Book Score: Halloween Edition

Ran a carton of books and DVDs over to my pals at the Buy Counter at Title Wave a couple of days before my road trip last month. While they dug through the flotsam I spent an hour gathering a tall stack of books which had been too new for me to acquire used when I was still employed there. What a difference a year makes. It wasn't until I'd brought everything home - didn't have to spend a dime! - and stacked it on my shelf that I noticed a telling theme running through the titles. They started out innocuously: Boy's Life, The Fourth Bear, The Janissary Tree, The Poe Shadow ... and then there was this run: Survivor, Grotesque, Pulp, Thunderstruck, The Terror. I don't know if I should worry about my subconscious or embrace it.

On audio, to while away the hours on the interstates, I had 2oth Century Ghosts, In the Dark of the Night, The Shadow Over Innsmouth & Dagon, A Fine Dark Line and The Stupidest Angel (a Heartwarming Tale of Christmas Terror.) Ended up reading Boy's Life and listening to A Fine Dark Line simultaneously and found myself becoming confused as to which modern Southern gothic coming-of-age story was which. All the racism, drunkenness, proto-sexual glimmerings, spousal abuse, '60s pop culture references, kindly old black folk, etc. got all twisted up.

It was a Halloween trip and that is all I have to say in my defense.

Hell House

Note: If you are not familiar with the Hell House phenomenon, read this, then watch this.


I like Christians. Most of my best friends are Christians, primarily because their faith teaches them to be kind and generous and - though I am not a Christian myself - the sort of people I aspire to be. On the flip side of the coin, I have on more than one occasion had violence done unto me by someone who objected to my failure to accept Jesus Christ as my personal savior. Any offense given, I assure you was done purely of ignorance having not been raised in the church.

It was, therefore, with great apprehension that I ventured late last night down a dark highway in rural Tennessee looking for the signs for Hell House XI: Deadly Deceptions. What sort of Christians would I find there? I was sure they'd be able to tell immediately upon seeing me that I was one of the damned. Would they welcome me? Tolerate me? Shun me? Chase me away? I had visions of being trapped in a hot, white room, surrounded by people loudly exhorting me to take communion before I'd be allowed to flee. Was this a chance I was willing to take just to satisfy my curiosity about the evangelical Christian uses of horror?

After being directed to a parking spot, I said a quiet prayer to the god of my understanding to help me be open and tolerant and to help me blend with the faithful. Also, I asked the g.o.m.u. to save me from any situation in which I'd feel tempted to lie about my beliefs.

Taking a deep breath, I stepped out of the car into a pitch black night. There were no signs, no people. I had no idea where I was supposed to go and could scarcely see the pavement under my feet. Then I heard voices approaching and instinctively latched on to them. "Hi. Do you know where the entrance is?" "Right over here." I tagged along with the two ladies and began finding ways to join in their conversation. One lady was visiting for her second time that night and had, in previous years, waited for hours in a line that stretched well into the parking lot.

We paid our $7 at a folding table attended by smiling women in colorful sweaters and went to stand in line in the fluorescent lit community room. It was very, very bright but, though they could see me, the other folks didn't turn as one and whisper and point at me. I continued to chat up the ladies I'd walked in with, hoping to form allies rather than enter the Hell House alone. My experience with Christianity is that women on their own are often looked upon with mistrust.

As is always the case when I try new things, it's the people you meet who really make an experience worthwhile. Everyone was of the nice Christian variety and I ended up in an animated circle of conversation with about seven folks who were sparked by my questions about this particular Hell House. It had apparently begun eleven years previously at a shopping mall in the city of Bowling Green, but public outcry had been so violent that the church had been forced to move it to a more remote location. "I don't understand," I said, a little disingenuous, "What was the problem?" "Oh it was the gays, the abortion people, even other churches." "Other churches?!" "They just didn't understand what we're trying to do." There was an anecdote about a youth group from another church who had been forbidden to attend the Hell House but snuck over anyway. When they returned, the kids sat up with their pastor until 3AM with the result that the pastor called Victory Bible and commended their work and said, "We'll never miss another one."

