Quick summary:

A guy buys a Playstation 3. He then plays with the internal workings of the machine in order to get it to do even more stuff than it could before. Sony sues him for it… an action that, frankly, is hard to morally justify even if you can show paperwork that makes it legal to do so. Anonymous attacks Sony websites and starts harassing Sony executives.

In case you missed it: Sony is suing him for modifying a product that he owns. He didn’t “license” or “lease” or “rent” that product. He owns it. Apparently, that doesn’t mean what it used to, because even though he owns that product he isn’t allowed to do with it as he pleases. That’s like a food manufacturer suing you for distributing a unique recipe, or an auto part manufacturer suing you for using car parts in a different brand car.

That’s it in a nutshell.

Ars Technica recently covered the story with a focus on how people have been able to get information on these executives. To me, this focus is completely uninteresting. Detectives have been able to get personal information on other people since before electricity was discovered, and always will.

Others have focused on the specific actions of Anonymous, and whether “they” went “too far”. That’s a fun philosophical debate if you really want to kill a few hours, but doesn’t actually have anything to do with what happens next.

That’s the key: what happens next?

This latest round of attacks by “Anonymous”, the general banner for “whatever random people got ticked off enough to target Sony executives for being a bunch of jackasses”, is becoming par for the course. You can’t stop it. Anonymous isn’t an organization. It’s just the phenomena of a bunch of people acting out. They don’t know each other, they don’t “keep in touch”, and there is no leader. YOU are Anonymous.

So, if a corporation tries to hurt random people, the members of that corporation can expect backlash. This is the world we live in.

While I’m not crazy about “mob mentality” or “mob rule”, I understand why it’s starting to happen. After Enron demonstrated to the world that corporate executives are above the law even when they seriously harm people, the notion of random people being sued for doing things that hurt people only in the vaguest and most esoteric sense is more than the average Netizen is ready to handle. People who do real harm are immune to punishment, and people who do largely theorhetical harm are lynched by the system.

Since there is no government mechanism for maintaining the balance, mob rule rises.

I don’t have a solution to the problem, but I do know that we’ll see more and more of this. It will go a bit further every time. Executives responsible for random smack-downs on the public can expect more and more backlash.

For those of us that have nothing to do with this conflict on either side, expect to be caught in the crossfire. You will be able to do less on the Internet tomorrow than you can today in order to keep executives safe from being held accountable by Anonymous. Corporate services you wanted to use will go down occasionally due to Anonymous attacks. The trend will continue.

The solution? Maybe more transparency in the corporate structure, more accountability… or maybe a completely new model under which to build a business. Ah, but this is my stop folks… I’m not really the “ingenious solutions” guy, just the “understanding what the hell is going on” guy.

We Live in Public – 2008, 18A, 88 minutes

Ondi Timoner’s documentary chronicles a decade in the life of Internet pioneer Josh Harris, who instigated an “artificial society” experiment in which more than 100 artists lived under 24-hour surveillance in an underground compound in New York City. After FEMA broke up the project, Harris turned the cameras on himself and his girlfriend. Timoner’s provocative film (winner of the Grand Jury Prize: Documentary at Sundance) includes clips from Harris’s projects as well as her own original footage.

Keep it digital and catch it on Netflix. It’s scary and awesome, although the ending is a little weak. The point, through, is this notion that we are all encouraged to make our lives public. It is the way forward. “Web 2.0″, “User-created content”, “Social media”, assorted buzzwords yadda yadda…

Now that we’ve lived with these ideas for a few years, the hipster movement makes sense. After all, you can’t be cool all the time, and in an age of constant surveillance and recording you’re bound to do something stupid that people will take notice of. As a result, people claim it was “supposed to be ironic”.

That, or your idiotic status update was “just trolling lololollol”… sure, we believe you. No, really, I’m not typing sarcastically or anything.

The older generation got flinchy about public perception by doing what they always do: hiding behind “professionalism”. The number of dry, sterile public profiles that tell you nothing about the person in question is staggering. People have thrown themselves into mediocrity enthusiastically in order to keep the all-seeing eye of the Internet from making them look like an ass. So, instead, they look ignorable.

Now, if “ignorable” is part of the job description, then your resume is perfect. For the rest of us, its time to just be guileless and let the chips fall where they may. Either you’ll run your business yourself, or you’ll let the world run it for you.

