Explosions reported near Boston Marathon finish line
wcvb.comTwo explosions have been reported near the Boston Marathon finish line on Boylston Street, and there are reports of injuries.
Tumbling from my phone, so grammar, spelling, etc may be sub-optimal, but a commentator on npr was talking about restricting gun sales to people with mental illness, and I’m frustrated.
(Please note that none of this is meant to distract from the fact that something awful happened today, or take away from anyone’s sympathy for the victims. This is just for the armchair psychs and part-time gun control experts. Also, sorry, but I can’t seem to do a read-more.)
Here’s the thing: there is no one “dangerous” mental illness. “Kill Crazy” isn’t in the DSM, not even the new one. Some perpetrators of mass killings have shown signs of or have even been diagnosed with mental illness. So have millions of other people who have no propensity towards violent acts. Furthermore, even if a specific mental illness was deemed so likely to cause violent crime that it would justify barring all sufferers from firearm ownership, a person would still need to be formally diagnosed to prevent their purchasing a gun. Unless psych testing was mandated before every gun sale, a potential killer could escape detection by just… not going to a psychiatrist. And for that diagnosis to show up on a background check, the FBI/NICS agents would have to have access to not only criminal/civil legal records, but medical records as well, which is a whole other can of worms.
I mean, I get it. People want to keep their guns while simultaneously preventing Other People, Scary People, from owning guns. And it’s real easy to single out the mentally ill as Other. But we’re not. We just aren’t. We are part of the general mass of humanity. A few, a very few, of us are Scary. So are a very few non-mentally ill people. Preventing all mentally ill people from owning guns wouldn’t prevent gun violence. It would deprive everyone of certain privacy rights and further stigmatize mental illness, but it wouldn’t stop gun violence.
If we’re going to talk gun control (and let’s be honest, we should), we need to talk about controlling everyone’s guns. Discriminating wholesale against one group just so we can shrug our shoulders the next time this happens and go “well, we tried” is a shitty idea.
“Dangerous” is not a diagnosis. And frankly, evil is not a mental illness. And I’m tired of being a talking point because my neighbors would rather treat me as a threat than deal with the small armory they keep in a glass case in the bedroom.
stuck in reverse | quinntana (side pezberry) | 5866 words [glee rare pairs challenge]
The door’s left open when Santana reaches and Quinn’s crawled up in her bed, legs up to her chest, looking smaller than Santana’s ever seen her. Even smaller than the way she found Quinn alone and crying in the hospital bathroom, the day after she gave Beth away.
trigger warning: violence
Defy the theater shooter: Go out to see a film, and DON'T be afraid
Words fail at times like these. It feels like only screaming will do.
A gunman breaks into a crowded theater, opens a canister of gas, and starts shooting.
What can you say to that? How can you hope to process such a cruel and pointless act with any type of logic? Investigators will now try to discern a motive, but what could possibly be gained from opening fire on an unarmed crowd of strangers in the dark?
I don’t accept the “Obviously, he’s crazy” explanation. This was calculated. This was done to cause pain.
So if you want to defy the theater-shooter and the terror he has created — go out this weekend to see a film and enjoy being with your fellow moviegoers.
Don’t be afraid.
This isn’t even about him. It’s about us standing up and saying we’re not going to allow the fear created by some random, pissant boogeyman to resonate any further. He was a coward, stomping around in body-armor as he blinded people and shot them in the back as they crawled away. Don’t let him feel bigger than he is and don’t let him take any more away from us.
As the families of the victims and the people of Aurora, Colo., grapple with the aftermath of this sickening attack, they deserve our prayers, love, goodwill and any tangible help we can give them. The rest of us are left to ponder the unanswerable from afar.
As someone who believes deeply in the power of story, and spends a lot of time in the dark watching images projected on a movie screen, this feels like a violation of one of our last collective refuges. We go to the movies to escape, and we do it together. It’s a source of joy, comfort, and relaxation – all things our society could use a little more of. I know this is very Kumbaya of me, but frankly, we could use a little more “together” too.
Yes, we go to concerts to hear bands and line up at stadiums for our favorite teams, but mostly we listen to music through our earbuds, and watch the big game on television at home. Movies are one of the few nationwide events that we enjoy as groups. Now comes word that screenings of The Dark Knight Rises in New York will come with police chaperones, as if the movie itself was provoking crazed reactions and was not just another victim in this sad ordeal. I realize copycats are a possibility, but overreaction will just fuel the destructive passions of those out there who are just looking for an excuse to snap.
I don’t care if this killer was supposedly in costume, pretending to be The Joker. The simple fact is, movies may inspire folks to do stupid things from time to time, but they don’t make people kill other people. This is a falsehood spouted by pundits who prefer to torture a straw man, rather than deal with, say, the question of how a particular madman was able to get his hands on so much lethal hardware.
