Spotted! A Ghost at Glencoe!!!

Let me preface this blog entry by saying that I don't believe in ghosts. In my opinion, the vast majority of paranormal experiences are simply tricks of the brain. Our senses are often unreliable narrators that we believe without question, and that gets us into all kinds of trouble and causes people to believe some of the dumbest shit imaginable. Chemtrails, for example.

Having said that, while I don't believe in ghosts, I am open to the possibility so long as there is some kind of rational scientific explanation. I realize that that last sentence completely obliterates my credibility as a skeptic, but hey, my mind is that of artist; not a scientist. Maybe ghosts are something to do with the multiverse, simulation hypothesis, or quantum mechanics...three things I do not understand in the least which allows me to shoehorn paranormal personal experiences into some kind of rational, scientific context.

I know the chances of ghosts being real are infinitesimally small, but as I said, I try to keep an open mind.

First, a little background.

My wife and I recently returned from a two weeks-long trip around the UK. We visited (in order) Bath, Stratford-Upon-Avon, Keswick, Oban, Edinburgh, York, and London, driving 1,300 miles in a rented Vauxhall. During our drive between Oban and Edinburgh we decided to stop at the site of the Glencoe Massacre, which is in western Scotland.

Now I'll give you a brief history of the massacre as I understand it. Feel free to skip past this part if you don't care to learn a little Scottish history and you just want to see the goddamn pictures.

The massacre took place in 1692 following The Glorious Revolution, which refers to the revolution that took place in England where the Catholic King James II was overthrown by English nobility and replaced by his nephew and daughter, Protestants William of Orange and Mary II (known as William and Mary...probably familiar to US audiences because of the American college established in their name).

The mostly-Catholic Scottish highlands wanted to return James to the throne, and staged the first of several Jacobite uprisings (Jacob = James) meant to restore their Catholic monarch to the English throne. The uprising was ultimately quashed after several battles, and Now-King William graciously offered amnesty to the clans who had risen against him on the condition that they pledge their loyalty. He issued the amnesty offer in August 1691, to be taken no later than January 1, 1692.

The clans did not jump at the offer, but after it became clear that James was unlikely to reclaim his throne, one-by-one the clan chiefs reluctantly pledged their fealty to the new king. None of them more reluctantly than Alastair Maclain, chief of the MacDonald clan in Glencoe, who waited until the last possible day (December 31) to sign.

Unfortunately for Alastair, he went to the wrong city. He arrived at Fort William only to be told that he needed to take the pledge at Inveraray, which was over 70 miles away. Alastair arrived in Inveraray three days later, and eventually gave the pledge to the Sheriff of Argyle about a week after the deadline had passed.

The MacDonalds had a bit of a bad reputation in the highlands. They were known as poachers, cattle rustlers, and general all-around ne'er-do-wells. Alastair's failure to sign the loyalty oath was seized upon by one of Alastair's enemies; John Campbell, chief of the powerful Campbell Clan. John Campbell brought this oversight to the attention of John Dalrymple, the English secretary of state, who, in turn, brought it to the attention of the king.

It was decided that the crown needed to make an example of the MacDonalds. And by "make an example," I mean, "completely wipe out."

A force of 120 soldiers were dispatched to Glencoe in February, ostensibly to collect taxes from the MacDonald clan. The troops were billeted in the MacDonald buildings, no doubt causing great hardship (as it was the middle of winter). After two weeks of waiting, the commander received the following order, directly authorized by the king:

"You are hereby ordered to fall upon the rebells, the McDonalds of Glenco, and put all to the sword under seventy."

Early the next morning the troops set about the grim task of murdering their unsuspecting hosts as they slept. Militarily, the operation was botched pretty badly, partly due to the bad weather, but also due to the reluctance of many soldiers to murder the families who had hosted them for the last two weeks.

Regardless, 38 men were killed by the soldiers, and an additional 40 women and children died of exposure in the hills of Glencoe as they fled their burning houses. It was one of the most heinous massacres in modern English history, and every February 13th a wreath is laid at the site of the memorial to remember those who were lost.

History lesson over.

On our trip, Erika and I went to the Glencoe Visitor Center, a small museum with exhibits about the fascinating history and geology of the area. But before going inside we decided to do a little mile-long walk through a recently-clear cut forest to the site of ruins which date back to the massacre.

As we were walking we saw the stone foundation of a building and decided to explore a bit. I took a crapload of pictures because there was a cool, gloomy, spooky forest in the background.

Full disclosure -- part of my motivation for taking these photos was to try to capture something that would look like a ghost in the background, either to spook my wife, or to make for an interesting blog entry.

