Spontaneous Musings

(I'm exaggerating. This is my sense of humor, which apparently runs in my family.)

Me: Checking in - I'm safe. Subway shooting was nowhere near me.
Bro: Yea, I checked you're proximity and figured you'd have a hard time getting a gun. Too soon? Sorry.. Glad you're okay.

Mother: LOL!

Me: Every time I take the subway with the "children" on it, I have two thoughts, 1) I'm glad I never had kids, and 2) the sudden desire to go back in time and neuter my entire generation.
Mother: LOL!

So see? We have a dark sense of humor in my family. [I find the MASH theme song amusing.]

***

Luckily for me - I left for work at 6:30 am, and got there at 7:54 am. I was seated at my desk, working away, when some nitwit decided to board a subway with a gas mask, and open fire on the poor passengers. It was on a "moving" train and during rush hour (8:30 or thereabouts). 16-19 people were injured, at least 10 fatally shot. Scary and tragic.

The subway line was the R line. I take the G train, or the Q, if it's not working. Sometimes the F to the R if hard pressed, but that's further north. And not today.
( Read more... )
***

COVID

Less and less masks on subways and stations. It's annoying. Also hardly anyone wears them at work - outside of a few colleagues in my area of cubicle land. I told folks going on the site tour - that since it is being held outdoors - we weren't enforcing masks.

According to Mother, the Mayor has COVID now.

And my Doctor wants me to get the fourth shot or second booster. (I would rather rate until it is easy to come by. Since she's not giving it to me, and neither is crazy company...I see no rush. Doc is recommending it to all patients over 50.) Doc also wants to increase Metroformin to 1000 at night, and 500 in the morning, with statins for Cholesterol.

Mother is throwing caution to the winds and going to see Hamilton in Charleston with her retirement center in July. She figures her knee will be healed by then. If not, she'll find someone who can buy her ticket.

***

I may not get to see my niece in April after all. Apparently her boyfriend is coming up for her birthday, and then she's expected to go back with him to Virginia. Apparently, he's been traveling to see her - so now it's her turn? Oh poor baby - he had to go all the way to London and Scotland to see his girlfriend. Must be tough. The travails of the rich.

I foresee issues in my niece's future regarding social work. From her perspective there's the extremely wealthy and there's my niece's family.

Mother: well she is studying poverty.
Me: Not the same thing.

***

Determined that the woozy/dizziness of yesterday, which I felt again today - was most likely not do to the CBD as previously thought, but due to the combination of allergies and shifts in barometric pressure playing havoc with my ves·tib·u·lar system. (When you look up a word on Google - it has an audio of the word, and phonetic spelling. I looked it up because while I have a great vocabulary, I can't spell. ) Anyhow, I figured this out when it happened again at work this morning - and was quickly remedied with a tynenol sinus allergy pill.

**

Anyhow, hoping everyone has a safe night and a safe rest of the week. No crazy gunmen disrupting it. Workplace sent out an email telling us to be safe. (It did not say avoid the trains - since obviously we couldn't.) Also I happen to work for a transportation agency. On the way home, there were police all over the place. Atlantic Avenue Terminal had cops with dogs. Why they needed dogs, I don't know. Can the German Shepards sniff out guns? (They always use German Shepards, and Doberman's for some reason.)

I think I'm a bit bored. Television has not been gripping me this summer. And I can't get into the book I'm supposed to be reading for book club. So wandered on line, while struggling with my new novel, to figure out what FaceBook was talking about -- in regards to the two television journalists being shot in Virgina.

Saw the video. And....words fail. Except, isn't it time we made all firearms and the possession of firearms illegal? Or at the very least, regulated their use?

Here's a passage from my recently published novel, Doing Time on Planet Earth about Guns. The conversation is between Fiske, a private detective with a fake British accent, and Caddy, who is sick of her life and just wants an end to it. Caddy knows nothing about guns.

She studied the gun in her palm, and slowly lifted it and aimed at him. “I could shoot you.”

He smiled, his teeth glinting against the light. “You could, but you won’t.” Nothing else in his posture changed, just the smile, which lingered.

“What makes you so sure? I flipped off the safety. I have it aimed directly at your heart. One press…”

He let the cigarette drop and stubbed it out with his boot. “A couple of reasons. One,” he held up a finger, “you’ve obviously never fired a gun before, so your stance is completely off. Two,” he lifted another finger, “your aim is too high and too much to the right – you’re more likely to hit the lamp pole behind me or that tower. You might nip my jacket. But that’s about it.”

