Jax Book Nook

Okay, so I don’t have any other idea to write about, so I am spleening about every inconsistency in the Harry Potter series. Now, I am a Millennial, but before you start saying “Read Another Book,” I must tell you that the last few weeks have been great for my Twitter follower count, so there’s that.

I don’t have a plot hole this week. I have a complaint about the HP world building. Namely, why does Slytherin House exist? Okay, I know that technically Slytherin is the house for people with “great ambition,” but originally the entire point of the house was a place to put all of the evil wizards. Hagrid even says every wizard who ever went bad was in Slytherin. (I guess Peter Pettigrew is an exception) Every character we are supposed to hate is in Slytherin and while there may be some decent people from the house, like Snape and Slughorn, it’s basically the asshole house.

Being sorted into Slytherin is like being told to your face that you are going to Hell. No, really, think about it. The Sorting Hat has perfect knowledge of the mind and soul of every person who is sorted, and it tells some people they belong in the same house as Voldemort whose mascot is a classic symbol of evil from the Bible. Almost like some kind of infinitely just and wise being telling you that you should share a zip code with Hitler in the afterlife or something.

I don’t mean to say that the existence of Slytherin is bad writing. Yes, it’s a pretty black and white world J.K. Rowling made, but it’s a children’s book. Furthermore, when she tried to introduce shades of grey in the later books, the stories got worse, particularly the last one. That isn’t to say the last books were bad, they just weren’t as good as the early ones. Rowling does shades of grey better than George Lucas does, but not as well as either of them do good vs. evil. The dropoff from books 1-3 of Harry Potter to the rest of the series is not nearly as bad as the dropoff from the Original Star Wars Trilogy to the “morally complex” sequels.

No, I mean looking at it from the perspective of people in universe, why do they educate people they know have a high likelihood of turning into bad wizards. Why don’t they just use the Sorting Hat to identify who bad wizards are (which it practically already does), snap their wands in half, and send them packing?

Well, there’s an answer to this question. You have to think of the Wizarding World as having a social contract, just like ours does. Order comes from making compromises between the various parts of society so that everyone feels like they have a place at the table. Imagine if the ministry did just expel all the Slytherins and snap their wands in half? What would happen then?

The Slytherins aren’t going to just take that lying down. After all, they include some of the oldest and wealthiest wizarding families in the United Kingdom. They can buy new wands, and if Ollivander won’t sell to them, they’ll go abroad or more likely start their own wand shop. And then they will start their own magic school. What do you think that place will be like?

We get a pretty good idea in the fourth book. Draco mentions that Durmstrang teaches the Dark Arts, not just defense against the Dark Arts. The headmaster is a former Death Eater. A Durmstrang equivalent in the UK would likely lead to multiple wars.

That’s why Slytherin house exists. It’s better to have the Slytherins at Hogwarts taking OWLS than it is to have the Malfoy, the Lestranges, and the Blacks of the world founding their own school and teaching their children the Unforgiveable Curses at the age of eleven. Hogwarts is a unifying institution in that everyone in British Wizarding World goes there. If the Slytherins had their own school, they’d probably form their own society in their own section of Britain, and how difficult would maintaining the Statute of Secrecy be when the Slytherins are holed up in Scotland killing muggles for fun?

Now, there is a problem with all of this. Namely, this already happened. In both wizarding wars. Voldemort comes on the scene, and despite the effort by everyone else to integrate Slytherins into the rest of society, even giving them cushy government jobs, they go crazy and start trying to take over. Social contract broken.

This happens. In the U.S., we have a social contract called the Constitution, and that worked pretty well until we had a Civil War and it didn’t. So, after the Civil War was over, we amended the Constitution three times. Europe had an informal balance of powers in the nineteenth century, which fell apart in World War I. They tried, and failed, to reform their contract in the interwar years, but after World War II a new set of international institutions, NATO, the EU, the UN, gradually took shape.

The problem with the Wizarding World is that after being threatened by Voldemort and the Death Eaters, their social contract remains completely unchanged. When the first book begins, we are ten years away from a Slytherin led revolt against the system, and the Soring Hat is still doing what it always did. We’re even told that the people directly responsible made up stories about how they were hypnotized into being Death Eaters. No changes to the system have been made to prevent this from happening again. And hey, what do you know, it does! Voldemort returns, the same people who led the attack the last time rally around him due to either fear or enthusiasm, and this time they even overthrow the government for a full year.

A lot of people don’t like the Epilogue, and I didn’t mind it from a story standpoint, but what bothers me in hindsight is that it shows once again that the Wizarding World has done nothing to modify their social contract to prevent another Wizarding War. Harry’s child worries openly about being sorted into Slytherin, which indicates that it still exists. Draco is there despite having played an active role in assassinating Dumbledore, apparently a free man. It’s like if we had a Civil War and decided to just let the South keep its slaves. At least Europe tried to change during the interwar period. Wizarding Britain just keeps going with the same system that failed twice without anyone asking “Why did this happen?” or “How can we keep it from happening again?” Inevitably, some other dark wizard will rise, and another war will start.

Now, I don’t know how I would change this. Yes, yes, I do. Abolish Slytherin house. Tell the Sorting Hat to put the Slytherins in other houses. If the parents complain, tell them that if you start a war, you better win it. The public will support you given the last two wars they had to live through. Half of these people should be in Azkaban anyway. Have tolerance training seminars at Hogwarts. Do something.

If you would like to do something, buy my book: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BLSVRZN5 

Let’s call this “Jack Willems and the Bad Case of Writers Block.” After last week’s post, I’m still thinking about Harry Potter. Yes, just like a stereotypical millennial, I can’t get my mind off those books. At least for now. During my last theory, I mentioned Sirius’s death and my belief that Harry was responsible for it, despite Dumbledore sugar coating it. Now, a week later, I have reconsidered. Harry still acted stupidly, but he wasn’t the most responsible person for Sirius’s death. No, that would be Sirius himself.

This doesn’t have to do with his getting into a fight at the ministry. There’s no reason he shouldn’t have been in that fight. No, this has to do with the mirror. Yes, the two-way mirror. Sirius gave Harry a two-way mirror before he went back to school on Christmas, so Harry could contact Sirius any time he wanted to. Harry only finds this out after Sirius is dead because he never opens the package. Then, presumably he forgets about it, because Harry goes to the ministry because Voldemort made him imagine that Sirius was being tortured there. Harry never feels guilty about this (which I find to be odd), but if Harry had known about the mirror, he would have contacted Sirius using the mirror and not used the fireplace in Umbridge’s office, he never would have gone to the ministry, which was an obvious trap, and Sirius never would have died. All of this was utterly dumb, but not as dumb as what Sirius did.

What did he do? He didn’t tell Harry what the gift was. No, not at Grimmauld Place. Molly Weasley would have sniffed that out. Nope, I’m talking about the first time Harry used the fireplace. Earlier in the book, before Harry fell for the world’s most obvious trap, he experienced Snape’s memory of Harry’s father and the rest of the marauders bullying him. Harry is seized with the need to speak with Sirius, which would be fine if he bothered to look inside the package Sirius gave him saying use this if you ever need to speak to me. However, Harry didn’t do this and decides he needs to use the only unmonitored fireplace in the castle, the one in Umbridge’s office, leading the Weasley twins to turn the Great Hall into a swamp as a distraction. Harry sneaks into the office and uses the fireplace to speak with Sirius, and if Sirius was a logical human being, here is how that conversation would go.

Sirius: Harry, you’re using the floo network to speak with me. Why?

Harry: I saw one of Snape’s memories I need to talk to you about.

Sirius: No, I mean I gave you a two-way mirror to speak to me whenever you want. It’s that package I gave you at Christmas. Why are you using the floo network?

Harry: Really? This is embarrassing, but I never opened it. I guess I kind of forgot about it.

Sirius: Harry, whatever you need to talk to me about, this can’t be a safe way to communicate.

Harry: Actually, no, it’s not. I guess I should cut this short.

Why didn’t Sirius do this? Yes, other people have found this plot hole, but it just irritates me more now that I’m a writer. When people don’t behave rationally in books, it bothers me now. That’s how writing changes you.

Indeed, there are a lot of things about Harry Potter that don’t make sense in retrospect. Things like, why didn’t they examine Sirius’s memories before he was sent to Azkaban. Dumbledore may have testified against him, but why bother with testimony at all in a world where Pensieves exist? How did Sirius stay in Azkaban when all the other Death Eaters know that the traitor is Peter. You expect me to believe no one would try to cut a deal when they had that kind of dirt to spill?

