This weekend Zhang Shuhong, co-owner of China’s Lee Der Industrial Company, transformed himself from a powerful toy manufacturer into a powerful symbol of corporate accountability. He did this by hanging himself.

Lee Der manufactures toys and pieces of toys used in Mattel products, which include merchandise from the Sesame Street and Dora the Explorer television shows. Earlier this month, Mattel recalled almost a million toys built at Lee Der, “because they were made with paint containing excessive amounts of lead.” Dangerous and defective products coming out of China is not shocking news these days, but just because one country becomes distrustful of another, it doesn’t dull the pain any when you discover that it’s your own company that’s to blame this time around. This point is brought home by the reports that Mr. Zhang’s hanged body was found this weekend in one of Lee Der’s warehouses, and declared a suicide.

Bizarre? Creepy? Unusual? I thought so, but then the AP wire threw down this little bombshell: “It is common for disgraced officials to commit suicide in China.” In other words, Mr. Zhang’s suicide is not an isolated incident, but a cultural custom.

This, to me, is a fucking shock to the system. In America, we can’t even get our disgraced officials to fucking apologize most of the time. But when Zhang Shuhong (also known as Cheung Shu-hung) discovered that his company had fucked up big time, well, let’s just say he didn’t blame it on Rummy.

Maybe it’s perverse, but in retrospect, I have a profound new level of trust and respect for Zhang Shuhong. In life, I probably wouldn’t have trusted him much at all (not because of any ethnic prejudice, but simply because businessmen make me nervous), but now I wish I had given him the chance, perhaps to engage in a venture or play a friendly game of cards. Because a man who will take his own life if he believes he has done wrong is a man you can trust to tell you the truth. We don’t have that level of accountability here in the United States. Sure, Enron’s Kenneth Lay died of a heart attack shortly after he was found guilty of fraud, but it’s unlikely that he did it on purpose.

But what if this was a normal convention in our society? Would you trust Rupert Murdoch’s media outlets more if you knew that he’d kill himself if they lied to the public? Would you be more inclined to purchase a Chevrolet if you knew that General Motors CEO Rick Wagoner was willing to jump in front of a bus if his cars were found to be defective? I might.

And then I got to thinking about ‘ol Karl Rove, who announced his resignation as President Bush’s Deputy Chief of Staff today, effective August 31st. If this were China, instead of a blubbering press conference, we might have seen Rove’s mangled corpse on the White House lawn this morning. We may never get an honest answer about why he resigned, be it to avoid another subpoena or just because he’s tired, but if all he’s planning to do is write his memoirs and take his dogs to the beach, then I fail to see where the remorse comes in.

I’m not actually suggesting that the nation’s most powerful leaders begin a self-imposed ethical suicide policy. I find it a bit extreme. But some sort of accountability would be nice.

Saturday’s date, in case you missed it, was 07/07/07. Various news outlets looking to fill dead air time (CNN, I’m looking in your direction) declared it The Luckiest Day of the Century, with rather overexuberant anticipation. Lots of people even scheduled their Las Vegas weddings to coincide with this supposedly exciting date. Me? I stayed in, except for when I went out to buy groceries.

Now, as a Discordian, I have a healthy skepticism about reading too much significance into numbers. After all, our elders spent a great deal of time fucking with us so that we’d get the point. It’s true: if we were a race of octopi, there’d be a Law of Eights instead of a Law of Fives.

Nevertheless, it was worth keeping an eye on just in case. So what happened on Saturday? Al Gore’s Live Earth concert extravaganza went off without a hitch. On the other hand, a horrible truck bombing killed 150 people in Amerli, Iraq. Bit of a mixed message, there.

And then I got to thinking about all those times the crew of the Starship Enterprise went back in time to avert a horrible catastrophe threatening the Earth, or traveled incognito to a distant planet and saved their civilization from impending doom without even telling them. And I realized that maybe Saturday really was the luckiest day of the century, and we just didn’t hear about why.

