Regulation ghosts

There's a well-known series of books about vampires that I once started to read. I picked up the first book, read a powerful, graphic opening, and then about five pages into the meat of the story, closed the book. I haven't picked it up since, and that was over ten years ago.

That book, and that second scene where I was first introduced to the hero of the story, has stayed in my head all this time. Because I think I can make a point that can help other people who just might be picking up a pen for the first time, I'm going to explain why.

As I tend to do, I'm not going to specify the series. If you've read it, you'll recognize it. It happens to be one of my wife's favorites, so it's yet another subject for us to have lively discussions about. We've had quite a few.

It's set during the cold war, and the opening shows a very unconventional autopsy that ends in shootings and an explosion. This sets a top-secret Soviet program back years of progress. The second scene shows a young man reporting for his first day of work as the person in charge of a British project that opposes the other one that we just read about. Inside a room accessed by a secret door, our hero meets a ghost. Instead of rattling chains or demanding that his son avenge his murder, this spectre gives our hero a short report on the events in the first scene. This patriotic spook passes on military intelligence.

Disclaimer: you already know that every word of this is my opinion. This is my word, not the word, and it's sure as hell not the last word. This is a word about what I choose to write words about. Horror.

What's wrong with a ghost doing its part for queen and country? Nothing. It shows nobility and a willingness for self-sacrifice. But it also shows a connected, enlightened empathy, a willingness to look out for the little guy. It also shows an intelligent involvement in the present. This ghost is not an old, dusty record player endlessly spinning the same scratched vinyl disc. More's the pity.

Despite having vampires as the main antagonists of the series, the series isn't horror. It's science fiction. There's an understandable rhyme and reason to the universe, clear cause and effect, and some ghosts have our back.

You know, maybe it's that last point in particular which explains why I don't think I'll ever pick that book up again. I like horror, and part, I believe, of a good horror story is our inability to truly grasp the parts of the universe that are trying to drown us in its bathtub. Borrowing/Butchering a quote, the strongest fear is fear of the unknown, and when we can see an expression of love from a ghost, we feel we know it, even if there are facets of its existence that we can't possibly grasp. It smacks too much of Casper, and cheesy Lifetime movies where the tragic but plucky heroine is constantly getting scared out of her wits by the spook in her new house, which – surprise! Was only trying to warn her that the cardboard-cutout handsome guy she's seeing is the asshole who ghostified the house's prior tenant.

You know, if I never achieve anything else lasting as a writer, if I can only get 'ghostified' in the dictionary, my life will have meaning.

I've covered a bit of this before, so let me try to rephrase it while contributing something new. I'm going to label this set of words the rules for ghosts. These points are what I keep in my head when I sit down to write a ghost story that I want to scare people with, and not just because these guidelines would produce a story that I would probably enjoy reading. I think each of these points pushes a button in people's minds. I think they dig under the floorboards and get inside the spaces between the walls.

1. A ghost did something unusual during its mortal life. Though it's rarely explained why this matters, it's important because millions of people die every year, but they don't all come back. So our ghost has to have been remarkable in some way. It developed an obsession, it became consumed with greed, it died a painful death, or it lived a life so empty that just reading about it makes us worry that we haven't done enough with our own lives. There will be no ghosts of milquetoast accountants who died in their sleep or of mediocre soccer moms who passed peacefully, surrounded by loving family members. Normal doesn't make a ghost.

2. A ghost does not have a wide range of responses to stimuli. A haunt can be subtle or obvious, though our story is more effective if it at least starts off subtle. But it won't break dishes in the kitchen one day, file a lawsuit at the county clerk's office the next, and finish off the week by possessing the lady next door so it can sit down with the new owner of its house and hammer out a twenty-page contract agreeing to co-inhabit the house on a time sharing basis. A ghost is emotion and energy, like lightning finding the shortest path to the ground.

