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Tag: violence

Home Alone – watching movies, reading, and working.

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Not necessarily in that order, but while the girls are all away for a bit this week, I tackled some minor cleaning, and watched some pretty violent movies at a reasonable hour. John Wick 4 was yesterday evenings attraction. Not a bad entry in the pantheon on Gun-Fu flicks. I liked it better than number three. But the first one is still the best. Sad to know now how the actor whom played The Concierge is actually dead, so no Continental Hotel of New York spinoff money for that guy. Too bad. Incredibly bad timing. But maybe they centre that set of stories around Winston The Manager now instead. Not sure how they’d do that. Writers strike will have to put a pin in it for now anyway.

I watched Scott Pilgrim vs. The World again on Monday night. Not really appropriate for the kids either, but less violent, sort of. No guns, but swords and fighting play a big role. So best to wait a few more years before I share that movie with either of them. I saw GOTG Vol 3 on my phone the day it came to digital, so I don’t need to rush to watch the Bluray. I’d like to share it with my wife, she sort of liked the first two anyway. Though, now we have this massively bloated roster of tv shows, specials, and other films in the universe that you have to have some (minor) understanding of, to enjoy the transition between movies 1 & 2, and the huge gap prior to movie 3. It certainly doesn’t play as an interlinked trilogy. Which spoils the overall flow just a little bit. Little bit. Little bit, you know? It feels as though someone cut out three hours of exposition between 2 & 3. Which they did. They smeared it over a bunch of other ‘content’, in hopes you’d watch that other stuff too, in order to get the whole picture. This film needed a prologue where they just straight up give you all that stuff up front. Would make it feel a whole lot more in line with movies 1 & 2 if they did. A Re-rerelease but with that upgrade would be beneficial. Oh well.

So here we are, Wednesday. Clean sheets, showered, house tidied up, and the rain outside is still falling. I have some projects to attend to, but otherwise a chill day is in store. The family is set to return today, in preparation for appointments tomorrow, and a child’s birthday party on the weekend. The house will come alive with noise once more! As much as I enjoy peace & quiet, I do miss the minions when they aren’t here with me. But I had loads to do, and I wasn’t much fun, so better to be with the rest of the family at the cottage to play with cousins, grand parents, aunts & uncles while I was working. Still missed them all terribly though.

So now we are down to the last 10 or 11 days of summer break 2023. Amazing how quickly nine weeks can pass you by. This summer will remain one to remember, not just for the tragedy, but for some other more pleasant memories. First time ever taking the kids to Wonderland! That was pretty awesome. Movies, parks, parties, pig farm, and sadly a funeral. Fireworks, shooting stars, fishing, paddle boarding, wake boarding, tubing, the fun seemingly never ends! The Bancroft Rockhound Gemboree! Finding a new route home! New roads, and books, and things to do & see. A very busy summer. Split by tragedy, right in the middle. Followed by the mad dash to fundraise, and then multiple funerals across southern Ontario. Sadly, at this point I think that will only start to happen more often, as we get closer to fifty years of age.

We are none of us left untouched by tragedy for long. May the long cold fingers of death not touch you until you are ready.

I hate to say it, you hate to see it, but it’s probably true.

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This will be controversial and unpleasant but it needs to be said. We do too good a job in north american society of shielding the average Joe in the population from the grisly truth behind what an AR-15 does to a human body. I think that lots of people believe that those kids from Uvalde in Texas from the other day are lying in a morgue with little round weeping bullet holes, and not the truth, that they were pulped and unrecognizable. So the ideal vision of our Angel’s asleep with tiny wounds let’s us walk away and forget about it. But if you plastered every newspaper with one savage, graphic, horrific view of the hideous truth, the gun lobby would struggle to maintain their vise grip on US politics.

It is horrific. It is happening. It’s happening to children, on what seems like every third day, just about. The movement to ban high capacity magazines and to reduce the availability of higher powered military grade weapons needs a new, upfront tack. Various media outlets hide the true nature of the details, because they are so horrific. So we can picture something less terrifying in our minds, and allow ourselves to just do nothing about it.

To make a real change, a few apple carts will need to be overturned. Why do people think there are so many vets with PTSD? They’ve seen the reality and it fundamentally changed their whole lives. But those of us shielded from the truth allow it to continue, until your asked to give a DNA sample to help find your kids remains because they’re just grisly matter now. Not an identifiable human being.

Guns have a place, and a use. Just not assault style rifles in average Joe’s hands.

I personally like to target shoot with a 30-06. I do so whenever I go to Las Vegas. It packs a punch, but can only hold five bullets at once before you have to reload it, and you have to manually pull back on the bolt to load it. Great fun. But that’s not when John Q Nutcase the caucasian killer has when he goes to a school to kick things off. That, while deadly, would give the majority a chance to flee, or to attack during reloading. Not that that is much better, but these fish in a barrel situations are untenable. It’s vile and cowardly. You wanna feel like a man, go start a fist fight with the person(s) you actually have beef with, not a grade school full of little kids.

Yeah so, in a few days time when this becomes relevant again, I’ll just relink to it, in perpetuity.