So when they go, "Oh, ching-chong, sing-song so solly!" it annoys me on a different level than they were hoping.

First Person Shooters are one of the last civilized places you can hang with crazies like these (and no, the American South doesn't count as civilized). Other than the Army, I guess. I suppose I'm not the only college-educated Marine who's had to share a foxhole with a racist mouth-breather from Arkansas.

6. The Guy who Leaves his Live Mic Lying Around so I Have to Hear his Rap Music.
You know he's there because he's killing you and you sometimes hear him clear his throat or cough. He's just happily listening to his music and playing his game. Only his mic is on. And we can all hear his music. For some reason, it's always, always gangsta rap.

There's no point trying to tell him his mic is on. The sound is going through his headphones' mic and he's obviously not wearing them. Even if you were to shout loud enough for him to hear, the rap music would drown the sound. If there's no option to mute him the only way out is to quit the game.

This guy is a reminder that human society is very closely knit. No matter what you do or don't do today, you are going to ruin somebody's day even if you never find out.

5. The Hotshot "Leader"

To be fair, he's pretty good at the game. He would probably be better, though, if he didn't expend so much energy ordering his teammates about and badmouthing them. Everything his friends do infuriates him because his ego is too huge for any game to contain. Here's some sample dialogue:

"Shoot him! Shoot him! Hah, now you're fucking dead, you shoulda shot him! God now he killed me, God you're such a fucking idiot! YouFang you fucker, you stole my kill! Get the flag! Get the flag you fag! God, way to die, moron!"

And God help thee if thou teamslayest him in error. For then thou shalt unleash a deluge of abuse and be thyself teamslain by Him, that thou shalt know the idiocy of thy ways.

Just as in real life, bad managers exist in the world of video games. However, in video games, nobody asks them to be in charge.

4. The Inquisitor
Whenever you actually do well at a video game, Inquisitors materialize to accuse you of cheating. Swearing ensues. No arguing will convince them. So sure are they that you are hacking that they sometimes follow you into other games or send you personal messages. It's never skill or bad connectivity, it's always cheating.

I think the Inquisitor might actually be the other face of the Hotshot "Leader". If the Leader actually loses to people on the other team, his ego would collapse if it was a result of sucking. So therefore it has to be cheating, right? The Inquisitor represents the human mental defect that blames their folly on secret consipiracies when their own abilities fail.

3. Captain Echo
Here's a hint for all you dumbasses out there: either turn down the sensitivity of your mic or turn down the volume of your TV. I am so goddess-damned sick of hearing every shout and explosion echoing through your voice port.

Captain Echo is significant because he's... uh... he's just fucking dumb, okay?

2. Oink-Pig

Gaming is very addictive and when you are caught in the majesty of another universe, it's hard to find time to eat. It's a temptation to eat while gaming. And yes, that's okay. What isn't cool is not turning off your mic. Nobody wants to hear the sloppy crunch of your Cheetos, the smaking of your lips or your tongue darting in and out of your mouth, Oink-Pig. And we especially don't want to hear you burping. Over and over again.

Oink-Pig is a nice symbol selfishness of consumer culture. He could take measures to curb the "externalities" of his consumption which cause misery to others, but honestly it's too much work and he doesn't care. BUUUURRRRRP!

"Once there were a man who try to make his skill ultimate..." - Samurai Showdown

1. The Game Breaker
This is by far my least favourite personality. Which is too bad, because the Game Breaker is the ultimate symbol of excellence in humankind.

In the world of RPGs, such individuals are called "Power Gamers". To be a true game breaker, you must want to win and nothing else. You don't play to have fun. The only fun is in triumph.

First you must know your equipment. Where equipment is customizable, choose only equipment that causes the most kills, not that which is coolest or most fun. If equipment is not customizable but collectible on the map, head straight for the good guns. Headshot anything in your way.

Secondly, you must know your maps. Every map has nooks where nobody can see you. Find them and take up sniping position.

Thirdly, you must know the broken-rules and glitches in the game. Find which ones you can exploit. Ones that defy physics and graphics are especially useful because n00bs won't expect or understand them. If there's a way to walk through a wall, you must find it.

And lastly, you must be the best. You must play and play until your reflexes are unrivaled. You must be able to headshot a n00b the quarter-second you see him, not the half-second. This is what is truly admirable/scary about Power Gamers is the sheer devotion to mastery of a useless pasttime. One wonders what these people could do if they devoted half the energy to real life what they sank into first person shooters.

It was this last personality that finally soured me on online CoD. In my final game, a Game Breaker stood directly behind a concrete wall, fired through it with a rifle and head-shotted the guy in front of me from a room away. I had just enough time to process this before I too was shot in the head. My goddess, such devotion!

