No, I’m not going to delve into the sections of our brain that makes “love” happen, but, rather, what makes us, as individuals love people in a romantic way.

Looking over my “ideal woman” post below, it occurred to me that she is a reflection of myself. Nothing more, nothing less. Maybe there is a little bit of a hyperbolic edge to my description of her, but she represents me as I want to be (and what I strive to be while undoubtedly be the subject of the next post here) – the ideal me, ironically enough.

Moving right along, this little speech by Francisco d’Anconia in Atlas Shrugged is dead-on, in my opinion, and even reflects what I reflected on above:

Some people think that sex is a physical capacity which functions independently of
one’s mind, choice, or code of values. They think that your body creates a
desire and makes a choice for you — just about in some such way as if iron
ore transformed itself into railroad rails of its own volition. Love is blind,
they say; sex is impervious to reason and mocks the power of all philosophers.
But, in fact, a man’s sexual choice is the result and the sum of his fundamental
convictions. Tell me what a man finds sexually attractive and I will tell you
his entire philosophy of life. Show me the woman he sleeps with and I will tell
you his valuation of himself. No matter what corruption he’s taught about the
virtue of selflessness, sex is the most profoundly selfish of all acts, an act
which he cannot perform for any motive but his own enjoyment — just try to think
of performing it as an act of selfless charity! — an act which is not possible
in self-abasement, only in self-exaltation, only in the confidence of being desired
and being worthy of desire. It is an act that forces him to stand naked in spirit,
as well as in body, and to accept his real ego as his standard of value. He will
always be attracted to the woman who reflects his deepest vision of himself,
the woman whose surrender permits him to experience — or to fake –
a sense of self-esteem. The man who is proudly certain of his own value
will want the highest type of woman he can find, the woman he admires,
the strongest, the hardest to conquer, because only the possession of a heroine
will give him the sense of an achievement, not the possession of a brainless slut.
He does not seek to gain his value, but to express it. There is no conflict
between the standards of his mind and the desires of his body…

Observe the ugly mess which most men make of their sex lives — and observe the
mess of contradictions which they hold as their moral philosophy. One proceeds
from the other. Love is our response to our highest values, and can be nothing
else. Let a man corrupt his values and his view of existence — let him profess
that love is not self-enjoyment but self-denial, that virtue consists, not of
pride but of pity or pain or weakness or sacrifice, that the noblest love is
born, not of admiration but of charity, not in response to values but in response
to flaws, — and he will have cut himself in two. His body will not obey him,
it will not respond, it will make him impotent toward the woman he professes
to love and draw him to the lowest type of whore he can find. His body will
always follow the logic of his deepest convictions; if he believes that flaws
are values, he has damned existence as evil and only the evil will attract
him. He has damned himself and he will feel that depravity is all he is
worthy of enjoying… Then he will scream that his body has vicious desires
of its own which his mind cannot conquer, that sex is sin, that true love is
a pure emotion of the spirit. And then he will wonder why love brings him
nothing but boredom and sex nothing but shame….

And this presents a dilemma: what happens when there is no heroine to conquer, no woman that really represents our highest values? What happens when there is just incompetence ad infinitum and no people of ability of the opposite sex?

Who knows.

This is sure to be an interesting post, so let me dig out my notebook and see what I wrote, exactly:

She must be attractive. I mean, I’m going for an ideal here, and it’s likely I wouldn’t exactly gravitate towards someone who I don’t find attractive. It’s a must.

As far as what qualities are attractive to me, I’m pretty lenient. She should be all-around smaller than me. Wearing glasses is a turn on, though she shouldn’t need them to look/sound smart. The two necessities for me to really find someone attractive, though, are gorgeous eyes and an equally gorgeous smile. If she doesn’t possess those, she’s not the ideal.

And now for the really important stuff: what’s in her head.

