I recently sent him some Medieval manuscript images that I found online and asked him to explain them to me. These are the results:

You should think of the images of the illuminated manuscripts of the 8^th to the 15^th century as the Instagram of the day. In this particular “post” we see a Medieval version of the Kardashian sisters as they conjure magical spells while encircling a tree. These young women are almost certainly witches, and when the community uncovered their black magic, they would have surely been tied to wild horses and torn apart while the townsfolk cheered and threw potatoes. (Note the surgically enhanced breasts. The cosmetic surgeons of the day used to insert clay molds beneath the skin in order to achieve the desired shape. Mortality rates were very high with this procedure. )

This is a highly skilled depiction of some very put-out dogs standing in a field. One of the dogs, the white one with the regal collar around its neck and the small erection, looks slightly ashamed. He likely offended the commoner dogs (note the mottled colours and blunt expressions that characterize the serf animals) by questioning their religious values and then attempting to rape them. Think of this panel as one that prefigures Cute Overload.

Monks did more than just illuminate manuscripts. For recreation they played other monasteries in a Medieval version of Ultimate. Of course, a frisbee had not yet been invented, so the monks used a scapula, also known as a human shoulder blade. These were festive occasions for the monks, characterized by excessive drinking (They brewed beer, too) and the ribald singing of team songs. This image of the bat is the team crest of the Carthusian Bats, a formidable franchise known for their vows of silence and ferocity on the field.

This is the equivalent of a Medieval paparazzi shot or stolen cell phone photo. It captures the King and Queen in an unguarded and intimate moment as they enjoy a hot tub. The Queen, obviously spent after intercourse in the hot water, catches her breath, while the robust King, carrying his Holy Ejaculate Saucer, heads off to enjoy the pleasures of his many concubines. This image should be thought of as one you might find on 4chan.

The beatified and sacred have gathered in this image for an annual event in which awards are given out to the holy. It happened once a year, was very secretive, and is vaguely analogous to the Academy Awards. The holy would each have a vote, which they cast in private, on such categories as, “Best Performance While Living Atop A Pillar,” or “Most Holy Self-Flagelator Of The Year.” It was very much looked forward to by the participants, and they all hoped to win, even if they took a public stance of humility and abasement—just look at the attention they paid to their wardrobe for this event.

The attendees, the world’s financial and economic elite, are a small group but one that still manages to account for roughly 50% of the entire wealth on the planet. This is entirely mind-blowing, of course, and the fact that 1,700 private jets transported this precious cargo to their destination nestled in the Swiss Alps, where they were to focus their collective genius on income inequality and climate change is tragically ironic. The organizers of the meeting even went so far as to hire A-List actresses Marion Cotillard, Charlize Theron and Jennifer Lawrence, as well as all-time Major League Baseball hits leader Pete Rose to work the coat-check.

Its no surprise then that the swag given to each person who attended the conference was impressive, to say the least. What follows is a list of the items and services provided in the official Davos Gift Bag for all who attended the 2015 World Economic Forum:

A stylish satchel with shoulder strap that proudly states, “Committed to improving the state of the world.”

A pair of Roots Canada winter mittens.

A 1.5 litre bottle of virgin glacial water, hand-melted by Greenland artisans who chip the ice out of the glacier, transport it home and melt it over a fire using a traditional stentøj.

An albino peacock.

Box seats at the 2016 NHL All-Star game.

A six-month personal services contract with a supermodel.

A permit to hunt the Amur Leopard of the Primorye region of Russia.

A lock of Ronald Regan’s hair.

An Academy Award.

Sarah Palin’s stolen cell phone pics.

A special guest appearance on Game of Thrones.

Embryonic stem cells from Roger Federer’s twins.

Time machine.

Actual torture hood used at Abu Ghraib.

For the vast majority of my life I believed in the general sincerity of our governance. I mean, I didn’t accept everything that they said, I knew that they’d obfuscate to suit their own political agendas, but on the big stuff, when push came to shove, I trusted that we were led by people who would not directly lie while looking you in the eyes.

Now, I don’t want to suggest that I believed in a rigid, black and white Cold War dichotomy.

I understood that there were nuances and that the truth was round, rather than two-sided, but I did think that Western Democracies abided by some immutable principles and were to the best of their ability, “good.”

Well, when the US government cynically lied to it’s own people about Iraq having Weapons of Mass Destruction, and then went ahead and invaded the nation, resulting in the death of perhaps one million Iraqis, all the while knowing that Saudi Arabia was actually the country that nurtured the 9/11 terrorists, my child-like faith was forever shattered.

It was simply astounding to me that something so calculated, something so evil, could take place, and take place without a revolution of protest erupting in our streets.

I now view authority with a level of skepticism that I did not before, understanding that those in power always have more to protect and gain by lying than those outside of power. And so it was that I went to see the documentary Citizenfour last week.

