Yet without in any way downplaying the horror of what happened, it is interesting to note how rare these kind of events are considering the numbers involved. I mean of all the billions upon billions of people on this planet, and all the pain, all the suffering, all the anger and the frustration and the stress that people face in their day to day lives, it is really surprising how only on the rarest of occasions do people snap to the point of going batshit violent crazy. I think the fact that only two or three people on the planet per year do so is a tribute to the human spirit and to the basic soundness and strength of the human mind. For all the misery and fucked up shit in the world, I'm impressed by the way we all manage to hold it together as well as we do.
Unfortunately certain crass political types sometimes try to take advantage of these rare tragedies in an attempt to increase their own power by exploiting the emotional aftermath in order to trick us into curtailing our freedoms in ways we wouldn't agree to under normal circumstances. Happily such political lowlifes can be quickly put in their place by the wisdom of Beatnik Bill.
For examples of inappropriate, inaccurate and just plain dumb responses to the Connecticut shootings click here.
Governor Patrick says that the sudden departure of scandal plagued persons from his cabinet last week has no significance, but the Boston Herald isn't falling for it in their editorial entitled "Hardly a Brain Drain:"
Try as he might to put a happy face on yesterday’s cabinet departures, Gov. Deval Patrick can’t change the fact that several of his top team members are leaving in disgrace — and not a moment too soon.
Read more here.
There was ice on the babbling brook by my house this morning.
Kids from the Community Homeschool Network came to sing at the Amherst Survival Center this week.
4 comments:
this the same William Burroughs who shot his wife in the head?
Yes, he shot and killed his wife when trying to shoot an apple off the top of her head playing a game of William Tell while they were both heavily intoxicated. So I guess you could argue that he was one of those people who shouldn't have had guns.
C'mon Tom... Gotta step up your Beat history. It was a glass that he tried to shoot from her head, and Beatnik is most definitely a derogatory term that was used to refer to the beat writers. Richard.
You're right, it was a glass, but I used the term beatnik somewhat sarcastically. You are also right that the beats themselves didn't like the term.
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