I awoke this morning and logged onto the Internet as I normally do almost everyday. While my coffee was brewing and I was deciding whether to make eggs and toast again, or oatmeal again, or French toast again, I thought it a little curious and coincidental that early in morning before I had awoken, within hours of each incident; a person had been hit and killed by the Coaster commuter train near University City, a man had dove head first off the Harrah’s Rincon Casino hotel building, AND a man training for a triathlon in Solana Beach had been mauled and killed by a Great White shark.
I immediately stepped outside to make sure there were no thunderclouds hovering overhead, or giant meteorites heading toward earth.
As the day progressed, I occasionally checked each of these stories for further developments. The man who had been killed by the shark was immediately identified by his friends and family, some of whom were at the beach with him when the attack happened. However, this story, the one about the man being killed by a Great White, dominated the headlines in an unprecedented way over the other two, even to the point of making it onto national news sources like CNN, Yahoo!, and others.
The person who had been hit and killed by the Coaster commuter was more like a bi-line story to the actual major event that took place- thousands of other commuters were stranded at the train station waiting for the tracks to be cleared, the investigation to be complete, and then for other commuter trains to come and pick them up. It even snarled traffic in the area as unaware drivers-by were slowed by the throngs of news helicopters that had showed up to film the train sitting dejectedly unmoving on the tracks, and also by the rush of stranded passengers that were desperately trying to catch buses or cabs to make it to work on time.
The identity of the person who was hit by the train was so obscured by news about traffic that the articles I read did not even mention if it was a man or woman. By the way, what exactly does “hit” by a train mean? Bumped? Thrown? Dragged? Possibly, the body was so horribly disfigured they could not even distinguish the sex of the victim. Something so horrible could only be smoothed over by reporting on these bastards that couldn’t get to work on time. Who wants to bet there was at least one person stranded on that train platform calling in to work with his ace in the hole excuse?
“I’m trying to get to work, but a person was hit by the train. Don’t believe me? Turn on the news. Yeah, okay. I’ll just see you Monday. You have a good weekend, too.”
The man who had thrown himself off the casino hotel to his death was hardly written about in the news at all. A casual reader of the news would think this just a coincidence because of these two other attention-grabbing catastrophes that happened to occur on the same exact day. However, if you follow the news like I do, you will notice a pattern news agencies have with reporting suicides. They are normally only briefly mentioned, and it is almost impossible to get a follow up story concerning who the person was or why they did it. Now, on a day like today, reporters can use the excuse that covering that story was not first priority since all this other shit was going down at the same time.
There have been times, not that long ago actually, where suicides seem to simply disappear from the headlines after only appearing suddenly. After a police dog fell from the Coronado Bridge, with the man who the police were trying to apprehend, there was a great uproar of news coverage about this heroic dog and, equally intense, the fact that the man who took the dog with him off the edge actually survived the fall. But does anyone else beside me remember it was only a week or two later that two men jumped and died from the same bridge within one day of each other? Who were they? What were there names? Why didn’t anyone try to stop them? You know, what? I don’t know, either. Because the press hardly covered it. When the K-9 who had died had his funeral, complete with bagpipes and a gun salute, it made front-page news.
It is a fact that the Coronado Bridge, at least in 2004 and previous years, normally ranks third in the continental United States for bridge jumpers. But what is truly bewildering about this is that it is not a walking bridge. The Golden Gate in San Fran is number one, and if you have ever been there you know that it is easily accessible by foot, and there is absolutely no barrier to stop a person from plunging straight down into the bay. I was there with my family one time and a person pulled up in a car, stopped, and jumped right out on the ocean side where there isn’t even pedestrian access to the bridge. We didn’t see it, but afterward it was pretty obvious what had happened. Helicopters were everywhere, the Coast Guard boats were everywhere, and the police had to go out and move the person’s car into the parking lot and search it for a suicide note.
I don’t want to make any big statement here in this essay about media coverage of suicide except to say when very famous celebrities commit it, or die mysteriously full of so many drugs even an elephant would have had a heart attack, the media goes crazy for it. A celebrity suicide on the front page of a newspaper is like a shining stack of flapjacks smothered in butter and syrup and laid out on the table for a gang of hungry lumberjacks to tear into and demolish.
