On Thursday, September 19, as reported by Fox 5 Atlanta, "a man was taken to the hospital after officials say he was shot by deputies during a confrontation in Coweta County overnight." That confrontation (in which the shooting victim charged police with a weapon but survived the encounter) began as a domestic violence disturbance in the home of the man's parents right here in my neighborhood.

On Friday, September 20, as reported by 11 Alive News Atlanta, "a Newnan man is facing a murder charge in the shooting death of a woman at a local gun shop late Friday night." That man, the owner of the gun shop, lives in his former grandfather's home in my neighborhood.

To be clear, they are not the same man.

Multiple news sources have posted their mugshots. Both of them are middle-aged, overweight, bald, white men. The only thing keeping a witness from picking me instead of them from a police lineup is that I don't have a beard, a distinction that I'll be sure to maintain.

They've always told me I was most likely to die within 10 miles of my home, I just didn't think it would be at the hands of one of my neighbors. Just to be safe, ya'll might want to stay away from my 'hood for a while.

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It is not so long ago that a member of the Diplomatic Body in London, who had spent some years of his service in China, told me that there was a Chinese curse which took the form of saying, "May you live in interesting times." There is no doubt that the curse has fallen on us.

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So the debate last night between an old white guy and a marginally less old white guy who led an effort to overthrow constitutional democracy for his personal benefit didn't go well. Big deal.

If you didn't know who you were voting for already, it's only because you haven't been paying attention. If you haven't been paying attention, you really shouldn't be voting.

If there's any outrage to be had here, it's only that the guy who led an effort to overthrow constitutional democracy for his personal benefit is being allowed to interview for the same job. If that one wins, it's only because Americans have decided that they are tired of living in a constitutional democracy, which, as much as I may disagree with it, is their right to do.

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My father is enthusiastically following all the news stories about American college campus protests against Israel's ongoing campaign against Gaza. I'm not sure what the appeal of that story is for him other than the fact that's what Fox News is broadcasting all day to distract its viewers from the ongoing trial of The People of the State of New York v. some guy who used to be president. (According to Dad, those damn Yankees are being very unfair to that nice, smart man.)

When I think of college protests, the first thing that comes to mind are the protesters who stood just outside The Arch of my (not particularly liberal) college campus decrying Bush Junior's invasion of Iraq in 2003. I seem to recall no one was particularly kind to them at the time, the prevailing general sentiment being "how dare they stand up for those bastards after what they did on 9/11." To hear the locals talk about it, the only rational explanation for the protesters' behavior was that they hated America.

That's my father's stance on pretty much all protests. To hear him complain about Colin Kaepernick kneeling or Occupy Wall Street, there's nothing less American than protesting. (To be fair, he thinks events in, outside, and around the Capitol on January 6 were also wrong; he just thinks that unjustly persecuted fellow facing a kangaroo court in New York didn't have anything directly to do with them.)

I hate to be inconvenienced as much as the next guy, but I respect nonviolent, peaceful acts of civil disobedience in the style of Gandhi and MLK, even when I'm not particularly sympathetic to the protesters' cause, like that guy who stands on Gillis Bridge overlooking Sanford Stadium on game days yelling through a bullhorn that everyone in the crowd is going to Hell for worshipping a football instead of Jesus Christ. Sometimes, you've got to do what it takes to make people aware of your opinion.

It would be great if the kids camping on their college quads could restrain themselves from graffiti and spitting in the faces of the men who have come to arrest them, but it would also be great if Arabs and Jews could find a way to stop indiscriminately killing one another in ever increasing numbers. As Dad tells me a great man once said, "there are very fine people on both sides."

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See if you can follow along: In 2005, as a college football player, Reggie Bush won the Heisman Trophy for athletic excellence. In 2010, it was determined that Bush accepted illegal payments and a car in 2004 which should have made him an ineligible player, which would have also made him ineligible to be nominated for a Heisman, so the trophy was reclaimed. In 2021, it became legal to pay college football players which means that you can now give a player a car and a Heisman. Today, fourteen years after it was taken away, Bush was given his Heisman Trophy back.

I've never had a very high opinion of the very subjective Heisman award, but now it's impossible for me to have less.

Bush has always decried having his trophy taken away because, well, I guess he thinks he deserved that car. Sure, he was indubitably a great college athlete, and sure, it's legal to pay players now, but it wasn't then. And that's the point.

According to their own website, the Heisman Trophy Trust admits explicitly charges all 928 voting members with the following criteria for their nominations:

"In order that there will be no misunderstanding regarding the eligibility of a candidate, the recipient of the award MUST be a bona fide student of an accredited college or university including the United States Academies. The recipients must be in compliance with the bylaws defining an NCAA student athlete."

Even if the Heisman committee has decided that players always should have been paid, anyone who breaks the rules in place while they are playing, by definition, cannot be "in compliance with [NCAA] bylaws." Therefore, letting him keep the trophy is in explicit violation of the Heisman Trust's own stated rules.

Hey, it's the Heisman Trust's trophy and they can do whatever they hell they want to with it. But if they want us to believe their rules have any more significance than the NCAA's, they should at least stop pretending their award is anything other than a popularity contest.