My group was ushered in, accompanied by two burly security guards, and led giggling in the dark down a path into a wooded area. At one point a guard barked, "Quit laughing. It's time to get serious." At a cemetery tableau we were met by the first of "The Master's" imps who would guide us through the rooms of his house of horrors. This is where the experience got excellent. In addition to meeting some nice folks - who were my heroes for sticking by me throughout - I got to see some well executed youth theater! I was proudly sporting my TBA Theatre - Anchorage, Alaska jacket both as a conversation starter and a way of indicating that I was out of my element and relying on the kindness of strangers. The young performers gave me something on which to hinge my observations.

The first scenario cautioned against drunk driving. "I just wanted to have a good time!" The plot was a wee bit absurd - girl causes fatal accident, calls her mother and a phone flung from the wreckage of the other car begins to ring - but the acting and staging were great! Real wrecked cars, fire pots and fog machines, the little sister of our sinner crawling through from the passenger side of the mother's car to die in our sinner's arms, etc. I think the imp detailing the scenario said that Kentucky was responsibly for 30% of drunk driving fatalities, which seemed exaggerated, but I was willing to go with it.

I wasn't clear about scenario two, but it seemed to warn against pornography and date rape. Again, a little absurd as the porn-inflamed date-rapist compounds his sin by murdering his victims (complicit, of course, in their own deaths by listening to loud metal music and making out with a guy in his dorm room.) It was really violent. The kids did a good job with challenging material, but what teenager doesn't love that kind of over-the-top drama? At least they're doing it for Jesus. The imp narrating was doing a Heath Ledger Joker thing and kept returning his attentions to the gorgeous 14-year old standing next to me. I was vaguely offended that he didn't get up in my face, too! Weird statistic here: One in three women is addicted to pornography.

The next room was teen suicides. It was really disturbing to hear the (adult, this time) imp tell a dead girl who was upset that "everyone called her a slut," "Well, you ARE a slut!!" Another girl, sporting excellent bloody wound makeup on her wrists killed herself because her mother didn't believe her that her step-father had raped her. "Damn. That's cold," I did not say out loud, though my eyes were huge and my mouth agape in horror.

In the next room a guy killed his wife and girlfriend while on a meth binge. Then, we went to Hell.

Here, a handsome young man got to strut about among strobe lit scenes of the punishments various sinners would suffer when they arrived in "The Master's" domain. It was nasty stuff, but I couldn't help but wonder what the competition was like among Hell House auditioners to get a plum role like his. Backstage I imagined the joint looked a lot like High School Musical 3 with our man Satan here getting, while not the lead of course, the role every guy secretly wanted. What an opportunity for a good Christian kid to let his freak flag fly!

It was, as intended, a huge relief after our trip through Hell to be escorted into the waiting arms of an angel and through the tomb (great set piece) from which Christ's body was mysteriously risen. In a soothing room dressed entirely in white fabrics, new age music playing, we were welcomed by Jesus himself - as played by an appropriately earnest 18-year old blond kid. His message was very warm, he made eye contact with everyone and assured us that we could always have hope and not to let Satan deny us that. He then led us in a prayer that did not require me to lie and we were led, at last, to the final stage.

Inside the huge chapel we were seated in front of a podium and invited to fill out comment cards ("Check One: a) Did you accept Christ into your life for the first time tonight? b) Did you make a decision to re-commit yourself to Christ tonight?, etc.") and given the opportunity to chat with a counselor about what we had seen. No pressure. No hard sell. My companions for the evening just filled out their cards and left, so I followed. In the parking lot I earnestly thanked them and, seated safely in my car again, remembered to say a thank you to the g.o.m.u. for letting me enjoy a fascinating glimpse into the unfamiliar world of evangelical Christianity.

Twilight

The first time I saw him the whole world seemed to stop and wait for me to breathe again.

