Cape Diem

Sometimes there's a man...we won't say a hero, 'cause what's a hero? But sometimes, there's a man, well, he's the man for his time and place. He fits right in there. And with apologies to the Coen Brothers and "The Big Lebowski," at this time and place, it's Pessimism Man.

Granted, like all superheroes, he just does his thing and quickly departs - for which we can all be grateful. But he paid us a visit earlier today, which sort of derailed our train of thought for anything very useful.

See, the news was already just godawful no matter what direction you look in, but at least we felt fairly secure here at home. Then, over our morning coffee, we noticed that our quiet little residential street was teeming with speeding traffic. But why? It turns out that they were all detouring from our nearest major intersection, which had been closed off after an "incident."

Specifically, there was a car crash (which didn't look too major), and a helpful police officer arrived on the scene and went to check on the occupants of the cars. The driver of the first car jumped out and stabbed him. The officer fell back, and the driver then rushed to the other car and started stabbing its driver. Lacking a Rapid Response Social Worker on scene, the officer shot the offender - who died at the scene.

We don't know the race of any of the people involved, and it wouldn't make any difference to us anyway (though it might to mobs). It was a horrible event, and the police officer acted appropriately to save a life.

With this gloomy cloud hovering our head (and an unending parade of cars roaring past our home), we at least tried to come up with a topical cartoon or two, but couldn't conjure anything which wouldn't get our house burned down.

An especially dangerous proposition when you've stockpiled as many flammable bottles of Clan MacAccelerant as we have.