Playing in the background: Loud Vornado fan, pushing the hot air into the kitchen to be sucked up by the vent. At least in theory.
Well, either that or my brain really is being controlled by a secret CIA experiment. Or maybe Scaley, my neurotic query-letter-fearing dinosaur, is on vacation. Hopefully at a nice rest home with a name like Sunnyville and many hypodermic needles full of artificial sleep. (Don't be too impressed by that line, though, I think I stole it from Stephen King.) Anyway, I somehow managed yesterday to send out five query letters in a single afternoon. I mean that is freaky. That's the intellectual equivalent of climbing Mount Everest, K2, Lhotse, Nupse and Ama Dablam all before breakfast one morning and without changing your crampons. (They're mountains in the Himalayas, gang. That's why we have Google, remember? And you should probably look up what crampons are, too, because it wasn't as funny as it sounded.)
I wish I could tell you that, obviously, I'm cured. I wish I could lay out with exacting precision How I Sedated The Query-Letter-Fearing Dinosaur and solemnly promise all of you that Everything Is Just Fine Now, Thank You. I wish I were reasonably certain I could do it again, like say, today. Unfortunately, it may have just been a one-time thing. But it was pretty darn cool, and I'm patting myself on the head over here. Now, if one of 'em would just come to fruition, that would be awesome.
If nothing else, it was a nice distraction from Jaycee Lee Dugard, America's very own Elisabeth Fritzl. In case you've been held hostage somewhere they don't get CNN, Jaycee was an 11-year-old girl in Northern California who was kidnapped, in full sight of her father, by a whack job and his equally whacky wife. They kept her locked in a weird compound of sheds and tents in their backyard for the last 18 years, where she gave birth to two of the husband's children, before suspicious authorities finally busted their game late last week. Okay, eighteen years is not twenty-four, and a back yard is not a cellar, but come on, people. Why does this keep happening?
Now, with Elisabeth, there was really no way the neighbors ever could have known. She was, for one thing, underground. When the police showed up, they found a door with an electronic lock that you could only get to by going through about eight other locked doors. But this girl was outside a lot of the time. Okay, no point in blaming the neighbors, it was all whack job's fault (though one could also blame the federal prison system; in 1977 the guy was sentenced to 50 years for kidnapping and rape and somehow got released after only 10. If he'd served his whole sentence, or even half of it, this wouldn't have ever happened.) But seriously. If you have a weird neighbor who seems to have an outbuilding attached to his house in which something or other strange may or may not be going on, for God's sake, call the cops, folks. Please? For the Elisabeths and Jaycees of the world? If nothing else you might bust a small meth lab before it becomes a great big really dangerous meth lab. Or just be mildly embarrassed and have to bake your neighbor some cookies or something.
(For the record, I have an idiot neighbor, and while he does have an outbuilding, I think he's in more danger of accidentally decapitating himself with a chainsaw than of abducting someone and keeping 'em in there. But I do watch the guy. Hey, he's entertaining.)
I have some good news, though. Apparently 18 years in a back yard (or 24 years in a cellar) will not ruin your life after all. Elisabeth Fritzl has a boyfriend. She and her kids have 24-hour bodyguards, and one of 'em has apparently fallen for Elisabeth. He's a lot younger than she is, but the family likes him and she seems very happy, according to the German press. Oh, and she got her driver's license recently.
I'm not a big believer in the ruinability of life, anyway. There's only this one, that we know of, and okay, Elisabeth's kids will probably never be CEOs of Fortune 500 companies or top-ranking neurophysicists, but that doesn't mean they can't enjoy a walk outside, feel the rain, laugh at something funny on TV or smile when a cat tickles them with its whiskers. And if you, who have not spent 20 years as a sex slave in somebody's cellar, don't enjoy walks outside or can't smile when a cat tickles you, why not, pray tell? I mean, life's short. A monster could attack your city tomorrow.
