I’m pretty sure the constitution guarantees the right to break windows with a skateboard

For whatever reason, the first day of May has become a day of rioting in Seattle.  Oh, it’s not a group riot.  It’s a select collection of knuckleheads who are made up of locals and troubled kids from other cities, who use the march to support workers (big in communist countries, mind you) to break windows and vandalize downtown businesses.

Last year, it was if our police force was caught off guard, as mask and hood wearing vandals would do their damage and then duck back into the crowd.  To them, this is just a big game and a way to punish the successful.  The second any of them were arrested, they’d start screaming “police brutality.”

By the way, quick side-note.  Do you really think that the stores paid for all the damage caused by vandals?  Muck like graffiti and shoplifting, it’s the rest of us that pay.   The stores merely increase prices to cover whatever insurance doesn’t cover.  Just sayin’….

So, back to “What to do about the cowards who cause the damage on May Day?”  Again, it’s not a large number, so here’s my plan:

Set up phony video crews, like TV news teams–a reporter, a camera guy-complete with call letters and have them video-taping away so you capture high-quality video of the destruction.

Next, set up a swat team of paint guy snipers, who shoot anyone who throws a brick through a window or smashes a car windshield is marked….so when police arrest them and they deny being the vandal, we have video proof.

Do that a couple of years and watch the event return to just a march instead of a license to loot.

Better ideas welcome.  But just standing by and protecting the right to riot doesn’t work.

Tim Hunter

Close to how I looked when I found out

Probably one of the most unusual intersections in my life has to be the Brian Miller/Carol Burnett connection.

It starts back in the 1970s, when I attended Torrance High School in southern California.  During the first three years of high school, I was a proud member of the Tartar Band, playing trumpet.  I found myself going down that path and by the end of the marching band season of my junior year, I was done.  Besides, I was an OK trumpet player–but Adrian Miller was excellent.  Such control, such perfection.

In my last year with the band, Adrian’s little brother, Brian, entered high school.  He played drums and was quite accomplished, even as a freshman.  He really looked under control when he got behind his drum set, that little early-growth goatee making him look like a beatnik musician out of the 1960s.  As I moved through high school, then headed off to college, I lost track of the Miller brothers.  But I heard they continued with their musical careers after our days at THS.

While most of my teenage memories had to do with basketball, high school and girls (one in particular), I also remember evenings at the Hunter household, watching The Carol Burnett Show.  She’d come out, answer questions from the audience, then do most of an hour’s worth of skits, with some songs thrown in.  But it was the skits, where they’d go into hysterical laughing fits that I remember most.   Carol, Harvey, Lyle, Tim, Vicki and there, in the audience, Ernie Anderson.

Flash forward a few decades and my sister Debbie informs me that she’s working with Adrian and Brian’s little sister.  That’s when I found out how it all connected.  Here’s the short version. After graduation, Brian continued fulfilled his musical destiny by becoming a drummer with the CBS orchestra.  As if that wasn’t good enough, he struck up a friendship with Carol Burnett, that evolved and, once she found herself single, it went even further to the degree that today, Carol Burnett is actually Mrs. Brian Miller!  No sh…kidding!!

Waking the halls of Torrance High 40 years ago, who knew that one day, one of my classmates would be married to Carol Burnett?

To Carol– a Tarzan yell this week on your 80th birthday.  To the unlikely couple, I’m so glad you had this time together.

Tim Hunter

I’ve got it again.

That sick to my stomach feeling that has me watching a newscast that’s basically repeating the same thing over and over again, showing the same footage over and over and yet, I keep watching–hoping that maybe if I watch long enough that it will make sense.

But it never does.

It happened on September 11th, 2001, when our world changed forever.  When two commercial airliners were purposefully crashed into an iconic building for the purpose of randomly killing as many people as possible.  How do you even think that way?

An act that we’d immediately deem unthinkable if we were writing a book or screenplay.  No one wants to even go close to there.  But sadly, we’ve had occasion after occasion since then of unspeakable and unthinkable carnage by lunatic or crazed zealots.

Oklahoma City.  The youth camp in Norway.  Newtown.

This time, the city of Boston’s traditional Patriots Day celebration and the legendary Boston Marathon have been scarred forever by some demented mind.

I’ll tell you, it doesn’t take me very long to go from shock to very, very mad.  I have zero patience for this kind of insanity.  There is no way that an 8-year-old boy should be killed while going for ice cream with his mom and sister, who cling to life.

I have already formulated responses to these acts but nothing I would ever put in writing.  The penalties I have in mind for these kinds of crimes are so intense, they’d make any terrorist think twice about even passing gas.