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A timely excerpt from Mark Twain's
A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court (1889)
Chapter VI, "The Eclipse"

As the soldiers assisted me across the court the stillness was so profound that if I had been blindfold I should have supposed I was in a solitude instead of walled in by four thousand people. There was not a movement perceptible in those masses of humanity; they were as rigid as stone images, and as pale; and dread sat upon every countenance. This hush continued while I was being chained to the stake; it still continued while the fagots were carefully and tediously piled about my ankles, my knees, my thighs, my body.

Then there was a pause, and a deeper hush, if possible, and a man knelt down at my feet with a blazing torch; the multitude strained forward, gazing, and parting slightly from their seats without knowing it; the monk raised his hands above my head, and his eyes toward the blue sky, and began some words in Latin; in this attitude he droned on and on, a little while, and then stopped. I waited two or three moments; then looked up; he was standing there petrified.

With a common impulse the multitude rose slowly up and stared into the sky. I followed their eyes, as sure as guns, there was my eclipse beginning! The life went boiling through my veins; I was a new man! The rim of black spread slowly into the sun’s disk, my heart beat higher and higher, and still the assemblage and the priest stared into the sky, motionless. I knew that this gaze would be turned upon me, next. When it was, I was ready. I was in one of the most grand attitudes I ever struck, with my arm stretched up pointing to the sun. It was a noble effect. You could see the shudder sweep the mass like a wave. Two shouts rang out, one close upon the heels of the other:

"Apply the torch!"

"I forbid it!"

The one was from Merlin, the other from the king. Merlin started from his place—to apply the torch himself, I judged. I said:

"Stay where you are. If any man moves—even the king—before I give him leave, I will blast him with thunder, I will consume him with lightnings!"

The multitude sank meekly into their seats, and I was just expecting they would. Merlin hesitated a moment or two, and I was on pins and needles during that little while. Then he sat down, and I took a good breath; for I knew I was master of the situation now. The king said:

"Be merciful, fair sir, and essay no further in this perilous matter, lest disaster follow. It was reported to us that your powers could not attain unto their full strength until the morrow; but—"

"Your Majesty thinks the report may have been a lie? It was a lie."

That made an immense effect; up went appealing hands everywhere, and the king was assailed with a storm of supplications that I might be bought off at any price, and the calamity stayed. The king was eager to comply. He said:

"Name any terms, reverend sir, even to the halving of my kingdom; but banish this calamity, spare the sun!"

My fortune was made. I would have taken him up in a minute, but I couldn’t stop an eclipse; the thing was out of the question. So I asked time to consider. The king said:

"Ah, too bad. Oh, well, if'n we can't have the sun, we can at least have a barbecue. Light 'im up, lads."

Reaching up one sleeve, Merlin produced a wand. Reaching into the other, the magician revealed a bag of marshmallows. Piercing one with the other, he asked:

"S'mores, anyone?"

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The headline at Atlanta's Fox 5 was "Over 850 pounds of crystal meth found in Norcross storage unit." My first thought on reading the article was, "wow, that's a lot of drugs." My second thought was, "how do you dispose of that much meth?" The article didn't say, which if you ask me is a real indictment of the modern clickbait era of journalism.

Left to my own devices, I did what I usually do when I have a question: I googled it.^†

That was a mistake.

I only write this so that when I am arrested and the DA introduces into evidence my Google search history and social media feeds full of helpful instructions about what I should do with my stash when the cops inevitably come kicking in my door, I can say that it was all because I read a poorly reported news story.

(To save you the same trouble, let me report that the answer appears to be "mix it with bleach." I'm guessing a lot of bleach. I have not yet worked up the courage to google how to dispose of that.)

^† In addition to "how to dispose of crystal meth," these are some other actual Google searches I made in the last 2 weeks: "who likes licorice," "why am I paying 24% taxes," "life is not all sex and sun lamps," and "green lantern condoms." What can I say? I'm a curious guy.

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For years, I've been trying to think of what epitaph I want on my tombstone. My mother is under instructions that if I die weirdly — electrocuted by eels, run over by an ice cream truck, hit by a meteor — I'll want that carved in stone. And if I die normally, she should lie and say that I spontaneously combusted.

On a related note, a recent incident at one of my town's finer dining establishments gives me another idea. "Shot to death in a Hooters parking lot over a plate of wings" would make a pretty darn good tombstone.

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I read in the local newspaper that my county currently averages 1 suicide every 14 days. That's on pace for 26 a year. If that seems high, it's because it is.

According to the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, Americans kill themselves nationally at a rate of about 14 per 100,000, which implies that Coweta County, Georgia, population 155,000, should expect something near 22 suicides per year. For Coweta, that figure is an aspirational number.

What's so bad about living in Coweta? I can only guess.

Of course, thanks in part to our poor healthcare system and our easy access to guns, Georgians kill themselves more often than average Americans. (That's just the price you pay for freedom!) By Georgia standards, Coweta should see 24 suicides per year. So maybe our higher rate is our friendly way of helping prop up those counties that aren't pulling their weight.

Back when I was in a Coweta County high school, the statewide suicide rate was only 13 per 100k (national average 12/100k), yet I knew several people whose parents had killed themselves, and I knew students who attempted it. If people are finding things more bleak and hopeless now than they were then... as a community, maybe as a whole society, we just must be doing something wrong.

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