She must have personal integrity: she must be brutally honest and she must practice what she preaches. She can’t be afraid of the Thought Police or conventional wisdom or all of that; she’ll act independently of such rules. Now, that’s not to say she’s some sort of dictatorial brat, but she’ll feel free to speak her opinion about anyone and anything, others be damned.

She must also think of humans as inherently good. That is to say, she doesn’t think we’re all corrupt and greedy and evil inherently. She believes, instead, that everyone has a capacity for good and evil, but the good came first, and other influences corrupt individuals, not man as a species. She wholeheartedly believes original sin to be a farce, for if man were truly evil, we’d be stuck in the Dark Ages with none of the technology we have now. In a nutshell: she believes man is good with traces of evil, rather than evil with traces of good.

The corollary to that is that she’s an agnostic/atheist, or even a deist (I’d look forward to a debate with a deist, actually! It brings a smile to my face to think of that conversation). I don’t think I’d be able to coexist in a relationship with a religious dogmatist, even if they were “moderates”.

The next quality is that she must be worldly: she must have a vast appreciation, knowledge, and, above all, curiosity for the earth and all the cultures it houses. This is essential since I am part of a very diverse and worldly family, and I have an extreme desire myself to travel the world. To have a partner that shares that passion and desire is essential to me; for someone to be otherwise makes hem seem like an ignoramus or arrogant American. Again, the corollary to this is that the ideal woman is NOT an American, since it’s significantly more likely that she’d be more engaged and curious about the world if she was from somewhere overseas. And, plus, discussing the differences in culture from her nation and mine would be entertaining and supremely enlightening. (This isn’t to say my dream girl isn’t American, but, again, it’s more likely that someone from abroad would be more knowledgeable about the rest of the world)

She also must be intellectually inclined, eschewing stupid things and stupid people. She thinks critically and for herself, and swears by truth and fact. She seeks constantly to broaden her knowledge, and, consequently, is a voracious reader. She loves debate and discussion, knowing that the greatest way to gain knowledge is through debate with opposing viewpoints. Is masterful at making and holding arguments (no, not about things like who’s going to do the laundry, things like political issues!), and isn’t easily swayed by another person’s argument. It follows, then, that she’s a good speaker, and a particularly good writer.

She must be competent. I don’t accept anything less.

She also should be an artist in some way, though it doesn’t have to be her job. Whether she paints, plays music, or writes, doing something creative is a must. I don’t know why, but it makes her seem multi-dimensional.

And, the most important one of all: she has to love life.

Since my fiction writing has reached the breaking point, I figured I’d return to philosophy, which is ultimately a little bit more rewarding for me.

Every day, from now on, I’m going to sit, pen and paper in hand, and write about a predetermined philosophical topic, or at least one about life in the abstract, for 30 minutes of time. After that time’s up, I’ll take my notes and share them with you guys here (the reason why I’m not simply typing stream-of-consciousness on the computer is that, for whatever reason, my mental acuity is much better with paper and pencil).

Sound good?

Stay tuned for tomorrow. The topic: the ideal woman. The topic for Thursday, and all future topics, will be spun off from my musings tomorrow. If I go down a tangent totally unrelated to the topic, I’ll circle it, and it will be the topic for the next day.

Lately I’ve been in an apocalyptic state of mind. It feels like everything is crashing down, as if the foundations of the world are crumbling, and the house of credit cards is collapsing like the Twin Towers did on September 11th. I’m struggling to find a whole lot of positivity in my life — not my accomplishments, but of the utter incompetence of those around me. I’m sick and tired of being the best with everyone riding on my shoulders just because I’m the most capable and the brightest light in the room. As much as I hate to make Atlas Shrugged references, it seems like that’s the type of world I’m living in — the small and the weak riding on the coattails of those who are the ones with any semblance of intellect. Again, I’m absolutely sick of it.