Maybe a meteor was on its way, and got knocked off-course just in time. Maybe a plague was narrowly stopped from spreading its wrath across the globe. Maybe a vile alien conqueror was prevented from attacking our solar system by benevolent heroes whose names we’ll never know.

Who can tell? All I’m saying is, in the interest of optimism and paranoia, don’t assume it wasn’t a lucky day just because you didn’t win the lottery or get laid. Maybe 07/07/07 really was The Luckiest Day of the Century, and Captain Kirk just can’t tell us. You don’t want to hurt Captain Kirk’s feelings, do you?

UPDATED BELOW (June 19, 4:45 PM)

By an incredible stroke of luck, and with a little scheming, I was able to see Michael Moore’s new film Sicko ten days before it arrives in US theaters. By now we’ve all heard the stories of Moore’s trip to Cuba, his anonymous donation to a political rival facing a health crisis, the near-reverent reception at Cannes. All stories for another day; I just want to talk about the movie.

Moore’s toned it down a bit in this one; far fewer jokes and very little of the guerilla street theater that defined his earlier films. He’s willing to step aside and let things unfold, tossing in a bit of narration here and there, but mostly letting his subjects speak for themselves. Just a few minutes into the film, it’s clear this was the right choice. In the opening minutes we meet a couple, once reasonably comfortable, who have been forced into bankruptcy by their medical costs, despite being insured. They’re moving into a spare room at their daughter’s house, and not long after they arrive their son pays a visit to lecture them on their irresponsibility. It’s depressing, and hard to watch, and this is just the tip of a massive fucking despair-iceberg.

Before long we’re watching interviews with cancer patients who were denied care because their conditions were not considered life-threatening. Most of them, we soon learn, are now dead or dying. We meet people who have lost spouses and children because their insurance deemed life-saving procedures “unnecessary”. Current and former employees of the insurance industry talk about their work in the same halting tones as an old soldier wondering how many people he killed. You’re goddamn right Mike isn’t telling a lot of jokes this time out.

Of course, the director comes out in favor of universal health care — he’s Michael Moore, after all — and this is where the tone of the film brightens somewhat. He provides an admittedly silly summary of Hillary Clinton’s attempt to introduce health care in the early days of her husband’s administration, before moving on to her opponents. We’re treated to a montage of conservative politicians and pundits explaining that universal health care is the first step down the slippery slope of Soviet tyranny, and describing the bureaucratic nightmare of Canada’s health care system. In classic fashion, Moore heads north of the border.

The Canadians he talks to seem quite happy with their health care system, as do the people he meets during his trip to Great Britain. In France he dines with a group of American expats who regale him not only with tales of free health care, but of daycare centers, paid maternity leave, sick days that last as for long as you’re sick, doctors who make house calls 24/7, and five weeks of paid vacation a year. By the end, France ends up look like some kind of fantastical paradise, minus the jet packs.

And then there’s the Cuba trip. Having learned that volunteer 9/11 rescue workers were being denied coverage for the lingering effects of digging through the rubble, Moore decided to take them to the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base, where “enemy combatants” receive free medical care in addition to all the waterboarding. Denied access to Gitmo, the group makes its way to a Havana hospital, where Moore requests the doctors treat them no better or worse than Cuban patients.

This sequence, and that request in particular, promise to become a source of controversy in the months to come. People have already questioned whether or not the trip to Cuba was legal, and others are accusing Moore of dishonesty, claiming he requested top-of-the-line treatment for the patients, then saying otherwise in the film. More charitable opponents claim Moore himself was duped by the Cuban doctors, who put on a good show for the Americans before returning to bureaucratic business as usual once the cameras were gone.

I honestly don’t know, and I don’t have the resources to find out. I’m sure that, before long, people with press credentials and expense accounts will have picked over every second of Sicko, each hoping to push their own agenda, each omitting the findings that hurt their case. The “objective” analyses of Sicko will end up far more biased than anything in the film, which is a little silly. Sure, Moore’s become a liberal poster boy, and a punching bag for conservative commentators, but this film doesn’t take sides in the way pundits would like us to think it does.

