Our Avenue Makes The News

"Never send to know for whom the bell tolls, it tolls for thee." - John Donne

Yesterday around 10 in the morning a cop parks her car in the middle of our street outside our kitchen window. I went out and noticed there were more police cars up the street, and the cops were kneeling beside their vehicles with their guns drawn. I heard the policewoman tell a neighbor there was some incident going on in a house. I managed to get out to tutor a student at 10:30, but when I tried to get back home the police had blocked off my street completely, and wouldn't let me past the police tape! There were news helicopters buzzing around above us, and when I went to pick up my son from school the other parents were all in a tizzy about it. They figured it was a bank robbery (there are three banks where my street intersects a busy thoroughfare) but my wife was still holed up at home and had learned there had been a house invasion and there were hostages involved.

I took my son downtown to avoid the whole situation and waited until it was time to pick up my other son, around 12:30. By that time the "police activity" was over (according to a recorded message my wife got over the phone) and the gunman was dead. But before he went he shot a hostage, a 24-year old mother as she frantically passed her two kids out the window to the police. My wife heard the flurry of gunshots (10 or so) and she was still feeling nervous hours later.

When my boys heard about the incident they went into their art therapy mode, the younger one drawing pictures of himself using his superpowers to defeat the bad guy and the older one writing a letter to God (OK, Santa) expressing his disapproval of robbers.

It's unusual that our street makes the news. Now the story comes out that there was a link between the gunman and his victims: he was an unstable stalker. (Where are the stable stalkers?) I don't think that makes it any easier to process. Now I think about the kids who live in fear of this kind of brutality day in and day out, in Congo, Iraq and probably not far across the Bay Bridge.

Just Enjoy The ...Tomato Song

This morning I was bonding with my boys by watching VH-1 just like I used to with my dad. Muna and Aidan really enjoyed "The Show" by Lenka (who's sure to appeal to fruit flies too young to remember Feist). To be more specific, they enjoyed the tomato puppets that appear in the video for 5 seconds about a minute and a half in. I have to admit they are entertaining, and according to imdb.com they haven't done anything else. A little later I was thinking about how much those puppets must have cost. All I know is if Rigor Mortis and the Standstills had paid more than 100 bucks for them (in 1980s dollars), we would have made the whole freakin' video about the tomatoes.

Just Like Old Times

I don't use the word "evil" lightly, but California's Proposition 8 joins such discriminatory laws as the Chinese Exclusion Act and the anti-miscegenation statutes enforced by many states over the years. What century is it? I can't even get my mind around the evil and hypocrisy that got this prop passed.

I did compartmentalize lots of the propositions in this election, and voted against ones I otherwise would have supported were it not for the taxation or debt that would have been required. I'm all for helping sick kids, but two billion dollars is two billion dollars.

Had this been a pro-gay marriage initiative with some ridiculous outlay of funds for survivors' estates or whatever, I would have said, "Shea and Noriyko, I love you guys, but I can't see spending all that money on the Gay Marriage Monument (formerly Treasure Island)." But Prop 8 had no economic impact one way or the other. It was an exercise in hatred, pure and simple.

Many churches supported the measure, and their sheep-like followers lined up obediently to take away the rights of their neighbors. Now I ain't church-goin' folk, but I know a little. The hateful ignorance of these "Christians" is in direct opposition to the commandments Jesus said were the most important of all:

The first of all the commandments is, Hear, O Israel; The Lord our God is one Lord: 30 And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength: this is the first commandment. 31 And the second is like, namely this, Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. There is none other commandment greater than these. (Mark 12)

Certainly anything Jesus stated as simply and directly as these two commandments should take precedence over the old adulterer-stoning guidelines of a thousand years before. But if the literal-minded lemmings need old school commandments, how about "Thou shalt not hate thy brother in thine heart." Have we progressed at all?

The religious people in question should be ashamed of their bigotry, since our grandkids will shake their heads at the ignorance and hatred that supported Prop 8, the way we can't even imagine how whites owned human beings or how fear-mongering labor unions got Congress to ban immigration from "undesirable" countries.

Jon Stewart joked about all the Mormon money coming into California to support Prop 8, "'Cause if there's one value the Mormon church has always held dear, it's that marriage must be between one man and uh..."