Sorry...'Tis the Season to What?

I have honestly hmm-ed and haaaw-ed about actually sitting down to write something here. This has just been a week (month, year) and there is this simmering anger inside or maybe it is an overall sense of disgust. It is not a throw things and scream anger. It is more like a lead ball or a roll of barbed wire in my gut. I want to update you about Chester first...I suppose there is anger about that because I just want him to be well. We had to rush him to the vet on Monday. He had been to see her a week before and was hanging in there, though he is rapidly going blind. Then he just suddenly swelled up all over...riddled with tumors. His poor tummy was bruised and purple looking from the rapid swelling. The doc took one look at him and was horrified. We were basically told that he needed treatment now or he was done. We took the 'treatment-now' option. It was not a happy financial picture...there was a lot of decision making. He got his treatment though which now has to go on for weeks and weeks. By Monday night when we finally got him home he was happy, and his tumors were shrinking quickly. Most are about gone, except the largest one which shrinks daily. My life is now once again lived by the alarm on Twyla's phone. He has a cornucopia of medication that needs to be administered at a carefully scheduled rate (1 hour apart, 2 hours apart, etc.). For several days after a chemo treatment he has to be very carefully monitored and carried outside to go potty. His waste is extremely toxic ( if there is an accident you have to do the whole hazmat suit thing). I have already had a couple of people look at me and go 'well, when is it time to let go?' I'll tell you when it's time to let go. When Chester does, okay. Maybe you could just dispose of the life of a friend because it costs a lot or it's a lot of trouble. I am not that person. Yup, this is a super crappy time of the year for this to happen (no time would be good but cost wise, wow).
That doesn't change anything. We just tighten the belt a notch (or six) and do what is necessary.

I woke up yesterday to read that some asshole in China had gone into a school and tried to basically chop up a bunch of children. By the time I got back from the mailbox and checking on a friend's cats at 1:00 or so, another effing asshole had massacred a couple dozen babies and their teachers in Connecticut.
Then came the litany of "prayers go out to" and "what a tragedy" and "thoughts go out to" and "we must never let this happen again",  then the inevitable jackass jumping up and waving their arms yelling "this is not the time to talk about gun control" or "guns don't kill people, people kill people".
You know what. Screw you. Every last one of you who don't want some kind of regulation and gun control. Screw you. That maniac didn't go in and kill his mother and all of those children with an assault slingshot or an assault banana or a glock intention. He picked up a couple of weapons at hand that were easily acquired and he killed a lot of people...which is what those guns were designed and intended to do. Kill a lot of people. They are not hunting tools. They are not target tools. They were dreamed up, designed, built and sold to kill people. The only thing the gun doesn't care about is which people or how many. I know, there are some of you who will again jump up and down and cry foul...guns don't think! Guns are just things. Again I say screw you. Energy and intention and thought has power. When you put that energy into something, it is going to end up in the hands of those who want to kill. Like magnets that are drawn to each other. Our whole society now is based on acquisition and killing what we perceive to be the monster, real or imagined. And usually it doesn't take much to convince us that other people are the monster. Brown people, people that pray differently, people that live differently  or have what we want or zombies.

I am very interested in all of the people who are out there now buying up assault weapons, they claim for the Zombie Apocalypse (or 2012 or economic collapse or end of oil or the flu...which, of course, is when the zombies will show up). I know that sounds mental. There are training sessions that take place to "kill zombies". I hear it all the time. They come up with ways that a zombie apocalypse could actually happen. They are gleeful about it. Maybe it will be rabies or a chemical thing...hehe!  Do you want a little insight into the mentality of people who REALLY wish for a Zombie Apocalypse? Who play video games where killing zombies is the objective and dream of a real zombie xmas...you know...a scenario where you just blow them to smithereens as they shuffle toward you, presumably craving your grey matter. They want an excuse to kill people.
What are zombies anyway?
 Zombies are people...people who have some kind of sickness or other that has made them this thing. Zombies are a way in which to kill lots of people indiscriminately and feel no remorse. They are men, women and children. Sick ones. And they are fair game. Humans, yet humans where open season can be declared and there will be no consequences. What does this say about us, when our monster of choice these days is human? That we wish a few million (billion) people would get a sickness that would make it okay for us to riddle them with bullets and watch in glee as their blood spatters everywhere. This is not normal behavior.