It was a busy night at the movie theater. I was hustling popcorn and sodas at top speed to a lobby-spanning throng of customers, when, suddenly one among the crowd seemed to glow as if he was lit from within and all else fell into shadow for that light. His skin was pale, almost translucent, which enhanced the effect as he stood in contrast to the summer-bronzed crowd. His eyes, a piercing blue, seemed to sense my stunned stare and he glanced over at me curiously. Flustered, I dropped a soda and was shocked back into the frenzy behind the counter as my coworkers yelled and I scrambled to swab up the fizzy mess.

My breath still came quickly as I returned to my station to be greeted by my friend Chowderhead who leaned across the counter and said, "Andrea. This is Rusty. He's going to the Killdozer show with us Thursday." A shy, crooked grin bloomed across the pale, beautiful face and crinkled the corners of the bright blue eyes from which I had yet to recover after my first glimpse. Say something. Say something. Say something sane. "Cool," I mustered, and they disappeared into a theater. Up close I had seen the way his smooth skin stretched over his muscles like marble, and how broad his chest was under his sleeveless flannel. His features could have been carved by a Roman artisan 2000 years ago, the lines so straight, so hard, so clean. I thought of nothing but seeing him again for the rest of the week.

.... and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I could go on about my first love for hours - Seriously, I could - but it is my sincerest hope that you have had a first love of your own and that you already know how it feels. The near-obsessive need to be together, the knowledge that no more beautiful creature has walked the earth, the willingness to bear annoying friends and relatives, the songs, the phone calls, the way your skin responds electrically to a touch, etc.

That, in a nutshell, is what Twilight is about. If you think you'd enjoy reading 498 pages similar to the first three paragraphs above, then I highly recommend Twilight. You would not be alone. Romance is the fastest selling genre in fiction, supernatural romance the most popular sub-genre, and you'll be surprised at how many people - teens, adults, pre-teens - you know are eager to discuss Twilight with you. It's a cultural phenomenon now spanning four books, a feature film to be released in December, and countless, fevered Facebook groups devoted to its hero, a 90 year-old vampire dating a 17 year-old high school student.

What entertained me the most about Twilight, and - I admit it - kept me turning pages, was the thinly-veiled, cautionary tale on the dangers of teen sexuality represented by the irresistible but potentially fatal attraction the vampire and the high school girl have for each other. Ooohhhh, they want each other sOOOO badly, but if he gets too close to her, why her very scent may send him into a bloodlust and he will kill her before he knows what he's done. There's a great Man of Steel, Woman of Kleenex thing going here. Pages and pages are devoted to describing the epic battles for self control this vampire must wage against his base desires. The responsibility for this is all his. She is an innocent beauty, she does not know the power of her effect on him. Occasionally she gets carried away and tries to hold his hand or cuddle or something, and he must flee rather than devour her.

Yet, he stays because he loves her that much. Also, he's 90 and has learned how to control himself better than an age-appropriate vampire could. Dreamy!

Not to put too fine a point on it, but I'm told that in one of the later books our vampire marries his sweetheart because he could not "turn" her without that kind of commitment.

I cannot deny that when I was a teen I would have given a few pints to meet a guy who loved me enough to keep his hands to himself - as long as he found other ways to demonstrate his overwhelming physical need for me, like, not ripping my throat out with his teeth. There's a sort of proto-rape fantasy vibe in Twilight with the vampire's need to drink her blood substituted for a teen male's overwhelming need to, ermm, make love. It's like a literary first sip of beer, grooming girls for the crystal meth of romance novels geared toward adult audiences wherein the vampires actually do "it."

It's tempting to gripe about what could be called sexism in novels like Twilight - she's passive, he's aggressive, she swoons, he acts, he is sexualized, she is an innocent flower, etc. - but as I said, romance is the best-selling genre in fiction and the reason for this (duh!) has to be that millions of ladies (and gents!) have some wishes that need fulfilling. Maybe it's no surprise to those of you connected to social reality, but I always need evidence which, in this case, says: 90 year-old vampires who look like hot 23 year-old boys and will marry them first are what women want.

