December is the cruellest month
When last month's squiggling frenzy ended, got to thinking that December marks not just the end of Nanowrimo but the beginning of a month with a lot of awful anniversaries. One of them long before my time was the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour. That got a big look in this year due to the 75th anniversary. It turns out to share the date with the murder of John Lennon way back in 1980.
Of course all of that is ancient history but recently is also a festival of misery. There was the Sandy Hook school massacre back in December 2012. It is frightening to think that even the senseless deaths of so many school children did not trigger a change of heart in the government and public of the USA and certainly not the NRA. Australia had it's own creepy crawly gun man who took hostages at the Lindt cafe in Sydney back in 2014 and hitched his egotistical power trips to the ISIS bandwagon.
Then yet another pair of ISIS wannabees mowed down a bunch of people at a Christmas party last year in San Bernadino California.
And now there is barely time to remember the dead when a whole bunch of new atrocities fill the airwaves and the television screens.
Even when not having a television, it is almost impossible to escape them.
Putin must have studied his Master Stalin well. For he was reputed to have said that one death is a tragedy but a millions deaths are merely statistics.
The scale of the destruction in Syria and Allepo in particular is just too enormous for the normal person to comprehend. But watching a man giving a speech at an art gallery who is shot in the back in cold blood while his killer does a victory dance that would not be out of place in Saturday Night Fever - it was just plain creepy. Even if Andrei Karlov was a minion of Putin and personally responsible for bombing Alleppo back to the stone age which he most likely wasn't, it is still a ghastly way to die.
But the creepiest so far - it sort of reminded me of what the Americans call 9/11. Now that the jihadists find it so much harder to hijack planes they are getting desperate and resorting to hijacking trucks to use as weapons.
The attack was uncannily similar to the one in Nice which has now of course forever tainted Bastille Day for the French.
And now the miserable puritanical Islamic fundamentalists have trashed the wonderful Weihnachtsmarkt. No one does Christmas quite like the Germans. I still get nostalgic for the four years I spent Christmas there even while now being a card carrying member of the Grinch Club. Maybe that is why I signed up. The Oz attempts at doing Christmas are just so sad and pathetic in comparison and pretending that it is winter in the middle of summer just emphasizes the awfulness.
It must have been awful for the Polish truck driver Lukasz Urban who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time and for his boss who was following the progress of the truck almost in real time and his wife who was getting no replies to her phone calls.
Now Germany will have to copy France and Belgium with extra security measures.
Then there's 21st December which as well as being the solstice is also the anniversary of the Lockerbie terrorist bombing. That seems like centuries ago except of course for the relatives for whom it will always be like yesterday.
Past or present. All paths lead to doom and gloom in December. Here's hoping that the future will not get tainted too. But since fumble fingered potty mouthed petty and vindictive Tyrant Trump and his Schnurrbart minions will soon get his paws on the nuclear codes, the odds are not exactly in our favour.
Of course all of that is ancient history but recently is also a festival of misery. There was the Sandy Hook school massacre back in December 2012. It is frightening to think that even the senseless deaths of so many school children did not trigger a change of heart in the government and public of the USA and certainly not the NRA. Australia had it's own creepy crawly gun man who took hostages at the Lindt cafe in Sydney back in 2014 and hitched his egotistical power trips to the ISIS bandwagon.
Then yet another pair of ISIS wannabees mowed down a bunch of people at a Christmas party last year in San Bernadino California.
And now there is barely time to remember the dead when a whole bunch of new atrocities fill the airwaves and the television screens.
Even when not having a television, it is almost impossible to escape them.
Putin must have studied his Master Stalin well. For he was reputed to have said that one death is a tragedy but a millions deaths are merely statistics.
The scale of the destruction in Syria and Allepo in particular is just too enormous for the normal person to comprehend. But watching a man giving a speech at an art gallery who is shot in the back in cold blood while his killer does a victory dance that would not be out of place in Saturday Night Fever - it was just plain creepy. Even if Andrei Karlov was a minion of Putin and personally responsible for bombing Alleppo back to the stone age which he most likely wasn't, it is still a ghastly way to die.
But the creepiest so far - it sort of reminded me of what the Americans call 9/11. Now that the jihadists find it so much harder to hijack planes they are getting desperate and resorting to hijacking trucks to use as weapons.
The attack was uncannily similar to the one in Nice which has now of course forever tainted Bastille Day for the French.
And now the miserable puritanical Islamic fundamentalists have trashed the wonderful Weihnachtsmarkt. No one does Christmas quite like the Germans. I still get nostalgic for the four years I spent Christmas there even while now being a card carrying member of the Grinch Club. Maybe that is why I signed up. The Oz attempts at doing Christmas are just so sad and pathetic in comparison and pretending that it is winter in the middle of summer just emphasizes the awfulness.
It must have been awful for the Polish truck driver Lukasz Urban who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time and for his boss who was following the progress of the truck almost in real time and his wife who was getting no replies to her phone calls.
Now Germany will have to copy France and Belgium with extra security measures.
Then there's 21st December which as well as being the solstice is also the anniversary of the Lockerbie terrorist bombing. That seems like centuries ago except of course for the relatives for whom it will always be like yesterday.
Past or present. All paths lead to doom and gloom in December. Here's hoping that the future will not get tainted too. But since fumble fingered potty mouthed petty and vindictive Tyrant Trump and his Schnurrbart minions will soon get his paws on the nuclear codes, the odds are not exactly in our favour.