But when ordinary, unknown citizens take their own lives, even for political causes, the media sweeps it under the doormat like a pile of dust that just won’t fit into the dustpan no matter how times you try sweep it up. Does the media think it is protecting other suicidal people, or other citizens from suicidal people, by shuffling these stories into the press and then out as quickly as possible, while Heath Ledger’s “mystery” death by ten prescription drugs and three hundred eight-balls of cocaine is thrust into the limelight as if we are all supposed to be searching for a happy ending to a story that has already reached it’s conclusion?
The only happy ending to suicide is to survive it, fix your life, and move forward into life in a positive fashion. Sadly, that does not happen often enough, even when people survive their attempts at killing themselves. The suicide survivor is pushed into the smallest corner of his household like that unwanted piece of furniture inherited from a distant relative that you cannot immediately get rid of for sentimental reasons, but are definitely not planning to keep forever.
Possibly, no media coverage of suicide survivors is a really, really good thing. The last thing a suicidal person needs after almost dying is to have some assholes camera shoved in his face. However, in an age when psychologists and psychiatrists are on the cusp of more than one breakthrough in treating mental illness; isn’t a good idea for us all to sit up and recognize that when people behave strangely, threaten suicide, become morose and depressed in an outwardly anti-social way, that we all are a little responsible for the outcome of their suicidal tendencies? And isn’t it a little revealing on a day like this with these three tragedies that the one the media gloms onto is a rare occurrence, so obscure and unthreatening in it’s nature that a group of surfers immediately paddled out at the same beach to catch their dawn patrol waves even before the dead swimmers body was carted off to the coroner?
The media, and society in general, love to hype on the unreal fear of events that are real, but that actually happen in our world so infrequently it is ridiculous to fear them everyday. But suicide does happen everyday. And often times it happens to the same segments of our, or any other society, over and over in such a repetitious way it might really save lives and benefit our entire society by taking notice as to who it as who jumped off the bridge today. And, how often do pedestrians accidentally get “hit” by trains? Were there two suicides today? One from a hotel rooftop and the other miles away, but only hours apart, underneath a train?
That is important and it does matter a lot- But what becomes the bigger story is the traffic surrounding the train station where the dead body lies, and this other event at a beach that happens less often every year than people being killed by vending machines.
Bless the souls that paddled out after the shark attack to surf. They want to show everyone that it is nature and shit happens. But if they waited two months, or even three, or five years, the same thing is as likely to happen then, on any random day, as it did today.
And maybe we should also thank the jumper for not being a shooter. If your place of business closes for a few hours, the traffic is a little slowed, you are inconvenienced a little bit- that is less concern for you than the family of the suicide victim who will have to go the morgue to identify the body. That is, if she or he even has anyone close enough to him or her to go and do that sort of thing.
Sunday, May 4, 2008
Entry 2
After a breakup with a woman I had been dating for over five years, and living with for about four years of that time, and after kicking this nasty prescription medication I had been taking since I was nineteen years old, my life changed for better and worse. I finally had gotten published somewhere I would earn royalties for my writing, but also had to find a place to live and scramble desperately to get a better job.
This has been a kind of “story of my life” for me for about as long as I can remember. I’m pretty lucky when it comes to falling into fortunate positions in life, but also equally unlucky in somehow getting screwed over by employers or women. I have been, for the past three weeks or so, emailing labor lawyers concerning a recent employer I had that fired me without any kind of warning because I had been late to work three times. My car had two major problems in less than two weeks. I know, sorry excuse. Really, if I could afford it, I would just junk the piece of shit and buy a new car. Now, I’m forced to go on unemployment because these assholes fired me, and a few other people at the company, and re-staffed their office with a bunch of twenty year olds who think working part time for ten dollars an hour is a sweet deal.
I’m very sympathetic to people who are forced, for whatever reason, to sleep on the street. In fact, it’s kind of amazing I did not end up that way when I was younger. People who know me now do not realize what a complete fuck up I was in my late teens and early twenties. Now, going into my mid-thirties, there is less sympathy from people around me concerning me not having a real career and a retirement plan. I’m in the same pickle I’ve always been in- I know exactly what I want to do with my life but I do not get paid for it.
I identify with the bum who walks up to a bunch of nicely dressed, younger post-yuppie group of people and, instead of attempting to ask them for spare change, spits at them or yells obscenities. He is trying to get their attention. He is trying to shock them out of their safe little shells. When life treats you coldly, and you can no longer afford to enjoy it, and especially when day to day existence becomes a matter of survival, as opposed to a quest for “the pursuit of happiness” the individual that goes through this himself becomes cold and hard and distracted from other people’s sense of stability.