Actually, put that way, Heck yeah! That'd be smokin'! Where can I get one?

Something about a Rut

Does anyone ever think to themselves, "One day I will end up in a rut?" Certainly I never expected to, given my checkered - but interesting! - career history and penchant for spontaneous cross-country moves. But then I arrived in Anchorage, Alaska, and was surprised that, for the first time in my life, I felt "Home." Even so, in the intervening 14 years I still felt the call and moved 3700 miles south ... then promptly turned around to move back. Maybe if I hadn't picked Phoenix ...

Here, in the place I consider Home, I have connected with a vibrant community of like-minded souls, been adopted by a couple of hooligan dogs, and made such a commitment to place as to buy a house. Talk about a rut. Nothing like anchoring yourself to a mortgage to minimize potential for checkered - but interesting! - career moves, and forget about picking up and leaving altogether on a moments notice. How then, denied my previous outlets from an impending rut, am I to break free?

An entire sub-genre of romantic comedies is devoted to the notion that the most staid personality can be undone by the entrance into one's life of a fresh and quirky personality - ideally an attractive member of your preferred gender - who will (for reasons that are usually inexplicable) devote boundless time and energy to the task of dragging our hero kicking and screaming out of a rut. Attached is a photo of my new love, as yet unnamed. It's a '94 Suzuki DR350SE and, as is the case with many of my loves, it does not belong to me.

Back in March I received an email with this photo and the following: I figure it'll take me a few afternoons in the shop to have a fun runner that I can loan to interested parties who want to try their skills at falling down in the dirt. "Why, that's me!" I thought, composing an eager reply. The author of the missive is my best Alaska riding buddy and is well aware of my teenage dream of opening my riding horizons to that part of the planet composed of dirt (also gravel, sand, ammunition casings, etc.) Oh, he knew what he was doing when he sent me that tantalizing message and, because that's the kind of guy he is, he came through!

This Saturday I finally had a chance to test the budding promise of this promised girl-machine relationship. I don't know how it was for the DR, but for me, oh, it was sweet like hearts and flowers and dust like a raccoon mask and rocks bouncing off your visor. That kind of sweet. C'mon, you know what I'm talking about.

Tooling along in about 2nd gear on his KTM Adventure 950 while I screamed along behind in top gear holding around 62mph (though the DR will go to 70mph!) we first went off-pavement at the abandoned Atlas missile site near the end of Knik-Goose Bay Road. Talk about a teenage dream come true, the place was every Texas redneck girl's ideal setting for a first date. Big abandoned concrete bunkers with iron doors looming out of dense woods in a complex scattered across a couple of acres, layered in graffiti and paintball splatters, accented by burnt-out cars and bullet-ridden 70s-era electronics. This is where our tires crunched over a dense layer of spent ammunition. "This is great! We should have brought our guns!" I said to my patient, bemused companion.

After another highway stretch, we then attacked a perilous cut-off (maybe a powerline pass or a fire break) with a loose rock surface. Highlights were a moose carcass in the road and some steep climbs and descents made interesting by the deep series of divots dug in by bouncing winter snowmachines and mudbogging spring 4-wheelers. These early rough users also laid bare any huge rocks under the road surface which added an exciting technical aspect: Stand up while the bike bounces wildly beneath you; Gun it to get up the steep sections; Careful on the brakes while you're bouncing down the other side; Don't crash into any giant rocks. A toast, now, to beginner's luck!

Another stretch of pavement led us to Burma Road which, though dirt, was well graded and uneventful. It ran through some beautiful forest which made me realize that there's not a lot of room for sightseeing on a dirtbike since you're constantly trying not to crash into things. Occasionally, during rare monkey mind moments of trusting the bike and my own instincts, I'd get the DR up to a thrilling 40+mph. Later, my jaw dropped to hear that Mr. KTM 950 does it at 60-70 when he's not nursing a squid.

