OMG WTF, I’m Old

As I’ve mentioned before, since I have now been without cable a few years, instead of watching TV I usually watch original comedy stuff on YouTube – guys like this one and this one and this one, gals like this one, this piece of citrusy goodness, and, of course – these guys, as they’re the home team.

A month or so ago, I was voting in a Survivor-type contest among YouTubers, and I kept seeing this one three-letter acronym used over and over again in comments on people’s videos. It was confusing me terribly as to why people were repeatedly writing this acronym in regards to YouTubers they apparently liked.

Because when I was in college and thereabouts in the Eighties – and into the Nineties, for that matter – all those bad boys with their Black Flag and Minor Threat and Bad Brains records (i.e., the ones I always wound up with – go figure) used to stencil this three-letter acronym on guitar cases and skateboards and stuff. Or my ex’s slightly nerdy, acid-dropping, D&D-playing friends would fake tattoo it on themselves. It was spray painted on the walls (always either in black or red) of at least three apartments I remember in Murfreesboro and two in Nashville, and on the outside of one garage.

You’d have been hard pressed to walk into Cantrell’s, the Exit/In, or Elliston Square in the Eighties and not seen this acronym scrawled on a t-shirt, an Army jacket, or a pair of torn jeans in black magic marker. After all, it was all, everybody’s an anarchist, yada yada and all that… way back then in the ol’ Dark Ages. After all. (I just wanted to fit “all” into this paragraph somehow, just one more time.)

And it – said three-letter acronym – it wasn’t very, well… nice. (And understandably so, since everybody was an anarchist and all that.)

So a month or so ago, I was really having a lot of trouble wrapping my head around why in the world people kept leaving in comments things like:

“(insert YouTube comedian’s name here)… FTW!”

I guess it’s one of the disadvantages to not having kids/teenagers to set me straight – and next time, maybe I’ll have enough sense to just go straight to Urban Dictionary instead of straining my brain over something like “For The Win!” for days. Or a week and a half exactly.

But I guess at least not having teenagers meant I got to spare myself the inevitable ridicule when Mom asked why all these people on YouTube were telling all these other people to f*ck the world, right?

Seeing Justice Served: Let’s Do the Right Things on BOTH Sides of the Mississippi

Here when, in a few hours, a Knoxville jury will begin deliberations on the sentence for convicted murderer, torturer, and rapist Lemaricus Davidson, I’m reminded of some rather interesting new info I came across while browsing around the ‘Net a few weeks ago regarding a very, very old case that’s still sorta in limbo to this day.

More than likely, unless you’re from around here, you probably didn’t hear about the West Memphis Three case until the documentary Paradise Lost: The Child Murders at Robin Hood Hills was first aired on HBO in 1996, a broadcast that kickstarted a wave of national attention like a snowball rolling downhill that still kinda continues to roll and grow as time goes on.

I was right here in Memphis in 1993, in my late twenties and working down in the Medical Center, and remember very well the morning I sat down at my desk and flipped open The Commercial Appeal to do my usual quick morning skim of the news to find that they had discovered the mutilated bodies of three young boys across the river in West Memphis. I was usually the last one into the office every day, as most everyone else came in before I did, so the rest of them already knew and had already talked about it, so after a couple of “Yeah, I know”s and a little small talk, I was pretty much left alone with the horror of it all the rest of the morning. Nobody really knew what to say anyway.

Then there was the shock of the arrest of three other West Memphis boys – teenagers – and nobody really knew what to think. I’d never in a million years say Memphis and the Metro Memphis area in general was a place of “innocence” – probably not ever, really – I think probably throughout history it’s always pretty much been the “harder, tougher, meaner sister” to its three other large siblings in the Volunteer State. But back then things were not quite what they are these days, we weren’t quite as overrun and (sadly) numb to crime here as now – I seem to recall it was not all that long before this incident that some official was claiming publicly that there wasn’t a gang problem in Memphis. In short, people as a whole could still get really shocked here as one big group and community. Maybe not so much now.

So as I said, nobody really knew what to think – and therefore, I think probably a whole lot of us at the time just let the media do the thinking for us. I pretty much thought they were probably guilty – these kids, these teenagers – because the local media (all outlets) pretty much said so. And they were mainly publishing what they were given, what they were told – you can’t blame them all that much, really. Especially since as time went on, things got more and more convoluted – documents went missing, potential suspects inexplicably never followed up on – that case was a great big mess, but most of us who were just occasionally following it on the TV news and in the paper weren’t all that aware of that either – how messed up it was – until much, much later.

So from 1993 to 1996, I really never once thought to question it, what I and everyone else was told. They said the teenage boys were guilty, and pretty much everything we in the general public had been exposed to up to that point in the papers, on TV – they looked pretty guilty. Jason Baldwin and Jessie Misskelley got sent away to the penitentiary, and Damien Echols landed on Arkansas’ Death Row, and that seemed to be pretty much that.