Game Breakers are utterly predictable in their behaviour but what makes them frustrating is that it doesn't matter if you become wise to their tricks. Their skills are so ultimate that you can't defeat them on even footing.

Right now, the console version of Might and Magic: Clash of Heroes is utterly unplayable because of Game Breakers. If you try to play it online right now, some 161st level guy will slaughter you using the undead team, the cursed shield as an artifact and either Death Knights or Bone Dragons as a special unit. Every online game becomes broken like this unless the designers constantly monitor it, seal the glitches, depower the abilities that are too tough and constantly thwart the Game Breakers as they seize some new angle. I remember people complaining about Blizzard constantly tweaking StarCraft, but it absolutely must be done to maintain the fun. Video Games are supposed to be fun.
---

So that's it with me and online competition for awhile. All the games I'm craving are one-player only. There, the only annoying personality I have to deal with is my own.

Book Review of "Two Sisters" by Gore Vidal

After reading Julian this spring, my mind was primed for more Gore Vidal. As I described in this review, Julian is easily one of the best books I have ever read. So on the way to rescue the wife from a root canal one day, I stopped into the White Cat Bookstore and said, "Give me all the Gore Vidal you have". I had two options, and bought them both. However, I chose the book Two Sisters because I opened the cover and the first sentence I read went, "Despite my protests, Marietta revealed her breasts."

I say "book", because Two Sisters is part novel, part screenplay and part memoir. The memoir bits are the sections where he reminisces and bitches about days past and present. The novel bits are the parts he makes up, and the border between the fiction and nonfiction is never clear. The screenplay is a relevant but amateur script about Herostratus, the ancient Greek arsonist who burns the temple of Diana to one-up his sisters. The three parts intertwine and gradually Vidal reveals the story of a love triangle between himself and twins Eric and Erika.

I can see how somebody could really hate this book. The structure is unconventional and some might find it jarring. The protagonist, Gore Vidal himself, could be construed as disagreeable. He's two-faced, petty, dispassionate and self-interested. He constantly snipes other authors. The universe in which Vidal lives is hedonistic, affluent and decadent. Some might see the antics as disgusting.

Yet I did not hate this book. I liked it. If one views the book with certain amount of distance, it becomes hilarious. It seems to me as though the Gore Vidal of Two Sisters is a self-parody. Therein is the key to liking this book. While Gore Vidal never winks at his audience to tell us that he's not really that bad, I'm willing to risk being wrong and say he's not the awful person he portrays. Even if the parody touches truths that are too close to reality, at least they're funny.

This book is full of quotables. I'm terrible at memorizing quotes, so I won't remember a single one. But Vidal's use of phrase had me constantly chuckling. He ranges late 1960's culture and brings home a variety of anecdotes and humourous observations on which the reader can feast. The world was changing as television and movies humbled the novel and Vidal has many things to say, sad and eloquent, as he watches his world of great literature dying.

This book was particularly significant for me. For this book is about the foolish pursuit of immortality. Vidal and his cast of characters in both his memoir and the screenplay all seek to be known after they have died. This has struck me hard at a time when I have ceased to be a young adult and I hold a baby in my arms.

Throughout my youth I wanted to create something or many somethings that would be admired in future generations, like a Beethoven Symphony. It's not just my desire, but that of just about every writer, artist, and composer. Here, in Two Sisters, Gore Vidal is watching literature collapse. His memory is failing him. He is just beginning to realize that the drive to create which he posessed in his youth will be destroyed just as certainly as his body will decay. Paraphrasing him, death comes for us all and the writer has a chance to take a shot at him. Some shots are better aimed, but death always wins.

Even during my lifetime, the yardstick by which I have judged immortality, Ludwig van Beethoven, has diminished. His music, and the means by which it is played, has grown fainter as interest and public money dry.

I have known that at some point I will have to challenge this idea of living through the art I leave behind. But I don't know if I'm ready to examine it yet. If I look inward and see that the reason why I write is empty, why write? I think before I'm ready for this philosophical leap, I'll have to actually be earning money through writing. That way I can say, "I write because it feeds the baby". That will certainly soften the blow. If I look too deeply now, that job at the 7-Eleven in Rosetown will be too appealing.