Though I value my life immensely, it’s always been a twisted fantasy of mine to actually see the apocalypse — a massive end to the world. Perhaps that’s because of my desire to escape to “another” world, an impossible one where there aren’t others to weigh me down. Yet, part of this fear that I’m getting is that we are headed toward an apocalyptic meltdown, what with our failed wars and economy. I fear that I won’t be able to live my life to the potential that I see in it, and I can’t even take solace in the hope for an afterlife because there isn’t one for me; this life is all that all of us have. I fear that the responsibility of others will rob me of a chance to run a productive, successful life, and I despise them for it.

It doesn’t help that I feel that my well’s running dry, not in my actual writing on my blog, but in my schoolwork. I just can’t think of any ideas, or, at least, of any good ones. Perhaps it’s my sleep deprived state, or maybe it’s just the stress of incompetence everywhere that’s really getting to me and knocking me off my game. I can’t stand it. I can’t stand it. I can’t stand it.

This is more frustration than anything else, frustration with other people, which is good, in my opinion, since my worst habit is blaming myself for the mistakes of others. It takes an awful lot to knock me off my horse, since I have so much confidence in my abilities, but I’m starting to lose any and all hope for the world I live in, which shouldn’t really matter, except for the fact that the ineptitude of others will affect me and I’ll have to carry their burden until the day I die.

Just a brain dump.

Again, unfortunately, dear readers, the project is getting derailed by my poor time management skills (or just plain lack of time). So, I’ll have to revert to the policy of getting out the episodes at more erratic intervals, so I have less stress on me and I can actually write other things for once! Hopefully this will allow me to flesh out all of my writing more and deliver it at a higher quality — I’ve always been for higher quality writing.

But, take consolation, since I know you’re sad: I’ll be writing a lot more other stuff. Not just Project Atlas. And, when a PA episode DOES come out, it’ll be that much sweeter, right?

Explaining the Watchman
Isaac Sampson

What we’re really doing is defending what is most important to us — and what we think should be defended in this country: freedom of speech and personal integrity. And that’s what the Watchman is all about.

Alex Whister placed his copy of the Watchman on his impossibly immaculate desk — though it had endured his 3 years of work and some other poor sap’s years, lost to the black hole of the past, it looked as if it were assembled that day, having a nice, even sheen. Its cleanliness could be attributed to the lost hours of the day where Alex, sitting, decidedly bored and apathetic, waiting for the clock to strike quarter of 6, would simply clean his desk with whatever means he had at his disposal. Between 4 and 5, Monday through Friday — especially Friday — Alex would be sitting there, paper towels in one hand, bottle of Windex in the other, wiping off his desk with punctilious precision, taking extra care to wipe the stains that had accumulated on his desk: stains that were only visible to his eyes. What made his desk’s spotless condition even more astounding was that he ate lunch there every day, without fail. At noon, he’d be at his desk, eating a sandwich, or an apple, drinking green tea always — decaffeinated. Always decaffeinated.

He raised his head to view his computer monitor deliberately, as to appear lazy or simply uninterested in what it had to hold for him. The clock read 5:31. He wheeled his chair out to the entrance to his cubicle, scanned the area for signs of life, found none, and retreated back inside, thinking aloud, “Well, 4 more minutes until you have to do it. 4 more minutes. What are you going to say? What are you going to do? What –” a man walked by, cast an inquisitive glance at Alex, then walked away indifferently. After the man walked by, Alex whirled around, faced his computer, and decided to think in his head.

5:32.

Just seem confident. That’s all you have to do. Seem bloody confident. Don’t stutter, don’t look down, just be smooth, like James Bond. Look her in the eye, put on a smile, and just ask her to get a cup of coffee with you. Simple’s that. Confidence. Confidence. Confidence. Oh, relax too. Don’t get too emotional, just relax, and have fun with her. Relax. Deep breaths. Deep breaths. Relax.

5:33.

He repeated these little mantras for the next two minutes, staring up at the clock every few seconds, desperately wishing that the clock wouldn’t advance; if he had his way, the clock would remain frozen perpetually at 5:33, and he’d never have to take action. He pleaded with the clock — please, please, don’t move to 5:34, not 5:34! — to no avail: the clock, surely enough, ticked ahead to 5:34, which left him with under a minute to work up the courage to ask her out.

