One a Day

I was walking around Brooklyn today and saw an increasingly large number of Boston hats.  It was really nice to see.  I’m glad my family in friends in town are all alright, and my condolences go out to the families that were affected.

I keep looking for the words to type here, but I think Patton Oswalt said it best.

Boston. Fucking horrible. 

I remember, when 9/11 went down, my reaction was, “Well, I’ve had it with humanity.”

But I was wrong. I don’t know what’s going to be revealed to be behind all of this mayhem. One human insect or a poisonous mass of broken sociopaths. 

But here’s what I DO know. If it’s one person or a HUNDRED people, that number is not even a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of a percent of the population on this planet. You watch the videos of the carnage and there are people running TOWARDS the destruction to help out. (Thanks FAKE Gallery founder and owner Paul Kozlowski for pointing this out to me). This is a giant planet and we’re lucky to live on it but there are prices and penalties incurred for the daily miracle of existence. One of them is, every once in awhile, the wiring of a tiny sliver of the species gets snarled and they’re pointed towards darkness. 

But the vast majority stands against that darkness and, like white blood cells attacking a virus, they dilute and weaken and eventually wash away the evil doers and, more importantly, the damage they wreak. This is beyond religion or creed or nation. We would not be here if humanity were inherently evil. We’d have eaten ourselves alive long ago. 

So when you spot violence, or bigotry, or intolerance or fear or just garden-variety misogyny, hatred or ignorance, just look it in the eye and think, “The good outnumber you, and we always will.”

Why would you go through the effort of donating mustard that has turned black to a food bank?  What could have been going through this persons head?  That “mustard” expired in 2007 and someone donated it this year to some food drive or another.  It has to be an act of stupidity because nothing else makes sense.

I watched this cat take a running leap and tackle a german shepherd puppy.  Leo is a love, but has got some serious claws.   And to totally confuse everyone except those who know, Hope you’re feeling better Robin.

This is one of the many images that come to my head when I think about summer.  It makes me think of the summers from my adolescence.  I’ve been back a few times over the past few weeks, and its felt like no time has passed at all.  I think its really important to have people and places in your like that make you feel at home and nostalgic.  This is definitely one of mine.  And even though I’m almost thirty, and you told me I could call you by your first name, I still call you Mr. Meng.  I guess old habits die hard.

Was hoping to have some confetti going for post 100.  Or at least some Aurora Borealis, but there’s too much light pollution for me to see it I guess.  For tonight I guess we’ll settle on this picture (below) that I took last week.

There’s a little hint of purple in the wet track, not sure if its a hint of the sodium lights glowing over head or some sort of aberration but I’ll take it.  Let’s keep it moving people, onto the next one.

Its easy to give advice to others.  Following advice is a little harder.  Following our own advice feels impossible.  However, that’s what I’m trying to do.  My inspiration for this came from a post I saw on Design Taxi, where established authors share advice that they wrote on their hands.  It got me to write a few pages of introduction to something that I had stewing in my head.  It also made me want to create in general.  I’m going to make sure to keep doing my Work every day.

Walked all the way from Crown Heights to Tribeca today.  Thought these were pretty cool.  My friend told me that family members of bridge workers who died would put locks on the bridge as a memorial to the person.  Apparently this has turned into a thing where people who love each other(couples, parents and kids, etc.) write their names on a lock and lock it on the bridge.

I think both are pretty awesome.

Picture Unrelated.

So lately I’ve noticed a lot of gun rights enthusiasts getting up in arms about the the national attention of gun policy.  It’s a pretty typical pattern.  One thing that I’ve been seeing a lot of lately is the criticism that we should be paying attention to the pharmaceutical lobby instead of guns, because the majority of the perpetrators of mass shootings were on antidepressants or some other kind of psychological pharmaceutical.

Now I don’t disagree that the pharmaceutical industry should be put under a lot more scrutiny, or that the lobbyists that plague our countries government isn’t a nearly insurmountable problem, but blaming the antidepressants or anti psychotics on these shootings is like blaming the potato famine on the potato.  Or more topically its like blaming marriage equality hearings on Obama passing the Monsanto bill.  Is there any surprise that someone who could go in and murder a bunch of school children, was being treated for a psychological disorder?

Why is the gun lobby so afraid of gun control.  Sane and law abiding citizens should be able to own firearms. Honestly if you pass a serious background check and you want to buy an M16 to protect your home or hunt ostrich go for it. But clearly there is an issue with people getting guns that shouldn’t be allowed to be any where near them.

Burning the candle at both ends right now…