Happy Birthday, Mr. Hicks

12/16/1961 - 2/26/1994

"And we should call every truth false which was not accompanied by at least one laugh." -- Friedrich Neitzsche

"If comedy is an escape from anything, it is an escape from illusions. The comic, by using the Voice of Reason, reminds us of our True Reality, and in that moment of recognition, we laugh, and the 'reality of the daily grind' is shown for what it really is — unreal…a joke. True comedy turns circles into spirals. What before seemed a tiresome, frightening, or frustrating wall, the comic deftly and fearlessly steps through, proving the absurdity of it all. The audience is relieved to know they’re not alone in thinking, 'This bullshit we see and hear all day makes no sense. Surely I’m not the only one who thinks so. And surely there must be an answer…' Good comedy helps people know they’re not alone. Great comedy provides an answer.” -- Bill Hicks

"Pornography is good. All drugs should be legal. War is wrong. The rich get richer. The poor get poorer. Thank you, I'll be here all week." -- Bill Hicks

Cubehead Classix

For those of you arriving here from the 8easybits.net URL, welcome! If you're just tuning in, the reason you're here is because I accidentally nuked the .sql engine of the 8EB site during a host/domain transfer and don't know how to fix it.

But I have some good news: a new comics site is underway. From the beginning (before the ill-starred host transfer), the plan was to build a brand new site to host my brand new comics, which would be kept separate from the 8 Easy Bits archives. Although a full 50% of the scheme ended in total disaster, the second half of the project remains in progress. I'm going ahead and transferring most of the comics I've drawn since 2008 (or so) to the new site as originally intended, but this means that a whole lot of "Cube" archives get excluded, and they've got nowhere to go without the old 8 Easy Bits page.

And that's why I'm posting them here!

Well, that's one of the reasons. The other is that I've been so busy elsewhere I haven't had an opportunity (or the remaining psychic reserves) to compose a fully-baked update for this week. (Incidentally, these comics were first conceived to fulfill just such a demand.)

But man...this stuff is ancient. The very first ones date back to when I was twenty, which was eight years ago. Going through these now, I can see why some webcomic artists have deliberately erased or hidden the archives of their earliest work. While it might offer the longtime reader a moment of nostalgic comfort, revisiting really old material can be, for its author/artist, an embarrassing march down Memory Lane (which intersects with I Used To Really Suck At This Avenue and God What A Loser I Was Boulevard). Be warned: if you haven't read these before (or at least not recently), a lot of them are pret-t-t-y bad.

But it does go to show: we've come a long, long way together, haven't we? You have to praise me like you should.

And while we're at it, here are a few more oldies but goodies:

Oh man -- I'd nearly forgotten this one, which dates back to the first semester of my junior year at college (late 2004). For the sake of disclosure, the strip's inclusion is the reason I've tagged this post with a "marijuana" label. Kids, pay attention -- the preceding comic has been a dark portrait of cannabis consumption's effects upon the inexperienced and developing brain. (For your own safety, please just stick to safe, legal binge drinking.)

"In His Efforts to Get to the Bottom of Things the Laureate Comes Within Sight of Malden, but So Far from Arriving There, Nearly Falls Into the Stars"

For your reading enjoyment this evening, I have transcribed a passage about humanity's psychological relationship with the universe (a topic we've touched upon from time to time) from John Barth's opus, The Sot-Weed Factor, published in 1960.

The date of publication bears especial mentioning because it sure as hell doesn't read like something written in the second half of the 20th Century: Barth purposefully (and brilliantly) imitates the style and structure of an epic novel from the 18th Century. In this is it is very much like a literary Venture Brothers, blurring the line between parodical pastiche and earnest homage to the extent that it's neither more of one than the other.

The bulk of the story covers the final years of the 17th Century in the life of the British poet Ebenezer Cooke. This qualifies The Sot-Weed Factor for the designation of historical novel (again, in a a parodic sense), since Ebenezer Cooke was a real person, whose claim to fame was a 700-line satirical poem whose title Barth borrows as the name of his own masterwork. Biographical details about the "real" Cooke are scarce; except for the material concerning the "The Sot-Weed Factor's" publication in the early 18th century, everything in Barth's fictitious account is from his own imagination.

