Elliot Rodger…All That’s Left is “Why”?

This is another one of my short rants. We’ve got a director blaming the NRA for the deaths of innocent people. Evidently he doesn’t know squat. Elliot Rodger was mentally ill. He needed help. His parents tried to get him that help. Had the Santa Monica Police Department seen the warning signs of trouble in his videos, MAYBE they could have gotten him committed to a psychiatric facility for at least 45 days. Had they done that, 8 people might be alive today. THAT is the bottom line of it. In my opinion, mental illness doesn’t excuse an action or make it right, but it does help explain the “why” of it to a degree.

Now I want to know what also figures into this “why”? Was this guy bullied all his life or something? THAT is the vibe I got off of watching some of the videos. He doesn’t really come out and say it, though. The reason I say this is that a lot of shooters seemed to have experienced school bullying. THIS is one thing I personally would like for the public to know. Hopefully one day all the families, including Rodger’s, will have the answer to that “Why?”

However the political “blame game” is not going to cut it this time. People need to quit using others’ tragedy to earn brownie points or to get people to take a look at their work and that is what the director that made the NRA comment is doing. That’s right. I’m calling him out.  He’s using a colleague’s tragedy to make a name for himself. They don’t need to use it to further politics either. People are sick of that tactic already, and before anyone starts complaining and moaning, I don’t own a gun myself. I never have. I probably never will because I don’t need one. However, I do support the right of law-abiding citizens to own one.

 

Why On Earth is This Tolerated?

I have written much about bullying, but feel compelled to address what is turning into a severe problem nation wide.  A growing number of elderly and disabled people are being attacked. Why? Because criminals view them as easy targets. I don’t want to hear about teenagers making mistakes when I’m reading about elderly people having to have plastic surgery because their facial injuries so severe.

I don’t want to hear about how people make mistakes. To deliberately target those who are least able to help themselves, to me, is a hate crime. I don’t care what race the perpetrator is. I don’t care what race the victim is. Our elderly and disabled deserve better treatment than what is being given by our justice system, so HERE is what I propose:

I propose that anyone found guilty of assaulting an elderly and/or person with a disability which results in serious bodily harm should have to serve a 25 year sentence, flat-time and no parole, in a federal correctional facility.

There. You have my Monday rant. I am so sick of reading these stories, and many of these victims get critically injured.  This is some serious stuff people.  I personally think that 25 years flat time in GP is plenty of time to rethink one’s actions in a case like this.

I have an aunt who was murdered–after being severely beaten. So if you think I’m over-reacting, just pray this doesn’t happen in your family. Why is this even tolerated in this country? That is all I’m saying about this crap.

Food for Thought: Don’t Go on YouTube if You’re a Dumb Twit!–Nana’s on a Roll!

Good morning everyone! Now that I have gotten your attention I want to say a few things before you view this video that Carly Taylor posted on YouTube.  First off, she is a con artist. Secondly, she is racist.   This video is  full of foul-language but I used it for a training tool.  I even called Dunkin’ Donuts corporate over this and demanded they do something about this woman because what she is doing in the process of breaking a few federal laws is scamming for a free meal.  I say she is scamming because she waited for the next shift to show up with a video camera to harass what appears to be a minor (Needi) at work.

Not only did she make terroristic threats toward the staff, she also videotaped customers and staff without getting a SIGNED release prior to posting to YouTube. If she has a business degree, as she claims, she truly needs a refund because she got short-changed and her lawyer (if she didn’t lie about having one) should be disbarred for not telling her to STHU and leave the video camera at home.  Anyone who appears on that video can sue her and that is one of the reasons Dunkin’ Donuts needs to file an injunction against her since she had no permission to be video taping in their establishment.  Most journalists won’t even do this crap unless they are investigating ILLEGAL activity in order to expose it.

She wouldn’t have lasted 20 seconds in my store. I promise you all that she would have been escorted out in handcuffs within 60 seconds.  This is what SHOULD have happened:

1. Management should have been present. If they were, it wasn’t indicated.

2. Management should have directed her and warned her that she would have to leave if she didn’t turn off the camera.

3. I would have stated on camera, you do not have permission to use my image or that of any other employee on any public forum. Please turn off the video camera and we will get your meal.

4. If she refused, I would not have spoken further given the fact that she was belligerent and making threats, I would have gotten her locked up.  As I said she violated several federal laws here–one of which was to make a terroristic threat toward staff and NO establishment should EVER tolerate such abuse.