He looked at his cubicle wall, focusing his eyes on the one and only quote he himself coined. He cracked a wry smile at the sight of it, and viewed it with contempt:

“He who takes action and fails has, in fact, succeeded; he who takes no action, expecting failure, has failed.”

His mouth contorted into a smile, and then a full-blown grin, his lips forming a slight parabola on his face, and, for the first time today, Alex Whister laughed. He laughed at the sheer absurdity of his seriousness, and he laughed at the fact that he actually was laughing. He noted, quite joyously, that to laugh is to live, and he’d been missing, well, life this entire time, committed entirely to his work, religiously cleaning his desk. He laughed at himself, at the quotes on his cubicle wall, and grimly noted that he knew he was going to be rejected, but for this minute, between 5:34 and 5:35, that he didn’t fear it. When the clock struck 5:35, he knew this instance of happiness would descend into myth, into legend, into blackness.

5:35.

“Showtime,” Alex said, and, much to his surprise, the elatedness he felt at the sheer action of laughing did not, in fact, fall away. He rose out of his seat, carrying himself with energetic purpose, like that of a man who rises from bed in the morning and is genuinely excited about what a new day will have in store for him. He smiled again, and chuckled at himself. Alex thought he was in some sort of alternate reality — a place with positivity, a place where things are of no consequence, a place where he can live — and marched down to Erica Apels’s desk, the woman he was going to ask out. Whether she refused or not, he didn’t care. He felt as though the feeling of taking a risk was a good enough feeling, though this risk didn’t mean anything at all. It meant nothing at all, though, he noted, it meant everything. It gave his life color and darks and lights; his action erased the drab gray that so permeated the world around him.

This is how that guy Isaac must’ve felt, rebelling against those liars and crooks of the corporate media. By taking a risk, by standing up for what he and only he wanted, he gave himself freedom and… self-satisfaction. He didn’t quit at the last minute, did he? He saw it through, and he was proud of himself at the end. He had to be, because he had accomplished what he ultimately wanted — a newspaper with integrity. But… that’s only the beginning, isn’t it? He has to fulfill his promise; he has to keep writing, keep challenging the status quo. He has only gained a little victory.

He turned the corner, mechanically, without effort, and stood at the entrance of Erica’s cubicle, and was taken aback at how good she looked. He gazed at her wavy, almost metallic, blond hair, which descended in little curves down her neck and shoulders, her pale, but flawless skin, her slightly rounded face, and her small, dainty nose, which was a perfect fit on her face. She turned to him, and oh my God, her eyes are unbelievable! looked at him with inquisitive, green eyes. Despite her beauty, her demeanor seemed lethargic, almost as if she had worked too hard during the day — and stayed up late the night previous.

“Yes?” she said, with an undertone of annoyance.

“Hi Erica… I’m — uh — Alex. Listen, I was wondering whether you’d like to –” Alex managed to eek out, but he could already tell that he was losing confidence. He wasn’t helped by Erica’s careless smile — which was probably hiding contempt for him. He’d dealt with politically correct people before, and he couldn’t stand that blank smile they all put on, the one that masqueraded as caring and sympathy, but concealed annoyance and hate. He spotted that little smile, that face that told him you know, I’m trying to act nice to you even though I really am not in the mood, so cut me some slack. Go away.

Her lips were still stiffly contorted into something resembling a smile. She said, “Not particularly, but… I’m sure if you asked me, say, Monday, I’d give you a better answer. That’s fine, right?”

“No, no, it’s fine! I’ll just… Just…” Alex jerked his thumb in the direction of the nearest exit. “I’ll — I’ll get going now,” he sputtered, hardly caring to conceal his embarrassment, and, what’s more, his humiliation at getting shot down. Thoughts blaming himself, himself and only himself, entered his mind, invading and conquering his brain with ease. It was his fault that he had been shot down, it was his inadequacies that made him undeserving of having a cup of coffee with such a woman, and it was he who was unworthy of being even her slave. He cursed himself a thousand times over, knowing that it was a decision akin to a man jumping into a river knowing full well that he can’t swim, desiring only to get wet. Alex was swept away by the self destructive rapids that were now his own thoughts, drowning in them, wallowing in them.