Barth's Eben Cooke is cast in the mold of Voltaire's Candide -- he is well-bred and exceptionally educated, but an utter stranger to the workings of the world beyond the academy and his father's Middlesex estate. In a keen stroke of metatextual parody, Eben comes to hold his own innocence (which the reader immediately perceives as his most salient characteristic) as his highest personal virtue. Nobody should be surprised that Eben's introduction to the great wide yonder is just as excruciatingly (and hilariously) jarring as Candide's.

Eben's journey begins when he receives a commission from Lord Baltimore himself to sail to across the Atlantic and pen a poetical epic that sings and immortalizes the great virtues and heroes of Baltimore Colony. Scarcely does he arrive on the shores of present-day Maryland when his fantastic visions of a pastoral New World Ilium are rudely shattered: contrary to his expectations, Baltimore Colony is a swampy shithole populated by criminals, drunkards, slavers, prostitutes, opium-smugglers, hucksters, and worse. (You can read all about it in the original "Sot-Weed Factor" by the original Eben Cooke.)

But the real star of the novel, as far as I'm concerned, is Eben's teacher, guide, and friend, Henry Burlingame -- 25% Dante's Virgil, 25% Candide's Pangloss, and 50% Faustus's Mephistopheles. Comic book fans will surely spot something of Marvel Comics' Mystique in him as well -- Henry is a bona fide shapeshifter, appearing in various guises and a Rolodex of assumed names, acting as a double and triple agent in the machinations of the New World's conflicting power brokers -- a game into which he draws the hapless Eben Cooke.

That's the basic context of the passage you're about to read. Eben has just staggered into Baltimore Colony (after an altercation with some pirates off the coast) and has just convened at an inn with with Henry Burlingame, having just encountered him in one of his various guises. Burlingame has filled him in on the latest developments in the political intrigues concerning the colony's future, and the already disoriented Eben becomes distraught:

Ebenezer shook his head in a matter not clearly affirmative or negative. "That is a part of it, Henry; you go at such a pace, I have no time to think things through as they deserve! I cannot collect my wits e'en to think of all the questions I would ask, much less explore your answers. How can I know what I must do and where I stand?"

Burlingame laid his arm across the poet's shoulders and smiled. "What is't you describe, my friend, if not man's lot? He is by mindless lust engendered and by mindless wrench expelled, from the Eden of the womb to the motley, mindless world. He is Chance's fool, the toy of aimless Nature — a mayfly flitting down the winds of Chaos!"

"You mistake my meaning," Ebenezer said, lowering his eyes.

Burlingame was undaunted: his eyes glittered. "Not by much, methinks. Once long ago we sat like this, at an inn near Magdalene College — do you remember? And I said, 'Here we sit upon a blind rock hurtling through a vacuum,¹ racing to the grave.' 'Tis our fate to search, Eben, and do we seek our soul, what we find is a piece of that same black Cosmos whence we sprang and through which we fall: the infinite wind of space. . ."

In fact a night wind hand sprung up and was buffeting the inn. Ebenezer shivered and clutched the edge of the table. "But there is so much unanswered and unresolved! It dizzies me!"

"Marry!" laughed Henry. "If you saw it clear enough 'twould not dizzy you: 'twould drive you mad! This inn here seems a little isle in a sea of madness, doth it not? Blind Nature howls without, but here 'tis calm — how dare we leave? Yet lookee round you at these men that dine and play at cards, as if the sky were their mother's womb! They remind me of the chickens I once saw fed to a giant snake in Africa: when the snake struck one, the others squawked and fluttered, but a moment after they were scratching about for corn, or standing on his very back to preen their feathers! How is't these men don't run a-gibbering down the streets, if not that their minds are lulled to sleep?" He pressed the poet's arm. "You know as well as I that human work can be magnificent; but in the face of what's out yonder" — he gestured skywards — "'tis the industry of Bedlam! Which sees the state of things more clearly: the cock that preens on the python's back, or the lunatic that trembles in his cell?"²

