Virginnia Tech Massacre

Sorry to bug. 

I left work on Monday afternoon at 2p.m.  Driving home I heard the news report on the Virginnia Tech massacre.  It, of course, made me sad and reflective.  During the course of the week it has been difficult to avoid the story both within and without myself.  Last night driving home from work I caught a newscast where the reporter was reading a letter written by the Seung-Hoi Cho's sister.  It expressed apologies to the victims.  I couldn't help feeling sorry for this family that has to take responsibity for the acts of its son and brother.  I thought of something that my good friend Ron said when we were kids: "Even Hitler had a mother."  I thought of the people I love and what I could and couldn't forgive of them.  That is a mind blowing exersise.

One hopes that in every tragedy we learn how to avoid or mitigate loss in the future.  How could we have stopped it?  Gun Control?  More Guns?  Those seem to be the first issues that come to mind.  Then you hear how deviant behavior should have been caught earlier and not allowed its fruition.  Many, many things to ponder.

I sat at home with these thoughts in the back of my head and the television in front of my face (soma-holiday, if you will) when this skit from Saturday Night Live comes on.  This is one link I think you should check out.  It aired two days before the massacre and had it been scheduled for this week, it would have been cut for being innapropriate.  I think SNL is funny and enjoy watching the show.  I will continue to do so.  But this skit brings to mind how unhallowed human life has become.  Is it funny when six individuals kill each other? 

Though I don't believe that senseless acts of cruelty are isolated to our current culture and times.  They've been around since Cain.  I do think that elements of our current media and taste have de-sensitized us to the glory involved in just being alive.  Everyday I go out and view this great thing that is man, I am humbled when I realize how fragile we really are.  End.

Superstition

My Odometer hit a very special landmark on Friday.

When I was in grade school I had an obligatory shower I took before bed at 7 pm.  I developed a ritual then.  I liked coming out of the shower and stepping into the bedroom when the digital display on the clock read 7:17.  If this was accomplished the next day would be a good day.  Does that sound like OCD to you?  If you hit the link, point 2 under compulsions makes the most sense in my case.  In a nutshell, the child-me was trying to assert some power over a world that could prove itself cruel and lacking in certainty.  I eventually outgrew the ritual but the number 17 remained a talisman foreshadowing good things.  From middle school and up until my early thirties my fixation with the number was dormant in the background of my psyche (mixed metaphor?).  In my early thirties the importance of 17 returned.  But instead of the clock display, license plates and odometer readings is where the number started to once again 'speak' to me.  This may be due to my increased time in traffic.  License plates that have 717 on them mean 'good day'.  Conversely, 313 means 'be careful' (this is an invention of my newly burgeoning psychosis).  The trip odometer reads 717 seventy one point seven miles after every trip to the gas station where it is reset.  The main odometer will only read 717 once.  And I didn't own the car when that happened. But the number in the picture, a pallindrome, will also only happen once.  I was exited about reaching this mileage point and took my camera with me to capture that magical moment which would transcend me into an era of good fortune.  Ironically, it occured on Friday the Thirteenth.  "Can't Win For Losing" as they say.

I was saddened to see that Kurt Vonnegut passed away this week.  I was never forced to read his work when I was in school so I had the opportunity to read it at my own leisure when I was older and could absorb it better.  Breakfast of Champions  is like The Little Princefor adults.  If you are ever allowed the opportunity, read it.

 

Oh, the Places You'll Go!

Oh, the Places You'll Go!

Happy Birthday Blog!

The link above will direct you to my latest epic.  I thank God for blessing me with four special cherubs (unfortuneately Trevor had school this week and could not accompany us) who put up with a rather peculiar uncle.  Of all children's literature the title above has always struck me as uncontrivingly deep.  Enjoy if you can.

Well of all the subjects I thought about for today; Blog as offspring, how the blog has changed me, where the blog goes now or I blog therefore I am, none would have solely accounted for the pleasure I have derived from this endeavor.  It has helped me step outside of myself and act as a narrator to an otherwise random sequence of events.  That's nice.  But most importantly it has helped me keep in touch with you and there is nothing more special than that.

Other titles that meant a lot to me when I was a child:

The Giving Tree

Frog and Toad are Friends

looking back on it all...

does anyone remember the picture above?  It is a tree I see during my bike ride to the gym in Hollywood.  It is a tree I used to see on my bike ride to Hollywood.  Today I saw that the tree had been chopped down (see pictures 2 and 3).  I blogged about said tree last year.  It helped me make a point and for some reason I found that endearing.  Though I wouldn't go as far as to call the tree an eye sore, I could see how the owner of the property on which the tree stood could see it as a de-valuating factor to his real estate investment.  And maybe, I know I don't know the whole story, the tree may have been a liability.  If it was diseased, rotting or dead, one would worry that it carried the potential to cause property damage, or worse, physical damage.  My good friend who was also familiar to the tree likened it to a cell tower.  And that may be the way the local residents felt towards it; unsightly (I am not bothered by cell towers but have a feeling that this is the general consensus towards them.)  The fact that it was chopped down saddens me because it was something that caught my eye; something I got used to looking at that will no longer be there.  Pretty or ugly, it was there.  And now it isn't.  Its absence emphasizes the fact that certainty is never permanent. 

Tomorrow is Easter Sunday and YES, I would like to be religious but know that I fall short the mark.  But in regards to Easter I have always thought that John's gospel put it best (for me) when he said, " and the Word was made flesh".    To me, belief in the Ressurection is belief that the flesh was made Word again.  The materials of this world including ourselves will change and eventually perish but that Word will always be.  That is why Easter holds a particular message for me; the promise of a certain certainty.

But whatever you believe or don't believe I hope that you have a nice Easter or had a nice Passover, or just enjoy your Sunday with the people you hold dear.