Hunger Pain And Suffering Games

Making sense of tragedies like the shooting at Los Angeles' International Airport seems futile at this point. Police have charged Paul Ciancia with murder of a federal officer and committing violence at an international airport. The charges could qualify him for the death penalty. This is horribly ironic, since according to many reports he was suicidal just prior to going on his rampage. It the idea was that he could show up with a loaded rifle and let the nearby law enforcement officers do the job for him, he misunderstood the equation. Mister Ciancia shot and killed one TSA agent, then wounded two more along with a civilian with his assault rifle before he was shot four times while the rest of Terminal Three dove for cover.
It doesn't make sense because it's not the product of a stable mind. Ciancia's duffel bag contained a handwritten letter signed by him stating he'd "made the conscious decision to try to kill" multiple TSA employees and that he wanted to "instill fear in their traitorous minds." Michael McCaul, chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee observed, "It's very difficult to stop these types of attacks. And you know, it's like a shopping mall outside the perimeter, it's almost like an open shopping mall. So it's very difficult to protect."
Take note, crazy people with guns who live closer to shopping malls than they do to airports. Ultimately, there is no safe place to hide. Which is why I would like to suggest a ridiculous solution to a terrible problem: Create free-fire zones for those individuals who feel moved to end their lives at the end of a gun. Don't make law enforcement officers have to struggle with your motivations. Drive on down to the local shooting gallery, lock and load and take your chances with the other nut-jobs who are alternately anxious to kill or die. It would be substantially less expensive than making sure that people like Ciancia get the mental health care that they need. Instead of medication, money could be spent on ammunition. Why spend all those hours sitting in front of your X Box playing Black Ops when you can live it? And if the government could give up some of its broadcast time on C-Span to broadcast the melee live, it could become a revenue stream itself.
Or maybe we can spend a little more money, time and effort trying to deal with the twisted reality in which we currently find ourselves. The one where a lone gunman can walk into a crowded airport and kill innocent victims.

New Math, Same As The Old Math

My son and I have a favorite T-shirt that we haven't managed to buy for one another. It says, "2+2=5 - for exceptionally large values of 2." It's the kind of thinking that makes sense for a family of non-math majors. To a certain degree, we are all happy to have the latitude to use our very extensive vocabularies to extrapolate and expand upon all the potential answers to life's problems. The facts of math and science make us all a little uncomfortable. That doesn't mean, however, that I have no appreciation for the concrete nature of these subjects. I was well on my way to being an exceptional math student when my personal life got in the way. The discipline that was required to study Elementary Functions was not available to my mind as a senior in high school. After years of tracking in the upper realms of whatever math courses were available, I opted to finish off my public education with a class called "Selected Topics In Math." It was a place holder, a review, for those who needed that math credit to get them into the college of their choice. Whereupon they could choose to take exactly no further math courses.
This was true to the absurd degree that I took a class that was listed in my university's catalog as "Astrophysics for non-math majors." It would be another ten years before I would need to remember the quadratic formula. That was when I decided to become a teacher. As it turns out, the powers that be would like teachers to know more about the subjects they teach than what he answer keys in the back of the Teacher's Edition of the textbook has to offer. Suddenly, I found myself in love once again with the precision of it all. The way those equations balanced and the steps that made complete sense when followed in the proper sequence. It turned out that being able to explain to kids why there was such a thing as a perfect square gave me peace. During my years as a fourth grade teacher, I reveled in the connections that math allowed me to bring to my ten-year-olds' minds. Getting them to fold pieces of construction paper to find their own equivalent fractions was more satisfying than I can describe.
And then our school district decided that they wanted to emphasize math facts. All that touchy-feely investigation was over, replaced by the rote memorization of rules and correct answers. Never mind the "why," just get to the bottom line already. This was one of the reasons why I didn't feel particularly sad about returning to the computer lab, leaving the regurgitation of times tables to those whose temperament was more suited to such things.  Every so often, I would take a fourth grader aside and try to blow his or her mind with the amazing correlations between the diameter and circumference of a circle, but mostly I returned to my life as a man of words.
Until last year, when the pendulum of education swung back. All of a sudden, they want kids to talk about how they figured out that whole two plus two thing. The "why" is back. And I don't really mind if it's always going to be four, as long as I get to talk about it.