Contrary to what Moore’s many detractors would say, this is not a left-wing propaganda piece. Everyone — liberal, conservative, and everything else — will come away outraged at the way insurance companies treat the people they claim to protect. No matter your feelings on universal health care, it will be hard to deny that the system we have now represents the very definition of “hopelessly broken”. Perhaps the coldest of capitalists will be able to rationalize insurance companies’ practices as “good business sense,” but one would have to be a seriously evil bastard to ignore how little sense those practices make from a medical perspective.

I know I walked away deeply unsettled, baffled by America’s refusal to adopt the kind of health care system that has succeeded in the rest of the industrialized world. None of those countries have fallen into oppression, even as our leaders tell us such a result is inevitable. Nobody in England goes bankrupt because their appendix picked a bad time to explode, and yet the Bolsheviks never quite took over. Why, if I didn’t know better, it would almost seem like our government was full of stubborn idiots who don’t give a shit about you.

You know what? Fuck all y’all, I’m moving to France. Have fun picking out tiny caskets for your dead uninsured kids, assholes.

Update: As of right now (4:45 PM on June 19), it’s very easy to obtain your own free copy of Sicko from any major torrent site. Although this is technically illegal, I support anything that will put copies of this movie into the hands of people who might have avoided it otherwise. Nonetheless, I plan on going to a theater on June 29, and paying real money to see this movie, and I urge everyone reading this to do the same. A lot of people will have a lot of unkind words for Sicko no matter what, and I don’t want to give them the satisfaction of a box-office failure.

Kurt Vonnegut has died. So it goes.

To lose a peer is a frightening experience. The knowledge that a contemporary, someone of your own age, your own generation, has died, gives you little choice but to consider your own mortality. Anyone familiar with his writing knows that Kurt Vonnegut faced this many times, and had considered his mortality at great length. He would despair, and he would make his peace, and he would repeat the process all over again, often in the course of a few short paragraphs in a short chapter. Perhaps he had it right; coming to terms with one’s mortality is no reason to stop searching for fresh insights on the matter. Perhaps my familiarity with his work is the reason I feel queasy whenever I meet someone who’s completely sure of something.

I have not lost a peer. Kurt Vonnegut had lived for fifty-eight years before I was born, and had already written much of his most influential work. Instead, my colleagues and I have lost another in a long line of teachers and, for lack of a better word, heroes.

As I have remarked in the past, I have a nasty record with heroes, and it’s been getting worse lately. The last ten years have given us nearly constant bad news about the people we admire. Vonnegut of course, and Douglas Adams, Hunter S. Thompson, and Robert Anton Wilson, just to list the first few writers who spring to mind. Johnny Cash is gone, and the other Beatle I liked, and we’ve only got one Ramone left. A cool professor who I never met shall lecture forevermore in Valhalla. For years, I have joked that all the cool people are fleeing the planet to avoid some impending catastrophe. I now suspect I should not have called it a joke.

These writers and artists, these philosophers, sages, luminaries and other professional thinking persons, gave us, their students, the greatest gift imaginable: they made us realize that we weren’t all that original, and that all the crazy crap we’d thought of had been published twenty years earlier. Suddenly we had guides, people who had gone through all the madness before us, and who had been kind enough to take notes. And best of all, a lot of them were still alive! Whenever the world started getting too crazy, we could ask them if they’d ever seen anything like it before, and how they got through it the first time.

Whenever the world loses such a guide, we feel as though we have been sent out into the wilderness before our time, our training left incomplete. There are no benevolent blue Jedi ghosts to tell us we’re ready. In time we will become confident enough to carry on the work of those who came before. Perhaps someone will even emerge as a worthy successor. That process is slow, however, and in the meantime we can only wait to see which of these impudent young grasshoppers will rise up to inspire the next generation of artists, geeks, and idealists.

Until that happens, I know that I am not alone in hoping for one final insight or insult or hallucination from Mr. Vonnegut, one last bit of satire dressed up as wide-eyed innocence.