Ebenezer sighed. "Yet I fail to see the relevance of this; 'tis not germane at all to what I had —"

"Not germane?" Burlingame exclaimed. "'Tis the very root and stem of't! Two things alone can save a man from madness." He indicated the others patrons of the inn. "Dull-headedness is one, and far the commoner: the truth that drives men mad must be sought for ere it's found, and it eludes the doltish or myopic hunter. But once 'tis caught and looked on, whether by insight or instruction, the captor's sole expedient is to force his will upon't ere it work his ruin! Why is't you set such store by innocence and rhyming, and I by searching out my father and battling Coode?³ One must needs make and seize his soul, and then cleave fast to't, or go babbling in the corner; one must choose his gods and devils on the run, quill his own name upon the universe, and declare, 'Tis I, and the world stands such-a-way!' One must assert, assert, assert, or go screaming mad. What other course remains?"

"One other," said Ebenezer with a blush. "'Tis the one I flee. . ."

"What? Ah, 'sheart indeed! The state I found you in at college!⁴ How many have I seen like that at Bedlam — wide-eyed, feculent, and blind to the world! Some boil their life into a single gesture and repeat it o'er and o'er; others are so far transfixed, their limbs remain where'er you place 'em; still others take on false identities: Alexander, or the Pope in Rome, or e'en the Poet Laureate of Maryland ——"

Ebenezer looked up, uncertain whether it was he or the impostors whom Burlingame referred to.

"The upshot of't is," his friend concluded, "if you'd escape that fate you must embrace me or reject me, and the course we are committed to, despite the shifting lights that we appear in, just as you must embrace your Self as Poet and Virgin, regardless, or discard it for something better."⁵ He stood up. "In either case don't seek whole understanding — the search were fruitless, and there is no time for't. Will you come with me now, or stay?"

Ebenezer frowned and squinted. "I'll come," he said finally, and went out with Burlingame to the horses. The night was wild, but not unpleasant: a warm, damp wind roared out of the southwest, churned the river to a froth, bent the pines like whips, and drove a scud across the stars. Both men looked up at the splendid night.

"Forget the word sky," Burlingame said off-handedly, swinging up on his gelding, "'tis a blinder to your eyes. There is no dome of heaven yonder."

Ebenezer blinked twice or thrice: with the aid of these instructions, for the first time in his life he saw the night sky. The stars were no longer points on a black hemisphere that hung like a sheltering roof above his head; the relationship between them he saw now in three dimensions, of which the one most deeply felt was depth. The length and breadth of space between the stars seemed trifling by comparison: what struck him now was that some were nearer, some farther out, and others unimaginably remote. Viewed in this manner, the constellations lost their sense entirely; their spurious character revealed itself, as did the false presupposition of the celestial navigator, and Ebenezer felt bereft of orientation. He could no longer think of up and down: the stars were simply out there, as well below him as above, and the wind appeared to howl not from the Bay⁶ but from the firmament itself, the endless corridors of space.

"Madness!" Henry whispered.

Ebenezer's stomach churned; he swayed in the saddle and covered his eyes. For a swooning moment before he turned away it seemed that he was heels over head on the bottom of the planet, looking down on the stars instead of up, and that only by dint of clutching his legs about the roan mare's girth and holding fast to the saddlebow with both his hands did he keep from dropping headlong into those vasty⁷ reaches!

[1] Burlingame must be a greater prodigy than even he knows: it wasn't until the 20th Century that the existence of the interstellar vacuum achieved general acceptance. Even Newton himself accepted aether theory to account for light's propagation through empty space.

[2] This passage reminds me of one of my favorite books, Celia Green's The Human Evasion.

[3] A treasonous machinator who Burlingame seeks to undermine. Barth probably is poking fun at the abstruse webs of intrigue found in 17th and 18th Century novels, but in any case The Sot-Weed Factor's player chart is probably impossible to follow without the aid of a detailed diagram. I finished the book and still have no idea whether its Coode is an out-of-reach schemer, a boogeyman invented by Burlingame, or Henry himself. This in itself may warrant a reread.