Eventually, the lyrics “You know you’ve got my sympathy, but don’t point that thing at me,” become “I no longer feel sympathetic, and my gun is pointed at you.”
It is becoming increasingly difficult for people in our society to have any kind of social conscious whatsoever, especially when our own government, and people who run the major corporations and businesses, that employ a vast majority of the work force, do not have a social conscious themselves. When our president flatly refuses to admit there is a recession, and does not seem to understand that four dollars a gallon for gasoline is a high price for most people to pay, you have to wonder why we keep electing people to office that have never lived a real life. It is more difficult now than I can ever remember in my lifetime for people to offer a helping hand to each other. If people with vast wealth won’t reach out a helping hand to those in need, what the fuck is someone like me supposed to do to help people?
We live in a “quicksand” economy where the wealth does not trickle down, it is sucked into a bottomless pit, beginning with the upper-middle class, leaving really poor people with absolutely no hope of ever climbing out of their poverty. Here in San Diego, the political debates are about where to build a new airport, or how to fix the pension system, but hardly ever what to do about a poor and homeless population that is growing, not decreasing. The rich in this city are just hoping the problem goes away. And since when does California have a more regressive economy than over forty other states in the Union? California’s unemployment at the end of 2007 was sixth in the nation, tied with Washington D.C. D.C. not even being an entire state with only a small percentage of the industry that California has.
The true billionaire patron of charity, Joan Kroc, passed away years ago. And I guess there is no one here in this community who is willing, or has the actual means to take her place. Art and music is banned in city schools because of lack of funding, laws are constantly passed making smoking, parking, and littering more expensive to incur simply so the city can earn more money off misdemeanors, government property has been auctioned off at discounted prices in an attempt to stave off city bankruptcy, San Diego police and firefighters have protested, threatened strike, or have applied at other cities in the county, or even out of state, because their wages and benefits have become stagnant….with all this going on it is not a surprise that no elected government official has the brass to put into effect a plan to help out the cities least fortunate citizens.
One thing to think about is that this is not just a city, or statewide epidemic. Across the nation things like this are going on. Making the upcoming Presidential election probably one of the most important in the past three decades. At the very least, whether you subscribe to the left or right politically, you can be excited that the GOP chose a candidate with a brain. McCain/Obama, or McCain/Clinton debates promise to be filled with intelligent dialogue about how to cure the countries ills. And it’s the first time that I can remember, or have been aware that a candidate for president running to replace a member of his own party, actually openly disagrees with most, albeit all, of the exiting president’s policies. It’s just too bad the people who made the mess in the first place will not own up to their personal responsibility as public servants for the mistakes they made. And I don’t think it is asking too much for more than an apology. It takes a big man to admit a mistake, but an entirely different, much more responsible kind of human being to help fix the mistakes that were made while he or she still has the power to do so.
This has been a kind of “story of my life” for me for about as long as I can remember. I’m pretty lucky when it comes to falling into fortunate positions in life, but also equally unlucky in somehow getting screwed over by employers or women. I have been, for the past three weeks or so, emailing labor lawyers concerning a recent employer I had that fired me without any kind of warning because I had been late to work three times. My car had two major problems in less than two weeks. I know, sorry excuse. Really, if I could afford it, I would just junk the piece of shit and buy a new car. Now, I’m forced to go on unemployment because these assholes fired me, and a few other people at the company, and re-staffed their office with a bunch of twenty year olds who think working part time for ten dollars an hour is a sweet deal.
I’m very sympathetic to people who are forced, for whatever reason, to sleep on the street. In fact, it’s kind of amazing I did not end up that way when I was younger. People who know me now do not realize what a complete fuck up I was in my late teens and early twenties. Now, going into my mid-thirties, there is less sympathy from people around me concerning me not having a real career and a retirement plan. I’m in the same pickle I’ve always been in- I know exactly what I want to do with my life but I do not get paid for it.
I identify with the bum who walks up to a bunch of nicely dressed, younger post-yuppie group of people and, instead of attempting to ask them for spare change, spits at them or yells obscenities. He is trying to get their attention. He is trying to shock them out of their safe little shells. When life treats you coldly, and you can no longer afford to enjoy it, and especially when day to day existence becomes a matter of survival, as opposed to a quest for “the pursuit of happiness” the individual that goes through this himself becomes cold and hard and distracted from other people’s sense of stability.
