Afraid

Have you
ever noticed that events seem to run in some sort of cosmic
cycle? Like celebrity deaths….I’ve always heard they die in
groups of three. I can’t verify this, but it does appear to
be this way to me. Probably just some old wives tale, but
still interesting.



Well, this week I’m going to comment upon a series of recent
events that I’d bet even money on you haven’t heard about in
the past.



I’m talking about physical violence…with food.



Yes, friends in this fair land of ours, there seems to be
current trend, unhealthy one at that, of using food as a
dangerous weapon.



Take this first example. Just recently in the Oklahoma state
prison, one Ernesto Rosales allegedly tried to stab another
inmate by the name of Jermaine Portillo with a pork chop. He
was charged on December 3rd, 2004 with assault and battery
with a dangerous weapon, i.e. a sharpened pork chop bone.
The charge goes on to say that the defendant, Rosales ‘ did
therefore inflict serious and grievous wounds on or about
the left eye of the said Jermaine Portillo with the unlawful
and felonious intent then and there to do him bodily harm’.
The article did not say if the pork chop was recovered as
evidence. Prosecutors handling this matter say there is
enough meat in this case to keep Rosales behind bars for
many years to come.



In our next example, on December 10th, 2004 a man in Houston
was arrested when he flew into a rage over being served a
cold sandwich. He then attacked the manager with the
sandwich, threatened to kill her and blow up the restaurant.
No other information was available at this time. Seems like
a pretty cheesy deal to me.



Finally, in Austin, Texas this past week, we find that a
woman has been charged with assault after getting into some
type of argument over some part of her inheritance. Seems
the woman got mad at her husband and threw a beefsteak at
him. Apparently these incidents provoked the husband into
saying more than he probably should have which caused his
wife to then get her pistol and shoot him. Obviously she
didn’t feel the beefsteak had done the job in the proper
manner. My guess is that the steak wasn’t loaded.



Anyway, I suppose the steak throwing charge won’t be the
main focus of her trial. I’m thinking she would have gotten
off more easily if she hadn’t gotten the pistol and put a
hole or two into her beloved. She clearly wasn’t thinking
properly since she threw the weapon away into her swimming
pool. A place it would most likely be noticed before too
long. “Hey look, is that the new model Creepy Crawler…? No,
it looks like a forty five.”



She could get twenty years. For the shooting, not the steak
throwing. They’ll forget about that small incident.



I am just totally aghast. What in the world is our society
coming to? I was in a discussion yesterday with a bunch of
folks and we got to talking about the moral decay in this
country. Well, you can just see that movies such as “Animal
House” are most likely to blame for some of the root causes
of these heinous acts of violence. Food fights are now being
accepted as normal behavior in most of the country. Not a
month goes by; we don’t read or hear about somebody getting
hit in the face with a cream pie.



Degradation starts so slowly, doesn’t it?



Just look at where this may lead. Whole societies have
fallen over events such as these. Rome wasn’t destroyed in a
day, you know. It took thousands and thousands of pizzas to
do it in.



First cream pies, then steaks, pork chops and sandwiches.



Can casseroles, soufflés, cakes and green beans be far
behind?



Be afraid, be very afraid.