Speaking of which, I saw Cloverfield this weekend, which despite the nice peaceful title, is all about a monster attacking a city. You may have heard about this flick, which is supposedly all shot on camcorder from the point of view of the gang of friends that's running from the monster. Guess what, I was impressed all to hell. It was very real. I had no trouble believing this was how people would act in a situation like that, the acting was good, the dialogue was pretty good too (a lot of it improvised) and there were some creepy critters much scarier than whatever was attacking the city. Cloverfield gets somewhere between an AWESOME and a WOW (four and a half stars). Highly recommended.
So send the query letter, already. Tomorrow you might get stepped on. Yeah, kind of a nonsequitur, okay, but I had to come full circle on this post somehow.
Showing posts with label Elisabeth Fritzl. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Elisabeth Fritzl. Show all posts
Sunday, August 30, 2009
Friday, May 2, 2008
Last one on child abuse for a while. Honest.
Playing in the background: The breathless pause between the deep freeze and the blast furnace (it's spring in Texas)
Meters swum today: Nada. Going back tomorrow.
Look, sorry to be such a downer, but between the FLDS kids and Elisabeth Fritzl I'm having nightmares. What's weird, though, is for once in my life I don't feel like driving over to Eldorado (or flying over to Austria, which is just across the street from downtown Dallas) and beating the snot out of one of these men. In times past that'd be my first reaction. "He did what?! To his own daughter?! I'll *&^*%!! kill him!!" Then the more rational part of my brain would remind me that spending the next twenty years in jail wasn't my idea of a good time and I'd settle for ranting at whatever co-worker or family member was unlucky enough to be closest about how effed up is our culture that it can churn out monsters like this and maybe these bastards just need to spend twenty-four years locked in someone else's cellar with a couple of armed sadistic rapists so they can Understand What It's Like. (Not that I have Issues. Certainly not.)
That's not happening this time around, though. With the FLDS kids, my first thought was, "Why don't we just make the men leave and let the women and children stay?" Not exactly an original thought but hey, it was new for me. Then this thing in Austria came along and I've hardly given Josef Fritzl, quaintly dubbed "Horror Dad" by the British media (I love those guys), a second thought. I've seen his pic a few times on the Internet and what usually crosses my mind (after "No wonder he had to rape his own daughter, what other woman would have him?") is something like, "That poor deluded psychotic. Somebody please lock him up before he hurts himself or anyone else" and then I'm right back with Elisabeth and her kids. How are they feeling? What do they need? Do they know there's a whole country, hell, half a planet, cheering for them and wishing them well right now? And is there anything I can do to help? (Not really, no. But I always want to help.)
This Means Something, Roger. I'm not sure what, though. Maybe all those trips through the A.A. Big Book are starting to sink in. Or maybe it's the Heart Sutra. Well, probably not that second thing. I'm kind of a Buddhist Catholic; "The Sutras? Oh, yeah, I've heard those are good books." It's just a little scary, though, because if my first immediate thought isn't to strangle the perpetrator, I might start to, I dunno, develop some compassion for these human monsters that were once five-year-old children who laughed and played with puppies before something went so drastically wrong and turned them into the creatures they are now. If that happens, I might have to acknowledge the vast complexity of the natural world and how useless all our dualities of "yes" and "no" and "truth" and "falsehood" and "good" and "evil" actually are. And if that happens (yes, I'm almost done here), A. I'll be displaying some signs of maturity and B. I might have to start having compassion not only for the human monsters in my own life, but (Buddha forbid!) for my own stupid self. I mean, yikes. What's a person to make of that sort of thing?
Meters swum today: Nada. Going back tomorrow.
Look, sorry to be such a downer, but between the FLDS kids and Elisabeth Fritzl I'm having nightmares. What's weird, though, is for once in my life I don't feel like driving over to Eldorado (or flying over to Austria, which is just across the street from downtown Dallas) and beating the snot out of one of these men. In times past that'd be my first reaction. "He did what?! To his own daughter?! I'll *&^*%!! kill him!!" Then the more rational part of my brain would remind me that spending the next twenty years in jail wasn't my idea of a good time and I'd settle for ranting at whatever co-worker or family member was unlucky enough to be closest about how effed up is our culture that it can churn out monsters like this and maybe these bastards just need to spend twenty-four years locked in someone else's cellar with a couple of armed sadistic rapists so they can Understand What It's Like. (Not that I have Issues. Certainly not.)
