I Eat Teeth.

You could say it’s an idiosyncrasy. Some people need to pull their socks up after they sit down. Some folks need to turn the faucet three times to the right before they can leave the bathroom. Others shine their shoes so they can look up them skirts on the subway train.

I Eat Teeth.

Big whup. Mom didn’t like it when she was around. But now she ain’t around. She’s behind the shed. And yet. Still.

I Eat Teeth.

Dad didn’t let me visit the nursing home no more after that one time. Didn’t think I should eat teeth. But now he ain’t around no more neither.

I Eat Teeth.

Mom, Dad, the Neighbors, the Teachers. I’m sure they had their own thing. Dad’s tissues next to the nightstand told me was up to somethin’. Mom’s perpetual change of clothes in her car. The Neighbors’ pool parties with their friends, the teacher’s eyes and the cheerleaders’ skirts. Don’t matter. We all got our thing.

I Eat Teeth.

Mom’s teeth, Dad’s teeth, Ted’s teeth, your teeth. But no worry. You live in me and I live in the Center and together we live forever.

I Eat Teeth.

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Hello, friends. And welcome to Weekend Open Bar. The column that sits us around the poisoned watering hole at the End of the Pop Culture Universe. It’s a little gathering we do every week. Where share how we’re celebrating the End of the (Theoretical) Work Week. Certainly many still work, but for others like myself there is the illusion of reprieve. I tell you what, it certainly will feel like an illusion tonight when I’m lesson planning for next week’s classes.

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Hear ye! Hear ye! The Monday Morning Commute has arrived! Let us meet this train of thought in the station, see what wares it has to offer, and then add our own before it continues toward Collective Conscious Square! `Tis our duty as denizens of the Omega Level to not only profit from the bounty of awesome-suggestions, but to contribute as well!

Make merry and dance in the street! Digital or otherwise!

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Over the course of the last week or so I’ve been rereading Arthur Miller’s quasi-historical The Crucible in preparation to teach it. I had forgotten the density and poignancy of the play — Miller’s work is pretty much a head-on condemnation of our current power structure, criticizing the fact that it is based on racism, sexism, paranoia, religiously justified oppression and the process of othering.

Of course, I’m going to have to water down all of these ideas as I attempt to present them to a body of fifteen-year-olds who couldn’t care less. And while I abhor the concept of compromising sick ideas, I am willing to do so as long as I keep a promise to myself. No matter how little interest these teenagers show, I am going to ensure that they walk away from The Crucible knowing one thing for sure:

Giles Corey is the motherfucking man.

In true, historically-verified terms, Giles was an old-ass man accused of witchcraft during the Salem Witch Trials of 1692. When you think of him, think of that bad-ass geezer who isn’t afraid to speak his mind or take a stand. In Arthur Miller’s words, “Giles Corey, eighty-three…He is knotted with muscle, canny, inquisitive, and still powerful.”

According to Puritan Law, any man who would not plead either guilty or innocent to an accusation could not be tried in court. Giles refused to plead innocent because he didn’t want to subject himself to an unjust trial and he wouldn’t plead guilty because he wasn’t a goddamn witch. In such instance, the Puritan authorities would lay a suspect on his back and then place as much weight on him as required to elicit a plea (thereby justifying a trial).

But Giles never succumbed to the (literal) pressure. Subjected to this torture for days, Corey never issued a statement regarding the accusation of witchcraft. Elizabeth Proctor from The Crucible clarifies:

He were not hanged. He would not answer aye or nay to his indictment; for if he denied the charge they’d hang him surely, and auction out his property. So he stand mute, and died Christian under the law. And so his sons will have his farm. It is the law, for he could not be condemned a wizard without he answer the indictment, aye or nay.

In fact, the only words slipping out his mouth during the entire endeavor were “More weight.” Giles Corey is the definitive old-man bad-ass.

Found  below are a campy recreation of Giles’ fatal pressing and the music video for Unearth’s Giles.