This weather...is novel-writing weather...all I need, is some tea and chocolate biscuits. ..if...I were English... What's the American equivalent? A cup of coffee and a...hamburger? I don't know. I feel so primitive compared to them. 😬
Should I feel bad that while I am typing away in bed, my boyfriend has to cover his head with his sheet so as to block out the light from my computer screen? Eh. He'll thank me when my book hits the bestseller list. You're welcome! heh.
As I sit here literally in the middle of one of the United States' last franchises of bookstores, I wonder. How much longer will these walls stand, and how much more will the internet, the ultimate nemesis of bookstores and printed books everywhere, (without much effort really), continue to take from an author's fantasy? Or at least, this author's fantasy? (Did she just call herself an author? Excuse me. Writer.)
How can a pressed stack of pieces of paper, transformed by the colorful or colorless cover of a crisp, unruffled miniature masterpiece COMPETE with a sleek, lightweight, backlit, "I only have to scroll through one screen" ("and don't have to bother flipping-through-a-hundred-pages") electronic device?? Well, IMO, it can't.
The simple pleasure of holding in my hand this bundle of wondrous wordkeepers, the glee in breathing in the new (or old) paper pages, that brief moment a reader can relate to a blind person as he or she runs his or her hand along the textured cover, twice over with their thumb...how can an "e" book compare?
Oh, you kids and your technology today! Nothing will ever compare to a printed book. Nothing can compete with the mystical, if not magical feeling of slowly pacing up and down the aisles of mahogany-colored bookshelves, holding your breath as the gods unveil to you your next fantastic discovery. Carefully eyeing and admiring the stacks of novels printed especially for you. Or if not for you, then, for the person standing next to you. You know, the one that wants to shove you over because you're standing in their way, and all they want to do is freakin' snatch the book in front of you, but they can't because you're freakin' in the way. And you know this so you diabolically smile to yourself and stand there a few seconds longer. I don't do that...I'm not saying others do, but I don't. Muahaha. No really, I don't.
I myself can remember the days I'd wander along the aisles, stopping at all the books that caught my eye. Hurriedly turning to the back cover to ravenously scan over the words that form a detailed or vague summary--either way, I knew every book was a gamble. Hit or miss, I guess.
As I type these light, hope-driven words, I am weighed down by the possibility that people of the future may not find the value in a printed book. Convenience is so appealing and right at their fingertips. You wanna read Stephen King's latest novel? Bam! I purchased a digital copy and am reading it now. Technology seems to be replacing more simplistic items in a busy parent's daily routine, such as turning on a Learn Your ABCs with Elmo video for your kids instead of reading them a Sesame Street book, or handing them your SmartPhone and let them YouTube away...
However, during my 9-month "stead" at Barnes and Noble in the Irvine Spectrum, I learned something. If anyone is going to save the book publishing industry, it is going to be: kids. I can't tell you how many children's books I rang up customer after customer. Big bucks on these colorful pages of wonder, mystery, and adventure. Not only picture books, but young readers and young adult readers, too. Harry Potter, The Land of Stories series, the Diary of a Wimpy Kid series, Junie B. Jones, The Magic Tree House, oh, and the Percy Jackson/Heroes of Olympus series. Kids went NUTS over when the new Percy Jackson book was going to be released. Greek mythology is still cool! Woohoo!!
The enthusiasm I saw in these kids' eyes, coming up to me as I organized one of many very cluttered bookshelves in the children's department, asking me, "Do you guys have the 7th one yet?? Do you know when you'll have it??" Their parents even gently nudging them to pre-order a book. It gave me hope that books in print might not be dead after all. So get this, not only are our children our hope for the future of the Earth, they're our hope for the future of real live bookstores, too! ::raises the roof:: Oh, sorry. I went to high school when that was a thing.
And...bringing it back to my point at hand, I don't find anything wrong with E-books. I was only teasing. They're slim and convenient. I get it. And they probably don't take away from the enjoyment or pleasure of reading the book. I guess I prefer the old-fashioned way. Online newspaper articles, online books, online magazines. Damn you, internet! Stop making everything so dang accessible!
My only hope, is that my book will hit the bookshelves long before they tear down the houses in which they reign.
Take away my beloved Crown, Super Crown and then the Barnes and Noble at the Cerritos Town Center, you did. Dare you try and take away the rest? Did I hear, sit-in? Protest? Oh, sorry, I forgot. It's not the 60s. And who do you think taught me that? A book, or the internet. You're both wrong! I learned it from a movie!
I think I am getting delirious now, so, alas, I will shut my "mouth", stop blinding my sleeping boyfriend with my laptop screen, and go to bed. Night!
