Live video.

Thirteen years ago, Ambulance Driver and I, along with BabsRN, did a little compilation post, called "Perspectives.". Ambulance Driver, ever the consummate performer, now wants to read it aloud, and I've agreed to do it with you. Babs has declined to read, but Jennifer has agreed to read Babs' part aloud. We're doing this on the Facebook Live platform tomorrow morning at 09:00 Central. (GMT -5) If you know Ambulance Driver's real name and know how to find him on Facebook, this is really easy. If you don't, then I don't know what to do for you. After 13.5 years, I'm probably pulling back the curtain a little. We'll see. I think that AD started this as a little treat for people staying at home.

Ray.

The week before last, on Monday, the Tribe started blowing up my phone. I got the word that Ray Carter, AKA Gay Cynic (of Northwestern Free Thinker), had been sent home from the hospital for hospice care. He was given about two weeks to live. I called Ray, and told him that I was coming on the weekend. He said that he looked forward to it. He seemed in good spirits. We texted and emailed through Wednesday, but I had to work on Wednesday and Thursday, and was so busy, I wasn't even getting by enough to see my father in a rehab hospital, where he was mending from an infection in his ankle. (And still is.)

I flew up to Seattle on Friday, 27 May. I arrived tired and with a headache, and checked into my room as quickly as I could, and sent Ray texts to let me know when he was ready to receive a visitor. After a few hours, I sent some to his mother, but got no response. Finally I called her, left a message, and was called back: "He's not doing well. He took a turn yesterday, and he's not really able to receive visitors just now." I told her that I didn't want to be a burden, but that I would come over in the morning, after calling ahead.

The next morning, I called, and Ray's mother said that he wasn't doing well, but maybe a visitor would help. I arrived at his house on a lovely street, full of flowers, at about 8:30AM. I was let in, and waited in his room to meet Ray. I met his brother Tim, who was very nice. When Ray came into his room where I waited, he was lethargic from the OxyContin and Oxycodone that he was receiving to ease the pains from end-stage liver failure. But he was there. We talked as he lay in his bed. He swung his feet off the bed and said, "Let's go." He wanted to sit in the living room.

Under an afghan on the couch, Ray fielded all kinds of questions that I had about his early life. I've known this guy for over 7 years, and I really didn't know his origins. He had wanted to be a police officer, but felt that a gay cop at that time (the early '80s) would never receive backup. He had worked as a night security guard at a college, and as a dispatcher. He had been an office worker. He had sold electric cars and bikes. He had worked for the Second Amendment Foundation. Throughout the talk, his mother and brother filled in what Ray couldn't say. Ray fell asleep often, and then grew cold and had to go to bed.

I excused myself, and got lunch, and spent a couple of hours at the Pike's Market. I bought fruit from a stand where the vendors used sharp knives to hand slices of peaches to passers-by. Some years ago, Ray had led my family though the market, and an attractive Asian gent handed each of us slices of peach. He was probably about 21. My then-14 1/2-year-old daughter was grinning and blushing as she accepted the peach, obviously quite taken with the looks of this guy. I then realized that behind her, Ray had a very similar expression as he stood back a bit to appraise the bounty of the fruit stand, before accepting his own complimentary slice. I laughed at the memory of this.

I didn't find the coffee shop where I had gone with Ray down on the Market, some years back. He had to use the restroom, and since I was in line, he handed me a $10 and asked me to order for him what in my family has come to be known as the "Ray Carter Special." It's an accomplishment when an order for a drink can make a downtown Seattle barista's eyes widen, but apparently asking for 8 shots of espresso over ice in a to-go cup will do just that.  I did find a nice coffee shop in the Moore Hotel, and ordered a latte, which came to me with coffee art on it.

I went back to Ray's house a little bit depressed. It is a lonely thing, to go alone to a place where you had enjoyed yourself with family and friends.

