Charlie Sheen Is Righteously Depraved

Pleasure is the most basic human desire. Our predecessors struggled through a nasty and brutish, yet they still got their serotonin receptors firing through putting meat on fire and inventing sexual perversions. Today, our world is just as nasty and brutish, but we have refined the realm of pleasure so completely that we’re tempted never to leave. Soon, we will have nutrient rich cocaine and fully realistic sex robots. Until that time, booze, coke, porn, and hookers will do nicely. At least that’s the case if you ask Charlie Sheen.

Mr. Sheen is the ultimate heathen. He seizes pleasure at every opportunity. In and out of marriages, rehab, and career trouble, Mr. Sheen unapologetically comes back to the pleasure drug. You can call him a drug addict or a sex addict, but he is simply addicted to Pleasure. He is a Junkie. The Junkie finds something he likes and does it until he does not like it any more. Usually, he stops liking it because it trades off with something else and the high is not worth it any more. The rules of the tradeoff don’t apply to Mr. Sheen.

The Junkie may lose his family. Without a doubt, some junkies feel the Guilt and Shame of the penitent Old Testament sinner- the type of resonant fire in his brain extending up from Dante’s Third Circle- each time they satiate their gluttonous desires. If Mr. Sheen is indeed the garden variety junkie, then he should be susceptible to God’s double-barreled Guilt and Shame shotgun of repentance. But Mr. Sheen puts no stake in fidelity. His treatment of fidelity ranges from indifference to the type of scorn usually seen only in abortion clinic protests. Mr. Sheen has broken up with more women than most men have imagined while masturbating. He has ended relationships with threats of beatings, actual beatings, and Old West gunfire. He has five children in the custody of three women and exalts the fact that he doesn’t have to worry about tracking down a reliable and tight-lipped babysitter when he has the urge for a 36-hour bender. At a minimum, one could say that family life is not the anchor that will keep Mr. Sheen’s flighty spirit grounded.

[RIGHT- Stay gold, Ponyboy's brother.]

The Junkie may lose his career. Regular saps like us can’t get away with devoting our lives to the pursuit of pleasure because it gets in the way of the Daily Grind. If we spent our nights smoking crack and fucking hookers from dusk til dawn, our productivity would take a hit. Lindsay Lohan is a junkie with some of the same pleasure-seeking qualities as Mr. Sheen, but her career has been derailed. He has maintained a more successful career with a more ambitious pleasure addiction. His secret is that he has landed the perfect junkie gig. He plays himself on a mindless sitcom. Every week, the network turns over a bank vault worth of unmarked, non-consecutive $100 bills and returns to its blissful ignorance. Mr. Sheen can show up hungover and read his lines off cue cards one afternoon each Thursday. He gets a bankroll for his pleasure addiction, CBS gets ratings, and the mouth-breathers get season upon season of Two and a Half Men to serve as a soundtrack for their pathetic march to the grave. Everyone wins.

The Junkie may lose his health. Indeed, the Overdose is the Junkie’s Waterloo. Without it, John Belushi would have his own mindless sitcom. Adam Sandler wouldn’t have to dress Kevin James up like Chris Farley and pretend to laugh every time he shows his gut. But the Overdose is real. The problem is that the Overdose scares everyone other than the Junkie. The Junkie wants his next infusion of pleasure- he is not concerned with the opportunity cost of death. The Abyss is the natural end, after which there is no pleasure and therefore nothing to interest the Junkie. Mr. Sheen’s orienting principle is pleasure, so the complete absence of pleasure does not register. It is not his concern; it is ours.

Mr. Sheen cannot bottom out. He can keep drinking, smoking, and fucking his way to pleasure as long Angus Jones still looks young enough to play a kid on TV. The Junkie gets religion when he has lost everything and hits the low bottom. Mr. Sheen does not have a low bottom. He has days where E! News talks more shit about him and the Average Joe’s give water cooler high fives in his honor. He might even have to spend a weekend in a glamorous rehab facility on the beach, which is nothing less than an indulgent vacation. With his batteries recharged and nothing to lose, Mr. Sheen can jump back on the train and embark on his quintessential human pursuit of pleasure again and again.

Mr. Sheen is a Shimmering Monument to Hedonism. But we are pathologically unable to acknowledge his achievement. He has attained great heights in a domain that we are not allowed to enter. Non-golfers cannot appreciate the genius of Tiger Woods and we- sad sacks of mediocrity- cannot appreciate the genius of the greatest heathen alive. Mr. Sheen is a Pleasure Junkie, and nothing could be more righteous.

Is Anyone Else Amazed That Russia Doesn’t Have a Death Penalty?

