Violent Fantasies

***VIOLENT FANTASIES***

Nobody will ever come out and admit to having violent fantasies about their enemies, but that doesn’t mean it’s not true. Everybody has that one person in their lives who they feel deserves double hand strangulation, a blast from a flamethrower, a Columbian Necktie, or any other savage means of torture or murder. Some fantasize about violence more than others, but it’s something we all do whether we’re open about it or not. Anybody who says otherwise is a goddamn liar. Even the most peaceful people have angry thoughts every once and a while. That’s what the mind is for: it’s the last sanctuary of privacy we have. If we actually had psychomantic powers (a.k.a. telekinesis), then we would all be shit out of luck.

Having violent thoughts doesn’t make you an evil person. Hell, it’s the sanest thing a human being can do without actually committing those acts. The moral crusaders like to complain that videogames make the youth of today violent people and we all know that’s serious bullshit. Videogames, martial arts cinema, horror novels, these things don’t promote violence, but they give the average human being a channel to release their most hateful thoughts. When I was in high school, my favorite form of violent entertainment was watching old school ECW (not the WWE revival of it, which sucked). Watching The Sandman and Tommy Dreamer smack their opponents with kendo sticks and suplex them onto barbed wire made me feel giddy inside. Did I actually do any of these things to my fellow classmates? No, I didn’t, because that’s considered assault and it’s highly illegal.

Being able to separate fantasy from reality is the most important thing a person with angry thoughts can do. There are kids who play Gears of War or Call of Duty on their X-Boxes and think they can go overseas and do actual military service. When you step on a landmine in a videogame, that’s okay, because there’s always a reset button. If you step on a landmine in the real world, you’ll either lose your legs or you’ll die instantly. And trust me when I say this: real life war has no reset button. The same thing is true when you are the aggressor and another person is the victim. If you think about shooting another human being with an AK-47 and that fantasy makes you smile on the inside, congratulations, you’re a human being. But if you actually shoot someone with an automatic weapon, it’ll fuck with your mind for the rest of your life.

There are plenty of ways to channel violent fantasies into productive and creative results. I, for example, wrote a heavy metal song last night called “Chainsaw Samurai”. Not only was it about a samurai who preferred a chainsaw over a katana, but that samurai was a murderous psychopath who left seas of blood everywhere he went. In the fictional world, a chainsaw-wielding samurai is cool to me. Hell, I’d even watch a movie, read a book, or play a videogame if that person was the lead character. But if someone like that popped up in real life, I’d be scared out of my mind. I might not even want to come out of my room for several months if I knew such a vicious person was coming to Port Orchard. Of course, violence in Port Orchard is about as unnatural as a fireball falling from the skies, so I don’t know why a chainsaw-wielding samurai would ever want to come here, but that’s beside the point.

So go ahead, ladies and gentlemen. Relax in your easy chair and visualize your worst enemies chained to wooden posts with tires stacked around their bodies and a blazing fire crawling up their soon-to-be corpses. As long as you don’t do it in real life, you’ll be just fine. That’s what made the 2000’s detective show The Shield so cool. We cheered like animals when Vic Mackey pressed Armadillo Quintaro’s face against a burning stovetop. If Darren Wilson did that to Michael Brown, however, the media shit storm would never end. It would just become a biblical flood of brown juices stinking up the entire country and making everyone sick to their stomach. We’ve got ears, say cheers!

***DARK FANTASY WARRIORS***

Speaking of violence and burning people alive, my next Dark Fantasy Warrior will be Debra Cameron from the “American Darkness” short story “The Pyrocrats”. Does it seem strange that a woman who burns everything to the ground for a living is considered the sensible one in that story? This is a violent fantasy at its most brutal level. I’ve already drawn a picture of her psychotic partner Eduardo Mendez, so Debra Cameron is naturally the next one to be featured. I probably won’t draw a picture of The Fire Marshal (because we never actually see his face) or Xavier Melanson (because he’s not a warrior; he’s a puss-bag).

***MUSIC DIALOGUE OF THE DAY***

“Dear Diary, it was cold today. The sun came out later, so I strolled about looking at the shops. Didn’t see anything I liked, so I didn’t buy anything. On my way home, I posted a letter. It’s been quite a nice day. Somebody exploded an H-bomb today, but it wasn’t anybody I knew.”

-“Dear Diary” by The Moody Blues-