"Satire and Parody in the age of Facebook Feeds" (OR) "RAGE CLICK THIS"

You, generating traffic for a website.

Practically unknown satire "news site" The National Report recently posted an article describing a "Gay-to-Straight" program that was supposedly going to be enacted in Arizona schools starting November 1st. Front and center is a picture of Jan Brewer, the oft maligned, mummified matron of malice. If you didn't see the article, it's right here. Before we begin, all the quoted sections are actual responses to the article, either from the sites comments page, blog repostings, or various Facebook links.

"What?! This can't be real."

"Is this real? Someone please tell me this isn't a real thing because I'm a two seconds away from CAUSING A SCENE SOMEWHERE"

No, it's not.  You were ready to believe it, though, which is the crux of this post.

We are all pretty familiar with The Onion at this point, or so I'd like to hope. The Onion bills itself as "America's Finest New Source" and publishes articles about Studys discovering people far away are not actually smaller, and (my personal favorite of all time) Scientists studying effects of weightlessness on mortal terror. The Onion is consistently hilarious, presenting mundane day-to-day events as world shattering news or positing a ridiculous, World Weekly News worthy alternate present.  It's satire is heavy-handed and obvious, which means that if one of your friends believes an article on The Onion, you should definately sell that shmuck a snipe-hunting kit or Atlantean Vacation. The Onion is entertainment, but is it really satire?

Unlike "irony," satire is something most people understand.  It's purpose is to use humor to enact social or political change through tools like exaggeration, to correct behavior with a snide dagger. Satire is an often necessary tool for social change, as it allows us to hamstring mighty subjects and figures and discourage others from following their lead. By this definition, The Onion isn't really satire- it's really a parody of news media in general. Parody imitates works of art or literature, and the Onion is a parody of the news as a form.

Now to the part about The National Report.

The article in question suggests that the Gay-to-Straight program is a brainchild of Dean Huls (which incidentally, is an anagram for "Held Anus"), who supposedly works for "People Can Change." Dean isn't real, but "People Can Change" is, and here is there mission statement.

Facing the reality that you have unwanted homosexual feelings can cause tremendous turmoil - especially if those feelings conflict with deeply held values, beliefs and life goals. We know what it's like. We've been there.

But there is another way out. A path that led us to resolve rather than fight homosexual feelings. A path to authentic brotherhood. And to our innate heterosexual masculinity.

Hey sailor. Want to autheticlly fulfill my surrendered masculinity?

I know, what awesome guys they are.  They have a program called a M.A.N.S. Journey, which stands for Masculinity, Authenticity, Need Fulfillment and Surrender. Other than the fact that the acronym would be totally better as MANiFeSt (That one's free, conversion camp psychos), the idea of Masculinity needing fulfillment with authentic surrender is, well, pretty gay. Actually, MANFeST might be an even better acronym.

So National Report caused such a stir that "People Can Change" (probably called that since "People Really Inevitably Change Seriously" was too earnest, and the acronym PRICS was taken) had to actually post a response on their home-page. (Bold is their emphasis, underline is mine)

The satirical website National Report has issued a FAKE news story alleging that People Can Change programs have been adopted by Arizona public schools. Its own disclaimer admits, "All news articles contained within National Report are fiction, and presumably fake news."

In fact, the spokesperson is fake, the interview is fake, the photo with Arizona Governor Jan Brewer is fake, the press conference is fake -- and the quotes are fake, rude, and demeaning of gays.

This satire is not reflective of our organizational values, including compassion, understanding and respect for all who deal with or have ever dealt with homosexuality, however they may choose to address it in their lives. (See Mission and Philosophy.)

People Can Change does not provide programs or services for minors. We are a peer-led support organization of men who have personally experienced significant change from unwanted same-sex attractions ourselves and who now share our experience and give support to other adults who voluntarily seek similar change.

Right, because gay-to-straight programs AREN'T demeaning of gays.

A lot of blogs reposted the National Report article as gospel, and many have had to redact and explain, "No, Crazyland isn't doing that." Seriously, they call Arizona "Crazyland." We're getting to the good part now.