Shame on me for thinking you carried shame with you. Now, I am ashamed for bringing shame upon the thought of you, bent over, back in pain, shins so bloated from the water that remains. Quarters for tips, ingratitude crossing their lips, out, and into the air. Fierce, their stare. They’re impatient, and to them, the fault is yours.
Shame on me for thinking you didn’t know you did what you had to do. Cruel was I to believe you were ashamed, too. I stripped you of your dignity, every tear I cried for you--the memory of handling their luggage, I could sue them for any humiliation they brought to you. No, I was never ashamed of you. But I didn’t know...neither were you.
Shame on me for not believing in you, in your strength, in your dignity, in your ability to overlook all the bad around you, and recognize and thrive upon that which was good. Shame on me for not realizing you had been in this place before. You weren’t accepting defeat. They couldn’t take anything from you anymore.
Why didn’t I see it? Why do my eyes still cry? Thinking of you, a baggage handler. A skycap. You were an angel in disguise. I shamed you by thinking you took shame in what you did. For shame, for shame, I am to blame, burdening myself with an image, a label--for those times, I forgot your name.
I cluttered up your memory. I mourned over your ankles, swollen up every day, after a graveyard shift you had been thankful to have...a job...any job. And I dared to rob you of that source of pride--no matter how little its profits.
I’m sorry, dad. I’ve failed you. I complained of your demotion until my face turned blue. I’ve been so angry and built up so much hate. I resent whomever assigned you to that fate. A successful business gone south, I’m sure some can relate. And I’ve cursed those two men who stabbed you in the back and took your deal. Your trusting heart is something they could never understand or feel.
And though you lost that mansion you built in the hills of Palos Verdes Estates, it will hold no candle to the one in which you now stay.
I forgot how high you held your head. How could I forget you moved with grace and with purpose. Forget all those schmucks who hold little importance. Who won’t ever know the true value of life. Or that love will never come at a price. So no matter how little, or much that you make, you are deeply loved...and love you cannot take.
I will carry on your legacy, be it a crown or a chef’s hat I wear on my head. I will not hold shame in my heart, it’ll only turn me dead. I’ll remember your beauty in every smile with us you graced. I won’t let them take the good memories of you away from me, and cloud them with sorrow and pain.
Lastly, shame on me for seeing an act of misfortune, and not recognizing the act of pure love. That’s what drove you on, daddy, wasn’t it? Love. Screw the money, the fancy suits, the shiny cars. You had love. You HAVE love. And even though you were sick, you would keep working for that love til the day you died. Yes, dad, I did cry. I do cry. But it hurts a little less knowing you knew you had a purpose. You knew where it was all headed. You knew God’s plan was falling into place. You would love us til the day that you died. And you showed us this, your ankles were swollen with pride. I will not be shamed. I will not let you be shamed.
You wear a halo now, glowing and beaming with love. Badge of honor, you need not. Your halo says it all.
Guns don't kill people. People kill people. And in order to do THAT, they take those guns that don't kill people and kill people with them.
Gun violence is an epidemic. It is like a disease, and it's been around for decades. But I fear it is getting worst. We have allowed it to grow and to thrive. How many shootings have there been in U.S. the last couple of years?
President Obama recently said that Congress won't even allow the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to study gun control because Congress doesn't want people to think they are trying to impede upon their 2nd Amendment Rights, which have never been taken LITERALLY.
The Second Amendment states: “A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.”
Ok, I get it. You're law-abiding, gun-bearing Americans--you're the Militia. Which makes…terrorists the enemy? Ok. And apparently because the Second Amendment gives citizens the “right to bear arms”, in the event of a war, it seems that we need to make sure our MILITIA is properly equipped.
Is that what you are trying to tell me? Are you also saying it refers to the war you face on a nightly basis, handgun resting on your nightstand fully loaded, in case a robber strolls through?
It is so easy to immediately hone in on “the right to bear arms”, but there was more to the 2nd Amendment than that. Not only that, but it was written in an entirely different time.
I understand you want to hold on to your guns and you have every right to do so. But I want to protect my right to be free from the fear that my next door neighbor, whose background check came up squeaky clean, doesn’t go crazy and go on a shooting rampage killing ten of my neighbors. I want to protect my right to be free from worrying if the guy coming towards me with the malignant look in his eye isn’t packing.
I guess it is an unfair question. The government can’t protect me from being the victim of gun violence any more than it can protect me from being the victim of rape, burglary, or murder.
But the ease with which these men/women were able to purchase guns is frightening.
President Obama also stated that during his term in office, the ownership of guns had been the highest in YEARS. He attested this was due to the fact that Congress is so SCARED gun-owners will blow a lid and cling to their weapons in fear further restrictions would be placed on them. Even if Obama wanted to TRY and make this country a safer place by imposing stricter gun laws and more in-depth background checks, would you even let him? No, they cannot be touched.
