And the first he kills only the wicked
And the second kills only the good
And the third he kills people more handsome than him
And the fourth kills the misunderstood
                    -- Momus, "Eleven Executioners."

        Violence, Bob thought with gusto, relish, and other stuff.  Violence is the key.
        It was a lovely autumn evening.  The windows were open, a calm breeze blowing in.  Birds were singing.  In the distance, a car alarm was going off.
        "Violence," Bob said.
        "What?"  Heather was reading a book.
        "Violence," he said again.
        She looked up from her book.
        "You're not going to start ranting about air conditioners again, are you?"
        "No," he said, "no."
        "Good, because I got it the first time.  Air conditioners are a necessity and we all need more power."
        Actually, the air conditioners had been in the back of his mind, again.  The night was warm, maybe a little too warm, and he'd been feeling the need to click on the air-- just a little need-- maybe-- just a little air-- cool off the livingroom-- just a bit.
        "And when you start going 'more power' over and over again like a schizophrenic, and then you start laughing-- I start wondering if maybe you're having a small nervous breakdown."
        Bob shifted his butt on the couch.
        "I was thinking about violence," he said, "and how school is designed to make you violent.  It's not designed to socialize you, it's designed to make you violent."
        "That's nice."
        Bob sighed.
        He'd been on about that for a while, too.  He supposed he'd been, anyway.  Not that there'd been any school shootings or anything-- the violence thing had just popped into his mind a while ago.
        There had been that kid who'd gotten punished for writing violent stories, though.  Suspended or something.  But that'd happened a while ago, now.
        And that other kid who'd gotten expelled for having a violent dream or something.  But again, that'd been a while ago.
        But, these things had just popped into his head.  A while ago.
        There wasn't even anything about highschool violence on tv.
        Totally Spies was on, though. The volume was on low so Heather could read.
        Maybe that's why I'm feeling violent, Bob thought.
        So he channel surfed for a while.  But there was nothing better than Totally Spies.  So he put it back to Totally Spies, and he rubbed his forehead.
        Sure, everybody knew that highschool was a hellhole.  There are countless books, movies, songs, zines, and tv shows all about how crappy highschool is.Ý The unfairness and pain of highschool is so well established that to even comment on it-- either pro or con-- teeters on the edge of cliché.
        All the pressures of having to keep up with the cliques, the mind-numbing assignments assigned by teachers who are little more than puppets reading out of specially-designed "teachers editions."  The pressures of having to pretend to care when deep down inside you know that really there's no future for you after school beyond maybe a life of debt and turgid grunt work.  And all the exam anxiety and boy/girl angst, or (even more stressful) boy/boy or girl/girl angst and all the drug crap and all that prefab rebellion and the parents that just don't get it y'know... whatever "it" was... and so on.
        All the stress surrounding the process of the illusion of forced socialization.
        But nobody (as far as Bob knew) had ever suggested that highschool was actually not designed to socialize... but in fact to do the opposite....  That maybe highschool was, at its core, designed to make people violent, drive them apart.  Or if not drive them apart-- because there are lots of social groups in highschool-- drive them insane.
        That the function of school is to drive students to fantasize about violence.
        Or at least make them paranoid.
        Surely, someone else had thought of it.
        Sitting in those desks all day, doing meaningless assignments, backs aching, legs falling asleep, brains getting fuzzy... being taught by people who got their teaching certificates simply because getting a degree in education is easy-- and when you're a teacher the holidays are good.
        And then getting older and leaving and either going to another, harder school-- or getting a  job.  Getting trapped in the workplace.  Having to listen to superiors you know are stupider than you.  Having to do pointless, empty work simply because that's what you get paid to do.  Having your identity sucked away by a 40-hour work week.
        Not that Bob actually had a 40-hour work week.  But the few hours he worked each week were more than enough to drain him.
        But, the people who worked their 40 hours, those people were dead inside.  He knew this-- for a fact.  He could see it on their faces.  Their exhaustion, their desire to collapse at home in front of the tv and shut off their brains.  The drunken stupors they fell into, weekends.  Anything for the temporary release of numbness.
        Their jobs gave them their identities by stripping them of their true selves.  The same could be said of school.  Neither school nor the job truly shapes, both things simply just destroy.  He knew this.  He could see it in their faces.
        And people who say they need a job to give their lives rigidity and focus, all they do is use the job as an excuse for never getting anything meaningful done.  They all say they need the focus of work, that work gives them time, time at the end of the day, to pursue their art.  Because without the job, there would be no time for art.  The job takes you away from the potential to create, and thus reinforces the need to create.  Nothing is a better motivator than saying you can't do something.  Or, that's the theory, anyway.
        And of course all the people who always say they need jobs to give their lives order, they're always artists-- writers, poets, comicbook artists, musicians, actors... but then again, everybody is at least one of these things these days.  Or more than one simultaneously.
