A Thinking Man's Ponderings

An eight year-old boy is dead in Assam, India from eating snake eggs. Four of his friends are fighting for their lives in a hospital after eating the same eggs. The boys found the eggs in a field and boiled them before their deadly feast.

I never even heard of anyone eating snake eggs. Like the boys, I could have thought the eggs safe, especially if I were starving. If I found them in a field, I could have mistaken them for bird eggs, which might be what the children did. They may also have been children in families where food was scarce, so free eggs would have seemed a godsend to them. Instead the poisonous feast has sent one of them to God. I hope the others survive. I’m sure they will miss their friend.

A husband and wife face child neglect charges in Snow Camp, North Carolina. While they got stoned on marijuana, their 2 year-old son nearly burnt himself to death playing with a cigarette lighter. The child torched himself with the lighter causing third-degree burns over the upper half of his body.

It could be argued accidents can happen even when parents aren’t stoned. A brief walk outside to get the mail, a phone call in another room, and the results might have been the same. Yet, when people are stoned, they are not as alert. Imagine a brain surgeon stoned, or an air pilot. So it might be negligence due to being oblivious to the apparent danger to the child, or a careless error in leaving a cigarette lighter within reach of the toddler while the parents puffed away in oblivion.

This questions also hangs disturbingly in the air: was the child near the parents when marijuana smoke permeated the atmosphere in a density that could have seeped into the child’s developing mind.

Whatever the case, the child went to the hospital. The family’s second child is in the custody of Social Services. The parents are also charged with drug possession, and, clearly, a family is torn apart. All because the parents got high and may have been too stoned to save their child from nearly burning himself to death. A sad story all around.

A female customer handed a leaflet to a young woman working in a fast food take out window. The leaflet’s theme, in so many words, was women provoke rape by the way they are dressed. Mind you this was a woman dressed for work at a fast food restaurant just doing her job and some fanatic sticks this offensive leaflet in her hand and admonishes here with this: “Even though nothing is showing, you’re being ungodly. You make men want to be sinful.”

This is what was written in the leaflet:

You may have been given this leaflet because of the way you are dressed. Have you thought about standing before the true and living God to be judged?

Scripture tells us that when a man looks on a woman to lust for her he has already committed adultery in his heart. If you are dressed in a way that tempts a men to do this secret (or not so secret) sin, you are a participant in the sin. By the way, some rape victims would not have been raped if they had dressed properly. So can we really say they were innocent victims?

This is typical religious nonsense. Note no leaflets were handed to male employees. This stems back to the Adam and Eve fairy tale; i.e. it’s Eve’s fault Man fell. Hence women are unworthy of the priesthood. And thanks to them Eden’s dead and the world is steeped in sin. And, if they’d just behave and dress better, preferably like nuns, men wouldn’t have to rape them. Nor would followers of God have to admonish them with leaflets.

This brings to mind the “God save me from your followers.” Amen.

I read in the news the Chilean earthquake shortened earth days by shifting the earth axis 3 inches. So for a measly 3 inch shift, we lose time in our days. Why couldn’t we have an axis shift to shorten our work week, or make our weekends longer? No, that would be asking too much. Instead, the powers that be, whatever that means/is, gyp us out of some precious time in our day, probably the time when we’re off work.

I’m thinking maybe this is one of those conspiracies. Some secret society that controls the world engineered this quake to screw the masses, overlords insuring the masses have less time to be idle and potentially seditious.

Well, at least they only screwed us out of 1.26 microseconds. Still …. microseconds today, macroseconds tomorrow. And before you know it your weekends will seem to go by in minutes. And nobody figures it out until some brainiac puts it all together in a computer program. But just before he breaks the news to the world, he mysteriously vanishes to some funny farm where a red-faced, alcoholic doctor stands above the unconscious brianiac’s brain with a scalpel in his trembling hand.

A friend once told me, “If ever you were in the jaws of lions, chemicals in your brain would shut off the pain and horror. You really wouldn’t feel it.”