The final 80 miles or so saw us on the Big Lake road out to the Parks then north through Willow to pick up the back end of the Fishhook - Hatcher Pass Road. Mr. KTM can get up to 90-100 on this one and, even on the dirt hits curves at 55mph "with room for error." This was my first trip up the back side of the pass and it easily ranks as one of the most beautiful rides I've ever enjoyed. It was exceptionally hard to avoid crashing into things while stealing glimpses of the vistas that kept opening ever more spectacularly around us. The DR is a very forgiving machine, though, and if I failed to avoid a rock or pothole the bike could be trusted to forge ahead unfazed.

My biggest problem is right hand turns, which may be a mental disconnect between the need to press into the right grip while simultaneously using the same hand to control the throttle and front brake. It made for some squirrelly moments negotiating the steep, slick switchbacks that lead to the pass. My instructor gave me a brief, but productive, lesson in counterbalancing after observing one of these close calls.

On the way back down, my mind-reading leader took us on a side trip up Archangel Road which is something I've always wanted to explore. My poor Honda Element can just barely make it to the Reed Lakes trailhead, but now I was bouncing and sliding and counterbalancing merrily along, standing on the pegs and entertaining the idea that maybe I might get the hang of this one day. At the top we stopped for a breather and talked about the funniest things we'd seen on Top Gear. Afterward we made our way back to Garage Mahal. I was exhausted, hungry, missing my heated hand grips with an ear-to-ear grin creasing the coat of grime on my face.

About that rut ...

My new best friend, the DR350 with the fresh and quirky personality sent to drag me out of my comfortable riding habits ... My instructions were keep your weight on the pegs, let the bike move under you and when in doubt, gun it! So, not three minutes off the pavement for the first time, I found myself with the front wheel in one rut and the rear wheel in another and made a classic squid error: I focused on the ruts rather than focusing on my goal. (I'm sure this a metaphor.) Then I gunned it! Then I found myself face down in the dirt! I turned off the DR which, though lying on its side was still putting happily away, and waited sheepishly for assistance. Mr. KTM 950 laughed when I apologized for dropping his bike, while pulling grass out of my visor, "That's what it's for!" he said. "Well, it's kinda your fault," I replied. "You said 'When in doubt, gun it!' but you didn't say anything about looking where I was going." Photo of crippling injury is attached.

Ten minutes later I dropped it again. I hate ruts.

I go to Towson, High

After catching Superbad last week, I've had the Paul Feig/Judd Apatow/Seth Rogen crew on the brain. This creative team breaks my heart regularly with their tantalizing offers of romance for losers and nerds, and I have carefully avoided The 40-Year Old Virgin and Knocked Up, despite overwhelming evidence that they are fantastic, funny films. Still, I cannot resist their offers to revisit those agonizing teen years as one of the blessed suburban middle class, with all the freedom from danger and want and all the burden of high expectations they entailed.

It was sometime during my second year at Dumbarton Middle School, the horrors of puberty foiling every attempt at social or academic achievement, that I finally flunked out of the "Gifted & Talented" program and gave up. From Geek to Freak in 6 bloody periods. One day it was Damian Hammontree, boy genius, asking me to go steady over his visual demonstration of the fractal properties of music, and the next day it was Tim Tarpley, dull-witted jock, trying to shove his tongue in my mouth over a bottle of Four Roses under the railroad bridge. My first kiss. To his credit, Tarpley - he had a nickname like "ferret" or "weasel" - didn't press the issue after I bit him and took off, "Gotta go!," He may have been preoccupied with the possibility of needing stitches.

The above incident reveals that, despite huge efforts - utterly unlike the ones I put into academics - I was never much of a success as a Freak. The great thing about Freaks, though, was that they had exceedingly low standards and would even let weird, smart girls hang out with them. The legend of Ferret spread quickly and assured me a degree of safety from predation that none of my Freak girlfriends - I am deeply saddened to say - enjoyed.