We originally thought the ruins we found were from one of the buildings involved in the massacre, but as it turns out the ruins were more recent -- dating from the last 200 years or so. The foundation from one of the original structures (which we came across later in the walk) was barely recognizable, and had been built over several times.

Anyway, once we were back in LA I decided to have a peek at the images to see if there were any spooky-spooky ghosts in the background. I zoomed in and started to pan around, and funnily enough I actually saw something that sent a legit chill down my spine.

Here are three of the photos I took. Please note, none of these photos have been digitally manipulated in any way.

Note: The woman walking behind the ruins in the first two pictures is my wife, not a spooky ghost. I know what my damn wife looks like, knucklehead.

Anyway, when I was looking for spooky ghosts I decided to zoom in on the third picture (because it was the clearest and best of the three) and I'll show you what I saw.

See it yet?

How about now?

Ah. There she is.

Color corrected.

And closeup.

From wide #1

And wide #2

So. What is that thing? I have no idea. I have several theories. It could be a Banksy-esque drawing, which seems kind of unlikely (that's a lot of effort to put into something so remote and ambiguous).

It could be an optical illusion of light and shadows.

It could just be a pattern in the moss, or a burn mark or some other natural phenomenon.

Most likely it's just another example of pareidolia, to be filed away with countless images of the Virgin Mary on toast, underpasses, pizza pans, and pretzels. I don't find images like this particularly compelling without further investigation, which would no doubt debunk this bit of silliness.

But...

If I were to stash my skeptic hat for a bit, I could dig up some pretty neat stuff that probably makes for a much better story.

I decided to do some very scientific Google research to see if there were any other reported hauntings at the Glencoe site. Scotland Magazine did an article, and there are several others making reference to ghosts in the area.

But one manifestation in particular stood out. A blog entry named The Banshee of Glencoe Scotland talked about the Scottish version of the banshee (called the Bean-nighe, or "Washer Woman") which was supposedly heard on the night of the massacre. I decided to do a Google search, and I found the following spooky-scary images of the apparition:

 

I don't know. What do you think? Is this a wee little Bean-nighe creeping about in the woods?

 

Another theory creeping around my brain is that, perhaps, the entity in the woods was actually a picture of my wife. Compare what she was wearing that day to the image:

 

Anyway, I just thought I'd share this with you. We didn't hear a banshee wail while we were there (it was actually quite quiet and peaceful) so I don't think either of our lives is in danger from this imaginary creature.

But...

In case one of shuffles off of this mortal coil in the next couple of days under suspicious circumstances, well, I wouldn't entirely rule out the possibility that the wee bonnie Bean-nighe finally got to us.

Elliot Rodger's True Motive

David Berkowitz did not kill six people because his neighbor's dog told him to "kill pretty young girls."

Kyle Huff did not kill six people in Seattle because of the drug use and sexually permissive lifestyles of the "rave" culture.

Jared Laughner did not shoot Gabrielle Giffords and others in Tuscon because the "government used language to control peoples' minds."

Seung-Hui Cho did not commit the Virginia Tech Massacre because of "rich kids, debauchery, and charlatans."

Finally, Elliot Rodger did not go on a killing spree in Isla Vista because he was rejected by women, or because he was a privileged white male (whose mother happens to be Asian), or because he was influenced by misogynistic movies, or because he managed to purchase a firearm, or because of a culture of entitlement.

The motives given by the mass murderers are only justifications imagined into existence by profoundly disturbed minds. They are excuses, and they are ultimately meaningless. Searching through a killer's ravings for some kernel of truth has always been a fruitless endeavor.

There has been quite a lot of research done on mass murderers, and the consensus is generally that their stated motive is meaningless. If you are curious, here are some articles and books about the topic, written by people who are much more educated than I am:

• There Is No Such Thing as a Motive for Mass Killings by Ari Schulman
• When It Comes to Mass Murder, Think Method and Means, Not Motive by Allen Frances
• Columbine by Dave Cullen
• The autogenic (self-generated) massacre by Paul E. Mullen

After Seung-Hui Cho went on his killing spree, did we blame media portrayals of wealth for the attack? Did we blame Jodie Foster's appearance in Taxi Driver after John Hinckley Jr. tried to assassinate the president? Did we blame David Berkowitz's neighbor's dog for enticing him to kill?

No. Of course not.

Elliot Rodger is no different, and his justification is just as flimsy. Yes, he blamed his rage on attractive women, his virginity, happy couples, and his feelings of isolation, loneliness, and inadequacy (especially as perceived by the opposite sex). He wrote a lengthy document detailing the history of his rage where he painstakingly recounted each negative encounter that led him down his dark path.