Somehow I didn’t find that comforting. I had trouble believing I’d enter something akin to a euphoric state while the gnashing jaws of lions shredded my flesh with exuberance. The only comfort I could derive from this savage scenario is it would be quick.

I’d like to be wrong in my disbelief about chemicals in the brain coming to the rescue of a person about to die a horrible death. I’d like to think victims of horrendous killings would get some grace and be spared the pain and horror in a world where people are murdered every day and serial killers tear lives to pieces.

After years of debates, a global team of scientists has concluded an asteroid 10 billion times more powerful than an atom bomb slammed into the earth and led to the extinction of dinosaurs.

Examining years of studies and theories, the team declared the asteroid created a day of hell in which extreme environmental changes delivered doomsday to the gargantuan reptiles that once ruled the world.

To me, this suggests 2 things:

1. An asteroid doomsday could happen again. Odds seem to favor this.

2. Humans could be on the hit list for extinction, should a killer asteroid return.

Before that killer asteroid returned full force, I’d think some humans would hide underground foregoing the effects of the initial strike and the apocalyptic aftermath. But, could they eventually resurfaced safely when their food supplies ran out, or would the environmental changes be so extreme the humans would perish the moment they inhaled the toxic air, the last of their species forever gone like the dinosaurs?

Not a pretty pondering.

Glenn Young, veteran police officer with 34 years experience, was told he was too old to be hired for the chief of police job in North Irwin, PA, a borough one half mile wide, population 900 people.

Young states he has minutes from a borough council meeting showing officials rejected his application as “standard operating procedure” with people over 55 years of age.

Young is suing the borough for age discrimination.

Men have run nations in their 60s (President Reagan, 69, Dwight D. Eisenhower, 65). Surely Glenn Young can run a police department in a 900 person borough.

Some people fall off a horse and get paralyzed for life. Others fall down a stairs and die. A guy in China falls 13 stories and lives. Did you copy that, not only does the guy fall from a surefire kill height, that should have turned his body into scrambled eggs on the ground, he also falls from the ill-fated 13th floor with all the bad omens and terminal curses that number conjures up.

He lands on a parked car, crushing and totaling it with the hurling impact of his body-turned-missile. Who has luck like that?

Fate is funny. Maybe as some people contend, when your time is up it’s up and you cannot go before your appointed death date no matter how many grim reaper moments sneak up on you.

According to Wikipedia’s List of Serial Killers by Country, the United Kingdom and the United States have more serial killers than other countries in the world. I find this alarming. Why do these two countries produce so many monsters?

Is there some evil gene hidden in the Anglo Saxon DNA? Do these countries share some sort of food or product with insidious chemicals that seep into mothers’ wombs like bad seeds into the ground? What gives?

Maybe it’s some sort of societal issues. Perhaps movies that glorify gore and celebrate violence are a link? Yet, not every mother’s son who watches these movies goes on a slaughter fest. What gives? Why are these two countries plagued with so many twisted killers who live and breath to kill scores of innocent people?

A stalker shot an elementary school teacher, Jennifer Paulson, to death in Tacoma, Washington. Those who knew her said she was passionate about her work and kind and loving, like an angel.

The monster that killed her, Jed Ryan Watts, pestered Jennifer for years, tormenting her at every turn.

She never dated Watts. She worked in a cafeteria with him about eight years ago when he and Jennifer attended Seattle Pacific University. Watts pestered Jennifer for years, calling her repeatedly, showing up at her work, and, eventually stalking her.  Not even an anti-harassment order, a talk with Watts’ National Guard commander by the principal of Jennifer’s school, or an arrest, stopped Watts’ incessant harassments.

He shot Jennifer at her school Friday at 7:30AM and fled in a tan Honda sedan. Deputies caught up with him around 8AM. A shoot out ensued, and Watts lay dead. Maybe there’s some justice in that for his evil actions. Though, as far as I’m concerned, not enough.

If there’s a heaven, a new angel just moved in. My heart goes out to all the people who knew and loved Jennifer Paulson.