And then Paradise Lost aired for the first time, and sometimes I wonder just how many people besides me in the Mid-South were sitting in their living rooms shaking their heads and going, “Waaaaaaait a minute…”

Mara Leveritt’s book about the case, Devil’s Knot, as well as other books and articles, just added to the mix of questions and doubts. Leveritt was one of the local media on the case in Arkansas at the time. By the time I got around to reading her book, I had seen the documentary and had read more and more convoluted stuff about the case coming out of the local media, so a lot of the things in her book weren’t a surprise or anything new, but the book certainly further outlined just how screwed up the whole case was. (Not to mention this one simple fact – how many people end up on Death Row or incarcerated for life with NO physical evidence linking them to the case?)

I’ve been blogging since February 1997 and I could be wrong, but I think today is the first time I’ve ever written anything about this case. For a long time still after the documentary aired – well, those boys from West Memphis just weren’t a real popular topic around these parts, or maybe I should say there was still a lot of intensity on both sides of opinion when it came to the West Memphis Three. I remember witnessing a debate on the subject among a group of people downtown that nearly dissolved into a fistfight, years after those kids were dead and years after the others were sent up to do time.

It’s kind of funny now, as times have changed – really now the thought of mass public hysteria about Satanism and sacrifices seems as dated to me now as ’80s Brat Pack movies and big hair and mullets. But this case hadn’t been the first in this area to get all that mass hysteria and suspicion flowing – it was one of three or four big ones all around the same time, if I recall right – it was kind of a big deal, back then. I don’t think I ever felt like I was afraid, per se, to say, “You know, this stuff is starting to sound like maybe it didn’t really go down like they told us it did in the beginning.” But still, given what is somewhat of a Southern trait and tendency to just keep your mouth shut when things are intense or inflamed – sometimes it just seems best to do just that, and I think probably a lot of folks around here did that for a lot of  years, after that documentary started putting questions in people’s heads.

And I’m sure there’s still some out there that think the boys – all grown men now – were guilty as hell and are right where they should be. But I just can’t imagine there’s a whole lot of people, other than those that were very close to the case and relatives, that didn’t start to question and wonder about it all after Paradise Lost.

Or at the very least – and this has really been my own personal feeling all along – I can’t imagine that most weren’t convinced that they deserved another trial, a fair one. That’s what I’ve said, in private company among family and close friends, all these years. Maybe they are guilty – I don’t think they are, but maybe they are – but the trial and investigation that sent them up was rather abominable, a great big giant convoluted mess. They deserved another, better, and more fair trial, at the very least. Especially since it put one of them on Death Row.

And I guess that’s one of the reasons the West Memphis Three case came to mind this week, while I’ve been closely following the trial of the ringleader in the Christian-Newsom murders in Knoxville. There’s been no big major-release documentary (yet) of this particular case like in the West Memphis one, but the Knoxville News-Sentinel put together a small one that was excellent, Death on Chipman Street, and there’s loads of video, transcripts, articles and all kinds of other stuff to be found among the Knoxville media. Between reading and viewing a lot of that, and now having watched the majority of Davidson’s trial and most of his brother’s trial -

Well, it’s rather stunning when you compare the two cases, the two trials. I’m sure they’ve had their fair share of problems up in Knox County with that whole thing, but just comparing them on the surface, from the point of view of the general public, a bystander looking on – that Knoxville case is running like this fantastically organized, well-oiled machine in comparison to the disorganized and dysfunctional mess that investigation and trial in the West Memphis case was years ago.

What kind of nudged my interest into seeing what was new with the WM3 case recently was a sort of accidental discovery of something I wasn’t really looking for at the time. If you watched Paradise Lost and/or the sequel, no doubt you remember John Mark Byers, stepfather of one of the victims, the “crazy wild man” from the documentary who was once himself a prominent suspect in the case, even after the West Memphis Three were convicted. His enormously angry and enraged presence fairly dominated both films, especially the first one. A great big and imposing guy, he repeatedly and very loudly and vehemently called for the deaths of the accused. His rage was so visibly huge, you didn’t have to use your imagination much to figure what would happen if he could get his hands on any of the three, and get away with it.

When I rather accidentally came across this site and this blog a month or so ago and learned that even Mark Byers – of all people!!!! – now thinks that Echols, Baldwin, and Misskelley were convicted by mistake and should be set free or at least get another and more fair trial, I was just blown away. Who would have ever, ever thought that this man, who ranted and raved on camera at great length and in very great detail about his hatred for the three convicted and the horrendous ends he wished upon that time, would do a complete, 100% turnaround and now be in support of seeing them freed?!?!?!

That’s when I knew the doubt that had been nagging at me in the back of my head ever since the documentary aired in 1996 was there for a reason and rightfully so.