But Elliot Rodger was sick, demonstrated by the fact that he had extensive contact with multiple mental health professionals and law enforcement. He was described by his mother as "special needs," and it was known that he had "high-functioning autism" since at least 1999. Elliot Rodger had serious mental diseases, and we will probably never learn the true extent of his illness.

But if you asked Elliot Rodger, the true cause of his suffering was women. He shared this hatred with previous mass murderers George Sodini and Marc Lépine. But Elliot Rodger's obsession could just have easily been a neighbor's dog, or the government, or jocks in white hats, or Jodie Foster, or rich kids.

If he had not been obsessed with women he would have had the same murderous instinct, but with a different justification.

Now I shouldn't have to do this, but I figure I should. I am not in any way excusing his actions or his justifications. In addition, violence against women is an epidemic, and conversations about misogyny, feminism, entitlement, privilege, and media depictions of violence are invaluable. The more conversations we have about these topics, the better off we are as a society. And I have no problem with the #YesEveryWoman hashtag. If anything valuable were to come out of this tragedy, it would be for us to continue to bring attention to the dangers that women face on a daily basis, based entirely on their gender.

Having said that, can we please stop invoking Elliot Rodger when we discuss these things? It is not productive to associate an opposing point of view with the actions of a mass murder.

Yes, some men get frustrated when they are unable to find a girlfriend. They invent somewhat offensive terms like "Friend Zone" to characterize that frustration. People like Seth Rogen write movies where some of the characters are sexually frustrated men. Men who think they are "nice guys" are often dismayed when women are attracted to what they perceive are inferior men.

But linking those relatively banal cultural touchstones to the actions of a mass murderer is, frankly, incredibly insulting. Seth Rogen and Judd Apatow were right to be pissed off.

Further, I believe making that association is a disservice to the actual victims of Elliot Rodger's violent spree, and it fulfills the dead killer's overwhelming narcissism. This is exactly what he wanted. He wanted the world to talk about his actions, and they gleefully obliged. That is why he published the now-famous YouTube videos as well as his "manifesto."

Unfortunately, we've now found ourselves firmly locked into the timeline that follows every mass shooting in the United States. In the days following the tragedy, people will blame things that fit their own agendas and belief systems. Some will rail against congress and demand better gun control laws. Some will demand that Congress do more to strengthen mental health programs and leave guns alone. Some will blame pharmaceutical companies, and demand that Congress investigate. Congress will pay lip service to all of those demands, but ultimately they will do nothing (as they have done dozens of times before). Memorials will be held. Victims will be buried. Families will mourn, and eventually the news cycle will turn. The next mention of this horrible killing will be the one year anniversary, where we will bemoan the fact that nothing has changed. Or maybe we'll be subjected to another mass shooting before the anniversary arrives, and the Isla Vista attack will be listed in a long line of avoidable and unacceptable tragedies.

Yes. Avoidable.

And here's the part where I talk about gun control.

Here's why: The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun. That's mostly true. But the only way to prevent a bad guy with a gun from shooting a bunch of people is to make sure the bad guy never gets a gun in the first place.

Before you start, I realize he killed three people with a knife and hit several people with his car. That's irrelevant. He shot eleven people. Three of those gunshot victims died. Those deaths were made possible only because of the presence of a firearm. Without the firearm all you'd have is a criminal who murdered his roommates and injured a bunch of people on the street. Sad, of course, but not the national tragedy it is now.

Having said that, I should tell you that I am a gun owner. I enjoy the peace of mind I get from having a firearm in my house. I enjoy going to the range and shooting my gun. But I would gladly give up my firearm if the US began enacting gun laws similar to what you see in every other industrialized country in the world.

Gun laws that are responsible for this map:

Source: http://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/interactive/2012/jul/22/gun-ownership-homicides-map

But it will never happen. If a man bringing an assault rifle to an elementary school and gunning down a room full of kindergarteners did not entice lawmakers into introducing more restrictive guns laws, then there is literally nothing that will change their minds.

So we wait until the next time, when we will trot out the same scapegoats and rage against the same government who is too inept to make meaningful change.

I don't look forward to it.

Life, purpose, meaning, and some random thoughts.

So I think this is my place for thoughts that are too boring for Facebook and too long for twitter. It's where I can write down things that I think without worrying about people actually reading them.

That said, I have a couple of things I want to talk about.

First of all is my health. I wrote, shit, like, 20 entries about my health woes...which was just speculation, fear, and a bunch of dumb shit for the most part.

It was inane and myopic, but this is my damn blog so I get to be inane and myopic as much as I goddamn want to.

As it turns out, there's probably nothing wrong with me physically. I did a bunch of things between when I first started to feel symptoms and when those symptoms subsided, and any one of them could have fixed things:

1) I wasn't sleeping well during the worst times because I was raising an infant. Eventually my son started sleeping through the night, and when that started happening my symptoms subsided.

