Thursday, February 15, 2018

A Bunch of Different Stuff

Now it’s three thirty and ABC network news is doing a live feed to the west coast just like they did yesterday.  They are talking about the Park City shooting.  Seventeen are dead and Nicholas Cruise was charged with seventeen felony first degree murders.  He is of age and so is ellegible for the death penalty in Florida.  It’s said to be a very large campus.  They say you should shade the windows and turn out the lights to keep quiet.  The question is why a person so obviously mentally ill was able to buy an AR 15 a year ago.  They have a lot of live video, that’s for sure.  Cruise has lost both of his parents.  The FBI flagged a remark of Cruz last September made in twitter or something about wanting to go down in history as a mass school shooter.  But the FBI couldn’t pin it down.  The FBI was suspicious but couldn’t do anything about it.  Cruise had a real arsenal of guns in his room.  He lived in a “nice neighborhood”. 

[Yesterday] There has been another major school shooting.  This time it is at a Ft Lauderdale high school by a nineteen year old ex student with many psychological problems.  He was banned from showing up at the school with a back pack.  The shooting began about twenty to three and the students were about to be dismissed for the day.  Many terrified students actually ran into buildings and hid in closets.  The shooter’s name is Nicholas Cruise and his mother died last year.  It’s speculated he might have a beef with the teachers.  At first they said that fourteen were wounded and just one or two were dead.  Later they said that seventeen students were killed in today’s shooting.  I had on Eye Witness news after I hung up with Paul.  They also had a special airing of ABC World News Tonight at three thirty.  I imagine they’ll have a west coast update when the time rolls around.  Of course it raises the age old question about the access to guns by just about anybody no matter how mentally unstable.  Unlike other shooters he didn’t commit suicide but allowed himself to be captured an hour later.  We’ll be hearing more.  It’s been kind of overcast today and they say there’s been rain today but I haven’t seen it. 

Mon rallied today at my visit, which was encouraging to me.  Tim and Marie were there and they’d been there since just after lunch when Mom missed out on that meal.  Tim himself hadn’t eaten and needed to get lunch after he left.  The drapes were closed but we opened them.  That night stand was turned back the right way facing out into the room.  Mom definitely seemed more alert and made eye contact and smiled.  I talked to her some but it wasn’t much.  There was an aid that came in and took Mom’s oxygen and pulse level, which is in a thing on her wrist now.  I asked Paul why they had to puree her food and Paul said it was because she can hardly swallow.  The only food she ate today was a part of a muffin, a half a banana and a little applesauce with pills ground up in it.  There were no hugs from Marie today but I did kiss Mom good-bye on the lips.  They have these access codes at the gate for going both in and out.  Paul says “sometimes patients wander off”.   

I shaved and brushed my teeth twice.  I went down about twenty minutes to nine to be taken to the dentist by Alvin.  Naturally Alvin relied on the GPS thing.  We got there just before nine and parked.  I was trying to light a cigarette when the door opened.  There were two other men waiting outside and they got into a conversation about their medical problems.  I had to fill out one of these electronic gismos where you had to review your medical status and make sure it was correct.  You were supposed to touch a yellow square with your finger and turn it blue but I had to use the stylus thing and press hard.  You had to press hard for your signature too.  I didn’t get seated in the chair till about twenty after nine.  The cleaning took longer than usual.  First it was the ultra-sound thing and then it was the polishing and then a long session using the pick.  There was waiting and I was watching a thing on TV about the African savanna and the animal interaction.  Then they had a thing on cities in India invaided by some kind of monkey and also white leopards.  They said that twenty (?) men had been killed by leopards.  Dr Bui finally came in and said that I had a cavity in every front tooth and she showed me in the mirror.  She said that a year is too long for me to go without having a dental cleaning.  I also needed six root canals, which flabbergasted me.  She said they could get approval.  They took a whole lot of X rays in two different sessions.  It’s lucky I didn’t OD on X rays.  I got the fluoride treatment and I got the usual new toothbrush and stuff.  Alvin was there waiting for me at twenty to eleven.  He helped me with the electronic thing.  Besides this I was nervous.  Then we stopped off for gas on the way home.  I barely had time to smoke a cigarette before lunch. 

SONG SUBSTITUTION ALERT:  “Johnny Can’t Read” was replaced with “Star-Trekking” on “Spring Training” both on the posting and on this file.   “Rock this Joint” was replaced by “Moonage Daydream” on the album “Passionate Playthings” out in January.   In both cases the new songs had been on my mind but they ended up being dropped.  “Kid Charlemagne” replaced “Star-Trekking” as the lead-off song at the last minute.  In both cases I was just reviewing songs (in "Predators" and "Knocking Over the Bar" from October) and the fact that two duplicates showed up is a little unnerving.  Management just says “It was a translation error”.   

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