[4] Remember that year or two after graduating from college where you moved back in with your parents, worked a part-time job, and sat around playing video games, smoking weed, sleeping until noon, and wondering what the hell to DO with your useless life? Eben was in similar straits during the time to which he refers. He has no desire to go back to it.

[5] One chapter ago, during Eben and Henry's reunion:

"You were so much altered when I saw you last, and now you've altered back to what you were!"

"'Tis easy but to say oft what I've said to you ere now, Eben: your true and constant Burlingame lives only in your fancy, as doth the pointed order of the world. In fact you see a Heraclitean flux: whether 'tis we who shift and alter and dissolve; or you whose lens changes color, field, and focus; or both together. The upshot is the same, and you may take it or reject it."

[6] The Chesapeake, of course.

[7] "Vasty?" Really, Mr. Barth?

Playlists & Self-Diagnoses

Two weeks ago, about 74% of the music I listened to consisted of psytrance and ambient tracks.

Last week, the percentage of psytrance and ambient tracks on my playlists decreased by 56%, comprising 33% of all the music I listened to. Meanwhile, the combined total of Alec Empire, SPK, and Skinny Puppy tracks on my playlist comprised 46% of the tunes on that week's queue.

This week, psytrance and ambient tracks compose 13% of my playlist. The combined total of tracks by Alec Empire, SPK, and Skinny Puppy has decreased by 35%, and now composes 31% of my playlist. The combined total of songs by The Swans, Whitehouse, and Converge now account for almost 50% of all the music I've listened to this week.

The significance of this should be obvious: thanks to New Media software, I can now easily and accurately monitor my own mood swings. What an age!

(Oh, shoot. I'm behind in answering comments, emails, and Formspring questions again. Will catch up tomorrow afternoon.)

Space: Outer and Inner (Part 1.5)

Image filched from The Old Farmer's Almanac

For the past two months I've been a resident and employee at a Quaker retreat center outside of Philadelphia. I affectionately refer to the place as "the farm" in conversation, but the place isn't a farm, and it's really not in the middle of nowhere. It's something like a commune with a business model: most of the residents/clients are recent college graduates, retired folks, or people experiencing a period of transition. This place gives them a setting in which they can live with other people in similar circumstances, participate in workshops, and figure out their next move. It is a religious place (and I am, of course, an atheist), but the Quakers are not what you'd expect from a Christian sect in the States. In all the weeks I've been here, nobody has ever once tried to talking to me about Jesus. Early on, a few people asked me if I was a Quaker, and did not pry any further when I answered in the negative. All I'm saying is that this godless blasphemer isn't making a peep of complaint about the company he's kept lately. (They're tolerant to the point where I'm a little tempted to show up at a morning worship meeting and shout out HAIL SATAN. They probably wouldn't be too happy about it, but there is actually a nonzero possibility that they would give me the chance to explain myself afterwards -- and I can make a pretty good case for Satan.)

But I digress!

One of the daily events at this place is a gathering called Epilogue. Like pretty much all of the religious stuff at this place, it's totally optional. But what it usually consists of is a short reading, song, or meditation session in order to close out the day. A couple of weeks ago, one of the folks in charge of scheduling daily and weekly events approached me and said she heard tell I was something of a stargazing buff.

"How would you like to lead an outdoor Epilogue one night?" she asked. "You could say a few words about the stars and point out some constellations for us."

I sure as hell wasn't about to say no.

It's probably going to happen sometime this week, whenever the skies clear up. I've drafted a text of what I'd like to say. It would be sloppy of me to read from a sheet of paper, so what I'm probably going to do is read it over a few (A FEW HUNDRED THOUSAND) times and reduce it to a series of points and subpoints in my memory. But here's hoping whatever comes out of my mouth goes something like....

Tonight it is my privilege to direct to your attention: eternity. Or, at least, the largest piece of it we are capable of observing directly under ordinary circumstances.

Today we have a pretty good idea (or at least some supremely educated guesses) about the nature of these distant points of light – what they're made of, how they work, how they're born, and what happens when they die. But it has only been in the last five hundred years of our species' 200,000-year history that we've made such a stupendous breakthrough. But even before humanity acquired the technological and intellectual tools to understand it, THIS [gesturing upwards] was there, tantalizing the imaginations of our ancestors.