During this time, he was marching toward the door, without thought; his face displayed no emotion, cloaking the bitterness raging inside of him. He accidentally ran into a coworker, who dropped the newsmagazine he was holding. Alex muttered remorsefully, saying something about him having a long day and being stressed out from work, but they were rushed words, whose memory — and meaning — would vanish as soon as they were spoken. The man said something to the effect of, “that’s alright, mate,” and things carried on as if nothing ever happened: both men knew the futility of even issuing an apology and an acceptance of said apology, as they knew the collision was a mere accident. But, in helping the man pick up his fallen magazine, Alex was struck: he forgot the copy of The Watchman on his desk. He rushed saying a blatantly extraneous “Goodbye” and jogged to his desk, zigzagging through cubicle aisles and coworkers with surprising agility. He picked up his copy of the Watchman, and ran back out to the nearest exit, nearly crashing into more coworkers on his way.

God, I need a coffee. Alex thought, and, yet again, let his control of his body fade, transferring it to the force of habit — he was traveling a route that he had taken so many times that he could go there even if his eyes were gouged out of their sockets (assuming there was no traffic, of course).

Come on, pick yourself up — every single time something goes wrong, you take the opposite approach of everyone else by blaming yourself. Their approach is to blame everyone but themselves, and you blame yourself only; both approaches are wrong. Hell, you’re good at everything you do, especially your job, and you do have a bit of charm — when you’re not looking like you’re going to puke because you’re so nervous. You need to relax and feel comfortable, even when you know your “performance” isn’t going too well; when the crowd gets antsy, step up your game. But that just makes you more nervous.

But, most of all, the thing that’s killing me is that I need someone to talk to. I don’t care who, I just need someone to bounce my ideas off of — someone to acknowledge my existence as something more than another guy stuck in that awful cube farm. And someone who’s competent. And someone who loves me, not for the six figures I somehow make crunching numbers, but for my ideas, for my thoughts, for my accomplishments. And someone — here’s the important part — who has compelling ideas themselves, someone who creates things I would’ve never thought of myself. I want someone to look in the eye as an equal. That’s what I want. Not these politically correct buffoons who are a dime a trillion nowadays, who have nothing to offer but altruistic bullshit that they don’t even believe in themselves.

By now, Alex had already received his coffee, and sat down at a table, reading the Watchman, reading as slowly as he could to kill whatever time remained in his day.

* * * * *

Eric Lansing walked, energetically, toward Madeleine Schaffer’s desk, carrying a paper in his hand. He walked with a smile on his handsome face, but his thoughts betrayed what the smile seemed to convey. He plopped the paper down on Madeleine’s desk, forcefully, as if angry, and said, in a tone that was, ironically, lighthearted, “So, Mad, what do you call this?” He winked at her, injecting the conversation with some deliberate faux-cheeriness.

She responded as he had predicted, sarcastically saying, “A newspaper article, Eric.” She didn’t bother to wink back, knowing full well that Eric was not really happy with it — as he usually was. For whatever reason, she mused, he never thought her work was up to par, and criticized it, but on everything else, she (or so he said) was wonderful. She just was not as good as him at their job; he outclassed her, and to her, he asserted his superiority far too often.

“No. I call it trash. Or something like it,” Eric’s voice turned grave. “Why are you reporting on this — why are you printing what uneducated buffoons say as fact? Because they’re the ‘common people’, is it? Because they’re the voters? The ‘common taxpayer’? Some bloke is going to see that article and think, ‘Gee whiz, Nancy, if Mark Smith from Toledo thinks that we should demand leaders that we can identify with, we damn well should.’ That’s not good. Print your own thoughts, man.”

