The Blog I'm Not Writing

Let’s get this out of the way.

Department Of He Who Lives  Like A Dick Shall Die By Another Dick  By The Sword
Shall Die By The Sword   [1]

Sub-Department Of Poetic Justice

“So we need to be very clear:  we are not going to get gun deaths to zero.  It will not happen.  You can significantly reduce them, by having more fathers in the home….”

 

 

“…or having armed guards in front of schools.
We should have an honest and clear reductionist view of gun violence, but we should not have a utopian one.  You will never live in a society where you have an armed citizenry and you don’t have a single gun death.  That is nonsense; it’s drivel.

But I am – I think it’s worth it.  I think it’s worth to have a cost, unfortunately, of some gun deaths every single year, so that we can have the second amendment to protect our other   [2]  god-given rights.  That is a prudent deal.”

( Charlie Kirk, Turning Point USA CEO and co-founder,
speaking in April 2023 during a TPUSA Faith event.  [3]  )

Sure, Charlie, let’s make a (prudent?) deal. 

Sounds like Charlie Kirk would have approved of his own death’s cost-worthiness.

Oh yeah, re having fathers in the home reducing gun violence?

 

 

Kirk’s alleged shooter had a father in the home.

And it is from their fathers/their homes that most young shooters get their guns.  [4]   [5]

 

 

 

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Department Of A Death Moiself  Would Have Mourned    [6]
Sub-Department Of A Weak-In-The-Knees Moment

Dateline:  Monday, 8:14 am; in my car on the way to pick up MH after he’d taken his car to the dealer for service.  I pull up to a stop sign and wait to turn left, onto a busy east-west street.  The cross traffic has the right of way and does not stop, except for a pedestrian crosswalk with a blinking light which is activated when its button is pushed by a pedestrian.

 

 

This crosswalk is activated frequently in the mornings and again in the afternoons, by kids going to/returning from two schools in our neighborhood (one elementary and one middle school).   A girl who looks like she is in the middle-school-age range is on the other side of the busy street; she has pushed the crosswalk activation button, and the crosswalk’s lights begin to blink.  Traffic coming from the east stops; traffic from the west does not.

Moiself  counts westbound four cars – WTF ?!?!? –  which, one by one, and with plenty of space inbetween them, cruise through the crosswalk, ignoring the flashing lights.  I gesture (futilely) to the cars’ drivers as they do so; after the fourth car-which-doesn’t-stop, the girl, still waiting by the crosswalk, looks across the street at me – we make eye contact – and gives me a shoulder-shrugging, What can I do?  expression.   Finally, a fifth car stops, and the girl is able to cross the street safely…and that is my weak-in-the-knees moment.

I feel my knees getting weak, even though I’m not standing, I’m sitting in the car.  My wobbly-knees moment is because I’m thinking of all of the times I’ve been at that same crossing:  I’ve seen how kids hit the button, watch for the crosswalk lights, and as soon as the lights start flashing the kids cross the street.  They do not look to see if cars have paid attention and are actually stopping; they looking down at their phones (unfortunately, the most common scenario) or chat with their friends. I’m so glad that girl was paying attention when so many cars were not – I’m so glad that when the lights begin to flash she waited and looked both ways to discover if it was indeed safe to cross the street….

And I am trying to understand – definitely not excuse – the four drivers coming from the west who did not stop when they had plenty of time to do so.  Okay; they’re heading east; maybe the morning sun is in their eyes?  But after girl crosses safely and I am able to turn east, onto the same road and into the same sun, I notice that it’s bright but not *blinding* bright, and I can see everything ahead of moiself  just fine.

What could have been so important that those drivers zoned out or….aaaarrrrgggghhh.  And where’s a traffic cop when you need one?

 

 

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Department Of An Unexpected Source of Life Wisdom

Dateline: Tuesday; 6:25 am, listening to the daily meditation in my Calm app. It’s a different meditation every day; thus, I had no expectations for what the subject would be, but certainly among the expectations I did not have was to hear a quote from  Kung Fu Panda – specifically, from Turtle Master® Oogway    [7]    :

“Yesterday is history. Tomorrow is a mystery.
Today is a gift, which is why it is called the present.”

I *have* encountered this motivational quote several times, but never heard it attributed to a turtle master.

 

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Department Of Post- US Open Tennis Championships Thoughts

“Years ago, I was watching a women’s Grand Slam tennis match with a friend who isn’t a sports fan. My friend appreciated the skills of the players — the shots, the gets, the athleticism — but she liked the tennis couture more. The match was a two-setter, rather quick and seemingly effortless.

