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I’ve only met and hung out with Corey Haim once. I know stories about him many don’t. I’ve seen him do things many haven’t. And it pisses me off to go into work this morning to find out he’s dead and all the wires are claiming potential overdose. While the overdose isn’t too much of a stretch, the fact that I read the story at about 8:30 am EST irks me to no end. Why? Because he was pronounced around 4:30 am PST. Do the math. He was probably still warm to the touch when I read that article. Talk about tactless.
I’m sure a lot of people are going, “oh gee, another child star dead.” He’s up there with Brad Renfro, Jonathan Brandis, River Phoenix and how many others. Stupid, idiotic deaths that could have been prevented. Unfortunately people can only be helped if they actually want it. If they don’t no amount of force will ever help them heal.
Corey considered himself a relapser for life. What does that tell you? Yes, he had “flu-like symptoms” just before he died. Not that that narrows it down much. It just means he was hot and a little sweaty. Whether it was a drug overdose or not, over two decades of ravaging his body with a slew of different drugs left him far too susceptible to any illness. So whether the autopsy determines if drugs were the cause of his death, they were the ultimate cause of his death.
Maybe now those demons will stop chasing him and he’ll be able to find whatever it was he was looking for. There’s now no more pain to drown out with drugs. Only peace. Those closest to him rode the roller coaster with him, whether they wanted to or not. Hopefully, now, they too can finally find peace with Corey.
Maybe some day people, especially kids, will learn from all those pointless deaths.
No, I’m not a PETA nut. I’m not even a crazy animal rights activist. I’m just morally opposed to zoos and any places where animals are harbored purely for our entertainment. Like Seaworld. Killer whales were not put on this earth to smack balls into baskets with their fins for us. Bears aren’t supposed to ride tricycles. Horses aren’t supposed to high dive. And so on and so forth.
Zoos and animal sanctuaries can have their merit. I’m not opposed to helping endangered animals thrive by breeding and caring for them in captivity, nurturing them back to healthy numbers, and then releasing them back into the wild. But do they really need to be put on display? Every zoo I’ve been to, the animals look downtrodden and melancholy. Some of them even look drugged for how sluggish and unresponsive they are. Ooooo, yay! I can see a tiger! I’d much rather pay for a safari on the Serengeti and put myself in the cage while the animals run around their homes as they should. Animals are much more majestic when they’re free to live.
So really, should we be all that surprised that a tiger jumped out of its compound at the San Francisco Zoo and mauled a kid to death after the dumbass kept pelting it with rocks? And the police shot the tiger to death. As if it was expected to be a little calico kitty. Or what about when a full-grown chimp going, pardon the pun, ape shit on someone, literally ripping her face off, after being made to perform for most of its life, not to mention slapped on human mood stabilizers? Really? And again, the chimp died.
And now we got a killer whale (uh, hello?) that lived up to its name and started to eat its trainer during a live show down in Seaworld. If my life were reduced to a performing monkey act, I’d probably want to eat my trainer too.
And let’s not forget Roy’s unfortunate run in with his own Siberian tiger at his show. But the tiger was in good spirits before the show, they say! Guys, it’s a fucking tiger. Let’s get real here, okay?
Let me put it this way: the only reason dogs don’t eat our faces in the night is because they’ve been domesticated for 10,000 years. And even then they still maintain that instinct that allows them to flip out on people for no apparent reason or provocation. These performing animals? They’re, what, two, maybe three generations born in captivity? Do you really think you’ve bred the wild out of them in that short of a time span? Please tell me people can’t be that stupid.
Go ahead and think I’m a heartless bitch for not really caring that yet another trainer got his ass eaten by a performance animal. That’s the risk they take, isn’t it? You had Steve Erwin doing all sorts of inappropriate things to exceptionally wild animals. He put himself in that danger so the law of numbers would dictate that the probability he’d die by one of those ferocious animals would increase dramatically. Not a shock that he ended up going out that way. And the Grizzly Man living his life with wild grizzly bears. Are we really that surprised that he was mauled to death by one? Duh?
It’s like being surprised that a race car driver dies racing his car. You’d think it’d almost be inevitable considering the risk involved in doing something like that. You put yourself in that risk. So don’t be surprised if you die by it. These aren’t kittens and puppies and cute little teddy bears. They. Are. Wild. Animals. Period. They function on pure instinct. Just because you’ve trained it to toss a ball in a basket doesn’t mean it isn’t plotting your death.
