Four minutes before I kicked the steel gate that was always locked, the alcove it protected strewn with trash, I had been sitting down in a familiar office, listening to someone I'd known for over ten years tell me that I didn't have a job anymore. It wasn't that I hadn't seen it coming, it wasn't that it wasn't warranted. The fact that things had deteriorated to the point where I was being fired from a bar was what stuck in my throat like a pill swallowed without water. That I had been running late and spent the money on a cab to get there on time didn't help. It couldn't get lower than this. I would have to get comfortable at the bottom. I said my goodbyes to the bartenders and the other managers. People I had grown to call friends and now might never see again, because that's the way these things go.
Back to the steel gate.
I walked out of there without a look back. Out onto the street for the last time and up passed the steel gate. I had always assumed that the building was a disused factory, or a workshop that only open during the day. I kicked the gate twice and screamed 'FUCK!' like a man that didn't know what else to do. Behind the wall, three or four dogs started barking, frightened and confused. A man yelled out 'Yo?!' It never occurred to me that it could have been a living space, but the neighborhood had changed. It had gone from trendy to fully gentrified. European money filled the gaps that the American economy couldn't and condos were sprouting like weeds. Every unused room was now a living space, every inch was maximized for profit.
Embarrassed, I tried I walk away quickly. A bearded man with a gut and sandals crashed out of the gate, dragging trash from the entrance behind him.
"What the fuck are you doing banging on my door like that, you asshole?!"
I don't think I had ever been so embarrassed.
"I'm really sorry, I didn't think anyone lived there."
"Even if no one did, you think you got a right to go around banging on doors like the fucking police just because you had a few drinks??"
I obviously wasn't the first to transgress this way.
"No, I don't. I'm sorry, I haven't been drinking. I just got fired and was angry, I had no business taking it out on your door. I honestly feel bad that the dogs are upset." my words fell on the pavement like spent matches.
"These are rescue dogs! All of them! Do you have any idea what they've been through? You know how long it will take to calm them down?" The guy was really working himself into a lather for someone that looked like he had slept most of the day. He took a step towards me, raising a hand like he was going to hit me but slipped on a wet piece of cardboard, catching himself on the same gate he'd just stormed out of, the one I'd abused so thoughtlessly. I didn't laugh or try to hit him. I turned and walked away, maintaining ownership of the situation's general humiliation.
"Stay off this block, jagoff!" He called after me.
It wasn't going to be a problem, I had no reason to come back to this neighborhood now. Just one stop at a bar nearby that I liked, since it was quiet and and I figured I might never have occasion to be in it again. I loped ten blocks to the Pencilbox and propped myself up in the warm candlelight. Their cheapest whiskey burned the little cracks on my lips as I stared at a point in space two feet in front of my face.
At first it all seemed promising. After a couple minutes the three bikers that were laughing as loud as they pleased left. Everyone else talked quietly and the bartender left me alone. Perfect. Then a group of French people came in, sat near me, and giggled about something or other. I couldn't spend the night glaring at them and watching them pointedly fail to tip the bartender. I headed back to my own neighborhood.
I went to my local bar right under the train tracks, a cash-only bare-bones Irish pub where you could feel the rumble off the train above through your fingertips on the bar. A neighborhood guy named Danny cheered me up the way he knew best.
"Don't sweat it, you'll take a few weeks, your wife can carry the load. Marriage is like that, you give and take, feast and famine."
It was nonsense, but that was okay. Sometimes nonsense is exactly what you want to hear.
Thursday, March 13, 2014
Sunday, February 23, 2014
Get it off your chest
It seems silly, but for months I've been texting a deceased friend. I'm not sure how it started, but at some point during the grieving process I shot a text out there just to feel like I was talking to her again. It just started flowing from there. I've been going on about all the things I could never talk about with anyone else. The embarrassing things. The ugly things. The dark and terrifying things that well up in the mind in the wee small hours. This woman never judged me and, in some ways, understood me better than anyone ever has. Even if it seems a bit immature, doing this has been more cathartic than I would have ever expected.
It never occurred to me they would give her number out to someone else. They aren't as understanding. At least not at 4AM.
Wednesday, January 15, 2014
Trials of Circumstance (not by P.D. James)
The windows had been sealed, the firewood covered, and the bolt inside the door gave a satisfying click as it found home. Hamilton Starkweather gazed at the pond just south of the summerhouse and reflected fondly on the prior two months. It had been another successful season of swimming, friendly visitations, and well-aged brandy during summer storms. Now it was over. His extended holiday had helped him relax more than he had in years, but he couldn't help but feel melancholy at its passing. Now it was back down to dreary London and the daily malaise of the publishing business.
