Wolf at the Door

“I'll huff, and I'll puff, and I'll blow your house down!”

Don't you just hate it when you hear that and look outside only to find that the big bad wolf is at your door again?

Throughout history, wolves have often been associated with being the bad guys. Whether they're trying to eat you, or trying to trick you and then eat you, or are trying to trick you, blow your house down, and then eat you, it seems that in the vast majority of our stories, wolves are usually seen as evil. We see this every single day in our various forms of media and entertainment. How many times have you seen a wolf attack someone on a TV movie, or a werewolf devour an unsuspecting actress that always seems to have a dearth of talent (and of clothes)? Seriously, watch the Syfy channel sometime. We sing about wolves, we tell stories about them, and we watch them on television. Our imaginations run wild with the thought of wolves, for whatever reason. Our literature is a reflection of us during the time in which it was written. Our thoughts, values, emotions, current events, etc are all captured in one form or another via literature. One of my favorite examples of this involving a wolf is a little song by a favorite band of mine. You can check it out here. 

The song “Wolf at the Door” off the album Hail to the Thief by Radiohead features lyrics such as

“I keep the wolf from the door

But he calls me up

Calls me on the phone

Tells me all the ways that he's gonna mess me up

Steal all my children

If I don't pay the ransom

But I'll never see him again

If I squeal to the cops”

As with anything, this can be interpreted in a number of ways. There is certainly symbolism to be found in these lyrics though, and there is no mistaking that the “wolf at the door” represents bad and scary things. It represents everything we are afraid of, from violence, to losing what is most precious to us, to being harassed, etc. The wolf represents misfortune in our lives. Humans tend to fear what they do not understand. In this case we associated evil with wolves, because for a long time we really didn't understand them (we did the same thing with snakes and other so-called beasts). This didn't help us to cope with the unknown though, and if anything, all it did was make us fear wolves.

It's said that having fear is a sign of intelligence. After all, an intelligent person would not dive off of a cliff onto jagged rocks because they understand that they would be greeted at the bottom by a most unfortunate fate. This is something that is in us from birth. We don't have to be taught to be afraid of something, although in this case, we were. Certainly wolves have been known to attack humans, but that's merely one side of the story. We see this on television and hear stories about it, but let's talk about the facts.

Wolves are carnivores, and as such they will eat a human if it comes to it, but they certainly do not hunt us. Attacks on humans are out of desperation. They often occur in the winter when food is scarce and a pack of wolves are starving to death. Even then, it's really only likely to occur if you come upon a starving pack by yourself. Wolves are naturally afraid of humans (as are other animals) and will never ordinarily seek a human out. It has to be a perfect storm really, for a wolf to attack a person. Predators don't want a challenge; they want something easy and risk-free. The most realistic danger that wolves pose to man is if someone were to leave a baby unattended to outside. Of course that would be a different story than those above. Even then though, wolves don't go into neighborhoods looking for humans to feast upon. In fact, if they still had access to the forests that they once did, this would come up even less.

Our fear of wolves led to a massive campaign to have them exterminated. It was even the federal government's job for some time. Eventually, thousands upon thousands of these animals had been killed. North America, an area once home to a thriving population of various species of wolves, had almost lost all of them be the end of the 19^th century going into the 20^th. Many areas are still virtually barren when it comes to wolves. They were hunted to near extinction.

They have been reintroduced in different areas though, and they seem to be doing OK. The government has been doing quite a lot to help the wolves take to their surroundings again. They are treated as endangered animals and are largely protected. In recent years we've seen the truth about wolves begin to come out. They aren't bloodthirsty beasts who skulk around looking for their next human to eat, they are animals who play an important role in the land we call ours, and in the environment in general. They help keep the number of pests such as deer, ground squirrels, and other rodents down.

It's time we stop killing the things we don't understand. We need to accept the fact that we don't always have the answers to the questions posed to us, even in our 21^st century world. Wolves are not to be feared, but admired.

Now if you'll excuse me, I have to get the door. 