I should pause here and add that I mean no disrespect to Mark Byers here by bringing up his past behavior. Quite the opposite, in fact. At the time, way back when, I felt so sorry and such sympathy for all of the parents, including Byers, but anyone who saw the documentaries witnessed how over the top he was at the time; and then when there were several turns of events that pointed the finger in his direction over possible guilt, I thought that was credible at the time (and one of my relatives was convinced upon seeing the first film that Byers did it, not the teenagers). The fact that he’s made it through many difficult years and hurdles, mostly all the while with thousands of people suspicious of his own innocence in the case, and not only past all the rage towards the convicted but this 100% turnaround supporting them in their quest for a new trial – sheesh, my respect for Byers has increased immensely.

In any case, so many lives have been lost needlessly here. Stevie Branch, Chris Byers, and Michael Moore – the “real” West Memphis Three – should have never had to die as they did. They should be young men in their mid-twenties now, but nothing’s ever going to bring them back and they are forever eight years old. Melissa Byers has passed away since, never knowing (if I’m not incorrect here) that new information was going to surface that would point guilt in a completely other direction from the three convicted in the deaths of her son and his friends.

And then you have Damien, Jason, and Jessie – now all in their thirties – locked up over 16 years now with 16 years of their lives gone for all practical purposes. And Damien’s physical life hanging in the balance on Death Row.

Here in a few hours, we in Tennessee are going to find out what’s going to happen to Lemaricus Davidson, whether it’s life with parole possible (51 years minimum due to his convictions, so it might as well be life without parole, really), life without parole, or death. I don’t really think, especially after this week, that there are any lingering doubts or questions in anyone’s mind that the right person’s been convicted in this case. People may continue to argue the outcome of today’s (hopefully it will be today) sentencing, but the Christian and Newsom families feel justice has been served, and one way or the other – one of those three ways – Davidson will be off the streets forever, whether totally or theoretically.

I’m okay with that. I’m all for it, really.

But the West Memphis Three case – there’s too much doubt and too many questions in this other one, here to the west. Not only that, but new doubts and new questions – and new evidence – that have yet to be followed up on fully and followed through. If Damien, Jason, and Jessie were to win their freedom with a new trial – or if the new leads and evidence don’t out the real killer or killers – that would mean the killer’s still out there. I’m not really okay with that – who would be?

And you know, even still – maybe they did do it, the teenagers, when they were teenagers. Sure, I don’t think so, obviously, but that possibility is still out there.

But I think we should find out. And do it right this time. Give those men a fair trial this time – one that’s not an unholy mess and circus of disorganization and dysfunction and mishaps that get pushed aside just for the sake of convicting somebody - and go from there. Wrap up this case for once and for all, as cleanly as the Knox County folks just did with theirs this week, and see what the outcome is this time.

What a horrific mistake it would be to execute the wrong man for this awful, horrible, tragic and terrible crime. It would be equally awful and horrible and tragic and terrible as the little boys’ murders themselves, as would letting two other men sit there for the rest of their lives if they didn’t do anything wrong. It’s already been almost 17 years, almost 14 of which have now been shrouded in an incredible amount of doubt and unanswered questions.

Without another trial, and a fair and better one this time – or without seeking out the answers to the questions all the new evidence has brought up – if Damien Echols is put to death without any of that happening, none of us may ever find out in our lifetimes here on earth whether the wrong person was executed or not.

I’m not okay with that. We might all be dead and gone eventually without ever knowing the truth, if that happens.

But that doesn’t make it all right to just go ahead and do it right now. I’m not okay with that at all.

(I’m posting this without proofreading it, but then again this post has been simmering in the back of my head for about a decade now, so hopefully I got it sorta right.)

Stuff You Just Wish You Could Take Back Sometimes

I’m sure there’s lots (LOTS) more than just this one, but I was thinking the other day about an unfortunate and awkward incident that’s been bugging me for a few years now, among the many other things I wish I could just hit a “restart” button on sometimes.

Prince Charming (the boyfriend) and I have this acquaintance who is a musician in a VERY famous band. In all actuality, I am only acquainted with this person via e-mail (as in the unfortunate and awkward incident mentioned above), but these two used to be very good friends. They grew up in the same neighborhood, went to school together, hung out in the same bunch as teenagers – etc. As time went on and as people do, they fell out of touch, though PC would sometimes hear stuff about his friend through the grapevine, as it were. Well, that and the fact you can pick up pretty much any music magazine or website and there’s this person – the band’s been around a long time at this point, but still hugely, hugely popular.

About, oh, I don’t know, six or so years ago when PC was going through a tough spell, I took it upon myself to get in touch with this person, with no other intention other than hoping maybe this person would be willing to send along a surprise postcard or something like that to PC – at that point, anything that might be a cheerer-upper of sorts. Things were pretty bleak and grim and I was just really grasping at straws for anything that might help and pull PC out of that depression a little.

The personal e-mail address for this person had just kinda landed in my lap, so I just thought I’d give it a shot. Since I’ve been acquainted over my years bumming around the music scene with various folks both famous and semi-famous, I knew how probably most contact from unknown people often comes across and didn’t really want to, you know, come across like some crazed fan – which I’m not really of this band anyway, I like ‘em just fine but they’re not one of my big favorites – I think I might have told this person that to begin with (heh), just for the sake of not appearing like some lunatic.