If Hogwarts is connected to the Floo Network, why does Molly Weasley have to send Ron a howler to chew him out? Why not do it in person? Hell, why are parents not visiting all the time? Why have dorms? Wouldn’t it be easier for students to just take the floor network every day? Does the Hogwarts Express serve any non-plot purpose? Why not just use a Portkey? If the Hogwarts Express serves no purpose, why did Ron think taking the flying car was the best way to get to Hogwarts after being shut out of the barrier in the second book? There are a thousand better ways to get to Hogwarts. Arthur Weasley could just hold Ron and Harry’s hands, apparate in Hogsmeade, and they could walk there. Shouldn’t Ron know this?

You could keep going. I guess the answer is that nothing and nobody in this world is perfect, so it’s pointless to complain. Consider in the Wizard of Oz how Dorothy is able to go home the whole time by just clicking her heels, but Glenda makes her go through the entire rigamarole of walking to Oz and killing the witch “to learn a lesson.” I can’t be the only person who threw my bottle at the screen when I first heard that.

Oh, and by the way, buy Beer Run: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BLSVRZN5  

Okay, so I know I should be using this blog to promote Beer Run, which is available here: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BLSVRZN5, but I’ve need to talk about something that has been bugging me for a while. I think I found a flaw in the Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone. I don’t mean things like “Harry is a Gary Stu” or “there are too many adverbs.” I mean a plot hole. Spoiler alert for Harry Potter and the Sorcerer Stone, though if you need a spoiler alert for this book, I’m going to ask you if would like to meet President Biden because apparently you’re a martian.

Okay, by comparison, let’s look at Indiana Jones and the Raiders of Lost Ark. It has been pointed out that Indy objectively accomplished nothing in that movie. He sets out to keep the Nazis from the Ark, and he fails. In the end, the Nazis get the Ark, and it kills all of them. Best case scenario, they take it all the way to Berlin and open it in front of Hitler and the rest of the Nazi leadership. I think Cracked pointed this out, and then the Big Bang Theory did, though inevitably there have been Reddit posts about this. Indy should have just stayed at home.

Now, let’s look at Harry’s decision in the Sorcerer’s Stone (or the Philosopher’s Stone if your British), to go down into the maze and protect the stone. Hell, let’s say he and Ron and Hermione never bother getting interested in the stone in the first place and just spend their time doing normal 11-year-old wizard stuff. What happens? Well, the last protection the stone has is the Mirror of the Erised, and Quirrell can’t crack it. The Mirror of the Erised shows those who gaze upon it whatever their deepest heart’s desire is. The catch is that it will only surrender the stone to someone who wants to have the stone, but not someone who wants to use it. Quirrell just sees himself resurrecting Voldemort. It’s not until Harry steps in front of the mirror that the stone materializes in his pocket.

So, what if Harry just decides to go to bed early that night? Simple, Quirrell and Voldemort don’t get the stone. Indeed, Voldemort only gets close to the stone precisely because Harry shows up right when Voldemort needs him to. Looking at it objectively, it would have been better if he just listened to Prof. McGonagall and did nothing. Then he could have at least played quidditch and won the cup.

Now, this is a children’s book, which is often forgotten, but it still bothers me. Certainly, Dumbledore must understand this. He’s an intelligent man. Why didn’t he tell Harry that he acted like an idiot, other than, you know, the fact that this is a book? Why reward Harry for thinking that he was able to protect the stone better than Dumbledore and every other teacher at the school combined? Above all, why give Gryffindor the house cup and thus ensure that Lucius Malfory’s attorney sends him a rather angry letter?

Now, the argument may be made that this looks at Harry’s actions purely from a utilitarian standpoint, when Dumbledore might be looking at this from a virtue ethics perspective. Sure, the consequences of Harry’s actions might have been bad, though ultimately, they weren’t, but his actions improve his moral character, which is what’s really important.

Except, no, it wasn’t improving his moral character. Instead, it exacerbated his greatest flaw: his need to be a hero. Sometimes, like in the Chamber of Secrets or in the last book, this flaw becomes a virtue, but other times it gets people killed. No, really, in the fifth book, Harry decides only he can save Sirius, and ends up walking into a trap that gets Sirius killed. And he does this while his friends, who know him pretty well, tell him to his face that this is a trap set up for him because his enemies know he needs to be a hero. Dumbledore sugar coats it for him, but in the end, Harry’s at fault. Though, Dumbledore is a little easy on Harry, likely because he encouraged Harry to be this way. Whenever Harry risked his life, and others, Dumbledore responded by giving Harry points for Gryffindor up and till the point someone died. After all, most of the time when Harry does this sort of thing, it works out.

Now, I did search for people who have noticed this same problem on the wide world of the internet, and yes, a few people on Quora and Reddit have pointed out that without Harry, Quirrell couldn’t do shit. Still, I can’t remember any major cultural heavyweight to bring this up. Why? It’s sitting right there in plain view! If someone can point to some place where this has been extensively discussed, I’d appreciate it. Am I off base and missing something in this situation? Tell me, I’d love to hear it. And buy Beer Run. Here’s the link again: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BLSVRZN5.

I will be talking about Beer Run with other authors on the Book Slam this Wednesday at 3 pm Eastern Time. Here is a link to their YouTube page. Looking forward to talking up my book. The Book Slam – YouTube

I have started on a sequel to Beer Run. This may seem odd as I’ve only sold a few copies of the first book, but I need to keep writing, as it is a habit. Furthermore, I have ideas for Beer Run, and I was able to publish the first book, so I may as well work on a second.

Right now, the working title is “The Great Reckoning” and it starts right where the last one ended, with Bill and Cassandra landing on earth. Just as Bill gets back to the brewery, he finds it under attack by the Lunatics, the local Xenophobes, who believe, based on an online video titled “The Great Awakening”, that Bill is the head of an intergalactic conspiracy to destroy their livelihood, lure them to his bar, and then eat them.

After one of the leaders, Jethro Duff from the first book, tries to burn down Bill’s bar (which is made of metal siding, making arson impossible), Bill decides to sue the man behind the online video, Cody Duncan. Bill’s attorney, an oversized beetle hires an investigator to look into Duncan’s operation. This investigator just happens to be Jimmy, Bill’s intern, who works as a private investigator as one of his several side gigs. As Jimmy gets infiltrate’s Duncan’s organization, Bill starts to worry if Duncan will bring out some of Jimmy’s bad habits. Not sure how it will end, but that’s why it’s a work in progress. Tell me what you think of the idea.

Alright, so now that I have laid out my ideal fantasy world of Pandemonium. Let me tell you what I’ve done to sell it: I’ve had it beta read and revised to oblivion and I’ve queried every agent that could plausibly be interested in it I can find over the last two and a half years. I’ve gotten two full requests, but no takers. I have a six-book series planned, but I’ve only written the first novel and am desperately trying to sell it.

The book involves the Stranger Church being sold to a prosperity gospel preacher who resurrects a theocratic vampire to force people to give him money using hypnotism. As you might expect, this doesn’t go as planned and then locals have to take him down.

I have to have applied to over one hundred agents at this point. I’m wondering if maybe I need to start applying directly to indie publishers at this point. Beer Run was a book I wrote to get a writing credit to promote this Pandemonium. Getting published in the indie sphere took a lot less time than getting published through an agent. I’m wondering if I need to switch tracts and stop querying agents and start querying publishers.

On the other hand, maybe there is something still wrong with how I am writing it. Now, I’ve only given you all an introduction to the story (which I promise is a real story and not just exposition), but if you see something that might be keeping the story from getting published. Tell me that too. Be completely honest.

So, just throwing myself out there to the internet world: what do you think I should do? Switch to Indies? Cut out this or that part of the concept? Just give up? Tell me. I can take it.

Here is the last part of the history Pandemonium. It’s been great reliving the beginning of my writing life. Now, let’s finish up.

***

The 1970s and 1980s were periods of change for the city of Pandemonium.  Grimsley began a reform within the Satanic Temple to dispatch with the need of a literal Satan.  Satan was now a metaphor for worldly success, and worship was merely a means to an end in this.  In modern capitalist society, there are better ways to achieve worldly power than sacrificing a goat at 3 am on a Sunday.  Witch society would concentrate raising children to pursue ambitious careers with the same reckless abandon that Cramner and his followers pursued Earthly power on their own terms.  Most Witches were happy with this change, as few of them really believed in the existence of Satan.  However, as time went on, fewer and fewer of the Witches actually attended the Satanic ceremonies.  If Satan was not real, why was it necessary?  Those that did attend increasingly gave reasons such as “tradition” or “I grew up in this temple.”

