Errata is a web journal written by Robert Davis who has neither spent a night in a ghost town nor pulled a turnip from the earth. He doesn't even know if turnips grow in the ground. Perhaps on trees, like candy corn. Therefore, Errata is a non-commercial project.

Observation #1: It may be appropriate, when leaving a movie theater, to say "mysterious."

Observation #2: It may be appropriate, when leaving a movie theater, to say "mysterious" at the top of your lungs. Bring your eyebrows together before you say it. Effective!

Observation #3: Same for books. Even at libraries.

There is a prize for people who correctly guess the thing about Metropolis, Nevada.

Except where the text specifically states otherwise, Errata's vagaries are indicated vaguely and its authors are indistinct in the traditional way of the Internet, except where the authors lay claim to their work. In some cases Robert Davis lays claim to work that is not his own but has been abandoned like so many ghost towns. Except where held presently, fistfuls of dirt are suspended via dispersal, or dispersed via suspension (in the air), and thus their dissolution is their transcendence, or their transcendence is their dissolution. And yet our eyes tear, and our vision is impaired, demonstrating for the umpteenth time that one entity's gain is another's fit of sneezes. Except where indicated, storms shall outlive the clay upon which they rain, unless storms are improperly delimited by their clouds, which dissolve, rather than by their inevitable return. Thus the clay loses, unless the clay is said to own the storm, to use it to make itself heavy, to make itself cling to white garments, refuse dispersal, cake upon the facades of abandoned buildings, and sit like Man [sic] upon the earth where it is pelted by a storm that it owns. In which case the clay still loses, if you ask us.

Some of the above is legally binding and should be considered a mental contract between Errata and those upon whom it acts. The bit about the prize should be considered an overstatement insofar as prizes differ from dirt and prize dispersal differs from dirt dispersal. Please recall that ownership is a weight and, therefore, hope that you do not win the prize.

One day Errata or its representatives will call upon you for a favor. It is expected that you will hop-to without delay.

You may contact Robert Davis by email unless it's about the rock that was thrown in anger. The rock is more properly called a clod. Why do you continue to raise the topic?

12 May 2004

Torture in the S21

Hearing about the torture and the grizzly deaths in Iraq over the past week, I keep thinking of a new documentary about a notorious prison in Cambodia, the S21, which was part of Pol Pot's genocide machine in the 1970s. The movie, S21: The Khmer Rouge Killing Machine poses some pretty difficult questions about who the victims are in these situations. Should a child raised by the Khmer Rouge, who becomes a ruthless prison guard, who tortures inmates, who cannot see the inmates as human, be counted among them?

Certainly what has happened so far during the Iraq war, in terms of scope and number, seems to be a far cry from what happened in Cambodia, and I don't mean to compare them. I only mean that it's easy to make knee-jerk reactions about people — on either side — and much harder to admit the presence of darkness within ourselves that can lead to atrocities, to admit how malleable human behavior is, whether it's harnessed by people in power or just a product of a complicated system where justice turns into tit-for-tat when bookkeeping gets sloppy.

"I'm doing this because..."

S21 is having a limited release this year. Check it out, if you get the chance.

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