Which one has your best interests at heart?

Good lord!

China’s perverse blanket censorship of the Internet was one thing – if the Chinese people want their thoughts to be controlled by a bureaucracy that’s their business. Public opinion influence and control by political entities is old news. But this is something startlingly new. This is them saying: “keep your filthy stinking money!”

Are they honestly that rich already?

Apparently China’s online games were worth over $900M in Q2 alone. So sure, maybe that’s enough… if there is such a thing as “enough” in modern economies. Still, can anyone really afford to slow down when things are moving so fast these days? Won’t this make foreign investors from a variety of industries flinch a little?

Morality (however you define it) is expensive, and it looks like they’re willing to pay the price. While I’m not entirely certain I agree with their particular philosophies, I have to admit: xenophobia in the digital age takes guts.

It will be interesting to see how this all shakes out five years from now.

New Media is the tipping point where Good finally beats Bad

About This Video: Gary Vaynerchuk sounds off for 120 seconds on The fact that our technology is moving so fast and it is actually helping one major thing, it is allowing good people to wine

By the way, I’m pretty sure “wine” is a typo on his part even if it is, ironically, appropriate.

Why is this the most horrific thing I’ve heard about since a soldier tossed a puppy off a cliff? I’ve blogged about this before under the context of Halloween and along the lines of deleting my old work, but it’s worth saying again.

The problem with people “knowing who you are” is that you’re constantly checking yourself for presentability and consistency. Over and over you clamp down on your creativity, restrict your passion, and censor your thoughts because the world is watching and you’re never, ever allowed to change. You are what the record says you are. There’s no escape, and to hell with what “feels right” for you at the moment.

It also means that, ironically, people will accuse you of being “fake” or “lying” if you try to grow or if, god forbid, you merely change your mind about something. Favor will be granted toward those who’ve been consistently pleasant. Mediocrity be praised!

Pretty soon, you’ll have to look like this to be trusted:

Oh wait, that’s already true and I kind of do look like that. Damn. We’re screwed.

I guess it’s true what they say: the more things change, the more they stay the same.

So recently a US soldier tossed a puppy off a cliff on video. If you feel the need to see it for yourself most “legitimate” media has done you the favor of making it easily accessible for your viewing pleasure. Lucky you, I’m sure you’ll thank them. For the record, I have decided to spare myself the trauma… but it’s up to you whether or not you think you “should” see it… or whatever…

As usual everyone is being (deleted) about it (long stupid rant deleted) …

That’s the other thing about opinions: if you’re a betting man, put your money on the average opinion being whatever makes people feel good about themselves rather than anything that could be arrived at if one were to bother thinking about what one was saying.

So while I don’t have an opinion on censorship here I am sharing my opinion on opinions, oh how droll and clever why don’t I know when to quit oh god oh god…

I could go on, but I’ll let Sean Bedlam sum up my thoughts on the matter. Warning: he swears. Of course, if you’re honestly going to complain about that after watching a puppy get thrown off a cliff, you have bigger problems than I am qualified to address…

Really. I’m not kidding. Do not hit play unless you want to see lots of blood.

It’s not like this level of gore is new to the indie film scene. Crazy flying bucket-fulls of blood have been the easiest way for indie films to stand out. Unfortunately, since they all do it (and since Tarantino’s big-budget indie-style stuff of late) it’s becoming a bit of a bit of a cliché.

With the heart of new media being word-of-mouth, expect this movie to make some money. Just don’t be deceived into thinking that it’s unusually creative or has any particular merit as art. I’m not saying you won’t enjoy it, mind, just that “Shoot ‘Em Up” pretty much put the nail in the coffin of the “violence is fun” genre.

The only room left in the genre is for the true innovators. For instance, I give you “Battle Royale“.

7th graders forced to kill one another for the sake of cultural balance isn’t exactly for the timid either, but at least the trailer sells the story. You get an interesting choice with Battle Royale: either enjoy it for its sheer mayhem and “wrongness”, or enjoy it for the profound statements it makes about society and the individual. The difference is that good art gives you the choice, and says more about the people watching it than it does about anything else.

Why am I posting a bunch of potentially offensive videos from a guy making political statements I don’t completely agree with and I’m not interested in discussing?

Sean Bedlam is what new media is all about.