The National Report isn't just satirizing Jan Brewer and Joe Arpaio in this article, it's successfully satirized an entire audience. Many Americans have become detached from reading the news in general, and most of the stories they see are hand-picked by their friends list and spread across social media. The Facebook New Posts Feed is the new News Feed, or perhaps the new Post-News News Feed, to put it alliteratively. We are constantly besieged by articles that play to our exact interests.  I, for one, am guilty of reading all manner of "OMG the gov't is crazy" and "look happy non-cis folk" articles because that's what my friends share. It plays to my preconceptions, desires, and outlook on life. I'm essentially the same as a guy ignoring front page war horror stories to read the sports page. We all are.

The satire that National Report has pulled off, intentionally or not, is that it has played to our preconceptions of Arizona as "Crazyland," of Jan Brewer as some kind of liverspotted cacodaemon, and as the whole of America being pretty shitty to homosexuals and children in general.  None of those things are false (especially the cacodaemon part), but we're all too ready to believe that this outcome is possible. Look at some of these responses:

"That lady Is sick Jan Brewer needs help She probably has gay family members , no one can change who they are I totally disagree with this!!!"

"How about you teach your shitty-ass kids not to bully people for being gay. How about that. Wow that sure would solve the bullying problem instead of trying to fix what isn’t broken."

"This is just insane. Are we going back into the 1950′s era ignorance? Most sex offenders are heterosexual males. I would really like to see where they are getting their facts from…..like a valid site with the facts..not propaganda."

"This is terrifying is so many ways!!  Nobody has the right to tell anyone else what they are supposed to be or how they are supposed to feel. Wow, I sure hope this doesn't pass! "

Not the "eating babies" I meant, Google Image Search.

Perhaps the most telling result of this article, other than everyone we know is more gullible than we thought, is that everyone is basically a self-righteous lunatic. Sure, straight-to-gay programs for children is a pretty rage-inducing idea, and is easily as bad as eating babies.We want to believe we are on the side of good, and that our enemies are psychotic evil bat-people who drink brains and eat blood-diamonds. The satire here is that we believe everything we read, as long as we are prone to believe it or are due for a paladin-armored rage at the world we hate.

Seriously though; gay-to-straight programs in public schools? How did anyone read the fake Arpaio quote and continue to believe this was real:

Less gays in our jails makes for a smoother running prison system. There will be no more prancing around along with all the other gay activities that homosexuals like to do.

Okay, that does kind of sound like him, I'll admit it. Despite everything I've said above, I now come to the original idea I wanted to posit: "Rage Clicking."

In the end, satire, parody, hoax, or simply humor in bad taste, the National Report generated a lot of traffic for their site with one article.  It Bonsai Kitten'd a demographic of people who perceive themselves as well-informed, hip, and up-to-date, and probably generated a significant number of page views.  If they had advertisers, the traffic generated by "rage clicks" would have been pretty good.  It posits an idea that most online news providers (I'm looking at you, Huff Post) probably figured out a while back: people want to be insanely angry, and will happily view advertising for the chance to have an aneurysm.

Yeah, that's right. I just created a new form of marketing. You're welcome, marketing executives- who I choose to imagine are all white, rich, wear suits, do cocaine and masturbate to "Mad Men" because it makes them easier to hate. So, National Report's article: brilliant satire, humor in poor taste, or marketing ploy? Let me know.



photo credit: Reid Rosenberg via photopin cc

U.S.S Enterprise LGBT-1701 (or) GAYS IN SPACE!

I love both Star Wars and Star Trek for very different reasons. I love the sense of epic struggle against totalitarianism in Star Wars, as well as the fact that it has what amounts to Awesome Zen Space Wizards. I love Star Trek for it's utopian future where mankind has united and poverty and need have been eliminated on Earth. As I've grown up, though, I've noticed that the things I love seem to be missing something that is pretty present in my own life.

Specifically, gay people.

Nope, no gays in space.

I am not the first person to notice that there seem to be no gays in space. I know that the LGBT fandom of Star Trek issued a boycott back in the late nineties surrounding Star Trek: Insurrection after 20 years of pushing for there to be even one gay character in the ship that represented a pluralistic and multicultural society. I'm going to end up focusing on Star Trek here, because let's face it, the sexuality in Star Wars amounts to “boy meets girl, saves girl, kisses girl, surprise incest.” Star Wars isn't really Sci-Fi, it's Fantasy in Space. There, I SAID IT. So, what is it that made it so difficult for a franchise as huge and utopian as Star Trek to incorporate gay characters?