Nick Mamatas is a Putz

After listening to his interview, I realized that he is exactly the type of person I believed him to be. He is snide and overconfident in his (lack of) abilities. Throughout the interview he repeatedly mocks his clients and continually tries to assert his mental dominance over the majority of the human race. He even went so far as to mention how he used to sabotage certain clients based on if they were "nasty" and hurt his feelings. Nick would send the client's professor a copy of the "model" paper he wrote for the student and of course many students did not make much of an attempt, if any, to alter the paper.

Nick really did it this time. I mean I knew that he was a loser, but this really cemented it for me. He took such pride and joy in propping himself up as some superior being who was capable of writing term papers which normal people were too stupid to do. He laughed in between his remarks and didn't even attempt to dress up his disgusting ways. Mamatas comes across as sleazy and untrustworthy, often talking too quickly for his own good. Ego drips off of every word he says and it feels as though he might asphyxiate from it at many points. This interview was great. It really proved once and for all how much of a creep he is, and how little respect he has for those who used his services. Nick Mamatas does not care about his clients and he never did. All he cared about was making a quick buck.

He claims this job afforded him the free time to be able to work on novels and other projects, but seriously, can anyone name something written by him? That is, besides your last term paper.

Nick Mamatas Will Write You a Six Page Term Paper...If You Have 600 Dollars

It's 1:57 AM and you're still awake because you have a term paper due in six hours. You know that you'll never finish your six page paper on "magical realism in Latin American fiction", and the stark realization that you're going to fail your literature class is beginning to set in. You're in the agonizing process of ripping your hair out fistful by fistful until you have a thought. "What if I could pay someone to do this for me?" Well, Nick Mamatas would have written it for you.

Once (and some would argue still) an aspiring writer, he took a job writing term papers for cash. It's tough to put his motivation for taking the job better than him. "Need $100 by Friday to keep the lights on? No sweat. Plenty of kids need 10 pages on Hamlet by Thursday." It was quick, easy money. Wait, did I say easy? Well yes, according to Nick, writing term papers isn't just good for quick cash, but it's also very simple. The trick is that you don't try to write an actual paper, you simply extend the length of the information and topic to fit whatever length paper the client wanted.

When speaking about his girlfriend trying to write one, he commented "She tried to write a paper, instead of filling five pages." He outlines the steps he would take and even brags about an instance when a friend of his was trying to write a term paper on an obscure subject (magical realism in Latin American fiction to be precise), and had to give up after working on it for hours. Nick claims "She was still weeping, chain-smoking cigarettes, and shouting at me at 2 a.m.  I took 20 minutes and finished the paper, mostly by extending sentences until all the paragraphs ended with an orphaned word on a line of its own."

The other trick he utilized to make writing paper after paper more interesting was humor. "In business papers, I'd often cite Marxist sources. When given an open topic assignment on ethics, I'd write on the ethics of buying term papers, and even include the broker's Web site as a source." He even went as far as to embarrass his clients in certain situations, such as "Whenever papers needed to refer to a client's own life experiences, I'd give the student various sexual hang-ups."

He tries to justify selling term papers, but I'm not buying. He claims that students "are being cheated by the schools that take tuition and give nothing in exchange." He attempts to give this occupation a quality of nobility, but if we go off of his argument that money-grubbing schools are cheating students, then we also need to look at the fact that he would charge 100 dollars a page for term papers. He tries to lessen the stigma of his former job by claiming that schools are ripping students off, but then he charges students exorbitant fees himself.

Nick Mamatas tried unsuccessfully to be cool. He's a little-known author who thought that writing an article about his former life of ripping students off would be captivating. Sure, perhaps he truly helped students by writing papers for them, and maybe they would gladly pay what they paid again. Not to mention that Nick didn't set the going rate for his services. He didn't create the industry. At the same time though, he cannot and should not be absolved from his sins. What he did was certainly not something to be proud of, and it's most assuredly not something that is looked upon favorably by others.

Nick Mamatas attempts to set himself apart by saying, "I doubt many experts spent most of a decade writing between one and five term papers a day on virtually every subject." and he succeeds, but not in the way he wanted. He succeeded by surrendering his integrity. He offers a view into the taboo underworld of selling grades to students, but nobody thinks he is cool for it, and I certainly cannot name one work written by him, besides the article I'm commenting on of course (The Term Paper Artist).