3. A ghost has a limited range of focus. The internal logic on this is sketchy, but in all the stories the shades are fixed to something, some remnant of their past (more on that below). A haunted house, hotel, car, toy, or town. Even a person can be haunted. A ghost might be mobile, but not randomly so. It's tied to a person, place, or thing. A spectral afterlife is an old-fashioned marriage where the options for divorce are extremely limited.

4. Because it was once a living person but is now dead, a ghost is tied to the past. This reflects the symbolism of what a fictional ghost is to a reader, old memories or feelings that won't stay buried. In a haunted house, radios play commercials for companies that went under twenty years ago, a bottle of soft drink sweetened with high fructose corn syrup tastes like the good old stuff that was made with real sugar, and a tattered old dress smells fresh and clean with just a hint of a forgotten lover's perfume. But it's all a phantom. Spend a night in a house that once burned down and you'll wake up in a moldy ruin. Join that gracious host for a week of feasting, and you'll starve to death. Show up on a dock to meet that lover who once got away, and sooner or later your body will wash up on shore. The past belongs to the dead, not the living.

6. A ghost can't experience personal growth, including learning new facts, or keeping up with changing events. This is a matching point to the previous one. The possibility of change, of molding the future, belongs to the living and not the dead. Those who have died but are sticking around are stuck with what they had when they were once alive, body, mind, and spirit. A ghost of someone who died in the service of MI-6 would whisper, scream, and write, 'Blake is a traitor' long after the man himself was dead and buried. They're always playing the same game of chess, one where the moves are announced but the pieces never advance. A person who freezes to death comes back as a ghost who will never be warm. The shade of a person who died feeling betrayed will never forgive. Never.

Hey, remind me to read something with a happy ending when I'm done here, okay?

Another A-kon has come and gone. This year it was held in Fort Worth, but there were familiar faces and familiar shenanigans. The day before the con started, some knucklehead decided to play Bruce Lee and kick open a pair of double doors at the hotel. The doors were expensive.

I wrote Bruce Lee in the above paragraph, but the person who told me about it actually cited Jet Li. Uh oh, can't I learn new names, or references? Am I stuck in the past? Maybe I am.

Because I'm still writing.

Why we're all liars

Are you fucking kidding me?

Imagine this. I wait outside the front of my house for the postal carrier, pretending to trim the trees. When he or she comes by I say, “Hey, be careful. My neighbor is letting his dog wander loose, and it's a mean one.”

Or, I go down to the grocery store and stand by the entrance while I pretend to text my wife and ask what kind of cheese she wants me to get. When a customer with either darker skin or wearing some kind of religious clothing clears the checkout line I go up to the manager and say, “Excuse me, but that person just pulled some steaks out from underneath their coat.”

Or, I drive down to Brownsville, at the Mexican border, and I run around yelling, “The Mexicans are coming! The Mexicans are coming! Their tanks will be here in fifteen minutes!”

Or, I take a bus to Boston, Massachusetts, and run up and down the streets yelling, “The British are coming! The British are coming! They're worried about Trump taking power and they're going to invade!”

Now at what point did your disbelief give you pause?

A few days ago a man named Edgar Maddison Welch scared the hell out of some people and could have gotten those people and himself killed. The details are few and far between right now, but what's generally agreed on is this: He read some writings online that claimed a certain pizzeria was just a front that masked child abuse. He believed those writings strongly enough to arm himself and go down there. He fired his weapon inside the business, and later he was arrested.

Now, we haven't heard directly from him (and if he or his lawyer have any sense at all, we won't), but a couple of facts stand out.

1. He didn't go in shooting, wasn't focused on killing every adult in the building.
2. One phrase keeps being used over and over again, in quotes. Self-investigate. Again, we haven't heard from Welch's lawyers (by now he should have some), but whoever they are they haven't come forward to denounce this quote as false, and every time it's repeated it digs this man's grave a little deeper. A very specific grave.