And the response was perfectly pleasant in the beginning. This person was, like, “hey, good to hear from you, what’s going on with (PC), if there’s something I can do to help, just let me know”.  So I did. Even though PC’s folks had moved out of the neighborhood where they all grew up and down the road a little ways, this person’s mom had remained friendly with PC’s mom, they’d run into each other at the grocery and such lots of times over the years, yada yada yada, so I knew this person wasn’t completely oblivious to some of the struggles there’d been over the years for PC, so I was pretty upfront about it all and was just like, you know, “any little thing, even just a postcard or something would be a big pick-me-up here”, and thanked this person, and left it at that.

Then nothing. I know people get busy, I know people mean to do something or other and then time just passes and passes and they never get around to doing whatever it is – I’m one of the world’s worst when it comes to things like that – but it was something small that would have meant so much at the time, and it just bugged me, still does. I didn’t tell PC what I’d done for about three years, and when I finally did, he wasn’t really bothered about the fact that this person had never responded past the first time, said I was sweet to have done what I did but to not let it bother me that there’d been no further response.

But it still does – bug me, that is. And maybe dude just got busy and forgot about it, or maybe I did come off looking like some crazed lunatic after all. I dunno.

Thing is I know one of these days, we’ll run into this person somewhere or another, and I’m sure it will be fine and all that. And PC will introduce us and I just hope dude doesn’t say something like, “Oh… YOU’RE the one who…”, ‘cos then I’ll have to bite my tongue to keep from saying “Yeah, and YOU never…”

Or maybe I’ll just say, “Yeah. Yep, I did,” and leave it at that. I just wish I had never done or said anything in the first place. How awkward.

And in truth, he probably had good intentions at the time and just forgot, but that one stupid moment really just broke my heart a little and shook up my faith in humanity a bit.

Anorexia Jetsonia

I haven’t really been in a blogging mood, which I guess has been kind of obvious.  And I hate that, because I have let something slip by on the music blog I absolutely did not mean to, but maybe I can get myself sort of re-motivated into things next week.

Anyway, no, I haven’t really been in a blogging mood, and apparently I’m not in an eating mood either.  Which is kind of bad when you only eat maybe once a day and sometimes not anyway, which is kind of good when you’re almost too poor to eat anyway, but I know it’s not good and healthy to only eat maybe once a day and possibly even not.

I DO get hungry.  It’s just that there’s nothing I want to eat, and if there is, after two bites I’m over it.  Stuff I have eaten and liked my entire life – I don’t want it and/or it doesn’t taste good.  Everything is just totally blah.  In a way it’s a good thing that I don’t eat much when I eat anyway, but it’s just kind of disturbing to get two or three bites into something and just be like totally unable to finish.

The only things I really want to eat are breakfast food or Mexican food.  But the way things are going – even though I’m too destitute to be able to go out to eat – if I COULD go eat at Cafe Ole every night this week, I’m afraid by night #2 I would be over that too and not want that either.   Or Waffle House.  Which is totally unimaginable to me that I could go in either and not feel like eating anything on the menu, but there ya go.

I was kind of jonesing for some Pancho’s today and like I said, Mexican food is one of the few things that sounds good these days.  So since I had to go to the grocery store anyway, I picked up fixings for nachos and grabbed some Pancho’s dressing too and that pretty much satisfied the craving AND I did actually eat and it was good.  Except I ate so little and there’s so much left that I could probably eat for the next week… and now I’m a little afraid I’m going to lose my appetite for the one thing I always have an appetite for.  Plus I ate so little, but so way much more than I usually do, so now I’m stuffed and miserable.

I bought some bananas today because they looked good and appealing – which I’m sure I will eat.  I like fruit, I just don’t buy much because normally most would wind up going to waste.  Maybe I should just buy fruit for a while.  But what if I start not wanting to eat fruit either?

Weren’t things supposed to be like The Jetsons by now anyway, where you just took a pill and bam, that was an entire meal, and we all fly our cars around instead of driving them and – right?

Double the Horror, Double the Poverty

Last night was depressing.  I went to the grocery store.

Back in the spring, I mentioned that I had noticed a lot of the things I pretty much HAVE to buy on a regular basis had gone up relatively significantly.  Well, now (in just the past week or two), they’ve gone up AGAIN.

40 lb. bag of (store brand) dog food – up from $7.99-8.99 in April 2008 to $13.99.

20-ish lb. bag of (commercial) cat food – up for around $11 to $15.

Box of (store brand) dog treats – used to be two for $2, now $4 ($6 somewhere else for something similar).

Kitty litter – I always buy cheap kinds and store brands because my cats simply usually prefer them.  The store brand cat litter at my usual grocery stores is now costing what Tidy Cats, Fresh Step, etc. USED to.

All totaled, well over $15, possibly even up to an additional $20 a month or so if you’re a pet owner.

