The Image That Kills will be a four part inquiry through analytical observation of media and it's effect on personhood and social neurosis. The main hypothesis is that imbedded images help to create a sickly people. I am not proposing such common place tautologies as violence on television is responsible for violence in culture but a cohesive demonstration that convoluted and often false social messages make for a neurotic, psychotic, depressive, self-decaying person and manifestly a society that is at a lack of value.

     This Suicide Hotline will serve as the launching pad for the Image That Kills, outlining the four areas I am devoting the most attention to. I do not expect to be able to fully construct this piece through the-hold, in order for me to properly expand this work would be a book project, demanding much more time and research than I am currently interested in investing. The four headers for the parts are as follows:

• The Split: The cult of distraction and the creation of unreality. What we see and hear through the media verse what we see and know in life.

• Connection: The symphony of mass suffering and how people turn to the celebration of death and pain due to the lack of actual living involved in being alive.

• Separation: How modern day stereotypes and images are used to pit people against each other, virtually reinstating a new type of segregation that is mental as opposed to physical. (Homosexual Vs. Straight, Rich Vs. Poor, White Poor Vs African American, Men Vs Women and so on). This will also investigate how this sort of projected we are all very different but can still work together somehow mentality is used to keep all people from ever realizing any totality of harmony within their community and society at large.

• Results: Alienation, alcoholism, anorexia, anxiety, isolationism, workaholism, retail therapy, therapy, addiction, escapism and eventually the desire to assimilate into the culture of the image that kills.

     Part one will set up and point out ways in which every one of us is disserviced by outlets controlling the flow of information. Let me note that I am not proposing a thesis where I see a limited group of people controlling the other, rather it is our social mores and socialization controlling us all. I do not believe or suppose there is a puppeteer pulling the strings behind the scenes but rather that even such a puppeteer is under the control of a perpetual cultural illusion. To some degree there may be those who have more power than others, but even those with power are limited by the control exerted upon them by their basic belief system. Ultimately I hope to show, somewhat, how what we are shown and told about how we are suppose to be and how we are suppose to behave does not match up with what we know through experience or how we feel. I believe this leads to mass confusion, despondency and disbelief.

     The remedy that we are offered is the symphony of suffering, where all people join together under the slave masters of powerlessness and hopelessness. Not only are we lead to believe that there is something a little wrong with everyone, but that this something that is a little wrong with us is what joins us together and the only way for us to find a commonality with others. Basically, this underlying belief keeps us bound to our suffering, first minimizing it as a triviality and secondly reinforcing that it is okay to feel fucked up constantly as long as you don't miss any pills or doctor appointments.
     Although we are seemingly told over and over again that we need to work on ourselves and that we are all joined we are also bombarded with symbols and ideologies that perpetuate how different we all are. Not only are we all different but these differences are inherent and in some mysterious way unable to avoid or get passed. Working on yourself then takes precedence over working with other people to solve any types of problems that effect each of us.
     Desperation eventually leads us to self-destruction. Subconscious acting out is a reactionary mechanism of attack against what is causing our ills, which we are taught we cannot do anything to stop. For instance, the happy worker who one day has a nervous breakdown for no apparent reason and is then sent off to the analyst, the woman or man who after years of reading fitness magazines that just one day up and decides to go find an enamel precipice of salvation and ejaculates vomit into the opening.
     Last months issue acted for myself as an emotional jettison. Now that the air has been cleared and I am redevout to my mission for the tantalization of new possibilities I am embarking on what I see as an expenditure of the utmost importance; a true observational, cross disciplinary look into the causes of neurosis and mental illness...one that is not based on any sort of genetic or biological inherency but rather a social one. To show why and how is not enough for me, I also would like to attempt to over ideas for solutions that are life-affirming and possibly socially redirective.
     If anyone has any suggestions or comments regarding this or anything else feel free to email me at anniemcmz@yahoo.com

Anne McMillen (AKA) AnnieM is a manic depressive who is currently living on the charity of her brothers couch. She is very single although there is a certain girl whose pants Annie is dying to get into, and there is also a guy who has a script for Oxycotin that Annie’s been thinking of “dating”. In her free time (which is all of her time) she enjoys substance abuse, video games, reading philosophy (because she is that pretentious), listening to music, and being a normal asshole from Ohio. When not busy playing pool or online spades, Annie some how fines time to write, obsessivly compulsivly, leaving her with a large arsenal of words she plans on unleashing on the “free” world.