Now I've stated my assumptions first. If any of them turn out to be false, then my conclusion is invalid for Mr Welch, but my point is still going to be valid.

I don't think he is a fanatic. We've seen a lot of fanatics lately, in this country and others, and they go in with guns blazing, intent on racking up as high a body count as they can. Blood is the goal for fanatics because as far as they're concerned they're the ones god chose to whip the whole world into shape, and when you're having that intimate a tea party with your spook of choice, blood is the only drink you serve.

So if he isn't a fanatic, what is he?

Naïve. A naïve fool.

If you just got an incredulous look on your face, please understand my terms. There's no pain or damage that a fanatic can inflict that a fool can't match. Anyone can inflict pain and shed blood. You. Me. Anyone.

Again, how did he wind up where he is now? He read a story online, something along the lines of the bait stories that leap out at you while you're waiting in line at the grocery store, and he went in there ready to shoot. If you claim he isn't a fool, show me what scale he used to judge that all the people in there were part of that conspiracy, and that's why he didn't mind driving them into a panic. Show me where he studied the architecture of the building to be sure that whatever point he fired that weapon at didn't have a brick wall or metal pipes or something else solid enough to shatter the round and send fragments into the crowd. You fire a rifle inside, you're gambling with your own life and with other's lives. He's a damn fool.

Go back to those example I gave you above. Some of them I think most of us would fall for, but they get progressively ridiculous. Now add a fact to each case. In the first, I've been feuding with my neighbor because his dog has been doing his business on my lawn. Second, I'm wearing a tee shirt that says 'God bless the KKK.' Third, I've set up a little stand by the side of the road, and it has a big banner that says, 'Anti-tank rockets, $500 dollars apiece.' Fourth, if anyone stops to listen to me explain my claim, I tell them that in order to get the whole story they'll need to buy my book, and I just happen to have a few copies with me. In other words, in each case I have a reason to lie that benefits me personally. Now does that fact give you pause, even in those cases that seemed straightforward?

Then put your pause function on speed-dial, because you're going to be using it. Everyone has a reason to lie. Why? It's fun to lie. Why the hell do you think I want to make my living doing it? Why do you think damn near everyone does it, every single day of their lives? It's free, it gets the liar some attention, and it's easy. Now I'm not talking about the simple lies that make a person's day easier. 'Damn, honey. I meant to unload the dishwasher but I forgot.' 'Honey, you know I would never forget your birthday. I had reservations for dinner but the boss says I have to work late.' Those are lies of convenience. They're a quick shot of bullshit to cover up mistakes, and so, we benefit from telling them. But the person who first claimed that J. Edgar Hoover liked long dresses and frilly undies? That friend of yours and mine who swears that their cousin's neighbor once popped her poodle in the microwave to dry it off? They get that moment when we fall for it, and that shared magic when a good story finds an audience. Storytelling is magical, and magic can be worked with truth or bullshit. That's the power of magic.

But please don't start believing in spirits to the point of handing over money to Madame Zelocka, who claims she has an urgent message from your-long departed Uncle Phil. Believe in fairies if you want to, but not to the point of hateful words for someone who doesn't. Don't be so ready to believe that hundreds of people can consciously work together to keep a secret, a secret that's spread all over the web. If you do, you're a fool. Not evil, but a fool.

Enough with the blogging. Let me get back to telling lies that I'll get paid for.

Back to writing.

My wife is going to be published

Just a few days ago I got a text at my work. At that moment I think I was arguing with my shipping computer that there was no such place as 'No Name Needed' in the state of Texas, when I heard the happy, beepy/chirpy noise that my phone makes when someone wants my attention to their printed words. Normally texts at work are a nuisance, as a lot of them are about warning me that there's dog yak on the carpet waiting for me to get home. But on that day it was three simple words that brightened my whole day. 'I got accepted.'