A figure stalked briskly up the footpath that led from the main road. The hard clacking noise of plastic souls on the worn concrete were like pinpricks in the still morning air.
"Nigel Pellington, as I live and breathe!" Hamilton called out in his boisterous way, recognizing the threadbare peacoat that his friend had been wearing as long as he had known him.
"I thought you'd left for the smoke this past Tuesday, and why on earth is that muffler wrapped around your head, it'll be summer for another six days!"
Hamilton had barely gotten the sentence out when the figure abruptly pulled a antique Luger from the coat pocket. The shot scattered a flock of mourning doves that had been bathing in the pond. They found their formation as they soared over Hamilton Starkweather crumpling onto the lawn.
A figure stalked briskly up the footpath that led from the main road. The hard clacking noise of plastic souls on the worn concrete were like pinpricks in the still morning air.
"Nigel Pellington, as I live and breathe!" Hamilton called out in his boisterous way, recognizing the threadbare peacoat that his friend had been wearing as long as he had known him.
"I thought you'd left for the smoke this past Tuesday, and why on earth is that muffler wrapped around your head, it'll be summer for another six days!"
Hamilton had barely gotten the sentence out when the figure abruptly pulled a antique Luger from the coat pocket. The shot scattered a flock of mourning doves that had been bathing in the pond. They found their formation as they soared over Hamilton Starkweather crumpling onto the lawn.
Pleading out
Most of us are taught that revenge is never the answer, that what you get out of it will ultimately weigh more heavily on you tham anything you dish out to some transgressor. Most of us also pay as little attention as possible to that life lesson, at least as far as the way we think and feel about the people that have done us wrong. It's hard not to imagine terrible things happening to people we think deserve it. Sometimes, we can't help but imagine the satisfaction of doling out retribution. We have plenty of reasons for thinking this way, after all, 'violent revenge movies' is a category my Netflix account suggests pretty heavily to me. Not trying to say that it doesn't have reason to, there are a lot of eighth graders that would be embarrassed to have my taste in movies. I just find it amazing that it's a category.
I'll get to the point.
In late 2012, I lost my friend Megan to someone else's negligence. I had been close with Megan for about half my life. She understood me in ways no one else ever has, and even though I think that was because we were a lot alike (she often referred to me as the older brother she never wanted), many other people would tell you the same thing about their own relationship with her. She had more people that would describe her as their 'best friend' than anyone else I know. This isn't due to any flightiness or phoniness on Megan's part. When she spent time with someone, she made them feel important and needed because, to her, that's exactly what they were. She didn't take the people in her life for granted, and made sure they knew she loved them. Losing her was a devastating blow to a wide and diverse network of family and friends.
There were many people that, naturally, wanted swift retribution. I can't say I didn't. Someone central to our lives, someone that was a piece of all of our heart's was ripped away for nothing other than someone's alcohol-impaired driving. That someone should pay. It was obvious. The fact that this person showed little or no remorse for destroying a unique and cherished life only sharpened our collective resolve that she should pay dearly, and for the rest of her life.
Over a lot of long, sleepless nights, that became less and less of a concrete idea for me. I don't want this person walking around free for the simple danger of her destroying more lives with her reckless disregard, but what would it change for her to know the pain she caused? Nothing. Nothing will bring this precious person back and that's an ugly, pointy fact that has to sit in our guts for the rest of our lives, but if we all got five minutes in a room with no windows with this person, that would invite a new kind of ugliness that we would have to carry around, one that is even harder to shake.
This person recently plead guilty to the charge of vehicular manslaughter and will serve a year in prison followed by a few years of supervision. That's actually more than I ever expected the criminal justice system to do in this case, and it's actually quite good in a case like this. It still won't change a thing for me. I'm glad this person will have some time to think about her actions, but I doubt that will make her any different of a human being.
There's no justice, after all. There's just us.
I'll get to the point.
In late 2012, I lost my friend Megan to someone else's negligence. I had been close with Megan for about half my life. She understood me in ways no one else ever has, and even though I think that was because we were a lot alike (she often referred to me as the older brother she never wanted), many other people would tell you the same thing about their own relationship with her. She had more people that would describe her as their 'best friend' than anyone else I know. This isn't due to any flightiness or phoniness on Megan's part. When she spent time with someone, she made them feel important and needed because, to her, that's exactly what they were. She didn't take the people in her life for granted, and made sure they knew she loved them. Losing her was a devastating blow to a wide and diverse network of family and friends.