That's not happening this time around, though. With the FLDS kids, my first thought was, "Why don't we just make the men leave and let the women and children stay?" Not exactly an original thought but hey, it was new for me. Then this thing in Austria came along and I've hardly given Josef Fritzl, quaintly dubbed "Horror Dad" by the British media (I love those guys), a second thought. I've seen his pic a few times on the Internet and what usually crosses my mind (after "No wonder he had to rape his own daughter, what other woman would have him?") is something like, "That poor deluded psychotic. Somebody please lock him up before he hurts himself or anyone else" and then I'm right back with Elisabeth and her kids. How are they feeling? What do they need? Do they know there's a whole country, hell, half a planet, cheering for them and wishing them well right now? And is there anything I can do to help? (Not really, no. But I always want to help.)
This Means Something, Roger. I'm not sure what, though. Maybe all those trips through the A.A. Big Book are starting to sink in. Or maybe it's the Heart Sutra. Well, probably not that second thing. I'm kind of a Buddhist Catholic; "The Sutras? Oh, yeah, I've heard those are good books." It's just a little scary, though, because if my first immediate thought isn't to strangle the perpetrator, I might start to, I dunno, develop some compassion for these human monsters that were once five-year-old children who laughed and played with puppies before something went so drastically wrong and turned them into the creatures they are now. If that happens, I might have to acknowledge the vast complexity of the natural world and how useless all our dualities of "yes" and "no" and "truth" and "falsehood" and "good" and "evil" actually are. And if that happens (yes, I'm almost done here), A. I'll be displaying some signs of maturity and B. I might have to start having compassion not only for the human monsters in my own life, but (Buddha forbid!) for my own stupid self. I mean, yikes. What's a person to make of that sort of thing?
Wednesday, April 30, 2008
Since Elisabeth Fritzl Last Saw Daylight...
...Mikhail Gorbachev became the Soviet premier and ushered in glastnost. (1985)
...the space shuttle Challenger blew up. (1986)
...I graduated from high school. (1987)
...Salman Rushdie published The Satanic Verses, and certain Islamic clerics put out a contract on his life. (1988)
...the Berlin Wall fell, and Prince William Sound was covered with oil after the Exxon ship Valdez ran aground. (1989)
...Nelson Mandela was released from prison after 27 years (three more than Elisabeth). (1990)
...apartheid finally ended in South Africa. (1991)
...the civil war in El Salvador, which dragged on for eight years and killed over a million people, most of them civilians, was formally brought to a close with a pact signed in Mexico City. (1992)
...the "don't ask, don't tell" policy went into effect in the United States military. (1993)
...figure skater Nancy Kerrigan was attacked by rival Tonya Harding's ex-husband shortly before the Lillehammer Olympics (1994).
...O.J. Simpson was acquitted of killing his ex-wife Nicole Brown and her friend Ron Goldman. (1995)
...Theodore Kaczynski, the "Unabomber," was turned in by his brother. (1996)
...Princess Diana died in a car accident. (1997)
...President Clinton denied having sexual relations with "that woman, Miss Lewinsky." (1998)
...Two teenagers killed 15 students and wounded 23 others at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado. (1999)
...Elian Gonzalez returned to Cuba after eight months in the United States. (2000)
...9/11 happened. (2001)
...Jimmy Carter was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his charity, Habitat for Humanity. (2002)
...Johnny Cash died at the age of 71. (2003)
...Photographs of abused prisoners at Abu Ghirab ignited a scandal for the U.S. military. In another inexplicable turn, George W. Bush was re-elected President. (2004)
...Pope John Paul II died after an amazing 26-year reign, and Hurricane Katrina, with the help of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, destroyed much of New Orleans. (2005)
...Pluto was demoted to non-planetary status. (2006)
...the seventh and final Harry Potter book was released. (2007)
Sorry, guys. I'm still trying to wrap my mind around it.
...
A candle for Elisabeth
Leaves raked yesterday: Billions.