            Following Whitfield’s death, the Strangers took a different tact.  The Witches’ faith was about Earthly power, which could be accomplished without any resort to worship at all.  The Strangers claimed to be a Christian church, however, and the rejection of their community by the wide Christian world left them deeply shaken.  In addition to this, a new study by Cramner University disturbed the Stranger community greatly.  In the hey days of the turbulent 1970s, the youth of the community started to engage in certain activities disapproved of by their elders: drugs, pre-marital sex, and loud music.  Researchers at Cramner did a survey of teenagers in the 1970s and found that drug use, sexual activity, and crime rates were higher among the Stranger youth than among the Witch youth.  Add to this the fact that the Stranger part of town became notorious in the same decade for hosting the town’s only pornographic theater, and the Strangers were forced to confront the question of what they really believed for the first time in 300 years.

In light of these developments, finding a replacement turned out to be more difficult than expected.  The elders of the church interviewed one churchman after another, but many expressed doubts about their faith similar to the Witches about whether God existed, whether God favored this church, or even if the Stranger Church deserved to exist.  After the negative reception that Pandemonium received in the 1950s upon the Witches’ coming out, recruiting an outsider for a pastor was virtually impossible. 

Just when it appeared that all hope was lost, a young man all the way from County Antrim in Ulster called the Stranger Church specifically to say he wanted the job.[1]  Surprised to receive aid from so far away but delighted to have an interested candidate, the trustees of the church invited Atticus MacDonald for an interview, paying for his flight.  MacDonald did not disappoint, as he aced the interview, indicating both a real grasp of theology and presence on the pulpit.  MacDonald began his life as a Presbyterian, but later in life entertained doubts about the doctrine of double predestination and soon had to leave the Reformed church tradition.  He had been educated at Trinity College in Dublin and had already served five years as a Presbyterian minister in Belfast.  This made him a perfect fit for the Strangers, as MacDonald was educated, experienced, and, in a stroke of providence, theologically in line with Robert Winthrop’s practical theology.  MacDonald had only one condition, namely that a male friend of his be allowed to come with him.  This made the elders somewhat nervous, as other religious communities had dealt with the issue of underground homosexuality among their clergy.  When they explained their reservations to MacDonald, he laughed and told them this was not the case between himself and his friend at all.  His friend, you see, had an unusual condition that meant he could not live just anywhere, but could only live on the grounds of a desecrated church.

            “A desecrated church?  What are you implying?” asked one scandalized elder.

            “Excuse me, sir, but as I understand your history, you built your church right on top of the ground where you burned that poor woman to death using the wood of the ship where you decided to commit that heinous act, did you not?” asked MacDonald.

            “Well, yes, I mean, our ancestors did that, but does that make our church desecrated?”

            “I mean no offense,” MacDonald said. “I only hope to do a favor for a friend.”

            MacDonald called in a disheveled, dark-haired young man wearing a black coat and grey scarf, beckoning him to introduce himself to the elders.  The young man called himself Theophilus, or Theo for short, though this was an assumed name, and he spoke with a noticeable but not thick Irish accent, unaffected by any Scottish influence, unlike his Orangeman companion.  He thanked the trustees for having him here and said that he and MacDonald were not “buggerers” as he called them, but rather very good friends who had been through a few scraps together.  Theo promised he would be out of the way, as he was content to sleep in the crypt.  His only requirement being the importation of a few crates of peat bog from “back home,” which he said would help him sleep. The Stranger elders discussed it amongst themselves, and agreed that while this was highly unusual, MacDonald was the best candidate, so as long as this Theo character kept to himself (and perhaps bathed).  MacDonald thanked the elders, and began as pastor in December of 1982.

            Of course, we must briefly consider the tragedy that occurred in Fieldhand church in 1979.  However, once again, this book is written for the purpose of strengthening civic pride.  Having been alive during those times and remembering the great anguish Pastor William Walker’s actions brought to this community, I would argue some things are best left unsaid.  I am sure Pastor Overstreet would agree about this.

            The Ze’ev had their own brief flirtation with fame when a camera crew from a local news station captured a Ze’ev transforming on camera, leading to a Ken Burns documentary about the now famous Ashkenazi sect.  Scientists flocked to Pandemonium to try to find some scientific basis for these famous transformations.  None has ever been forthcoming.  The Rabbi Maharam has speculated that none will ever be found as not everything is within the limits of human reason.

            Finally, this brief history must come to an end, so it may well come to an end with the Author, who succeeded Fr. Grimsley to the position of Satanic High Priest in March of 1997, a position he holds to this very day.  Much like Grimsley before him, the Author sees himself as less a servant of dark powers and more a caretaker of history, which is why he has decided to write this brief history.  Our ancestors’ practices may be offensive to us today, but we stand on their shoulders.

            If the reader fears for the Author’s immortal soul, he or she is entitled to such beliefs, but for what it is worth, the Author does not share the same fears.  He has attended Satanic ceremonies since his birth, either as a congregant or as a celebrant, and nothing has ever occurred. No possessions, no floating objects, no disembodied voices. Nothing happens.  There is nothing to fear, which is why if the reader is in town the Author invites him to our services every Sunday at 10 am.  Few believe in this sort of thing anymore, but the reader can witness a unique historical ceremony with deep roots in America.[2]  The Author, conscious of the fact that he has monopolized this brief history, will now allow the other religious leaders of the community have the final words.

Pastor Atticus MacDonald of the Stranger’s Church

            I thank my adversary[3] for giving me this space.  His decision to mention my friend Theophilus must sound strange to you, but Fr. Ravenwood has always held a small grudge against me for bringing Theo here.  Theo rubs some people the wrong way.  Fr. Ravenwood commonly refers to my friend as “he who lowers property values.” We at the Strangers’ church have taken it upon ourselves to try to convert Theo and convince him to wear a nice shirt every once in a while.  Alas, neither lesson has stuck, but hope springs eternal.

            I find no serious historical inaccuracies with Fr. Ravenwood’s brief history,[4] only a serious inaccuracy in his description of my theological opinions.  Fr. Ravenwood claims that I was selected for this position because my theology was similar to that of Robert Winthrop.  Nothing could be further from the truth for the very simple reason that I actually hold my beliefs.  Fr. Ravenwood’s brief history makes it clear the Winthrop did not actually believe what he preached.  This is what Fr. Ravenwood means when he says that Winthrop was not seeking to obtain some “metaphysical truth.”  Based on my conversations with him, Fr. Ravenwood appears to be a closer disciple of Winthrop than I am, though I do believe in a creed remarkably similar to the one Winthrop promulgated.  He may have taught better than he knew, which may also be said of the Drunkard. I have been the Pastor of the Stranger Church for 38 years and one thing I have tried to emphasize is that ideas matter.  The way we think the world is shapes the way we behave in it, or at least it ought to.  For this reason, I hope you do not attend Fr. Ravenwood’s service at 10 am this Sunday, or any Sunday.  Come to my church.  Come to Pastor Overstreet’s church.  Have coffee with Rabbi Maharam that Sunday morning.  Sleep in.  Whatever you do, don’t attend a faux worship service for the Devil.  I doubt he will appear, but what will disappear is an hour of your time, and for all you know you don’t have many of them left. Remember death.

Pastor Darrell Overstreet of the Church of the Tobacco Fields

            Throughout the South, people claim they are defending history.  History is important.  Fr. Ravenwood thinks history is important, and I agree with him.  What causes me dismay is Fr. Ravenwood’s insistence on retelling that history with vast holes in it.  Fr. Ravenwood tells the story of my congregation using the word “slave” only once.  The ship that brought us was involved in “Migration and Importation of Such Persons.”  The unconscionable cruelties of Beauregard Davis are given two footnotes.  Fr. Ravenwood says the Witches offered no resistance to military occupation, but skips over the March Massacre of 1888 where a Witch militia destroyed a thriving African-American business sector out of jealousy and hate.  Jim Crow is barely given word.  Fr. Ravenwood glosses over the long history of segregation and racial violence in this city, the legacy of which remains with us today. 

            Should we move on?  Our faith does not teach us to move on, it teaches us to forgive. Forgiveness, however, must be accepted by the guilty party, and the guilty party will often refuse forgiveness by failing to acknowledge they need it.  I actually know the Davis family quite well.  They are a good family.  I would say a friend of the church, though I have yet to get one of them to join.[5]  Their cooperation was invaluable in allowing Mr. Coleridge to write his book, giving him full access to the old plantation house.  I encourage any visitor to buy his book as a necessary counterbalance to this rosy, whitewashed history produced by Fr. Ravenwood.

Rabbi Maharam of Temple Ze’ev

            I thank Fr. Ravenwood for giving me this opportunity to welcome potential visitors to our town.  I invite all visitors to Pandemonium to come to the old Ze’ev marketplace and learn the history of a unique immigrant community whose descendants are living the American dream.  We are not the only Jews in the South, but there are few people who can say this unironically: Shalom y’all.  A great deal of this history is dedicated to our monthly transformation, which we received many questions about in the 1990s due to the Ken Burns documentary.  By now, I assumed it was old news.  Yes, if you come during a certain time of the month,[6] you can see quite a show, but that is only one part of our community. 

