Haven’t had much to talk about this week. As a friendly warning, the ramble quotient of the following passage is quite high.
Two of my classes this semester grade homework with a check rather than a letter grade or points. Finding this mildly amusing, I decided to stick the first homework from each of those classes on our refrigerator. (Both check-pluses!)
In the last day or so I’ve taken a few moments to reflect on some news stories that have been circulating in the media this month. I will take this opportunity to share a few of my observations and opinions.
First, I’ll comment on the recent coup* in Thailand**. I would have commented on it yesterday, but really a coup should last at least a day before it is given any legitimacy (makes the history books easier to write, you see). They say it was for the good of the country and that they will turn over the reins to a democratically elected government, but they also took power from a democratically elected government. It can’t be that the guy they forced out is so bad, seeing as they’re letting him participate in the new set of elections. (Maybe this is the Thai equivalent of a mulligan.) Forced takeovers by the national military*** don’t exactly inspire confidence in the stability of...well...anyone involved, really.
Second, Nancy Grace is an amazing bitch.**** I’m reasonably sure anyone reading knows what I’m talking about, and if you don’t, I’m even more sure that information on it wouldn’t be hard to find. To make a short story shorter – and maybe just a little oversimplified in the process – she badgered this woman whose very young son was just kidnapped, implicitly accusing her of either having something to do with the case or just not giving a damn. Near as I can tell, she shot herself in the face with a shotgun shortly after ending her interoga-er, interview, with the aforementioned bitch.
Now, some of the more cynical types among you may say that I’m just jealous of her ability to get people in emotional distress to kill themselves, to which I’d reply, “Hey, shut the fuck up, man. I’ve never actually been responsible for anyone killing themselves, as far as I know. Besides, if I was, I'd at least make sure they deserved it first. This bitch assumes people are guilty."
But to be honest, that’s not even the part of it that strikes me as…what’s the word, depraved? Despicable? I don’t know, one of those D-words. I was watching TV after reading a little bit about the story online, and decided to see what she was talking about and who was guilty that day (almost two weeks later). Lo and behold, they’re still talking about the same case! It practically screams “I’m not responsible for that woman’s death, and I’ll prove it by showing you all she’s as guilty as I think she is!” Yes, this woman abducted her son and managed to spirit him away to some hidden place without anyone around noticing, and even thought to cut open the screen of his window first, and would give up on whatever scheme she was no doubt planning just because she crossed paths with you, Nancy Grace. You were just too smart for her. You haven’t met a defendant who wasn’t guilty.
Ahem.
Anyway, talking about it now seems akin to dragging this dead woman’s body around outside the city gates. In the last famous instance of this, the Greek hero Achilles dragged the body of this guy named Hector around some city for some ridiculously long amount of time, and we all know what happened to him.
I’d suggest you invest in some heavily protective footwear, Ms. Grace. Maybe hooker boots. They’d go very nicely with your sense of journalistic integrity.
*Silent P
**Silent H
***As opposed to ones by, say, the national courts
****Amazing is modifying the degree of “bitch”-ness. I’m saying she’s more of a bitch than normal, not that she is both amazing and a bitch. My previous usage of both words made this clarification…not so much necessary, but...yeah, it’s necessary.
I’ve been awake for nearly 4 hours already^, and normally I wouldn’t even be awake for another 2 hours or so.
Today is going to be a long day.
Just before I woke up, I had a couple or three weird dreams. The content of the first 1-2 is unimportant (i.e., I’m not saying anything about it); the third one is the reason I decided to stay up instead of going back to sleep at around 4:30, when for a long time I wouldn’t even be asleep before then. (Weird times. If I get any more incoherent, I apologize in advance.)
My last dream was more like a case of what a very reliable* source tells me is called
Hypnagogia. I “woke up” in my dream***, and my vision was fixated on a point near the center of my room. Slowly, a purplish human shape congealed in the middle of the room****, and it was making some kind of rasping noise. Offhand, I’d say it sounds like the noise someone would make if they were drawing air through a slit throat that somehow wasn’t bleeding. (That’d make it a gurgle instead of a rasp, you see.) Like most of my analogies, I don’t actually know what that would sound like, and efforts to find out might just get me labeled crazy, and rightly so.
I wanted to yell at this…thing, but I wasn’t able to. (I really hate that.) Then, as suddenly as my original waking, I became fully awake. I could tell that this had happened for several reasons, not all of which I am able to describe. It has more to do with my perception than my ability to act; I seem to have a dreamlike set of restrictions on my actions during much of my waking hours as well.***** The apparition vanished, and the room changed in color and tone slightly.
In less immediate (though not necessarily less weird) news, I turned 21 two days ago, on Thursday. No other comments about it, really. Just thought I should note it.
*I say this in jest.**
**Not a pun
***Nine times out of ten when I wake up in a dream, I wake up from the place I went to sleep, even if it is a ‘normal’ dream other than the way it starts. I think it’s me trying to trick me…wouldn’t be the first time, but that’s a story for another day.
****Purple is the color in which I see in the dark. Alas, it was not Lich, the fiend of the Earth. (At least, I think not.)
*****I don’t know if this is anyone else’s experience, but when I’m in dreams, I often consider alternative courses of action, even ridiculous ones that, for whatever reason, I would never do. (Same thing happens when I’m awake.) Examples include stabbing/hitting people [generally for being stupid], jumping in front of a car/down a flight of stairs******, and not turning on a turn and just driving into the guardrail, or barricade, or off the road, or whatever.
******I’m actually pretty good at jumping down stairs, ever since I started looking at it more like modified falling. One day, I want to jump down a flight of stairs, jump off the wall (instead of landing on the floor), and use that momentum to get down a second flight of stairs. With enough agility and a cooperative stairway/populace, I could eventually get down an entire building that way.
^I started writing this more than 30 minutes ago. Normally I don’t like to give any impression of how long something takes me to write, but hey. Besides, I didn’t spend the whole time writing. (If I did, maybe I'd fix the obnoxious formatting errors.)
I wasn't going to blog today, but the first news item I saw upon rejoining the Material Sphere was that
Steve Irwin, or at least the part of him that made him one of the few interesting Australians, has left that very Sphere.
I'm not one of those people who believes in celebrity immortality, but I can't say I ever thought the guy would be killed by an animal, let alone while filming a show. I guess that proves that no one can survive a direct blast of poison to the heart. (Slowly converting one's heart from flesh to poison and/or a form two sizes too small, on the other hand, means a death not quite as instant.)
Australia had better redouble its efforts to protect
Paul Hogan because there's not much stopping me from learning how to throw terrible weather at them.*
In lieu of a formal tribute, the next time a flesh-eating animal latches onto my arm intent on consuming its meatier parts, I'll give it a "Crikey! 'E's got me ahm!**" for you, Steve. You will live on in the parts of all of us that make us provoke animalistic forces beyond our control, even to the point that others say, "Damn, that guy is provoking animalistic forces beyond our control."
*wave*
*Other than the lack of a reliable weather-control device.
**That's Australian for "arm"