Like Vonnegut, I pause to read over what I have written, and wish I had written something else. I wish that my points didn’t wander, and I wish my revelations only came at appropriate times, instead of popping in to fuck up a lovely obituary. In a part of my mind that should know better, I wish he hadn’t died in the same old way everyone else dies, with the same three words he had long appended to each life lost: so it goes.

In the end, though, that’s the point. We may be lost in the wilderness, and fully justified in feeling upset, but we will continue moving forward through time whether we choose to or not. Kurt Vonnegut, yet another of our lights, our sages, is dead; his linear stroll through time has ended. So it goes.

I’m wondering, have any of you ever actually seen or heard Don Imus’s show? He’s a boring, boring man. No, really, he’s a weird old dork who mumbles a lot and rambles off on long, pointless tangents. Sometimes he’ll just mumble about what he’s watching on television, while he’s on the air. My grandfather does that, but he doesn’t have a radio show. He’s in a nursing home. Let’s let that sink in for a second before we go further: Don Imus rambles pointlessly, just a like a feeble old man in a nursing home. Keep that image in your mind, if you would.

So why did the Rutgers women’s basketball team freak out last Wednesday when Imus called them, on the air in his rambling way, “nappy-headed hos”? Yes, it’s stupid, yes, it’s racist, yes, it’s sexist. Obviously, it was a mean and hurtful thing to say. But why even acknowledge it? A stupid person said something stupid. Why is that surprising? Stupid people think, say, and do stupid things every day. What, because he’s on the radio, his opinion suddenly matters? Not in my book.

And why do Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson now have to get involved any time any celebrity says something ignorant? Don’t they have anything else to do, at all? Are they actually trying to make themselves less relevant? At this rate, Sharpton will be making catty remarks at the Oscars with Joan Rivers in about five years.

In a press conference today, Essence Carson, Captain of the Rutgers women’s basketball team, had this to say in response to Imus’s comments: “We’d just like to express our great hurt, the sadness that he has brought to us.”

With all due respect, Ms. Carson, why on Earth would you care what Imus thinks? Being insulted by Don Imus is like being insulted by a bum on the subway. When a stinky old hobo calls me a bastard, I don’t feel any “great hurt”. I casually flip him the finger and get on with my life. With one hundred percent seriousness, I say this to the entire Rutgers women’s basketball team: You’re better than this.  You’re college-educated champion athletes with bright futures. How does anything anyone could say alter that?  Flip Imus the finger and get on with life.

Team member Heather Zurich added, “We were stripped of this moment by degrading comments made by Mr. Imus last Wednesday. What hurts the most about this situation is that Mr. Imus knows not one of us personally.”

Yes, exactly. He doesn’t know you, and you don’t know him. So why do you care what he says? He’s a stranger. He’s nothing to you! So why dignify the statement with any reaction whatsoever? Remember: confused old man in nursing home.  Don’t worry about it!

Maybe I’m just an arrogant bastard with no feelings (it’s been suggested once or twice) but how fragile is your self-esteem if this kind of thing causes you serious emotional trauma? It’s a dick with a radio show who called you a nasty name. That’s what people with radio shows do! That’s practically all they do; they’re not a very creative class of people. For example, Imus has also referred to Rush Limbaugh as “a fat, pill-popping loser” and Tucker Carlson as “a bowtie-wearing pussy.” Fine… those two times, he was right. Nevertheless. He can’t steal your moment unless you let him.

Space aliens and their trademark UFOs are back in the news lately, in what I’m hoping will eventually turn out to be some hilarious pattern. Last November we heard reports of UFOs spotted hanging around Chicago’s O’Hare airport, spotted by a dozen air traffic controllers, who, while admittedly a stressed-out over-worked crowd, really ought to know what they’re looking at when they see objects flying in the sky. The FAA, predictably, refused to investigate, and the matter remains unresolved.

Then last week, CNN’s Gary Tuchman reported on Anderson Cooper’s blog a strange story involving former Arizona Governor Fife Symington.