            One thing to note about Fr. Ravenwood’s brief history, namely the initial plan in 1970 to build the courthouse with only three doors: yes, we objected to three doors being too few while the Fieldhands objected to three doors being too many.  Somehow four doors was just right.  I remember that time, and I remember being insulted at the insinuation that we weren’t real Pandemonians.  Of course, Pastor Whitfield and Fr. Grimsley never meant to insinuate such a thing, they were just forgetful that’s all.  But it was important to correct, because identity is important.  Every man must ask himself, who am I? And because no man is an island,[7] most of the time this means asking, who are we?  The Ze’ev are both citizens of Pandemonium and people separate, set apart.  Thank you for your time, and if you do find yourself on our side of the island, I suggest David’s Chophouse, if you’ve never tried Jewish barbecue.

Statement by the Diocese of Charleston

            The Diocese of Charleston objects to the publication of this brief history at a time when no priest has currently been selected for St. Michael the Archangel parish.  We mourn Fr. Timothy’s death.  May eternal light shine upon him.  Any invocation of Satan risks summoning the demonic presence.  We condemn Fr. Ravenwood’s actions and any ceremony performed at the Second Satanic Temple to invoke Satan.  A new priest for St. Michael’s will be forthcoming.

---

[1] He had heard about the job through an article in the New York Times centered on the now famous church’s troubles in finding a new minister.

[2] Subject to certain revisions over time such as the replacement of human sacrifice with the crushing of a bug.

[3] The term Satan means adversary, which is why it is so appropriate our communities have been at loggerhead for so long.  While the Red Devils may have won the last game, Winthrop leads the Blood Bowl series overall 68-60-3.

[4] There are no inaccuracies, but as Pastor Overstreet makes clear, there may be certain important omissions.  Many of the more elderly members of my church would no doubt blanche at Fr. Ravenwood’s rosy description of Col. Davis’s massacre of surrendering Stranger soldiers, but personally having found Col. Davis to be a more complex historical character than that action would demonstrate, better to leave certain things in the past.  

[5] As Pastor MacDonald says, “Hope springs eternal.”

[6] Get your mind out of the gutter.

[7] Did you like that?  I came up with it myself.

After a halftime break for the Super Bowl, we are back to the history of my fantasy world of Pandemonium.

***

Any survey of religion before the Revolution would be incomplete without talking about the Fieldhands and their quest to found their own church despite their unfortunate condition. Practitioners of the peculiar institution throughout the American South attempted to carefully control religious ceremonies on their estates, where pastors would preach the virtue of obedience.  However, despite their best efforts, American blacks would often hold their own religious services where African spirituality mixed with Christian concepts, a practice that southern society attempted to limit.  Pandemonium, however, was a very different town from other places in the American South. When Jacob Freeman, a freeman who had participated in these illicit religious ceremonies while on a plantation on the mainland, came to Pandemonium and preached the Christian faith to the Fieldhands in the first time, the Witch establishment could not care less.  The Witch religion centered on Earthly power, which the Witches wanted the Fieldhands to have no part of, so the Witches never tried to convert the Fieldhands to their own faith.  Furthermore, the Satanic High Priest at that time, Cornelius Blackroot, found the Christian religion to teach a “slave morality,” using that term 150 years before Friedrich Nietzsche, which would be most useful in preventing any revolt, and encouraged Witches to allow the Fieldhands to be evangelized.  Jacob Freeman began the Fieldhand religious tradition without even the benefit of a church building, gathering his congregation together on Sunday mornings in the tobacco fields.      

            After the Revolution, the Bargain was amended again to remove any restrictions for either side to move across the line.  This legal change had little practical impact, as the law was rarely enforced, but it did open up the possibility of the Strangers sending missionaries to the Witches, as legal restrictions of freedom of religion were going out of style.  However, evangelizing and just talking about religion in public was going out of style as well, so custom now forbade what the law now allowed just as custom allowed what the law previously forbade. 

            The most significant events in Pandemonium between the Revolution and the end of the Civil War are the revolt of Calvin Johnson in 1831, which led to the death of 250 people, and the destruction of the First Satanic Temple in 1857, which led to the deaths of 496 people.  As a local historian, the Author writes for the purpose of promoting civic pride.  I acknowledge both of these unfortunate events and wish they had not happened. However, dwelling on the past does not help our community move forward. That was a different time and those events do not represent the town we are now.  Other books have been written on this topic that go into further detail if the reader is interested.[1]

            The Civil War changed Pandemonium just as it changed the rest of America.  Residents of Pandemonium served on both sides of the Civil War, none more prominent than CSA Col. Robert Davis, who served under General Robert E. Lee himself at the battle of Gettysburg.  The Witches supported the confederacy throughout the conflict, as their agricultural economy depended on the existence of the South’s current labor force.  The Pro-Union Strangers, on the other hand, rioted when the Confederacy attempted to impose a draft on the area.  A Stranger militia conducted the Revolt of 1865, hoping to aid the Union by creating an enclave behind enemy lines.  This foolish attempt to imitate the mountaineers of West Virginia was quickly crushed by Col. Davis’s own troops.

After the War of Between the States, the Witch community made the collective decision to establish a sense of Victorian respectability.  The Witches completed the Second Satanic Temple[2] in 1882.  Rather than the underground pit built more than a century earlier, the Second Satanic Temple was a white, rectangular building with Roman columns and a slanted roof with a steeple on top and stained-glass windows.  Any passerby could mistake it for a Baptist Church.  The liturgy changed as well, substituting the sacrifice of a rabbit for the sacrifice of a goat.  America is a great country, and even those outsiders at the furthest reaches want to assimilate.  Unlike a great number in the South, the Witches put up scant resistance to military occupation or Reconstruction, though they were glad to see both come to an end.

            The Fieldhands, it goes without saying, had greatly improved social standing following the war.  The Fieldhands gathered in the Southwest side of the island where Beauregard Davis’s western plantation was and the Witches remained on the Southeast side of the island.  For the first time, the Church of the Tobacco Fields benefitted from having a church building with a roof and four walls, located over the very spot in the tobacco fields where Jacob Freeman began his ministry more than a century before. During Reconstruction, one Fieldhand, Marvin Jackson, served two terms in the South Carolina legislature.

            But by far, the most significant event in Pandemonium to occur in the latter half of the Nineteenth Century was the coming of the Ze’ev.  A fringe Jewish sect from what is now the Czech Republic, the Ze’ev fled persecution in their home country and came to America to make a new life for themselves.  Today, few could imagine our town without the Ze’ev who have produced so many doctors, lawyers, judges, bankers, businessmen, philanthropists, rabbis, professors, and others who have enriched this community so much.  We have learned to tolerate their oddities.  However, when the first members of the Ze’ev arrived on the Northeastern side of the Island on August 12, 1892, the Strangers valued tolerance less than they do now.  Natives of the island looked askance at the haggard refugees wearing rags, carrying all they owned in a sack.  The Ze’ev knew little English, and their religious customs unnerved the Strangers, who had tolerated Witches for more than two and a half centuries and were unlikely to relish the possibility of more unbelievers on the island.  Pastor Todd Whitfield tried to calm down his congregation, concentrating on the Good Book’s passages concerning love and forgiveness.  He told those men that those who live by the sword die by the sword, and if they lived by the sword, they would die by it too.  However, Christianity is a philosophy many identify with but few practice, so the Strangers ignored their Pastor’s pleas to think reasonably and formed a lynch mob of fifty people to go to the Ze’ev one night on a full moon.

            Five of the lynch mob came back alive, covered in large gaping wounds, bleeding profusely from every seam of the body imaginable.  Pastor Whitfield was at a loss for words.  He had hoped that his previous warning would strike a prophetic tone, but in the Christian context prophecy does not equal divination.  However, the Rabbi Eliyahu came to visit a visibly shaken Pastor Whitfield the following morning in order to explain what had happened.  The Rabbi told the Pastor that his people suffered from a blessing and a curse (“For what blessing from the Lord is not also a curse, and what curse from the Lord is not also a blessing?”) that the Lord had bestowed upon them in the old country as a protection from their enemies.  This blessing and curse would come upon all members of the Ze’ev 18 or older who was born to a Ze’ev mother.  Upon every full moon, they would transform into a beast no person would trifle with.  The Ze’ev had immigrated to Pandemonium thinking that the inhabitants would be used to this kind of thing, having lived next to the Witches all these years.

            “It is unfortunate that your men attacked on the full moon,” continued Rabbi Eliyahu. “On any other night they would have taken us defenseless and they would not have died.  But the Lord does protect his chosen people.”

            “I need a stiff drink,” responded Pastor Whitfield.

