Memorial Day is over, but every day is still gray

Every time I read about a new act of violence (gun violence in particular) I feel like I've been hit with a baseball bat. The collective head of the United States has been beaten into a coma by the metaphorical bat of gun violence.

My two cents (which won't buy anything anymore): The two noblest aims of a free, democratic society are 1) to ensure that freedom of speech/expression allows every voice to say what it wills and 2) to ensure that the majority will of the people [regulated by an agreed upon (although inherently imperfect/evolving) moral code enforced by checks and balances] is enacted.

Mix capitalism into those principles and you're left with two two-word slogans that can basically explain your nation's entire history: "Sex sells" and "Money talks".

I've seen these people, ordinary citizens, in the news lately who walk around heavily populated areas (downtown, fast food restaurants, etc.) with their rifles and their shotguns strapped around them, in plain view. Their proclamation is that they are out supporting the 2nd amendment and trying to raise people's awareness that guns are not the problem. When people call the police on them because they are scared, they maintain civility while defending their freedoms (and videotape everything to post on the God-forsaken wasteland known as the internet, where intelligent, informed discourse came to die). To me, this is misleading. Essentially what these people are doing is patrolling areas with weapons stating that they're deterring crime and that they're the good guys.

But I keep thinking this: the reason we have police, the reason we have a military, is so that the vast majority of us who don't sacrifice ourselves in the line of duty can live a life free from fear. It is an horrific shame that we live in a nation where we can walk a downtown street, enter a movie theater, or simply go to school, and be afraid. Un-uniformed men patrolling our streets proclaiming to be our best option against gun violence is a sad state of affairs, and that's the point they're missing, I think.

Could I say I wouldn't have paid all the riches in the world for one of them to be present when the massacre at Sandy Hook took place? No, I couldn't. A right-minded person armed with a rifle could've helped. Could I say that I'd rather they, the responsible majority, have no access to guns so long as it ensured better gun violence prevention? Absolutely. The beauty is, neither extreme is required. America is supposed to be a rational place that takes the black and white issues of the world and turn them gray, prizing individuality and nuance. I suppose it's inevitable that that experiment failed. 

Imagine a guy walks around an elementary school with a loaded rifle, then walks in.

Now imagine a guy who walks around with a rifle strapped around himself in traditionally non-violent neighborhoods in order to display that he has a free right to carry a deadly weapon and to proclaim to the media that he is the only true source of protection (statistically speaking, have these stand-your-ground gun-toting people made any kind of significant impact on violent crime?).

That's the third world to me. But America has long been on this road of whip-'em-out to see whose is bigger. And like the 2nd law of thermodynamics, it shows that all spirals generated by uninformed, uneducated, disassociated participants is downward.

Every time I read about gun violence I think about two people that used to be in my life. And I think about how many million times over I would wish to suffer and die before any type of violent crime or even any provocative, potentially frightening situation should befall them. A little girl should not have to walk down the street and wonder why normal people are carrying rifles, as though we lived in a war zone. She shouldn't have to hear the explanation, "We're the only thing standing between you and certain (unpredictable) slaughter" but, more than that, she should not have to live a society where that is a valid explanation.

"Hashtag" fuck guns and fuck violent people. Words rule.

an "ugh" with infinite u's, a "sigh" with an infinite s

I've had a couple good jobs in this life, and I've had a bunch of horrible ones.

The worst job I've ever had is not even emailing her.

Great Moments In 21st Century Television

Homer: "Wait wait wait wait wait. No matter what I did, no matter how many people lost their pensions, it's forgiven like that?"

Catholic priest: "If you truly repent, then yes."

Homer: "Ooookay, let's make some magic here. I wiped a booger on your shirt, I made a dog and a cat kiss, I swiped a bolted down TV from a Holiday Inn, I coveted the wife in Jaws 2, I lied to a waiter, I masturbated eight billion times and I have no plans to stop masturbating in the future. Woohoo, I'm clean!"

Sometimes you have to wonder what's the point in even keeping track.

Maya Angelou died, but so did a pregnant Pakistani woman who was stoned to death for marrying a man against her family's wishes.

Sigh.

