Over & Over Again

Every time there's a mass shooting it's the same thing, again and again.

Common Sense Folks: "We need gun control -- now!"

Gun Owners & Fans: "Guns aren't the problem! The problems are, in no particular order: Mental illness, chronic bullying, toxic masculinity, violent video games, the lack of MORE guns, and the fact that they banned prayer in our schools!"

Common Sense Folks: "But other countries have those same issues -- yet they've TRIED gun control, and as a result, there have been fewer mass shootings! Look at Australia!"

Gun Owners & Fans: "F--- the kangaroos! This is America! The second amendment is on our side! And look at me -- I take guns very seriously!! I'm responsible with them, unlike some people!! They're fun to shoot and collect and own and HELL NO ARE YOU GONNA TAKE THEM AWAY."

Common Sense Folks: "We don't want to take away your guns. We just want to make it harder for people to--"

Gun Owners & Fans: "NRA!?!?! DO YOU HEAR THIS?!?!?! THEY'RE TRYING TO TAKE OUR GUNS AWAY!! SAVE US FROM BEING SITTING DUCKS!!!"

NRA: *bribes the right people*

Everyone: *Shuts up for a few weeks.*

Two weeks later: *37 concertgoers get pumped full of bullets & die.*

Common Sense Folks: "UM, HELLO!?!?!"

Gun Owners & Fans: "MENTAL ILLNESS AM I RITE?"

Common Sense Folks: "NO! Lots of people suffer from mental illness, and they don't go around killing people. WE NEED GUN REFORM!"

Lawmakers: "It's too soon to talk about gun reform! But it's never too soon for 🎶thoughts & prayers!"🎶

Common Sense Folks: "Those are great when someone's great uncle dies, but they're not exactly WORKING, HERE!"

First Random Guy On The Internet: "Heathens! Clearly all these violent deaths are God's way of telling us he's angry about gay marriage!"

Second Random Guy On The Internet: "Ummm there were mass shootings before gay marriage was even legal."

First Random Guy On The Internet: "BOW DOWN AND CONFESS YOUR SINS!"

Second Random Guy On The Internet: *Blocks/Mutes First Random Guy On The Internet*

Two weeks later: *12 churchgoers get pumped full of bullets & die.*

Donald Trump: *tweets "thoughts & prayers"*

*goes golfing*

Common Sense Folks: "THIS HAS GOT TO STOP! WE NEED COMMON SENSE GUN LAWS!"

Gun Owners & Fans: "Even if we take guns away, criminals will ALWAYS find ways to kill, anyway! Criminals gonna crim!"

Common Sense Folks: "Maybe so, but can't we at least TRY?"

Gun Owners & Fans: "No!!! If you take our guns, we'll have no way to defend ourselves!"

Common Sense Folks: "From what...?"

Gun Owners & Fans: "From criminals! The corrupt police! Nazis! Zombies! Intruders!"

Common Sense Folks: "Okay, so maybe you can keep one or two guns. But high-powered rifles? Do we really ne--"

Gun Owners & Fans: "It's a slippery slope! First you come for the rifles. Then you come for ALL MY GUNS! Then we all die, helpless! Don't you see?"

Common Sense Folks: "But I don't think high-powered rifles are what the founding fathers had in mind when they wrote the second amendment..."

*Everyone goes around in circles with the same arguments, ad nauseam*

Two weeks later: *A car drives into a crowd and kills 8 people.*

Gun Owners & Fans: "HA! SEE?!? IT'S NOT THE GUNS' FAULT, NOW, IS IT?"

Common Sense Folks: "True, not THIS time, but...."

Two weeks later: *A dozen & a half teenagers are pumped full of bullets at their high school and die.*

Common Sense Folks: "CAN WE GET SOME COMMON SENSE GUN LAWS NOW THAT OUR CHILDREN HAVE BEEN SLAUGHTERED?"

Lawmakers: "LOL no."

Kids Who Survived The Shooting: "WE ARE SICK OF OUR FRIENDS DYING! STOP THE MADNESS! GUN CONTROL NOW!"

