People,

I've been having a hard week. I've been a little sick but mainly I've just been kind of depressed. The coming of winter always makes me anxious and sad, there's a bunch of internal strife in the band right now and I'm finding myself having a bit of an existential crisis. The physical symptoms of all this are that I want to sleep approximately 23 1/3 hours a day, that I either want to eat nothing or seven gallons of ice cream and that my fuse is insanely short.

And that's really what I've been thinking about, the nature of anger and violence in people. Everybody has anger and violence in them to a certain degree, but our society makes you squish it all the way down in yourself in order to get by. Not that that's a bad thing. Living in a world where everyone is fully in touch with their fury would be like...well, I guess like living in Boston. Oh well.

I personally have a lot of anger, a terrible temper and, when angry, a blinding all encompassing fury. I have always hated this in myself except for the few times it has served me well in emergencies. I mean, I guess I'm glad I have a well of anger to draw from in the sense that I know I wouldn't hesitate to really hurt someone who was hurting LBS or my close friends, but I'm also convinced that that well is fairly poisonous, which is why I spend so much time in shrinkville trying to tap into it and figure it out.

My attempts to get in touch with my inner violence have been pretty successful, and I think in general I have added a few inches to my fuse. But sometimes, like when I'm depressed, I can feel it bubbling up inside me and pulsing just under the surface. And when it finally erupts it never ceases to amaze and scare me just what lives inside me.

Example: On Wednesday morning I was riding to work and was feeling pretty bad about life. I knew that my fuse was short and so I had been trying to be extra-courteous to people in order to avoid anything that would set me off. Anyway, pulling out of an intersection I got cut off by some yahoo in a van. I had to slam on my brakes and had it been three months, and a lot of experience, ago I probably would have wrecked. The fuse had been removed from its protective sheath.

Then, with no cursing or beeping from me, the guy started screaming at me. He was cursing me out and staring at me in the rearview mirror. The fuse had been doused in gasoline.

He finally pulled ahead and for the next half mile kept speeding up and then slamming on his brakes, apparently in an attempt to teach me a lesson. And people, I HATE it when motorists take it upon themselves to teach their fellow drivers a lesson. It's some seriously dumb shit that could end up with someone being dead. The fuse had been lit.

I was in stage one of fury at this point, where I'm angry but I still understand myself. I started giving the guy the finger and yelling at him that he was being a dick. I mean, I'm on a motorcycle for Christ's sake. It's dangerous enough without any extra assholes.

The finger set him off and he started having a fit. He turned all red and just lost his mind, screaming and cursing. He subsequently stuck his head out his window and mimed shooting himself in the head and then pointed at me. The bomb exploded.

At this point absolute fury took over and this is what both fascinates me and scares the hell out of me. It's like one of Alex's droogies takes over my brain and starts running the show. I literally don't know this guy inside me.

Here were my thoughts as I remember them. I wanted to somehow end up with this guy in an alley and beat him with a crowbar. Then I moved on to a favorite fantasy of fury Joe - the handgun. I wanted so badly to have a handgun, order him to his knees and then have him beg for his life while I say things like "who's the big man now?" "What, you don't want to shoot me in the head anymore?". I never graduate to actually wanting to kill someone, but I do get as far as completely breaking his spirit and doing a fair bit of maiming.

About two minutes later I turned off the road and hit a parking lot to recover. My knees were shaking, my breath was short and the adrenaline in my veins felt like electricity. Then I felt really guilty about just how angry I had just been and wondered what I would really be capable of. And I know I'm not alone in these feelings.

It makes you wonder. As much as we live in the 21st century, there is a huge part of us that is still in 30,000 B.C.

Anyway, I've now moved on to just wanting that guy to get a moderately severe case of the flu. I consider it a major moral victory.