DARK HUMOR or, HOW TO EMBARRASS YOUR CHILD

Bad weeks seem to be in abundance around here. I have been fortunate. I have witnessed bad and wrong and sad things, but from a distance, from the periphery. I’ve done what a could, and can, to help, while silently giving thanks that the bullets of misfortune missed me, even as I feel badly that they hit someone else. This of course, does not prevent my penchant for inappropriate comments from rising to the fore.

The saddest of a series of events occurred two weeks ago when the son of a family in my wife’s prayer group was found dead at home. He was eleven years old. My thirteen year old daughter had seen him and talked with him just three hours previously. I cannot even begin to imagine what his family went through, what they continue to go through, but I hope to never experience it.

The wake was held a week later. We went to the funeral home, where I was reminded why I want no calling hours, no service, no memorial eulogies, no pictures projected onto a screen. Harvest my organs, burn me up, and scatter my ashes into the Mississippi in view of the Café du Monde. I hope it brought comfort to them; it just isn’t for me. As with such events, I was ready to go after paying my respects. My wife and daughter, however, wanted to stay, so I wandered around the facility while they visited with the family and acquaintances. It wasn’t long before they remembered why I am best left at home, preferably attached to an ankle restraint.

Those who know me are aware that I get into trouble when I am idle. My imagination runs wild. I start talking with attractive but unfamiliar women. And I get creative. So it is that I observed that there was a table laden with toys and a basket full of bags of skittles candy in the viewing room. It was fairly obvious that these were objects which had been important to the young man during his life, and that the family wanted to share his special interests with their friends. A half-hour or so later I observed my daughter talking with some other young people who were there. They were all eating candy. I motioned her over to me and asked, “Where did you get that candy?” She replied, “It was in the basket on the table in there.” I reared back in (pretend) shock and said, “No! You weren’t supposed to eat that!. The things on that table are going into the casket with him!” She turned green, put her hand to her mouth, and said, “Tell me you’re kidding!” I smiled and said, “Okay. I’m kidding!”

I am hoping that she will forgive me before she graduates from high school.

One day I’ll have to blog about it.

This week, though, I’m afraid I’m simply derelict in my duties here on The Killzone.  Sorry, folks.  Next week, I’ll be here for sure.

John Ramsey Miller

I didn’t watch any of the coverage of the Royal Wedding that I could avoid. Not that I don’t appreciate romance or tradition, because both are the glue that holds the world together, but because I thought the idea of being glued to TV to watch two rich kids getting married at the cost of millions of dollars in this day and time is absurd. I understand that the Royals are important to people in the UK and to some of their ex-colonies. Even though diluted English blood runs through my veins, I’ve only been to England once, and have no intention of returning. I thought the coverage of that Royal event was going to last for weeks, maybe months, and the 328 deaths from tornadoes became secondary to a wedding an ocean away. I expected coverage of their honeymoon, perhaps all the way through their first child’s birth. And then our Special Forces whacked bin Laden and the Royal couple was abandoned as though it never happened. How’s that for a plot twist.

So after ten years we stopped the monster with a round or two through his left eye. The most wanted and hated man in the history of America. In all honesty, he probably wasn’t even in the ranks of top twenty mass murderers in the past fifty years. When you put him up against Eichman, Himmler, Hitler, Pol Pot, Mao, Stalin, or even Latvia Beria, he was something of a piker. Well, he was responsible for thousands of deaths of innocent men, women, children. And he’s cost the US 3 trillion dollars in ten years. Because of this one psychopathic, individual, we have been brutalized physically, economically and emotionally. We’ve engaged in two wars resulting in thousands upon thousands of deaths and injuries and immeasurable suffering and spending those trillions of dollars we might otherwise have used for extending our golden age. Glad he’s dead and don’t care to see a picture of him being all dead.

We write a lot about bad people. How many times do we give our killers super-human abilities. Osama bin Lauden proves once again that the worst killers are often the ones with the least amount of actual blood under their nails. It’s like getting rich. You don’t often get rich working a job, you get rich when lots of others do the work and you just direct.

Who is more evil, the killers in the trenches, or those who inspire, give them direction, define their purpose. Who do you think was worse, Hitler, or the groups of mass murderers who did the actual killing?

Writing believable villains is far more challenging than writing good guys. An effective villain has to be complex and self-deceived. A murdering brute can be frightening, but how many can hold a book together the way Hannibal Lector can?

Nothing unifies like fear. Now that the Boogy man is dead, how long do you imagine it will be before we get a new one to take his place?