Great Moments In 20th Century Film

Shelley Winters' performance in Lolita.

Best line: "I wouldn't care if your maternal grandfather turned out to be a Turk... but if I ever found out you didn't believe in God, I think I would commit suicide."

Okay, that's just her funniest line, not necessarily her best. It really is a great performance.

what they call "eventful"

Spent a couple hours at the park, alternating between reading and kicking the soccer ball around. Today mostly listened to Amos Lee and then Okkervil River. Hooked on O.R.'s "Where The Spirit Left Us". I drove down the cliffside to walk in the ocean at La Jolla beach, but it was far too crowded. While driving down the road I saw a homeless man with his pants down squatting over a gutter. He began pulling his pants up as I passed by. I can only assume that he was defecating.

On any normal day, a homeless man defecating into a sewer opening would be the strangest sight that one would see. But today took a turn for the not normal quickly. Since La Jolla was too crowded I decided to visit the beach at Torrey Pines. Torrey Pines is the area directly north of the Salk Institute, which you may (probably not) recall is my favorite place in San Diego. Torrey Pines is a park on a cliff where para-gliders and hang-gliders launch from. There's a steep dirt staircase cut into the cliff that leads down to a beach. The beach is known as Black's Beach, and I had never been there. I descended the steps, and once I reached the sand I was greeted by a naked man in a baseball cap. At first I thought he was a confused elderly man. But after seeing several men walking naked across the sand, penises dangling, I quickly realized that it must be a beach where clothing is optional. As difficult as the descent was, I can't say it didn't make sense. But most people were clothed and I wasn't about to walk straight back up the steep stairs, so I took off my shoes and socks (and my shoes and socks only!) and went for a stroll in the waves. According to Wikipedia, "Black's Beach is the largest nudist beach in the United States". I had no idea. Really only about 17% of the population was nude.

Anyway, nudity doesn't bother me. Unless it's myself.

Strange day. The whole time all I could think was, "She would be laughing so hard if I could tell this story to her myself." I could come home and when she asked, "How was your day?" I could respond, "It was good. I practiced soccer, saw a homeless man pooping into the sewer, and then I unwittingly stumbled upon the largest nude beach in all of the United States." If that didn't make her smile, then I don't know what would.

"Spent a lot of time staring at the ceiling,
spent a lot of time talking to walls.
Spent a lot of time chasing that old time feeling,
spent a lot of time waiting on your call."

"Only wary in our lives
open-eyed and half-ashamed, it's just that way.
Float down that river, freezing, tired, fully-wired, a total waste.
That's where the spirit left us.
Only wary in our lives
your eyes all fire, your mind aflame, don't be dismayed.
When this sobbing world goes screaming by, I swear that if I had my way,
you know I would have blessed it."

Brief Encounter

Sure, naturally you assume I'm referencing famed British director David Lean's early 1945 film Brief Encounter, an adaptation of a Noel Coward play about a married mother's passionate but doomed tryst with a stranger. But I'm not.

The brief encounter I'm referencing took place at a grocery store. I was standing in line, the man ahead of me in a loose gray tank top, shorts and sandals. He was, by my estimation, in his mid or late 30s. He was purchasing a pack of beer. As we were waiting in line he perused the magazine covers. On the cover of the National Enquirer the headline read: "$100 MILLION AT STAKE: Michelle's SECRET DIVORCE FILE!" sandwiched between two grimacing photos of the president and his wife. The man shifted his pack of beer to one arm, pointed at the magazine cover, and said to me, "Now that would make my day." Before I could respond the man's significant other called him over to another line.

I was left to ponder why the failed marriage of a president would make this man's day. I mean, hate his politics all you want, but to revel in the dissolution of a  loving union seemed to me to be a whole new level of lazy, passive ignorance. Obviously we were both aware that the National Enquirer story was a joke. But the man next to me in line was happy to idly wish that the president of our nation might go through a scandalous, acrimonious divorce. "Just so long as the man is unhappy," is basically what this guy said, and I can't relate to that kind of personal vitriol. Criticize the man's professional performance if you must, but how could any man who has ever felt love wish it torn away from another human being?