My theory? It would have been weird to make it normal. By that, I specifically mean that, while having a gay character is no stranger than having a Japanese character on the Enterprise, including them would have been threatening to the producers. Consider, for a moment, that Star Trek: TNG had a openly gay character and it was never remarked upon and completely naturalized for the viewership. A world where it didn't matter existed. Could audiences of prime time TV at the time have handled this cognitive burst? Could they only have handled or processed gay characters in story lines that had to be specifically about sexuality? Would it have been so hard to portray them in the words of Leonard Nimoy, as “ neither objects of pity nor melodramatic attention?” This has to be what the producers were thinking, right?

About the time that Star Trek was ignoring gay characters, Babylon 5 incorporated a bisexual female character into their show, Susan Ivanova, who had a relationship with another telepathic woman. Babylon 5 also had a male/male marriage. Babylon 5, while a terrific show, was ultimately less popular than TNG and it begs a question- did mainstream audiences want a hetereonormative future?

The answer to why Star Trek did not have gay characters is vague. Brannon Braga, an executive producer for TNG. spoke in 2011 about the push and pull developing the show and the consideration of a normative gay culture on the Enterprise.

“[There was a]...constant back and forth about well how do we portray the spectrum of sexuality. There were people who felt very strongly that we should be showing casually, you know, just two guys together in the background in Ten Forward. At the time the decision was made not to do that and I think those same people would make a different decision now because I think, you know, that was 1989, well yeah about 89, 90, 91. I have no doubt that those same creative players wouldn’t feel so hesitant to have, you know, have been squeamish about a decision like that.”

No gays in space at all.

A quote like this sounds nice, like an “oops, we fucked up, but we're all allies now” but it doesn't explain the why very well. Why, when you have stars like Whoopi Goldberg rewriting their lines from heterosexual to sexuality-neutral commentary right there on set, could no one writing or producing the show wrap their heads around the idea that GAYS WILL EXIST IN THE FUTURE?

Suggesting that Next Generation was under pressure from affiliates to be a family friendly show, Braga described the decision to exclude LGBT characters as "not a forward thinking decision."

Let's jump from Sci-Fi to more fantastic television shows of the same approximate time period. Shows like Xena: Warrior Princess and Buffy the Vampire Slayer both featured either queer subtext or openly gay characters. It's strange to note that these shows were both wildly popular with hetero and queer audiences, so what was Star Trek afraid of? It's especially strange because the world of speculative fiction as long been tolerant of LGBT people in Sci-Fi fandom, even if it wasn't openly talked about for many decades.

NONE AT ALL

Even a casual analysis of geek/nerd sexual culture will show you a vast acceptance or at least tolerance of most sexual identities. Is this a response to the static, heteronormative sci-fi of the previous generation? I present this theory to the producers of Star Trek; you should have normative gay characters in space because that's THE WAY THE FUCKING WORLD ACTUALLY IS DIPSHITS.

 I believe that this shortcoming has real negative long term effects for the Star Trek franchise.  You cannot claim that you exist in a future that is without class or categorization and then ignore a massive real world group that has been marginalized for centuries.  Would it have killed someone to have two women holding hands in Ten Forward?  It's primitive. Up your game, Star Trek franchise.

It's on you, J.J. Abrams.

I AM BECOMING LIKE GOD (or) "How I am getting slightly better at Donkey Kong"

Look upon my works and DESPAIR.

Well, not despair, really.  Truth be told, these aren't particularly impressive Donkey Kong Scores by any stretch of the imagination.  The Current DK High Score is at 1.1 Million, so I'm still just an ant before gods, but that isn't the point.

I started volunteering at Bodega 420, a small general store in the Roosevelt Row in Phoenix, a couple of months ago.  I worked with the owner, Adrien, on getting a 48-in-1 arcade machine at a scorching good price and cleaned that bad boy up and put it in the Bodega about the same time I started closing the store on Monday nights.  In the last few months, I've watched my score steadily increase on a budget of about a dollar or two a week.

This is to be expected, of course, as anything you practice at, you will get better at.  What's come to my attention playing Donkey Kong is that, when I get better, I am instantly aware of it.