“Excuse me Eric, but at least I haven’t been warned by management to keep my trap shut at all yet, unlike you, who can’t suppress your radical political beliefs. I’m doing my job as an objective journalist, by reporting on the facts and not giving my opinion. I only give the facts that are available at the time. And, indeed, Mark Smith from Toledo did say that we should vote for our leaders based on how we identify with them. That’s a fact. That’s what a voter thinks, so the statement that ‘common voters choose their leaders based on how they identify with them on a personal level’ is a fact. The press should be as close to transparent as it can be — acting as a seamless conduit between information and the people. I’m not allowing personal emotion into this, so aren’t I doing a good job?”

“It seems we have different ideas and ideals about what the press should be. I think the press should be the separation of right and wrong, the people who can report on the facts and not show the spin doctors as truth-tellers — of course, within reason. I mean, we’ve still got to be as transparent as possible, and report for what the people want because… Well, they’re paying for our paychecks, by buying these newspapers. And, maybe — maybe you’re right. We’ve got to cater to the common man because he’s the one who feeds us. I still… Still think that we need to have honesty in our reporting, but not so much that it drives away customers: to do so is to flush money down the toilet, so to speak. I’m sorry, Madeleine. I have been accused of being too idealistic, and it seems my critics,” — he motioned toward her — “might be half-right,” he said, in a sardonic tone, with an accompanying sarcastic smile donning his face. Anyone else would’ve thought that he was just being devilishly sarcastic in saying that, but Madeleine knew that was his way of admitting defeat in the way that would damage his ego the least.

“Hey, at least you get where I’m coming from,” she said, matching her tone of voice to accompany his. “Let’s… drop it, okay? Go earn your paycheck or something.”

They both laughed for a reason they couldn’t quite identify, but were happy to find that they finally were distracted from the impact — and the eeriness — of their disagreement. It was a rare thing to see, for both of them, and it burdened their consciences, for they each viewed the other as a glimmer of light in the human race, a person that they could admit as a positive influence on their lives: a person worth remembering. But, yet, a disagreement could make the illusion of symmetry between them disappear, and made the instigator (or the rebel) prone to conceding their argument, trying to keep the illusion alive as much as possible. To lose faith, to lose confidence in the other person, was, truly, to lose self-esteem. To punch a mirror because the reflection looked sinister would be an accurate way to describe it — after all, the mirror image, despite all appearances to support it, is not the object itself. It is an illusion of being — and this is exactly what Eric and Madeleine knew their relationship to be: a struggle to keep their souls afloat in a world that hated their being. And so, like the good friends they were, they clung to each other in support, in celebration that the other person made them feel good to be themselves. It didn’t matter that it was all a mirage.

Eric sighed and picked up the article swiftly, saying, “I’ll go back to work. For a moment,” and turned and walked away, back to his desk. He read the article again, put it back on his desk, and shook his head in disbelief. His head was in civil war; his ego was against itself. He picked up the article, turned to his left to go throw it in the trash, and thought better of it, placing it softly on the desk. He smiled at himself, and knew that it was okay to disagree with Madeleine, that it was fine to go against their little similarities. But, at the same time — he wondered how she was taking it, as he knew their feelings mirrored each other well on matters of this kind. Would she think that he was a lost cause by disagreeing for once? Would she think ways were on the way down between them, even though they weren’t even involved romantically?

“Maybe it’s my responsibility to fix it,” he whispered, answering the questions in his mind. “Maybe I’ve gotta do it.”

