0 comments on "MURDERING someone is wrong"

MURDERING someone is wrong. Killing someone accidentally or in the course of saving your life is not.

I was completely boggled the other day when I had to explain to the Kid that the movie “The Call” (Spoilers ahead) is the story of a murder.

In the movie, a serial killer kidnaps teenage girls with blond hair. (There’s a sad backstory that might make you feel bad for him if things weren’t so creepy and weird.) And the main character, Jordan Turner, played by Halle Berry is a 911 operator that messes up and lets a girl be kidnapped and murdered by him.

Anyways, it’s a while later, she’s dealing with PTSD about that poor girl getting murdered. And another girl gets grabbed by him – though they don’t know he’s the same guy yet.

It’s just a teenage girl heading to her car in a parking garage and a guy grabs her and throws her in his trunk. He takes her cellphone, but she has an extra one confiscated from her friend.

So she’s able to call 911. And with the help of Jordan, Casey Welson (Abigail Breslin) makes some truly courageous attempts at saving her life.

But she still ends up strapped to a table.

She still ends up a bit cut up.

She and Jordan both discover the same creepy murder room and bunch of bloody scalped blond hair.

And Jordan arrives just in time to save her. Like, he’s literally cutting into Casey’s face when Jordan bashes him across the back with a nitrous tank.

He’s knocked sprawling, presumably unconscious.

She runs back to untie Casey and they’re about to make a run for it, then he jumps on her back and they beat the crap out of each other.

She knocks him down and she and Casey run again.

He attacks again, and she stabs him. He can’t move.

Jordan begins to dial 911 – and Casey stops her.

Instead of calling the police and having him arrested, they leave him in his hidden hidey-hole to die.

And the screen blanks out.

They never tell the police they found an underground murder room. They leave tons of forensic evidence showing that they were BOTH down there, not just Casey. They leave all those scalpe wigs with their DNA evidence of the dead girls behind.

The end.

That is murder.

When she hit him to save Casey, she could have grabbed the scalpel off the tray and stabbed him. It would have been self-defense.

When he attacked them the second time, she could have killed him then. It would have been self-defense.

But when Jordan and Casey put him back in the hole to die – that was murder.
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Jordan could have smacked him with the tank, then stabbed him in the spine. He would have been alive, paralyzed, and she could have claimed she was trying to kill him in self-defense.

He would have been able to answer questions.

They found his dump site where he threw all those girls’ bodies.

What if it wasn’t his only dump site?

What about all the families and friends wondering where their loved one went?

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I sometimes feel as though our media output has far outpaced our maturity level as a society.

We socially condition people to think that murder is okay.

Then we are upset that people are murdered.

How many movies and television shows have the police breaking all kinds of laws, and not getting in trouble? They’re constantly beating information out of people or killing the bad guys because “a trial would be a waste of time for a scumbag like you”.

WTF?!?

A law enforcement officer is not judge, jury, and executioner.

The limits of their authority are to cuff you and take you to jail.

It’s up to a judge and a jury of your peers to decide your fate. And they should be impartial while doing it.

Giving someone a gun and a badge doesn’t make it okay for them to MURDER people.

And constantly showing in movies and TV that people can MURDER someone just because that person attempted to murder them is horrifying.

If someone tries to murder-death-kill me, I’m going to fight for my life. And if I end up killing them in the process, I can live with that.

But I’m not going to tie them up and torture them.

You only have to watch “I Saw the Devil” once to see all the bad choices he makes in the name of revenge. Because of him, lives are devastated and blood runs in the street.

And then what?

So yeah–

Murder is wrong.

An Elderly Lady is Up to No Good at Amazon
0 comments on "is it weird to say that I feel powerful?"

There’s been a great emotional upset, and I feel a bit tired and scared, but is it weird to say that I feel powerful too? Because it’s like the rules don’t apply to me anymore.

It gives me an almost weightless feeling.

There’s lots of work to be done if we want our country to survive the upcoming troubles, but it’s okay. We’re strong. We’re going to stay strong. And when we come out the other side… we’re going to be stronger still.

The only thing I worry about is all the people dwelling in misery and despair bringing down the younger generation. There’s children that have literally known no other President than Obama. They’re not ready for an evil man in office, and with the way people have shrugged off what’s happening around the world, they’ve been kept insulated by bad jokes told by people that don’t have enough awareness to be terrified.

But they will be.

And that’s what frightens me and makes me sad. Children and teens are going to start looking around and realize what their parents and grandparents have done to them. That there was almost a country where everyone had equal rights and everyone could find their place — and it’s most likely been taken away from them.

Because laws are going to be written. Things are going to be said. Violence will happen.

And rather than being able to shrug and say “Well, we’ve got four years to live through. Another lame duck Presidency” it’s going to be “Oh shit, these assholes have rewritten ALL the laws. We’re going to be screwed for decades.” And that sucks.