Gun Owners & Fans: "Shut up, KIDS! You are young and can't even drink alcohol yet, so what do you know about life or anything??"

Kids Who Survived The Shooting: "WE WILL NOT BE TAMED."

Common Sense Folks: "HECK TO THE YES! THIS IS INCREDIBLE! GO, KIDS, GO!"

Gun Owners & Fans: "Wahhhh! Teenagers are being rude to us on the Internet!" ☹

Kids Who Survived The Shooting: "Senator Rubio, will you help us?"

Marco Rubio: "Sorry, I'm busy taking a swim in all the money the NRA has given me!"

Donald Trump: *Hmmm, how can I make this about me?*

Lawmakers: "Hey, I know! Let's solve this school shooting problem with an idea that I'm sure has never occurred to anybody before, but is so brilliant, it HAS to work! Let's give -- wait for it -- TEACHERS guns!"

Kids Who Survived The Shooting: "That's a terrible idea!"

99% of Teachers: "That's a terrible idea!"

Common Sense Folks: "That's a terrible idea!"

NRA: "More people buying guns? Works for us!"

Gun Owners & Fans: "More guns, not less? Sounds good to us!"

Teachers: *Collectively quit*

 * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Are you sick & tired of gun violence, school shootings, and innocent people dying in mass numbers, too? Here's how you can help: 

Donate to Giffords: Courage To Fight Gun Violence (helping to enact smarter laws, background checks, and more.)

Donate to The Sandy Hook Promise (helping to prevent gun violence.)

Get out and participate in March For Our Lives in your area on March 24, 2018.

On Facebook: 

One Pulse For America

Everytown For Gun Safety

Giffords

On Twitter:

Follow Emma4Change (Emma Gonzalez)

Thoughts On The (Disastrous) Current US Presidency Using GIFs From The (Wonderful) Show 'Community'

November 8th, 2016, started out normally. There were nerves, but they were minor. The polls seemed to be pointing to a win for Clinton. How Trump had managed to get this far, we didn't know. He was a ridiculous buffoon, a reality-TV hack who was about as un-Presidential as you could get.

But we had the hope that he'd be put in his place by that evening. Clinton would win, we'd be able to celebrate our first female President, and life would go on pretty much the way it'd been going on for years.

Except that's not what happened.

Somehow, he got enough electoral votes to win.

Turned out, enough people actually thought he might be a good leader... or something.

Now we were nervous. 

But... maybe his pre-election "promises" had just been hogwash talk. Maybe he wouldn't really do all of the horrible things he'd promised to do, like build a freaking wall between the US and Mexico and kill the Affordable Care Act. 

Oh. Okay.

But what about his loyal followers? What would it take for them to realize they'd been duped?

After all, there was his string -- nay, giant ball of yarn -- of lies...

His refusal to condemn white nationalists should be a major red flag, right?

Nope, he still had supporters.

There was his sadistic determination to kill Obamacare any way, anyhow, no matter what replaced it and who lost their insurance in the process.

And then there's his complete ineptitude when it comes to handling anything maturely and responsibly, which might just lead to us getting nuked by North Korea in the near future.

But at least he's reliable about one thing....

I am so embarrassed for my country.

More than once over the past nine months, I've woken up and thought: "That psycho being president was a bad dream, right?"

Sometimes I just want to pretend I AM in a dream, or an alternate reality, where Clinton won, and things are relatively predictable and sane.

But then I remember our reality is the darkest timeline.

My instinct is to act accordingly....

But where there is still an ounce of hope left in the world, I'll continue living in this messed-up timeline, trying to make the best of it.

Even when I do this at least three times a day...

Because what's the alternative?

I'll continue going to work each day, loving on all my students, little kids who hail from all corners of the globe, speak one or two of dozens of languages, and who live in daily fear that their homes will be raided and their will be families deported.

I will continue creating art.

I will continue being kind.

And I will continue to remind myself:

Where there is darkness, shine a light.

Where there is hate, inundate it with love.

Where there is ignorance, educate.

And where there is a chance of impeachment... hope the heck out.