Are we that inept as a country that we are incapable of feeding ourselves nominally healthy food so we have to rely on fast food joints to dole out the calories for us? First it was Subway and Jared and him losing two and a half people by eating Subway three times a day. Nevermind how you could have saved all that money by just walking down to the grocery store, buying those same exact ingredients and make those salads and sandwiches and wraps on your own. No. You have to do it through Subway or you won’t do it right.
Then it was McDonald’s because Morgan Spurlock handed them their own deep-fried ass with Supersize Me so they felt the need to get health conscious. Apple slices and milk with Happy Meals. A variety of salads and yogurt (nevermind that yogurt cup thing is like eleventy-billion calories and you’re better off eating the non-biodegradable french fries). You want to eat healthy and feel like paying triple the price for a quarter of an apple? Come to McDonald’s.
Now it’s Taco Bell. I kid you not. Now they have a Drive-Thru Diet (per their ad, not a weight loss program) with their own female Jared (only she’s in a bikini) saying how much weight she’s lost by eating these “lower” calorie foods from Taco Bell. So it’s one of the most ambiguous commercials ever and she rightly could eat Taco Bell once a month for all it matters. The point is, she was able to eat Taco Bell and lose weight. The correlation doesn’t have to be huge. It just has to exist. Wonderful. Now people are going to go into Taco Bell and order off of the “smaller ass” menu but top it off with a bucket of soda, those twisty crunchy cinnamon things and a Gordita and wonder why their secretary butt is getting bigger. Just great. Well, Taco Bell does have a tendency of balancing itself out. I mean, how many of those calories and grams of fat can you possibly absorb when you’re rocketing the entire meal out of your bum a half hour later?
What aspects of a relationship do you require in order to consider someone a friend? Personally it requires years of knowing. I befriend people easily enough but thanks to a good burn from a former long-time friend, I no longer allow people into my inner sanctum without a thorough screening. I have to gauge their reactions to things, trickling information about myself to them in order to see if they’re going to accept me as me or if they’re just another fraud. Over time, the relationship builds and, if no signs of mutiny are found, I start to consider a person my friend.
Granted there are exceptions to every rule. There are just a few people that you know, that your gut tells you, that are damn cool people and not to miss out. I listen to that because it’s almost always right (I would say always right but seeing as it’s a human reaction, and humans are fallible, always right is an impossibility by nature).
Online friendships have quickly replaced those of a pen pal relationship. And I’m not talking about the 1001 MySpace friends a person may have but never talk to. This is the deeper relationship. The connection is instantaneous, usually found by some sort of commonality, like a fandom. Just like in tangible form, people gravitate towards each other in evolving cliques. You get to know these people, you form bonds with them. You discuss things with them that you wouldn’t tell your tangible friends, maybe because you find some kind of comfort from behind a computer screen. You’re not entirely vulnerable. Or are you?
When you talk to the same people online over the course of a few years, it’s hard to discount the friendship that’s formed there. People would argue that “it’s not real” because “you don’t really know those people, you’ve never met.” Fair enough, but tell that to the people that “knew” Ted Bundy. Get my drift? You can be just as duped by someone in your physical face as you can by someone that you’ve never met on the tangible plane, just on the internet one.
And that’s why it’ll sting just as bad to get stabbed in the back by an online friend as by someone you’ve known for just as long in the flesh. The bond that you thought you’d had, formed over multiple years, was broken, probably because the other party didn’t feel the same, or felt that the friendship was somehow more frivolous, not as weighty, because you’ve never met. Sure, it might be somewhat easier to get over because you just can delete that person from your friends list, stop visiting the same forums, ignore their instant messages, and pretend like they never existed because you never did meet them. It doesn’t take the stinger out, though.
You’ll still have that tiny scar, the one that’ll chip away at your trust of other people just a little more, leaving you more guarded than you were before, a little less trusting. To the other party, perhaps they felt it was worth it. They got what they wanted. The thing is, your online persona can be a real good indicator of how you act in the flesh. And if that’s how you treat people online, you’re not the type of friend I’d want to have at all.
Just because your internet friends are relatively faceless, you’ve never shared a hug or a handshake, doesn’t make them less of a person. If you want to be a sleazy bitch and leech what you will off of people regardless of what it does to them, that’s your problem and Karma will be knocking at your door when you least expect it. I’m sure you’ll wonder why but that’s to be expected. You’re the reason why the internet is the cess pool that it is.
There’s no respect for your fellow human beings. There’s no courtesy. There’s only every man for himself, regardless of any semblance of relationship that might have been forged. Because at the end of the day, you can just turn your computer off and ignore it all as if it never happened. But it doesn’t mean you’ll escape Karma.
