Newsflash: It's hot. It's hot everywhere, but down here in the southern part of the US, we're in a heat dome. Which means right now we're the last hot dog on the grill, the one that the cook forgot all about, and we're going to be cooking here for a while yet. Most of my poor wife's garden has died and withered, except for her mutant tomatoes, which are still producing. (I swear those seeds must be from the land around Chernobyl. Nothing else could explain how the plants are still alive)
I had my daughter down here from Ohio a couple of weeks back, and my writing got put on the back burner. Now that I've picked it up again, I'm cranking out Mister Donovan's Cadillac, a fun little piece that I started some time ago about a company man with a company car, one that gives him a little too much information about his perfect wife. I actually might finish the first draft either tonight or tomorrow, depending on how I feel. My insomnia has gotten a bit worse lately, despite the fact that I'm getting up a little earlier in the mornings and hitting the treadmill. Then it's back to Roja. I could wonder if my creative procrastination about finishing my first book is due to dread of exhilaration at finishing it turning to letdown, (something that happens in my head quite frequently. Graduating from boot camp felt -- odd.) or from knowing that the next step is getting it rewritten, a process which I compare to pulling your own wisdom teeth out with a pair of tweezers.
In the news right now is a twit named Anders Behring Breivik. This guy apparently saw himself as a crusader, and determined that it was his solemn duty to save Europe from the Muslims. Shortly after he set off a bomb and shot a whole bunch of people, everyone who he idolized broke all speed records in distancing themselves from him. Can't say I blame them, but it's a case of too little too late. Breivik, in my humble opinion, was less motivated by duty than by ego. He says he was fighting a good fight, but look at what he did, and didn't do. He didn't run for office, saying "Elect me and I'll get rid of all the Muslims! They'll never set foot in this country again!" He didn't run down to his local recruiting office and say, "I want to join the army! Can I go straight to Afghanistan? I want to fight Muslims!" He didn't run down to the nearest fjord, buy a boat, stock it with supplies and guns, and then sail it to Morocco, Egypt, or Saudi Arabia, and launch his own one-man amphibious landing, jumping ashore with guns blazing. All of those would require work, the threat of humiliation, and the last two would actually be DANGEROUS. He stayed at home, in a country without the death penalty, where he was warm and comfortable. He set a bomb, and he shot some kids. In all the news about this tragedy, I have yet to hear that any of the people killed were even Muslim. He killed the people who had the misfortune to be in arms reach.
That's not the tactic of a crusader. That's the showing off of a coward.
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