Even without the aid of telescopes, sophisticated mathematics, or even a written language, our predecessors' powers of reason and observation were keen enough to notice a few important characteristics of the stars: namely, that their relative positions to each other in the sky remain fixed, and their movement across the celestial sphere corresponds with the solar cycles. Given the stars' usefulness as agricultural time-markers and navigational tools, our ancestors had a far more intimate relationship with the heavens than we do to today, despite their total lack of knowledge regarding the stars' physical properties.

What we're seeing now is a textbook picture of the autumn sky – a nice, fairly subtle, transitional scene, and the very setting where my own experience as a stargazer began. Looking to the west, you'll see triangle of summer stars Vega, Deneb, and Altair, of the constellations Lyra (the lyre), Cygnus (the swan), and Aquila (the eagle) sinking toward the horizon. Of these, Cygnus is the easiest to spot from here – simply direct your gaze this way, to the four stars that look like the top of a cross. Were there less light pollution, you might be able to see the Milky Way stretching from the northeast and cutting through the Triangle to the southwest – but to borrow a sentiment from a former Secretary of Defense, you go to stargaze with the sky you got.

[Note: if all goes according to plan, I will be pointing these out with a special green laser pen developed for just such an exercise.]

The fact that we still identify the stars by these groupings and these names is an intellectual relic of our ancestors. Presented with a span of objects that they could not approach, touch, or examine, our ancestors' imaginations compelled them to associate the stars with their mythological figures and cultural symbols. Dominating the sky at the moment is a patch of constellations representing the myth of Perseus and Andromeda. The W-shaped asterism right above us is Cassiopeia, the vain queen of Ethiopia who boasted that her beauty excelled that of Poseidon's sea nymphs. In the direction where the shape seems opening up is the constellation Cepheus, named for Cassiopeia’s complicit husband; and at Cassiopeia's turned “back” is her daughter Andromeda, whom she offered up as a sacrifice to quell Poseidon's wrath. Below Cassiopeia is the hero Perseus, the slayer of Medusa and forebear of a long line of Achaean kings; and between him and Andromeda you'll find a leg of Pegasus, the flying horse Perseus rode to rescue Andromeda from the sea monster Cetus – who is represented by his own constellation some ways to the south of Pegasus.

Below Perseus is the Auriga (the Charioteer), marked by the brilliant Capella – the uppermost point of the Winter Hexagon (or Winter Circle), the emblem of the rising winter sky. At the ring's center you'll find Betelgeuse, the second-brightest star of the hibernal hunter Orion.

I would also like to draw your attention to a visitor: the planet Jupiter, skirting the rim of the constellation Aries (the ram). We shall call him a visitor because, unlike the rest of what we’re seeing, he is not a permanent fixture of the sky. (Though of course, “permanence” is a term that speaks to the limitations of our temporal perspective. Had we a sufficiently long memory and broadness of vision, we would appreciate that virtually nothing in this existence is permanent – but I digress.)

Our word “planet” comes from the Greek term planetes aster, meaning “wandering star.” Unlike the “fixed” stars of the firmament, the planets move across the sky at their own paces, with an apparent erraticism that we've come to fully understand and accurately predict out only within the last few centuries, as our understanding of our place in the cosmos has transcended mythological models and guesstimates founded on inaccurate assumptions and scant data. Thanks to [name deleted] and her telescope, we can vouchsafe from Jupiter an example of our progressive knowledge.

What you’re seeing are the four Galilean Satellites, discovered by the great Galileo Galilei and named for four of Jove’s young human lovers: Io, Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto. Their discovery in 1610 did far more than afford another well-off white male the chance to name four little dots in the sky after his fancy; they demonstrated a principle. Here was evidence to support the then-controversial heliocentric model of the sun and planets: the fact that these objects orbited a body other than the Earth proved that our world is not the central fulcrum of all existence, as was previously assumed.

Galileo was a link in the recent chain of scientific enlightenment that began with Copernicus and Kepler, and continued on through Isaac Newton, James Clerk Maxwell, Albert Einstein, Edwin Hubble, Stephen Hawking, et cetera. Their work has furnished humanity with an exponentially more accurate conception its cosmic existence than it possessed at any other time in its history.