This nitwit that killed those little ones can probably be boiled down to a few facts. He probably spent lots of time playing violent video games. Likely was into visual violence (tv, movies). Had a lot of paranoia issues that were fed on a daily basis. They will come to the conclusion that he felt disenfranchised, left out, bullied, had delusions, his mom didn't make him his waffles that morning or he was saving everyone from a horrible end next Friday (Thursday if you are on the other side of the planet). It will be one or all of these things.
Everyone will feel bad, light candles, heap up teddy bears, hold hands and hug, a few celebrities will tweet that they just can't believe it (though they starred in the latest blood porn crap that opened last week to record sales). The NRA will send a delegation of murder advocates to get the rednecks shouting to the sky that you can pry their AK47 from their cold dead hands (when it is really the cold dead hands of babies and teachers that we're actually talking about here). A few politicians will shed a little tear and proclaim this a senseless tragedy. Someone will make sure that there is exciting celebrity news to distract the public...brad and angie will get marrried or have triplets, tom will do a super-exciting stunt while marrying a new little girl, lindsay will get arrested again and have to share a cell with someone truly bad, like martha...(Yes, I know I didn't capitalize...it was to make a point.) The point being that these stories are of absolutely no consequence to you or I. None. It is none of our business any more than the happenings in your life are your neighbour's business. Then everyone will shake themselves like a dog shakes pond water off after an illicit swim and they will remember that Walmart is open 24/7 and the hedonism must continue.

As the news was told to me yesterday, the Siberian Orchestra children's choir came on the radio singing "On this Merry Christmas Night" in their tiny voices. I didn't well up, I didn't start bawling a prayer to god, I just felt this sense of disgust at absolutely KNOWING what will follow...pretty much what is described above. By next week it will be non-news. Christmas is COMING! Santa is COMING! GET YOUR SHOPPING DONE GET ALL YOUR STUFF BEFORE YOU MISS OUT AND IF YOU DO THERE IS ALWAYS BOXING DAY BOXING WEEK NEW YEARS SALESALESALESALE!

And then there will be the statement "turn to god...he is just testing you." Right. He sounds swell.

I am not an atheist. I have a deep spiritual life. But I don't believe in a deity that 'tests' people by allowing their children to be tortured and massacred. This is us not some god with a clipboard and a red pencil making check marks beside our name if we manage to live through the murder of our child and climb to the other side praising him for designing a fabulous test like this. Like your god is going "OOH...OOOH...wait...I know how to check and see if they REEEEEALLY believe in me!" Let me see....I created this nut here to kill a few people and be hated forever...I think I'll send him to the elementary school today...this'll be a GREAT test!". I can't WAIT to get started!"
 As if.
We are doing this by allowing the circumstances under which it can happen to take place.

We need to get beyond this or we won't need the 21st to do us in. We feed our babies on a steady diet of violence and brain killing chemicals and disconnection. Do you want to know what happened to this young guy that just destroyed hundreds and hundreds of lives forever? We did. Us. We, each and every one of us is culpable and responsible.

Every child who is raised by their friends, by violent content of movies, video games and corporate nannies that convince them that they will be unhappy without the ability to communicate with their friends electronically and kill zombies by the score on their screens has the potential to become this guy that we all hate right now. It doesn't take much to set it off. Just the smallest imagined transgression.

I know I am shouting at the wind and waging a war against the tide. But the anger won't go away. The barbed wire just rolls into a tighter ball. It doesn't feel like Christmas. It doesn't feel like anything. But that damned children's choir keeps playing in my head. I  imagine it is the souls of those babies singing as they cross over, reminding me that this will happen again pretty soon.