            You must understand that as far back as the 18^th century, the Witches made no claim to perform magic anymore.  Their faith was in seeking Earthly power, both in that they hoped to exercise it on Earth and that the power was native to Earth.  The Strangers were not “used to this kind of thing” and no group of Strangers had such rude awakening since the original Strangers witnessed the first sacrifice aboard the Charon.  However, Pastor Whitfield could not prevent the Ze’ev from settling on Pandemonium, nor could anyone else.  The council met and discussed the matter the following month, and the decision was made that because the Witches and the Fieldhands already lived on the South side of the island, the Strangers would share the North side of the island with the Ze’ev. [3] The Strangers quickly moved out of the Northeastern side of the island until the Ze’ev had that quadrant of the island all to themselves.

            As Pandemonium moved into the Twentieth Century, its economy changed from a port city dependent on tobacco and fishing to a truly diversified economy, fueled by innovation.  Smokestacks and kilns replaced tobacco fields and shipyards, as the Ze’ev started Kosher butcher shops and tailors.  In the Fieldhand part of town, the famous Cleopatra night club was founded, a mecca for jazz performers in the first half of the century. Gradually, residents of the State of South Carolina became aware of the town’s oddities, and the religious practices of the Witches soon transformed from a well-kept secret to a poorly kept one. The State of South Carolina remembered the Witches’ service during the Civil War, and the white community at least had become accustomed to them.  A well-placed donation from the wealthy elites of Witch society didn’t hurt the Witches’ gradual acceptance either. Over fifty citizens of Pandemonium served during World War I, and another hundred served in World War II, which saw Bunim Greenblatt win the Congressional Medal of Honor after dispatching an entire German company during a full moon in Southern France.[4]  The Great Depression brought out the best in Pandemonians, who gave more to charity on average than any city in South Carolina, founding soup kitchens, homeless shelters, and, of course, missions.  Intermarriage between Strangers and Witches, once unheard of, became common, as were double ceremonies.[5]  When a Stranger boy brought home a Witch girl, or vice versa, his parents would increasingly say he had made a fine choice.  The Pastor of the Strangers actually encouraged this trend, as whenever a mixed marriage came to be, normally the parties would convert to his church and not to the temple.

             After World War II, the Witches increasingly came to believe that they belonged in America as much as anyone else did, so why hide their identities?  In 1953, the Satanic High Priest, Blaise Jackson, proposed to his congregation that they reveal their identities to the state government of South Carolina and to the wider world.  The congregation agreed.  Jackson met with his counterpart of the Strangers, Pastor Peter Whitfield (grandson of Todd Whitfield) and proposed that the Bargain be changed to allow the Witches to “come out” as it were.  Pastor Whitfield agreed, and at the next meeting, the council amended the Bargain and Jackson called the media. 

            The reaction of the world disappointed the Witch community.  American was in the middle of a religious revival in the mid-1950s, in response to the atheistic tyranny of communism.  All across the United States, people expressed shock and outrage as they learned of a town where Satan was worshipped as regularly as God was.  The residents of South Carolina pretended they had never heard of such a thing, fearing the world would condemn them right along with the Witches.  Televangelists would pray for the island to be eaten up by the sea.  The National Council of Churches voted to denounce the Bargain, as well, a Faustian bargain.  Large crowds of Christian believers arrived in front of the Second Satanic Temple with signs hoping to shut the place down.  Jackson dispersed the crowd by threatening to cast a curse upon them. 

            Of course, when the Pope takes notice, then you know you’ve made it.  Upon hearing the full story of Pandemonium in L’Osservatore Romano, Pope Pius XII dictated a letter to the bishop for the Diocese of Charleston, asking him why he had made no attempt to confront this evil in his own land.  When one receives a letter from the pope, one better look busy, so the bishop instructed that a church be built on the Witch side of the line.[6]  This church would be staffed by a pastor and given whatever resources needed to stay open.  When the bishop’s assistant explained to him that there were no Catholics in Pandemonium, the bishop repeated his instructions and demanded they be carried out to the letter.  For the last sixty years, St. Michael the Archangel Catholic Church has stood in the town square, just on the Witches’ side, while other churches in the diocese have been closed for lack of funds or due to a shortage of priests, aid to parochial schools has had to be cut, and mission trips have been canceled.  The Diocese has always found a way to keep it open, if only to prove a point.[7]

            The Witches, shocked by this response, decided another liturgical reform would satiate the modern world. Starting in 1963, the Satanic ceremonies would no longer require the sacrifice of a rabbit.  The crushing of a large bug would suffice.  The Strangers reciprocated with their own liturgical reform, removing the ceremony whereby the congregation would drink the princess’s ashes with water and placing the Bloody Book in the crypt.  The bones from which the ashes were produced have been kept away from the public eye since the mid-1960s.

Over time it became apparent, however, that the Christian world’s disgust ultimately lay not on the Witches but on the Strangers and how at home they appeared to be with their diabolic neighbors.  In 1967, Pastor Whitfield attended an ecumenical meeting of Christian pastors from all across America only to find he would become the main attraction.  Priests and preachers of every stripe demanded how he could tolerate the danger to his congregation’s souls presented by his lackadaisical attitude toward the Devil.  Council meetings, intermarriage, and, more recently, some Strangers had even started attending Cramner University.[8]  Whitfield calmly explained that the Witches’ beliefs had no influence on their day to day behavior.  Blaise Jackson was a gentleman, even if he had some retrograde beliefs concerning segregation, and Whitfield found him to be a reasonable and even thoughtful man over the many conversations they had during Whitfield’s years as Pastor.  Jackson, in fact, had admitted to Whitfield in private that he had no faith in witchcraft or the existence of Satan, but instead thought of himself as a curator of a museum containing the history of his community.  The comment resonated with Whitfield, who often doubted his own God’s existence in the small hours of the night, and similarly thought of himself more as a caretaker than an evangelist.[9]

            Whitfield ended the conversation with a bon mot. As a Lutheran pastor pressed him on the issue, Whitfield asked if his particular sect of Lutheranism still considered the pope to be the anti-Christ.  The Lutheran affirmed that it did, but asked how this was relevant.  “As we are discussing people tolerating ultimate evil, I wonder whether we are really discussing the Witches in my community or the Roman Catholics in yours.”[10]

            Jackson, now in failing health, held his own Ecumenical Council in 1969, when he received a visit from Anton LaVey in June of that year.  While LaVey thought his visit would be enlightening, or at least entertaining, the two men soon found they had little in common.  LaVey found Jackson’s conservative demeanor boring.  Jackson considered LaVey to be merely a provocateur.  When LaVey offered to succeed Jackson, Jackson refused him.  “My church is a museum.  Yours is a circus.  One does not belong in the other.”

            A museum to what we might ask? Jackson would pass away in January 1970, to be succeeded by a new Satanic High Priest, Alastair Grimsley.  Grimsley became the first High Priest to endorse integration, and announced that both the Satanic Temple and the town of Pandemonium would have to undergo changes in order thrive in the coming century.  Pastor Whitfield met with Grimsley for lunch one Sunday afternoon to discuss a proposal to amend the Bargain yet again.  The proposal presented to the council would allow for a renovated meeting hall with three doors: one for the Strangers, one for the Witches, and one for the Fieldhands, in recognition of the Fieldhands’ contributions to the history of Pandemonium.  The community made two objections to these plans.  The Fieldhands complained that the very idea of forcing them to go through a different was just Jim Crow under a different name.  The Ze’ev objection was essentially “What are we dog food?  Why don’t we get our own door?”[11]  Whitfield and Grimsley argued that nobody was required to go through any particular door, and that the doors were meant to honor the founding sects of Pandemonium.  Furthermore, if the Ze’ev insisted, a fourth door could be added.  In the end, the meeting hall would be renovated to have four doors, one of each side, unlabeled so as to avoid any association with segregation.  That being said, today, each of the four sects had chosen a door to call its own, and members of the community rarely deviate from custom when entering the hall. The initiative would be Whitfield’s last public accomplishment before his death in 1975.  The Bargain has been amended only once more since then, to create a unitary executive in the 2004. 

---

[1] See Footnote 14.

[2] Now on the National Register for Historic Places.

[3] In the event that any tourist feels deterred from visiting Pandemonium because of these facts, the Author can assure them that the Ze’ev in their transformed state are normally very docile and only become hostile when provoked unnecessarily. While writing a portion of this brief history, the Author sat on his front porch one warm night in June and observed two transformed Ze’ev roaming his lawn without fear, for the animals barely noticed him.  Normally, they are pinned up on transformation nights.  The Ze’ev are, if nothing else, considerate and thoughtful neighbors.

