File Under: Smoked Too Many Doobies in the 60s

Many moons ago, when I mentioned to my seester (not The Clam, the other one) that I was going to rent "The Wall" (the Pink Floyd movie), she told me that, unless I was planning on getting stoned first, the movie wouldn't make sense to me. I scoffed at her, but at the same time never rented the movie. Well, now I understand what she was saying. There are things which (apparently) make perfect sense when you're stoned out of your gourd that are beyond those of us in the sober world...

http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/04/18/commentary.plate/index.html

Plate: Let's lay down our right to bear arms

This was the part that really got me:

"Let me explain. Some misguided people will focus on the fact that the 23-year-old student who killed his classmates and others at Virginia Tech was ethnically Korean. This is one of those observations that's 99.99 percent irrelevant. What are we to make of the fact that he is Korean? Ban Ki-moon is also Korean! Our brilliant new United Nations secretary general has not only never fired a gun, it looks like he may have just put together a peace formula for civil war-wracked Sudan -- a formula that escaped his predecessor.

"So let's just disregard all the hoopla about the race of the student responsible for the slayings. These students were not killed by a Korean, they were killed by a 9 mm handgun and a .22-caliber handgun."

I'm sorry - I know I haven't been following the story 24/7 like a good little girl, but who exactly is focusing on the fact that the shooter is Korean? (Except for Koreans themselves, who are apparently mortified that one of their number could do such a thing. I simply found it hugely ironic that, much like SAT scores, Asians even out-performed your average white guy in this horror. Bell Curve, indeed.)

OK. That was tasteless.

But back to my point. What in the hell is this guy talking about? Does anyone have a clue? And does the fact that the new SG of the UN is Korean, and ostensibly a nice person, somehow exempt all Koreans from committing crimes?

I'm not trying to get in the middle of the whole gun control argument. I think it's tacky to discuss this this early - kind of like the people who asked, when I told them my aunt had lung cancer, "Does she smoke?!"

As far as the issue goes, I know where I stand and why, and I'm so over having this debate, because nobody has the slightest intention of even listening to the opposition with an open mind any more. So why should I waste my breath trying to make my point?

Besides which, 2 guns did not wake up one fine morning and decide that they wanted to take down some college kids. That's absurd. And the kids weren't killed by a Korean. They were killed by a mentally disturbed person. That he was born in Korea is beside the point. That Ban-ki-Moon is Korean is beside the point. That he may have come up with a peace plan for Sudan is beside the point (and I'll believe that when I see it).

The guy was sick in the head. He killed them. That's the point. Period.

Update on 24

Well, it was brief but glorious. I have already lost interest in the show everyone assures me is the best show ever.

I haven't even seen in for the last 2 or 3 weeks. It isn't even that I haven't been home. (I mean, it's 9 pm on Monday night - where am I going to be? I'm mature enough now (read: old and boring) to realize that if I don't get to bed by a reasonable time early in the week, I'm toast by Friday.) I just don't care about the show. I do kind of feel like a heretic, but I will not eat green eggs and ham...

I heard somewhere that the Black Donnellys was cancelled, but I don't know that's true. Needless to say, my interest in that show peaked the first night and went downhill from there.

And CBC has sent Coronation Street to the Sunday 7:30 am ghetto until hockey playoffs are over. Now THAT bothers me.

It's a funny thing about TV. I like TV. Well, let me qualify that. I am not the sort of person who sniffs, "I NEVER watch television. (I'm too busy reading Kafka, or Ayn Rand or whatever.)" But most of the shows that are on don't thrill me. I've already said that I don't like reality TV. I try to never watch the news, not the least of which because most the brains of most "news commentators" these days can barely support the weight of their hair.

But the shows I like, I really like. I especially like comedies, although it seems that the only funny comedies on television these days are cartoons. And I enjoy a good mystery. (But CSI doesn't particularly appeal to me. The writers of that show only seem interested in showing the rest of the nation that Calipornia and New York aren't the only depraved places in the USA. Good to know, and yet another reason my tourism money won't be going to Vegas anytime this century.)

I really enjoy Law & Order (especially the Jerry Orbach episodes) but usually turn off the show halfway through, because watching the weasely lawyers trying to get their clients off gets my goat.

But I don't generally make it a point to sit down and watch a show every week. You know, how people used to say "OK. It's Wednesday at 8:30. Ozzy and Harriet is on." (Or whatever.) So actually making an effort to sit down and watch 24 proved too much for me. I think I'm going to follow the advice of a guy I was talking to on the bus. (No, it didn't involve a tin foil helmet - this was a suburban bus!) He said he never watches 24 during the season. He rents the old season from Netflix. That way he doesn't have to deal with commericals, waiting between episodes etc. Plus it seems like less of a demand on his time.

I think I'll try that. And if The Canuck is to be believed, last season (5) is the one to start with.

Did the Editor Take a Day Off?

Did The Editor Take A Day Off? - Originally posted April 3

From today's Detroit Free Press online (freep.com):"Police: Shelby Twp. confesses to killing 7-Eleven clerk"

Of course, in the body of the article, you come to understand that the entire township was not actually responsible for this poor clerk's demise; it was merely one sorry citizen of Shelby Twp.

However, that's not what the headline says. Based on the headline, I'm thinking the citizens banded together to rid their town of the scourge of overpriced sodypop and candy.

Whatever happened to EDITORS?