If you've ever played Donkey Kong, you know what an unforgiving mistress it can be.  There's just enough pattern to lull you into a false sense of security, and just enough randomness to dash a perfect run to dust when an unexpected barrel comes at a 45 degree angle and ends your futile climb.  There is no relaxing, no losing focus.  It's like being a fighter pilot, but with more barrels and quarters.  Every small progression is a grueling process of trial and error, instinct, and calculated risk.  A 6000 point advancement is an epiphany.

I've played a lot of video games, it's true, but if you've ever entered "the zone" as someone putting on neon green shades in the eighties might say to you before skateboarding away, you might be familiar with part of what I'm getting at.

"Have you ever entered the zone?"

At risk of sounding like a serial killer, when playing an FPS, you might go on a kill-streak.  You become a focused murder-android of destruction, barely thinking as you put round after round into anyone who appears near you.  Screaming voices over your headset fade away, and for what might seem like an eternity, you are unstoppable.  Okay, that did sound like a serial killer, but allow this particular simile.  There is a part of our mind that can focus on complex tasks with tremendous accuracy and finesse.  When it perceives these tasks as "life and death" it can seem to distort time.  An experiment by David Eagleman dropped participants into a freefall over a net to mimic a frightening event, then asked how long they thought they were experiencing it for. All participants over-estimated their freefall time.  Maybe this is because memory is distorted by adrenaline, but the imitation of danger is enough to provoke this heightened state.

By engaging in the "life or death" struggle to survive against robot-kill machines or pixelated gorillas, one can experience this phenomenon as well- though probably not as heightened as a fighter pilot.  Furthermore, because of the relatively codified worlds of video games (as opposed to the REAL world, where there are trillions of factors to constantly consider), skills or knowledge is incredibly specific and focused.

A particular example of this kind of epiphany:  On the "Elevators" level of Donkey Kong, one has to actually step towards the springs at the top and double back to climb the ladder to save Pauline.  This particular moment stands out to me because I realized it like it was a bolt from the blue.  I understood it as I did it.  It goes against the basic premise of the game (avoid objects) but it's the easiest way to beat a level most people will get stuck on.  (If everything I just said makes no sense, I'm sorry.)  Regardless, it was a burst of insight.  This sort of thing happens somewhat regularly while pushing against the brick wall of Donkey Kong perfection.

What am I getting at?  Zen.  I felt a brush with something like Zen. Maybe awareness of Kong is an awareness of Kōng, to some degree- there is an emptiness in the moment of moving forward, something transient, a moment where I understand "This is not real, it is a game" with perfect knowledge.  A fleeting instant where I am aware of the both real-ness and void-ness of all things.
Or, I just like Donkey Kong.  With any luck, I will break 100,000 points this summer, and look forward to the time I can say "LEAVE ME THE FUCK ALONE I'M A FIGHTER PILOT" as someone tries to interact with me as I reach some new stage of being.

READER BONUS POINTS:  You get 10,000 "Totally Rad" points for noticing I said "fighter pilot" three times in this post.

ULTRA BONUS POINTS:   You get 1,000,000 points for noticing "zone dude" has a fighter jet model hanging from the ceiling.

Steubenville and Rape Culture

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Space 55 Love Letter

I love Space 55.  There, I said it.  I'm ready to commit.  

There are very few places I have felt as at home at as Space 55.  The first time I ever stepped foot thru the doors was for 7 Minutes in Heaven, back in June of 2010.  I was in a weird place in my life- I was in the process of buying a house in Downtown Phoenix, and my girlfriend and I didn't want to renew our apartment lease if we might be moving out in a month, so there was an undefined housing limbo for the two of us.  I stopped living with my parents when I was 18, and they had moved and divorced in the intervening time, but my mother allowed my girlfriend and I to move in and stay in her guest room for a few weeks while things finalized with the house. I had never actually lived at this house, and my mother was working long hours and seeing her then new beau a lot, so the place was basically empty all the time.  I was working at a used book store and had spent the last few years trying to create a body of visual work (some of which had been shown at now-closed candy/record store, Sweets & Beats just a few weeks earlier).  

My high school friend and long time gaming buddy, the Amazing Ashley Naftule, came to me raving about a show he'd seen recently that he really wanted to perform in, called 7 Minutes.  I knew that, over the previous year or two, Ash had become more involved with the Phoenix art scene, and he was incredibly charged by the chance to get on stage at Space 55.  I agreed, and then looked up Space 55.  

