if you rewind the tape back to the rosily splendiferous dawn of time, when men were men, women were women, and everyone tended to speak with a fair deal more gurgling and spittle than they do now, you'll notice that two things remain true. no matter what blurry segment of history you decide to examine closely, folks can be reliably counted on to (a) want to compete against each other to establish varying sorts of intellectual or physical dominance, and (b) cheat.

yes, cheating -- that morally reprehensible shortcut to glory that always seems to tantalizingly circumvent the omnipresent traffic jams that clog the main thoroughfares of life. it croons its siren song from shadowed alleyways, telling us, hey, you're better than those chumps out there, buddy, so why don't you swing along this way and i'll show you a good time? at the end of the day, the moon would cheat the sun out of a few precious minutes of twilight if it could. (and, oddly enough, it HAS managed to do so in the past; unfortunately, each case related to those transgressions was thrown out, on account of the sun constantly incinerating the evidence.)

let's face it: there are a LOT of ways to get the proverbial leg up on your competition nowadays. magical boots of speed, voodoo charms, radioactive wheaties -- all of these things are readily available... all hang low on contention's fruit tree. and in a creative universe where people are often animals, and those animals are often powerful enough to juggle forklifts, well... a "competitive edge" is sometimes necessary, and occasionally even smiled upon in order to succeed.

assuming the event staff doesn't catch you, that is. :]