[4] Greenblatt’s superiors did not understand how this could have occurred, but merely found Greenblatt standing naked one morning in a German camp surrounded by dead bodies.  Giving him the Medal of Honor was the best way to accept the victory without having to explain it to anyone.

[5] Undoubtedly this led to interesting debates as to how the children were to be raised, but those debates have been largely contained to bed chambers and kitchen tables.

[6] This being the part of the town that God was supposedly not allowed on.

[7] This is not speculation.  When the Author asked the current bishop as to why a church with no parishioners has remained open for six decades, the bishop responded “To prove a damn point!”

[8] “It has one Hell of a law school,” Whitfield explained, perhaps not understanding the irony of this statement.

[9] Thanks to the Stranger Church, who for the purposes of this brief history, have given the Author access to Pastor Whitfield’s personal journals as well as other invaluable documents.

[10] I consider this a bon mot, but some visitors to Pandemonium consider this to be an unsettling remark.

[11] The words of the Rabbi Maharam at the time.

I have decided to take a break from posting parts of Pandemonium’s history to cover the most watched event: the Superbowl Commercials.

I missed the first five minutes of the “game” which means that I probably missed the first commercial break. Damn my responsibilities as a father putting my son to bed!

My review therefore begins with the Indiana Jones Trailer, which genuinely feels like Harrison Ford’s desicated corpse is being drug out the back of a train. This is followed by the E-Trade baby commercial, which is another example of an American Icon, past its prime, being trotted out for another trip to the well. Then, I think there was this thing with Serena Williams giving a half-time speech to a group of people for…something.

Second Break: T-Mobile commercial with Bradley Cooper and his mother. They advertised this ahead of time. It reminds me of that commercial where they had a bunch of people just jack around on camera for two minutes and admitted they blew millions of dollars. “What are you going to do with your money?”

Alicia Silverstone still exists, apparently. Bass Pro Shop commercial is boring, but effective. Ben Stiller talks to us about reality and then drinks a Pepsi, says we have to try it to see if he was acting. We’ve all had a Pepsi, Ben. We know you can act.

Third Break: Clothing commercial. There’s an app for clothing now. Do we need an app for that? I guess we have an app for everything. Paramount ad with Sly Stallone. Don’t think that is new. Caddyshack parody for Michelob Ultra, which is also not new. What is this that they are playing old material already.

Flash Trailer: Worth it just to see Michael Keaton and hear him say those words. Movie looks like a video game. Christian ad is cute. That’s it. Squarespace commercial: just no impact. Animal Control commercial–I didn’t download access to Fox in any form until tonight and I did it just to watch the game. I don’t have cable anymore as a millennial. What’s the point? There was also this 10-second cooking show commercial. Too short to bother with.

Fifth Break: Now they are doing this “real” thing with Steve Martin. We know he can act. You don’t have to pretend to like Pepsi to prove that point. New glucose monitor with a Jonas brother. Too obvious. He’s a diabetes icon. Obviously. I guess it is plausible at this point that Netflix would give a series to golf. Wait…It’s real? Electric Vehicle commercial for a car company other than Tesla. You know the thing about these other electric cars? You hear about them once a year and never see them. Like Santa Clause.

Sixth Break: “Diddy don’t do jingles!” Snicker…snort…guffah. At last, a commercial that makes me laugh. Nice one, Diddy. See you at the next Budweiser commercial shoot.

America manufactures more goods in terms of economic value then it did 50 years ago, by a very large multiplier. When they say our manufacturing has declined, they mean as a percentage of our population employed in that industry when compared to other countries. In terms of the amount of goods, measured by economic value, we are still second to only China. American labor is comparatively expensive, but the work is generally high quality. That’s why America is the place you manufacture things like passenger jets and solar panels, but not plastic action figures you see at the store. It’s a trade-off, like everything else in economics. If you want quality work, you have to pay for it. And you generally don’t need quality work to make stupid nick-nacks. There are lots of factories in America guys.

Is the dancing idiot the tax expert? Then the answer is no, Turbotax, no.

Seventh Break: Iphone commercial where they take people out of the picture. I’ve heard some people theorize that capitalism has gotten so efficient that it might actually achieve the desired results of communism, but I don’t think this is what they were talking about. Maya commercial-Okay, that was funny. They kept us on a string on that one. Really had a lot of people in the media seriously reporting that they were ditching the M&M’s. Sure, they would. Downy McBride-ehh, that was okay. This was probably the best commercial break.

Eighth Break-Dancing animals on a safari. Might be effective if they were advertising speakers, but I don’t see how the car is making the animals dance. Oh, it’s another electric car commercial. Figures. Hamm and Brie–Ehh, play on names. Pringles commercial–this is actually a fun premise, because who hasn’t had this happen to them. Heineken commercial–this is another old commercial. They pre-aired a bunch of these.

Ninth Break–Doritos commercial with the triangle–all I have to say that I had heard the British economy was in trouble, but man, the pound is replaced by a grade school instrument. That’s tough. Miller Time v. Coors–ends in Blue Moon–actually a good beer commercial. At least AmBev is making fun of itself. Now get Budweiser in there. Maybe do a pod people sketch. Cute dog commercial-can’t remember what it was about.

Tenth Break-USFL Commercial–I wonder how many people remember why the old league died. Trump convinced them to move to the fall and compete against the NFL. Didn’t work out well for them. If they stuck with spring football, it could have worked. Big New Yorker Commercial-I had a teacher in high school from NYC who loved those. Never saw the attraction. Don’t know why you would want one the size of a basketball court. Tax commercial-getting to be a lot of those. These are really quick. I’m having problems keeping up. Fox keeps promoting itself a lot. Could they not find outside advertisers?

Eleventh Break: Another ad for a Fox show. This is for Farmer’s Wife. Then there’s Animal Control again. The Daytona 500, which is on Fox. Gutfeld’s show on Fox News. Is that a separate company now or not? I think Disney bought the Fox network, but not the News Channel.

Twelfth Break: Trojan Horse Commercial-actually not bad for a company that’s probably a scam. An actual trojan horse metaphor for an anti-virus commercial. Creed III–I’ve only seen two of the Rockies.

Halftime-I’ve got to say, I’ve been disappointed so far. These commercials have been duds. Fox keeps advertising itself. Pepsi’s campaign is a dud because it doesn’t answer the basic question: why aren’t you Coke? The one beer commercial I’ve seen was fun, but it didn’t really measure up to the glory years of the Budweiser-Miller rivalry where Budweiser made up for their generic piss water with whip smart commercials. Now that they are the same company, I feel like the commercial space has lost something invaluable: the image of the Coyote chasing the Roadrunner. Someone bring back the smartass lizards.

Edit: Okay, catching up on the commercials I missed. The Pop Corners commercial was pretty fun, I have to admit, but I don’t think getting the Breaking Bad crew back together is quite the accomplishment people think it is. Seems like these people will get back together for anything. I don’t get the praise for Ben Affleck’s Dunkin Donuts commercial though. If someone at Dunkin Donuts tried to argue without you about your order, would you think he was being friendly or rude?

Thirteenth Break: Flag Football Ad-NFL congratulates itself for being progressive while veterans with CTE shoot themselves in the chest so their brains can be studied.

Fourteenth Break: Big Bunny drags people out of their seats and kicks them down a whole covered with screens-ad for Tubi-like we don’t have enough screen in our lives. Meta ad–everything about Meta proves that Mark Zuckerman is a space alien. Medicine ad. Enough said. Petsmart and Purina-any pet commercials during the Superbowl are going to remind us all of Pets.com. Do you really want to do that? Cruise commercial. Enough said. Daytona shows up again.

Fifteenth Break: Trailer for Air: I guess its interesting that these people at Nike could see Michael Jordan was special but Portland couldn’t, but I never get the suspense surrounding movies concerning a business strategy, even if it is innovative. Same way I felt about MoneyBall. DoorDash ad I can’t remember. Now they are repeating ads. Doesn’t Gordon Ramsay have enough shows. Fanduel ad where Gronkowski tries to kick a field goal–were you supposed to bet against him?

Sixteenth Break: Pop Corners ad. Again, not bad. Bud Light Ad where the husband dances to the waiting tone. I feel like AmBev has actually accepted what they are: we are the holding music of beer. That’s who we are. I guess you should own up to it. Everything else is a repeat. These guys didn’t get as many ad buys as I remember.

Seventeenth Break: Kia Commercial about forgetting the binkie: (Best Robot Chicken Nerd Impression) This situation is not humorous! It is painful and humiliating as anyone who has been through it can tell you! Crown Royal promotes itself by reminding you it comes from Canada, so it must be boring. Mr. Peanut’s roast–if you have to give me a QR code, you failed. I’m not going on the internet to watch the rest of an ad. Also, thanks for reminding me where M&Ms got that idea.