This is a hilarious case of nearly missing the boat.  The first article to pop up was a New Times online article written by Robert Pela, which includes such statements as "the old guy, who started out wearing a kilt and a plaid shirt and ended up ruining everyone's night by taking them both off" and phrases like "appallingly lackluster" and "better than an evening of dinner murder mystery...Sort of."  I was petrified.

I'm going to derail this loving memoir a moment to laugh loudly over the internet.  I don't know Robert Pela, but from what I can gather in the articles I've read by him in the New Times since, he's one of the mythical "old guards" of art and culture in phoenix.  You know, those guys who wax fondly about how great everything was when they were youngish in the 80's and how nothing really speaks or matters and "Downtown is OVUH." Truthfully, I didn't live thru your mythical Lemurian golden age of Phoenix, so I can't comment.  Frankly, in my life as an artist and performer, I don't spend a lot of time looking back and going "whoa, that's way better."

Mom would be so proud.

Back to the story at hand- I was petrified.  This article made it seem like I was going to a death camp where I would be fed a bucket of liquified corpse juice and asked to clap, and now I was going to perform there?  This, for me, might have been the best decision of my life (which is harried by a colossal string of poor decisions).  I decided to not only do the 7 minutes, but I was going to do it as hard as possible.  There's not a lot of evidence of that show, sadly, and I won't delve too deeply into, except that it involves me playing a box-car hobo on a public access wine show across from Ash as a snooty sommelier and drinking from a bindle containing a bladder from a boxed wine.

I also don't remember if anyone thought it was very funny, but that's sort of inconsequential.

Over the next two years I would perform at every single 7 Minutes (with the exception of that time I got the shingles).  I've eaten Popsicles to tell the jokes on the sticks, tried to summon dread Azathoth, done Improv, fought inside a tiny city, and more.  The freedom of expression provided by the 7 Minutes shows is easily one of the best things available to see or do in Downtown.  From a 5 star Yelp review of the most recent June shows:

"[...] I underestimated Phoenix creatives. Every act was entertaining at worst, most were good and a couple made me laugh until my sides hurt.  Most notably a comedian known simply as Seymour."

In case I haven't dropped this bomb on you yet, I'm Seymour (whose full name is Seymour Samson, but nobody remembers that).  I've heard people talk up my Popsicle comedian character around or even right to me without knowing I was He.  The satisfaction is tremendous.  I'm a little flush right now just thinking that so many people like something as ridiculous as that.  It's flattering to know something that came out of my head has made so many people laugh. I owe Space 55 a debt of gratitude for that alone.

It goes deeper, however.

Last year our Artistic Director, Shawna Franks, came to Ash and I with a rough idea for a show- it involved a treehouse, a kid, and music and fun and games and dance parties.  Over the next few weeks Ash and I brainstormed like some kind of mental monsoon to create the show that has been running there for almost a year straight, every first Saturday.  I've mentioned Hollis' Travelling Treehouse and Dance Party on this blog before, but it bears a little more note here.

When we first sat down to create the Show, it seemed like an intimidating task.  We were planning to have musical guests, audience interaction, puppets and rotating characters within a kid's show framework.  I watched Blue's Clues and old Sesame Street carefully for days.  Since then, the show has ballooned into something I find very magical.  There is an undercurrent of mythology in Hollis that tickles the old gamemaster part of me- a land where all puppets come from, rules about fairies and gnomes and a series of subplots moving so molasses slow in the background as to be invisible to those not seeing every episode.  Is our audience aware of Hollis' origins?  Do they know why Shadenfreude and Treehouse bicker so much?  Do they suspect the truth?  It doesn't really matter, I suppose, when we get to do this.
:

HOW IS THIS POSSIBLE?  How did something I made reach so many people?  It seems almost unfair.  In the last year I've pretty much been able to look at someone I respect and find amazing, point at them, and then have a chance to work with them.  What kind of awesome punk rock dream is that?  If I ever thought that Phoenix was a boring or dull town with no art or culture, I need to jump in the time machine and punch myself in the stupid face.

But it goes DEEPER.