A short while back friend of ours told Claudia and me about an anthology series that was being put together called 'Dirty Magick.' One of them is set in New Orleans, and is a cross-genre book combining fantasy and detective elements. While the idea didn't generate any spark in my head, it did in hers, and she was able to draw on the time she spent over there. She sat down and cranked out a story in just a few days, a nice one about murder and the voodoo loa that had a flavor I had never seen before. It has a bit of old-style noir and a dash of Constantine-style attitude, and it's what's going to be Claudia's first time published on paper.

Technically, she was published before me. Once upon a time she sent in a story to the CHUD website, and they accepted it. She let me read it, back when we were dating, and it was one of the things that made me a little more intrigued about this quirky woman I was trading e-mails with. Some random stranger read her story, and decided that other random strangers would enjoy reading it. That's how you get picked. This was years before I got 'Roaming' into Absent Willow Review. Rock on.

Not long after I got my contributor's copy of 'Hard Luck,' Claudia found a shelf in the house with some empty space on it. She cleared the whole thing off, and put 'Hard Luck' and 'Handsome Devil' on it. Then she told me that I better get busy and fill up the rest of the shelf. Now I get to tell her that we're having a race. Once the shelf gets filled up, we count who has more books on it. Winner gets, – well, we'll think of something.

So to keep the ball rolling I sent 'Dear, Sweet Edina' to Apex Magazine. I finished a really harsh short called 'The God Box' a few days ago, and my poor wife has already called it the most awful thing I have ever written. As soon as she finishes going over it I'll make whatever corrections are needed and get it sent out.

Then I'll write something else.

Today's lesson: Goats Don't Grow On Trees

Sorry about not posting last weekend. I was working on In The Dark, and because I'm the head of the safety committee where I work, I also had to put together an action plan for next year. All part of making sure no one gets killed which is something I do believe in, despite rumors to the contrary.

As opposed to my writing, where people regularly get killed. Speaking of which (writing, not killing), I'm at that point on In The Dark where the going is slow and grinding. All those little bits where I just wrote disconnected action sequences? Well, now I have to not only fill in all the bits between them, the whole thing has to make sense! I forget who said it, but the adage of 'Books aren't written, they're rewritten,' has proved itself twice in a row now. I really think it takes more work the second time around.

Oh, the title of the post? My wife has a sense of humor something like mine. I frequently tell people that I just don't have a sense of humor at all, especially at work. That's because at work I'm usually focused on something, and because I work in a warehouse environment, that something is often the sort that can get you seriously hurt. So I don't let my mind wander.

But I do have something that I call a sense of humor. Today my wife and I were out and about, and we saw some people begging on the side of the road. We both sometimes give money to people in need, but only when we don't feel like we're being taken advantage of, and this time we didn't give. But we did start talking about it, and I started putting different scenarios to her, trying to find the point that she would part with her money. I got to where the hypothetical beggars were kids in a school band, and one of them was out on the median, in a kilt and playing a set of bagpipes. Then, she admitted, she would contribute. “Because goats don't grow on trees.” Makes perfect sense, right?

Still writing.

How to dance

For the first few days after I sent Roja in, I was in this weird state of, 'okay, now what do I do?' Working on short stories after doing a book feels like a step back. I keep wanting to dive nosefirst into the next one. Of course, bitter experience has shown me that's one of the best ways to foul something up.

So I started on one that's a little different. It's not horror, or even science fiction. It might have its roots in the months that I spent down in Panama when I was in the Marine Corps, or it may just have been lodged in a loose stitch in my little bag of nightmares. Sometimes I get a stray beat in my heat that won't go away, the kind that you find yourself tapping your foot to when you're not paying attention. At some point, I could see a man dancing to that beat, and the audience clapping it in time. This guy can move like few human beings have ever been able to move, and people love him for it. Then I saw something really bloody happen, right there on the stage.