So yes, that is all pet stuff and I suppose some people would scoff that pets are a luxury (even though they’re the only “kids” I have).  So let’s look at stuff for ME.

Nearly all the food and personal items I buy for myself are, these days, generic and store brands.  Nearly all of THEM have increased in cost similarly.  Thank goodness I don’t habitually eat very much or often – which is bad, I know – but the simple fact is right now I couldn’t afford to eat TWO meals a day, much less three, so right now my borderline eating disorder is a blessing.

One of my preferred easy quick cheap meals is not so cheap anymore.  Formerly 89 cents, I discovered just over the weekend the price had gone up to $1.09.  And now it’s gone up to $1.29 SINCE the weekend.

Here was the real shocker for me, though.  I actually noticed this at another store last week, but thought maybe it was just one of those things, since I was at a retail drugstore where things sometimes are higher than they are at, say, Kroger or Wal-Mart.

But no.  Angel Soft toilet tissue, usually acquired for $1 or less per four-roll package many places – now pushing $2, at $1.85.  This isn’t Northern, this isn’t Charmin, this isn’t Kleenex – it’s ANGEL SOFT, for goodness’ sakes.  Granted, even if I had lots of money I’d probably buy it anyway instead of the others.  I like it just fine, think it’s great anyway, and after what a plumber once told one of my best friends after a thousands-of-dollars plumbing repair job, I probably will buy it forever (well, if I can afford to).

And I have long lamented the high cost of feminine hygiene/protection products for years, as that is something most women HAVE to have on hand and cannot do without, yet even the store brands are often horrifically expensive.  I have always considered that one of those things that’s just simply not fair and borderline sexist.  Fortunately I stocked up on that stuff a few months ago with the generous gift of a kind friend of a Wal-Mart gift card.  I am NOT looking forward to seeing what that stuff costs when I’ve depleted my current stock.

But seriously – do you see what I’m getting at here?  This is GROCERIES, people.  This is generic and store brand people food, as well as pet food.  This is “lesser brand” TOILET TISSUE, for Pete’s sake.

And most of it’s nearly DOUBLED in cost in just the last four months.  100% inflation, folks.

Gasoline prices were bad enough, and I realize they have decreased somewhat (at least temporarily).  It still sucks that I have a compact car and it costs over $50 to make a two and a half hour trip to my hometown there and back, and that I’m 42 years old and my mom has to send me the money if I want to come home for the weekend.

But this – this is groceries – and TOILET TISSUE, for crying out loud – doubling in cost.  What happens next year?  Tripling?  Quadrupling?

I can’t afford any of it, and my income is tentative enough as it is.  What really sucks is that I’ll still be owing taxes next year on what pitiful, way below average “poverty level”, amount of income I have actually earned this year.

All I’ve been hearing about lately is people getting laid off, hundreds here, a few there, hundreds more over there.  I suspect few of you reading right now could tell me you’ve gotten a raise this year that’s helping to offset this incredible rise in not only cost of just living, but cost of necessities.

I know I’m sounding like a broken record here lately.  I don’t know how many times I’ve asked this in the last five or six months, and I’m getting kind of tired of asking it and wondering about it at this point, but anyway…

Where does it stop?  When does it end?

You want my vote in the Presidential election?  Then tell me it is going to stop, and where it’s going to stop, and when it’s going to end, AND make it happen.

Preferably before we’re all homeless and out on the street, starving, and having to tear up family Bibles and dictionaries and encyclopedias because we can’t afford to buy four rolls of toilet paper.

Collectively Broken?

I know most of you probably read or heard about the church shooting in Knoxville this past Sunday. I’ve been trying to find the words to comment on it all week, but it’s really been difficult to put thoughts into words in this case.

Different people I have discussed it with have been most struck by different things about it. One was horrified that such a thing happened when children were on stage performing a play. Another has not been able to get the thought of the child who was covered in his mother’s blood out of her head. I was particularly disturbed by the irony that one of the victims wasn’t a member of the church, but of another church in the community, and had come to the church that day to see the kids’ play, and the fact that some of the other victims were visitors from out of town (I heard anyway).

And I guess one of the most disturbing things of all to many people is the fact that obviously you can’t even be sure you can feel safe in church anymore. Of all places.

I think of the church I grew up in – a small town church, but there are many big churches with large memberships in town and the town’s not all THAT small anyway – however, the church I grew up in was pretty small compared to most. Even with a full house, someone with a gun could have taken out the entire congregation and any visitors in a matter of minutes. That just makes my blood run cold and sends shivers down my spine.

As a kid, I spent literally hours in that church, and quite often by myself – with an adult on the grounds, yes, but not necessarily in the general vicinity where I was or even in the same building. But who wouldn’t have thought that wasn’t safe?

I also lived my entire life until I went off to college in houses that were never locked – not my home, not my grandparents’ – unless you went out of town on vacation, and maybe not even then, because it really didn’t matter. From around the second or third grade on, I walked home from school to a home that had been empty and unlocked all day long, and usually spent another two or three hours alone in the house until my parents got home from work. We didn’t lock our cars; we didn’t have to.