Eighteenth Break: Another NFL self-promo, followed by a Fox self-promotion. Are these people having problems selling ad space? Old Taylor Swift commercial. They can’t even fill up the game with new commercials. What made the people who make Oikos yogurt say to themselves: “Deion Sanders. That’s our target demographic!” Ring commercial. Eh. Another Animal Control promotion.

Nineteenth Break: Another commercial. Another cute dog. Who tears up the house. And they get another house. Gosh, that was the cutest commercial for the biggest soulless corporation I can remember. Old rockstars come together to help promote new workplace HR system or something. There is this pattern in American life where things go from threatening to tolerated to accepted to tame to practically conservative. In the 1950s, rock and roll was a menace to society. Now, I’ve seen it used to advertise baby shampoo and now, HR systems.

Twentieth Break: Disney commercial–Nostalgia. More nostalgia. Yes, Disney, you exist, and you are big. Premature electrification–actually one of the better commercials, yet it’s showing in the fourth quarter. Subtle. You didn’t know it was a car commercial until the end. Kind of snook in there.

Twenty-First Break-The Busch Guide-that made me snicker a little. Poking fun at Sarah MacLachlan is fun, though a little random. Poker Face promotion–still not really interested in this show. Booking.com-musical number-pretty forgettable. Accused–the most eye-catching thing about that was a Swastika in a barn. On Fox, explosions are both expected and boring.

Twenty-Second Break-Black and white photos of people yelling at each other in 2020. Jesus gets us. Really? How do those photos show us that? Wouldn’t we have to get Jesus’s reaction to all this? Another Animal Control promo. They really believe in this show!

Twenty-Third Break: T-Mobile commercial with John Travolta-this is another old ad. Sketchers add with Snoop-Dog-it’s funny seeing Tony Romo getting tackled by eight-year-olds and launching a receiver in the air. He might be able to win a playoff game in this league. More Fox promos.

Superbowl Commercials Over: I would give this year a D. Even the better moments were either a little weak or unintentional. This is truly a letdown compared to years past. Mean Joe Greene. 1984. The Magic Fridge. Now we settle for M&Ms redoing jokes that Mr. Peanut did years ago, and they weren’t that great then. This is sad. What have we come to America?

P.S. By the way, there was this game playing in the background. It was apparently pretty good. “Down to the wire” some are saying. Jesus, why can’t we get our priorities right?

I hope you all enjoyed part I of my faux history of Pandemonium–the town at the center of my work-in-progress Christmas in Pandemonium. Here we go with Part II.

Benjamin Franklin, one of our country’s illustrious founders, is known to have said “We shall all hang together, or we shall all hang separately.” The sentiment did not originate with him, but with anyone in a similar desperate situation, which the Witches and the Strangers now found themselves in.  In this moment, Miller forgot his newly discovered piety and turned to Cramner, who was apparently thinking the same thing.  As enemies, they were outnumbered and likely to die, but as allies they stood a chance.  Miller spoke first, stating that his earlier words concerning the passage “thou shall not allow a witch to live” may have been overly hasty.  Cramner apologized for the sacrifice on the Charon, chalking it up to too much enthusiasm in his congregation to begin their new lives in America.  Cramner offered to let the Strangers remain in Pandemonium, provided they assisted with the defense of the island.  Miller found that offer most attractive as both he and his crew were wanted by the law elsewhere, but insisted that Cramner would have to agree to cease and desist any more acts of human sacrifice.  Cramner did not like the condition, but did not see an alternative.  Recognizing their common plight, the Old Heretic and the Drunkard “shook on it” a second time, and proceeded to form an alliance for their own survival. Captain Miller had within the last 24 hours founded a religion and then made a bargain with the Devil.

            Working together, the Strangers and the Witches successfully rebuffed the Stono attack, and then pursued the Stono to the mainland where the chief and the remainder of his forces were slaughtered.  The settlers then moved onto the Indian village on the mainland and proceeded to do unto the Stono as the Stono had threatened to do unto them.  Having killed all the men (including all boys over the age of 10), the Strangers and Witches carried off the women and burned the village to the ground.[1]  Back at Pandemonium, Cramner agreed that because the Strangers, unlike the Witches, had not brought women with them on the journey, the Stono women would be given to the Strangers as wives.[2]

            It is one thing to make a deal in haste, quite another to fully negotiate the terms from a position of relative ease.  Two months after the alliance was made, the Old Heretic and the Drunkard “shook on it” a third time, but this time they had the foresight to write the terms of the deal down in greater detail.  First, the island would be bisected in two by a line agreed to by both parties with the Strangers receiving the North end of the island and the Witches receiving the south end. Both the Witches and the Strangers agreed to stay on their side of the line. That being said, if they were to live together like this, they would have to form a common government, or at least a place to meet in order to deal with future issues.  A common meeting hall was established on the exact center of the island with two entrances, one on the Stranger side of the line and the other on the Witch side of the line. A council of six people would be elected, three from each side, and the town would be governed by two different mayors, each one responsible for governing the town on their respective side of the line.  The Strangers promised not to report the Witches to any Christian Kingdom or Empire, and the Witches in return agreed reluctantly to give up any practice of human sacrifice.[3] The Strangers also wanted it written down that not only were the Witches not allowed on the Stranger part of the island, but neither was Satan himself allowed.  Cranmer, a fallen Anglican priest who had been educated in theology, was amused by this request and stated that perhaps the Witches should ask that God be disallowed from coming onto the Witches’ side of the island.  The Strangers discussed it among themselves and to Cranmer’s amazement responded that they found those terms acceptable.  Those famous provisions were incorporated into the Bargain of Pandemonium, and though it has been amended over time, that charter remains the basis of our town’s government.[4]

            Both parties took this social contract seriously and held up their end of it.  When the Crown established the royal colony of South Carolina a few years later, the Strangers did not go running to the local governor to turn the Witches in.  This might partly be to do with the price on their own heads, as Miller and his crew had been wanted on smuggling charges for several years.  Covered in fog, the island of Pandemonium often went unnoticed by English settlers.  When it was necessary to do business with the royal governor, the governing council would vote to appoint a representative who would represent both communities, swearing to reveal none of the secrets about the religious practices in Pandemonium or its founding. 

            The Witches voluntarily gave up the practice of human sacrifice.  Cramner began a religious reform movement within the cult whereby the sacrifice of a human being was replaced by the ritual sacrifice of a goat.  Many Witches voiced their concern that without a truly diabolic sacrifice of human life, that their connection to the Evil One would fade, and with it their powers.[5]  However, this reform was necessary to protect the deal in place making the town a possibility, and the prohibition on human sacrifice has been honored by Witches to this day, with one notable exception. [6]

            The Strangers had their own religious reforms to attend to, as a church can rarely survive with a liturgy depending on a single verse read by a barely literate seaman with no theological training heavily influenced by alcohol.  The Strangers disassembled the Charon and used the hull to build their original church on the very ground where they had killed the Stono princess.  The Stranger Church[7] also had a stone crypt underneath it, where the bones of the Stono princess were kept.  Guilt marked the church’s foundation from the beginning.  Miller placed the Bloody Book at the back of the Church’s nave, where it remains today, now under glass.  The Drunkard appointed himself as both pastor and mayor, the concept of separation of church and state and that time just developing, and proceeded to start leading a service made up mostly of songs and sermons centered on how disgusting and devious the Witches were, despite just having made a permanent alliance with them.  Far from repenting, Miller carved the verse “thou shalt not suffer a witch to live” on the arch above the church’s entrance.  However, Miller also warned the Strangers to keep the peace, a point he made in a ceremony whereby he took the as ashes of the Stono princess’s cremated body and forced his congregation to drink said ashes with water “so the sin would remain with them.”[8]  This contradiction lies at the heart of the Strangers’ faith, and like most mysteries at the heart of religion, the question is not so much unanswered but answered a thousand times over in a way that is unsatisfactory to all involved.

            After the Drunkard’s death in the 1656, the Strangers decided they needed an actual pastor, someone who knew what the Christian faith was, and this required an education in the Christian faith.  The Witches, much like other religious minorities seeking shelter in America, had founded Cramner University[9] in memory of their founder after his death, but a school run by Witches would not serve to educate a Christian pastor.  Also, it was located on the other side of the line, and crossing the line was an offense punishable by execution.  However, an inquisitive young man named Robert Winthrop, the son of one of the original Strangers and a 13-year old Stono Indian, having learned to read at the age of six at a rate faster than the Drunkard himself, so impressed the community that they charged him with leaving Pandemonium and returning upon having educated himself in Christian theology.