5. Corporations need to give all staff training for these situations and the authority to take action when this is taking place in case management is occupied with vendors and such.  The remedy for such issues should not be limited solely to management staff. Any employee should be able to kick such people out of the establishment. It is common sense.

Here is the link to the video (Warning: Again, this video does contain foul-language!) :

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u7UElWxqGIs

If there is one thing Nana hates, it is racism. If Needi (the employee threatened) was a minor, I hope her parents also filed charges.  To me Ms. Chapman is nothing more than a con artist trying to get her 15 minutes of fame, but if you read the comments under her video, it obviously backfired on her, and rightfully so.

Here is another link about this to look at.  It’s a pretty good article too for coming from “The Smoking Gun”…

http://www.thesmokinggun.com/buster/viral-video/polite-dunkin-donuts-worker-768402

I was so angry when I saw this that I used this video to train staff on how to handle this situation.

Remembering the Monster (Part II)

It is  funny how when a child goes through abuse in the home, they feel that they did something wrong, or they said something to piss the abusive parent off.  However sometimes the abuser reveals the real reason for singling out the child. It is a lesson I know very well because it was taught to my abuser as well.

I am referring to my late stepmother.  As cruel as she was and as evil as she could be, I learned some lessons about her that did enable me to forgive what she did.  Does that mean that from time to time the shadows don’t try to creep up and remind me through nightmares and such? Absolutely not.

I remember well how I slept with the lights on after she killed herself with that same pistol she waived at my head–and sometimes she went further–she would actually put the barrel to my head, and I can remember how cold it felt to this day.  Often she revealed my existence as her reasoning behind her resentment of my presence in the family. The bottom line is, I stood up to her once I got older.

I find it also funny that when growing up, one thinks this is actually normal crap to deal with day after day.  Once she took her own life, and the shock of her death subsided, along with my self-loathing thinking it was my fault she did it, I began to get around ‘normal families“…You know–the ones where both parents didn’t fight and they actually had meals together at the table like we did before my parents split?

However, back to my point…She would tell me things her mother said to her such as, “…I don’t want you and I never did!”   Then she told me a story about how her two step sisters died in a fire that she believed her stepfather started. I wasn’t sure what to make of this story until I read it myself, but she was adamant that her stepfather set the fire.

I had a horrible tendency to turn my anger inward during and after those years. I remember hearing those negative voices when my stepmother committed suicide–and they were very “loud”, if you know what I mean. I kept hearing, “You should have done this!” or “IF you had done X then Y wouldn’t have happened.”  The bottom line is that there was nothing I did to cause it being that I was only around 14 and nothing could change it.  I had to work my way through that process of grief and self-loathing.

My dad was a total basket case, so I had to help arrange the funeral and pick the casket, as well as the dress to bury her in. THAT was the hardest part of that whole thing–having to help arrange it at 14. I am glad my sister and sister-in-law were around to help keep my head on track, and they did help me to handle this.  To this day I have an aversion to going into funeral homes even though I make myself do it. All it takes is the smell of the flowers or the sight of a black suit to send me straight back to 1978. I don’t know why but that triggers those memories in a huge way. I find it ironic that I knew more about her childhood–her parents names and such than my father did. I also knew that she had three sons taken from her in Red Bluff, CA in the 1970’s so if anyone is looking to find her, then contact me via email.

I struggled with trying to find reasons for what happened, and trying to make “sense” of it, but there is no “sense” when it comes to something like that or any unexpected loss, I think. There was also that voice that kept saying, “What if I had done ____ differently? Would it change a thing?”  I didn’t have a sounding board to take my frustrations out on so I turned to pen and paper, which was all I had at the time–aside from an imagination that when my pen flowed freely, the counselors became concerned.  I also struggled with the fact that there came a day when I fully realized that what went on in our household was NOT normal by any stretch of the imagination.

Then came the day I had to forgive her and then myself.  I realized that I both loved her and hated what she did, but realizing that she was not in control of her actions enabled me to forgive her and begin to rebuild from another starting point. I also had to forgive a few others in this process. When I say I had to “rebuild from another starting point” I am referring to the fact that after any traumatic event we can never fully be the person we once were.  We have to debrief ourselves a bit and then start reprogramming from that point, I think.

Living with her mental illnesses was one thing, but her behaviors also taught me how “NOT” to be a stepmother.  It also turned me off of the idea of internet dating and such because she WAS a mail order bride.  Anyone can put on any image they want to present themselves to be, but you never know what they are until you are with them.