Eventually, the lyrics “You know you’ve got my sympathy, but don’t point that thing at me,” become “I no longer feel sympathetic, and my gun is pointed at you.”
It is becoming increasingly difficult for people in our society to have any kind of social conscious whatsoever, especially when our own government, and people who run the major corporations and businesses, that employ a vast majority of the work force, do not have a social conscious themselves. When our president flatly refuses to admit there is a recession, and does not seem to understand that four dollars a gallon for gasoline is a high price for most people to pay, you have to wonder why we keep electing people to office that have never lived a real life. It is more difficult now than I can ever remember in my lifetime for people to offer a helping hand to each other. If people with vast wealth won’t reach out a helping hand to those in need, what the fuck is someone like me supposed to do to help people?
We live in a “quicksand” economy where the wealth does not trickle down, it is sucked into a bottomless pit, beginning with the upper-middle class, leaving really poor people with absolutely no hope of ever climbing out of their poverty. Here in San Diego, the political debates are about where to build a new airport, or how to fix the pension system, but hardly ever what to do about a poor and homeless population that is growing, not decreasing. The rich in this city are just hoping the problem goes away. And since when does California have a more regressive economy than over forty other states in the Union? California’s unemployment at the end of 2007 was sixth in the nation, tied with Washington D.C. D.C. not even being an entire state with only a small percentage of the industry that California has.
The true billionaire patron of charity, Joan Kroc, passed away years ago. And I guess there is no one here in this community who is willing, or has the actual means to take her place. Art and music is banned in city schools because of lack of funding, laws are constantly passed making smoking, parking, and littering more expensive to incur simply so the city can earn more money off misdemeanors, government property has been auctioned off at discounted prices in an attempt to stave off city bankruptcy, San Diego police and firefighters have protested, threatened strike, or have applied at other cities in the county, or even out of state, because their wages and benefits have become stagnant….with all this going on it is not a surprise that no elected government official has the brass to put into effect a plan to help out the cities least fortunate citizens.
One thing to think about is that this is not just a city, or statewide epidemic. Across the nation things like this are going on. Making the upcoming Presidential election probably one of the most important in the past three decades. At the very least, whether you subscribe to the left or right politically, you can be excited that the GOP chose a candidate with a brain. McCain/Obama, or McCain/Clinton debates promise to be filled with intelligent dialogue about how to cure the countries ills. And it’s the first time that I can remember, or have been aware that a candidate for president running to replace a member of his own party, actually openly disagrees with most, albeit all, of the exiting president’s policies. It’s just too bad the people who made the mess in the first place will not own up to their personal responsibility as public servants for the mistakes they made. And I don’t think it is asking too much for more than an apology. It takes a big man to admit a mistake, but an entirely different, much more responsible kind of human being to help fix the mistakes that were made while he or she still has the power to do so.
Entry 1
I was downtown eating dinner with my brother and his family last night. I was forced to park about two blocks away. City College, as we all know, does not have enough parking for it’s thousands of stoner students. It was very curious to me as to why the building that formerly housed Landlord Jim’s, and other worthwhile establishments, was still standing. Wasn’t that supposed to become a parking garage? And, if not, why the fuck can’t I go drink at the bar until the fucking garage is built?
Equally curious to me is the transient population that sleeps on the sidewalks all over East Village. I looked around and there abandoned warehouses, empty dirt lots, and wastes of space everywhere that could be used to shelter the homeless population if .00000000005% of the cities budget went into a pool to fund such a thing. Steve Francis, the up and coming mayoral candidate that our current Mayor loves to cuss out, personally promised me if he was elected he would sequester $175,000 for such a thing. That is $1.5 million for a dog park that nobody uses and less than two hundred thousand promised for a place to shelter and feed human beings that have fallen on hard times. Everyone, please, go kick a puppy.
After eating dinner with my brother and his wife and allowing my three-year-old nephew to beat me down and wrestle me to the floor, I headed over to the Pink Elephant for a nightcap and a game of pool. Directly across the street from Pinky bar, next to the Union Bank, is a giant waste of space parking garage that I am pretty sure no one parks in. And, mingling about the corner of 30th and University are more transients looking for places to sleep and eat. As I smoked a grit out front of the bar, I began formulating in my mind the proper mixture of manure and chemicals needed to blow the bejezus out of that parking garage.
