Jack Cassidy hears a commotion outside of his Bastille’s cell window. He takes the toilet paper he’s writing on and hides it behind the crevice of a loose stone in his chamber. He walks to the window and looks down upon the courtyard far below him. A throng has gathered around the guillotine. People are shouting. Prisoners with their hands tied behind their back are led up the stairs to wait in line for their turn at the guillotine. Yet no one seems in charge. People scream louder for blood. And then she comes.
Nearly eight-feet tall, a naked woman as black as night with a black shag haircut to match parts the crowd. She climbs the stairs to the guillotine. The mob has grown silent now, almost embarrassed with their thirst for violence. But the black woman motions to the guards to place the first victim head first into the guillotine. She then pulls the lever and the head rolls into the basket; blood lightly misting the air.
Head after head is decapitated by the black woman. Jack Cassidy is transfixed staring down in horror. He wants to pry himself away but every time a new victim is fed to the bloody mouth of the guillotine he excitedly watches. And then the black woman stops and slowly turns her head and looks up at him peering out of his barred window. She stares at him and then smiles.
I keep hearing people rap that we’ve become desensitized to violence. Too many violent video games, obsessive violence in the media, movies and the senseless, brutal cancellation of Deadwood. But have we really become desensitized to violence? Let’s hop into the WABAC machine with Mr. Peabody and his pet boy Sherman and take a trip to the days of yore with no video game gore. We would see Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus Maximus, animals on the farm slaughtered and people executed in public (and private) places for all to see. “What’s that, Sherman?” “Did you say that people used to be desensitized to violence?”
Shirley Partridge gave birth to a beautiful blue marble and then she let her flame-haired son run rampant because it’s always been this way and it always will. In the past some thick-skinned brute smashed a rabbit’s head in with a rock and laughed. And his friend watched horrified. In the future, the same thing happens. Over and over. The ape insect called Human is now divorced to some degree with Mother Nature. So maybe as the Cement Freaks and Suburban-niks forget about the cold hard facts of life and become desensitized to violence, Mother Nature compensates with violent movies, violent music, violent video games and the completely senseless and grotesque spectacle of HBO’s cancellation of Deadwood.
A little Partridge told me that maybe we’re supposed to be desensitized to violence. Or maybe the whole idea of being desensitized to violence is simply not balanced on the Scale of Reality TV.
The Partridge Family Temple is pleased to announce a brand-new PFT holiday. It’s called Black Friday and takes place the day after Thanksgiving. We at the Temple understand that God is the ultimate consumer. In a sense the Universe is like a gigantic Walmart and God just can’t wait to consume all that stuff. We also understand that we were created in God’s image which means we are all little consumers. Here today, gone tomorrow. And you know what? God’s gonna stock those shelves again. Maybe it won’t be a dodo bird. Maybe even something way better than a dodo bird.
