Word of the day: "titanomachia"

Today, I read about the so-called Portland Six; there was another terrorist in custody in Malaysia, and, most lovingly, I finally settled down to read some details of the so-called Montgomery Sniper.

We live in a chaotic, degenerate world, and my misfortune is that I am aesthetically fascinated by the suffering - as long as it happens to someone else. I suppose I should feel morally repulsed - but consider the Montgomery Sniper. One man, a high-powered sniper rifle, picks off seven unconnected individuals in a two-day spree. Sniping from up to six football fields away. One .223 caliber bullet per victim; mostly head-shots. The man (or woman, you never know, even girls play Counter-Strike) fires once, then moves on. Disciplined chaos. The targets have no connection; are of all races, ages, religions, ethnicities. They include a WASP, a Haitian immigrant, an Indian, and a Hispanic.

Brilliant, freaky madness. No pattern. No motive. No warning. Simply insanity. And probably some serious marksmanship training.

They still haven't caught the anthrax mailer either.

I suppose the suffering of others is one way I can vicariously and voyeuristically remove myself from the Gehenna of my personal banalities; my personal.. *trivia*.

I don't see portents of the impending apocalypse - that implies a direction and history. Simply an intensitifcation of the kind of random, senseless chaos that characterises human existence. There is no pattern, no order, no justice. Simply pockets of enforced stability; and even within those pockets entropy rules. A government is broken or made by the chaotic aggregates of voter demographic. One man is born a pauper; while the next into silver spoon-dom. Another man is insane; a second suicidal, a third, an Everyman. One person a scholar, another a convict. No patterns. No destiny. No meaning. Just random chance. (Although there's a remote possibility of karmic reincarnation, I grant:) And the occasional ability of the individual to impose his own meaning on the world around him. Those men we call geniuses, madmen, .. or heroes. Or villains.

And this is who we are.

"Things fall apart, the center cannot hold.
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world."