And nobody would have thought twice about the fact that I spent countless hours walking or bicycling around the neighborhood or all the way to downtown by myself, also from a pretty young age. Even when 8-year-old Cary Ann Medlin’s body was found raped and mutilated in the woods in a nearby town when I was 13 – a tragedy that Newscoma, my age and growing up in the next town over at the time, referred to the other day in her own thoughts about the Knoxville shootings – still I continued to hoof it around town by myself all the time, albeit with probably some stronger cautionary words about being careful and watching out for myself. Heck, at 13 years old, that was prime time for me walking downtown every week to spend my allowance at the music shop on records and that week’s issue of Rolling Stone.

But you really didn’t HAVE to worry about not being safe, not then, not there, and not even all that much even in the bigger cities. In 18 years, there was the Medlin case, there was the Marcia Trimble abduction and murder in Nashville that was such unusual and big news that, I guarantee you, every single native Tennesseean still alive that’s over the age of 40 not only remembers her name, but can probably tell you exactly what she looked like. Because stuff like that just didn’t happen, not as a rule.

And people in small towns didn’t go around killing each other. I recall one big nasty murder in the county when I was a child, and one when I was in high school. One was killed by someone who had previously worked for him, the other was shot and killed by a man he knew over some argument. Two – TWO – murders in two counties in 18 years.

And now there’ve been more murders than I can count in both those counties over the last ten, fifteen years – not every day, no, but far, far more than two in 18 years, and many of them seemingly arbitrary or random. Kids get abducted and sometimes wind up dead, and it’s still shocking, sure, but not like it once was. Another school shooting happens and you’re appropriately horrified, but no longer all that surprised.

And now people are walking into churches on Sunday mornings and shooting and killing people. If you can’t be sure you’re safe in school, or in church – where, then, can you feel safe?

Of course, now I live in a city where murders happen every week and I hear gunshots pretty much every day just about now, so I’m even more numbed and jaded by the constant influx of violence and crime. But that’s why the horrible things that keep happening back home – and even in Knoxville, which is not crime free, of course, but nowhere near the percentage Memphis is – that’s why these things bother me even more. Stuff happens here that’s not supposed to happen up there, or there.

Would the church shooting have been as shocking and people so horrified if it had happened in Memphis? Sure, of course it would have. But I don’t know that many would have been all that surprised, sad to say, especially the rest of our fellow Tennesseans. People from up yonder where I’m from, other than a very small handful, they don’t come to Memphis to shop or to see doctors or for entertainment like they used to. They go to Nashville instead, or even just to Jackson. It’s really pretty sad.

I am grateful that nobody I knew was at the church the other day in Knoxville, but plenty of folks I’m acquainted with did have friends or family that were there, and even one or two that are members that weren’t there that day. That doesn’t make it any less disturbing or sad.

And when I heard from someone in Knoxville about a comment someone they know made – someone who is a member of a large Baptist church in West Knoxville, and quite possibly the same one my future mother-in-law attends every Sunday – the comment being something along the lines of well, you know those people in that church practice witchcraft – I just felt sick.

My future mother-in-law – the Baptist churchgoer – used to be involved in programs that were held at the TVUU church weekly, and had just been telling me on the phone the day before what a nice church it was, and how lovely and wonderful all the people she knew there always had been. In fact, it turns out one of her other sons – one of my future brothers-in-law – used to be a member of that very church.  Maybe still is technically and still on their rolls, though he doesn’t really go anymore.

Witchcraft. I mean, please. Granted, it wasn’t the Baptists or the Methodists or the Presbyterians or a super well-known sect, and it wasn’t even the Catholics, who goodness knows have been accused of lots of whacked out things in thousands of years. But witchcraft? Don’t be stupid. Google before you go shooting off at the mouth. I mean, Wikipedia’s right there.

The ignorance in this country seems to be at an overall all-time high, and safety’s at a premium, obviously. If you can even say safety exists anymore, when you can’t be safe in church on Sunday.

People are having to choose between buying groceries and putting gas in their car, and at the same time, people are getting laid off from their jobs left and right, businesses are closing, and not too many that still have jobs are reporting that their salaries are going up along with the cost of everything else that’s going up.

When does it all end? Where does it stop?

There’s an election coming up, but is anybody who could really change things really going to do something about it all?

I wonder. Something’s got to give. When things break, you fix them. Are we, collectively, broken enough yet?

Throwing Them to a Pack of Hungry Wolves or Lions Would Be Well Deserved (Even Though You Can’t Do That)

A word of warning – this is a particularly vile and horrific tale of an episode of animal cruelty, so don’t go on to the next paragraph if you don’t want to. I usually try to avoid reading such things when I run across them because they break my heart and I can’t take it, but it was too late and my brain had already registered it when I came upon this one in my hometown newspaper. I would link to the story (which was really just a news brief from the sheriff’s report of that date), but the paper requires registration/subscription for most such things so there’s no point in me linking it.

