personal

Sunday. It gets away from me a little at the end.

I did the crossword puzzle today, went to the movies with friends, and wrote this:

[deleted]

The movie I saw was The Dark Knight Rises. I won’t deny there was a little part of me eying the exits, on the lookout for suspicious behavior, a little extra-jumpy at the (not infrequent) sound of gunfire on the screen. I’m really angry and sad that the conversation about the film, which I thought was very good, has to accommodate the terrible tragedy that happened earlier this week in Colorado. That our enjoyment of the movie had to be so horribly undermined by a murderous asshole with a gun.

At the same time, of course I recognize that that’s the very least of the tragedy. And by calling the gunman a murderous asshole, I’m neither trying to make light of his terrible crime nor suggesting that I don’t have some small amount of…well, not exactly sympathy, but maybe empathy, or understanding, for the very real mental problems he might have, which led him to this horrible act.

But I also don’t want to make him out to be something that he’s not, something that fits into the narrative of the Batman films. Because that’s just feeding into his delusion, and I can’t help but feel that when the media does it — and have they ever — they are in no small degree complicit, or at the very least encouraging to other deranged and violent souls. If your goal is to prevent this sort of thing from happening again, you don’t call the gunman “the Dark Knight Killer.” Better, I think, that you call him a murderous asshole.

Those who are truly complicit, of course, are the gun manufacturers and the NRA and the lobbyists, and moreover the state and federal representatives who have failed to protect anything but the interests of the former three. It’s important to remember that the gunman in Colorado purchased his guns legally, and yet I’m hard-pressed to think of any legal reason why a private citizen would need, or should be allowed, a semi-automatic weapon.

I’m not wholly, across-the-board anti-gun. I’ve fired one myself all of once, on a firing range when I was a Boy Scout, and I’ve never really seen the appeal. But I understand, to some extent, their use for hunting and for self-defense. But a weapon like the one that did most of the killing in Colorado has one purpose — to kill — and because of that we need more, not less, safeguards against it falling into the wrong hands.

I feel like this post has gotten away from me a little bit, more half-formed thoughts than anything else. (Hey, there were some silly superheroes up above!) But it really was impossible to talk about The Dark Knight Rises without talking about what happened in Aurora. In many ways, the film is an indictment of those who would use violence and terror to achieve their ends. It’s a fitting conclusion to Christopher Nolan’s Batman trilogy — and that, quite frankly, is the conversation I want to be having.

Saturday

I don’t quite know how it happened, but somehow I convinced myself that I’d had my car inspected back in April. That’s when it was supposed to be inspected, which means that for the past three months I’m just lucky I never got a ticket. My mistake was revealed last week when I tried to renew my car’s registration with the state of New York and discovered they didn’t have a yearly inspection on file. I’m not sure what it says about me — or this weblog — to admit that I combed through my blog’s archives to see if I’d made any mention of having the inspection done in April, or that I was prepared to send the New York DMV photographic proof of what in retrospect was an expired sticker. But I found no mention in the archives, and the sticker was expired, so I realized I’d have to bring the car in a few months late.

Which I did this morning. I got up around 7, which is kind of the last thing I want to do on a Saturday if I can help it, and drove to the auto-body shop in Mineola. It used to be you could get a train back from Mineola right after that, the station just a block’s short walk from the shop, but a couple of years ago the LIRR changed the schedule just enough to make that all but impossible. So I had to wait around for about half an hour, and then get a train to the station one stop after mine and walk home. (That’s just how the stations are set up: Mineola’s maybe an hour-plus walk away from my station, but the next station after that’s only about a twenty-minute walk away.)

It’s okay. The rain the other day really did cool things down, and it wasn’t an unpleasant morning walk. I knew I’d have to do it, so I had my iPod along with me.

When I got home, I called the air conditioner repair service to get a window on when they’d be returning the AC they took with them on Tuesday. Between 9:30 and 11:30, I was told, which basically gave me enough time to take a shower, have breakfast, and pull out all the plastic and plywood I’d used to cover up the big gaping hole in the living room wall. I did my best on Tuesday to disguise the hole, and make it exceptionally difficult for the dog to get out through it, or for burglars to poke their heads in. I even slid some furniture in front of it, but I have to admit I was glad to be getting rid of it finally.

Putting the air conditioner back in the hole took all of fifteen, maybe twenty minutes. And immediately you could tell that it was working. I paid and tipped the two guys, and they went on their way.