Do you cling to your guns simply to defend your right to own them? Is it all about principle? Freedom? What? What is it? Please. Explain it to me. Because I don’t get it. I look at a gun and I see harm, death, destruction, a potential cause of mayhem. I don’t feel secure. I don’t feel better protected. The only reason why that guy breaking into your house right now has a gun is because gun advocates, the NRA, Congress allowed him to—directly or indirectly. Somewhere there was a loophole. Somehow the gun ended up in the wrong hand. You can’t tell me I should be less afraid of guns because the people who own them are responsible, law-abiding citizens who are here to protect those in danger. All I am thinking about is that gun sitting on my neighbor’s nightstand. The one who blew up at the summer block party last year over burnt asparagus. Yes, I am afraid of guns, and no, I don’t want to handle one. I don’t want to know what a handgun feels like. Shot gun, maybe. But only at a shooting range. Sorry. Was that hypocritical?
Anyway, my point is, people LOVE spouting the phrase, “Guns don’t kill people. People kill people.” Yes, with those guns, they kill people. Yes, a gun is an inanimate object that turns into a deadly sidekick quite easily. People use the rationale that guns don’t kill people because they wish to separate the right to own a gun from the possibility of that gun belonging to someone mentally unstable--in other words they are saying, oh i own the right to own a guy because I am perfectly sane. (I ask you, how many Americans are actually clinically diagnosed with a mental illness? Irony. We don’t know. Because we don’t know.) A perfectly sane person can turn a gun into a killing machine as easily as a person with questionable sanity. And how many children end up dead after shooting themselves because a gun was not properly stored? Dozens. It is ridiculous.
I’m not saying don’t go shoot a turkey or whatever it is you hunters like to stick bullets in. And I know so many are pissed at me for expressing my dissent for owning guns. When the war comes, we need our arms. But, we’re not in war, and if a homegrown terrorist did come and open fire wherever you may be, where the hell and how the hell did he get those guns in the first place? And if you say illegally, well, it ain’t that hard to get it LEGALLY either. Gun advocates made sure of that.
Do I sound mad? Are you offended by my tone? I am sorry if I am making you mad or irritated or if I am instigating you, but…do you really know the reason I am mad? Because so many people have died at the hands of a gunman. Little toddlers have shot themselves because the safety wasn’t on—hell, the owner of that gun didn’t even bother storing it away.
I am mad because people are dying because guns exist. No, guns are not the main cause of death, but they ARE a cause of death, and they are pretty much protected under law. I guess if the government can’t stop us from buying and dying from cigarettes, how can they stop us from buying and dying from guns? Go on. Keep your gun. Keep your principles. Your privilege as an American citizen.
All the while, the nation is suffering. Because mass shootings are on the rise in America. Make no mistake. If your immediate thought is, well, that’s why I have a gun to protect myself and my family when that happens. Are you even going to be near your weapon when something like that occurs? Are you walking around packing?
If Mike encountered one of his main enemies, Greg, on the streets of say…Compton, and Mike is filled with fury because Greg accidentally ran over his little brother eight months ago when he ran out into the street, and didn’t survive, Mike could easily reach into his jeans, bring out a gun, aim, and shoot Greg down like he’s been wanting to do for the past eight months. Once Greg sees Mike, however, reach for his gun, Greg reaches for his own and in less than a minute, both are lying on the concrete, dead, bodies riddled with bullets.
If Mike was not carrying a gun, even if Greg was, he wouldn’t have a gun to reach for. He could not aim and fire. Greg would not see the need to reach for his own gun. Or maybe Greg didn’t have a gun on him as well. Mike could perhaps give Greg a loathing look as he passed him, but at least the two men are still alive.
What we have to consider is this: how many are dead due to gun violence?
Let me rephrase that. How many deaths could have been prevented if stronger measures were taken to ensure guns were not a threat? None would have been prevented in that case because guns ARE a threat. I’m sorry, but they are. I don't need a gun. I don’t live in a movie, and not any time soon, is a war between two drug lords going to take place on my front lawn. But yes, I’ve lost family members because of guns.
Gun does not = Death. I get it. But unless our country is invaded by some other armed country, I feel safer in a world without guns. I don’t want to be pushed down some seedy alleyway, gun to my head. Other countries that ban guns have done beautifully. I know not every landscape and culture is the same and that we are the target of international agendas, so there are special precautions we must take. But it’s not like you can take a gun on a plane anyway.
The “right” to bear arms. It should not be called a “right”. If anything it is a privilege—one far too many people, namely malicious ones, take advantage of.