By George Stephanopoulos, ABC News

WASHINGTON- A recent surge in terrorist activity in Russia has brought the nation’s issues with Chechan rebels back to the forefront of international dialogue. The tragedies have highlighted Russia’s spotty human rights record in the post-Soviet era. Presidents Clinton, Bush, and Obama have walked a tightrope with their Russian counterparts in order to preserve friendly relations with the former U.S. adversary while also ramping up pressure to improve treatment toward ethnic minorities within the country. Perhaps the most startling revelation of the past few weeks was the announcement that Russian President Demitriy Medvedev opposes the country’s 14 year old moratorium on the death penalty, but will continue to enforce it out of deference to the international community.

Some may be surprised at Medvedev’s respect for international law that was routinely trampled by the Americans in the Bush era. Others may be surprised at the President’s exercise of power given the fact that he is commonly seen as a figurehead for former President Vladimir Putin, who is widely presumed to wield most of the power in the country. Not me. I’m still hung up on the fact that Russia doesn’t have a death penalty. Really? I thought those guys were totally barbaric and would love to kill political dissidents in really archaic and cruel ways.

Seriously- this is the country that gave us the gulags, a bloody revolution that ended in assassinated rulers, and a decades-long arms race that resulted in millions of people starving just so they wouldn’t have to look weak to the West. Russians are known for enduring great pain and suffering, for being ruggedly individualistic, for heavy drinking, and for aggressively violent tendencies. To me, that personality screams out “Texas.” And who loves the death penalty more than anyone else in America? That’s right, the Texans! Both populations even rely on oil money to support huge disparities in wealth within their borders. Sure, Texas has money and Russia doesn’t, but it seems to me that widespread poverty would lead to more executions, not fewer.


[RIGHT- Make no mistake, Russia knows all there is to know about death.]

So how the hell did Russia end up without a death penalty? Supposedly they signed the European Convention on Civil Rights in 1996, and part of that document was an agreement to institute a moratorium on the death penalty. You’re telling me that Europe is collectively imposing its will on Russia through non-coercive force? I call bullshit. Apparently you’ve never heard of a little thing called the Napoleonic Wars. I mean, a half century ago there was a world war brewing between one country that had nuclear weapons and one that didn’t have nuclear weapons, and half of Europe joined the country that DIDN’T have nuclear weapons out of sheer terror. If Russia tried to execute someone, or even if they wanted to repeal the moratorium entirely, nobody is going to stand up to them. It would be a race to see who could concede more quickly. My money is on France; those guys love to surrender. They would give in faster than the Pope will cover up the next child molestation allegation against a bishop.

Even though the personality of the country does not offer any clues as to why Russia doesn’t have a death penalty, the timing of the moratorium might offer some hints. See, in 1996 Boris Yeltsin was still the President of Russia, and if Boris Yeltsin was anything, he was a huge drunk. Really, you could get a second-hand buzz off of that guy just by smelling his vodka-tinged sweat through the armpits of his ratty suit coats. Thus, it is eminently possible that Yeltsin was drunk when he signed the treaty, like that story about how the Yankees and Red Sox agreed to trade Joe Dimaggio for Ted Williams, but changed their minds when they sobered up the next morning, only Yeltsin never sobered up.

I have my own theory, though, and I call it the “White Fang” theory. In White Fang, Grey Beaver (no relation to former California Governor Gray Davis, or to fictional-pornstar-that-I-just-made-up Beatrix Beaver) had this badass dog named White Fang, but some guy named Beauty Smith- I know, super gay name- gave Grey Beaver whiskey until he was addicted and traded the dog for a bottle of whiskey, thus setting the stage for centuries of relations between European immigrants in North America and the indigenous populations. See, I think that the Europeans were worried about Russia killing a bunch of dissidents, and in their tricky, whiny, sniveling liberal way of doing business, they started giving Yeltsin free booze. After awhile, they started making him pay for the booze, and he quickly ran out of money. Then, they said that the only way he could have more booze was if he banned the death penalty, so like anybody who has seen Sober House with Dr. Drew knows, he immediately signed off to get his next fix.

However the policy came to be, I have seen enough James Bond movies to know that the Russians operate an extensive and shady underground world. It is extremely possible, even probable that the Russians contract out their executions to the Russian mafia that made its money through extreme cronyism of doling out the national industries after the fall of communism. Is it so far-fetched that these captains of industry that perform what used to be government functions such as drilling for oil and collecting garbage have also taken on the former public business of killing political adversaries and criminals? I think not. In fact, after seeing the Viggo Mortensen documentary “Eastern Promises,” I would be surprised if the Russian mafia didn’t take advantage of that tremendous money-making opportunity, even if they had to do so buckass naked. If they will take money from anyone and are willing to kill to earn that money, they might as well take money from the government to kill as well.


I guess that scenario makes the most sense, and it puts my mind at ease, because it was really bothering me to think that Russia- bastion of cold-blooded killing and human rights violations-would do something so humanitarian and equitable. But if they’re really just shifting the responsibility to private individuals, turning a blind eye, and enriching the former ruling class, it seems very typical of the Russian system. Glad we got that sorted out.