When I Try To Be Helpful, Things Tend To Go Wrong: Part 3/3

So then there was the time I caused a massive sinkhole in my Grandma's front yard.

It was about a year ago. It was raining really hard that day. My uncle, who lived with my Grandma, had died unexpectedly a few days prior, and my mom and aunt and others had gathered at my Grandma's house to help with things. My mom had asked me if I would come over for a few hours to help with some sorting of papers. I agreed.

When I arrived, there didn't seem to be any place to park at first. Grandma's driveway was blocked by my uncle's trailer and another car, and the front lawn (where guests  often parked) had my uncle's truck and 2 other cars. There really isn't a shoulder on this street for parking, either.

I did see an open spot on her lawn, though. It was closer to the house, and could only be accessed by using the neighbor's driveway (which borders my Grandma's yard.) But I thought, hey, I need to park, and that's a nice spot!

So I parked and went into the house to help sort the paperwork. An hour or so later, I was ready to leave. When I got to my car, I discovered it was sitting really low, as if a tire had gone flat. The driver's side door practically scraped along the ground as it opened. I got in the car and started the engine, hit reverse, and realized... I was stuck. 

I got back out of the car. That's when I noticed the front tire had sunk about six inches into some mud, but worse than that, it wasn't just mud... it looked like water was draining down into it... as if it were a hole....

I went back inside the house and sheepishly explained the situation to some of my relatives. My mom's cousin hooked up my car to his with some cable, and said he could pull my car out... but I still needed to sit in the car and put it in reverse and give it some gas.

This I did, but all the while, I was imagining myself climbing into the car and then -- whoosh -- disappearing forever into the bowels of the earth, like that poor Floridian guy. My only hope was that at least (if that happened) my car was tethered to another car. Maybe I'd be able to climb out.

But huzzah, my car was freed and pulled out safely. Happy ending!

Over the next few weeks, we learned that a leak in my grandma's plumbing had actually caused all this erosion, causing this sinkhole to form. It turned out it was around eight feet deep. Left undiscovered for more time, the sinkhole could have expanded and swallowed up part of my Grandma's house's foundation... or someone could've been walking there and fallen in....

So the leak had to be fixed and the hole had to be stabilized and fixed, which cost a lot of money, and, naturally, I blamed myself because I was the dope who parked up far on the lawn, in the rain, whose car had gone in and started the whole thing in the first place.

Life: never dull!

When I Try To Be Helpful, Things Tend To Go Wrong: Part 2/3

My Grandma, age 94, has lived in the same house since the 50s. Not being as spry as she once was, household repairs and cleaning have gotten more difficult, and some aspects of cleaning have been abandoned altogether.

For example, her basement. A few months ago, I went down there one day and noticed that there were cobwebs all over the place. My Grandma does her laundry down there, so I felt that was unacceptable. So on my next visit to her house, I brought my vacuum, and began to suck up years' worth of former spider homes, dust, and so on.

This took about an hour, and I won't lie... I enjoyed every minute of it. I have this weird thing about vacuuming.

When I was finished, I guess I was feeling pretty proud of myself, because I really wanted to do more good deeds. 

Upstairs in my Grandma's hallway, I saw a cobweb on the ceiling, and removed it. Then my eyes beheld her smoke detector. I asked if I could check to make sure it worked, because Safety. I was given the "OK".

Now, there are many types of smoke detectors. Some you can test by pressing a button. Others you have to test other ways. This one seemed to have no buttons, so I took it off the ceiling to examine it.

Suddenly, a loud wailing noise burst forth, filling the entire house.

It turns out my Grandma had this elaborate security system that was wired to the smoke detectors.

Because of course she did.

I immediately put the smoke detector back, but the alarm continued. I ran to the security system panel to see if I could do some disarmin'. After a minute, the sound went away. Then the phone rang.

"I'll get it!" I called, feeling mortified. I figured it would be the security company, and it was. 

"Everything's fine," I told the guy on the phone. "I accidentally did something with the smoke detector. But everything's fine here." The guy said OK, and I hung up.

