June 8, 2011
--Two signs, three messages
On the way back to the shelter tonight, I saw that someone had put two, handwritten signs in his or her window. The first one said "Fuck You!" and the second one said "Get A Life, Bitch!"
Since I've never seen them there before, I'm going to assume that they were created and put in that window for me to read, and I'm going to respond to them. The second sign seems to have 2 parts to it, so I'll respond to those in sequence.
Response to Sign #1:
No, thank you.
Response to Sign #2, Part 1:
I have a life. Everyone who is alive has a life. Some people's lives are incredible. Some people's lives are terrible. Some people's lives are a combination of those two things. I would put myself in the third category, at the moment. There are all kinds of adjectives to describe all kinds of lives; I'm going with the adjectives that pertain most to my life now.
I doubt that there's a national government or world organization anywhere that doesn't read every word I write, every day. There have been so many movies, TV shows, magazines, newspapers, ads, songs and more that have either referred to me or been built around something that has to do with me in the past 2 years that I couldn't read, watch or hear them all if I had them in front of me and spent the rest of my life trying to get through them.
Some of that attention has been directed at me because of things I've done, and some of the attention has been directed at me because I'm the first to have done certain things.
When I'm able to put my intelligence to the best use, people respect what I say. I think that maybe there are also people who respect the fact that, no matter how many mistakes I make, I usually keep trying to figure out what the right thing is to do and then I try to do it.
Response to Sign # 2, Part 2:
It's true that sometimes I'm not very nice. I don't always handle every situation in the way that I wish I could. I'm only human; as far as I know, so is everybody else.
@ 10:57 p.m.
--There's a sub shop downtown that's been selling an ice cream confection called "Dirt in a Dish" for a while. It's in the same group of businesses that have the harassing, pedophilic Aldrich Library and ECHO/Leahy Center posters in their store windows. I still think that most of the really relentless harassment is from corporations, although some of the people who work in corporate outposts here do some nasty things on their own.
--There's now a banner on the front of the Dodge Chrysler dealership that says "Minivan Month."
--The Price Chopper
I went to the Price Chopper on my way back to the shelter tonight. Right in front of the entrance, on one side of the purple, "Sani-Hands" stand that gives out sanitizing hand wipes and has been there since I started going to that store, there's a shopping cart that has flowers on sale in it. The sign on the front of the shopping cart reads this way:
"Reduced!!
Dozen Roses
Serenity Bouquet
Nosegay Presentation Bouquet
Rose of Month"
There were prices after each name, but I left that out for the sake of time.
On the other side of the "Sani-Hands" stand were several pots of flowers in various shades of red on the ground. The sign for those said:
"MANAGER'S SPECIAL!
Flowering
Hanging Baskets"
There were other flowers similarly displayed in the same area, including "Strawberries & Cream," "Snap-dragon," and "Spray Roses."
The Nosegay Presentation Bouquet was a new insult from the Price Chopper; I've never seen them make any variation of that kind of insult before.
The Hanging Baskets were only surprising in that the store had finally decided to go far out of its way to make sure I got the message; there's a swinging chair at the far end of the display area outside of the story that's been on sale for "140" something; "149.99" or some price like that, for a while.
Yes, Price Chopper, I saw it before. It is somewhat difficult to shop in a grocery store while trying not to look at anything; I usually spend about twice as long in that place as I otherwise would, just because it takes me a lot longer to find things than it would under normal, healthy circumstances.
I have to shop at the grocery stores because that's where I can buy the healthiest food at the lowest prices. I would go somewhere else if there were somewhere else to go.
@10:15 p.m.
--Crystal Mangum
Like everyone else who gets accused of a crime, Crystal Mangum deserves a fair and unbiased trial. I don't see how she's going to get anything like a fair and unbiased trial with the kind of publicity she's had since the Duke case.
It seems as if she had a bad life before the Duke case; most people don't become strippers if they've had extremely happy, lucky lives. I guess maybe she was a small-time criminal a few times before she was hired to work at the Duke house that night; it also seems as if she'd made several attempts to stabilize her life, and that she continued to try to make those attempts even after the Duke case was closed and she was condemned by most if not all of the media.
There's nothing I've seen so far that makes me think that she wasn't raped. I'm going to ask again; how much time elapsed between the time printed on the last picture that one of the Duke lacrosse players took of her at the lacrosse house and the time that she notified the police that she'd been raped and was examined?
Was there enough time between the last, known picture of her taken at the lacrosse house and her notifying authorities that she'd been raped for her to have been gang-raped by a bunch of men who weren't part of the Duke team, or for her to have had consensual sex with as many men as the DNA testing center said it had identified samples from?
All the DNA testing center did was say that the samples given by the team as the team was asked to do as part of the case weren't matches. The word of the DNA testing center doesn't mean that she wasn't raped by anybody on the team, especially if there wasn't enough time between when she left the lacrosse house and when she reported having been raped for her to have had sex with multiple other men or to have been gang-raped by men other than the ones whom she accused from the lacrosse team.
Whatever happened at the Duke lacrosse house, she's on trial now for a separate event, and she, like everyone else, is entitled to a fair trial. That means that she needs to be tried by a jury of people whose opinions haven't been swayed by the media or by anyone else. That's the kind of trial that everyone is supposed to get.
@ 10:26 p.m.