The Henry County Sheriff’s Department was called out to a home in Buchanan, Tennessee – a community down by Kentucky Lake and a few miles outside of my hometown of Paris – about the death of a man’s dog. A teenager gave the Sheriff’s Department the information that the nine-month-old Golden Retriever puppy had been tied to a tree and attacked and killed by a pit bull.

The report said three suspects were spoken to, all of whom denied involvement (of course), but one of them was the owner of the suspect pit bull, and the puppy was found dead in the woods behind that suspect’s home. Although the paper didn’t say, due to the way the report was worded and the fact that the information was supplied by a teenager, I am kind of assuming the “three suspects” were probably also young people.

Well, goodness knows since I’m such a softie for animals anyway, I’m horrified, and who in their right mind wouldn’t be? It was a nine-month old puppy, for goodness’ sakes. It was still basically a BABY. Close to fully grown, yes, but still a very young dog, basically a baby dog.

I look at this old and in failing health 14-year-old clown of a dog underneath my desk right now, who I literally helped birth, and these four dingalings running around my house who I would have also birthed four years ago if their mama hadn’t gone into labor while I was at work. And then I think of that poor little nine-month-old baby – a Golden Retriever, for the love of whatever, one of the sweetest, most gentle breeds on the planet!! – who must have spent his last moments horrifically terrified and in an incredible amount of pain. For NO good reason except for the entertainment and the sick whims of some people who obviously need some very serious psychological help.

And don’t get me wrong, there’s no “pit bull outrage” here. It’s not that pit bull’s fault, it’s the fault of whoever its owner or owners are and the fault of those involved in this horrible act of violence. You won’t see me calling for the outlawing of pit bulls – if I had children, I would have no hesitation about letting them be around The Most Famous Pit Bull in Nashville (I won’t link, we all know who I’m talking about). Supervised, of course, but then I’m not going to let any young child of mine be around ANY dog fully unsupervised. I myself would gladly share a bed or a couch with TMFPBIN. She’s a lovely dog and much more well mannered than my brats.

Granted, pit bulls are a breed that are capable of severe damage or worse but heck, so is Dobie – and it would be more than a little overconfident and a reach to even just state that Dobie would be the Forrest Gump of “killer dogs”. I’ve seen him make mincemeat out of pigs ears and fleece chewmen, but only in the case of someone trying to hurt or kill me might his natural instinct kick in to attack, and even then the amount of damage he might cause is questionable if not totally non-existent.

My young ones are a little more in touch with their instincts about being protective – well, except Daisy because she’s a girl and never has needed to be with her three bumbling brothers and Uncle Dobie around, and Bruiser’s actual instincts in that direction are pretty debatable too. When he growls, he doesn’t know what he’s growling about, he’s only growling because his brothers are. But let another dog be in their territory of the back yard (even ones that they’ve seen outside their back yard and could care less about), or were someone to be trying to hurt me or Daisy, yeah, they’d go after them.

Still, Petey is my only real fighter and the only one capable of anything at all. I’ve had my hand right in the middle of things when Bruiser and Buster were fighting with another dog, and right in the middle of their TEETH at the time, and I can tell you there’s no real danger there with those two.

Not to mention the fact they all live with cats who are much smaller than they are. Petey could SIT on little Missy and kill her, but he’s also the one that is most frequently scared to death of the prospect of being about to get beaten up by Audi the white cat, who regularly tires of all their BS and goes after them. And doesn’t have any front claws.

But my real point here is ANY dog can be trained to be vicious and mean and attack and kill, and this episode with this poor puppy in Buchanan was just not this pit bull’s fault. It’s the sick person or people who trained that dog to be that way, and the fault of the disgustingly sick persons involved in this episode who got their kicks out of orchestrating it.

Granted, larger dogs by virtue of their size and general makeup are capable of causing more damage, but you can train a poodle or a Yorkie to be vicious and bite and attack. The dogs I have been most scared by in my life were the Chihuahua who lived next door when I was small, who was just plain mean (though not trained that way by her elderly owners, she was just mean, period) and a former co-worker’s two Schnauzers, who were known to sink their teeth into the ankles of people who unfortunately turned their backs on them. One would do better to be more wary of the small breeds than worrying about most big dogs; it’s the little ones you’ve gotta watch out for. And ANY dog is liable to have a negative reaction if they are surprised or messed with.

But this one that is suspected of killing that poor little Golden Retriever baby obviously had been trained to attack and kill, which is wholly the fault of the sick people responsible for training it that way and for putting that puppy in that position.

Reading about it will likely give me nightmares for a long time to come; I am having difficulty shaking the image from my head, knowing how terrified and in how much pain that poor dog must have been in. But what probably bothers me even more is that I fear this episode will wind up not further investigated and fully prosecuted dependent upon the results of the investigation, and basically swept under the rug.