Playing on the iPod: Something from season III of "Doctor Who", sounds like maybe space rhinos on the moon
I dunno about you, but my parents never threatened to lock me in the cellar. We didn't have a cellar, for one thing. We had a crawlspace under a pier and beam foundation and it was plenty scary (think "attic" with more spiders) but to my knowledge it didn't lock. It had a low ceiling, probably no more than four feet, hence the term "crawlspace." It was also really, really unpleasant. I think most cellars/crawlspaces inherently are. There's something about humans where we just don't wanna be underground if we can help it. Certainly I spent as little time in there as possible.
So imagine, then, spending twenty four years in a cellar. Consider giving birth to children there, alone and unattended, and trying to raise them in the dark, by yourself. Imagine what it would be like to try to explain what the sun was to kids who'd never seen it. Think about what you'd do if you never knew what would happen when the door opened. Would the guy on the other side, who just incidentally is your own father, bring you food? Would he rape you again? Would he take one of your children to live upstairs, if it didn't cry too much? Suppose the guy went on vacation to Thailand and, I dunno, got killed in a plane crash. He's the only one who knows you're down there. You and your children, which are his children, will starve to death if he doesn't come back. What's more, there's no reason any of this is happening. You didn't do anything wrong, except turn eighteen and try to leave the house.
Look, I imagine stuff for a living (or I'd like to anyway) and I cannot, I mean it, I cannot get my mind around this. I could sort of imagine growing up in a polygamous family when that scandal broke because I served some time in Utah as a kid. No, most people in Utah are not polygamists, but they were around, you knew who they were, usually the kids who were dirt-poor and had a lot of "aunts" at home and dropped out of school in the eighth grade. But this--this is just beyond me. This is cruelty on a level I just can't fathom. My brain keeps going crinkle.
Leaving aside the sick dude who did all this (and apparently had planned it for years, undertaking elaborate construction of the soundproof underground cell with its electronic keyless entry in his spare time and without his wife and other kids finding out about it), what happens now to this poor kid, Elisabeth Fritzl? And her kids? She's 42. Her oldest kid is 23 and the youngest about 5. The Austrian authorities took her straight from the cellar to a "place of psychiatric care," whatever that means, and she and the kids are "all together" and "doing well under the circumstances." I dunno about you, but I don't think a locked cellar vs. a locked psychiatric unit is much of a trade. Well, maybe it's not locked. I hope it's not locked.
I wrote an e-mail to my ex-shrink to ask him his professional opinion but he hasn't gotten back to me yet. You hear these stories of "feral children" who were confined in similar crazy ways and grew up without human contact. Usually they don't do too well "re-integrating with society", whatever that means. Can they be happy, though? Can they have friends? Enjoy new food, walk outside in the wet grass and be pleased at the splendor of the world? I mean, if they can do that, who cares if they ever get a Fortune 500 job or drive a BMW or even learn to talk?
Elisabeth was 18 when she went in there. She had a life before. Her kids may have grown up in the dark, but they had her and they had each other. So does that mean this story will end happily? Again, forget the sick dude who's certainly going to jail for some period of time; a happy ending for Elisabeth and her kids, that's what I'm talking about. See above re: wet grass.
No, I don't know why this has upset me so much. I don't know why it's giving me nightmares. I don't know why I can't just look at the story, shrug my shoulders, say "Oh my God" or something equally useless, and just go on with my day. I don't know why, but I can't. I think about it all the time. I wanna run out there (to Austria, just across the pond from Dallas, you know) and give everybody hugs and make it all better. A friend of mine told me a story about how on 9/11 she was watching TV and crying, and her four-year-old daughter came up and asked her what was wrong. Mom said, "Something terrible has happened. A lot of people have died. It's a very sad day." The four year old said, "I'm a big girl, Mommy. I can fix it." Yep, that's about my level of perspective here.
The people of the town where all this happened held a candlelight vigil for Elisabeth and her kids, one of whom, the 19-year-old, is in the hospital in critical condition. Candlelight vigils in Dallas being kind of rare, I'm going to light a virtual candle for Elisabeth.
