Yes, I really want to get to the bottom of this thing, this Texas chainsaw business. The Urmythos, if there is one, the crimson fons et origo. What really happened? Did somebody just fire up a chainsaw and go berserk? Or is there more to it than that? All should be revealed in Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning.

Like a lot of people, I like to feel that the insane violence I'm watching has some point. I suppose I'm just feeding my ergo here, but slashing and bloodletting, amusing as it is, must make sense if the viewer is to go away aesthetically satisfied. Last night on TV, for example, I saw a semi-conscious, battered man being hoisted onto a meathook, and I thought, “What do you have to do to deserve that? Because that's a kind of awful thing to be showing people.” Luckily, it turned out he was bad.

Then I saw an episode of CSI: SVP in which a suspect was kicked around by that peevish bald guy. It turned out he didn't know anything, oops! So he lost a few teeth, big deal. Everyone knows the “perps” being sought by CSI: VIP are the worst, and if you so much as live in the same building or sell them a pack of cigarettes, expect a beating.

These CSI shows often have a lot of guff about the heroes' family difficulties. In this same episode detective Melonhead's teenage daughter was acting up, something about how Melonhead had done something to her boyfriend. What they should do is have a spinoff called CSI: MELONHEAD, in which Melonhead is the bumblin' dad with a whacky family and an eccentric neighbour. It's always something. Everyone's trading zingers, but they have stressful problems, and Melonhead helps everyone by hanging them on meathooks.