Let me preface this story by saying that I have tried very hard not to get bitter about Los Angeles. You might know already that this was never my dream town. I moved here because T. moved here and it was silly of me not to join him when I did. Circumstances have put us in a crappy apartment with annoying landlords and prevented us from going out and seeing the sights as much as we would like. This does not necessarily make me bitter. What is making me bitter is the fact that some creep broke into our car, that the freeways are teeming with idiot drivers, that we get taxed on everything and that the air is brown.

    Yesterday, however, I was one of the lucky ones who got to view a distressed man set himself on fire and then put a shotgun to his chin and blow his brains out. It happened in the middle of a massive freeway interchange and was brought to me direct with the magic of live television. I had gotten home early from work and was looking for Oprah when I came across the unfolding incident. I can honestly say that I would have liked to live my life without seeing something like this. I did not need to see all of the blood in his body pour out across the freeway. I did not need to see this at all.

    Here's an excerpt from a L.A. Times article:

"The incident at first appeared to be yet another of Southern California's now prosaic freeway chases. But as the situation developed, it soon became apparent that this was an anomalous, quintessentially Los Angeles story because so many disparate elements of life here had suddenly coalesced on that smoking freeway overpass.

The story had guns, traffic jams, cellular phones, swarms of news helicopters, desperate self-promotion--and a sudden, tragic, cinematic conclusion. And all of it caught on live television."

    You can read the rest of the article on their site or here.

    I am trying not to blame this on L.A. but I think the writer of the above paragraphs was right on when he called these incidents prosaic. It takes true life blood and gore such as this to shake people up. I'm not desensitized yet and I don't want to be.

    What can I say that won't sound trite and cliché at this moment? It's all been said before and I have nothing to add. The fear and angst and horrible feelings of a little person like myself have as much import as this man's death in the big scheme of things, right?

    Might take a little break from the stories. I need to gather my thoughts.