I have not seen No Country for Old Men (and have little desire to), but I have noticed a tendency of those who [presumably] have to mention “No Country for Old Men’s Anton Chigurh” as a paradigm of acute brutality, which is just to say that I try to keep tabs on how chunks of arcane collective knowledge make their way into my working cultural vocabulary; it is a phenomenon I have attempted to chart for some time–indeed, I can tell you precisely how I came to unequivocally know who Paris Hilton is¹, and will soon be done with charting my increasing familiarity with Sienna Miller²!

1. This is a lie.↩
2. Who?↩