There were many people that, naturally, wanted swift retribution. I can't say I didn't. Someone central to our lives, someone that was a piece of all of our heart's was ripped away for nothing other than someone's alcohol-impaired driving. That someone should pay. It was obvious. The fact that this person showed little or no remorse for destroying a unique and cherished life only sharpened our collective resolve that she should pay dearly, and for the rest of her life.
Over a lot of long, sleepless nights, that became less and less of a concrete idea for me. I don't want this person walking around free for the simple danger of her destroying more lives with her reckless disregard, but what would it change for her to know the pain she caused? Nothing. Nothing will bring this precious person back and that's an ugly, pointy fact that has to sit in our guts for the rest of our lives, but if we all got five minutes in a room with no windows with this person, that would invite a new kind of ugliness that we would have to carry around, one that is even harder to shake.
This person recently plead guilty to the charge of vehicular manslaughter and will serve a year in prison followed by a few years of supervision. That's actually more than I ever expected the criminal justice system to do in this case, and it's actually quite good in a case like this. It still won't change a thing for me. I'm glad this person will have some time to think about her actions, but I doubt that will make her any different of a human being.
There's no justice, after all. There's just us.
Sunday, January 5, 2014
Walking Through the Snow
That Thursday was an off day to say the least. The health department had shown their faces early in the night at the bar where I work. One of the owners spent hours pretending to look for paperwork he knew perfectly well he hadn't updated. The charade might have been intended to keep the agents from looking too closely at the kitchen.
There was also an open mic that night. A sharp contrast was set between some extremely talented professional comics and musicians, and some creative roadkill of both varieties. It ended with some tightly rehearsed and excruciatingly annoying comedy songs from a duo that shall remain nameless. The screechy-voiced chanteuse on tambourine saw fit to play their last song with her top off, and acted surprised when told that could cost the bar it's license under the wrong circumstances. Even if that hadn't been the case, I would've told any lie, committed any misdeed to keep my customers from having to look at her bare torso any longer.
A snow storm was raging outside. There are no windows at this bar, so the accumulation seemed even faster to me when I looked out the door. Many places in the area were going to close early, we were following suit at midnight.
I was hungover, sleep-deprived, and training a new barback. These are three things that are normal for any shift, and I found a little comfort in their familiarity. The odd night at work hadn't been enough to distract me from what the calendar said: January second. It had been exactly one year since my best friend died.
His name was Jason William Schwallenberg. We called him Schwalli.
I first met Schwalli when I was 15, we were pretty close by the following year. I feel like I have endless reels of memories of driving around in various Mazdas with him at the wheel, listening to the same cassettes over and over, pounding our fists on the dashboard or stomping our feet in time. He was on the short side, wore glasses, and wouldn't back down to anyone. When guys big enough to make me shit myself tried to get tough, he was always the one to throw it right back in their face. He was always there for his friends, had style to spare, and taught me more about music than anyone else in my entire life.
I spent that Thursday thinking about how I didn't get to see much of him the last few years. He had gotten married and had two little girls, so it was understandable. He wasn't always the most effusive guy, but whenever he talked about his family, you could see they meant everything to him. I was thinking about them a lot as well that Thursday. I hate that his wife never got to say goodbye to him. I hate that his children won't get to grow up with one of the best fathers I can imagine anyone having. I hate that his parents had to suddenly lose their only son in the prime of his life. There's a lot to hate about it, but not much that can be done.
I didn't talk about it with many people that Thursday. I don't live in the town we grew up in, so most people in my life now never met him. But, if I'm honest, the main reason I didn't talk about him is shame. It always seems that when loved ones passed so young, that it should have given me the impetus to take life by the tail, to never waste time on anything, to never worry about petty nonsense or what other's think. Then I look back on the past year, and feel like it didn't take long to get mired in all the same bad habits and let the usual humdrum take back over.
But it isn't about that. It also isn't about me.
It's about trying to hold on to the memory of an unassuming man who might never have known what a profound impact he had on many different lives. It's about remembering to not only tell the people in your life that you love them, but also show them while you have the chance.
I walked home in the snow storm that night looking at all the freshly fallen snowflakes glinting like diamonds in the streetlight and thought about a guy that loved life, family and music. I thought about how I'll never see him again, but hope to keep him in my heart forever. Life is woven together out of love, hope, and beauty, but it's also fragile, short, and can be bitterly cruel. That's why it matters so much.