I choose to play it “safe” and avoid that trap, hence the reason I don’t connect with anyone to go out with from the internet.  I have my friends I hang out with.  If I go out with anyone it will be with NO ONE that I meet on the web.

Does this mean I am lonely? No. I am alone but I don’t get lonely.  I have things to do and places to go and since I spent half of my life married, I’m in no rush. I am certainly NOT desperate either. Being single does not mean that my life is broken.

Now I want to say something else here.  I read Cinderella as a  child…I watched the version of it with Lesley Ann Warren and loved it.  As I got older, as in my late teens, I began to realize how much truth in  “Fairy Tales” really existed.  Her friends were mice–AT LEAST in the Disney version. My friend was a mouse named Brutus. There is also truth in the fiction between us all.  My fiction was that I was a princess or an angel in waiting…When I grew up, I realized that I am a statistic…A number…One of the many who fell through the cracks, but made my own way back out of them.

In fact, I think the song “Luka” fits more accurately–even though I’m not a boy.  After all, Suzanne Vega was right…She only hit until I cried. I sure as hell didn’t ask why when she went on these rampages either.

Many of these fairy tales were written with happy endings, but in life, would they have been happy? We may never know.   Look at “Sleeping Beauty“…The queen was pissed because she wasn’t invited to the Christening.  The only thing that woke Aurora’s ass up was her true love’s kiss.  What rubbish.  All of these fairy tales have the sabotage of the memes we were taught running rampantly through them.  The main theme being “Good prevails over evil”….Does it?   Or, do we simply hope for the best, block out the worst and drive on hoping the next day will be better than the one before?

Either way I drew more inspiration for my writing from “Dark Shadows” than I ever would any of these “fairy tales”.  I also drew from a movie called “Paperhouse” and ‘another one called “Spirit of the Beehive“. Perhaps it is because in the eyes of the child I once was, Barnabas (from “Dark Shadows”) could not help what he was and that enabled me to empathize with his fictional pain.  In my opinion, he was bullied too.

Unusual Truth–Nana

You have beaten me yet I do smile

You have berated me but I still laugh

You have misjudged me and I have survived

You have bound me but never have found me

You have misused me yet I have prevailed

You have discarded me-the stone left unturned.

 

 

The Bullying Issue…AGAIN

Alright, this is for those who have read my past blogs on bullying.  I have now come up with some ideas on how to resolve a lot of this, and it came to me when I found out a friend’s daughter was getting bullied and the school switched her classes without telling anyone.

First, in TX, that is NOT supposed to happen. Parents are supposed to be notified prior to schedule changes–esp. mid semester.

For one:  All schools should be required to report any bullying incident to the parent(s) of all parties involved within an hour of becoming aware of it.  That way the PARENTS can actually be involved in addressing the issue.

Two: NO VICTIM should ever have the same classes, lunch break or any extra curricular activity with the bully. Putting the victim in a class with the person who abused them is akin to putting a rape victim in the same room with his/her attacker. It is psychologically devastating and it is abusive of schools to do this to a child who has been bullied.

Three: IT should always be up to the parent(s) of the victim(s) whether or not to file charges–NOT THE DISTRICT. It is their child getting hurt.

Four: Bullies should not be allowed to ride the school buses. Make their parents responsible for their child’s transportation.  Bullies tend to act out on a bus a lot.

Five:  every state should add sections with protections like those mentioned above. At least it’s a start…

Given the fact that many of the public schools now feel like prisons to the victims, I say an extension of the PREA (Prison Rape Elimination Act) should be expanded to include a rule that public school personnel who fail to tell parents and take measures to protect the victim should be held liable–especially if they fail to report the incident. If that incident is a sexual assault of some type they should be required to tell not only the parents but the police themselves.   Even if it is not a rape, but molestation of some type, it is still a crime punishable under the law. However many districts choose to sweep this under the rug–unless it’s an adult doing this to a child.

If steps like these are not taken soon, then it is children who are victims of violence and emotional abuse that are being silenced and then left behind. Think about that. This being said, I feel that aggravated suicide must be made a punishable crime in all 50 states.

The student population has a growing number of children from gang families coming into the school systems. Many of those have family members that are incarcerated and have learned their violent behaviors at home. You also have “average kids” who bully because they are abused at home.  These things must be addressed in order to make a safe learning environment for all children. Any district failing to enact measures to protect these children should be subject to loss of federal funding also.

This bullying which leads to violence, death and aggravated suicide must stop and it must stop now.