It’s actually more of a living historical document than it is a movie, I think, as it’s a real time presentation of Edward Snowden, over an eight-day period, as he leaked NSA documents to some journalists and the film-maker in a hotel room.

It’s a startlingly media-savvy and perhaps unprecedented way to conduct a leak, and that alone gave the movie a surreal, kind of theatrical feeling. Snowden was very consciously “presenting” himself and his motives to the world. He was, in a sense, acting and this struck me as odd.

Snowden always seemed to be suppressing a small, self-satisfied smile, as if trying to conceal his delight in being a gravitational figure that was setting a great narrative into motion, and I was astounded by how articulate he was, speaking in unbroken, virtually literary paragraphs when describing his intent and circumstances.

Isolated, without legal counsel and unsure of what was to happen to him and everybody he loved, he did not betray any anxiety, but seemed, calm, confident and even rehearsed in his manner.

Now when I see such a thing, I don’t suspect Snowden of fabricating the leaks, which essentially reveal to the public that the NSA is an omnipotent entity that has access to absolutely all our communications and actions, I suspect the NSA of fabricating Snowden. He was a CIA agent, after all, and what’s the use of a grand surveillance apparatus unless the people beneath it are conscious of it and feel its weight pressing down upon them daily?

I don’t have an opinion on the matter at this point, and there’s no way I can gather enough information to make a lucid and truly informed judgment, but my faith in our institutions is at such a low, that like a mad man in an alley, I find myself given to question everything that they prepare for my consumption, and you know, it doesn’t feel very good.

I grew up in the Age of Letterman, and I have to say that I view his pending retirement as good news. Over the years my encounters with the Late Show have become sporadic and accidental. It wasn’t just the format that seemed dusty, but Letterman himself looked a little bit old, sometimes even disheveled, and his performance recalled a different era, the man having somehow morphed from being the smartest, edgiest guy in the room to a beloved uncle repeating jokes after Christmas dinner. It wasn’t pathetic, just a little bit sad, like noticing somebody you love age and becoming a smaller, more vulnerable version of himself.

Once a revolutionary who brought irony into the mainstream, he now seems lost in time, usurped by all his competitors who have an organic sense and mastery of social media. Of course, when Letterman started, he was the undisputed champion of improvisational videos, bits that would have played brilliantly on the Internet, but the fact that he was both before and of his time, is no matter,

Back then he was a jolt of electricity into very calm and predictable weather and as a teenager I immediately related to him. He had an anarchic, Frat Boy sensibility, and liking him as opposed to another, lamer option, was a defining tribal characteristic. You wanted to wear the Late Night t-shirt the same way you wanted to wear the t-shirt of a super-cool alt band– it meant something about who you were and how you saw the world. Every night, we all gathered in our university residence to watch Late Night before heading off to our parties. It was a cultural drawing point and it sincerely brought us together.

Letterman has had a massive influence on our cultural landscape, his style and intolerance for the pieties and hypocrisies of celebrity culture– even though he lived within it– have pointed the way for so much of the comedic culture we currently revere.  Now in his late 60’s, it is time for him to go, and it’s very bittersweet. He was a giant, one with a unique gravitas and ability to cut through the bullshit, and I will miss him– as I miss the days of my youth–more than I can say.

I felt a kind of relief that he’d died of an overdose rather than some more pedestrian, accessible reason, as if that was at least one fate I’d be spared, but even that’s a false security. None of us know when or how we’re going to shuffle off this mortal coil, and I think it’s that anxiety that always draws us to the news of death. We whistle past the graveyard, and the multitudes of people who posted links on their social media feeds were in some way remembering that they were alive as much as they were that Hoffman was gone. It was a little bit weird, but I understood it, I think.

Being a celebrity is to submit to a process of self-annihilation. Symbols upon which all our projections are focused, they become radiant entities, briefly gathering strength from the absorption of our collective energy before inevitably immolating as if in ritual sacrifice.

Hoffman, familiarly imperfect in appearance, seemed more like us than other stars, who with their perfect bodies and dream eyes all seem a different species entirely, and it became easy to appropriate Hoffman in death just as it was in life, allowing him, in spite of our felt kinship with him, to remain an avatar, his end meaning whatever each one of us as needed it to mean.

I have been a huge fan of yours ever since Winter’s Bone. You are my Ozark Mountains, and our substantial difference in age, looks and talent does not make the purity of my affection creepy. It makes it real, and you Jennifer Lawrence are real. We should be together.

Michael Murray

Dear Jennifer:

I dreamed that you and I were walking along a beach together, holding hands. I was worried that a small sand crab might bite one of your bare feet, but you weren’t. “Hush now, my little turtle, “ you said, the salt air breezing through your hair.