Ray looked better. He was awake and sitting up on the couch. A new crocheted afghan was laying across his lap, sent by our friend Bonnie. He liked the flowers that I had brought from the Market. His sister-in-law and niece were there, too. We talked some more. He sat on his recently-delivered hospital bed.. He fell asleep. I talked into the night with his brother and mother, and then went to the motel.  The family wanted to know about Blogorado-- they said that Ray always lit up when he talked about it, and looked forward to it, year 'round. I knew that they weren't of my political bent, but it was important to me that they know that this was a group of people from different walks of life who loved each other as a chosen family.

In the morning, I bought a cup of coffee from a bikini coffee hut, and went back to Ray's house. I was met at the door by his brother Tim, who told me that Ray had passed away in the morning at about 3:30 AM. I was fine, and entered, and said nothing, and then realized that I had owed Ray a lot of hugs sent by friends, which I hadn't really given him. In our group, no one gets away without a hug, but that's for leaving, or maybe initial greeting. I'd sat in bed with Ray, and held his hand, and gripped his arm, but I hadn't wrapped him up. I started to mention this to his family, and for some reason my voice cracked.

My friend Zercool had sent me an email that he had tried to send to Ray, and had asked me to read it to him when I could. I had failed there, too. So I read him what Zercool had sent me to say to him. I didn't do well. In fact, I blubbered a bit. But I got the words out over Ray's remains.

I hugged his family and left to SEATAC, playing Grateful Dead's "Box Of Rain" on the rental car stereo from my iPhone. I'm not a Grateful Dead fan, but this song spoke to me, as it was written by one of their band members, for his father who was on his deathbed. I played it on repeat, and sniveled a bit as I drove through the softly-falling Seattle rain. And then I came back home to north Texas.

Ray Carter was a good man, who cared more about family and friends than anything. He was a man with eternal optimism, who went by the moniker of "Gay Cynic." We are all --even his political adversaries-- diminished by his passing. I'm glad that I got to see him one last time.

In case you've forgotten his name?

Christian Trejbal is still an ass. 

"There's a man at the door."

I was in the laundry room, turning dirty clothes into clean ones, when my daughter hollered to me that there was a man at the door.

I've actually been having some issues with a local who has lost his grasp on reality, and who believes that I'm the cause of his problems, so I made decent speed to the door. Not running, not amped, but ready. To my irritation, the door was standing ajar. I opened it, and found one of our newest officers at my department on the porch. I'm afraid that he may have misread my irritation with my daughter's accurate-yet-incomplete report as irritation at seeing him. He stepped back, and noted my hand in my pocket.

"Damn, Matt, you were about to put a cap in my ass!" He laughed.

I protested that I was happy to see him, and that no such thing was on my mind.

"Bull. You've got your hand on a gun, right now!"

I had actually been re-seating my little J-frame back into my leather pocket holster. I shrugged and pulled the whole rig out to seat it better, and re-pocketed it.

I closed the door and stepped outside, expecting there to be a potentially sensitive issue. There wasn't one. We chatted. Seems that a month or two back, I had done the recently-late officer from another agency a favor, when he had asked me over chat on our MDT to check on the registered address of a reported hit-and-run vehicle. I had found the suspect vehicle in its driveway, and documented the damage to it thoroughly photographically. I then had put all the picturess on a DVD,. and mailed it to him (my email couldn't handle it, and I was too lazy to set up a DropBox account.). Well, with his sudden passing, the case was languishing. I said that I would find the pictures and re-mail them to his P.D.

Strange the things that pop up.

Now I need to have a chat with the family about my expectations on answering the door and giving a more complete report than just "a man at the door."

And cheap at twice the price.

The only reason those two women injured in the inappropriate shooting during the manhunt for Dorner are taking the $4.2 million is because attorneys behind closed doors said, "Would you rather take the four point two million now, or wait five years to collect ten million dollars, by which time the attorneys have gotten the bulk of it?"

Yeah, L.A. would like to get that behind them, indeed.