There is too little time, and my own knowledge is too limited to go into much detail beyond what you learned in science class. You already know we’re looking at a multitude of burning nuclear orbs flying through the void, each individually more massive and farther away than our terrestrial experience has equipped us to appreciate.

Even if we do not have the time or inclination to memorize all their names and educate ourselves about the physical processes that make them what they are, we should at the very least be mindful of them, and of the fact that our existence is by no means whatsoever separate from theirs.

I would imagine that most of us have come here in order to better understand who we are and what we should do with the time we’re afforded as conscious entities on this planet. You would not argue with me if I suggested that we cannot hope to attain a full understanding of a person – or of a people, a civilization, or a species – without taking into account the setting of his (or their) existence. (The world is, after all, much more than just a flat backdrop to human affairs.) I do not think it is a leap of logic to induce the equal importance of examining the cosmos in which the Earth bubbled up (whether by chance or grace of god) in our efforts to arrive at a substantial understanding of our world.

If we do not consider our situation from a cosmic standpoint – and all the implications this presents – any self-knowledge we profess to have will be tremendously incomplete.

Now is a fine time to start looking upwards and thinking it over – there are few better times for stargazing during the winter months, when the air is clear and the skies are dark. If you require an intellectual starting point in your meditations, I might advise Psalm 19: "The Heavens declare the glory of God." But bear in mind that this is only a springboard. Like any useful piece of Scripture, the simplicity of the phrasing belies a world of meaning that demands to be explored.

Overheard: on space travel

(Image pilfered from Occupy the Game.)

Sure, I think interstellar travel is possible. Will it happen? Probably, if it hasn't already been done somewhere else. But if we're talking about the prospects of space travel from Earth, I don't see it happening any time soon, and if it ever does, I doubt the species making the leap will be homo sapiens.

I'd like to be proven wrong. Believe me, I would. But all signs suggest we've already shut that window on ourselves. What I see when I look at the species is -- it's sort of like that bright kid you knew in high school who got held back a grade for being lazy and then got expelled for being a jackass. There's still that chance he might live up to the potential everyone keeps telling him he has and make something of himself, but it would take an optimism bordering on delusion not to know what to expect from him, given the consistent precedent he's set for himself.

Homo sapiens isn't going anywhere anytime soon, and in all likelihood has "evolutionary burnout" written in its future. But hell -- there's always that shrinking sliver a chance we'll surprise everyone, including ourselves.

Man.

How much easier is it to abandon someone you love who constantly lets you down than to give up hope for your own future? What about when it's your rotten luck that to do one is to do the other?

Of site crashings and book trashings

Two items on tonight's agenda.

If you got redirected here via 8easybits.net, this probably isn't what you were expecting (or wanting) to see. An explanation is in order!

About a month ago I got it in my head to transfer 8easybits.net to a different host. Transferring all the files seemed to go off without a hitch, but we hit a bit of a snag during the domain transfer -- which is why the site was down completely for a few days there. I ironed everything out with the new host, changed the DNS whatchacallems, and naïvely dared to hope that would be it, and everything would be up and running like it was on the old host.

Oops!

Something evidently went very, very wrong during the transfer. The site's engine is busted and I don't know how to fix it. The content is backed up in at least two different places, so there is no need to worry about any comics being lost. (The commentary might be another story, but I'm trying not to worry myself with more than one thing at a time.) But the borked CUSP setup is so obsolete that you can't even download it anymore, much less find a readme file -- not that I'd be able to make much use of it, anyway. I wasn't the person who set everything up to begin with, and I have absolutely no conception of how SQL or PHP is supposed to work. Unless somebody with a functional knowledge of this stuff feels like doing some pro-bono work for the sake of preserving history, 8easybits.net as we've known it for the past seven years is probably a memory.

So why did you change hosts to begin with, genius? you ask. First of all, the host I was using before kept upping its rates, and my income isn't exactly keeping pace. Secondly, I've been working on putting together a new comics site under a new domain. My plan was to use the new site for all the new comics, but to keep the complete 8EB archives in the same place for anyone to browse whenever they wished.