Michael Murray

Dear Jennifer:

I saw you in The Hunger Games and I have to say, “I’m hungry for you!” Haha!  No, that would be creepy and I’m not creepy. Would you come to my birthday party? If the answer is yes, please where a white dress in your next televised appearance, but black if it’s no.

Michael Murray

Dear Jennifer:

I consider myself a feminist and believe in equal rights for women. I just want you to know that. I would fight for your rights.

Michael Murray

PS: Anne Hathaway is a bitch

Dear Jennifer:

I think it’s really cool that you served as an assistant nurse at the summer camp your mother ran while growing up. I tell you, if I was attending that camp, I would have been sick with stomach problems all the time! You should star in a movie about a nurse who falls in love with an older hernia patient and then has a forbidden and torrid affair with him. I have some drawings and notes if you’d like to see them.

Michael Murray

PS: Please send an autographed photograph.

Dear Jennifer:

The other day I had a dream that some breed of super rats were attacking me. I was valiantly fighting them off, but there were too many of them and all I could feel were their horrible teeth and claws slashing at me. And then you came into the room and everything smelled like pumpkins and the rats vanished. Holding hands, we ran together into a forest, the sound of waterfalls in the distance.

Michael Murray

However, soon enough I found myself distracted, focused more on placing the actors in their previous incarnations than whatever was unfolding on the screen.

“Look, there’s the guy from Parks and Recreation!”

“There’s Coach Taylor from Friday Night Lights!”

“I think the guy from The Sopranos is wearing a fake nose.”

“Man, that Jessica Chastain looks exactly like a young Julia Roberts!”

I don’t typically do this sort of thing when I’m watching a movie, so I figured that there must be something about Zero Dark Thirty, in particular, that was calling forth such a response. It was simple, I guess, the actors seemed more real to me than the characters that they were playing.

There was nobody in the movie that I liked or was particularly interested in, everybody seeming little more than a collection of suits doing their jobs. This might have been the directorial intent, but it kept me at an emotional and visceral distance, and the entire movie seemed procedural rather than human.

It was hard not to think of the TV show Homeland while watching, and how much of a better, deeper exposition of similar terrain it was than Zero Dark Thirty. I mean, I really, really liked Homeland, and had all sorts of feelings about the characters in the show, rather than about the actors hired to be those characters. Cable TV, with long narrative arcs, has become like reading a novel, while movies, with just 90 minutes or so, (or in the case of Zero Dark Thirty, 157 minutes) has to tell you a kind of hieroglyphic story, one that has to have an immediate commercial punch. And so TV shows, now digested slowly, as seasons rather than episodes, are like novels, and movies are more like an episode of a TV show, bound by all the limits of the prime time formula. It’s ironic, this, but such is life, and it is funny to observe that the consensus best movie of the mainstream this year, pales in comparison to one of the best TV shows of the year.

Sententious films like Lincoln and Zero Dark Thirty–arguably made for critics and awards shows– rarely end up serving the audience, whereas films like Pitch Perfect or The Perks Of Being A Wallflower, that are built to serve the audience, are actually much greater critical accomplishments. When the intent is to create something serious for an audience, or the critics that hover above the audience, rather than something authentic or organic within the artist, the results are always distant and insufficient, a suggestion of intent rather than the realization of it, and that artifice will always keep the true audience at bay.

Me: That steak was good.

Rachelle: It was.

Me: Really glad I’m here cuz after the US election really didn’t feel like I’d had enough politics!

Rachelle: Haha!!

Me: What movie would u like to be watching right now?

Rachelle: Babe: Pig in the city.

Me: Yeah, that was good– no nudity though.

Rachelle: Babe was nude.

Me: True.

Me: I thought Lincoln might emancipate a nude slave or something.

Rachelle: Ur thinking Lincoln: Vampire Hunter.

Me: Nude vampire slaves? Why r we here????

Rachelle: U still in the theatre?

Me: YES!

Rachelle: Poor, brave pickle!

Me: Where are u?

Rachelle: Walking home from the subway.

Me: Why didn’t u tell me u were leaving?!

Rachelle: U were asleep. Snoring so horribly, I was embarrassed to know u.

Me: The usher has woken up 3 people that I’ve seen, so I wasn’t alone.

Rachelle: You were probably asleep for about 20 more wake-ups!

Me: Hope Lincoln gets assassinated soon.

Rachelle: That’s not very nice, he was a great American!

Me: Lots of “acting” in this movie. Wigs everywhere.

Rachelle: It’s a nice night for a stroll, and look, I just found a five dollar bill on the street!

Me: ur a very lucky woman.

Rachelle: You make your own luck, they say!

Me: I think there’s about 45 minutes left in this movie.

Rachelle: Why don’t u just leave?

Me: Still might be some tasteful nudity.

Rachelle: U want to see Lincoln nude, don’t u!

Me: No! I’m just not leaving till the slaves are free, dammit! I care!