Life's short

Warning: Musings follow, and all I can promise that that they are in complete sentences, nothing more fancy....

From the New York Post: January 9, 2002 -- A 1-year-old Westchester girl, nestled in bed with her parents at 4 p.m. watching a Winnie the Pooh video, was killed by a stray bullet fired by a man in a nearby building who was using a street sign for target practice, police said yesterday.

http://www.nypost.com/seven/01092002/news/regionalnews/38555.htm

Hearing about this story made me think hard.

About whether it's a good idea to avoid eating tasty yet fatty foods.

About when the last time I called my sister was.

About why we celebrate someone's 75th birthday.

About why the deaths in the World Trade Center galvanized a nation, but the many traffic deaths in the U.S. this year go completely unremarked.

About why the people who have the least to lose are the ones who are such desperate gamblers.

This point's worth mulling. I don't think that it's always because these people want to win big -- they're not just looking for the next big score.

I think it works on another, more realistic, level: People who gamble want to suffer directly the consequences their own actions instead of having ill befall them because of the random vagaries of uncontrollable fate.

Bad things, we know, happen to good and bad people all the time, some people more often than others. Sometimes, it feels better to have your life go bad because of your own bad choices, than because of factors over which you have no control.

There's no satisfaction in cursing God for causing bad, because we know we can't change him. If we do bad to ourselves, at least there's hope that we can change ourselves.

Here's pictures from Africa. You may notice there are no captions -- feel free to make up your own.

http://homepage.mac.com/supersusie/

Last, I am doing a survey. Please share with me, without telling me who does it, an odd personal habit that you or a friend or loved one does. I will list them for the amusement of all, without crediting who does them. Let me give you a few examples:

1) I have a friend who ... brushes his teeth while he drives around in his car.

2) I have a friend who ... took a 7 week course and built a complete, perfect mandolin, but has no idea how to play the instrument.

3) I have a friend who ... thinks Josh Hartnett is the next Lawrence Olivier.

4) I have a friend who ... applied and was accepted to Clown College, but then decided to join the U.S. Reserves instead.

5) I have a friend who ... INSERT YOUR FRIEND'S QUIRK HERE.

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