The Bird is the Word

For our boys in Southeast Asia...

RIP Late Night

LNwCOB - 1864 Baseball
by ccob

Just Another Night In Bed-Stuy

I was setting down for a night in. Watch on movie, eat some junk food. Well a lot of junk food. Anyway next thing you know, the distant clipped bang of gunfire. Maybe seven times in total, although I wasn't really counting. It would go a couple of shots followed by silence followed by more. I'd like to be all hard and say that I'd gotten used to gunshots after living here awhile, but I'd be lying my ass off. Besides they've been getting less frequent, although it feels as if there's been a recent upswing. Or maybe it's just always been there and I'd been doing a pretty good job of ignoring it.

I look out my window to see any reaction because I might have mistaken it for fireworks or something, even though I was pretty sure I wasn't wrong. I knew it was gunfire. You can just tell. In the distance, a block away a crowd was gathered behind a car. There was a shape on the ground. I couldn't be absolutely sure as I squinted, but deep down I knew what it was.

A few minutes later, a chorus of sirens. Ambulances, police cars inbound. Cops dismounted and fanned out, entering the projects where the gunfire had come from. A stretcher, the body's rolled into the ambulance. Feet of police tape were unfurled as more cars arrived. I'm not sure if the person shot was dead or alive, but the seeming lack of urgency seemed to confirm it. As I keep looking I hear the beating rotor blades of an overhead police helicopter, a focused piercing blue beam of light penetrating the cloudless sky. A short term show of force for an event that won't make the evening news.

Telephonic Interlude

Like most people I have a cellphone as a means of communicating. It sure as hell beats using the payphone. I text on occasion but try to stick to the verbal method. I feel something gets lost in translation. Or maybe it's more of me relying on sarcasm as a conversational crutch and that doesn't really come across in plain text. It seems like a regression of some sort. We've come so far technologically to be able to use our voices, but we choose typed words instead. Not that it doesn't have it's uses, sometimes you don't really feel like having a drawn out conversation with a half dozen awkward pauses, you just need to drop a few words in. When you want to be concise it works. Or maybe you can just have a really short phone call.

Saturday

It's noon and I'm having breakfast. Maybe the timing makes it brunch or even lunch, but I judge a meal by it's contents and not it's timing. Three strips turkey bacon, two eggs scrambled, toast. And milk, soy milk. Incidentally it annoys to no end how much the bacon shrinks when it's in the pan. Maybe I'm just doing it wrong. But I doubt it.

Last night my neighborhood deli was robbed at gunpoint. And I really thought things had turned the corner. Well not really, the people get robbed all the time I supposed. Fortunately I didn't feel like getting grape juice or beer at the time. I would've been out some money. With the economy as bad as is, every dollar counts. Or maybe I'm just cheap.

Got a 4 hour math class in an hour. Not the best 4 hour time period of my week, but then things could be worse.