On a different note, my wife took me to see Hansel and Gretel, Witch Hunters today. It was a good fun, but more like an action movie than I thought it would be. It reminded me a lot of Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter, only without the historical connections. That gave it a lot more room to play around with themes that it wouldn't normally have. It was fun.

Still writing, only right now it feels like dancing.

How to steal and be complimented on your theft

So today (Saturday) the internet is being a bit wonky. So I'm going to use this time to get this week's entry typed in a head of time. I'm clever like that.

A friend and I once got into a spirited discussion about fanfiction, which ended with an armistice rather than a real peace. We had started discussing Sherlock Holmes, and the story, 'The Seven Percent Solution' came up. This is a story not written by Doyle, but considered so good that it gets treated as cannon, meaning all the little details in it are considered just as true as those from the books that were written by him. That's when hostilities began.

There are a lot of created universes. Harry Potter, Holmes, Michael Moorcock's, Discworld, and yes, Twilight. They get a lot of fans reading them, and most people who read have enough imagination to take the stories and wonder what else could happen in this strange, exciting place. If the story really reaches out and grabs us, (and that's and individual response, so I'm not going to get into whether or not a universe has to be widely considered 'good' for this to apply) then it's fun to just daydream about what our life would be like if we lived there, too. This real world can sometimes suck, and a fantasy world only sucks in ways we can handle.

Is it wrong to imagine? Hell no. Everyone should do it. Imagine enough, and you might start to come up with a story of your own, something where the hero (gender neutral usage) finally takes care of that one twit in the story that you really hated. Since this is your version of the world, there's a place for you, too. You can be the hero's next door neighbor, his confidante, his backup, and you can be a hero too, when the main one is off doing something else. So far, so good.

Should you write all this down? Why not? It can be fun, and if you write other stuff, it can kick-start that part of your head if it ever gets sluggish. I've done this, and takes me in directions I might otherwise not go.

Then you decide to go out and make some money with this story. That's when I ask that you pause for a minute.

As I've said before, writing is work. You start with an idea, an image, a bit of dialogue, or something else that gets the brain juices flowing. Then you take that seed and plant it in the (hopefully) fertile soil of your perception of the world, either the real one, or the one you're thinking about. It takes root in your own concepts of how people talk, whether or not we landed on the moon, whether that shy guy at the back of the classroom is going to grow up to be the inventor of a faster than light drive or someone who collects other people's spleens, and whether or not something creeps out from under your bed while you're asleep. You start that seed growing, and you prune it when it goes in directions you don't want. Get your plant big enough, and you've got a story.

When someone writes fanfiction, they're starting with a big chunk of someone else's plant. Again, not a bad thing, but recognize where that part comes from. Assume there are no copyright issues. (BIG assumption. I know very little of that field, and I know enough to say that it can be really, really messy) This is a moral argument, not a legal one.

When you make a character, and you either put enough work into him or her to make a good one, and/or you get lucky and create something that pushes people's buttons in the way that they like them pressed, you've made something good. Holmes is the standard by which all other literary detectives are judged, and with all the movies and plays that have come out, we've seen multiple interpretations of the character. Then someone went and wrote, 'Sherlock Holmes versus Dracula.' I saw that title standing in line at the library when I was ten years old, and I've never been the same since.

So what do you do if you have an idea that was spawned in someone else's flowerbed? Grow it, of course. Let it grow as big and as beautiful as it can. Then step back and look at it, hard.

Is it good? More importantly, is it strong enough to survive on it's own? If not, keep it and enjoy it. If it is, take a cutting from the part that you made, transplant it, and see it it will grow. One of my major complaints about the 'I am Legend' movie, wasn't all the tweaking that they did with the setting, it the fact that both of the endings were completely contrary to the ones that Matheson wrote. If you're going to borrow that heavily from someone, do what George Romero is supposed to have done with Night Of The Living Dead. He got the idea, and the scares and suspense, of a lone house surrounded by undead from I am Legend, and built his own story around it. It's great to get seeds from other people's plants, just do your own growing. 

