"latent ravening ferocity"

"...as if they got from his latent ravening ferocity not so much a sense of dependability as a feeling that his ferocious conviction in the rightness of his own actions would be of advantage to all whose interest lay with his..."

"the one weapon for the preservation of integrity, else breath were not worth the breathing, and hence to be regarded with respect and used with discretion"

Somewhere on my journey from angry young man to bitter old man confused and middle aged.  I found a lesson in this story: the idea that a bottomless rage might be controlled, carried around and used judiciously as a weapon.  I'm not sure it's actually something I've been able to apply to my life with any success, but it's at least seemed like a possibility at times when I didn't see a lot of possibilities.

The fairest way to look at it...

...is probably that it's not necessarily all my fault.  But that it's not entirely within my control, either.

It's like I always say...

...I'm not trying to be an asshole.

But I'm willing to be.

All I want...

...is for everything to be perfect and nothing to ever change.

Is that so much to ask?

I find this woman somewhat unsettling.

Whenever I surf past "Korea Today" at 2 in the morning, I am captivated, but slightly creeped-out, by the co-anchor. She's beautiful, but odd-looking.

She's probably the strongest evidence I've seen of human-alien interbreeding.

Picture via. Gif made from screencaps of "Korea Today" by [lrf]. Both presumed fair use.

Everybody's got something to hide...

...except for me and my monkey.

Image via.

The lobby of the...

...Chesterfield County Courts Building is unbelievably (maybe appropriately) bleak and gloomy. It's like a chunk was cut out of a February afternoon in 1890 and incarcerated in this piece of indifferent modern architecture.

It's not quite "abandon all hope ye who enter here," though. Maybe more like "Why bother? You're screwed."

I love the fact that the Code of Virginia...

...specifically exempts the President and Vice President of the United States from jury duty. I guess it's the whole "Mother of Presidents" thing.

Three things the internet has taught me about human nature.

(Mostly from the comments section.)

1. No matter how high-quality or well-regarded or popular something is, there's always somebody that thinks it's garbage.  A corollary to this is that for any TV or movie or book series there will always be someone that admits that it used to be good but it sucks now.  
2. There are people just waiting for a reason to hate someone or something.  Some celebrity says or does something that falls below a critical threshold of popular opinion and they are fair game.  And once someone is in the allowed-to-be-hated category then it will always be open season on them and anyone who speaks well of them.
3. So many people are completely incapable of understanding why other people might have made different choices or faced different circumstances than they have themselves.  That others might have had different options or fewer opportunities or just saw things differently.  If I had to sum up the internet in a sentence it would be a 28-year-old white male software developer who cannot understand why a 60-year-old black woman hasn't made the same choices he has.

Perspective

Courtesy of Macy's.