2) I had my wisdom teeth pulled. They had been a source of concern to me because of how the actor Andy Hallett died at 33 (infected tooth to heart disease to heart failure). My wisdom tooth hurt frequently and smelled bad, so I figured it was rotting in my mouth and infection was around the corner. The tooth was removed and my symptoms subsided.

3) I went through a battery of tests and none of the doctors could find anything wrong. I'd had my suspicions early on that the root of my problem was "panic attacks," but saying that and believing it are two different things. My doctor prescribed Xanax (in miniscule dosages) to take when I was feeling an attack. I took it infrequently, and now I have a bunch of unused Xanax pills in my medicine cabinet at home, gathering dust.

So that's it. I'm better. Sure, I still get moments of panic every now and then...but it's nothing at all compared to the shitstorms I used to experience. I don't know if I fixed it, or if the doctors fixed it, or if it just went away...I'm just happy that it's gone.

JUST LOOK AT ALL THAT FUCKING HAPPINESS!!!

Other stuff. (best transition ever!)

Just as a warning, this second part is going to get really boring really quick. Also, I'm about to write a bunch of opinions and shit that are probably really stupid, contradictory, and quite possibly offensive.

If any of that stuff bothers you, you may want to stop reading here.

Okay. You've been warned.

I've been thinking about human existence a lot recently, which is something we humans do. It's what makes us human, right Descartes?

Thinking of how fucking amazing my deltoids look...

Mostly I've been thinking about life. There's a kind of magic that is associated with life, which makes sense because it seems like a magical thing. We cannot create life from inert materials, and we don't even know how we could (though there are theories) so the mystery is enticing.

But I had a realization today...and I thought I'd share. I don't know if it's an original or even a well-thought-out realization, but I'm going to say it anyway.

What if "life" just came about from natural, predictable processes? As humans, we tend to believe that every system has some kind of definitive start point, like, "Here's where we were amino acids, then lightning struck and then we were living things."

What if it wasn't that simple? Or more accurately, what if it was more simple? What if life is just another predictable step in the timeline of our planet? What if it's just a byproduct of combining a bunch of inorganic elements, mixing in a little heat and pressure, and letting it stew for a billion years? Why is a living thing given so much importance? Everything in the universe started as this singularity and over billions of years formed into the universe we all know and love. This means that every thing we know was once a collection of  hydrogen, helium, and lithium atoms.

Life formed in the same, miraculous way that everything other thing formed...and death is nothing more than entropy.

Of course, this "life" thing is what allowed humans to comprehend and explore concepts like abiogenesis, panspermia, autocalysis, and divine creation. But life on earth has only been around for 3.7 billion years...which is 1/4 of the age of the galaxy. It's a relatively new thing. It's interesting, sure, but I think it's just another system in a complicated universe that has been twirling about for 13 billion years (which is a really long goddamn time).

What's the point? I don't know. I think the point is that there is no point. The entirety of human existence is nothing but a tiny, insignificant pixel of a pixel (yes, I know, that's not a revelation). I don't think the creation of life should hold this sacrosanct place in our minds, and I'm not convinced by any argument that starts with the premise that humans should avoid "playing God."

Stop that!

Life is just another aspect of the universe that should be examined, explored, and exploited to its fullest extent (so long as there is no harm done). We should treat the examination of life in the same way that we treat inorganic sciences. Ambiguous moralizing about the sanctity of life has not, and probably will never persuade me.

For example, I think environmentalists have a bit of a marketing problem...because their arguments are constantly framed in the context of "Save the Earth, keep things beautiful, and animals are people!"

LOL that walrus thinks he's people LOL!

Frankly, the Earth doesn't give a shit. It doesn't need your help, and it's going to be here long after we're gone. The only real threat is that big glowing yellow thing that will incinerate the Earth at some point. And it's not that animals are people, it's that both animals and humans are organic creatures...and can only survive by eating organic material. Whether or not plants, animals, or human have feelings is irrelevant -- one is going to have to feed on the other to survive. It's a brutal world, but that's how it works.

What environmentalists really should be saying is "Let's save humanity by preserving the place humanity lives!" Environmentalism is not, and never should have been about the environment. And while I'm at it, people who think that animals are morally and spiritually superior to humans are simply traitors to the human race, and they have no idea how actually shitty it is to be a member of the animal kingdom.

Environmentalism is about people. It's about preserving the only thing that keeps us alive (it's the thing that holds all of our food, water, and shelter, so it's pretty goddamn important). I agree with the concepts, but I hate how the message is being delivered.