I guess the moral of the story is to be a decent human being online and off. Treat people how you want to be treated and all that jazz. I would have thought that would have been “Parental Education 101″ but either someone failed or the internet took it away. Either way, only you can fix it.
I snagged this off of a fellow book blogger’s site, Opinionated? Me?
1. Do you like blue cheese? Dressing, sure. It’s not bad. Chunks, though, I might edge away.
2. Have you ever been drunk? Well, I don’t hurl around in shopping carts sober, I can tell you that much.
3. Do you own a gun? Not yet.
4. What flavor of Kool Aid was your favorite? Uh . . . red.
5. Do you get nervous before doctor appointments? No. Unless I’m waiting for results from a dire test. Which has been never.
6. What do you think of hot dogs? Who thinks about hot dogs? I just eat them.
7. Favorite Christmas movie? Emmett Otter’s Jug Band Christmas. Best. Movie. Ever.
8. What do you prefer to drink in the morning? Depends on the season. Hot chocolate in the winter, iced tea in the summer or apple cider in the fall.
9. Can you do push ups? If by plural you mean 2, yes.
10. What’s your favorite piece of jewelry? My charm bracelets, currently.
11. Favorite hobby? Writing.
12. Do you have A.D.D.? Only if I’m procrastinating.
13. What’s your favorite shoe? My DC Mantecas, currently.
14. Middle name? Don’t have one.
15. Name 3 thoughts at this exact moment? Whose spawn is screaming? I love The Mummy. My feet are cold.
16. Name 3 drinks you regularly drink? Milk, water, blood orange soda.
17. Current worry? Will I be able to get a mortgage without a co-signer? (Probably my most adult thought ever.)
18. Current hate right now? Being treated differently because I’m not a social butterfly.
19. Dum da dum dummmm what is that? WTF?
20. How did you bring in the new year? Watching the clock go from 11:59 to 12:00.
21. Where would you like to go? California.
22. Name three people who will complete this? I have no idea.
23. Do you own slippers? Yes but I don’t wear them often. My dog eats them. I stick to slipper socks. Which he also tries to eat.
24. What color shirt are you wearing right now? Gray.
25. Do you like sleeping on Satin sheets? I’ve never slept on satin sheets.
26. Can you whistle? Who can’t?
27. Favorite color? Green
28. Would you be a pirate? Only without the rickets.
29. What songs do you sing in the shower? I don’t sing in the shower. Honest.
30. Favorite Girl’s Name? Uh . . . Katie?
31. Favorite boy’s name? Vincent. Or Rome.
32. What’s in your pocket right now? Nothing. I tend to not put things in my pockets.
33. Last thing that made you laugh? My dog going bat shit with a sock. He mocks you with it, the bastard.
34. Best bed sheets as a child? I think my NKOTB sheets. Nothing saying childhood innocence like sleeping on a 20-year-old’s face.
35. Worst injury you’ve ever had as a child? Probably that time I dislocated my elbow . . . and then the other one . . . or maybe that time I cracked my collar bone . . . and then the other one . . .
36. Do you love where you live? No. Which is my I’m working my way out to California.
37. Revenge of the Nerds or Fast Times at Ridgemont High? NERDS!
38. Who is your loudest friend? Sarah, my Canadian friend
39. How many dogs do you have? 2 in the house but I only have 1
40. Does someone have a crush on you? I have no idea.
42. What is your favorite candy? Jelly Belly Jelly Beans
43. Favorite Sports Team? Yankees and the Green Bay Packers
44. What song do you want played at your funeral? Highway to Hell by AC/DC. It’s fitting.
I’ve been thinking about this the last few days, what with Banned Books Week coming up and all and how adamant I am for people staying the fuck out of library business and letting them do their jobs. Librarians aren’t parents. They’re not babysitters and they’re not nannies. It’s not their job to shield children from the potential evils in the world. Those are judgment calls best left for those children’s parents. And yet there are more parents than what’s comfortable thinking that not only should they themselves be making these decisions, but so should the libraries so they could be the beacons of safety they want them to be and their children can be theoretically safe everywhere.
While I could go on another rant about parents parenting only their children and so on, that’s not the point of this post. The point is is my abject dislike for these people in and of itself intolerant? Should I be more tolerant of their intolerance or does my intolerance at their intolerance of the First Amendment rights of others negate the intolerance definition? Is it ok for me to be intolerant of them because what I’m intolerant of is their very intolerance of anything different from themselves, thus incubating intolerance within their own community?
Basically, is my intolerance justified or hypocritical?
Did I make sense here?
