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One difficulty with the catalogue of Loch Ness Monster sightings – and one of the reasons so many identities have been proposed for the creature – is that they tend to vary widely. Sometimes the head is small and rounded, sometimes it’s horse-like; sometimes the skin is brown and smooth, sometimes green and scaly; and so on. Nessie detractors often use this fact as evidence that the monster doesn’t exist. But this is unfair. There exists no context, no frame of reference for Loch Ness Monster sightings; real witnesses literally wouldn’t know what they were seeing. And as such, even the most careful, scientifically educated observers would become as the proverbial blind men describing an elephant. And all this is to say nothing of the inevitable mythologizing of a huge, prehistoric-seeming creature of the depths. If there is such a creature as the Loch Ness Monster, this kind of variation of description would be entirely to be expected at this stage.

One unfortunate result of this is that there really cannot be an identity proposal for the creature that is going to neatly explain all of the sightings. Nessies either have small, rounded heads or horse-like heads, and presumably not both. There are, however, certain overall tendencies in the sighting reports, taken as a group, and these tendencies can be instructive.

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The Loch Ness Monster, considered as a previously unrecorded variety of animal, may or may not actually exist. This is a very complicated question, of course, with strong arguments either way, and we will hence not go into it here. But if it does exist, then the first question to ask about it is “What sort of animal is it?” A truly bewildering array of proposals has been made to answer this question. It has been suggested that Nessie is a colossal otter, or a giant sea slug, or, in fact, a long-necked manatee. And so on. All of the proposals have their own problems, some more severe than others. And none of them have the cultural currency of one particular proposal, one so popular that most people seem to think it is actually the only explanation being offered for a real Loch Ness Monster: the plesiosaur hypothesis.

Trouble is, the idea that Nessie is a plesiosaur may be one of the most hole-filled theories of them all. And as such, the seemingly indelible association of the monster with plesiosaurs may have done more damage to the idea of large, unknown animals living in Loch Ness than all of the arguments brought to bear against this idea, combined.

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Once upon a time, Matt Groening, the creator of a show called “The Simpsons” – perhaps you’ve heard of it? – and of another, more consistently funny show called “Futurama,” was nothing more than a lowly alternative cartoonist. His weekly cartoon, “Life in Hell,” was often brilliant, and often just weird. In 1994, he produced an episode of the cartoon entitled “Important Questions About Monsters, by Will and Abe,” Will and Abe being his very young sons. It was an aptly named cartoon. There were a lot of Life in Hells about Will and Abe’s preoccupation with monsters in those days; less so later on. Presumably, their love for monsters was beaten out of them by society, as it is for so many of our nation’s youth. Damn you, society! I could be a king, if not for you!

Anyway, for my next trick, I will now answer Will and Abe’s Important Questions, just 13 short years too late! While balancing on the high wire! You won’t be able to see that part.

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When I tell people that I’m a legally ordained minister, who has performed a good number of weddings, they tend to smile amusedly or even chuckle. Which is understandable. While I’m telling them this, I am, after all, usually wearing a Motorhead shirt, or one with R2-D2 on it. And I do think about Godzilla a lot. Still and all, I actually take a certain pride in the weddings I perform; take out the God, and all a wedding minister has to be is a public speaker. And I like to think I’m pretty good at that. I do serve a purpose, in the end; there are plenty of people in the world who want to get married but who don’t want Baby Jesus involved. I perform weddings for weirdoes, and I do a damn fine job of it.

Which is not to say that all the weddings I do involve costumes or juggling or being up to my waist in tapioca. Most are very serious, respectful affairs, even decent. And the second wedding I ever did – that was one of the stranger things I’ve ever done, insofar as it was fantastically, perfectly normal. Mostly.

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Certainly, a large part of the allure of villainy – a large part of the reason that, on some quiet level, we want to be villains – is that villains have power. They have to; it is a definitive trait. An enemy who is easily thwarted by Our Heroes, whomever they may be, creates no real narrative tension, and can thus hardly really be called a ‘villain.’ Now, this power can take any of a hundred forms; devilish cleverness will do, as will simple possession of henchmen. Let us define ‘power,’ then, for our purposes, as ‘ability to affect one’s environment.’ Or, as Doctor Doom might put it, “The ability to impose one’s iron will upon lesser men, and upon the very nature of time and space itself!” Thanks, Doctor! And we all have that; villains just have more of it.

By this definition, then, there are few great cinematic villains as powerful as the HAL 9000 computer, from 2001: A Space Odyssey. HAL does not merely affect his environment; he is his environment. They come right out and say it: There is, we are told, “not a single aspect of ship operations that’s not under his control.” And there are subtler means of communicating the fact. Dave Bowman asks him how he’s doing; “Everything’s running smoothly,” he replies, which is appropriate – he is everything. HAL appears as a circle, and the circle is a recurring theme throughout the Discovery (the ship that HAL runs). This circle motif also creates a suggestion of completeness; the circle is a symbol of the totality of existence, of the world, that recurs from culture to culture. And beyond the Discovery, beyond HAL, there is nothing, emptiness. The astronauts have the ship, and they have HAL, and they have nothing else – at least, not until HAL is overcome.

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