Then I went and picked up my car. I had to take the train back to Mineola, but luckily the LIRR makes a few other options available during the day. (Like one train every hour.) I got the car, after its inspection and oil change, and then I went grocery shopping.

Then I came home, napped a little, read some comics, and watched an episode of Touching Evil. (I was familiar with the US remake, which was well received but canceled right away, but I’d never seen the original British version. Apparently it’s now on Netflix.)

This evening, I watched Underworld: Evolution. Which was not very good. I was surprised back in January by how much I kind of liked the first movie in the series, but this was definitely a case of diminishing returns. And, pretty as Kate Beckinsale may be, I’m not sure I can bring myself to watch the next two.

So, anyway, that was my Saturday.

Friday

An uneventful day here, incredibly quiet at the office, especially after most everyone else went home for summer hours after lunch. (I think I counted six of us still left on my side of the office.)

I’m just still shocked and saddened by the tragic news out of Colorado. My heart goes out to everyone there, all the victims and their families.

The weather aboveground

This is kind of amazing, but it didn’t rain today. I almost didn’t know what to do with myself.

Although I noticed they seem to have stopped displaying the temperature along with the time on the monitors in our office elevators. “Let’s not tell them how hot it is outside. It would only worry them.”

Rain date

It rained today. Boy, did it ever. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

It was a pretty normal day, if incredibly hot and sunny. Rumor has it, it got up to about 100°F today, and I can believe it. That lasted until the early afternoon, around 3 o’clock, when I headed downtown to Wall Street, to take part in a focus group at Shutterstock my boss had recommended. She had been there herself this morning and said it was actually fairly interesting, kind of neat to see stock photos from the perspective of the people who provide them, and to offer them some perspective on how we use them. Plus, they were offering a $50 Amazon gift card in exchange for taking part, and for half an hour’s effort (plus the subway trip downtown) that seemed like a pretty good deal. (Plus, I could take part during the work day, with my boss’ blessing.)

The focus group itself was interesting: one woman asking me questions and a couple of others following along. I felt like I maybe wasn’t providing them with the answers they wanted, or explaining myself as thoroughly as I could. There were, of course, “no right or wrong answers,” but it’s been a little while since I’ve actively gone stock-photo shopping, and not once since taking on my current development job. But they were really friendly, and the session didn’t last much longer than the half hour advertised. (The chairs in their lobby, though? Genuinely uncomfortable. And I think my ears may have actually popped going up to the 30th floor.)

I knew I probably was going to miss my regular train home, the 4:54. I still had to go back to the office and pick up my bag (with my train ticket inside it), then get the subway back downtown again to Penn Station. A twenty-minute ride uptown, the elevator back up to my desk, then a fifteen-minute ride down to Penn. It was already about 4:15 when I came back down to their building’s lobby. But maybe I could do it, if I caught a subway right away and the traffic lights outside Grand Central were with me. I just needed to…

By that point, it had started to rain. I hadn’t brought an umbrella with me, which in retrospect is what we call a Very Stupid Move. There’s about a block between the Shutterstock offices and my subway line, and I got soaked running that short distance. I had a brief respite while the train took me back uptown, but then it was right back into the deluge at Grand Central.

I hung out under the awning at the exit on Lexington until the traffic light had changed, then raced through the bucketing downpour to the Duane Reade drugstore on the corner. Where I bought what turned out to be a pretty decent umbrella — albeit one that maybe came a couple of city blocks too late. I was thoroughly soaked — or so I thought, until I stepped ankle-deep into a puddle at the next corner and got even wetter.

I’m sure I looked a fright to my co-workers when I trudged back up to my desk. The only positive is that I was by that point too soaked to even care.

I headed back out into the rain, which by that point had not remotely let up. Bright flashes of lightning, loud cracking booms of thunder, wind thrashing the rain at you left and right, and giant puddles everywhere you step. Luckily, though, our office is only a block from Grand Central, and my umbrella was still holding up, so I got to my subway without too much more trouble.

I had some trouble finding my MetroCard, of course, and I most certainly did miss my original train out of Penn, but by that point those were just minor annoyances. I’m actually amazed that the Long Island Railroad didn’t collapse under the pressure of this afternoon’s storm. (I wish I could say the same for our home phone line; even with all of yesterday’s work, it went out again in the downpour.)

With luck, the rain — which actually stopped altogether around 7 — will cool things of a little. I’d hate to think all of this was for nothing.

Still, I did get a $50 gift card out of it, so that’s something.