Munch this
So I read that Edward Munch's painting, Scream, which is featured on kerjillions of coffee mugs, mouse pads, McCaulay Culkins and t-shirts worldwide, has been stolen from a low security museum over the weekend.

Hearing about the painting reminds me of a class I took senior year in college called "Madness in Society." It was one of those bullshit classes that have nothing to do with your major but is required to graduate. Not that class in particular, but a group of classes specifically made for seniors... not that it matters. I took the class, thinking that it sounded really interesting.

To its credit, it occasionally was, but not on purpose. The professor came up with the most boring topics imaginable, one of those being the life of Edward Munch. And he made sure to pronounce it "Edvvvvard Mooooonk", which, I'm sure is how it is actually meant to be pronounced, but god dammit, this is A-Mairica, and here in my country, we call him Ed Munch. As in ass munch. To help us further understand the life of Edvvvvard Moooooonk, we watched a movie on his life. A FOUR HOUR movie. Longer than the Titanic, people. Gilligan and his cronies took their tour shorter than the Moooooonk bio. I couldn't tell you much about his life because I have banished it from memory, but I'm certain that it involved a rough childhood, alcoholism, being misunderstood, and dying prematurely. Did I not just describe every artist's life? Well, there you go.

The only cool thing about the class was that we got to do presentations on topics of our choice, involving madness. Most memorable was the presentation by one of my most favorite eccentrics of my college career, a cat we liked to call Mike Cubed (there were three Mikes on that floor in our dorm, he was the third) who was famous for being bald at age 21, having a fondness for the word "nads," and wearing a t-shirt to the dining hall that said, "This is what 40 looks like." Anyway, Mike got an entire class period to dissect the Batman comic book series and actually did so so intelligently and humorously that it made sense. What it had to do with madness I'm not sure.

I did my project on voyeurism, by the way, which should surprise no one.