Enough about me. Two Sisters is certainly not for everybody, but it was certainly for me. I get the feeling that writers and literature enthusiasts will enjoy it more than others. The reviews that don't like it seem to dislike the ego of the Gore-on-steroids protagonist. For me, the book made me chuckle and sad by turns, and it is undeniably well-written.
4 bitchy writers complaining about each other out of 5

Book Review of "The White Plague" by Frank Herbert

Dune and its sequels got me through some hard times. In the midst of a painful breakup, I was lifted out of my funk by the words of fictional characters. A great deal of the series revolves around change and not being afraid of it. The books showed me how gripping the past leads to stagnation worse than any disruption caused by change. The action sequeneces make great film, as shown by the various adaptations, but they miss that the books are as much intellectual discussion as plot. The characters are more philosophical ideas than real people. Through author Frank Herbert's words, I was able to begin living again. It also set the stage for my future Discordianism.

It was with exitement that I found an old hardcover edition of The White Plague in an unlikely small-town bookstore in Perdue, Saskatchewan. It was his first non-Dune writing that I had found. Also, being a traditional Irish musician, the setting in Ireland was a plus. As I removed to irritating book jacket and settled into bed to read, I was hyped.

The action begins as the family of biochemist John Roe O'Neill is killed by an IRA bomb while on vacation. O'Neill's marbles go astray, he goes into hiding and manufactures a new plague which he releases into Ireland, England and Libya to scour those sinful countries clean. The world's women begin dying and the political and scientific elite scramble to find a cure.

Unfortunately, this beginning is a stumble rather than a leap. The narrator's viewpoint, in third-person, is unsettled and constantly switches between the perspectives of the characters. For myself, I didn't like it much. I found the constant switching between characters' thoughts to be disorienting rather than interesting. It also seemed to be cheating: rather than allowing the reader to guess a character's thoughts by their words and actions, Herbert just tells us. Yet, and perhaps Herbert meant this to be clever, there is still much mystery surrounding the motivations of characters. People just do things sometimes, and despite the amount of perspective switching, I had no idea why they were doing it and no amount of recollection or re-reading could reveal the mystery.

Luckily, after this opening face-flop, the story dusts itself off and gets going again. I became used to the perspective switching and during the plot's second act, I was able to enjoy myself. John Roe O'Neill, after a period of sneaking around the planet, returns to Ireland incognito to sabotage the efforts for a cure. There, he falls into the company of Father Michael: a priest who has lost his faith, Joseph Herity: the IRA operative who set the bomb that killed O'Neill's family, and a mute boy. They travel towards the biochemistry lab at Killaloe, across the island, and witness the devastation of the plague.

It was here that I found the Frank Herbert that I knew so well. For as the companions journey, they engage in philosophical discussion. Their intellectual discourse raises tempers as Father Michael and Herity try to destroy each others' psyches and secretly discover if their companion is O'Neill.

The problem is that this time, Herbert's philosophic and scientific discussions didn't work. In Dune, his characters are the intellectual elite of the universe and it makes sense that they speak on a level higher than average discourse. However, in The White Plague, everybody is a philosopher-historian and has something profound to say. Herity and Michael's sparring, in particular, is disconcerting as they are constantly becoming furious with each other for reasons which can only be described as esoteric. It is obvious that these are not characters but intellectual ideas and it is silly as often as it is enlightening.

In the end, The White Plague is a simple story dressed in fancy clothes. Nothing really unexpected happens and when it does, the reasons why it happens are confusing. Nevertheless, Herbert manages to paint an interesting picture of what might happen to our society if the full potential of biochemistry were unlocked, suddenly, on an unsuspecting public.
2 stirrings of O'Neill-within out of 5

ps: I've once again proved false the theory that one must like any book they've read from cover to cover. Ha.

Book Review of "A Game of Thones" by George R. R. Martin

A continuing five-part novel series named "A Song of Fire and Ice". A board game. A trading card game. An HBO series. When a fantasy novel inspires that much attention, there must be something good about it. How is it that I hadn't read A Game of Thrones until now? Regardless, I decided to give this one a read because I love reading books and then watching the adaptation.

Thrones is set in a medieval Europe-like world. Most of the action is set on Westros, a Britain-like island complete with Scotsman-like Wildlings. Mongol-like horsemen ravage the mainland. The big differences between our two worlds is that magic and mythical creatures exist in Martin's world. Also, instead of having winter during the course of a regular year, winter arrives two or three times a generation and lasts several years (the details of how and why this happens is not explained in the first book).

The action begins at the end of a pleasant summer, but the wise are predicting a dreadful winter. Westros is saddled with the irresponsible King Robert, his conniving wife Cersei of the rich, cruel and power-hungry House Lannister, numerous debts, and a gaggle of unusually selfish counsellors. Wildlings and terrifying creatures known as "The Others" threaten the north. Across the Narrow Sea, King Robert's mortal enemies, the remnants of House Targaryen who once ruled Westros, plot to sieze his throne. Into the action is thrust the honourable Eddard Stark, whom Robert asks to become his right-hand man. Eddard and his family are tossed from their happy northern lifestyle into a cauldron of intrigue.