"The most terrifying fact about the universe is not that it is hostile but that it is indifferent; but if we can come to terms with this indifference and accept the challenges of life within the boundaries of death — however mutable man may be able to make them — our existence as a species can have genuine meaning and fulfillment. However vast the darkness, we must supply our own light."
-Stanley Kubrick
There was also an open mic that night. A sharp contrast was set between some extremely talented professional comics and musicians, and some creative roadkill of both varieties. It ended with some tightly rehearsed and excruciatingly annoying comedy songs from a duo that shall remain nameless. The screechy-voiced chanteuse on tambourine saw fit to play their last song with her top off, and acted surprised when told that could cost the bar it's license under the wrong circumstances. Even if that hadn't been the case, I would've told any lie, committed any misdeed to keep my customers from having to look at her bare torso any longer.
A snow storm was raging outside. There are no windows at this bar, so the accumulation seemed even faster to me when I looked out the door. Many places in the area were going to close early, we were following suit at midnight.
I was hungover, sleep-deprived, and training a new barback. These are three things that are normal for any shift, and I found a little comfort in their familiarity. The odd night at work hadn't been enough to distract me from what the calendar said: January second. It had been exactly one year since my best friend died.
His name was Jason William Schwallenberg. We called him Schwalli.
I first met Schwalli when I was 15, we were pretty close by the following year. I feel like I have endless reels of memories of driving around in various Mazdas with him at the wheel, listening to the same cassettes over and over, pounding our fists on the dashboard or stomping our feet in time. He was on the short side, wore glasses, and wouldn't back down to anyone. When guys big enough to make me shit myself tried to get tough, he was always the one to throw it right back in their face. He was always there for his friends, had style to spare, and taught me more about music than anyone else in my entire life.
I spent that Thursday thinking about how I didn't get to see much of him the last few years. He had gotten married and had two little girls, so it was understandable. He wasn't always the most effusive guy, but whenever he talked about his family, you could see they meant everything to him. I was thinking about them a lot as well that Thursday. I hate that his wife never got to say goodbye to him. I hate that his children won't get to grow up with one of the best fathers I can imagine anyone having. I hate that his parents had to suddenly lose their only son in the prime of his life. There's a lot to hate about it, but not much that can be done.
I didn't talk about it with many people that Thursday. I don't live in the town we grew up in, so most people in my life now never met him. But, if I'm honest, the main reason I didn't talk about him is shame. It always seems that when loved ones passed so young, that it should have given me the impetus to take life by the tail, to never waste time on anything, to never worry about petty nonsense or what other's think. Then I look back on the past year, and feel like it didn't take long to get mired in all the same bad habits and let the usual humdrum take back over.
But it isn't about that. It also isn't about me.
It's about trying to hold on to the memory of an unassuming man who might never have known what a profound impact he had on many different lives. It's about remembering to not only tell the people in your life that you love them, but also show them while you have the chance.
I walked home in the snow storm that night looking at all the freshly fallen snowflakes glinting like diamonds in the streetlight and thought about a guy that loved life, family and music. I thought about how I'll never see him again, but hope to keep him in my heart forever. Life is woven together out of love, hope, and beauty, but it's also fragile, short, and can be bitterly cruel. That's why it matters so much.
"The most terrifying fact about the universe is not that it is hostile but that it is indifferent; but if we can come to terms with this indifference and accept the challenges of life within the boundaries of death — however mutable man may be able to make them — our existence as a species can have genuine meaning and fulfillment. However vast the darkness, we must supply our own light."
-Stanley Kubrick
Monday, November 11, 2013
Happy Lip Service Day
Every year I make the same tired jokes about Veterans Day. This is usually accompanied by a background anxiety that people will think me glib or insensitive about what people in the armed forces contribute. There are two things I have learned, though:
1) It is impossible to care about what is offending people that have a surface-level sense of humor
2) It is impossible for me to stop making idiotic jokes. No matter how much I want to.
When I was a boy, I wanted to join the Marine Corps. I investigated this option once I grew to the age of eighteen and it became clear that no college with a sentient human working the admissions process would admit me. Sadly, my life took me in a different direction, which, in case you were wondering, is a thing that craven cowards say when they are too spineless to admit their own spinelessness. I don't think a day goes by when I don't regret not going into the Corps. Do I make up for it by contributing to veterans causes? Lobby the government for better care for returning vets and the families of those killed in action? Buy a homeless vet a cup of coffee?
