And They're Only Going to Change this Place

Across and throughout New England and the Mid Atlantic today we're shaking our heads in dismay and disbelief about the snow and wind we're having in celebration of Halloween 2011, and being in the middle of it all, I gotta tell ya, it really sucks. They set a record yesterday in New York City for snowfall in October and they may break it by today's end. I will not hold my breath waiting for that to happen nor shall I be buying any of the tee-shirts or goofy hats that will be sold ("I survived the NYC Blizzard of October '11", indeed).

I hate crappy weather-I really do. And my definition of crappy weather is perhaps a little more tight ass than yours having been around the planet for close to six decades and having spent one of the years of one of those decades at Sondrestrom Air Base, Greenland where the weather is binary. It's daylight and not absolutely awful or it's dark and cold, snowy and windy (= awful). The grey area in the middle is known as Tuesday. I'm making some of that up, but you already know that.

But all of that whining and sulking and pouting have to be put on hold. There's a world in which each of us live, as the sun of our own solar system and some self-absorption is probably healthy-I have no idea if that's true but it sounds vaguely new age and that must mean it's acceptable, right? I'm asking because as many of us are kvetching about scraping snow off windshields today or how cold the seats in football stadiums are going to be (the beer will be about right though), in the world beyond our, half a world away, yesterday afternoon shit got stupid deadly.

The same hate-filled crazies who, by this time, have caused God (if He exists), to wonder what the hell is the matter with these people of faith, struck again and killed folks who weren't in Kabul as part of any Grey Line tour or (in some cases) even of their volition. Open-hearted and open-minded people who were doing a job and trying to rescue a nation state that has to be one of the saddest and most backward places to live on Earth in the history of this planet, before it was at war with itself, had their lives ended, suddenly, by another true believer who believes ultimately in nothing.

We spend every second of every minute of every hour of every day breathing the same air these malevolent miscreants do, trying to understand their motivations, something that cannot be done. If we cannot kill them all, and I'm not sanguine at our chances on doing that, we need to seal them in where they are and leave them to themselves. They are beyond being fundamentally flawed humans who have nothing to live for. They are rabid dogs who are nothing but danger, but not only to themselves.

People who have nothing to live for soon find something to die for. And then they want you to die for it, too. And when that all happens, it makes concerns like snow and rain even more petty than they are. "There has to be an invisible sun, it gives its heat to everyone. There has to be an invisible sun, that gives us hope when the whole day's done."

-bill kenny