He does two extremely taboo things in his videos: he swears (taboo because science has shown that some sounds emitted by human vocal chords, called “swears”, hurt people somehow), and he states a strong political opinion (taboo because, obviously, you shouldn’t… uh… opine…).

Let’s face it: we’ve allowed censorship to run amok in the mainstream media. When I can turn on the TV any day of the week and watch hours of back-to-back beatings and murder on CSI but we’re still talking about Janet Jackson’s 2004 Superbowl nipple, we have a problem. I’m not saying I’m a plug-my-fingers-in-my-ears-and-chant-”censorship is wrong” kind of guy, but when we ban sex (something we all like in our lives) from TV, but are cool with broadcasting violence (which we really DON’T want in our lives) perhaps we all could use a big kung-fu kick to our sensibilities. People haven’t felt like they can say what’s on their minds for ages.

(Oh, and yes I censor comments on my blog whenever they tick me off. Yeah, ironic, I’m a hypocrite, get over it.)

Looking back through the past bunch of decades we’ve dealt with this problem in a variety of interesting ways. In the 60′s people actively rejected social norms and called it “being a hippie”. By the 80′s people saw that wasn’t necessarily a long-term plan for them and instead tried to buy into the dream that television was selling them. Somehow this resulted in massive commercialization and shows with detectives that drove sportscars but still couldn’t afford a decent razor. This was followed by the 90′s, Generation X, and a bunch of people with an uneasy feeling that while everything probably made sense, they weren’t in on the joke.

Now we have the new media. Blogs, podcasts, message boards, virtual worlds, and yes, free video for all. Sean’s videos are a great example of what happens when the media is finally divorced of “institution”. People say what’s on their minds, at long last, and we’ve discovered that things don’t make sense and never did.

So, now what? Are we any less neurotic? Are we any more free? Has any of this changed a damn thing?

My gut tells me that while it’s all fascinating, the change in Who We Are (in big-concept caps) hasn’t happened quite yet. Let’s give it another decade. Even with all of the analytical tools and instant delivery of ideas across the globe that we have at our disposal, only hindsight remains 20/20.

–

Oh, and about what Sean’s actually said in these clips… hell, it would take about four dozen blog posts to cover it. I gotta go do some stuff though… so… you write ‘em.

Of course, that’s when it’s private. Publicly that pimple is forever blighting your face. There aren’t that many people out there that can pull that off. William S Burroughs, of course, or Tom Waits… but not me. I’m just not that cool.

Some time ago I remember having a conversation with Prokofy about my deleting a bunch of my old stuff. I made a bunch of videos during a period of time in my life where I was angry and feeling overwhelmed. Lots of political ranting and pontificating, but you know… like most things a person gets passionate about, it was a little extreme. A few months roll by, you look back, and realize you don’t feel that way anymore. So what do you do?

You could leave it. “That’s who I was” and all that. The problem is that if you leave it you’re stuck with it. It’s just as potent a message today as it was six months ago, and it’s saying something you don’t agree with. It’s saying it with your face and your name. You really want to live with that?

So to hell with it. Gone. All of it. I did a full purge.

Of course Prok wasn’t all that happy about my little anecdote. Aghast, he wanted to know how I could do such a heinous thing. That was my WORK. My CREATION. I poured my time and effort into that. How could I just get rid of it?

Easy. I hit the Delete button. Yes to confirm.

It’s like those people desperate to build a dynasty, or the ancient mumifiers, or that Singularity-obsessed cultish clique that obsess over the preservation of themselves into eternity. These people are so desperate to keep their particular combination of thoughts and feelings preserved for all time that they never stop to think that maybe, just maybe, not everything needs preserving. I don’t at all regret the loss of my sixth grade spelling tests, or my terrible high school attempts at poetry, or even my first few short stories that amounted to pretentious exploitation pieces. Time passes and you either slough off the old skin or stunt your growth.

So you know, enjoy what you read here because tomorrow I might just go ahead and wipe it out. No regrets.

During the live Lollapalooza Webcast of a concert by the Seattle-based super-group, the telco giant muted lead singer Eddie Vedder just as he launched into a lyric against President George Bush. The lines — “George Bush, leave this world alone” and “George Bush find yourself another home” were somehow lost in the mix.

Here’s the clip:

Here’s an uncensored version:

Here’s my advice to the telco: apologize. It’s not up to you to decide what reality is. This was vile.