By Isaac Sampson:

I am writing this to be saying that I am quitting my job. Or, to be more precise, I am writing to quit my job with my current employer. I will continue to be a journalist, but not one that is forced to omit the truth because of the corporate powers that be — the ones that currently own this newspaper. For my dedicated readers, this is nothing new; but for those who don’t regularly check this column, you may be surprised to learn that The White Post is indeed owned by a massive corporation. These folks — Petracorp — own sports teams, own television networks, have their own thinktank in Washington, own publishing companies, telecommunications companies, and have their own senator. Yes, folks, you heard me: their own senator. Regardless of their representation in government, these media conglomerates acquiring newspapers disrupt journalistic process like you wouldn’t believe — I’ve been told many times to edit my anti-corporate stance from my articles, and have had to comply, or risk losing my job. I’ve tried, time and time again, to get the word out to people that these media giants are dominating our culture, but have been shut down — I’ve had to edit those paragraphs into pro-corporate statements. What does that make me? A shoddy journalist, for sure, working in a corrupt system. The basic premise when you come to work for any of these so-called “news agencies” is that, if your views don’t reflect that of the corporation, they won’t get published.

At the same time, we’re forced to report on whatever will generate the biggest influx of readers or viewers — and, consequently, the biggest influx of money. I’m still shaking my head over the 3 mind-numbingly boring days that I had to spend covering the murder of a 10 year old girl in Kelso, Oregon (yes, I’m preparing for the ridiculous amount of hate mail that I’ll get for saying that) while, on the other hand, the government passed a bill that violated the rights of the honest man once again — deeming it necessary that we can be searched legally without a court order if there’s “probable cause” that we’re an anarchist, or a socialist, a communist, a fascist, an anti-war advocate, a libertarian, or whatever other bunk they lump other the label “enemy [sic] of the country”. Yes, they can now lawfully seize (read: arrest) you based on evidence that you don’t like where this country is going they gathered while unlawfully watching you at your job. Yes, I feel bad for little Polly Opham, but her death, no matter how brutal it was, took our attention away from something much bigger and worse: the erosion of our rights, all in the name of preventing another attack like the famed 44 attacks in London, and the wave of “terrorism” that’s spread throughout Britain. Any rational citizen would rather listen to a story on the government’s corruption, but we can’t call it that due to our corporate ties and the corporations’ ties to the government. What do you think would appeal more to the psyche of the country: the awful, wretched story of a girl brutally murdered by her brother, or some random “security bill”? Of course, the former. And instead of doing my job and telling the people that that bill is an outright threat to our security, ironically, these guys make me collect evidence at a crime scene like all those stupid crime dramas on TV, trying to be Sherlock Holmes, without the cool factor. (continued on page A5)

“Can you believe this guy, Maddy? He’s such a liar: he chose to work on the Polly Opham case, and didn’t tell us about –” a young man, probably in his late 20’s, pen in an ear obscured by his shaggy brown hair said, a slightly tired look on his face.

A woman, about the same age, with a sharp, straight nose accompanying an equally sharp and straight jaw, turned to him, and finished his sentence, “…that hopeless paper, The Watchman?”

Both their eyes lit up, his dark brown, hers a brilliant, sparkling blue, saying at the same time, with wry smiles spread on their faces, “Ah! Power! Again!” as if they were expecting each other to know exactly what and when they would say something. They, after long companionship, had found themselves to be equal in mind — and would consistently agree with each other so often that one could probably win the lottery before observing a conflict of opinion between these two. Both had long aspired to be journalists, both had went to the same college, both had went to the same graduate school, both got a job at the same newspaper. An onlooker could surmise that simply by living their own life, that person was living vicariously through the other. Eric was Madeleine; Madeleine was Eric. They went through life as if they were connected by an invisible rope — whenever someone did or said or thought something, the other would surely follow in the footsteps of the first.

“And this bit about being an honest journalist! Hah! This man lied more than any I know, to us, to Sam, and there he declares his little crusade for truth in journalism? He was a jerk to us — putting us down, saying that we were always in our little bubble, while he did nothing but stay in bubble and put on his tinfoil hat and cry government conspiracy at every turn? And when he wasn’t doing that, he was criticizing anyone who held a higher post than he did — just because they had power.” Madeleine said in a tone of condemnation, taking a swig of her latté, and placed it back on the conference room table with a sigh of satisfaction. She absentmindedly put her hand in her great curly mass of shimmering brown hair, and twisted her hair around her finger, going, and going, without a care, without focus.