Fife Symington III, who served as Governor of Arizona from 1991 to 1997, admitted recently that, in ‘97 while he was still Governor (until resigning due to a bank fraud conviction later that year), he witnessed the “Phoenix Lights” mass-UFO sighting. The Phoenix Lights, which began in ‘97 but still reoccur occasionally, featured strange lights high in the air in a pattern reminiscent of reflectors placed around a flying saucer-type vehicle. The first incident was witnessed by literally thousands of people. Though he initially denied the event and ridiculed witnesses, Symington now admits that he was among those thousands.

Symington says he lied about it initially so as to avoid starting a panic, but has since come ’round to the level of enthusiast. He admitted in a recent CNN interview that he believed the lights were from “some form of alien space craft.” What’s interesting about Symington’s revelation is that, as Governor, he had some inside access. At the time, the U.S. Air Force declared publicly that the lights were the results of flares dropped by A-10 Warthogs during training exercises. According to Symington, when he privately contacted Air Force and National Guard officials, they admitted that they were as perplexed as he was.

It seems like there’s always an increase in UFO news when things here on Earth get weird, and I doubt this is any exception. It’s an alluring concept, of course, considering that anyone who can travel here from a distant planet might be able to help us with Global Warming, or the Middle East. Would Captain Picard violate the Prime Directive to save the world from George Bush? Probably not, but Captain Kirk would at least punch Bush in the nose, and that’s something I’d love to see.

It’s amusing to consider how UFO speculation flip-flops based on global socio-political issues. In times of confidence, say when we actually find our leaders to be competent, aliens are depicted as frightening intruders. This holds true even when it’s a one-sided question, say when we believe in our own leaders, but hate the Russians (and use the aliens as metaphors for them). But in times like now, where we hardly have any faith left in anyone, UFOs are the happiest ideas around. When our politicians are useless bickering buffoons, terrorists are everywhere, and Polar Bears are running out of icebergs, the only relevant questions seem to be, “when are the aliens coming to help us?” and “why aren’t they here yet?”

Personally, I fantasize about peaceful, robed, Vulcan-like space travelers landing on Earth in the Spring of 2009. President Barack Obama and Secretary of Environmental Affairs Al Gore ride forth to meet them on a Hydrogen-powered zero-emissions chariot, protected by an honor guard led by the Pittsburgh Steelers. The Rolling Stones and Tenacious D are jamming somewhere in the background, and me and the rest of The Beak’s staff writers are in the press box, smoking a bowl with Matt Taibbi. And then Earth is led to glory, harmony, and, I dunno, somehow I get to smoke in bars again.

Or maybe not. Maybe they want to eat us. Sure, we scoff at illogical old-school sci-fi stories like The Twilight Zone’s “To Serve Man” episode, in which the aliens are all monsters who look at a human the way Jared looks at a Subway sandwich. We maintain that it would be completely impractical, in fact mind-numbingly bone-headed, to travel all the way across the galaxy for lunch. But that implies that aliens only eat for survival. Why would we assume such a thing, when we’ve demonstrated conclusively that intelligence can easily evolve alongside irrational behavior? When we humans eat to survive, we go to the nearest farm or grocery store. But when we’re feeling decadent? We might drive an hour out to a nice restaurant. And let’s not forget those $5,000 cans of Beluga caviar that rich people buy, just to remind us that they can. Who’s to say that alien merchants wouldn’t attempt to sell human flesh as a delicacy to a wealthy alien aristocracy obsessed with flaunting its own spending power?

But for the sake of argument, let’s assume that not all intelligent life in the universe is as bizarre and perverse as the mind of man. What if the True Believers out in Arizona (like Fife Symington) are right? The claim is that these lights, which look a lot like lights installed along the perimeter of a flying saucer according to videos I’ve seen on CNN and YouTube, have appeared periodically over Phoenix for the last ten years. If that’s the case, then we’re starting to look damn silly, and the aliens are probably starting to feel rather awkward. Remember that our TV signals are beamed out into space after they appear on our televisions. By now people in space have had time to witness countless dramatizations of “first contact” encounters where intelligent teams of experts address the phenomenon, decipher simple communication codes broadcast by the visiting extra-terrestrials, and then do their utmost to establish communication. If you were an alien watching these shows and movies, wouldn’t you expect people to do that when it happened in real life? But no, in Phoenix, you get one third of the population gawking or videotaping, one third issuing official denials, and the last third completely oblivious. How does a visiting alien account for the discrepancy between the quick-witted geniuses of science fiction and the dumb gawking ape-men of an average real-life city? What if they’re actually trying to extend a friendly handshake, and wondering why we still have our thumbs up our butts?

