As I mentioned yesterday, I had a topic I had been thinking about but then got sidetracked about finding a new barber. Well, I didn’t get another haircut last night so…
Anyhow, my wife and I were watching this show on Netflix, Scandal, and a scene made me think about an experience I had when I was working at a mortuary. In the scene, a character that works for a CIA-like organization kills three people, one of which is the White House Press Secretary (and husband of the President’s Chief-of-Staff). After killing the first two (reporters if I recall correctly) with clean shots to the head, he shoots the last and as he was dying, he spoke to him, apologizing for it not being a clean kill, because it had to look like a carjacking and done by an amateur. He sat there with the dying man and said he wouldn’t leave him to die alone, and basically talked him through the process. Now it isn’t the scene specifically I wanted to talk about, but when I talked a friend through his death.
C was an attorney, and I met him when I had that legal support business. We worked out of the same building, and crossed paths often, even when we weren’t doing a job for him. He wasn’t one of the many stuffy attorneys we worked for – he was quite down to earth and casual. He took on the cases of people the world wanted to forget because, “everyone is entitled to a good defense.” He had a cute assistant that I enjoyed flirting with and a teenage daughter who’d hang around his office after school that I got to know as well.
Years after that, while working in the mortuary, I was contacted by his daughter – C had a stroke and was in the hospital. When I arrived and met with his daughter and sister, they informed me that he wasn’t expected to make it. I sat with C and just talked with him. He wasn’t really conscious or coherent, but his eyes would shift around under his lids while I spoke to him. I sat with him for about a half hour, talking about old times, telling him we needed to catch up over a drink, but ultimately ended the “conversation” with permission.
I told him that he was loved, and that he would be missed by many. I told him that his daughter contacted me for help when this happened and that I would always be there for her if she needed. I told him that it was okay for him to let go.
A few minutes later, C passed – he let go.
I worked with the family for the arrangements, and took them to a sister funeral home that had rates much lower than the facility I worked at, plus any discounts I could convince the manager of giving. But there was one thing that really pissed me off that stuck with me.
C had a pair of shoes he considered lucky – they were so well loved that the soles were wearing through. there was never a question that C would be cremated in his “lucky shoes.” When it was time for the cremation, I took him to the crematorium and transferred him to the crematory operators. They went about their business, but as far as they were concerned, I was just another director bringing someone in. They chatted as they prepared, but then started in about his shoes. After a couple comments from them belittling his shoes and apparent station in life, I let them know that they really needed to be careful with their words, as they don’t know who could be listening at any given moment. They replied with excuses about being in a restricted area that was noisy and that no family could overhear them. That’s when I let them know that C was a friend of mine.
They apologized but I was already pissed. I didn’t rat them out to management specifically, but did mention there was an incident and all the support staff got to go through a training class about decorum and how to act.
Anyhow, that was a lot, so…
Interesting Tidbits
Song of the day: The Wretched by Nine Inch Nails
When Values Eat Their Young: How Ideal-Driven Groups Drift into Their Own Shadow – “The more a community cares about its values, the more vulnerable it becomes to betraying them. Not because the values are wrong. Not because the people are bad. But because human social dynamics create predictable failure modes that turn principles into their opposite.”
Peter Thiel & The Antichrist: Silicon Valley Apocalypse Hype – “‘Once we label our adversaries in these cosmic terms—all good versus all evil—there’s now going to be no compromise,’ says Dr. Fuller. ‘No rational discourse is possible, because the Antichrist is a deceiver, so all the arguments that might be brought for the worth of an opposing point of view are ‘deception.’ And so there can be no rational compromise. It only will bring out all-out tribal cohesion, tribal loyalty, unquestioning commitment. And so it usually leads to…sometimes violent consequences.'”
AI Now Claiming to Be God – “A slew of religious smartphone apps are allowing untold millions of users to confess to AI chatbots, some of which claim to be channeling God himself.”
LimeWire Acquires Fyre Festival Brand – “‘We’re not here to repeat the mistakes — we’re here to own the meme and do it right,’ LimeWire’s COO said in a statement”
Evidence of ‘Doomsday comet’ that wiped out forgotten civilization 12,800 years ago found in US – “New geological evidence unearthed in the US suggests that a catastrophic cosmic event may have wiped out a once-thriving culture more than 12,800 years ago.”
Hochul must shame LIRR unions —by revealing their outrageous strike demands – “The constant threat of strikes and state government’s ability to raise taxes to pay for union demands have allowed the LIRR to keep rolling without making the sorts of changes that businesses or even government agencies would have no choice but to implement to keep operating. Taxpayers and riders lose the most from this outdated arrangement.”
After Kirk assassination, political left social media posts list ‘next’ targets – “In response to being targeted, Rowling, said, ‘If you believe free speech is for you but not your political opponents, you’re illiberal. If no contrary evidence could change your beliefs, you’re a fundamentalist. If you believe the state should punish those with contrary views, you’re a totalitarian. If you believe political opponents should be punished with violence or death, you’re a terrorist.'”
Dissonance: A Journey Through Musical Possibility Space – “In this page, we’ll derive musical systems for real and imagined instruments. Starting from any sound, we’ll attempt to work out the musical scales and chords that sound the most consonant (or at the least dissonant) for this particular sound. In other words, we’re discovering musical scales & chords by analyzing the spectrum of a sound.”
Boeing Built A Flying Star Wars X-Wing – “In December of 2019, Walt Disney World opened the Rise of the Resistance attraction at its then-new “Star Wars”: Galaxy’s Edge area. What better way to celebrate than by partnering with Boeing’s NeXt division to transform a pair of experimental garden shed-sized 20-by-17.5-foot drones into X-wings for the opening ceremonies?”
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