Caddy looked down at the gun and back at him. She shifted her stance and turned the gun back on herself. “What if I shot myself?”

He was silent. Studying her. And she wondered how long he’d been there, watching, before he spoke up. A while, she guessed. She looked down at the gun in her hands, thinking there really wasn’t anything he could do to stop her. She had the gun. And it was pointed directly at her chest.

“Not sure I’d do that if I were you.”

“Why? Don’t tell me it won’t kill me.”

“Wasn’t going to. Will kill you. But you won’t like it.” He pulled out a pack of cigarettes from his pocket, knocked one out, lit it and puffed. “Lots of things will kill you though.” He studied the cigarette in his hand. “According to some nits, this will.” He glanced back at her. “The trick is finding the most pleasant method, unless of course you happen to like pain.”

“Pain?”

“Yep, pain. Gunshot wound to the chest, or actually gut from how you’re holding it, wicked painful. Slow too. Not instant. All your organs fall into your stomach acid and it eats away at them bit by bit. Take’s a few hours, maybe more. Some poor slobs actually make it all the way to the emergency room first, before they kick it.”

“Fine.” She lifted the gun to her head. “How about I just blow my brains out, no pain there. Instant death.”

“Depends.”

“On what?”

“Well,” he tapped the center of his forehead, “you got to aim straight to get the right place, aim wrong you just give yourself chronic brain damage. You’re alive, but you ain’t happy, and worse yet, you’ve lost the ability to end things.”

She moved the gun to her mouth.

“Shoving it in your mouth won’t work either, just make a bloody mess. Knew a bloke once who did that and he just blew out the side of his jaw. Wicked miserable. Also disfigured.”

“What would you suggest then?”

“Throw the piece in the river? No? Right, then.” He strode over to her. She took a step back. “Hey, not going hurt you.” He opened his hands in a gesture she took to be surrender. “You the one with the piece, not me, eh?” She nodded and let him come close. Close enough that she could smell the musky scent of his cologne, which mingled with the leather and smoke. His eyes were dark in his face, too dark to make out the color even at this distance. Nose to nose. She shivered backing up. “Hey, no worries. Not going to molest you. Just going show you something.” She held herself still, one of his hands hovered over her left breast, while his other gripped the gun.

“Now there are a couple of ways you could do it . You could,” he said, tugging at the gun, but she held tight to it, so all he managed was to get her hand to follow his, “hold it over your heart. Shoot twice, and bam, dead. Not instant. Packs a wallop though, feels a bit like someone punching you hard in the breast, hard enough you’d feel as if you’d fallen into that wooden planking below us. But not instant. Gunshots to the heart aren’t instant death – and they are wicked painful. About two, three minutes, feeling your lungs fill up with blood. Suffocating on it. Still, effective.” His hand felt strong and calloused, rough on hers. He didn’t stroke her fingers so much as just rest his over them as he directed where she should point the gun. He turned her hand carefully and pointed the gun at himself, where his heart must be. “It’s actually more effective when some other bloke does it. They can get three or four shots in. One can kill you, but three or four? Death comes much faster. Still painful. No just going to sleep. You feel your body break down on you.” He turned the gun again, raising it, bit by bit up her body cavity. “Here, round your neck, also effective, but more painful than the heart. Cutting people’s throats is a nasty way to die-- suffocate and bleed at the same time. Of course it takes just a few minutes, seconds really, but you know how long a second can feel? Peeps always saying just be a sec, you know? You look at your watch and that damn second feels like a fucking hour, don’t it?” Raised the gun higher and pressed the barrel against the bottom of her chin. “Most poor slobs do it like this. Pressing it real close, like the old muzzle is kissing the skin. Thinking they’ll just blow their blooming heads off. Don’t work though. All they manage is to blow off their jaw.”

He pulled back from her, still gripping the gun, wrestling it from her grasp this time. Taken by surprise, Caddy let go and stumbled backwards, catching herself against the rim of the bridge. He lifted the gun and pressed the barrel against the side of his head. “You could try the traditional approach, one you always see them do in TV shows and movies, and it’s effective. Only one problem: You could survive, and trust me, this ain’t an injury you want to survive. Suicide, babe, it’s a bitch. There’s no going gently into that good night. No matter how you choose to cut it.”