I realize, reading this back, that I come off sounding like a bit of a sociopath. I'll reiterate; it's not like I have some kind of attachment disorder or whatever. I love humanity, and I feel so many feels on a daily basis (more so now that I have a child). I love life. I love living, and I would never want to intentionally deprive anyone of their ability to enjoy living their life. I'll often cry so much when I'm alone at how much pain and suffering there is in the world, and I'll stare at a flower for hours until I'm overcome with...

Ugh. Can't do it. But everything else is true except for that last sentence.

Life is great, but life is not magical. I only like life because I happen to be alive. Once life stops (as it does for every living thing) I won't really care one way or the other. In fact, it looks like I just created my new epitaph:

Just Deleted

I did it again. I just spent a good amount of time writing an incredibly lengthy blog entry...and I decided that I didn't like how I sounded and I deleted the whole goddamn thing.

668 words. Mostly relating to my thoughts on the seriousness of death. and frustration with how media treats the event so casually. Also a few bits about how the interesting part of a drama for me isn't how the protagonist deals with a crisis, but rather about seeing the the protagonist reacts to the crisis and how it changes him or her.

I just read a blog by a woman who died of breast cancer in 2011. You can read it too. http://mylifewithbreastcancer.wordpress.com  The blog makes no mention of her death...nor should it, because she's the one who wrote it.

It's difficult to read. There is a lot of optimism and hope at the start, and the tone turns more and more angry, frustrated, and sad toward the end. There is no catharsis. No release. The final entry was posted on November 22 about how she was doing more chemo. She died a month later.

I was going to write a lot about it, but I decided not to. I don't want to sound too cynical, and I don't want to dishonor her memory just in case friends or family happen to read this.

I love you all very much...even the random assholes who might be reading this that I've never met before. Life's a funny thing. Don't take it for granted, whether it's yours or someone else's.

That's it.  

For Your Health (Part 10)

Thought I was done with this series, didn't you?

Well...never underestimate the power of a hypochondriac with anxiety.

I wanted to share something that has gone down in "Rhoades Family Lore."

Our family used to go to Long Beach every year (the one in Washington), which is a kind of "resort" town on a peninsula on the coast of southwestern Washington...near the Oregon border. Every year the family would stay at the lovely Boulevard Motel (which has unfortunately closed) because they had these cool little "cabins" for rent, and you could walk out the back to get to the beach.

For me as a kid, there were two really cool parts of Long Beach (neither of which was the actual "beach"). The first was the sweet arcade. The second was the Go Karts.

Oh man. Those Go Karts.

Back in the heady days of the early 90s, Go Karts were pretty serious business. There were no accelerator restrictors, seat belts, or padding of any kind. The Karts were simple, welded metals frame toting a way-too-powerful engine.

We visited the Go Karts During one of our visits, in the year of our Lord 1991. This was the first year that I was legally "above the yellow line" that I had to be over in order to ride the "grown up" carts.

I strapped in and found out very quickly that, as a feather-light 11 year old, I could crank out some serious speed.

The only problem is that I was a "terrible driver."

This became evident during my third and final race of the day. I was coming around the second "hairpin turn". My brother Tim was hot on my tail, and I checked over my shoulder to see if he was gaining on me.

When I looked forward, all I saw was a wall of tires...which had been placed around the track to cushion the inevitable crashes from these overpowered vehicles. The wall is circled below:

I whacked into the tires at almost full speed (because braking is for pussies). A fraction of a second later, the bridge of my nose whacked the un-padded steel steering wheel. As my car caromed off the wall, my brother's kart whacked into my kart's rear bumper, catapulting me onto the front of his vehicle.

This all happened in the blink of an eye, of course. For me, one second I was looking over my shoulder, the next second I was sitting on the front of my brother's go-kart wondering what the hell had just happened and why my face hurt so much.

As this "blink of an eye" action all taking place, my father (who was standing outside the track watching) leaped over a 5 foot high chain link fence in a single bound (fence pictured below...it seemed much bigger when I was 11).

He ran to me, scooped me up in his arms, and hustled me in to our motor home (embarrassingly named Poopdeck Pappy).

As I sat there, probably crying, my dad was doing his best House M.D. to see if I was seriously injured. From what I recall, it mostly amounted to "standing over me and looking very concerned."

From what I could tell I was okay -- no bumps, bruises, broken bones, scratches, et cetera. However, with trepidation, I felt the bridge of my nose (that had contacted the steering wheel).

It had swelled to the size of a walnut.

I asked my dad in all sincerity, "Am I always going to look like this?"

"No," my Dad assured me.

When my family heard I said that...they thought it was pretty funny. At the time I didn't get it -- I thought it was a very valid fear.

To be honest, I still feel kinda' that way.

