TINSELTOWN GAZETTE

MEGALOMS CONTEMPLATE REVENGE


This afternoon, December 25, 2003, an anonymous, but conspicuously placed recording appeared, in a plain vanilla envelope, in the T. Gazette Urbane Editor's inbox. The envelope housed a CD ROM, and what looked at first like a ransom demand. Block-print letters, cut "ransom note-style" from divers periodicals produced this message, "MerrY xmaS, yOU buncH of illeGitimAte illITeRAtES-P.s. Megalom SUCKS." We, the editorial staff, listened to the CD. Our moral dilemma was short-lived, we concluded that although the recording was likely obtained illegally and surreptitiously, it fit our brand of journalism like a Trojan-screw anybody we please, damn the torpedoes! Absence of malice, we just report, et cetera, et cetera. The essential elements of the transcribed (apparent) phone conversation between Megalom members C. Lagman and R. Hirsch appears below:

C. LAGMAN: Rod!! Great to hear from you old man! How's the Porn business shaping up? Keeping a stiff upper lip and all, heh, heh? What's on your mind, all nookied-out-or just warming up and calling for some phone sex to get jump-started?"

R. HIRSH: Yeah, yeah, very funny...c'mon Lagy, you know its really hard work, and dangerous nowadays. I'm really thinking of hanging up the tool and getting up some kind of gig like you got goin'-ya know-BIG, THEORY stuff, KOZMIK shit...AND BIG BUCKS!!

LAGMAN: Well, Rod, its actually a bit more complicated than that.

HIRSH: That's what I want to talk to you about, Lagy. I'm getting worried.

Yeah? What about?

Have you been keeping up with what is going on over at the new Gleeful website?

Can't say that I have, Rod. Heard it is a super site, but Being Cosmic is pretty full-time, I'm always having to defend, explain, and develop new branches of my theory-it's 24-7 man!!

Well maybe you'd just better go and check it out. I'd afraid we're dealing with a Renegade Society! It's out of hand already, and it's going to jeopardize, in the end, OUR LEGITAMACY.

Relax, Rod, nothing can do that. We have it under control. After we "compromised" the Holin exams, retired Lang's test, "proved" all other tests "too dumb" for us, disposed of Cageman neatly with a passing "WEIRD" shot, and conveniently can't find any other tests "smart" enough to let anybody else in-don't ya think we've effectively barricaded 'ol Megalom's doors for keeps? 'Sides, the Gleefuls are MORONS compared to us Megaloms.

No Lagy, that's not the problem. The problem is that these guys are really dangerous. There's Cageman-who's clearly some whacked-out Nazi left-over, and a drunken maniac who calls himself Vermicelli, and they got a high powered lawyer-Feely, and this totally psycho Administrator, Cooijmans. That's just for openers. It took me a while (and you KNOW how quick I am), but after I thought a long, long, time it hit me. They are making FUN of us, Lagy! And, they just don't seem to CARE! I'm afraid it's going to scare away the Stiffs. I lose, YOU really lose, and those dumb-asses lose, but like I said, they just DON'T CARE!!

Now you're starting to worry me, Rod. The Stiffs are the butter on my bread.

Lemme put it another way, Lagy, they've raised their legs and peed a stream of doubt all over your himation. Kiss those wood-sprite lectures bye-bye.

No! Unthinkable! I love my wood-sprite retreats, 'sides, the Megalom-Girls are just starting to warm up to me. Ugly pigs by your standards I know, Rod. But you know, in the night, all cows are black. Wait a sec, I gotta write that down...OKAY, OKAY, you sold me. But, JUST HOW ARE WE GOING TO GET THEM?! You said yourself that Feely's with them, quick with a retort and a tort.

Fight fire with fire, Lagy, expose the ring-leader for the Nazi-fraud he is and the whole Gleeful Circus will fold up like a tent.

Yeah?

Yeah. I have already done some sleuthing and I can easily shoot Grand Canyon-sized holes in a recently published Cooijmans article, "Crime and Sentence" and thereby show that he cannot be a super-genius like he says, so that he will be exposed and defrocked before all the Stiffs.

Proceed.

Right. Well, you have to read it for yourself, but essentially he says that the now archaic-and-ridiculed-as-procrustean concept of punishment meted out on an "eye for an eye" basis is inherently too soft (get that!), as it does not comprehend the subjects' (victim and perpetrator) relative culpability, and that just punishments need to be eye-squared or eye-squared(+). Specifically: p=r times c squared where p=punishment, r=responsibility, and c=crime.

Hmmmm, it DOES make sense....

LAGY!!

Okay, okay, go on.

Right. Here goes:

1. He assumes that victims are more innocent than perpetrators.
2. He Jesuitically eases the reader into agreement that no justice is done unless the perpetrator suffers more than the victim.
3. He never says who determines either "C" or "R".
4. He arbitrarily pegs the requisite proportional increase of punishment-to-crime at an minimal exponential value, the square (or higher).
5. While he reduces calculation of punishment to a mathematical formula, he introduces, in fact, more uncertainly into the designation of the ultimate punishment by allowing the victim carte blanche judicial review of the result.
6. He ignores the concept of suffering at the hands of one's own conscience.
7. He totally loses it, at one point, and starts babbling about how we'll genetically prevent crime with some kind of pre-natal DNA test. HE'S A ^%$&-ING NAZI, LAGY!!
8. He wants to use his method to eliminate Lawyers. By creating more confusion than he eliminates in sentencing, we may deduce that we'll then have even more lawyers.
9. Unlimited victim review vitiates his entire mathematical model.
10. He exposes the convict's complete removal from Society, yet neither explains what that means nor considers the costs or logistics involved in so doing.

Look, Lagy, I could go on and on-but do you see what I MEAN HERE??!! Guy's an IDIOT AND A NAZI THROWN IN FOR GOOD MEASURE. I WANT TO, I HAVE TO, EXPOSE HIM!!!!

LAGMAN: Hmmmm.

HIRSH: WHADDYA MEAN...HMMMMM!!!!

LAGMAN : Oh Rod, I have to go back to my THEORY now. I like your plan, but I'd advise that you rethink it somewhat. It could be that Cooijmans is being less than rigorous in a calculated way-just a thought, Rod.

HIRSH: I hadn't thought of that.

LAGMAN: I know, Rod, we're all so used to dealing with Stiffs.....

HIRSH: BUT, HE'S STILL GOT TO GO, DOESN'T HE??

LAGMAN: YES INDEED.

TO BE CONTINUED............