If you've ever seen a "slasher" film, this scenario is going to be familiar to you: The mad, "pure evil" slasher comes after his victim with an axe. There's a loud "thump!" and a scream. The victim looks in horror at his shoulder, now issuing copious spurts of fake red blood. Jason Voorhees character from the Friday the 13th Movies © 2003 New Line Cinema There's no doubt. The mad monster is evil. Pure evil. There's no way he or his actions could be described other than calling him evil. *   *   *   * Let's move to a different film, a Western. It's been a long cattle drive. Curiously, the never-shoot-first hero's clothes are still white while everyone else's are dusty and dirty.

It seems like wars today change little except names. They still cause massive death and destruction, most often to people who wanted nothing to do with such wars. One set of leaders is ousted and another put in power. They often turn out not much better or even worse than those who came before them. This was not always the case. The Western world was dramatically changed by WWI and much of the entire world was changed by WWII. After the attack on Pearl Harbor at the end of 1941, there were only a few minor attacks on 48 U.S. states during WWII. As a result, the knowledge of what war is like for Americans tends to be quite different than for people of Europe. For the past century, to the

Roger L. Simon You may not know writer Roger Simon by name, but chances are you know some of the things he's done. He co-wrote movies such as Bustin' Loose (star: Richard Pryor) and Scenes From a Mall (stars: Woody Allen and Bette Midler). He's also written many novels, including a series of detective stories about a character named Moses Wine. He adapted one of them, The Big Fix, as a movie, which starred Richard Dreyfuss. Sometimes people face events that so terrify them, their entire life changes. For Simon, this event was the attacks on the World Trade Centers on 9/11/2001. Although he admittedly remains a social liberal (he favors same gender marriage), many of his attitudes took a

The recent Memorial Day weekend got me thinking about the pentagram. Why? Well, read on... For as long as I can remember, my teachers (and innumerable books) have claimed that the "upright" pentagram is a positive and spiritual image. It's upright. What could be more positive than upright? It's used as a symbol for Wicca, Witchcraft, and Paganism. It's used for protection as in the famous Lesser Banishing Ritual of the Pentagram as well as in other rituals. It is said that the five points of the pentagram represent the five elements: Fire at the lower right, Earth at the lower left, Water at the upper right, Air at the upper left, and Spirit at the top. What a great symbol this