Playing on the iPod: Something from season III of "Doctor Who", sounds like maybe space rhinos on the moon
I dunno about you, but my parents never threatened to lock me in the cellar. We didn't have a cellar, for one thing. We had a crawlspace under a pier and beam foundation and it was plenty scary (think "attic" with more spiders) but to my knowledge it didn't lock. It had a low ceiling, probably no more than four feet, hence the term "crawlspace." It was also really, really unpleasant. I think most cellars/crawlspaces inherently are. There's something about humans where we just don't wanna be underground if we can help it. Certainly I spent as little time in there as possible.
So imagine, then, spending twenty four years in a cellar. Consider giving birth to children there, alone and unattended, and trying to raise them in the dark, by yourself. Imagine what it would be like to try to explain what the sun was to kids who'd never seen it. Think about what you'd do if you never knew what would happen when the door opened. Would the guy on the other side, who just incidentally is your own father, bring you food? Would he rape you again? Would he take one of your children to live upstairs, if it didn't cry too much? Suppose the guy went on vacation to Thailand and, I dunno, got killed in a plane crash. He's the only one who knows you're down there. You and your children, which are his children, will starve to death if he doesn't come back. What's more, there's no reason any of this is happening. You didn't do anything wrong, except turn eighteen and try to leave the house.
Look, I imagine stuff for a living (or I'd like to anyway) and I cannot, I mean it, I cannot get my mind around this. I could sort of imagine growing up in a polygamous family when that scandal broke because I served some time in Utah as a kid. No, most people in Utah are not polygamists, but they were around, you knew who they were, usually the kids who were dirt-poor and had a lot of "aunts" at home and dropped out of school in the eighth grade. But this--this is just beyond me. This is cruelty on a level I just can't fathom. My brain keeps going crinkle.
Leaving aside the sick dude who did all this (and apparently had planned it for years, undertaking elaborate construction of the soundproof underground cell with its electronic keyless entry in his spare time and without his wife and other kids finding out about it), what happens now to this poor kid, Elisabeth Fritzl? And her kids? She's 42. Her oldest kid is 23 and the youngest about 5. The Austrian authorities took her straight from the cellar to a "place of psychiatric care," whatever that means, and she and the kids are "all together" and "doing well under the circumstances." I dunno about you, but I don't think a locked cellar vs. a locked psychiatric unit is much of a trade. Well, maybe it's not locked. I hope it's not locked.
I wrote an e-mail to my ex-shrink to ask him his professional opinion but he hasn't gotten back to me yet. You hear these stories of "feral children" who were confined in similar crazy ways and grew up without human contact. Usually they don't do too well "re-integrating with society", whatever that means. Can they be happy, though? Can they have friends? Enjoy new food, walk outside in the wet grass and be pleased at the splendor of the world? I mean, if they can do that, who cares if they ever get a Fortune 500 job or drive a BMW or even learn to talk?
Elisabeth was 18 when she went in there. She had a life before. Her kids may have grown up in the dark, but they had her and they had each other. So does that mean this story will end happily? Again, forget the sick dude who's certainly going to jail for some period of time; a happy ending for Elisabeth and her kids, that's what I'm talking about. See above re: wet grass.
No, I don't know why this has upset me so much. I don't know why it's giving me nightmares. I don't know why I can't just look at the story, shrug my shoulders, say "Oh my God" or something equally useless, and just go on with my day. I don't know why, but I can't. I think about it all the time. I wanna run out there (to Austria, just across the pond from Dallas, you know) and give everybody hugs and make it all better. A friend of mine told me a story about how on 9/11 she was watching TV and crying, and her four-year-old daughter came up and asked her what was wrong. Mom said, "Something terrible has happened. A lot of people have died. It's a very sad day." The four year old said, "I'm a big girl, Mommy. I can fix it." Yep, that's about my level of perspective here.
The people of the town where all this happened held a candlelight vigil for Elisabeth and her kids, one of whom, the 19-year-old, is in the hospital in critical condition. Candlelight vigils in Dallas being kind of rare, I'm going to light a virtual candle for Elisabeth.
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