No. I'm an American. Despite a couple days that we set aside to say hollow niceties about people that put their lives on the line, we don't give a shit. We cut their benefits. We make sick jokes about the rampant PTSD caused by stretching a fighting force to it's breaking point. We allow callow, manipulative elected officials send them into nightmarish, unwinnable conflicts we have no business creating, aside from the very good business it will mean for some of their friends. We re-elect these same subhumans as if nothing had happened.
In a world where moral fiber is a devalued commodity, these are people willing to die for their principles. But we've watched our own government treat them as disposable and feed them into a meat grinder for so long that we have followed suit. It's enough to just click 'like' on a picture of men in uniform to 'Support Our Troops' as if that 'like' button will buy diapers for their children.
1) It is impossible to care about what is offending people that have a surface-level sense of humor
2) It is impossible for me to stop making idiotic jokes. No matter how much I want to.
When I was a boy, I wanted to join the Marine Corps. I investigated this option once I grew to the age of eighteen and it became clear that no college with a sentient human working the admissions process would admit me. Sadly, my life took me in a different direction, which, in case you were wondering, is a thing that craven cowards say when they are too spineless to admit their own spinelessness. I don't think a day goes by when I don't regret not going into the Corps. Do I make up for it by contributing to veterans causes? Lobby the government for better care for returning vets and the families of those killed in action? Buy a homeless vet a cup of coffee?
No. I'm an American. Despite a couple days that we set aside to say hollow niceties about people that put their lives on the line, we don't give a shit. We cut their benefits. We make sick jokes about the rampant PTSD caused by stretching a fighting force to it's breaking point. We allow callow, manipulative elected officials send them into nightmarish, unwinnable conflicts we have no business creating, aside from the very good business it will mean for some of their friends. We re-elect these same subhumans as if nothing had happened.
In a world where moral fiber is a devalued commodity, these are people willing to die for their principles. But we've watched our own government treat them as disposable and feed them into a meat grinder for so long that we have followed suit. It's enough to just click 'like' on a picture of men in uniform to 'Support Our Troops' as if that 'like' button will buy diapers for their children.
Sunday, November 10, 2013
Horrifying News Roundup!
So many horrible things are happening in this country and around the
world that I have to cram them into a blog entry! It says a lot about
human perseverance and ingenuity that we are always topping ourselves in
depravity and degradation while increasing the speed at which
civilization goes down the tubes. You can't keep us down!
These are the worst links I can possibly provide. If you think you can top me, please don't. Fair warning, that if you try to stay away from the news to maintain your sanity, you should read no further. I'm not putting these together just to gawk and gape at the horror of it all. We are being desensitized a little more each day with every click to the next sickening news story. I picked these out to highlight specific social ills in the hope we can look at each one a little closer and get down to the root cause.
You may have seen these on social media already, but we're going to discuss them here so we can get it out of our systems and don't bring them up at dinner with the in-laws while stuck for a conversation topic.
It's important to act like everything is fine in real life. I'm not kidding. Hang on to illusion. It's getting to be all we've got, especially in a world where:
- a man advertises his desire to watch a stranger beat and rape his 11 year old daughter.
Anthony Brinkman's nauseatingly perverse desire was exposed after police found an ad he had placed online. An undercover officer, posing as an interested party, lured him to the parking lot of a Cracker Barrel (naturally) where Brinkman was arrested. Upon confessing, Brinkman said that he was 'sorry' and 'stupid'.
You didn't break a window with a baseball, Anthony. You tried to violate and traumatize your own child.
I have stopped caring what creates animals like this. Nature, nurture, video games, telenovelas, don't make no nevermind to me. You could make the argument that the internet fosters and feeds this kind of psychosis that would come up with this, but of course, if it weren't for the internet (coupled with a lack of foresight that many of these kinds of scumbags fortunately don't have) they might never have caught Brinkman. The weird thing is, we don't want law enforcement invading our private lives, but no one reading this would care if the police didn't follow protocol when arresting Brinkman and accidentally danced all over him while wearing golf shoes. Which brings me to exhibit B:
- After being stopped for a minor traffic infraction, David Eckert is physically violated and humiliated in a vain effort to find drugs that he isn't carrying in his rectum
This happened back in January, but Eckert's lawsuit was just filed this week, leading to a flurry of reporters' questions for the head of the Deming, NM police department, who, rather than address valid concerns about the ordeal, refer the press to their lawyers, who also refuse to answer any questions. Until they do, the only version of events we can go off of is Eckert's account of being repeatedly rectally violated via enema, doctor finger, and colonoscopic probe and having to defecate in front of officers so that a doctor could examine the stool. All this happened because some patrolman thought he was clenching his butt too hard to NOT be carrying contraband. The cherry on top is that Eckert is being billed for all the procedures. That's right, the hospital that went along with this and performed all these procedures because some jackass in a uniform told them to is threatening him with collection, which is one better than Milgram ever did with his experiment.