Because now I have something that won't go away. A lot of my time is now spent fighting back against this cloud of anxiety that I'm afraid is just going to consume me...or worse, is covering some kind of serious malady that I'm too embarrassed to mention to my doctor because now that I've already "cried wolf" several times this year.

I keep telling my brain that it's fine, and that nothing's wrong. My good-ish health has been confirmed by more than a half-dozen doctors from three different hospitals.

But my brain keeps trying to convince me that something is ruining me from the inside...and boy is that brain convincing.

 I'm able to function normally, for the most part. It's not "debilitating," but when I have time to think about it, I silently fight against the fog that makes me occasionally dizzy, often uncomfortable, and always worried that something is wrong with me.

It sucks.

And it makes me wonder, will I always be like this?

I'm sure my dad will read this...and I wish he could give me the same comfort that I had when I was 11...but now that I'm a farty old know-it-all 33 year old, I've managed to convince myself that this "cloud" is just my new reality.

And that bothers me.

I keep fighting, of course. I've started exercising more. I'm trying to start "eating better." I'm trying to stay stimulated artistically (by writing...as well as acting in an upcoming production of "The Producers" -- TICKETS ON SALE NOW!!!). And I'm trying to not worry so much, though to be honest I never really worried that much before the anxiety struck.

I just hope that my efforts have some impact...because frankly, the fact that I'm not getting better, and the prospect that my current state of health is just my new reality is a bit depressing.

Scooter Crash! POW!

Before I go into what happened, let me make this plea to anyone reading. Please, for the love of God, use your goddamn turn signal. Any time you're turning. Even if you think you don't need to, just do it.

Cool? Cool.

So yeah, like the title says, I got into a "minor" traffic accident today. But as a woman at work told me (and I agree) when you're riding a motorcycle there is no such thing as a "minor" accident. Pretty much every time you're in an accident it's going to suck a lot more for the motorcycle.

The roots of this accident go back several months. I think it was last spring, and I was driving on a residential street with driveways on each side of the road. I was stuck behind a person driving obscenely slowly. After a bit, the driver came to a complete stop in the middle of the street, and I figured they were pulling into a driveway.

My instinct was correct, and the driver turned to the left, so I started to pass on the right. However, before I got too far, he cranked the wheel to the right (I guess he wanted to take a straight shot down his driveway?) and nearly caused me to slam into his fender and fly over the hood of his car.

At no point did he use a turn signal to indicate what he was doing. I remember thinking at the time, "Huh, that was scary. I'm not sure how to avoid an accident like that, other than to just wait behind the car until they've pulled entirely off of the road."

Flash forward to yesterday.

I'm driving home from work. For some reason I was thinking about how I'd handle "getting into an accident" on my scooter...whether or not my safety gear would protect me adequately. It was another one of those stupid, morbid lines of thought that I have at inappropriate times like that.

I was heading north on Cahuenga boulevard, and I decided to hang a left onto Whitnall Highway, which is one of those rare "diagonal" streets that cut through the San Fernando valley (thanks to a run of high voltage power lines splitting the highway). Directly in front of me was a fairly newish red Honda Civic with a USC Film School bumper sticker, who had also just turned onto Whitnall.

I followed the Civic for a couple hundred feet before the driver suddenly slowed to a stop. Since the car had stopped into the middle of the street I figured the person was parallel parking, so I needed to get out from behind them so they could back into the spot. Underneath the power lines is the Whitnall Off-Leash Dog Park (you can see cars parked along the street in this image...but during the accident it was wall-to-wall with parked cars and the park was packed):

 

I proceeded to pass the car on the left, as there was no traffic coming in the opposite direction. However, just as my scooter reached the rear bumper of the Civic, the driver cranked the wheel and started to turn. Left. Directly in front of my accelerating scooter (presumably on to Hatteras).

Now, if the driver turns left at this point, one of four things could happen to me:

1. I could slam into the Civic's fender and do a header over the hood, damaging both vehicles pretty badly
2. The driver could just never see me and run me over, leading to a pretty embarrassing "motorcyclist under car wheel" situation
3. The car could clip my scooter as I drove past, potentially leading to a really embarrassing "motorcyclist vs. stationary object" situation
4. I could jam on the brakes and try to stop before the car made the turn

NOTE -- the option of swerving to avoid this collision was not available, since it could lead to a collision with parked cars, a curb, or just slightly delayed the inevitable collision with the red car. And anyway, it happened way too quickly and I was too close to the car to consider a "by the book" swerve action, in my opinion.

Anyhow, I chose option number four. I jammed my brakes, locked up my tires, laid down my scooter, and promptly came to a skidding halt on my right side, with my helmet banging lightly against her driver's side door.

So in the matter of a few seconds I went from happy-go-lucky scooter jockey to prone road rash victim. It was quite jarring (literally).