I've finally made a profile over at Fearnet. One of the bloggers that I follow, Drew Daywalt, had some trouble happen to him recently, and I tried to offer a bit of encouragement.

Still writing, although the fact that this isn't getting posted until Monday might seem to call that into question.

Good news and bad news

Some time, back in the distant past, I had a spiral notebook in front of me and I was trying to figure out what a middleaged-plus dockworker would do if he suddenly became near-omnipotent, when I had a giddy rush and thought to myself, 'Holy crap, I'm writing a novel.' It was a major power-trip. I mean, a novel? War and Peace is a novel. Jurassic Park is a novel. The Shining, 'Salem's Lot, and Hell House are novels. Those are examples of novels, and I'm writing one?

Of course, the reality is, writing anything that size is serious work. Writing anything that size that is coherent is a lot of serious work, and writing anything that size that's any good, well, I'll wait until someone hands me money for Roja before I make a claim to knowing what writing a good one is like. I will, however, say that rewriting a novel, even before you know whether or not it's any good, is like breaking a hole in a brick wall by throwing individual grains of sand at it.

Now imagine how I felt last week as I started scribbling on the top of a blank page and thought, 'Oh wow, I'm writing my second novel.'

I've actually had the opening section written for a while, now. But thanks to my 'special' method of organization, I may have to re-create it. The first full-sized chapter opens with two young boys enjoying their summer vacation, and that's where the wholesomeness ends. Pondering a couple of events that I want to put in it, I realize this going to be a really nasty one.

If you've read the title of this entry, you're no doubt waiting for the other shoe to drop. On Monday, my wife got up after getting one night of sleep to recover from FenCon, including the moment when some idiot in one of the elevators hit the fire alarm, and she went to work. An hour or so later, she came home. Seems the higher ups at her company decided that had a few too many employees on the payroll. They laid her off.

To say that she is upset, or that I am upset, is a bit of an understatement. They were actually pretty nice about it, giving her a bit of a safety net. But as I told her, that's like someone putting a pillow under your head and applying ice to your nose after they've kicked you in the face. It's a nice gesture, but it's a nice gesture from someone who has just kicked you in the face. Now she's looking for a job, and at the same time prepping to run her booth at Oni-Con. She's pretty damn incredible.

Still writing, and by the way? I still get that same, 'Holy crap, I'm writing a novel,' feeling as I rewrite Roja.

By the way, this week is Banned Books Week! So go read something you shouldn't!

Something positive from something negative

At least twice a week, I wish that I had time to go back to school. The list of subjects that I want to know about includes (but isn't limited to) engineering, physics, chemistry, history, and psychology. The reason that I don't take the time is because as much as I want to learn about damn near everything, I want to write even more.

Psychology, in particular, seems fun, and it has a more direct application to writing than the other subjects. Way back when I first discovered the Horror Writer's Association, I browsed through their website and found an article written by Nancy Etchemendy entitled 'Writers and Depression.' You can read it here, http://www.horror.org/writetips/writetips-etchemendy.htm.

One of the points that the article makes is that the very nature of writing, that is, sitting on your butt all day, working alone, getting constant impersonal rejection, and the fact that few of your friends or family seem to understand that what you're doing is real work, can be pretty depressing by itself. Then there's the very real possibility that creative types are a bit more prone to it than most. I can't remember a solid source for that, so I'll leave it as a maybe.

Also a maybe is the odd little thought that the writing process goes through the same part of the brain that our negative emotions come from. I went through a bunch of my books trying to pinpoint where I heard that, and I couldn't find it. That's why it's a maybe. Expect to hear this subject again when I find the source.