Ah, Youth

There was at time when I believed that "Urban Cowboy" was the epitome of what a film ought to be. I wrote in a journal, after watching John Travolta as "Bud" and Debra Winger as "Sissy" live out their dreams of the New West: "Someday I want to write something as honest as this." I was referring to the movie I had just finished watching on HBO. The movie I had just finished watching on HBO as I consumed six or eight beers. I was feeling it. Deeply.
The beers helped. They helped obscure my memory of "Saturday Night Fever," and how Bud and Tony Manero were pretty much the same guy. Okay, one was set in Houston, the other was set in New York. One of these guys was going to use his talents on the dance floor, the other was going to ride a mechanical bull to win the heart of his lady love. One was a Bee-Gees-infused disco extravaganza, the other was a country-western lollapalooza. It should be noted that only the Urban Cowboy soundtrack had the distinction of receiving the "Chipmunk Treatment." Was that the only difference?
Well, in my mind, I had all but forgotten Tony Manero. It could have been that I was drinking Lone Star beer as I sat in my apartment, tearing up at that honesty. It was probably a contributing factor that I was alone. And drunk. It was probably the beer. It wasn't that "Urban Cowboy" was such a fantastic piece of work. Like its cousin, "Saturday Night Fever," Bud's story had sprung from a magazine article, "The Ballad of the Urban Cowboy: America’s Search for True Grit." Of course there was honesty in there somewhere. The script began its life as journalism.
It also didn't occur to me, sitting in my somewhat furnished living room that I was watching the next iteration of "Grease." Another hit soundtrack, only this time, Sissy was Sandy and Houston was Rydell High. All of my disdain for the star-making machinery that was making John Travolta a hit-making dancing machine fell away as I switched off the television and headed down the stairs to sleep off the effects of six or eight beers over a two hour period.
When I woke up the next day, I looked at my journal and felt my head throb just a little more like Gilley's nightclub. And I went back to my search for honesty. 

Bang Bang

We don't play Cowboys and Indians anymore. We play Cattle Management Specialists and Native Americans. We negotiate appropriate payment for agreed upon parcels of land, and we would never take up arms against one another. Not because it wouldn't be fun to pretend to shoot your friend. It's a lot of fun. It is completely cathartic and satisfying in a way that actual killing can never be. I know this because I spent a lot of time in my youth killing the other kids in my neighborhood. And we all lived to tell the tale. We all walked away. Andy Lopez Cruz did not.
If you've been avoiding the news, and why wouldn't you, you might not know that Andy was shot by sheriff's deputies in Sonoma County two weeks ago. He didn't pop back up and play again. There was no reset button. Andy was carrying a toy gun. It was an Airsoft BB gun that looked  a whole lot like a real AK-47. The biggest distinguishing characteristic in this case would have been the orange tip at the end of the muzzle. The one that had been removed. If you have a very cool, realistic replica of an AK-47, you don't want some silly neon orange tip at the end of your very realistic barrel. Not when there are hundreds of videos on YouTube that will tell you just exactly hot to take that silly neon orange tip off the end of your very realistic AK-47 BB gun.
There are not a lot of YouTube videos that will tell a community how to deal with the tragic and mistaken shooting of a thirteen-year-old boy. I suppose you could go back and take a look at the old "Alfred Hitchcock Presents" episode starring Billy Mumy in which a six-year-old boy finds a loaded gun that he takes for his empty toy holster. The suspense came from wondering just when that real gun might go off. Spoiler alert: There was a happy ending.
I don't feel happy about the way things are now. I do feel that as a parent I am keeping my son from doing things that I did when I was a kid, and it makes me feel more than just a little hypocritical. It also makes me feel glad that, after I've told him what a bad idea it is to carry around guns that look real even when they aren't, he grumbles and moans and keeps on living. I won't offer a judgement on the case of Andy Cruz and the officer who shot him. It's far too terrible and complex for me to decide. I will continue to miss those days when kids could "play guns" the way we used to back in my old neighborhood. For the record, all the kids I grew up with are still around, though I 'm guessing that they feel the same wistful feeling for the way things used to be as they carry on with the party line. The incredibly careful, politically correct and boring party line.