Minor parenting challenge.

My younger daughter just got back from a week with her aunt. Her aunt is really into eastern cultural knickknacks, and she gave my daughter a cute little figurine display with the critters of the Chinese zodiac affixed to it. "What Chinese sign are you, Daddy?" I was asked. Damfino. I've never bothered to look it up, because my disdain for the whole astrology and zodiac business is pretty deep and broad. But what the hell, let's see.

Oh. Apparently I'm a pig. Oh ho! How ironic.

I'm on record for taking any opportunity to fisk the concept of astrology, so I shan't belabor that theme again here today. (But maybe later, we can point and laugh at astrologists.)

My challenge here is to make clear to my children the stupidity of believing that a person will be imbued with certain traits merely by virtue or damnation of the time of their birth... while not causing them to feel that there is disrespect toward adults in their lives that follow it  (such as a wayward auntie).  Worse, if I push the issue, it becomes an opportunity for rebellion. I don't care to consider a world where my offspring consult their zodiac, be it Chinese or occidental.

Some this and some that.

--Mad Max: Beyond PaintBall.

--I read Hunger Games  on my Kindle, and it's actually a pretty good story. A quick read, I got the second one. You can buy the electronic "Boxed Set" of three, but it's pointless to do, because it saves you nothing.

--I sent Tam some pics and questions about a recent .32 that I handled on a recent call. I'm eager to see what she comes up with.

--We got rain tonight in one of our usual May thunderstorms. "Usual," but surprisingly absent this May, until now.

--Also absent is my usual May funk. As I mentioned, I got an A this semester in grad school. One at a time. I should go sit for practicals or something.

--Neither of my girls are doing anything productive in school. They did all the last of their testing in early May, and the teachers are calling it in from here. I do not approve, despite the high showing that both my kids (4th and 8th graders, respectively) gave.

--Remember when, as a young person making videos in the back yard, you ended up with a shaky, completely amateurish, virtually-unwatchable thing? Comes now the future, when two girls with a decent hand-held camera and some knowledge of digital editing can put together a homemade video that is far better than 99% of the dreck that I have seen presented as professional music videos. Like the best music videos, this one tells a little story, about a narcissist and her friend. Most amusing.

--I first heard that song (AWOLNation's "Sail") presented behind Jeb Corliss's amazing BASE-jumping video, which is also worth watching. But I'm sure that you'd already seen that.

--I seem to have missed this verse in the bible during Sunday school as a kid.


--‎"Tardigrades are able to survive in extreme environments that would kill almost any other animal. Some can survive temperatures of close to absolute zero, or 0 Kelvin (−273 °C (−459 °F)),[7] temperatures as high as 151 °C (304 °F), 1,000 times more radiation than other animals,[8] and almost a decade without water.[9] Since 2007, tardigrades have also returned alive from studies in which they have been exposed to the vacuum of outer space for a few days in low earth orbit." I read aloud to my wife.
"So that's what's going to take over the world, some day," she said.

Aww. Water Bears.

The passing of conservatives.

My conservative friends often think that I'm a damned liberal, and my liberal friends either think that I'm an uber-conservative fascist pig, or that I'm a bag of self-contradictions.
Let me make this clear: I don't take my stance to be contrary, or to "stand out and be different." I would LOVE to be able to side with a great big majority.

But right now, the two majorities are:
--people who think that it's more fair, and even intellectual, to distribute everything but rights.
--people who think that we should not distribute the wealth, but still should assert control over others' rights.

I've said all this before.
Lately, I've been thinking how great it would be to see an openly atheist or agnostic candidate run for President. I think all of the discussions about a candidate's fitness to lead, based upon his religion, are bollocks. Given that I want the President not to impose his religion upon the nation, I'd prefer him or she to keep their yap shut on the issue. The same goes with information about his marriage.

Let's do this, shall we? Let's get to reducing the interference that the government has in our lives, and reducing the expenditures. Let's just drop the social issues for a bit, shall we?