I’m just saying, humanity. Not in front of the new neighbors, mmkay?

We’ve got some dubious news out of Hollywood this week, folks.  It seems that a certain Frederick Evan Young, 44, of Los Angeles, California, who works as a Chewbacca impersonator outside of the Grauman’s Chinese Theatre was booked by the LAPD on battery misdemeanor charges on Thursday, after allegedly assaulting a pair of young Japanese tourists.  According to tour guides on the scene, Mr. Young was seen “harassing and touching tourists” and shouting, “Nobody tells this Wookie what to do,” in a depraved display.  He then proceeded to head-butt the tour guide, presumably while mewling and bellowing.

I am, frankly, disgusted with this news.  This will simply not do, people!  Dressing up as Chewbacca is a sacred institution, much like dressing up as Santa Claus or Chuck E. Cheese. The heroic greatness that is Chewbacca should not be taken lightly.

I’m not saying that Wookies are to be confused with Boy Scouts; they have, as is well known, been known to tear people’s arms out of their sockets when they lose at Chess.  And Battleship, and Clue, probably Hangman, but hey, anyone who dares to play board games with a Wookie should have already known that.  Besides, board games are just inherently annoying. They piss me off, and I’m lazy as hell, so just imagine what having to build that stupid Mouse Trap would do to someone with that much pent-up muscle mass and adrenaline?

The point is, Chewbacca is not a petty thug.  He’s an outlaw hero, a criminal mastermind, a powerhouse rebel, and quite possibly the greatest sidekick of all time.  His destiny is to fight tyranny and oppression and to bring down The Man, not to harass innocent Japanese tourists!  For shame, Frederick Evan Young of Los Angeles, California.  As a Chewbacca impersonating street performer, you had so much potential to do good in the world, and you frittered it away because someone wouldn’t pay you five bucks to pose for a postcard.

Earlier this evening NBC Nightly News correspondent Dawn Fratangelo ran a quick piece screaming blue murder about the latest American parenting trend: tutoring companies expanding their programs to include sessions for three-to-six-year-olds. These programs, in essence, offer extra teaching to students at a time when their learning potential is at its strongest. In response to such programs, one flabbergasted mother was quoted as saying, “I think it’s crazy… We have to let our kids be kids and we have to let them play.”

Tell me, parents of America: just what the hell do you have against education?

I’m serious, go up to anyone you care to try and ask them how many stupid people they’ve encountered today. Odds are, they’ll start bitching up a storm about the retard who cut them off at the traffic light, or the imbecile who got their order wrong at McDonald’s, or their idiotic Old Boys’ Club boss who’s too short-sighted to hand them a promotion. And you know what? There are a lot of stupid people in this country. Always have been. Am I the only one who considers that a bad thing?

Evidently not. A more sensible parent, also interviewed in the show’s segment, defended her decision to enroll her three-year-old in one such early tutoring program. “My main goal is to have her ahead of the class,” said Gina Moreno. “I don’t want her to be the kid that needs [an] after-school program, that needs help.” Bravo, Mrs. Moreno. Your daughter will have a bright future. Hell, even if she has a terrible future, she’ll be friggin’ literate.

Fratangelo’s piece worries about, “kindergarten becoming more academic and waiting lists for the right schools long.” I’ve got news for you: getting into the “right schools” is a quaint little problem for rich people. The average American child is enrolled in a poorly-funded public school where a lot of the available energy is devoted to discipline, security, and the eradication of soda machines. Noble goals, I suppose, but can you blame parents for trying to fit in a little extra learning?

Seriously, why is this even an issue? Forget competition, how about the value of sheer intelligence? If I had a kid, and that kid learned to read at age three, and was better than I am at math now at age five, I for one would be the proudest parent in suburbia.