            Winthrop soon found there was no “Christian faith” in the same sense that there was no such thing as “language” or “government.” There were Christian faiths.  Winthrop attended Anglican Churches in Virginia, Catholic Churches in Maryland, Quaker Meetings in Pennsylvania, Puritan Churches in Massachusetts, and held a very lively conversation with an Arminian as both of them were being chased out of Boston by an angry crowd wielding torches and pitchforks. We know from his journal that Winthrop came to the conclusion that none of these churches actually had an accurate picture of God, and he decided not to look for one.  Winthrop instead decided to create his own faith based on the needs of his community.  Winthrop rejected the Catholic faith outright because of the overwhelming hostility it faced in the English colonies, hostility that the Strangers would like to avoid when interacting with the local government.  On the other hand, if the Catholic faith caused hostility, the Anglican faith would tempt the Strangers to assimilate too far into South Carolinian society, and may lead them to break the Bargain, which could cause the Witches to retaliate.  Stranger worship would be decidedly low-church, so Winthrop adopted Reform methods of worship but adopt the Quakers’ belief in religious liberty, as would be necessary for any Christian society working hand to hand with Satanists. Winthrop agonized over whether to adopt the Calvinist doctrine of double predestination or the Arminian objection to it.  Theoretically, if the Witches were damned to Hell before they were even born, the Strangers would not be tempted to proselytize them as they would be if their souls could be saved, and this would keep the peace. However, Winthrop’s personal experience with straight Calvinism was an angry Puritan mob while his conversation with the Arminian left Winthrop with the impression that even if the doctrine were not logical, it at least created a logical man.  As was usual with Winthrop, his experience triumphed over any search for a theoretical truth existing in a vacuum.[10]

            Winthrop returned to Pandemonium having formed the doctrines of his new church and announced to the community that he would take over the position of pastor, leading the community in worship for the first time the first Sunday of January 1665.  Winthrop built a pulpit similar to the ones he had seen in Boston, and in a sermon delivered on that pulpit expounded the doctrines of the “Christian faith” he had put together in his journal while traveling back from Massachusetts. Unlike other religions in America founded by a charismatic figure, the Strangers today do not maintain that Winthrop was some kind of messianic prophet.  Winthrop borrowed liturgy and doctrines from other religions and adopted them based on the needs of his congregation.  He never claimed to find a secret code in the Bible or to discover sacred plates in the forest.  Winthrop’s attitude toward faith was practical.  Religion existed to serve the community, not to represent some metaphysical reality.  Winthrop may not have been a prophet, but to use a phrase the Strangers had adopted “he did us proud.”  When Winthrop died in 1711, the Strangers decided to memorialize him by founding their own university.[11] 

            Of course, there is more to life than religion and government.  In America, commerce dominates a large part of our existence, and Pandemonium soon became a thriving port due to the industriousness of its inhabitants.  When drawing the line dividing the island, Cramner made sure the Witches received the south end of the island, where all the arable farm land was, and the Strangers received the north end of the island, mostly forests.  Once they realized this, the Strangers determined it had been for the best.  They were sailors after all, and with access to the forests on the north side of the island the Strangers soon had a thriving shipbuilding industry which in turn begat fishing and trade. 

            The Witches found the south side of the island to be exceedingly fertile, good for growing tobacco, which would become the island’s main cash crop.  However, much like the rest of colonial America, they suffered a labor shortage.  As luck would have it,[12] a Spanish ship blown off the coast of Florida drifted into Pandemonium harbor in the year 1640, bringing with it the “Migration or Importation of such Persons”[13] that would be a great help to harvesting of tobacco. The passengers on that boat would never have guessed that their descendants would form the third great spiritual community of Pandemonium, the Fieldhands. 

            Witch tobacco had to be carried on Stranger ships, requiring cooperation between the two disparate groups, as capitalism often does.  This led to a softening of certain restrictions in the 1700s.  While crossing the line was still technically forbidden, soon housewives from one community to the other were crossing the line for no other reason than to borrow a cup of flower. An informal rule developed that as long as neither side was attempting to convert the other, presence on the other side of town would be tolerated.  Winthrop had warned the Strangers against trying to convert the Witches and stressed keeping the peace.  His prudence may have saved this young community.

            On the other hand, the Witches and the Strangers rarely met an issue they could not disagree on, a good example being the building of the First Satanic Temple in 1752.  As South Carolina grew in population and Pandemonium’s economy grew in size, the town, though remote, was getting more and more visitors and the Witches’ great secret became more difficult to hide.  The Strangers had hoped that this might cause the Witches to convert, but the Witches had their own preferred solution.  The Witches proposed that rather than perform their ceremonies out in the open as they had done previously, they would build a Satanic Temple underground, connected with a series of tunnels which would attach to each home on the Witches’ side of the line.  If all that was what they wanted to do, the Strangers would have been fine with it, but the Witches also wanted to use tax money, collected from both sides of the community to pay for it.  The Strangers would have none of it.  The idea of tax dollars paying for Satanic ceremony was outrageous.  Also, many Strangers believed that the entire idea of placing the temple underground was designed to allow the Witches to start conducting human sacrifice again without the supervision of the Strangers.[14]  The Witches felt this attitude to be hypocritical.  After all, in those days the Strangers’ pastor was paid a salary with tax dollars.  However, after a long session of yelling, screaming, threatening to beat each other, and questioning each other’s parentage, the Strangers and Witches came together as only they could.  The Satanic Temple would be built without tax dollars, the Strangers’ pastor would be shorn of his salary, and the Bargain would be amended to prohibit tax dollars from going to any religious institution.[15]  Democracy had done what it does best: create an outcome everyone could live with but no one was happy about. 

            The Churches of the Hatfields and the McCoys, as they would later come to be known, would soon find themselves opposed on every issue facing America as it became a country, starting with Independence.  Namely, the Witches were fer’ it and the Strangers agin’ it.  The Witches believed that on balance they were more likely to be accepted by an independent America than a British Empire that was formally Protestant, and the Strangers believed anything the Witches wanted must be bad.  Many a Witch marched with the minutemen, while Stranger names filled the rolls of loyalist militias.  When America won its independence, the Witches considered themselves one up on the Strangers, though the pro-Union Strangers would even the score against the pro-Confederacy Witches during Reconstruction.  These same dynamics would play out during Prohibition, where the bootlegging Witches would dodge the prohibitionist Strangers using a combination of finely tuned cars and well concealed speakeasies, and the Civil Rights Era, where U.S. District Judge Robert Mapplethorpe, born to two Stranger parents, would strike down and frustrate every Witch attempt to maintain Separate but Equal.

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[1] Stories such as these offend modern sensibilities, but they are common in the founding of America, and it would be difficult to tell the story of Pandemonium without them. Captain Miller justified this massacre much like he did his first one, by quoting scripture, namely Numbers 31:17.

[2] The Stranger’s church has a museum of their history which contains several portraits of these marriages based on the famous portrait of the Marriage of Pocahontas.  Nothing could be further from the truth as the Strangers’ wives were carried back to Pandemonium tied and bound.  The Strangers’ wedding nights would often leave the bride weeping and rolled into a ball attempting to stop their new husband’s advances.

[3] Cramner initially attempted to move Miller on this issue, promising never to use the Strangers as sacrificial victims and appealing to “freedom of conscience.”  The Strangers insisted on abolishing the practice, however, as it offended their newfound piety.  The fact that they had just finished fighting off an invasion that was provoked by Cranmer’s need for a victim may also have been a factor.

[4] The exact terms of the Bargain state: “the fallen angel shall have no hold of the island north of the line” and that “the Christian God’s dominion does not extend south of the line.”

[5] The Author of this book remains skeptical of such powers, but the Witches at that time truly believed Satan had granted them the ability to manipulate the natural world through the invocation of demons. This much is clear from the documents they left behind.    

[6]For more information on this subject, be sure to buy The Crimes of Beauregard Davis, written by Jonathon Coleridge and available at the Pandemonium History Center for $19.99. 

[7] Now on the National Register of Historic Places.

[8] Exodus 32:20

[9] Go fighting Red Devils!

[10] While being a Witch himself, the Author must admit a certain admiration for Winthrop’s pragmatism, based in his concern for the genuine good of his community, a sentiment sadly lacking in this day and age.

[11] Winthrop University is most famous for having lost 34-28 to Cramner University in last year’s Blood Bowl, though other might disagree. 

[12] I should note before certain readers become offended that the luck was entirely on the part of the Witches.

[13] Art. I Sec. 9, Cl. 1 U.S. Const. 

[14] The great irony here is that only a few generations beforehand, the Old Heretic mourned the loss of the old sacrifice, whereas his successor, Tiberius Johnson, was indignant at the very suggestion he would lead such a ceremony, calling it a “calumny” against the Witch community to even suggest they would commit human sacrifice.

[15] The Pastor of the Stranger Church, as one might imagine, was not happy with this outcome.