Bathroom Monologue: Historical Friction

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, famous author of the Sherlock Holmes series where a detective used keen deduction to find physically plausible answers to seemingly impossible or supernatural crimes, believed Harry Houdini was a nefarious magician who used his immense spiritual powers to block those of others when testing them in order to "debunk" their mysticism and ruin their careers. This is untrue. Mr. Houdini was not nefarious at all, but altruistically spent his time putting down amateur wizards who were exposing the craft for the few true magic masters. If the Virgin Mary showing up on a grilled cheese sandwich can be covered on CNN, you can imagine what would happen to somebody who can raise the dead, play chess with them, and have them fall back over at the first check. Magicians need privacy to get their work done. What work? Keeping miracles to a minimum and making the planet seem normal. How good of a job do they do? Well, you saw the Virgin Mary grilled cheese, but did you see the Last Supper wheel of Brie? No, and that's all thanks to Mr. Houdini.