Several years ago, I was still consumed with the desire to start a GWAR-esque band where I would throw blood on the audience and stomp around grunting.  Still am.  I wrote and recorded a couple of pretty awful sludgedoomscapes, and a couple of tracks with my very talented brother, Andrew Flanagan.  The idea was to dress as evil, black robed cultists and chant the name of dread Hastur while also trying to recruit.  The music sat on Myspace and my hard drive.  I made a couple copies, with liner notes and everything, and forced them onto people, but not much happened.  I couldn't find anyone interested.

Ash, however, loved the idea of a doomsday cult of Cthulhu, and we ended up performing in 2010 at 7 Minutes in Hell and something clicked for me.  The music was simply the atmosphere I wanted to create for these characters to live in.  The Cult of the Yellow Sign was born.

"Give it up for the slaves."

The Cult is easily one of my favorite things ever.  I get to dress like an evil wizard and scream at people while throwing flash paper and poppers at them.  I find it is easily my most carthaic creative outlet, and the one that people seem to connect the most to.  I owe it's current form to a lot of talented and creative people, but at the heart of that, I owe Space 55.  It was on their stage and with the support structure surrounding the theatre that I found the tools necessary to make something I always wanted to see a reality.  The Cult attended the Phoenix Comicon, and our plan for next year is the San Diego Comicon.  We've done the Phoenix Home and Garden Expo- something I could never have even conceived of if not for the amazing creative minds in Downtown Phoenix.  If there's anything I work on that has the potential to raze an entire city (or raise an entire deity) it's the Cult.

All this is just how the Space has affected me in my own creative life.  I've also seen tremendously talented performers on that stage from around the valley and it's hard to believe I'm on a first name basis with them.  I could list them all off, but letter for letter that list would easily crush my blog post.  It almost seems like all of Downtown Phoenix's creative culture is a huge game of "Six Degrees" with Space 55 as a possible substitution for Kevin Bacon.  I may be gushing a little, and I'm surely the same can be said of other venues such as the Trunk Space, which is also amazeballs, but my heart belongs to Space 55.  I've grown tremendously as a creative, a performer, and a person within those black walls and I look forward to a future where others can as well.

If you don't know, now you know.

Hard to Explain (or) Do My Parents Still Think I'm Crazy?

Pazazul Great & Terrible

Watching the clip above after recording it, I had a sort of epiphany concerning one of the questions I used to ask myself alot as a teenager: "Do my parents think I'm crazy?"  then, the truth is that they probably found me incredibly annoying more than anything else, but watching myself adlib with a puppet for an online audience rekindled the curiousity.

Occasionally, I try to explain to my family what it is that I spend all my time doing.  I spent a couple of years avoiding this, because all it amounted to was an occasional "Uh, so hows....painting?" around the holidays when I'd see them.  Now, I take a sort of masochistic joy in trying my best to explain to my mother "This weekend I have a zine release and performance for my doomsday cult."    It's not that I want them to be weirded out, in fact, I'd love it if my family understood.  My brother is about 5 years younger than me, and he seems to understand alright; he knows what it's like to have a creative urge that doesn't go away no matter how crazy it might sound when you say it aloud.  In fact, I think my brother has actually come to really enjoy seeing me perform.  At the most recent 7 Minutes in Heaven show at Space 55, my brother came out and saw a piece I titled "Kevin Flanagan, Daredevil Extraordinaire" where his laughter rang out from the crowd in a way I found very validating.

"Bury me with my stuff."

"You'll love it, Dad!  We do improv metahumor."

 I had made the act revolve around me calling my mother to explain to her my plan to jump over a pile of monster trucks as she was my "next of kin" and the audience really loved listening to us talk. There was a sort of sheepish acceptance in my brother's laugh that stood out from the audience, a shared link not only to our (occasionally) hilarious mother, but to the sense that there's a sort of comic futility in trying to get anyone, especially one's parents, to really understand what you do and why.  I think we all must have this existential dread about being understood, and it's sort of lame to present it as something artists have to deal with alot, but the truth is that I suspect my parents DO think I'm insane.  I'm certainly not doubting their affection for me- but any time I try to explain to them what I did or am doing, they get a glazed confused face that speaks volumes.  I imagined, watching the clip above, what it would be like if they actually had a chance to consume the creative body of work I've produced over the last few years and was filled with total dread.  I'm not ashamed, but if they're confused now, actually SEEING my work certainly isn't going to help.

