Jacob Heric

“People always mean well. They cluck their thick tongues, and shake their heads and suggest, oh, so very delicately.”

Norman Bates said that in Psycho. He said it in the parlor scene as Marion nibbled on sandwiches, taxidermy looming, and politely suggested that Norman put his mother in the madhouse. We watched it the other night, streamed it on netflix (I always said I was never going to be one of those people who put a television in their bedroom, but here we are logging countless hours on the macbook in bed watching movies). It’s a great film. Lots of long, jarring shots: Marion’s face on the bathroom floor, Norman’s neck and chin above the guest register.
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We bought our biennial subscription to cable (hello Time Warner, fuck you I hate you) at the Cumberland County Fair. Who doesn’t buy their cable at the fair? This year it was $39.95 for a year of digital cable. Not as good as the $29.99 I got for basic cable two years ago, but better nonetheless than the $57.95 that they normally charge for garbage television. It’s a racket, we know it, paying anything for commercial television. But it’s better than ritualistic suicide or violent hard drinking, both things that come to mind on dark, raw February nights. So, we indulge ourselves as winter comes.

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