The next time we watched a match together, it happened to be the 2012 Australian Open final between Novak Djokovic and Rafael Nadal. As the slugfest of a five-setter ended, both of us drained and exhilarated, my friend commented: ‘I guess five sets would be too much, physically, for the women.’  Flabbergasted, I turned to her and said, ‘You’re saying this to me?’

Alas, my friend is not alone in her assumptions about the endurance of female athletes. Consider: In Thursday’s women’s U.S. Open semifinal, Amanda Anisimova beat Naomi Osaka in the third set, but could Osaka have come back in a fourth? After taking in the four-set dogfight between Djokovic and Taylor Fritz, I was thirsty to see Anisimova and Osaka scrap further. The unsubtle message of professional tennis is that women don’t have what it takes for that.

After Djokovic and Nadal’s epic 2012 down under final, the exhausted players couldn’t even remain standing all the way through the trophy ceremony….”

  (excerpts, from “Grand Slam tennis tells women they lack stamina of men.
I know something about endurance: If the men can play five sets, so can the women.”
 (Opinion by Diana Nyad, The Washington Post 9-6-25 )

 

Moiself  is an occasional watcher of televised tennis matches. I understand the point that Nyad ( arguably the greatest endurance athlete ever ) is making…but, hell no. I do *not* want the women’s tennis matches to be the best three of five.

 

 

Yes, really.  And that’s because I also do not want the *men’s* tennis matches to be best of five – it’s too damn long.  For every Djokovic/Nadal five set epic there are a hundred interminable, someone, please-oh-please-can-someone-just-lose-or-win-and-get-this-over-with?!?!  matches.

If it’s a test of stamina (as well as tennis skills,) which seems to be is the point for the best three of five, then why not have the contestant play the best five of seven games?  Or the best seven of nine?

 

 

Or why not determine the true champion via the best of nine games played every day over three days?

 

 

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Department Of I Know…But I Don’t Understand

How do some words take on, or rather get assigned, politically loaded meanings? When did someone send out a memo to like-minded racist sexist homophobic conservative paranoiacs political partisans that they needed to make being *woke* a bad thing?

Moiself  gets how words and meanings drift and evolve and acquire additional meanings, from the entertaining to the politically and culturally loaded.  But for so long (decades, even centuries) the primary definitions of woke (a slang or contraction of awoke) had to do with it being the past tense of awake –  as in, to wake up from sleeping.

It became a shorthand adjective for someone who paid attention because that’s what you would tell someone who wasn’t paying attention, either literally, or metaphorically:  wake up, pay attention, snap out of it!

 

 

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Freethinkers’ Thought Of The Week     [8]

A Simple Question Which Is Never Answered

To religious friends, family, coworkers, neighbors, or anyone who believes that their faith commands them to witness to those who are either religion-free or who hold different religious beliefs:

 

 

*   *   *

May you not trust the blinking lights to protect you from
your own or other’s inattention;
May you be content with the best two out of three sets;
May you wake up!  Pay Attention!  Snap Out of It!
…and may the hijinks ensue.

Thanks for stopping by.  Au Vendredi!

*   *   *

[1] Matthew 26:52

[2] Yeah, and the right to guns is listed where in Charlie Kirk’s scriptures?

[3] I had no idea re this organization, their aims or even their existance, but the sniff of theocracy is in the air when you look at their spooky website:  “America Needs A Strong Church.  TPUSA Faith exists to unite the Church around primary doctrine and to eliminate wokeism from the American pulpit.”

[4] Including “our” own major exhibit in the school shooting hall of infamy:  Oregon’s 1998 Thurston High shooting.

[5] “Most school shooters get their guns from home – and during the pandemic, the number of firearms in households with teenagers went up.”  ( Institute Of Firearm Injury Prevention, University Of Michigan )

[6] It didn’t happen – very glad about that.

[7] I’ve not seen the movie; I trust there is some kind of zen turtle master character.

[8] “free-think-er n. A person who forms opinions about religion on the basis of reason, independently of tradition, authority, or established belief. Freethinkers include atheists, agnostics and rationalists.   No one can be a freethinker who demands conformity to a bible, creed, or messiah. To the freethinker, revelation and faith are invalid, and orthodoxy is no guarantee of truth.”  Definition courtesy of the Freedom From Religion Foundation, ffrf.org