Loss Leader

I remember when my older brother described having conversations with his daughter about big topics. He referenced the chat he had with her as she was beginning to learn about the bombing of Hiroshima. Listening to her awakening as an up-and-coming adult gave him pause. It was a chance to reflect on where his views and priorities lay. What was it that he had passed along? How had he impacted his little girl's world view?
I found myself in a similar situation this week, as I was engaged in a discussion of Humanity with my sixteen-year-old son. Such a big idea, it came with a capital letter. Such a big idea that it could be a major in college. His English class was reading Cormac McCarthy's "The Road." It was his teacher's idea to ask his students about their personal experience and reflect on what it might take for anyone to lose their humanity. Or diminish it in some way. What makes us less human? Pretty deep stuff for a high school junior, but I was surprised by how much thought he had already given it when I heard him talk about his response.
"I think experiencing loss can make you lose your humanity," he said. He said this with a great deal of certainty. I know that he had been thinking about grief and its attendant concerns since the death of our dog a couple of weeks ago. I wondered if being a sixteen-year-old boy made it difficult to feel human as he mourned. The past couple of years have been a rough introduction for him in terms of losing those close to him. His great aunt passed away suddenly last year, and his uncle's dogs both died within a few months of one another. These were attachments that he didn't talk a lot about, but he has always felt things deeply without having to wear those feelings on his sleeve. Something about still waters running deep.
This is why I had to consider what he said for his truth. As his father, it worried me that I hadn't done enough to prepare him for the tough times that life had to offer. How could I have made him ready to lose the people and things closest to him? I certainly didn't do a great job of insulating from it.
And now he was losing his humanity. He went on: "When you experience a great loss, you eventually become numb." Numb? My parental circuits were overloaded. How could he be numb? Hadn't we given him plenty of opportunities to express his grief? Did I ever tell him that it wasn't okay to show his feelings?
No. The reality check came as we continued our conversation and I asked him if he thought that maybe in those moments of loss that we might have a chance to feel with those things that make us more human: love, friendship, connection. Weren't these the bedrocks of Humanity. The capital H.
"I hadn't really thought about that," he looked at me with eyes that had seen it all, at least for the past sixteen years. "Let me get back to you on that."
I'm anxiously awaiting that response.

Heroes Are Hard To Find

The more things change, the more they stay the same. At least that's the way it is in real life. It's also true in comic books. Over the years there has been all kinds of furor raised about this or that super hero being married or killed. Captain America died, and the comic-world mourned. Peter Parker died. Or his clone did. And one of them ended up marrying Mary Jane. Even Superman died. The Man of Steel. How can this be? Oh, that's right. It's make-believe. I know it's okay because I saw them all last couple of summers at the movie theater and they looked just fine.
There's a scene in another made-up story that pretty much sums it up:
Vern: Do you think Mighty Mouse could beat up Superman?
Teddy: What are you, cracked?
Vern: Why not? I saw the other day. He was carrying five elephants in one hand!
Teddy: Boy, you don't know nothing! Mighty Mouse is a cartoon. Superman's a real guy. There's no way a cartoon could beat up a real guy.
Vern: Yeah, maybe you're right. It'd be a good fight, though.
That came from the movie, "Stand By Me," set in 1959. Even though pretend kids said it, this bit of dialogue pretty much sums up how I felt about Superman fighting Spider-Man. I knew that it wasn't really a fair question, since Spider-Man was obviously living in the real world, a.k.a. New York City. Superman came from some obviously fictional place called "Metropolis." And before that? A place in Kansas called "Smallville." Come on, please. At least Batman inhabited a synonym for New York: Gotham.
Now, the makers of Superman and his Bat-infatuated doppelganger are moving their headquarters from "Gotham" to Burbank, California. I'm trying to imagine a world in which this brings more verisimilitude to the son of Krypton. But only if he ditched his job at the Daily Planet and went to work for The TMZ.

Who Ya Gonna Call?

In honor of Dia De Los Muertos, I would like to offer up the following solution to a couple of problems that have troubled us for some time now: The question of the existence of an afterlife and the issue of government sponsored spying on our own people. Let me start by saying that no one should be particularly surprised that the United States has a bunch of spies lurking about. These are the ones that have lovingly been referred to as "spooks." The concept of espionage is hundreds of years old. I know because it's one of the accomplishments I can gain on my way to building my winning Civilization. The one that I'm building on my computer, that is.
Out in the real world, spying is a treacherous business. Nobody really likes to be spied upon, but everyone seems to do it just the same. Just like everyone seems to want to know about what happens in the afterlife. Since we haven't had any really "good" intelligence since we found out that Osama bin Laden was hanging out in a condo in Pakistan, I suggest we focus our efforts on finding out where the dead people are. All the technology we have could easily be turned to this purpose. Motion sensing cameras and infrared goggles could be used to collect data on apparitions that have previously been captured by fuzzy Polaroids or bad VHS tape. Why not bring the other world to its knees by uncovering all its secrets. This could even become a multinational program, with international cooperation and funding. Once we figure out where the phantoms are, then we can decide how we want to deal with them. Just like we banded together to rid the globe of seaborne creatures with gigantic robots, we could unite in the effort to detect and contain poltergeists and the like.
Some might call me crazy for suggesting this. Others might call me Bill Murray.