Tag: Orange County California

Wrong Track

I came across a brief piece about the suicide of an Orange County man. At Orange Metrolink station. Nguyen was his name.

The report said he calmly stood facing the oncoming train and seconds later, got run over. No fuss, no self-preservation.

I also came across that piece about victims of Temple shooting in Wisconsin. One of those people, an old lady, used to work 60-hr week and came there to pray all the time. A regular. A faithful.

Random lives. Random deaths. No grand legacy or leaflets to leave behind.  No “closure” of any kind.

They did not even die for a cause. Just gone, in 6 seconds. That window, between life and death. Close out!

Dream and doubt swallowed in death.

Both deaths were noisy (oncoming train and oncoming bullets).

Suburban deaths. Incomprehensible. Wonder if there were any relatives and loved ones who cared when Nguyen committed suicide that day. Poor train crew. They were trying to stay on schedule. Now with the investigation, and all.

I also read that the PhD student who shot people at the mid-night showing in the movie theater in Aurora, got glowing recommendation from faculty (mature judgment?).

He must have sent them on the wrong track. He must have kept his hair straight, his face composed (unlike the night before, when he went out and had his hair dye bright red).

Train track, academic track and religious track, all on the wrong track.

All happened within a span of a few weeks here in America, the Beautiful.

At least in the case of Nguyen, he did the job himself. He was not a victim of hate crime or anything. Just “calmly and deliberately stepped in front of an oncoming train”. Must have looked at the schedule, and was familiar with the track.

The wrong track that led to death.

I feel sorry for the lady. The laborer (60 hours a week) which wound up with nothing. By the sweat of your eyebrow shall you receive food on the table. She certainly put in more than enough for her shares. And all the hours of faithful prayers.

I hope she RIP. I hope the gentleman who stepped out in front of an Orange County train also RIP. I  hope the shooter get the justice he deserved, since he came highly recommended as “mature”. Now, his lawyer is trying to argue otherwise.

Wrong track!

Grace Jones, Jim Jones, Terry Jones

All with a “view to a kill”.

Jim Jones at least took the cool-aid himself.

Terry Jones, after delaying the Quran-burning date for a few months, gave in to his arsenic urge (or attention-getting disorder).

I am all for learning, from book lessons, and life lessons.

Life teaches us lessons from the doing and wrongdoing of others (this is the basis of Good vs Evil struggle in movie themes).

Eventually, consequences of an individual’s aggression will catch up with him.

For now, just as the young, educated middle class in Egypt and neighboring countries wanted a piece of the democratic dream, we got the worst exhibited here (in Netherlands, the comment from a mall-shooting witness was “we heard this sort of things happened in American schools, but little did we know, it’s here – the Netherlands-where we live”).

So, this is how the world perceives America, land of the free.

A few years back, in Little Saigon (Orange County, CA), a pirated-video shop owner exhibited a Ho Chi Minh portrait knowing full well his action would cause distress to his patrons and community he served. Westminster police had to protect him against demonstrators  while the FBI eventually moved in to confiscate his stocks (FBI warning at the beginning of every video came in handy). If they hadn’t he would eventually have joined Blockbuster Video in bankruptcy court anyway (karma-coded video).

The case was nowhere as huge as the Gainesville church’s sponsored Quran-burning.

In his burning, he dampens world’s enthusiasm for what America stood for.

We sent out mixed signals: follow us, we are the good guys/burn us down, we are the bad guys.

Which is which? 007 or Death Angel?.

When Malcolm X advocated separate-but-equal, he was shot down too.

Now, times have changed. While the desecration of others’ sacredness is constitutionally protected, it should not be encouraged (because it incites hatred and polarizes an already hate-filled world in need of healing and soft-power diplomacy).

There is another higher law: love your neighbor (and what they believe as sacred) as yourself (and what you consider as sacred.)

The Gideons better get hurried because a lot of Motel 6 bibles might be collected and shipped back to the Mid East to be burned in retaliation.

It’s tit for tat, and the best-case scenario. I hope the worst already happened last week.