[UPDATE: They DID end up apologizing! Will wonders never cease!]

John Martin
Pandemonium, 1841
Oil on Canvas Click
The FORBES Magazine Collection, New York
Click image for 1800×1198 version

Drama and the Second Life Herald have always gone hand in hand, but drama about the Herald is a bit different. Some changes have been made, and as a result Prokofy Neva will no longer be contributing for the paper.

It’s a complicated situation with a lot of moving parts. One part has to do with Prokofy Neva’s particular take on the events in question. Another part is Pixeleen Mistral’s new editing powers. Some would say that this all boils down to communication problems, betrayal, scheming – all the elements of a good drama. Personally though, I think it mainly has to do with Urizenus Sklar (Peter Ludlow) and Walker Spaight (Mark Wallace) publishing this:

This is going to take some explaining. In fact, it’s going to take an epic (read: long) tale to truly explain this situation. Let me pop one of those fancy WordPress <!–more–> tags in here and then dig into a brief history of the Herald and how things have kind of, well, exploded lately.

A Brief History of the Second Life Herald

Originally there was the Alphaville Herald, a blog about the subcultures in The Sims Online. Maxis (the game’s creators) weren’t real crazy about having somebody making a PG environment look anything less than completely family-friendly, and so they banned Urizenus. He moved to Second Life and started the Second Life Herald. Soon he was joined by Walker as “Editorial Director” and Pixeleen as “Managing Editrix”, and since Prokofy was leaving such compelling comments, he soon became an official “Staff Writer”. These were the “Four Horsemen”, as Uri often put it back then. While they all had different titles, they all basically functioned equally posting content and digging the dirt around Second Life.

This was going on for awhile before I came along. My first blog under the name Onder Skall was Second Life Games, and really I was just looking for a way to promote it. I was taking a really good look at the most popular Second Life blogs and, inevitably, the Herald kept coming up. I didn’t really like it at first. I’ve never been crazy about controversy, and to be honest, Prokofy pissed me off. While the site won me over, I still found myself getting angry at Prok for awhile after I started doing some freelance writing for them.

Writing for the Herald is a little like feeding piranhas with your bare hands. The readers eat up what you write, but they’ll take a few of your fingers too if you give them half a chance. You can’t say anything without being attacked. While many of the commenters offer insight and additional background to articles, there is a huge following of hardcore critics. “Oh, I love that part where you said the sky was blue. What about at night or at sunset or when it’s overcast, dumbass! You suck!” Ah the proudly ignorant; what would we do without them?

Anyhow, I started off writing about games but quickly digressed into other news. Somewhere along the lines my “Onder Skall comes to us via Second Life Games” byline got dropped, and I became an official writer for the Herald… although not at all equivalent to the Four Horsemen. All of my articles were sent in email to Pixeleen, who would then approve/disapprove/edit and post them under her own login. Only the Four could post directly to the site. I never really worried about it – after all, it’s not like we ever discussed it or had meetings, and I appreciated Pix’s editing. She’s very clever and I’ve learned a lot about selling a story through her.

Recently, however, there was a shakeup. I got my own account, but one without posting privileges. This means that I can log in and post my article, but nobody will be able to see it until someone with powers comes by, reads it, and hits the Holy Publish Button. This I barely care about although I imagine it’ll make things easier on their end. Unfortunately this was accompanied by another change: Prokofy’s account was changed. He no longer has access to the Holy Publish Button. Prokofy is no longer part of the Four.

Why did that happen? That’s a whole other story. First, let’s take a peek at this book here because it’s central to the entire issue.

The Sacred Tome

Entitled The Second Life Herald : The Virtual Tabloid that Witnessed the Dawn of the Metaverse, it’s a big summary of everything that has appeared in the online tabloid so far. Well, they promise it’s more than that of course. It’s not out yet but knowing those two it’ll probably confront issues of governance and how a quirk in any given world’s design can shape a culture and spawn subcultures.

Uri (Peter Ludlow) has a history of writing really great books. His Crypto Anarchy, Cyberstates, and Pirate Utopias sparked my imagination ages ago, although I never really made the connection between him and that book until recently. He has a series of other books about language and philosophy and a thriving full-time academic career. That kind of means that, while he did found the Herald, we haven’t seen much of him around there lately barring the occasional brilliant article.