However, I do feel like maybe I'm just waiting for the right thing to invite them to.  So much of what I do now is either obscurist or offensive (The Cult of the Yellow Sign is both) that I worry about alienating them further with something that's going to march them right out of the room.  The time for blasting horrible music directly at their room is over in my life- I'd really take no salacious glee in going "look at me, isn't this something you hate"  like I might have as a teenager.  Sure, there's a little of that in me still, but for the most part I now try to find a chance to direct it at audiences.

You and Me and Toxoplasma Gondii.

I lived with a cat for about 5 years.  In that time, I cleaned his litterbox, slept with him at the foot of our bed, watched TV or played video games with him in my lap, and all the other standard cat-owner behaviors.  Never once did I suspect that a mind-controlling brain parasite might have lodged itself in my blood stream and been changing the course of my life in secret.

We, as humans, like to consider ourselves the masters of our own fates.  We imagine that we have the sacred power of free will, when it seems in truth that we constantly butt up against genetic predisposition, social structure, and our birthplace when we "self-determine."  But what if there was something more subtle at work, shaping our movements and changing the course of human history with an invisible hand?  No, not the Illuminati or some kind of Cthulhu cult.  A simple parasite.

"I Poop Mind-Control."

Toxoplasma gondii. This single-celled organism thrives in cats, where it produces eggs that are eventually expelled by the cat.  All sorts of animals can then become carriers for T. Gondii (which is my new hip-hop alias, by the way) if they come into contact with feline fecal matter containing the eggs. T. gondii forms cysts throughout its new host's body and brain. Fascinating, tho, is that despite this parasitical infection, the new hosts are often perfectly healthy.  In fact, infected rats are practically indistinguishable from non-infected rats, with one exception:  They are less afraid of cats.

Genius Risk Assessment.

Such a major departure from normal rat logic, i.e. "Cats are going to eat me and then I'm dead" bears further attention.  Evolutionarily, it makes perfect sense- parasites that move back into cats are more likely to begin their cycle over, and thus, more likely to reproduce.  Rats that get eaten bring the parasite back to it's original proginator- a sort of exodus back to the motherland (cat intestines) by a new generation (of disgusting parasites).  There, the wonderful (horrible) cycle of life begins again- all because the rats displayed a tremendous lack of self-preservation instincts.

Here's where it gets good- Humans can carry the parasite in the same way that rats due, and are often infected from handling soil or kitty litter.  For the most part, the parasite is unlikely to make us ill, and it's even more unlikely that it will complete it's journey back into a cat (since even the most aggressive housecats don't usually eat humans) but that doesn't exclude the possibility that it could have an effect on human behavior.  Parasitologist Jaroslav Flegr of Charles University in Prague gave psychological surveys to both people infected with Toxoplasma and uninfected control groups. The Infected (I like how this sounds more and more like a horror movie) showed a small but statistically significant tendency to be guilt ridden and insecure. Strangely, on average. Infected women tended to be more intelligent, outgoing and friendly, and sexually active.  Infected men were more likely to be jealous or suspicious, and more aggressive.  Okay, that's sort of weird, but it shouldn't really have that big of an effect on us, right?  Kevin D. Lafferty found in 2006 that T. Gondii infection is extremely common and rates can vary greatly from country to country; 7% of Brits carry the parasite, but about 67% of Brazilians were carriers.

This, but with more cats and sex.

Before you run off and create the next blockbuster sci-fi thriller (I'm looking at you, Michael Bay) or start suspecting your crazy cat loving aunt is a servitor of mind controlling parasites, the data isn't really strong enough to do anything more than suggest there's a correlation.  It's a pretty enticing concept, I have to admit.  What if that girl you like is only nice to you because she has a cat and IS ONE OF THE INFECTED.  Would the parasite eventually evolve so that we would desire to have MORE CATS and also maybe, you know, LET THEM EAT US?  Slowly but surely the infection spreads around the world and then WOMEN ARE FRIENDLIER and MEN ARE MORE SUSPICIOUS and RATS ARE HANGING OUT WITH CATS and EVERYTHING IS IN BOLD CAPITAL LETTERS EXPLOSION EXPLOSION EXPLOSION!

It's fun to hypothesize.