December 29, 2020

The actual price for Childhood is $1000.00. $800 for paperback, though I don’t remember there being a paperback. ABE books offers it for $2000. I have no idea of the math that went into this. Turns out I myself have only one copy. Hope it’s on the hard drive somewhere. 

Reading through OBN– “thought” for “though” and close quotes at the end of something that wasn’t a quote. But it does give me pleasure to read it, as I have observed before, as though I’d never seen it before. 

Paid off the Toyota with one mighty check. Biggest check I’ve written since I paid off 62. 

Cop murders– which is to say, murders committed by cops-- continue and continue. No one seems to come to what seems, barring the perfection of human character, the clear solution. The firearm. If it is at hand, it will be used. Make sure the cop does not leave the car with a weapon in his hand. Make sure he does not patrol the neighborhood or the playground with a weapon available. Make real penalties for conducting a traffic stop for a dead taillight or a wide turn with a weapon in hand. Make real penalties for drawing, ever, regardless of what the officer “thought,” on innocents, or those being merely “suspicious.” Make sure the weapon is defense and never intimidation. Cops have a hard time talking to civilians without a hand on their weapon. This is universal and almost unconscious intimidation, and penalties must make the offender mindful. Make sure the weapon is hard to get to, so he must think twice about using it, bypassing the instant reactions of panic and ego. The immediate outcry is But what about the officer’s safety? This will enhance officer safety. Frightened people will not assume, accurately, that contact with the police will likely prove fatal and therefore lose nothing in shooting first. What about citizen safety? Can you imagine a citizen barking to a cop, “Take your hand off that gun for my safety!” Every police jurisdiction should enact the law “Don’t kill anyone who is unarmed or who has, objectively, offered no threat to you,” and that the violation of that rule be treated as murder. Do pause long enough, officer, to approach objectivity. Take that extra second to decide if a cell phone is a gun, if a toy is a weapon. If you are too scared to be on the street, you need not be on the street. It should be easy enough not to shoot people. Just don’t do it. Just don’t do it. If you’re panicky or arrogant, leave the gun in the car until you actually need it. It is not your place to be obeyed.  It is NOT your duty to get home at night. It is not even my duty to get home at night. Our corporate duty is to look out for one another. Actually, truly, serve and protect, so we can stop sneering at the irony of those words.