“Ooops, that shit exploded. Might as well build a temporary shelter to house hungry families. Or, better yet, just leave it a dirt lot and let the motherfuckers pitch tents there.”
Back in Pinky to finish my pool game with another local, after guestimating that only about 10 lbs of manure would be needed to explode said worthless parking garage (in a neighborhood, mind you, with plenty of parking and very few metered spots), my pool buddy nudged me right before I was about to take a shot, and pointed over at the two young women playing on the table next to us.
“What do you think of that girl’s ass?” He asked me.
“I don’t care,” I answered, purposely missing an easy rail shot and snookering him so it would take about five more shots for him to beat me than necessary. I didn’t care about the hot lesbian’s ass. I was preoccupied in my mind with the fact that I had forgotten to buy a stamp in order to mail in my unemployment statement so I could get a check next week, and, be able to afford food and gasoline the week afterward.
(The criticism here is obvious- If you are so poor why are you drinking and playing pool in a bar? Two reasons- Pinky is cheap, and, if I don’t occassionally go out and have some kind of fun, I will eventually be forced to execute my two roommates who are obsessed with playing Halo for hours at a time. The explosions, gunfire, and screams of agony that are constantly coming from the living room of our apartment are enough to make a person feel like he has PTSD, even though he has never been in a warzone.)
Also, I was considering that if I was ever forced to be homeless living on Fiesta Island might not be a bad deal. At least, there is an ocean breeze there. And, by the way, except for those O.M.B.A.C. perverts the middle of the island is never used about 95% of the year. Tent city, anyone?
Equally curious to me is the transient population that sleeps on the sidewalks all over East Village. I looked around and there abandoned warehouses, empty dirt lots, and wastes of space everywhere that could be used to shelter the homeless population if .00000000005% of the cities budget went into a pool to fund such a thing. Steve Francis, the up and coming mayoral candidate that our current Mayor loves to cuss out, personally promised me if he was elected he would sequester $175,000 for such a thing. That is $1.5 million for a dog park that nobody uses and less than two hundred thousand promised for a place to shelter and feed human beings that have fallen on hard times. Everyone, please, go kick a puppy.
After eating dinner with my brother and his wife and allowing my three-year-old nephew to beat me down and wrestle me to the floor, I headed over to the Pink Elephant for a nightcap and a game of pool. Directly across the street from Pinky bar, next to the Union Bank, is a giant waste of space parking garage that I am pretty sure no one parks in. And, mingling about the corner of 30th and University are more transients looking for places to sleep and eat. As I smoked a grit out front of the bar, I began formulating in my mind the proper mixture of manure and chemicals needed to blow the bejezus out of that parking garage.
“Ooops, that shit exploded. Might as well build a temporary shelter to house hungry families. Or, better yet, just leave it a dirt lot and let the motherfuckers pitch tents there.”
Back in Pinky to finish my pool game with another local, after guestimating that only about 10 lbs of manure would be needed to explode said worthless parking garage (in a neighborhood, mind you, with plenty of parking and very few metered spots), my pool buddy nudged me right before I was about to take a shot, and pointed over at the two young women playing on the table next to us.
“What do you think of that girl’s ass?” He asked me.
“I don’t care,” I answered, purposely missing an easy rail shot and snookering him so it would take about five more shots for him to beat me than necessary. I didn’t care about the hot lesbian’s ass. I was preoccupied in my mind with the fact that I had forgotten to buy a stamp in order to mail in my unemployment statement so I could get a check next week, and, be able to afford food and gasoline the week afterward.
(The criticism here is obvious- If you are so poor why are you drinking and playing pool in a bar? Two reasons- Pinky is cheap, and, if I don’t occassionally go out and have some kind of fun, I will eventually be forced to execute my two roommates who are obsessed with playing Halo for hours at a time. The explosions, gunfire, and screams of agony that are constantly coming from the living room of our apartment are enough to make a person feel like he has PTSD, even though he has never been in a warzone.)
Also, I was considering that if I was ever forced to be homeless living on Fiesta Island might not be a bad deal. At least, there is an ocean breeze there. And, by the way, except for those O.M.B.A.C. perverts the middle of the island is never used about 95% of the year. Tent city, anyone?
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