Instead, I was free to pursue a gifted & talented program in subjects like Drug Use, Vandalism, Authority Evasion and Party Crashing. While Damian Hammontree was acing the SATs in 8th grade and accepting early admission to Johns Hopkins at 15, I was scrounging change out of my parents sofa to buy Marlboro Reds and learning how to "own" a room long enough to make off with all the booze. My Anti-role models were kids like Eddie L. and Stephanie G. who mugged a man for heroin money ... while I scrambled to escape from Eddie's car; Eddie D. who, baseball bat in hand, walked me home drunk one night ... and another night raped my friend Anne at a squat for runaways; Karl H. who turned me on to Pink Floyd and Hot Tuna before committing suicide ... and was one of the few I thought had a chance.

The fact that I am alive and posting this to a blog shows that I was merely a "D" student. For all my fervent studies, I flunked at being a loser. Most of the Freaks thought I put on airs - the taint of a Geek vocabulary is difficult to conceal - and never trusted me enough to let me in on their worst (Eddie L. & Stephanie were the exception, being too far gone to care.) Also, despite my dismal academic and social record, I earnestly enjoyed a lot of Geek pastimes: Horseback riding, Theatre tech, Morning announcement crew ("Good morrrrrrrning, Towson!") You can imagine how the Freaks looked upon all this unaffected Geek-ery: With unaffected mock-ery. By rejecting the little good I clung to, though, the Freaks ultimately saved me from their own fate.

The summer I turned sixteen, I dropped out of high school. Thereby officially surviving the experience - even if only by getting out while the getting was good. For the record, it was the smartest thing I ever did as a teenager. No more Freaks and Geeks. Just Do or Die.

There was a Graduate program ... but that is a story for another post.

Squidly Rabbit

It's an exciting time of year for anyone in Anchorage who loves motorcycles, and amateur hour is in full force. I predict that by Sunday we'll have our first reported motorycle fatality of the season. Let's hope it's not mine!

Squidly Rabbit Learns About Safety Gear

As I was gearing up for my after work jaunt to Beluga Point - First Gear Kilimanjaro riding suit, boots, gloves, ear plugs, neck warmer, sunglasses, hair wrap and full face helmet all takes a while - a co-worker called me over to hear his amusing story. At lunch he was walking across Minnesota at Benson when he saw a guy on a new sportbike attempting to negotiate a corner. The rider cut too close, overcorrected and went too wide, bumped up over a curb and promptly fell over. After we laughed about that, I relayed the tale of an acquaintance who wanted to learn how to ride and promptly went out and bought a Yamaha FZ6. As a racer friend of mine put it, "If you're learning how to drive, don't you think maybe a VW would be a better choice than a Ferrari?" On his first day, with no experience in countersteering or clutch control, and no MSF course, my squidly friend crashed into the back of his own truck. My coworkers and I laughed some more and I headed out to watch the Friday evening festivities on the Seward Highway.

Mind you, this very morning I pulled a couple of chump moves of my own so I was riding pretty humbly, just trying to give the cages their space. It was a nice ride, fresh air and sunshine, with the earplugs I've recently added to my gear offering an incredibly soothing reduction in wind racket. I love them! They've put many more fatigue-free miles on my range. Then, one block from my turn-off, heading north on Lake Otis, I came over the crest of the hill to see a rider trying to catch the light from Waldron to make the right turn south, fail to manage his speed and steering, hit the median and flip over right in front of me. He and the bike bounced and slid - bike parts grinding and flying. He leapt to his feet as I stopped to ask if he was OK, but he - looking very handsome and cool wearing absolutely no protective ANYthing - was already occupied wheeling his Harley back from whence he came. I'm sure when the shock wears off he's going to be in some serious pain.

It's been an interesting day from a rider's point of view. There is something about watching a dude smash up his beautiful Harley that makes me want to laugh, but as every rider knows, "It's not IF you drop your bike, it's WHEN." So I must remember that on some level we are all only a Squid.

