Undead Things

Tell me this is not the best zombie story beginning ever!

Elderly Woman Dies After Rottweiler Bite

Alameda Woman Hides Dog Bite, Dies

Has anyone seen that movie, "Quarantine"? Hecka good.

Dead Cops

I'm sure a lot of you are going to be unhappy with what I have to say. Just liek every other post. But maybe this one a little more.

So, in Oakland there were four cops shot dead by this guy, Mixon. The whole incident happened in East Oakland, a couple blocks away from the Eastmont substation. Around where my boyfriend lives. Needless to say I've been in the neighborhood and seen how it is on a regular day. Which, for someone raised in the suburbs of Alameda, is pretty scary. Lots of black people everywhere. Scary music. Cholos on corners. And the ever-present possibility of gunfire. Sometimes. Which is a lot more often than I've ever been subjected to. In Alameda, there is no gunfire, no violence really, at all. We had maybe five murders last year. All of them were solved.

I have never lived in a place where stray bullets can hit my house or someone in it. No matter who I am or how I live my life. And I'm not using my boyfriend as a way of grasping for "knowledge of the hood." Did you know that the maximum effective range of an AK-47 is 874.89 yards? That's more than 7 football fields. Which is more than three blocks in the suburbs of Oakland. 2,629 feet. Which is this large, represented in the shaded area:



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It irked me that the whole area was shut down after the shootings. That the police and sheriff were guarding every corner. It irked me because that kind of response would have never happened in the same area if the people shot had been civilians. Technically, those cops didn't even need to be there after the slayings happened. The bad guy was dead. And the dead cops were at the hospital. But they were there, wasting our money anyway.

All this media hype. All these people showing their support for these dead cops.... I have to wonder why the people before these cops weren't honored in the same way. Why are the stories about the armed guards who never came? Why do four cops get a memorial at the Oracle Arena?

Why not the dead civilians?

What happened to them?

You know, usually I write about being in favor of shooting dirty cops. And this isn't one of those. We need cops. Not dirty cops, but the real men and women in blue who protect and serve us everday. But I don't feel right doing this. I feel like this is an afront to the memory of everyone who ever died in East Oakland.

Projects (A Realization)

So, I'm working on this one project right now. (I'm working on a lot, actually.) And something happened that made me think of how projects and collaborations work out. Not really. I had a really great idea of what to write about when i got on here but no real thesis. I just got frustrated with how the project didn't really have full cohesion and stuff. We'd spent over a month on it and not gotten very much out of it due to a lot of different distractions. But that's cool. This project is something that I really want to do. The thing that happened made me think about how people's own agendas play out. No, maybe how people try to reach their own agenda in a group, collaborative setting. And what that looks like.

I actually started working on another project because it was short-term and was infinitesimally more organized and better advertised and everyone there would all be working towards the same goal with enthusiasm that, on a good day, could be considered "vigorous". And I've had the good fortune of having all of the projects I've been a part of have people who were committed and determined to do the best that we could, individually, for the group. We all worked together, through differences. If we had them. I know a couple of projects were I ended up kind of not liking people, but we were able to put it aside and make something great together. It's something else. The feeling you get knowing you've successfully pushed through that barrier.

This project was trying my patience, though. It's better now. And I have confidence the finished product will rock.

"Piggybacking" is like getting your pet project to play a role in something that is not necessarily related, or where it would be a stretch to incorporate it. Or using an organization in a shameless attempt to promote yourself or your pet project.

"Piggybacking" is related to a "take-over" in the non-profit world where one organization which is fundamentally behind the creation and initial planning of itself or an event is "taken over" and the credit is "ganked" by people from another organization who had little to no role in said creation.

"Ganked" is "stolen."

--Gabe

Death's Message to Some: Slow the F*** Down!

My friend Ryan died yesterday morning (Sunday, March First, Two-Thousand and Nine.) The story right now is that he had taken methadone and drank gin and beer and never woke up. My friend Raul was awoken because the people in the house were freaked out by the fact that Ryan was dead and they wanted him to check. So he did. And I'll just spare you the gorey bits by saying Raul is gonna need a little while to deal with it.

I didn't know Ryan for that long. Maybe six months at the most. But he was a nice guy who always threw parties at his house. The idea of foul play is something that doesn't sit well with me. So I won't really dwell on it. It's a matter of policy that an autopsy is down when the 'cause of death for someone is not immediately determinable. (It's expensive, too. And they end up charging the next-of-kin.)

When I thought about his death, and what it meant to me. I thought of how unfair it was that he should die. I mean, there are a lot of people out there that I have known that I've seen mix far more lethal combinations of drugs. For instance, when I was at the Culinary Academy, I once saw a fellow school mate take pain killers and muscle relaxers and down more than pint of vodka at the same time. And drink the rest of the night. I found this incredibly dangerous because that combination was a couple steps down in potency--and one chemical short of--lethal injection. Alcohol most certainly could have taken the place of sodium chloride.

I have seen the best of my kind reduced to holey-brained shells of the people they once were. Because they popped pills. I've noticed pills are the new gateway drug for some people. Gets them into pharmaceuticals and coke and meth. One day I'll poll the people I know to see how many of them have tried all these drugs out today. I think it's something not everyone knows about, or even wants to know about: The drug problem in Alameda. But it's here. And I hope the people in charge plan to do more than arrest us.