And while we're at it (and Republicans, I'm talking to you, because even though you're screwed beyond belief with your mix of social interference and laissez-faire party planks, you're still the only big party willing to attempt to be the Grownups in the room, so I lean faintly in your direction.), let's quit listening to idiots like Rush Limbaugh, who had me at "why should I pay?" (a legit question) but lost me at "lemme see you nekkid."

Oh, and finally, as a person who leans TEA Party and Libertarian, I propose that we mourn the untimely passing of Andrew Breitbart. He raised interesting points, and flew in the faces even of a lot of Conservatives. He challenged the status quo. His passing diminishes the exchange.

Wait.

PigPen plays the upright acoustic bass?

It's far easier to accept that Snoopy plays the guitar.

Just stop it.

My mother and I were talking today about the public reaction to the tenth anniversary of September 11, 2001.

And we're appalled.

"Commemoration" isn't such a distant cousin of a word from "Celebration." It would seem that many have forgotten that there actually is a difference, and that those that know it seem to be blurring the lines pretty heavily.

I get that no documentarian worth his salt would fail to comment on the tenth year passing since our nation suffered an attack that had such ramifications. But the goal of those watching, and the goal of those showing the documentaries seems to be a type of entertainment.

Like a horror movie. "Ooh, it gives me shivers to remember where I was when I heard..."

I'm disgusted, and I'm not participating.

You want to wave our flag? Push to bring back most of our troops from the errands we've sent them on. Push to sunset the Patriot Act for good. Push to fire the TSA. Push to strengthen our borders (still as porous as they were 10 years ago, from what I see.).

But don't use some arbitrary tenth anniversary of the death of our countrymen as a day to be entertained. Do something GOOD for your country for a change, would you, please? We've spent the last 3,652 days dismantling it.

Another life lesson, learned at work.

"Sometimes, You Just Need To Know When To Give Up On A Case."

Important lessons like this are learned, when cleaning out your desk and file cabinet in preparation to move to a new office.

The argument goes on in my head: "Let it go."
"But if I could just find that other witness, we could..."
"That case is from 2008, Matt. Let it go."
"Maybe I should hold onto this tape for a bit longer...?"
"That case was adjudicated in 2010. Let it go."
"This training information would be useful..."
"...If you had a time machine, and needed to know about legislative updates for the session ending in 2009. Let it go."

The blank tape supply got a much-needed influx of newly-wiped tapes, and the shredder needed emptying twice, and the trash bin is overflowing with dead trees that gave the ultimate sacrifice sometime early in W's second term. And so it goes.

9-11-2010

Nine years later, I'm still remembering, but I'm noticing that things are culminating in... something. More stupid spectacles. More buildings going up. The new tower is rising.

I don't forget that for whatever reason, 9 years ago this morning, 2,774 people died because someone hated our country.

I don't think that we should stop down and quit doing our jobs because of that. I think that we should do our jobs twice as hard because of that.

And when the next attack come, we should go to work and do business as usual.

We need to be ready with a real winning response that doesn't involve just hunting terrorists. We need to repell them with our disdain.

Perhaps I Haven't Made Myself Clear.

In comments, someone said, regarding my post about Glenn Beck:

"You note that the nation is great today.

You are either not who I thought or quite blind to where we are. I am sorry for either. I would prefer that you learn a bit more(yes, ignoring his religious points before making a blanket judgment.

After all, he is the only one tracking the very dirty laundry in the White House."

I would submit that, if you haven't figured out that I love this nation, then you haven't been paying attention.

And if you think that Glenn Beck is the only watchdog on the White House, then you might consider broadening your view.

Oh. Yeah.

It's that time. Time for a refill, in a big way.

As you can see, my little 18 oz. bottle of garlic chili sauce that we popped open last week is about done with. Fortunately, my wife made a recent trip to the Asian Market again.

The goodness, it burns.