Again: oops.

Looks like we're stalled out for the time being. I'll probably rig up an archives page with some blog software at some point, but that will have to take a backseat to everything else I have planned. 8easybits.net will link to this (updated bi-weekly, usually!) blog until the new comics page is set up, which should be whenever I have a sufficient backlog to maintain a strict, once-per-seven-days update schedule for a three-month period. Until then, I'm afraid our soirees are restricted to the present format. (And do note that this is no longer the latest entry. Click the "Beyond Easy" banner up top to teleport your browser to the most recent update.)

I'm awfully sorry about this. And I'd also like to say that if you're still coming back to reread 8 Easy Bits from time to time, thank you very much -- I think that's really cool.

Moving on, then, to item two!

And now for the bad news.

The night raid on Occupy Wall Street's Zucotti Park camp put me in a really foul mood, which didn't get much better as more details kept coming in. What outraged and frightened me more than anything else were reports that the NYPD tore down the famous People's Library and threw the entire 5,000 book collection into a garbage truck. I felt as though a weight had been removed from my chest when word came in that the news of the library's destruction was premature.

Unfortunately, it seems that the report of the premature report was, in fact, premature.

When members of the encampment visited the garage on 57th Street to retrieve the books, they found the vast bulk of the collection missing. Much of what remains is damaged or practically destroyed -- almost as though it had been fished out of a garbage truck at the last minute.

So it would seem that that big rant I had prepared for Tuesday's update and then scrapped still applies. Jesus H. Christ. I would feel nothing but absolute, unalloyed horror at the NYPD's actions if the idiocy they've demonstrated weren't so confounding as to almost seem comical.

The kneejerk liberal reaction to events of this kind is to cry (or type, preferably in caps) police state, fascist pigs, etc., etc. Usually, I find this sort of epithet-hurling unhelpful, even when there is a grain (or a heap) of truth to the claims. But when city police go ahead and toss five-thousand-plus library books (and make no mistake -- even if it was not housed in a permanent structure or publicly funded, this was a library) into the back of a garbage truck, it takes more restraint than I possess to refrain from entertaining recollections of the world's Nazis, Maoists, Red Khmers, and every other representative of the elemental belligerence, intolerance, and ignorance that has been pissing on civilization like a territorial mutt in a flower garden since the torches were put to Alexandria.

Okay, so maybe it isn't very funny at all -- not even in a dark kind of way. But Bloomberg's bumbling attempt at a cover-up is freaking hilarious.

The announcement that the books were safe came from the Twitter account of Bloomberg's office. Why was the announcement necessary? Well, despite the NYPD's best efforts at a media blackout, news from the ground spread quickly via Twitter. When demonstrators tweeted about the loss of the library, major news outlets seized upon the story. (After all, government-sanctioned destruction of books is something that tends to strike at the public's nerves.) Bloomberg's office quickly claimed the library was intact in order to prevent the aforementioned Nazi parallels from drawing themselves.

When Bloomberg's office announced that the book were safe, a many of us (including myself) took them at their word. Why not? Given that the news of the library's destruction was aggressively put into circulation by the protestors themselves (and subsequently seized upon and propagated by mainstream news outlets), surely Bloomberg's office wouldn't be stupid enough to serve up a baldfaced lie about the status of the books and not anticipate the same people calling them on it, right? I mean, that's the kind of trick only a really, truly, profoundly, astonishingly, blitheringly dumb person would expect to work.

Almost as dumb, at any rate, as Bloomberg's responding to Thursday's demonstrations by insisting that the real story was that the turnout was lower than anticipated -- which is not only another blatant lie, but practically a challenge directed toward the demonstrators. It's the sort of thing a carnival clown shouts at people in line at the dunking booth in order to get them pissed off and ready to go.

Maybe Olbermann is right. Maybe Bloomberg is Occupy's man on the inside. Ever since Tuesday, he's done the movement nothing but favors, disguising them as antagonism. It has to be intentional. The three-term mayor of New York City cannot actually be this stupid, can he...?