Last and most heartbreaking:
-After being in an accident, 19 year-old Renisha McBride is shot and killed while seeking aid at a nearby home.
A message was sent with the Zimmerman verdict. It's been heard by the paranoid, the entitled, and the heartless, the kind of person that responds to a cry for help by shooting a teenage woman in the face. Michigan being a stand-your-ground state, the shooter in question in this case stands a good chance of never being charged in this, unlike in the strikingly similar case in North Carolina from September. The trend is being set, though. Whether you are a civilian or law enforcement, whether you are frightened or just feeling bloodthirsty, you can react with deadly force to any situation as long as certain laws in your state are vague enough.
God help us.
These are the worst links I can possibly provide. If you think you can top me, please don't. Fair warning, that if you try to stay away from the news to maintain your sanity, you should read no further. I'm not putting these together just to gawk and gape at the horror of it all. We are being desensitized a little more each day with every click to the next sickening news story. I picked these out to highlight specific social ills in the hope we can look at each one a little closer and get down to the root cause.
You may have seen these on social media already, but we're going to discuss them here so we can get it out of our systems and don't bring them up at dinner with the in-laws while stuck for a conversation topic.
It's important to act like everything is fine in real life. I'm not kidding. Hang on to illusion. It's getting to be all we've got, especially in a world where:
- a man advertises his desire to watch a stranger beat and rape his 11 year old daughter.
Anthony Brinkman's nauseatingly perverse desire was exposed after police found an ad he had placed online. An undercover officer, posing as an interested party, lured him to the parking lot of a Cracker Barrel (naturally) where Brinkman was arrested. Upon confessing, Brinkman said that he was 'sorry' and 'stupid'.
You didn't break a window with a baseball, Anthony. You tried to violate and traumatize your own child.
I have stopped caring what creates animals like this. Nature, nurture, video games, telenovelas, don't make no nevermind to me. You could make the argument that the internet fosters and feeds this kind of psychosis that would come up with this, but of course, if it weren't for the internet (coupled with a lack of foresight that many of these kinds of scumbags fortunately don't have) they might never have caught Brinkman. The weird thing is, we don't want law enforcement invading our private lives, but no one reading this would care if the police didn't follow protocol when arresting Brinkman and accidentally danced all over him while wearing golf shoes. Which brings me to exhibit B:
- After being stopped for a minor traffic infraction, David Eckert is physically violated and humiliated in a vain effort to find drugs that he isn't carrying in his rectum
This happened back in January, but Eckert's lawsuit was just filed this week, leading to a flurry of reporters' questions for the head of the Deming, NM police department, who, rather than address valid concerns about the ordeal, refer the press to their lawyers, who also refuse to answer any questions. Until they do, the only version of events we can go off of is Eckert's account of being repeatedly rectally violated via enema, doctor finger, and colonoscopic probe and having to defecate in front of officers so that a doctor could examine the stool. All this happened because some patrolman thought he was clenching his butt too hard to NOT be carrying contraband. The cherry on top is that Eckert is being billed for all the procedures. That's right, the hospital that went along with this and performed all these procedures because some jackass in a uniform told them to is threatening him with collection, which is one better than Milgram ever did with his experiment.
Last and most heartbreaking:
-After being in an accident, 19 year-old Renisha McBride is shot and killed while seeking aid at a nearby home.
A message was sent with the Zimmerman verdict. It's been heard by the paranoid, the entitled, and the heartless, the kind of person that responds to a cry for help by shooting a teenage woman in the face. Michigan being a stand-your-ground state, the shooter in question in this case stands a good chance of never being charged in this, unlike in the strikingly similar case in North Carolina from September. The trend is being set, though. Whether you are a civilian or law enforcement, whether you are frightened or just feeling bloodthirsty, you can react with deadly force to any situation as long as certain laws in your state are vague enough.
God help us.
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