Turns out my assaulter was a skinny, early-20-something , bleached-blonde woman with multiple piercings, large fashionable sunglasses, and a big tattoo of what looked like a butterfly on her back. She got out of her car, very shaken, and started apologizing profusely in a surprisingly low-pitched quasi-stoner voice.

I did what I always do in awkward situations like this -- I started cracking jokes to ease the tension and told her not to worry about it.

If I hadn't locked up my brakes, I probably would have avoided the accident entirely...because I didn't actually make contact with her car (except for my helmet). She was definitely at fault on this one, but since I was passing her car on the left, from a liability point of view it would have been more of a hassle to file a claim, in my opinion. My move was completely legal, but borderline "aggressive." I would have had to convince her insurance company that she hadn't used her turn signal...which is hard to prove without a third-party witness...and the deductible probably wouldn't have covered the cost of the repairs...and my insurance would have just gone up anyway...et cetera.

So I decided to just chalk it up to bad luck and get going home. I examined the damage -- my scooter was slightly scraped up on one side. It had a busted right-hand mirror, a missing reflector, and the handlebars had shifted a few inches to the right. It didn't look too bad, and it started up just fine. As for me, I had a bruised and scraped up ankle (I'll spare you the gory pictures), a scraped elbow, and a sore neck. No serious problems structurally...it was the standard "bumps and bruises" accident result.

I tried to convince her that everything was fine, and she was good to leave...but she insisted that I "at least" get her phone number (DIGITS BABY!). Throughout she continued to apologize, telling me that if I "needed anything" to give her a call. If I wind up having to get my bike repaired I might try to get a hold of her...but who are we kidding? I probably won't do that.

So she drove off, and I limped home (literally).

As for those safety devices I was worrying about? Well, the gloves and helmet get an "A+"...no scrapes on my hands, and a totally intact brain case.

My "armored jacket" gets a "C-". My right shoulder escaped mostly unharmed (though slightly bruised), but the armored plate in my elbow did bupkis, as I've got a 1" diameter bloody scrape there that's going to be a bastard to heal.

My armored pants and boots get a "NA", because I don't own either of those things. The boots would have been nice, as it turns out, because my ankle got trapped under my scooter and scraped to hell...and that's my main source of "ouch" at the moment. I don't think I need the pants...because those look goofy, and the khakis I was wearing weren't even scuffed.

I guess I'll try to be a little more careful in the future, though I'm not really sure what I could/should have done differently in this situation. I think I was just unlucky...hopefully that won't happen again.

Daniel Tosh and Rape Comedy

I'm going to write about the Daniel Tosh rape joke controversy today.

If you don't know about the controversy, I think this article gives a pretty good, un-biased overview: http://www.avclub.com/articles/daniel-tosh-was-just-asking-for-it-by-joking-about,82351/

If you're not interested in my opinions, or if you're afraid that you're going to like me less after reading this blog article, feel free to go to a different blog entry, like this one. Don't worry -- I'm not going to condone rape, or even the notion that "joking about rape is always okay" or that "comedians are above criticism."

I'm going to talk more the way this story has been covered, and my continued annoyance with the rise of "blog journalism" (that's a phrase I just coined...OR DID I?!?!).

 Anyone still with me? Okay. Good. Let's get started.

First off, full disclosure, I think Daniel Tosh is a very funny comedian. I saw his special "Daniel Tosh: Completely Serious" shortly before he got his show on Comedy Central, and I thought it was one of the best specials I'd ever seen.

I watched his show for its first two seasons, but recently the clips he plays are getting a little bit too gross (too many bodily fluids), so I haven't watched in a while.

Anyhow, that's my relationship with Mr. Tosh.

Now, on to the incident.

Here is the woman's account of the joke:

So Tosh then starts making some very generalizing, declarative statements about rape jokes always being funny, how can a rape joke not be funny, rape is hilarious, etc. I don’t know why he was so repetitive about it but I felt provoked because I, for one, DON’T find them funny and never have. So I didnt appreciate Daniel Tosh (or anyone!) telling me I should find them funny. So I yelled out, “Actually, rape jokes are never funny!”

...

After I called out to him, Tosh paused for a moment. Then, he says, “Wouldn’t it be funny if that girl got raped by like, 5 guys right now? Like right now? What if a bunch of guys just raped her…” and I, completely stunned and finding it hard to process what was happening but knowing i needed to get out of there, immediately nudged my friend, who was also completely stunned, and we high-tailed it out of there.

Actual journalists (such as this CNN article) recounted the incident thusly:

When the comedian Daniel Tosh reportedly singled out a woman in his audience and suggested, according to a blog post that recounted the incident, it would be "funny" if she "got raped by, like, five guys, right now," the online reaction was swift, heated and often split down gender lines.