Walker (Mark Wallace) is a net oldbie, having published 101 Things To Do on the Internet (edit: turns out that was a different Mark Wallace) back in 1999 and pitched in for last year’s Second Life: The Official Guide. He’s been busy with his 3pointD blog and tours the conference circuit moderating panels and the like, so he’s written slightly less for the Herald than Uri has lately. Still, he is The Walker. He runs the show. Don’t mess with him. He’ll mess you up man. What, you lookin’ at me? Are you lookin’ at me? I don’t see anybody else… uh… sorry. Back to the narrative.

So they have this book. It’s probably going to completely rock. One of the other things it’s going to do is drive massive attention to the Herald itself, so in preparation for the book’s launch, they wanted to make sure that the tabloid was pimpin’. Publicity for the book would drive traffic to the blog, and the blog had to be set up just right to drive people to the bookstore. Time to do some tweaking.

The Art And Science Of Blogging

Through working with the likes of the Herald, New World Notes, and of course Metaversed I’ve learned a lot of lessons about blogging – not the least of which is that I have a lot more to learn. One of the things about running a really popular blog is controlling the flow of information. You can’t have too many posts pop up in a day or the reader feels overwhelmed. Not enough, and the blog feels abandoned. Too many on the same topic and you look like a one-trick pony. Really hot stories can sometimes derail things, and it takes a bit of effort to become a consistent content deliverer. There’s a balancing act.

With this in mind it makes sense that they wanted to lock things down, but also to inspire their writers to new heights. Handing out the accounts in this way made everybody feel special (well, I imagine it did for a few of them) and ensured that there would be a backlog of content ready and waiting to make the Herald a good experience for all.

It was a good plan, but the down side was that they felt they had to lock down Prokofy to do it. The thing is, Pixeleen and Prokofy had been butting heads over a number of issues and simply weren’t communicating. From what I can tell it was Walker’s perspective that if things were going to work, Prokofy’s content had to be controlled a bit better. See, Prokofy beleives in what he’s doing. He doesn’t just write for the hell of it – he writes because he found something people need to know. To hell with “cool down time”, it’s publish time!

Well, there’s more to it than that, but I’m making guesses on Walker’s perspective when he sent Prokofy the email letting him know that his Holy Publish Button was being taken away.

I don’t care who you are, that’s got to hurt. Here you are working with people, helping to build something, by all accounts being a major draw for the paper and even getting an entire chapter dedicated to you in the upcoming book, and then suddenly you’re kicked out of the club with little to no explanation. That’s not a nice place to be, and there was precious little acknowledgement of that in Walker’s email (which has become a matter of public record since). Here’s how he broke the news:

We felt it best to put all the writers at the same level of authority so as to keep things very democratic and so as not to create any kind of FIC at the Herald, which, as I’m sure you’ll agree, is best for all.

Uh hunh. I’m sure he’ll completely agree.

Prokofy and Pixeleen

I mentioned before how I used to really get pissed off at Prokofy Neva. One day a few months back, as I was reading something he wrote and getting more steamed by the moment, a little voice at the back of my head said: “try ignoring the style and dig out the content.”

It wasn’t easy, but it changed everything. I think I went a little pale at the time. Prokofy’s brilliant. Crap. That means I’ve been acting like an ass.

I emailed Prok yesterday and arranged to speak with them on Skype for the first time. We talked for a few hours, some about the current drama, but mostly about writing in general. He actually writes for a living, but in a very different style and under very strict guidelines. When the day is over and he wants to unwind, he does a little blogging and maintains a “stream of consciousness” style typing out exactly, word for word, what the thought is rolling through his mind.

For the rest of us that means we’re dealing with every stray thought, digression, opinion and fact all tarballed together with no buffer at all. You know how somebody didn’t realize you were behind them and let the door swing shut rather than holding it for you, and you thought “you asshole” but didn’t say anything? Prokofy said it and merged it with all of his other observations about you and with the state of hydraulic doors these days.

So it’s hard to parse, and what jumps out at you are these little reflexive (and largely insignificant) jabs that get mixed in with everything else. By the end of the article entitled “Hydraulic Doors and You” all you know is that Prok called that guy an asshole and… something about doors…

… and then there’s Pixeleen Mistral. The Herald owes much of its recent successes to her writing and ability to find the tabloid-style angles on things. There have been a number of times where I’ll read something she wrote and learn a half-dozen things about compelling writing technique. Even if the subject material is completely ignorable you have a good time reading her stuff.

