Happy Nuevo Ano There

I hope you all have a year filled with surmountable obstacles, invigorating challenges that are good and much love.

Conflation

Maybe I'm getting too old for this.Or, I've reached my limit of putting up.

I just removed a blog from my list that I enjoyed for its humor and intelligence, and yes, it was a quite politically opposite blog from what I usually adhere to, but it was fabulous.

Yet. Yet. It contained a post about the the Connecticut shootings that conflated supposed wrong thinking about homosexuals, gun ownership, yada yada, albeit very humorously, though quite pointedly, that I thought totally missed the point about crazyball people. And their willow-the-wispiness in discovery prior to killing everyone.

It was deliberately political. It made me ill.

Some of the shit I see on Facebook, which is the biggest clusterfuck ever devised, and of which I'm associated, so I am a stupid clusterfucky contributor, too, is an amazing, not only conflation, but conflagration of bat guano, puerile spewings and Hallmark atrocities, on all sides that is probably contributing to the ongoing mental retardation of young, middle and old age people on every continent and time dimension ever constructed.

Sorry. But. Yeah.

I'm just about RIGHT THERE as far as telling everyone what I think.

In re jewelry carnage

It's a happier topic and one over which I have putative control.

Perhaps not.

Frothlet #2 gave me a Charming Charlie gift card for Christmas. I had suggested buying me some earrings since I'm totally bored and over with most of my current collection. He, probably dragged by his girlfriend to CC, was totally overwhelmed by the store. And understandably so since it's a glittery fifteen-layer-cake of artfully arranged cheap shit from earrings to bracelets to necklaces to shoes to purses and assorted other stuff. Not everything is cheap-cheap, but the range of cheap to medium-cheap outweighs anything not cheap-medium-cheap so that your EYEBALLS AND BRAIN EXPLODE.

It's just a fabulous store. It makes me happy.

So yesterday I hit it right when it opened and was in and out in an hour, $50+ poorer. Or at least Frothlet #2 was. I was only $20+ poorer since one cannot possibly be expected to STOP at $50.

I got me some new smaller danglies, some studs, some unique sorts, all in colors I didn't have and a cunning ring that is five individual rings that stack. Two are rhinestones and three are a minty jadey stone, all in silver or stainless or probably tin, who knows, but they all combine to make a flowery looking thing on my finger. I'll take a pic with Mr. Froth's new camera. Only problem  is, they move around on the finger so I have them secured with a twist-tie since I am fashion forward. The ring also goes well with my blueberry-lavendar Revlon nails.

I then decided to clean out the old jewelry and I filled up two small plastic bags worth of see-ya-don't-wanna-be-ya bracelets, earrings and necklaces. It was awesome! Someone will get some swag that isn't too shabby. Well, you know. I'd buy some of it at a resale shop. And, probably will sometime, because I'm stupid.

Are 50 or so pair of earrings excessive?

In re carnage

This isn't about the tragedies that have erupted, as they are wont to do over the decades. Obviously, it's all horrible and my prayers, seriously, have gone out to those afflicted.

What I would like to know is, barring we ban guns, gasoline, lighters, twine, fertilizer, trucks, bleach, whatall, what would one have done to STOP the Sandy Hook guy beforehand, or the Colorado guy, or whatever other guy who is nuts who wants people dead BEFORE that person did what he did? Because those people WILL succeed at what they do regardless.

Would you have increased healthcare options and medications, of which many people don't avail themselves, in which case you'll need you some healthcare/med police? Would you implant a chip in your potential nutball candidate that knows, sufficiently before mayhem occurs, when such mayhem is planned and therefore incapacitates that nutball? Do you have some secret source of research that you're hiding from us?

Would you require constant custodial care of those you deem potential nutballs? Not actual, certified nutballs, just potential nutballs, which includes a large percentage of the human race.

What would you DO or have done to stop whichever of these peeps beforehand?

Nothing. Because they hadn't done anything beforehand. So, what makes you think you can control this with restrictions on the rest of semi-normal society?

It's quite amazing. We're doomed to dissolve in stupidity-until the media forgets about it in a week, which is soon.

Reading materials

I finally retrieved my Nook from d-i-l and began reading The Passage, part one of  a trilogy by Justin Cronin, a Rice University professor. Post-apocalyptic, vampiry virus scenario, 800+ pages and it's awesome. The writing is actually good, as opposed to just serviceable, and I look forward to the second installment.

For Christmas I also received the ESV Study Bible, for which I asked and have begun  as well. I decided it's time to reenter some serious reading.

Point being, there's a strange duo.

Plus, the Vince Flynn series and Preston/Child's Two Graves (part of the Pendergast series which I'll have to wrest from Mr. Froth if he doesn't read faster), plus an old Rosamunde Pilcher from our United Way bookmobile extravaganza-50 cents!

I could just as soon become a hermit and read myself into oblivion.

Seriously. Rilly.

I have smallish hands, with smallish fingers. One would think I could text appropriately. No. I cannot. It's an old thing, I think. I'm almost grateful for the autosuggestion thingie on the phone thingie, there, thingie.

I'm all about task managing and clearing/ending all applications on my phone now. That's progress.

Merry belated mre phonr tp yoi@

Got a samsung galaxy phone. It'd hatd to tupe with yeemy leyyetd! Must get stylus
. Hopr all yall atr well@ colder thsn shit outsife! Ho ho ho youll shootyyour eye out kid!

What to do. What to do.

We live in a fictionalized society. If one is connected via any medium one is subjected to others' narratives, character development, plot points, denouement (especially denouement) and prologues and epilogues galore.

Of course I'm speaking about the most recent atrocity in Newtown, Connecticut. I tend to agree with Laura.

I feel like I'm living in a Margaret Atwood or Cormac McCarthy novel ( I just started The Road, who knew). We're this close to operating as characters written by someone else.

I know that doesn't make much sense, sense, but it's as if we've all gone over the edge into HAVING TO LISTEN, REACT, FEEL AND BE what the appropriate template is; that being: shocked, awed, empathetic, frightened about more scary shit taking place and what are we going to do about these gun-wielding crazy folks.

I sat there on the patio crying, thinking that I would DIE if my child had been in that charnel house. I would DIE if that were to happen now, when they're adults.

And then I was repulsed by every single last network foisting 24/7 coverage of it. And I was repulsed at myself for listening to it while I was sitting on the patio. And then I was repulsed at myself for deciding to post about it.

But, that's why we have football and basketball and new smartphones to jack with.

We are immersed in immediate news, which means we're immersed in the immediacy of human depravity, which means we need to find some way of making these situations real, mentally-get-overable if we're not directly involved, and a way to not continue the constant neverending drums of trying to second guess it all.

Some things cannot be fixed. Some things are so awful that the only good thing that comes out of them is that the perpetrator is out of our society. It has nothing to do with prevention. There are too many thousands of mental machinations, weaponry abilities and combinations thereof that will defeat any random generator computer, even, from preventing them from going wrong.

Add into the mix our lovely leaders and the soup of stirring a stick into an open stewy wound for weeks and weeks and weeks to evidence their SADNESS, and we have us a fine, continuing still-to-be-published novel of descent into hell.