TWO DAYS LATER, I was over at my Grandma's again, when there was a knock at the door. Her brother had come by the house to see if she was all right. He said that whenever he'd tried to call my Grandma in the last day or so, all he ever had gotten was a busy signal.

Long story short, when the security company called my Grandma's house to check on her after the smoke detector incident, they apparently also hijacked the phone line, and inadvertently continued doing so for two whole days. I don't know how, but that was the story. We had to to pay some phone repair guy $93 to come over and figure that out.

In the end, my Grandma decided the security company was more trouble than it was worth (one burned pizza in the oven could summon the fire department, if my hearing-impaired Grandma didn't hear the phone ring, for example.) So... no more security... one less expense every month. 

So I guess some good came out of it. But I sure caused a lot of trouble. All because I just couldn't help trying to be helpful.

* * * * * 

ETA 8/6/24, approximately 8 1/2 years after the above event:

I just want to say, I appreciate when my brain actually takes a lesson from the past and reminds me of it when I actually need it. Not long ago, when I was housesitting, the smoke alarm began to chirp -- low battery. My client lived in a townhouse, and before I climbed a stepladder to replace the battery, my brain had the decency to ask the question -- What if this thing's wired to one of those alarms, like my grandma had? It turns out it was! Unfortunately, the resident cat and I then had to live with the chirping for the next few days until the homeowner could get it fixed, but... at least I didn't summon the fire department! 

So kudos, brain. This almost makes up for all the things you neglect to remind of.

Almost.

When I Try To Be Helpful, Things Tend To Go Wrong: Part 1/3

I have a third-degree burn on my finger because I decided to clean the dishwasher.

You might think dishwashers clean themselves, but this is not true. Gunk gets into the parts around the places that seal tightly during a cleaning cycle. Also, you know the part on the bottom where the water drains out? Apparently that's a lot like a sink drain. Grime begins to collect there as time goes on, until it looks... well, a lot like a sink drain.

That's right. Step away from your computer and go check out your dishwasher, now.

You're welcome.

(Also, check under your fridge and behind your stove sometime. You'll be properly horrified.)

But back to yesterday. I was putting a bowl in the dishwasher when I noticed some grime. So I did what any sane person would do; I took out the bottom rack of the dishwasher and sat on the floor with a spoon, a pair of tweezers, a couple of paper towels, a bowl of water, and an old toothbrush, and went to work scraping off a bunch of ick.

When I was finished ("eh, clean enough!") I decided I should probably run a rinse cycle, just so that if I'd kicked up any dust or grossness while cleaning, it would get flushed away. 

Our current dishwasher was installed in the late 90's. It has a dial and a row of manual buttons. Every time we've ever run the dishwasher for the last 17 years, we've kept it on this one setting -- two buttons pressed in, and the dial turned to "normal wash." (No fancy washin' for us!)

Except I didn't want to run through a whole normal wash cycle, because I'd taken the dishes out, and besides, The Environment. So instead of turning the dial to "normal wash" I put it on "quick rinse."

About two minutes in, there came a burning smell... like the smell that comes when you spill something on a stove burner. Only that smell really isn't supposed to come out of dishwashers. I stopped the cycle and opened the door slowly (unsure if water would rush out at me... it didn't.) There was only a little water, at the bottom. And there was a piece of gunk that had emerged from some crevice and was sitting there. Naturally, I went in after it... and accidentally brushed my finger against the metal heating element. THE THING THAT IS REALLY REALLY HOT. APPARENTLY.

Now, normally when I get burned (and let's not dwell on how often that is) I run the wound under cold water. But I didn't this time because I was too preoccupied with wondering if the dishwasher was going to spontaneously combust.

After a few minutes, the smell died, and I decided to let the dishwasher have a second try. It was then that I tended to my finger (too late) and went about my business, waiting for the so-called "quick rinse" to complete.

An hour later, I had to manually stop the dishwasher because it was still going. When I opened the door, I saw that the soap had never even dissolved. It was just sitting there in all its powdery glory.

But by gum, the dishwasher looked a lot cleaner.

There's just a small chance of the appliance never working correctly again....