She’s relatively easy to work with although a few things I’ve sent her over time have been dropped into a black hole with no real explanation. That’s really not such a big deal either – just have to assume that the timing was off or the content wasn’t really “Herald material”.

I know nothing about Pixeleen outside of the avatar and the Herald writing. We’ve hung out together inworld once or twice and emailed a bit, but not one tiny little factoid about her real-world life has ever come out. No Skyping, no public appearances, no podcasts, no idea why. I’ve decided to leave them be about it though; everybody deserves their privacy.

Ready… FIGHT!

Pix has taught me quite a bit about digging for stories as well, but that’s where we begin to see the source of conflict between her and Prok. Pix has befriended quite a few people in… let’s say… dubious circles. They’ve argued over W-Hat in the past, for instance, and Pixeleen’s promotion of Plastic Duck’s machinima never sat well with Prokofy considering the history there. (Prokofy and Plastic had been feuding, and then Plastic tracked down Prokofy’s real home phone number and called him, speaking briefly with Prok’s daughter.)

It gets more elaborate from there, but let me preface this paragraph with the comment that my information is coming from Prokofy with no real input from Pixeleen. Recently stories that they had discussed and that Prokofy had researched were suddenly appearing on the Herald written by others. Also there are allegations that one story in particular, written about an individual who complained to Typepad about the Herald libeling them, wildly skewed the facts in their favor and omitted important news.

The details don’t matter. Bottom line: they were disagreeing a lot. Pixeleen, as editor, was trying to maintain… well… editorial control. Prokofy, as staff writer, was trying to get the news out. While this struggle had resulted in some really good content on the Herald in the past, things weren’t going that well. The communication just wasn’t happening.

Then the Walker email.

Prokofy asked for a rollback on the decision.

It was declined.

Prokofy and Walker argued.

Both Walker and Pixeleen invited Prokofy to post chatlogs and emails to his blog, knowing Prok’s proclivity for swearing might not support his case.

He did it anyhow.

The entire thing ended up as a bit of a fiasco.

Urizenus has yet to make a public comment. Probably a wise move.

Not as wise as Uri, I decided to document the epic tale.

“I wish them luck on their future endeavors.”

I’m trying to ditch my day job for a full-time writing career. I have a way to go and it might take me a long time, but whatever it takes, I’m going to make it. Part of my determination is that I love, live and breathe writing. The other part is that I’m exposed daily to phrases like this one: “I wish them luck on their future endeavors.”

That’s corporate speak for “screw ‘em.”

It was a phrase that came up more than once throughout this nonsense, but hey, people are annoyed. Nobody said that genius writers all get along.

To tell you the truth, the “blogging scene” right now more closely resembles the mythological Pandemonium: a layer of hell where everybody is screaming to be heard, desperate for attention, yelling whatever they can completely uninterested in listening to anybody else. That’s the blogosphere these days.

Bloggers link each other much less than they used to. They give each other as little credit as possible. Praise is reserved for those who can help them, or for themselves. Everything reeks of unspoken agendas.

The recent events at the Herald lately show that they aren’t immune to this disease of desperation that’s going around. If the players involved had taken the time to remember that there was a human being on the other end of the decision to take away Prokofy’s Holy Publish Button, it wouldn’t have been handled anything like this. If they had remembered how much the Herald owes to Prokofy’s research abilities, to his guts, and to the stories he’s broken in the past, they wouldn’t have done any of this through email… if they had done it at all.

Here’s a wacky idea: how about you have a meeting. You know, a little bit of group discussion, a little bit of moderation, maybe clear the air and get a group consensus on where the group is supposed to be going? And you could do it before screwing over one of the Four Horsemen?

Of course, here I am complaining about communication problems and I’m blogging about it instead of writing Walker or Pix or Uri about it. So I’m a hypocrite. *shrug*

The blogosphere is sick right now, and this is just one of the symptoms. Without Prokofy Neva the Second Life Herald is half the blog it used to be. The usual trolls and greifers will be looking for a new target too, so who knows how that will pan out.

Here’s hoping the Herald’s bout of Pandemonium isn’t terminal.

Picture of Mark Wallace courtesy of C.C. Chapman.