"This movie did for cinema what the Jonestown Kool-Aid did for kids' drinks"
I am 27 today. My LJ icon was taken exactly a decade ago (probably by sithjawa). I played hooky from school and cleaned the apartment. Tonight: fancy dinner with friends, as it is Dine Around Seattle right now. $30 prix fixe at 30 nice restaurants. Good deal!
The Dow closed below 8000 today. A Dead Kennedys pack came out for Rock Band. Those two sentences are my attempt at Harper's Index-style compare-and-contrast.
Yesterday was the 30th anniversary of the Jonestown mass murder/suicide. 900 people dead in the Guyanese jungle. A weird chapter in San Francisco's history come to a shocking dénouement. BoogaBooga has a buttload of links to quality stories (radio, books, etc.) about what happened. My high school graduation speaker was someone who went with the congressional factfinding mission to Guyana. I am pretty sure it wasn't Rep. Speier, although Rep. Speier went there as an aide to Congressman Ryan, who was shot and killed by Jonestown gunmen, as were several other people on the factfinding mission (along with a Jonestown resident who was trying to leave with them) as they were preparing to go back to the U.S. The mass deaths by poisoning began later the same day.
Anyway, my graduation speaker was a woman whose name I forget who was still in a state government position in 1999, and along with the "you young women will reach great heights blah blah" you're supposed to tell graduating high-schoolers, she also told us about being at Jonestown. I remember her describing getting shot and lying there looking up at the trees, with the shit going down around her. It was the most bizarre speech I've ever been privy to. 53 young women and their families and friends, in the Palo Alto sun, hearing about something that happened before we were even born, but which many of our parents surely remembered very vividly.
Mortality comes stealthily, then steps squarely into your vision, blotting out all else. History continues to whip and shudder like a dying snake. Time ticks by. We grow older.
The Dow closed below 8000 today. A Dead Kennedys pack came out for Rock Band. Those two sentences are my attempt at Harper's Index-style compare-and-contrast.
Yesterday was the 30th anniversary of the Jonestown mass murder/suicide. 900 people dead in the Guyanese jungle. A weird chapter in San Francisco's history come to a shocking dénouement. BoogaBooga has a buttload of links to quality stories (radio, books, etc.) about what happened. My high school graduation speaker was someone who went with the congressional factfinding mission to Guyana. I am pretty sure it wasn't Rep. Speier, although Rep. Speier went there as an aide to Congressman Ryan, who was shot and killed by Jonestown gunmen, as were several other people on the factfinding mission (along with a Jonestown resident who was trying to leave with them) as they were preparing to go back to the U.S. The mass deaths by poisoning began later the same day.
Anyway, my graduation speaker was a woman whose name I forget who was still in a state government position in 1999, and along with the "you young women will reach great heights blah blah" you're supposed to tell graduating high-schoolers, she also told us about being at Jonestown. I remember her describing getting shot and lying there looking up at the trees, with the shit going down around her. It was the most bizarre speech I've ever been privy to. 53 young women and their families and friends, in the Palo Alto sun, hearing about something that happened before we were even born, but which many of our parents surely remembered very vividly.
Mortality comes stealthily, then steps squarely into your vision, blotting out all else. History continues to whip and shudder like a dying snake. Time ticks by. We grow older.