There Is No Mention of Rod Stewart

I caught a part of this story which Marco posted about last week while Amanda and I were in Jersey Mike's. To encapsulate for those of you who haven't read Marco's post, this guy calls up 911 in Texas to report a robbery in progress. This isn't happening at his house, but at his neighbors. He tells the 911 operator that he's going over there to shoot these guys with his shotgun, and does it. The kids who worked behind the counter were laughing at the tape of this guy on the news, I think there were gun shots in the background once he walked away from the phone, but I could be inserting that memory myself. I felt chills run down my spine, and had no impulse to laugh. Is laughing wholly inappropriate here, or is it just me?

It reminds me of the scene in No Country For Old Men where Tommy Lee Jones is reading an article about some serial killing couple in California, he quotes the end of the article, "neighbors were alerted when they saw a victim escaping the house wearing only a dog collar". Tommy Lee inserts that they didn't think anything was wrong when they were burying people in the backyard, though. The deputy laughs, and tries to stifle it. Jones tells him it's okay, he had to laugh himself.

Has it gotten so bad that all we can do is laugh, and then laugh hysterically, at such a tragedy. Or am I just being to uptight, having been on the line with 911 myself so recently?

That night has affected me so deeply. It's affected both of us very deeply, and we're still dealing with it. I've had this simmering headache that keeps resurfacing, and my eyelids have these consistent little twitches. Every time Amanda is hurting, or anxious, I think that I could have pulled her more out of the way, that I could have dropped her off in front of the Jackpot, instead of her crossing the street with me.

After my initial attempts to break through Bruce Tedder's door, I lost anger towards the man who hit Amanda. I felt bad for him, thinking how this night would have changed his life forever, in a way wholly different than the way it changed Amanda's or mine. How he was probably in a part of town he didn't know too well, and didn't realize the street he was on dead ended into a parking lot. Then we found out this was going to be his third DUI, and I lost compassion toward him. We received a copy of the police report, saw his blood alcohol level was over twice the limit, and I had no more compassion for this man, none whatsoever. An arrogant bastard who didn't learn his lesson the first two times he got in trouble for drunk driving. Who didn't care, this reaches beyond his bad luck, his not knowing any better, and into hubris, where he deserves everything that happens to him now.

Then last night, Amanda and I were watching one of the most ridiculous movies we've ever seen, Dreamcatcher. In every scene, the preposterousorosity level just ratchets further and further. It operates in a bizarro universe where Tom Sizemore is the straight arrow and Morgan Freeman is the loose cannon. Aliens invade in viral form and then explode out of your ass, and that's only the begining. I'm getting off point though, early in the movie, a character crosses the street and is hit by a car. It was quick and violent, and then there was silence on the other end of the couch. I look over and tears are filling the eyes of the woman I love. And I know who's to blame for this. I know his name, I know his face, and I hate him now.