He studied the gun. Flipped the safety on and off again. Lifted it, and just as she assumed he was going to hand it to her or empty it, he aimed it directly at her instead. She backed up. “Question is how badly do you want it? Do you want it bad enough to feel pain? And what type of pain? The burning gut pain?” He aimed for her stomach and her hands darted there to protect herself. “Or the burn in the chest, not as slow perhaps and far more effective, no way out of that one. No going back. At least with stomach wounds, you got an outside chance.” He lifted the gun higher, stepping towards her. “Or would you prefer a nice clean bullet between them pretty eyes? Be dead pretty quickly, assuming my aim wasn’t off. Would hurt a bit. Feeling your head explode.” He took two more steps towards her, pinning her against the rim of the bridge. “So, what you say? Want me to pull the trigger? Take you out? Clean as a whistle?”

Caddy said nothing. Breathing hard.

He stepped back again. Turned the gun around and pointed it at himself. “Or should I just take my own self out? With you watching.”

“No.” she stepped forward.

“What? Don’t like that? What would you do? I got the gun.”

She stared at him, feeling the color leave her cheeks. She felt ill. “Can I have my gun back now, please?”

“What’s wrong? Don’t like the game?”

Before I wrote the book, I did a bit of research on gunshot wounds, and bullets. Discovered it's a nasty way to die. Knife wounds aren't quite as bad. But a bullet rips through the body.

Also, a gun only has one purpose to kill, maim, destroy, or injure something. Knives cut food and are used in cooking preparation. Cars get you from one place to another. Arrows not alot of purpose that I can see outside of killing things, but at least you have a fighting chance, and there's an artistry to it.

I honestly don't see the point of a gun unless you want to kill something, whether it is in the act of protecting yourself, collecting a trophy, seeking vengeance, an act of hatred, etc. You don't need a gun to hunt -- arrows work fine, as do knives, also more challenging. Also, you don't really need to hunt -- since we have this nifty thing now called grocery stores and butcher stores. Although, I'm willing to make allowances for folks who hunt to eat - such as deer (an overpopulation), rabbit (ditto), squirrels (same), and pigeons.

But handguns, machine guns, etc are unnecessary. All you really need to hunt is a standard rifle.
And...it's been proven that countries around the world that make handguns and machine guns illegal, have a lower rate of gun violence and death than those that don't.

Watching Carousel in the background - forgot what a dark musical that is. The darkest of the Rodgers and Hammerstein oeuvre. It's about a Carousel barker who falls in love with a lovely gal in New England. He gets killed and goes to heaven. And is sent back to help his daughter whose in trouble. But before that happens, he has to tell his story to the star keeper in heaven who is responsible sending him back. In the story, we learn that he was abusive to his pregnant wife, stole, and didn't really work. He comes back to help his daughter who was hurt much like he was and could go down his path. It's a disturbing musical...on a lot of levels, that I hadn't noticed before. I'm willing to bet that one out of three women have either experienced physical or emotional abuse from a boyfriend or father or husband or male boss/teacher etc. Two of my great-grandmothers - one on my father's side, and one on my mother's were beaten to death by their husbands (my great-grandfathers). At least two aunts were either emotionally or physically abused by theirs. And I've heard the excuses. They are all the same. Usually out of anger. Or their own fathers were like this. Or lack of control. I think it's about power mostly...and having none, so they struck out. But it does not excuse it.

Our media gives us mixed messages...as if we ourselves can't quite decide. Is it okay to use violence to resolve our problems? Is it ever okay? And if not, why do we feel compelled or satisfied when we see it resolved in this manner either in a video game or tv show or a film?

Also watched Life on tv this weekend...it's reassuring in that it shows violence exists in nature as well. Perhaps the desire to resolve issues with violence is in the DNA. It is deeply embedded in our genetic code. Animals kill, fight, and chase each other and other animals. Insects do as well. Nature is extraordinarily violent, yet beautiful in its violence, there's a grace to it that is difficult to describe. It reminds me of watching the Jerome Robbins dances from West Side Story, yet here we see the grace of the cheetah landing on the ostrich or the lizard grabbing a pray mantis with its tongue or a pair of birds doing a mating dance of joy across a pond.

( Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution )
( NYC's battle to eat healthy ...it is admittedly becoming a rather absurd one, depending on your point of view. )

Sigh. People bewilder me. Apparently mother nature did not deem it fit to give everyone common sense. And particularly not those of us who decide to become politicians.