The result is not pretty. Martin spins complex web of characters and their histories and I don't mind telling you that the cast is thinned significantly by the end of the first book. Jugular veins are slashed, femoral arteries opened, heads roll, wounds fester, poor slobs swing from tree branches and unpleasant things are poured over people's heads. Nor does Martin pull punches when it comes to sex. Pee-pees are inserted into hoo-hoos and the results described in detail. In true medieval style, some of the hoo-hoos in question belong to girls that we in the modern age would describe as underage.

However, blood splatters and money-shots are not, I repeat, NOT the point of A Game of Thrones. The stars of this book are the beautiful characters, their rivalries, loves, fears and aspirations. Even if some of the characters don't last very long, each one is an individual with their own needs and desires. This is not a realm of cartoons, but real people. Nor are their motivations obvious. Martin leads us to what his non-POV characters are thinking instead of just telling us. Each chapter leaves the reader excitedly speculating on why characters acted as they did and what they will do next. The plot is great, I was frequently surprised and never disappointed.

I have only two complaints with the book. Firstly, Martin excessively describes people's armour. For whatever reason, near the beginning of the book, everybody we meet is wearing ringmail over boiled leather. Then, as if to make up for the amount of boiled leather described, later characters are introduced with huge chunks of text describing the damn saphhire-encrusted gold with ivy rivulets covered by a cloth-of-gold cape that makes so-and-so gasp and blah blah blah. Next, please.

Secondly, while cliches are noteably absent, when they actually appear in middle sections of the book, the effect is jarring. I had, up until this point, marvelled at the lack of cliches and to read that somebody's blood ran cold and they were chilled to the bone was very disappointing. However, only the middle sections are polluted. (I would, however, bet that with the success of A Game of Thrones and possible resulting arrogance, later volumes may be more cliche-ridden. Can anybody confirm that?)

Thrones is a work of fiction that is almost mastery. If you like intrigue, mystery and great battles, this book will expand your understanding of what makes humanity tick. Yes, it's that good. However, I would say it is not for tender readers or persons who enjoy contemplating the Baby Jesus.

4 1/2 heads on spikes out of 5

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With Greatest Sympathy

I'm going to try very hard not be trite in this post.

Being a parent has given me a perspective that I lacked at this time last year. A year ago, I would not have been arrested by this picture which I discovered as I surfed the internet. Scratch that. Not just been arrested, but moved to weeping.

It's a picture of a baby from over a hundred years ago. His eyes are vacant and trusting. He looks like a sweet little boy, maybe with an unfortunate haircut, but sweet nonetheless.

Here's the thing. It's Hitler. I must have been one of the only history buffs in the world who hadn't seen this image until now, and I also missed the commentary and uproar it stirred. It's a bit of a cognitive dissonance. World War II propeganda turned Hitler into a demon and history and legend have transformed him into the most evil man who ever lived. Up until this point, I had not dwelled much on Hitler's past. I had known he was a shrimpy geek who was refused service by the Austrian army but was subsequently accepted into the German army and gassed on the Western Front. I also knew he was a mediocre artist. Before that, however, I had no idea. He might as well have rocketed out of the earth with a belch of flame and sulphur and a "Mwa-hah-hah-hah-hah!"

Yet there he is. There are no horns, no blood-spatters and his eyes do not appear to be luminous red. Adolf Hitler was once a sweet little kid who didn't know anything. A year ago, I'm sure the same thoughts would have formed. What brought tears to my eyes was the fact that when I saw this picture, I was holding my own baby in my lap. In her eyes is that same vacancy and trust. When I enlarged the resolution of the picture to look at it more closely, she recognized Hitler as another baby, leaned forward and smiled.

That was what broke my heart. Hitler started at the same place my baby did. I'm reasonably certain my little girl won't become a perpetrator of genocide during her lifetime, so what happened to him to so utterly destroy his humanity? What turns a sweet little boy into a paranoid butcher of millions who needs a child or soldier to watch him sleep lest a menacing spectre only he can see wake him screaming in the night? Was he emotionally and physically abused by his parents? Did an uncle touch him? Was he mocked until he cried or beaten for being short and brown by his schoolmates? How did World War I destroy him? What spiritual toll was exacted for years of having his simple, impressionistic artwork ignored? Or was he always just irredeemably broken?

And that was that. I FELT SORRY FOR HITLER.

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