I mention it because it feels right, especially for what I write. When I write the story about some coarse, greedy bastard who commits one evil too many and dooms himself to live in terror for the rest of his life, I'm tapping into the egotistical part of me that would gleefully crush such a person under my heel, and I'm remembering every person like that who I have encountered in real life. When I write about hate, pain, loss, dread, and rage so hot it boils your blood, I'm feeling them. Not the real things, understand, but some safe-looking version, emotion by proxy. Now consider the following:

I write damn near everywhere I can get away with it. In the car, on my lunch break, on my fifteen minute breaks, and often in between my breaks. (Sorry Larry) Despite the fact that I know perfectly well that I'm going to be interrupted, by the clock if nothing else, every single time something or someone interrupts me, I really want to scream at them to get the ---- out of my face. Maybe it's just part of their personae, but when I think about the writers that inspire me, the majority of them are known for some really negative traits. Stephen King is a recovering addict, Robert E. Howard committed suicide, and Harlan Ellison frequently channels his inner SOB. Richard Matheson once wrote a book where a magician explains that the audience is a hostile entity. Guess what? The writer can be one, too. If he or she does it right, you'll never even notice.

Yet after going through all that, look at the result. The Shining, The Bloodstained God, , Demon with a Glass Hand, and Hell House. Now if those don't put a smile on your face, I don't know what will.

Because it's worth sharing: A DJ giving a weather report for us down here in Houston today summed it up perfectly. 'Hotter than the hinges of hell.'

Still writing.

Texas heat, current project, and Norway

Newsflash:  It's hot.  It's hot everywhere, but down here in the southern part of the US, we're in a heat dome.  Which means right now we're the last hot dog on the grill, the one that the cook forgot all about, and we're going to be cooking here for a while yet.  Most of my poor wife's garden has died and withered, except for her mutant tomatoes, which are still producing. (I swear those seeds must be from the land around Chernobyl.  Nothing else could explain how the plants are still alive)

I had my daughter down here from Ohio a couple of weeks back, and my writing got put on the back burner.  Now that I've picked it up again, I'm cranking out Mister Donovan's Cadillac, a fun little piece that I started some time ago about a company man with a company car, one that gives him a little too much information about his perfect wife.  I actually might finish the first draft either tonight or tomorrow, depending on how I feel.  My insomnia has gotten a bit worse lately, despite the fact that I'm getting up a little earlier in the mornings and hitting the treadmill.  Then it's back to Roja.  I could wonder if my creative procrastination about finishing my first book is due to dread of exhilaration at finishing it turning to letdown, (something that happens in my head quite frequently.  Graduating from boot camp felt -- odd.) or from knowing that the next step is getting it rewritten, a process which I compare to pulling your own wisdom teeth out with a pair of tweezers.

In the news right now is a twit named Anders Behring Breivik.  This guy apparently saw himself as a crusader, and determined that it was his solemn duty to save Europe from the Muslims.  Shortly after he set off a bomb and shot a whole bunch of people, everyone who he idolized broke all speed records in distancing themselves from him.  Can't say I blame them, but it's a case of too little too late.  Breivik, in my humble opinion, was less motivated by duty than by ego.  He says he was fighting a good fight, but look at what he did, and didn't do.  He didn't run for office, saying "Elect me and I'll get rid of all the Muslims!  They'll never set foot in this country again!"  He didn't run down to his local recruiting office and say, "I want to join the army!  Can I go straight to Afghanistan?  I want to fight Muslims!"  He didn't run down to the nearest fjord, buy a boat, stock it with supplies and guns, and then sail it to Morocco, Egypt, or Saudi Arabia, and launch his own one-man amphibious landing, jumping ashore with guns blazing.  All of those would require work, the threat of humiliation, and the last two would actually be DANGEROUS.  He stayed at home, in a country without the death penalty, where he was warm and comfortable.  He set a bomb, and he shot some kids.  In all the news about this tragedy, I have yet to hear that any of the people killed were even Muslim.  He killed the people who had the misfortune to be in arms reach.
That's not the tactic of a crusader.  That's the showing off of a coward.