Because my nephew is sad and I don’t know how to tell him it’s all right.

I don’t know how to explain why I’m so relieved that he can pass for White. That he doesn’t look Asian like me, my sister, or my brothers.

That he’s not his cousin, who is half-White, who self-identifies as White, but who looks Black.

And it sucks that at 13-years-old, he is too young to have a frame of reference for what’s happened to our country.

That racism, sexism, bigotry, and xenophobia have won the battle — but will not win the war.

Because we are strong. And we will come through stronger.

Panoply at Amazon
0 comments on "Window shopping: ceramic tile cutters; “365 Prompts”; NaNoWriMo"

I’ve been looking into getting a pair of ceramic tile cutters. One of those handheld tools that looks like a rotary can opener. But I’m not sure what kind I would need.

I want to be able to cut old ceramic plates into different sized pieces to make a mosaic backsplash for the kitchen.

^above^
These are the two cutters I was looking at on Amazon. There wasn’t a very wide variety to choose from (only 7!). Still, these two look like either one would meet my needs okay (~_~;).

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“365 Prompts” is coming out December 10th, but will be available for pre-order after November 14th.

“What is it?” you ask. Well, “365 Prompts” is a collection comprising 365 subjects, each with three accompanying prompts. Which makes it great for anyone looking for a quick story idea, thought experiment, or creative writing subject.

So, you know, yay!

Plus it creates a handy reference when I post a story titled something like “Prompt Fill: 192. mushroom 2A[1]” without any further introduction. And it gives people something to request prompts from (“Can you give us a ‘Prompt 056. chainsaw 3A’?”).

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I’m half-heartedly participating in NaNoWriMo this year. I’ve only got a very very few words written for my entry, which even this early makes me think that I’m not going to win 2016 ;_;

Though who knows, I might throw together a collection of short stories that consists of 50k. That would be neato.

Anyways, if you’re participating in National Novel Writing Month, I wish you luck that you win the year. Fighting!

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[1] Prompt Fill: 192. mushroom 2A

Unsure whether he was hallucinating, he stared at the tiny creatures and their mushroom house village.

The mushrooms had sprouted after the rain and were arranged in a loose circle next to the stump he used for chopping wood. Inch tall humanoid creatures were moving around the mushrooms, walking upright on their back legs while their forelegs and paws were used to burrow into the mushroom stems to create hollows they were climbing in and out of.

As he watched, one of the creatures chewed and swallowed several chunks of mushroom stem. Its sharp teeth flashed as the mouth worked the mushroom flesh. It ate and ate until its stomach was swollen and full. Then its body jerked and vomited up a long stream of greenish pulp that nearby creatures gathered up and began applying to the outside of the mushroom houses.

“What…” He rubbed his hand over his face and leaned closer to the screen.

He’d set up the CCTV cameras after several small thefts around the property. He’d thought it was kids messing around.

Yet now he was watching as strange little creatures used his missing Phillips head screwdriver to dig furrows in the dirt. Furrows that looked a lot like the beginnings of a garden.

[/1]

The Way of the Househusband 01 at Amazon
0 comments on "H&V: Kanon vs Canon"

I’ve done a cruel thing to Canon Seth/Sunfire and Tony/Teen Steel/Steel Fury. Because of Warrick, Sonic Pulse survived for her reappearance in “Pulse of the City[1].” That’s the most obvious thing different.

But there were also the differences in how the Behemoth situation were handled, the events of “Tuesday Night” where Sunfire and Teen Steel spend a bunch of time together, and the reminder that they’re mortal–something the Canon Sunfire and Teen Steel never experienced.

These two guys are very important in All That Remains. (That’s all I’m going to say about that.)

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[1] The reason all of “Pulse of the City” is written in first person POV is because Ashley doesn’t even realize how other people perceive her.

She realizes that she doesn’t see herself as Sonic Pulse. So when she puts on her uniform, she forces herself to be a harder person than she naturally is.

I think that her time out of costume gave her a sense of perspective. Just not soon enough.

(Ashley has a whole story arc to her – “Pulse of the City”, “The Dark Harts”, “Beating Harts At Night” – and her family. And not just Evan[2].)

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[3] I think I’ve been cruelest to Evan most of all. He’s been fucked with, fucked over — and as a result he is a stewing bottle of rage. And in the Kanon-verse, because events never took place, the festering wounds in his mind were never cleansed.

He gets sidelined in “Tuesday Night”, which results in him being part of the raising of his grandson, and he finds a new happiness … But he also gets kicked out of being a superhero. And he eventually goes in and has certain sections of his brain biomechanically altered to control his rage-induced pyrokinetic psychopathy.

He doesn’t want to kill people.

But when he loses control…

Bad things happen. And the people he loves are left to pick up the pieces.

He’s happier without having to make those actions. Enjoys the life that he lives and the people he shares it with.

But sometimes …

Sometimes he wonders.

What would the world look like if the whole thing burned?