--Two signs, three messages
On the way back to the shelter tonight, I saw that someone had put two, handwritten signs in his or her window. The first one said "Fuck You!" and the second one said "Get A Life, Bitch!"
Since I've never seen them there before, I'm going to assume that they were created and put in that window for me to read, and I'm going to respond to them. The second sign seems to have 2 parts to it, so I'll respond to those in sequence.
Response to Sign #1:
No, thank you.
Response to Sign #2, Part 1:
I have a life. Everyone who is alive has a life. Some people's lives are incredible. Some people's lives are terrible. Some people's lives are a combination of those two things. I would put myself in the third category, at the moment. There are all kinds of adjectives to describe all kinds of lives; I'm going with the adjectives that pertain most to my life now.
I doubt that there's a national government or world organization anywhere that doesn't read every word I write, every day. There have been so many movies, TV shows, magazines, newspapers, ads, songs and more that have either referred to me or been built around something that has to do with me in the past 2 years that I couldn't read, watch or hear them all if I had them in front of me and spent the rest of my life trying to get through them.
Some of that attention has been directed at me because of things I've done, and some of the attention has been directed at me because I'm the first to have done certain things.
When I'm able to put my intelligence to the best use, people respect what I say. I think that maybe there are also people who respect the fact that, no matter how many mistakes I make, I usually keep trying to figure out what the right thing is to do and then I try to do it.
Response to Sign # 2, Part 2:
It's true that sometimes I'm not very nice. I don't always handle every situation in the way that I wish I could. I'm only human; as far as I know, so is everybody else.
@ 10:57 p.m.
--There's a sub shop downtown that's been selling an ice cream confection called "Dirt in a Dish" for a while. It's in the same group of businesses that have the harassing, pedophilic Aldrich Library and ECHO/Leahy Center posters in their store windows. I still think that most of the really relentless harassment is from corporations, although some of the people who work in corporate outposts here do some nasty things on their own.
--There's now a banner on the front of the Dodge Chrysler dealership that says "Minivan Month."
--The Price Chopper
I went to the Price Chopper on my way back to the shelter tonight. Right in front of the entrance, on one side of the purple, "Sani-Hands" stand that gives out sanitizing hand wipes and has been there since I started going to that store, there's a shopping cart that has flowers on sale in it. The sign on the front of the shopping cart reads this way:
"Reduced!!
Dozen Roses
Serenity Bouquet
Nosegay Presentation Bouquet
Rose of Month"
There were prices after each name, but I left that out for the sake of time.
On the other side of the "Sani-Hands" stand were several pots of flowers in various shades of red on the ground. The sign for those said:
"MANAGER'S SPECIAL!
Flowering
Hanging Baskets"
There were other flowers similarly displayed in the same area, including "Strawberries & Cream," "Snap-dragon," and "Spray Roses."
The Nosegay Presentation Bouquet was a new insult from the Price Chopper; I've never seen them make any variation of that kind of insult before.
The Hanging Baskets were only surprising in that the store had finally decided to go far out of its way to make sure I got the message; there's a swinging chair at the far end of the display area outside of the story that's been on sale for "140" something; "149.99" or some price like that, for a while.
Yes, Price Chopper, I saw it before. It is somewhat difficult to shop in a grocery store while trying not to look at anything; I usually spend about twice as long in that place as I otherwise would, just because it takes me a lot longer to find things than it would under normal, healthy circumstances.
I have to shop at the grocery stores because that's where I can buy the healthiest food at the lowest prices. I would go somewhere else if there were somewhere else to go.
@10:15 p.m.
--Crystal Mangum
Like everyone else who gets accused of a crime, Crystal Mangum deserves a fair and unbiased trial. I don't see how she's going to get anything like a fair and unbiased trial with the kind of publicity she's had since the Duke case.
It seems as if she had a bad life before the Duke case; most people don't become strippers if they've had extremely happy, lucky lives. I guess maybe she was a small-time criminal a few times before she was hired to work at the Duke house that night; it also seems as if she'd made several attempts to stabilize her life, and that she continued to try to make those attempts even after the Duke case was closed and she was condemned by most if not all of the media.
There's nothing I've seen so far that makes me think that she wasn't raped. I'm going to ask again; how much time elapsed between the time printed on the last picture that one of the Duke lacrosse players took of her at the lacrosse house and the time that she notified the police that she'd been raped and was examined?
Was there enough time between the last, known picture of her taken at the lacrosse house and her notifying authorities that she'd been raped for her to have been gang-raped by a bunch of men who weren't part of the Duke team, or for her to have had consensual sex with as many men as the DNA testing center said it had identified samples from?
All the DNA testing center did was say that the samples given by the team as the team was asked to do as part of the case weren't matches. The word of the DNA testing center doesn't mean that she wasn't raped by anybody on the team, especially if there wasn't enough time between when she left the lacrosse house and when she reported having been raped for her to have had sex with multiple other men or to have been gang-raped by men other than the ones whom she accused from the lacrosse team.
Whatever happened at the Duke lacrosse house, she's on trial now for a separate event, and she, like everyone else, is entitled to a fair trial. That means that she needs to be tried by a jury of people whose opinions haven't been swayed by the media or by anyone else. That's the kind of trial that everyone is supposed to get.
@ 10:26 p.m.