Another thing I’ve noticed in the aftermath of a terrorist event–it’s hard to be funny.  First off, there’s no way I’d ever go near that as the subject and for several days, it’s all anyone is thinking about.  Maybe it’s only natural that the world would be a less funny place.  Getting up every morning at 4am to write jokes for a radio show prep service–Radio Online–I can’t tell you how difficult it was to eek out three measly jokes this morning.  I apparently am not alone.  Funny guy Ken Levine is also have a tough time with finding humor in the world, at least for the time being.

http://kenlevine.blogspot.com/2013/04/how-can-anything-be-funny-today.html?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter

I just don’t understand how things like this can happen, nor do I want to understand.  I don’t know that there’s a way to stop it, but I feel strongly that we should keep trying.  It’s up to us to make this world safe for our kids and we need to do something.

Now.

There’s that sickly feeling in my stomach again.

Tim Hunter

 

Over a month, I noticed the shoelaces on my brown shoes were starting to thin out in a spot and it wouldn’t be long before it broke.  So, in an attempt to head off a problem, I looked for some replacement shoelaces.  I had my eye on some 36-inch replacements when a little voice said, “Oh, I’d go with the 45-inch laces.”  “Really?” I said.  “That seems kind of long.”

But I listened to her voice and bought the 45-inch version.

Upon re-lacing the shoes, they were just too long.  Ridiculously long.  But I had just bought them and, by God, I was going to get my money’s worth out of them.  Oh, I could have cut them or one end, but then that would have frayed and looked tacky.  Instead, I had shoelaces that you could have used to rescue someone from the bottom of a well.

Over the next five weeks, I’ve tied them re-tied them, tried double-knotting them, tripped over them and complained about them every time I wore those shoes.  I started avoiding those shoes to steer clear of the lace drama.  But these are the most comfortable shoes I own, so I started using them again and the re-tying, double-knotting and tripping resumed.

Then Monday, when I was in a major hurry, I stepped on them in a way that knotted the left shoe.  So much, I couldn’t get it untied and so, I resorted to scissors to cut the knot.  OK, now I’ve done it.  I’ll need to get new shoelaces.

I went to Fred Meyer, back to the original scene of the crime, bought the 36-inch versions and they fit perfectly.

I’m back to not even giving my shoes a second thought.  The laces when tied hang perfectly on the shoe and don’t touch the floor.  The world is once again a great place to live, as I experience proof once again that size does really matter.

Tim Hunter

Suicide sucks.

It’s a slap in the face to the world and all the people you leave behind.  It’s the ultimate selfish act.  Help is available.  There’s always help available.

In time, you can examine what happen and try to learn from it.  But in the immediate aftermath, you must grieve.  It’s part of the process.

So, in California right now, Pastor Rick Wilson of the mega Saddleback Church is dealing with the fact his 27-year-old son committed suicide last week.  Just shot himself.  Again, it’s their time to mourn.  But being on the outside of all this, I can’t help but wonder—so, where’d the gun come from?

In the letter to his congregation, Pastor Wilson said that his son “suffered from mental illness resulting in deep depression and suicidal thoughts.”   Sounds like the perfect household to have an unlocked gun!

The connection between mental illness and gun control is inescapable.  There is a major link that both sides want to ignore.  The mental illness people want to protect the rights of those facing those issues, while gun proponents don’t want any restrictions on anyone, even those mentally unbalanced.

I don’t recall the second amendment guaranteeing the right to be able to shoot up schools and movie theaters.  A little common sense needs to break out here.

If you have a serious alcohol problem and drink and drive, you can lose your license.  Your car can be impounded.  Rapists and pedophiles are identified so that we know who they are.

I don’t need to know who is stable and who has mental issues.  But someone selling rifles that fire off 30 rounds in a second–THEY need to know.  Maybe it’s a mark on a driver’s license or a government file that would be triggered in a background check.  I don’t feel the need to own a weapon.  Been there, done that.  When I did have a couple of rifles, they just sat around, collecting dust.  I completely respect your right to own a gun, as guaranteed in the U.S. constitution.  Of course, back then, that meant having a musket you could load and fire off.

Now, back to Pastor Wilson.  One of the best things he could do to help prevent future suicides is to find out where that gun came from.  Perhaps the answer is too clear and they had it sitting around the house.  Then, shame on them.  If a friend sold it to the kid, they get the shame.  Friends should have known about his instability.

We can turn to the government for help on these issues, but remember—WE are the government.  We elect people to handle the paperwork, but we’re the ones ultimately in control of our day-to-day lives.  We need to say, “Enough is enough.”  It’s up to us to take some serious steps that make it as difficult as possible for the mentally damaged to get these weapons. How many more Aurora Theater incidents do their have to be?  Shouldn’t Newtown be the last mass shooting at an elementary school that ever happens?

What’s it going to take to make us all just a little bit more responsible and aware of the obvious red flags?

Whatever you do, please don’t say, “Well, it doesn’t really affect me.”

Tim Hunter