        And the people who say they want focus and order in their lives-- the kind of focus and order that can only come from a job-- when they get the job that's supposed to inspire their art by preventing it, they always use the exhaustion that comes from that work as the excuse for why they never get any of their art done.  They're always so tired, at the end of the day, to do anything meaningful.
        But, also, you can't just quit your job.  You need it to survive.  And, of course, Bob knew this.  And so this is where the violence comes into the picture:
        Trapped in a situation where you have to devote a full third of your day-- or more-- to something that drains you of your identity-- and then forces a new kind of being onto you.  You need to lose yourself in order to keep yourself going.  But this self is-- invariably-- a new self.  And-- invariably-- it is never your true self.
        (Unless you let your job consume you.  And then you become your job.  And when your job is over, so are you.)
        And, but, also, however, the problem is this: if you quit your job, you soon find yourself simply vegetating.  With a job, you lose your identity... but with no job, you also lose your identity-- you indulge yourself, watch tv, jerk off, go to the store, sleep in, play videogames, read comics.  Anything to keep yourself from pursuing your art.  Bob knew this, too.  He's seen this in action, too.  More times than he can count.
        And, so, without a job all you do is wander around, lost and alienated and unfocused, while everybody else is working.  And you get bored.  And also, if you're an artist, which everyone is, now, you still don't get anything done because there's no urgency-- there's always tomorrow when there's nothing more pressing on the table.
        And then you get more and more angry.
        Bob wanted to scream.
        Suddenly, Bob hated his job, hated this room, hated himself, hated the tv.  But he didn't hate Heather.
        He felt like he should go running.  Run around the block.  Screaming.
        Bob sneezed.
        "Bless you," Heather said.
        "Uff," Bob said, sniffling.
        Totally Spies faded to black and a tampon commercial began.
        "Did school make you feel violent?" he asked Heather.
        "Sometimes," she said.  "But then again, so does work."
        "Y'know," Bob said.  "When my generation-- your generation-- our generation-- when we were in school we were sorta the prime demographic, and so all the tv shows and stuff were geared to us and they were all about how difficult school was, or how hard it was to be growing up.  Parents just didn't understand us in these shows, and our music and parties and love lives were all the true culture of youth in these shows, and that sort of thing.  And now that we're in positions of power and're stuck with boring teaching jobs or working at 7-11s, and there are new generations of people listening to music we-- as adults-- don't understand... and they're piercing their bodies and having sex and doing drugs and partying at a level we never got to when we were teens... now we have shows on tv about how hellish being a teacher is, how crappy it is to work at a 7-11.  We have bullshit entertainment like Boston Public that tries to make the viewer feel bad for all these poor, beleaguered teachers-- just like ten-fifteen years ago we were being fed nightmares about going to school.  When we were young, we were told over and over that going to school was a nightmare, and now that we've all grown up we're being told that growing up is a nightmare."
        The tampon commercial ended and a commercial about garbage bags began.
        "There've always been dramas about how shitty life is," Heather said.  "The actual demographic now is ten- or eleven-year-old girls.  We're a niche market that thinks we've got power because we spent all those years being referred to as 'Generation X' on the cover of every magazine in North America.  But, really, we're over."
        "You think?" Bob said.
        "Pretty much," Heather said.  "And while it's true that crap like Boston Public is tailor made for us and preys on all our whiney insecurities about how lousy life is and how difficult it is to deal with today's youth-- because y'know our punk rock was the real punk rock and their punk rock is all just corporate fashion-- it should only really effect you if you're lame already.  And besides, what's so bad about being 'over?'"
        "What d'you mean.  It stinks."
        "No.  I mean, did you every really accomplish anything when you were the young, hip, happening thing?"
        "Not really."
        "Exactly.  So how's life any different now that we're supposedly 'over?'"
        "But... I dunno...."
        "It's not.  We listen to the same music we always did, talk about the same stuff we always did, and do the same amounts of nothing.  Only now there's no pressure, so if you want you can just go and do what you want without having to live up to any media-generated image of what our generation should be.  Nobody cares any more.  I think it's kind of freeing.  Can I read my book, now?"
        The garbage bag commercial turned into a eyeliner commercial.
        Sometimes Bob felt like he was going into a "third-life crisis."  We have "quarter-life crises" when you turn anywhere between 20 and 25-- and now maybe there are "third-life crises," he thought.  They hit you just when you're coming out of the quarter-life crisis.  Sometime before, during, or after the point where you turn 30.  And then, maybe when that's over you get to move into your mid-life crisis.  Then, maybe, who knows, a new crisis every year or two as you slide down the slope into death.  Fear and death.
        Bob looked at Heather.
        She was staring at a page in her book, trying not to look his way.
        So far, Bob thought, this is turning into a pretty shitty century....

Next: Heather, again....
 

Epilogue 61.
Epilogue 59.
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