Not to make light of the matter in any possible way, but… Yesterday when I turned on the radio and heard of the situation in Las Vegas my first thought was: “O.J.?” And you know, when I had that thought I was not even joking or thinking it ludicrous that O.J. Simpson’s first order of business after being released from jail was to acquire a battery of firearms and go nuclear with it. I also had no idea he was actually in Las Vegas when the shooting happened. It would not have been too much more fucked up than the ambiguousness of what we know so far about the shooter. Well, wait. Yes it would. If it had been O.J. Simpson in that hotel room raining bullets indiscriminately on his first day of freedom in 9 years that would have been apocalyptically fucked up.
The video of all those people running for their lives is enough to make me cry, or throw up. Such a humiliating position to suddenly be in, from the passive entertainment of a music show to not knowing which way to run and seeing bodies of strangers around you fall to the ground and fucking die.
I turn off social media when things like this happen. Most of the play by play is offered up by people who are not even there nor do they have any legitimate interest in the matter. Their dispensing of on-the-record commentary has no significance. But more importantly is how lies and misinformation circle the globe instantly, flagging innocent and unwitting individuals as the perpetrators when they are not. This is why I’ve never looked at Reddit since the Boston Marathon bombing, when that site’s lynch mob wrongly accused someone of being the bomber based on nothing more than his “suspicious” appearance in some photo or other, I forget its provenance. If they had simply gotten it wrong and owned up to it that would be one thing. It was the pride they took in how much coverage their mistake got around the world and how INFLUENTIAL they were that made me a little nauseous and even fearful that we live in a world where anybody can be thrust into the ranks of public enemy #1 for ABSOLUTELY NO REASON.
Yeah.
I also turn of social media because of the inevitable finger pointing, name-calling, and politicizing of events that politics can do nothing about.
AND I AM SICK AND TIRED OF HEARING ABOUT JIMMY KIMMELL. This matter of comedians being national therapists has gotten out of control. I guess that’s just a symptom of there being too damn many late night talk shows but still, CANCEL YOUR SHOW FOR THE NIGHT AND TELL CATHARTIC JOKES WHEN IT IS APPROPRIATE TO BE FUNNY AGAIN.
Republican talk radio (I listened to Joe Walsh and, randomly enough, Joe Piscopo, about whose existence I forgot) took the usual approach of praising the work of LV police. As far as I can tell for whatever help they got from the Mandalay Bay security goons they did nothing more than get to the room in time for the shooter to off himself.
So much more to say but then nothing really to say because it’s all been said and no one listens to anyone but themselves. Right?
…
Just back from Newport, NJ. Not far off from what I expected. Very new, clean, even antiseptic. Not a payphone anywhere, not even in the big boring mall where I ended up spending too much of my two hours over there. Decent enough views to Manhattan, if that’s your thing. Mentioned to friend Dave I was going there, he said blech and that I should give Journal Square a try instead for its urban-decay-as-porn aspect. Hah, told him I was there on Saturday and had almost identical sentiments about the area.
Might have spent more time in Newport but I took a Q32 bus to 33rd Street and it was slow as hell, over an hour. Got some reading in, which was why I took the bus. Read chapter one of a book about how many times the world has come closer to annihilation than most people realize. Apparently in the 1980s a single Soviet individual in charge of monitoring such things saw the U.S. launch a single nuclear missile toward Moscow. Figuring this had to be a glitch he just let it go, expecting it to disappear. But then 4 or 5 other missiles appeared. Still, he could not deny that something was not right about the pattern. The episode lasted as long as three minutes, when the missiles disappeared from the radar. It was some kind of sunbeam aberration, I think, in which strong sunlight reflected off the ocean. This reflection caused the Soviets’ 1980s-era radar computer software to interpret these sunstrokes as rocket launches.
If that individual had reacted by the book the world would have cooked. And the upshot of this incident was that the person was demoted and almost fired for not sticking to protocol, essentially for not nuking the U.S. when there was no real reason to.
The story came out 15 years later, after the thaw. In response a certain international humanitarian organization awarded him a trophy and a cash stipend of about $1,000. Dude saved the world and got as much recognition as if he won a spelling bee.
Yeah, amusing story. The book is a collection of stories like this, where the apocalypse was just barely averted. The point being that all times are chaotic. Funny how I was just thinking of that phrase yesterday, before finding this book. Also learned that Sir Isaac Newton said the world will end in 2060. Never heard that. It’s based on some cryptographic analysis of the Bible. It’s also bullshit.
Going home to TAKE A DUMP.