The dark side of all of this, of course, is that these programs cost money. The featured program, “Junior Kumon”, reportedly costs $220 a month. Can you put a price on a good education? Apparently.

Sure, anything Junior Kumon can teach can be taught at home for free. I mean, if you don’t know arithmetic or the ABC’s, it’s time to put your kid up for fucking adoption. But let’s not forget those parents out there who are either too busy or too lazy to step up the education at home. If their home situation is a forgone conclusion, why not throw in a happier alternative?

Today marks the fourth anniversary of the day I found a beak. It was lying on the porch of the University of Pittsburgh’s Cathedral of Learning, slightly out of the way, its origins a mystery. There were no signs of a struggle, no indication that someone’s precious Mister Whiskers had been starting shit. The scene of the apparent crime was devoid of feathers and blood; there was only the beak.

My friends have heard this story more times than I care to count, due mostly to the fact that they kept introducing Horatio and me to people who hadn’t heard it yet. If I end up following Horatio and Princess Wolfsbane to New York next year, I’ll find plenty of opportunities to tell it again. As stories go, it’s something of an attention-getter. Disgusting though it may be, finding a beak, sans bird, is just weird enough to make an audience curious.

Weirder than finding a beak, as this audience soon learns, is the fact that no one else found it first. As far as I know, nobody else even noticed it. I admit it was a few yards from most of the foot traffic, but the Cathedral porch was (and remains) a popular spot to stand around and talk with your friends, or at least smoke with them. Still, even with all these potential witnesses, none of them took notice of the beak in their midst.

Once I realized what I was looking at, something– call it madness– compelled me to stake out the area and point out the oddity to whoever I thought would listen. It wasn’t long before I ran into an acquaintance of mine, a bit of a dick really, and one of his friends, and introduced them to the beak. After a few dull minutes of trying to explain to them why this was awesome, I found a more sympathetic audience in the form of Horatio and Captain Fun and told them of my discovery.

They could dig it. We set to work.

We drew a chalk shrine around the site where the beak was discovered and maintained it for several months afterward, even when the janitors washed it away on a near-daily basis. We wrote ridiculous scriptures detailing the mystical history of the beak. We started capitalizing the word “Beak.” We added nearly everyone we knew to our ranks. We devised a Beakly calendar. We clashed with the campus police on several occasions, mostly due to our (washable) vandalism and our attempts to sacrifice a potato to the Beak. It was all very silly, but it certainly felt like we were accomplishing something.

Four years later, on the fifth Day of the Beak, what has become of these young prophets-to-be? Why did we tone down the goofy mysticism? How the hell did we all manage to graduate? How could people who were already so bitter become so bitter? Why didn’t we sell out and live off the T-shirt money? Didn’t we have a band at one point in there? In short, did we fail?

Of course I’ll say we didn’t. We’re all still alive, more or less, and the handful of us who still care about the Beak have tried to lead lives in line with the philosophy we established. That’s very Zen of us and all, but when a movement is as new as ours we should probably focus on increasing our profile. Finding a comfortable worldview is nice, but it does sort of keep you from winning converts with mystical bullshit and garish rituals. Maybe we should re-open our propaganda wing.

There’s been positive stuff too, of course. We’ve been called the heirs of the Discordian movement, for crying out loud! Considering our admiration for the Discordians (and their always-awesome goddess Eris), this is both a tremendous honor and a huge amount of pressure. In forty years, will the lovable freaks of the world pass our books around once they’ve retired the bong for the evening? Does that mean we’ll have to write some books?

Writing a book about this stuff doesn’t seem too terrible, nor does taking modern-day Discordians to task for failing to continue the decidedly cool work of their forebears. Then again, we’ve made promises like that every year (usually in private) and have yet to keep them.

If we absolutely must make a statement, let’s just say we’re at a crossroads. No matter which way we go, we’ll end up somewhere Beakly; the real mystery is how long it will take before we get the actual work done.

And if that isn’t the definition of the Way of the Beak, I don’t know what is.