They're Not Going Away

In America guns are like cars. They're not going away. It's possible to point to a few (very few) other countries that don't have our ubiquitous weapon-toting culture, but it's ridiculous to think we can turn back the centuries of political and social evolution that made us the USA and them, say, Holland. I bet there are some nice old school puritans in Amsterdam pointing at us saying, "Look! They've criminalized drug use and prostitution. Why shouldn't it work here too?" Hmmm, I'm beginning to suspect that those peace-loving Netherlandish ways and their laissez-faire attitude about consensual "crime" are two sides of the same coin.

So now another crazy American asshole has killed a bunch of helpless people and he used a gun to do it. Certainly he could've used a bomb and probably he could've used a machete. He could've sped a truck (probably a Dodge Ram pickup) onto a crowded campus quad or piped carbon monoxide into his ex's dorm room. Chainsaw would've been very effective and inspired appropriate shock-and-awe! He could've killed a bunch of people in an Amsterdam coffee bar too. Serve those pothead pseudo-intellectuals right.

It has begun. Thanks to Cho Seung-Hui at VA Tech your politicians, spending your tax dollars, are already busily assigning funding to new, expensive, cronyist task forces, some shiny but tiny - relative to the problem - security technology, and a few lucky personnel (job ensured for life!) to look scary and inspect your national RealID. We need more funding! Now we need more than that! The people protecting won't even say please as they empty your wallet. It's for your own good. You asked for it. Begged for it!

Will any of this make you any safer? Will it even make you feel safer? Do you believe in the sunniest corner of your heart that more invasive policing and more, more, more funding will protect you from ... what? Has a policeman ever arrived at the scene of a crime perpetrated against you with any confidence-inspiring indication that justice will be served? I believe in the police, that they serve a crucial function maintaining civil society. I also believe they are stretched too thin by the overwhelming burden of - that term again - consensual crime they're expected to devote resources to. Those poor folks are so busy, most of us are embarrassed to call and report an actual property crime like a break-in, or vandalism. In Amsterdam, I wonder if the ho's can call the cops if a customer gets too rough? I bet they can!

How will you protect yourself? We are not children. The Muni/State/Fed are not our mommy and daddy. Heck, where were mom & dad when you were getting in trouble after school? They love you and they can't protect you (or protect the planet from you, as is the case for some of us.) The Fed doesn't love you. It loves the jobs and pork your tax dollars guarantee. In fact, the harried folks who created this country believed that they needed to be able to protect themselves from the very power we now frantically assign our policing bodies (so many more of them every day!)

Someone with a machete could be walking across the parking lot toward your office right this minute. You know it's true!

I own a gun. No guarantee that I'd have any luck with it, barring the element of surprising the hell out of an attacker, but I've done my homework and taken my personal defense classes and formed a plan. Eventually, I hope, the police will get here but that doesn't absolve me from responsibility for protecting myself and the people I love in the meantime by any means necessary. I sleep more comfortably at night for accepting this.

Use some of that tax "refund" to take a self-defense class. It's a much cheaper, much more proactive and - I suspect - a much more effective way to be a little safer than paying Sarah Palin's friends to sit in a meeting room collecting a state check only to tell you the solution to your protection problem is to give them more money.

Make sure your friends know you've got their back and don't let fear keep you from stepping up when danger is imminent. It's the only way to be sure justice has a chance, and that you don't live a life of regret wondering "What if I'd ..." In the end, we have to look out for ourselves and each other and that's how it's always been. I say this for myself, because that is the person I aspire to be rather than the ninny I am in high-tension situations.

Finally, if only Virginia Tech had adopted Penn Jillette's solution (quote below) to post-9/11 airline travel security hysteria we'd likely have had 25 or so fewer corpses on campus yesterday. Guns are not going away. Find a way to make them work for you rather than against you.

"What if, instead, we make the bad guys do the profiling? Get rid of all the showboat security. Try some freedom. Let anyone with a ticket get on the plane with anything he wants, and then make the terrorists decide which passengers to attack."