The offices of the Awl

For those of you who haven’t heard of Choire Sicha (or, like me, have no fucking idea how to pronounce his name), wake up suckers–he’s Big Media and you’re not.

Worse yet, do you know that he wants to poison your children this Halloween!

Don’t believe me? Think it’s wrong to accuse a perfect stranger (FULL DISCLOSURE: we’re facebook friends, and he once incorrectly identified me as Ted rather than Theodore in an interview he ran on theawl.com, but I’ve never met him) of child-murder?

If it’s wrong, ladies and gentlemen, I don’t want to be right. He’s the one who ran an article earlier this week at The Awl entitled, succinctly enough: “This Is My Year To Finally Poison Some Children.”

What should I take from that? That seems a fairly explicit note of intent, wouldn’t you say?

The police ought to have an entire department devoted to reading headlines such as these, and, if I might steal a line from Mr. Sicha’s post: “strike!” (exclamation point added by me)

Now, now, now, later in the post, Sicha does seem to imply that he’s kidding:

Of course, I’m not interested in killing anyone’s children with poison. I mean, tops, I was sort of thinking just a mild tummy ache. Or! I could make some fake Skittles, that have the reverse flavor-to-color ratio. Like, you eat a yellow one, but it tastes blue.

Or maybe, maybe I could make candy mangoes, and tell the kids they’re candy apples, and then when they eat them, BAM. Surprise mango taste!

You know, just like when you think you’re about to drink milk, but it’s orange juice, and you’re all confused.

Killing them, sheesh! That’s… really mean.

Does he think all of us “straight people” (his term) are saps, boobs, morons, naive to the point of idiocy? Perhaps we are. Perhaps we are. But all I know is that some guy says he wants to poison my little boy I’m taking him at face value, even, as Mr. Sicha asserts, he doesn’t have their death in mind, but a far worse fate: he wants them to work at a DMV.

This is a very bad man.