So, Who Are You?

I saw this posted by Grammarly  today on Twitter:

Considering I am a huge nerd, I found the question intriguing. I would love to know "who you are" based on the last book you read. It might say something about a person, right? Or it might not.

Personally, I started this summer with the works of who is becoming one of my favorite authors. Greg Froese introduced me to Cormac McCarthy a while back, and I dived into a couple of his novels this June, All the Pretty Horses and No Country for No Men. Based on those two reads I am might be John Grady Cole, the young cowboy protagonist of All the Pretty Horses. Not a bad guy to be, if you like horses and brunette daughters of hacienda owners. Well, unless you are not a fan of imprisonment in Mexican prison, corrupt officials, knife fights, and social bigotry. The good with the bad, right? I suppose I could be one of the three main characters from No Country for Old Men.  I would lean toward Ed Tom Bell, the Texas sheriff who is thrown into the turmoil of a drug massacre and the carnage that follows the disappearance of a briefcase full of cash. He is an honorable man, and he simply wants to do what is right in a world where that is becoming more and more difficult. It makes him question who he is and whether he belongs there anymore. I would choose Ed Tom over Llewelyn Moss, the welder who stumbles upon a drug deal gone bad while on an early morning hunt and ends up walking away with a briefcase of cash that would change his life, and the lives of every person close to him, is the most horrible ways. He is not a bad guy; he is actually incredibly likable. However, his decision made in a briefest of moments, was ignorant and at the same time, innocently naive. I definitely would not choose to be Chirgurh. He is an assassin, and, surprisingly, he is the most principled of any character in the novel. He lives by a simple code, that he must keep his word and complete his given task, and he lives up to that code with cold dedication. One could say that is truly honorable. But then there is the whole killing people with an air-powered piston or a shotgun fitted with a makeshift silencer. He is also pretty creepy.

This week, I took a step away from McCarthy, although I do hope to continue reading ""The Border Trilogy" this summer; All the Pretty Horses  is the first novel of the trilogy. I had to move away from McCarthy for a little while, despite how much I love what he writes. There is a long list of books I want and need to read, and the list just keeps growing. I decided to pull from that list Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut. I am only about halfway through the work, and I am enjoying it immensely, but it is, shall we say, odd. I find myself laughing at things that really should be funny, and I feel bad a a while until it happens again. If I am the protagonist of this novel, I am Billy Pilgrim. Billy bounces through times from one point in his life to another, "unstuck in time" as he calls it, and even spends time in an alien zoo after being abducted by an alien race who takes him aboard their flying saucer and whisks him away to their home planet. You know, the usual stuff. So far, Billy has proven to be an incompetent chaplain's assistant in WWII, an optometrist on the verge of a mental breakdown, a senile 40-something (according to his frustrated daughter), and pathetic prisoner of war. I do not like Billy. Granted, no one seems to like Billy. I guess I should finish the novel before I make an actual judgment.

What would "being" any of these characters say about me?

For now, I am going to be Ed Tom. That is the last book I finished reading. John Grady Cole is a cool dude, but I am too old to go riding off for the border, although there are days when that sounds pretty desirable.

That is the great thing about this little exercise: if I do not like who I am, based on the last book I read, I simply have to pick up another book. Problem solved.

So off I go to get unstuck in time with Billy. Who are you going to be?

Come Out and Play

I try not to rant, or try not to rant to an extreme.

OK, I rant quite often. However, I usually try to cloak the rant in something so it does not come off as an obvious and unabashed rant. However, this time, I am simply going to rant.

Today I was driving through the mean streets of Hutchinson, windows down and the radio up, but, no, I was not blaring bro-country. I had the dial turned to the area's top alternative tunes. A little diddy came over the airwaves that I have listened to many times. In fact, it is on my iTunes, and it is on a CD of songs Emily put together for me. The song is "Come Out and Play" by The Offspring. It is an interesting, troubling song.

As the song came to a close, the last chord echoing through my cab, the DJ uttered one of the most ridiculous statements that has ever floated from transmitter to receiver: "That song is a perfect theme song for this weekend!"

You might be saying, "But Kohls, 'Come out and play' is a great thought for the weekend, especially if the weekend is extended and a national holiday is nestled into Saturday."  All right, not one of you is saying that, mainly because you would never use 'nestled' in that way, but you might be thinking that I am way off in this rant. However, I am not way off. The DJ was, but I am not.

The title might seem appropriate for the weekend, but the song should not be thrown out as a theme for anything. The song tells the story of two boys in school who do not get along. One chooses to end the conflict by carrying a gun into the school and ending the life of his rival and any hope for a life that he might have once held. "One got wasted, and the other's a waste." I have listened to the song many times. I appreciate the style of the music, and I am drawn to songs that paint a vivid picture or tell a meaningful story. By playing the song, I am not advocating school violence or the use of a gun to 'solve' any personal conflict. The song does not do so either. In fact, it is a warning and an eye-opener. The song reminds me each time I hear it of an issue that is far too close for me to ignore or avoid. Why would I want to have such images thrust into my mind? I have wondered that myself. There is a saying that the first step is admitting you have a problem. I know that that statement is being taken out of context here. However, it applies. If we do not recognize that there are issues in our society, in our communities, and in our schools, then how can we prepare ourselves to deal with those issues, and more importantly, to keep them from occurring? How can we teach our children to deal with conflict without resorting to the most violent measures? How can we instill into our children basic human goodness that will allow them to empathize with one another, and, therefore, treat one another with respect? The issue is not how to keep guns out of our schools, or our churches, or anywhere else really; the issue is how do we learn to deal with one another in such a way that we do not create the desperation that would lead one to even consider using a gun against a fellow member of our society as a possiblibitly?

My original intent here was to lament how ridiculous it is that a DJ would not listen closely enough to the music she was playing to understand how inappropriate her comment was. I was going to talk about how words have meaning and songs carry messages. I guess I got a little off track. Or maybe I actually got a little more on track. A DJ failing to actually listen to a song before saying how great it is as a theme song for this weekend is not nearly as important as the rest of us failing to listen to what is going on around us, of us neglecting to treat each other with respect and empathy or of us refusing to think about how we teach our young people to face the struggles of life. it starts with our expectations and it is demonstrated through our actions. We need to be reminded of that every once in a while. I need to be anyway.