The Dark Knight was one of the most popular movies of all time, seen by hundreds of millions around the world, so we can just forget about blaming the moving pictures for this tragedy. Disturbed minds attach themselves to all sorts of inspiration, rarely for any good reason. Charles Manson claimed to take his cues from The Beatles. Later, the murderer of John Lennon claimed inspiration from The Catcher in the Rye. John Hinckley Jr. thought shooting the President of the United States would make Jodie Foster like him.
I don’t care what pop culture these diseased minds consume. I’m much more concerned about whether this killer – whose guns were apparently purchased legally – could have been stopped by stricter gun control laws, or through a more detailed background check.
Perhaps not. Perhaps this was such a random explosion of hatred that no one could stop it. But those are better topics for discussion than: Did a comic-book character cause this? You can’t blame Christopher Nolan’s trilogy, or the trailer for Gangster Squad, any more than you can blame the fans in the theater who were preyed on by this killer.
Horrified by the theater shooting? Don’t blame a comic-book character. Make a vow to speak up if someone you know shows signs of being dangerously disturbed.
Another thing we can do is simply not be afraid, not amplify the pain and distress this killer has caused. It may seem trite, but I keep thinking of a scene from another recent superhero movie, The Avengers, when a frail old German sees right through the penny-ante, would-be dictator Loki, and refuses to kneel before him. “Not to men like you,” the old timer says.
“There are no men like me!” Loki declares.
But the old German has seen a lot in his day: “There are always men like you.”
Similarly, there will always be malfunctioning souls like James Holmes who try to make the world suffer by infecting us with paranoia. We only inspire those types when we succumb to that influence. But the truth is, we’re better than that. We’re stronger than that.
One of the eyewitnesses, Alex Milano, a guy in a Batman t-shirt who was in the screening next to the attack, told Denver’s KUSA 9News he didn’t run right away because he thought the smoke and gunfire coming from the next auditorium was just a stunt, something extra done by the theater to make the midnight showing special.
“Me and a friend of mine, who I had just met that night – tonight — we were talking about it and we thought: ‘Special effects! Midnight showing! That’s awesome. What theater does thatanymore?’”
It’s a heartbreaking mistake, one made by many in those theaters. But there’s also something uplifting in that quote, which speaks to the larger power of movies.
In his hasty description of what happened, Milano described the stranger he’d just met at the theater as “a friend of mine.”
If there is any good that can come from this, I hope everyone else lining up for The Dark Knight Rises and other movies this weekend will see each other the same way.
Why didn't you like the latest Game of Thrones?
I don’t know it’s hard to put my finger on it, maybe it was the part where they murdered a fairly prominent female character who, shock horror, happens to be a sex worker, with as short a scene as they could manage, in an episode where she had no dialogue and in a manner that was as horrifically violent and sexualised as possible. Maybe because killing this character served no purpose whatsoever other than to illustrate how sadistic/cruel/ruthless two male characters were EXCEPT we already knew that because of the other scenes where they beat and threatened and tortured sex workers.
Maybe that.
children of the corn always make me so sad, because, like, oh, no! all those kids! and you know lots of them probably didn’t want to go through with the whole kill all grown-ups thing and of those who actually did the deed, how many wish they hadn’t? and all those teeny kids crying at night for their parents, but their parents are dead and they have to live with the people who killed their parents, and the people who killed their parents are kids, too, AND MEANWHILE, ON TOP OF ALL THIS TRAUMA, there’s a horrific unseen demonic entity stalking the cornfields and demanding blood sacrifices of the children.
GOD, THESE KIDS
THESE POOR KIDS
On the latest Switched at Birth, Emmett (a teenage boy), while breaking no laws, was tackled and handcuffed by the police, who didn’t pay attention to him gesturing to indicate that he was Deaf or try to communicate effectively or do anything police are supposed to do. I have seen a bunch of fans shocked at the police’s “unrealistic” actions, but police brutality is actually very common among disabled people (and, you know, everyone who’s not upper/middle class & white & able bodied). Here is an article on how this is not uncommon in the Deaf community that provides more links & information!
Dearest Mem have you heard of the recent scandal in Kpop world about one Park "Mickey" Yoochun from DBSK/TVXQ/JYJ? I thought this is relevant to you because you may know him from some of his dramas. he was lead in sungkyunkwan scandal. and also Some not so savory things were revealed about TOP and Gdragon. and I thought that also was relevant to you. But you might rather not know if you dont already know. So I thought I'd ask you first. do you want the 411?
wow i am extremely sorry i just searched the yoochun tag because holy apologism batman good god
WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOW, FANDOM
you can like a dude’s work but still recognize that it ain’t fucking okay to hit a woman or a fan, holy shit
