An old cliche` goes something like this,"A picture is worth a 1,000 words." It is a well known fact that, small children relate to pictures, forming opinions at a very tender age, opinions that last a lifetime. Do you remember your Mother reading your favorite bedtime story (mine was Black Beauty)? Your eye's would follow her finger as she would point out the corresponding pictures to match the words she read to you aloud. There were some bedtime stories that weren't very pleasant BUT, they were composed with a moral in mind i.e.; The Three Little Pigs and Little Red Riding Hood. " They (the characters) aren't real honey," Mother would comfort her very frightened child at the stories end. These stories, were written by Wilhelm and Jacob Grimm well over a century ago and although, they had what was to have been, "A Happy Ending" the mental images of a wolf, boiling to death or being hacked to pieces by a woodsman, was enough to create their own set of nightmares for any child that harbored even an ounce of compassion. The illustrations served only to heighten that horror. What I'm trying to say is, Yes! We are all supposed to be rational adults, who should be able to differentiate between what is real and what is fantasy but, what impression would a child of three form if he/she were to view MF #24's issue containing a very human hand wielding a butcher knife to the throat of a ferret? What of the wayward teen or the emotionally disturbed adult who has access to a ferret? I shudder to think of the consequences. Society as we know it is fraught with violence and inhumanities. Don't you think, it's time to pause and reflect about the role each of us has, and continue to play in perpetuating the insanity? As for my sense of humor? There isn't a day that goes by that, we as a family don't end the day with (at the very least) one belly splitting joke shared among us. So you see, it isn't a matter of humor, it's a matter of taste. I would like to think that the majority of the FML body has a champagne palate in contrast to the moonshine served up from time to time. I propose that we enter into our new millennium with a renewed spirit in what was once, responsible journalism? It all boils down to this, choices, choices that can either set us apart from all the rest or to lump us all into a macabre ball of sensationalists and I hear that, that ball is rapidly loosing it's bounce. And I Like That! [MA] [Posted in FML issue 2779]