Eric broke the silence, saying in a quiet and dejected tone, as to not let Madeleine hear him — but still looking in her direction, convinced that she’d hear him anyway, “Don’t you think it’s a bit ironic though — I know of a few people who pick up the Post just to read Isaac’s column and reports, thus raking in the cash for the corporate demons that Isaac so hates. His looney brand of political opinion clearly resonates with the insane — I mean, that bill requires that those who are going to search people have probable cause, so why distort it — and Petracorp has to appeal to those people in an effort to make cash. So, Isaac was probably not fired due to his… interesting demographic, we’ll say, that he appealed to. But, now that he’s off writing for his own newspaper that’s doomed to fail, maybe he’ll realize that the corporations are a huge help for getting a readership. Now everyone’s just going to dismiss him as a looney.”

Madeleine looked at him, studied him for a moment in indifference, and wryly said, with an arrogant tone of self-assurance, “Does it need to be said?”

Eric responded in kind, smiling at her, “No. Of course you agree.”

* * * *

Alex Whister, a brilliant, if idiosyncratic 29 year old, looked up from his newspaper and saw a person standing at the entrance to his cubicle. He was lean, with constantly moving — and fearful — eyes, and probably weighed too little for his 6 foot tall frame. The lines that made up his face were rounded, and, somehow, lacked definition, making him seem extremely plain, though the workings of his mind were anything but. He finished his work two hours early every day, but didn’t clock out then — he liked to go home when everyone else went home, at 5:45, so as to not draw attention to himself. He sat at his computer, looking up quotes of famous authors and philosophers. In fact, his only decorations around his cubicle were handwritten quotes that were attached to the cubicle wall via thumbtack. His favorites, to be sure, were the famed “proverbs for paranoids” coined by Thomas Pynchon in Gravity’s Rainbow. They were pinned on the ‘cube’ wall, penned in bold permanent marker directly to his left:

“1. You may never get to touch the Master, but you can tickle his creatures.
2. The innocence of the creatures is in inverse proportion to the immorality of the Master.
3. If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don’t have to worry about answers.
4. You hide, they seek.
5. Paranoids are not paranoid because they’re paranoid, but because they keep putting themselves, fucking idiots, deliberately into paranoid situations.”

He regarded them with irony, wondering whether he was paranoid just because he identified with every single one of the quotes. He heard a sound, off in the distance, and turned to fact the person who was speaking to him.

“Alex, I was erm — reading your analysis of our profits of the quarter and it appears as though you’re missing page 13?” the speaker said with both pity and contempt. She focused her eyes on him, as if trying to see into his mind, guessing what his excuse would be.

“I — I -I’m… sorry. I’ll… get that fixed straightaway. Sorry for being a failure…” Alex said, with not a hint of the self-pity that she expected to find in him — but a trace of self-loathing. His body language told the tale: he seemed extremely angry at himself — his shoulders were raised tightly, and his fists were clenched. He took a deep breath, paused for a second, and met her gaze as reluctantly as one would accept an order to stare straight into the sun. He said nothing, as if telling her to move on, to spend her lucky time on earth talking to someone who was worth something. She looked him back as if she understood, and proceeded back to her cubicle.

He subconsciously knew that he was very good at his job — that’s why he was still employed — but he equated every misstep he made with a massive failure, something that would get him fired. Quite simply: he disliked himself because he wasn’t perfect. Though he did everything with gusto 97% of the time, he spent his life as though he expected that imperfect 3% to shine through every single time, without fail. This made him avoid taking any risks for fear of rejection: he was so sure that he’d fail that he refused to do anything other than what he got paid for, and even then, he thought he should be unemployed.

He looked back at the proverbs for paranoids. He read the fifth one again, and laughed. You fucking idiot, he thought to himself. You deliberately put yourself in these situations where you can fail. If you stop doing anything, you won’t fail…