From what was reported in the paper, I think the evidence is already pretty much NOT in the suspects favor, and there are animal cruelty felony laws in this state and – at the very least – I think those responsible (or their families, if they’re minors) should be subject to the maximum fines, and those responsible ordered into strict psychological counseling, both of which are possibilities under current Tennessee animal cruelty laws.

Like I said, I don’t know for certain if the suspects in the case are teenagers or young people, though I suspect they are. And we all know of the tremendous evidence collected over the years that serial killers and other violent criminals often have a past history of animal abuse in youth.

If it were up to me, I think I’d probably just as soon tie the three to some trees and let a pack of wild and hungry bears or wolves or lions or tigers at ‘em. I’m not sure if people who would do such a horrible thing deserve much better than that.

Or at the very least (and obviously more reasonable and no more killing involved), the same scenario under the care of an expert animal trainer. Let those responsible feel the terror that that nine-month-old puppy felt in its last moments on earth, even if they’re going to get to be untied and live to tell about it another day.

In any case, I’m just sick about this and sick that people that live in my home county could be capable of such a horrific and vile act – my home county which used to be a place where nobody ever locked their doors or their cars before meth addiction became epidemic in rural West Tennessee and the meth heads started stealing everything they could get their hands on. It just makes me sick.

I really do hope the Henry County Sheriff’s Department will fully and truly investigate the case, and will fully prosecute it if they can. Or if that doesn’t work, I hope the puppy’s owner will take those suspects and/or their families to civil court and sue them for everything they’ve got and win, and that court-ordered psychological counseling will be a part of it.

It shouldn’t be a case of “oh, well, they just killed a dog”. At the very, very least, these people responsible are seriously mentally ill and need help. I hope they get it and I hope this case doesn’t just get swept under the proverbial rug.

And maybe if spmething does get done about the case, I can stop thinking several times a day, every single day, about and being horrified and sick to my stomach over what that poor terrified little puppy, who was still basically a baby, must have gone through. ‘Cause right now I am having a horrific episode of my own, remembering what I read in that in that article over and over again.

Petey, around four or five months:

Daisy, around four or five months:

Dobie, around four or five months:

I just can’t even imagine the terror. Nor do I want to. That Golden Retriever puppy was only a little older than they were when these were taken, and I just can’t even imagine the horror.

Technicality

I was telling my mom the other night that a question I keep seeing amidst one of my online ventures lately that grabbed my attention immediately was, “Have you ever wanted to see where Elvis lives?”

And my immediate gut reaction was uh, no, I don’t think I want to see where Elvis lives RIGHT NOW just yet, and I’ll inevitably be seeing it one of these days.  As will we all.

I have seen where he LIVED, yes.

OK, I’m picky about words, yes, that too.

So then last night as I was driving back to Memphis from Olive Branch – and about a fair hop, skip & a jump from Graceland – I noticed a billboard:  “WHERE ELVIS LIVES”.  So I guess that’s their current advertising campaign and all.

And at first I thought, well, I guess they told me, huh.  But then I shook my head.  It’s STILL not RIGHT.

I guess “Where Elvis lives ON” doesn’t really have the same ring to it, but even though I’m probably in the minority, there are still gonna be people like me who see that and go, “Ew, NO.”

Yummy

You can have your home baked bread and other foodie fineries. In MY version of heaven, there is always the smell of Pillsbury Crescent Rolls baking.

And West Tennessee BBQ cooking. And my dad’s hamburgers on the grill.

There is also a never-empty casserole dish of my mom’s asparagus casserole. And billions of my grandmother’s pecan pies, and it’s perfectly okay if I eat all the pecans off the top if I want to.

Goals Are Overrated, Really

One of these days, I’m no longer going to have a host of old posts moved over from the old site that need to be edited and categorized. There’s still 274 of them, mostly from 1997 to 2000. I usually catch the old ones as they come up as hits in my blog stats and fix them then, but god, I can hardly stand to read that old stuff, especially, say, pre-2000 or thereabouts. Partially because there are so many posts about friends of mine who have been dead a pretty long time now, though one of these days I guess I will be glad I documented so much of those years.

But mainly I can’t stand to read them because those old posts just make me wince. For someone who was already (ok, barely) in her thirties when I started blogging in 1997, I find I was rather ridiculous and giggly and I just see some of that stuff and go “ewww”. Or “ugh”.

That’s a goal before I die, though, get all that old crap categorized and edited – edited meaning separated into logical paragraphs. I got lazy and more tired the more mammoth that chore of moving them became and just at some point quit trying to make it all pretty and moved them all in bulk and in big chunks. I mean, I was copying and pasting years and years’ worth of HTML entries. HTML. It was a pain.

And another goal is to get Sarcastro’s old photos re-uploaded to his now-not-that-new blog, still. (Says the Queen of Procrastination…)

Those are reasonable and reachable goals I think, probably unlike the other 5 million goals and projects on the list. I wish there were three or four or even five or six of me and maybe I could get some things FINISHED for a change.