Do you notice anything? They use the caveats "reportedly" and "according to a blog post" in the lead of the article. This is very important for a journalist, since they are relying entirely upon this one person's account of the night, and one of the basics of journalism is to get multiple sources (you should use at least three to five sources for any article) before moving forward with a story. Unfortunately the article then goes on:

A comedian who shoots down an audience member who objects to his rape jokes by joking about her being gang-raped on the spot isn't being funny.

See what happened there? They were being all careful at the beginning, hedging their bets with journalistic language, but then they pretty much attribute that quote to him. It's a bait-and-switch.

Now I want to show how most tabloid rags have covered this story. For instance, here's an article from that bastion of journalistic integrity, The Daily Mail:

A female heckler at a comedy show was told by comedian Daniel Tosh that it would be funny if she was gang raped.

And from the blog boingboing.net:

Now, proposing that an audience member sitting right in front of you in a crowd of mostly men "get raped by, like, 5 guys right now" is in my opinion a whole lot heavier than letting a few random rape jokes drop in your lame standup act. Not that rape jokes are lulzy. But, Christ, what an asshole.

You get the idea. We have a number of blogs, opinion columnists, commentators, and "guest writers" coming in to educate their audience about why Daniel Tosh's joke was not funny. And they're all using a single source -- the woman's account.

Consider this, though -- what if the blogger didn't recount the "joke" exactly as it was told? What if there was something lost in the translation? What if Daniel Tosh was actually being careful in context, but the woman (still smarting from embarrassment and anger that night) recounted the joke in a way that would make Daniel appear in the worst-possible light?

Now please, please don't equate this with a kind of he said / she said issue, where (much like in many real-life rape cases) the account of the incident is wildly different depending on who you asked. For instance, the accused rapist might say "it was consensual" while the woman says "it was rape." My argument is not similar to that at all. There were over 200 people at the comedy club that night so there are multiple accounts available, but strangely, none of those audience members has given a neutral account...at least not that I have seen.

So, until a neutral, 3rd party account of the incident is reported, everyone should be exercising caution as to the wording of the "joke." In it's alleged form, yes...it's pretty offensive. To joke about a woman being gang raped in a theater doesn't sound funny at all -- in or out of the context of a "comedy club."

The closest we have to a neutral account is Jamie Masada's, who disputes how the incident went down. Using Mr. Masada's recollection (he was there that night) the woman's blog should have read like this:

Tosh asked the audience, "So...what would you like to talk about?" Some guy in the front row shouted "RAPE!"

I felt provoked because I, for one, DON’T find rape funny and never have, so I shouted out "No! Rape is never funny!" Tosh paused for a moment and joked with the guy in the front row, "That girl's probably been raped by, like, five guys."

Now, is it a funny joke? Not really. But is it as offensive as telling a woman "that it would be funny if she was gang raped" in a comedy club? No. Not at all. Not even close. It's a snide comment postulating as to why the woman hates rape comedy so much -- he's not threatening her with actual gang rape.

Of course, I don't think either account is accurate, and I wish someone else would come forward, or that Tosh would give his own account. All he's done is apologize, and say that he was misquoted out of context. I wish he'd just release his tax returns already!!! 

I mean...um...sorry. That was a different...never mind.

Personally, I do not believe that Daniel Tosh delivered the joke as the woman remembers, and it annoys me that people are taking this anonymous woman's retelling of the comedian's joke as Gospel. 

The joke just does not really even sound like Tosh. Compare the alleged "gang rape" joke to this one, from an earlier special, that also touches on the subject of rape:

Here, Tosh takes the horror of rape and turns it into an absurd story involving silly string. It's a careful recounting, and it's obviously made-up...though it still uses "rape" as a punchline. See how carefully he tiptoes around the subject -- even giving a kind of disclaimer that he works "a little blue." He's covering his bases...because if he didn't, it would be less funny.

The woman's account plays on the perception that Daniel Tosh is a kind of frat boy comedian, and the cadence of the alleged joke: "got raped by like, 5 guys right now? Like right now? What if a bunch of guys just raped her" sounds nothing like his actual cadence. It sounds like a frat guy's really bad impression of Daniel Tosh...and personally, I don't buy it.

As a final note I'll address the issue...can rape jokes ever be funny?

I think so, if they're done right. I've laughed at many rape jokes, and other jokes about horrible things (racism, 9/11, AIDS, child abuse, et cetera). Anything, including rape, can be targeted successfully for a joke.

If you don't believe me, ask Mr. George Carlin -- a well-respected stand-up who knew a thing or two about what is and isn't funny:

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