John Vargas

Deadly Force

So. The LAPD has struck again. After a high speed chase that ended on the 101 in Woodland Hills, the cops shot another person.

As he was running away.

Now. I understand that cops have to use deadly force in certain incidences, but those incidents have gotten cartoonishly frequent. I thought that cops were only really supposed to kill someone when their lives, or the lives of others, were in imminent danger. Is that not right?

Well, this dude crashed on the 101 after a high speed chase, turned the car around, and was smashed into (seemingly on purpose to stop him, fair enough), then he got out of the passenger side of the car and ran away. On foot. As he ran, the cops opened fire on him.

Now, exactly whose life was in danger at that moment? The cops? He was fucking running AWAY! They do know that AWAY is different than TOWARDS, right? I mean, I know cops are fucking stupid, and the training they go through has little to do with actual intelligence, but they do know that right? 

Perhaps they killed him because he posed a danger to civilians after he might have gotten away. You know, because his utter disdain for traffic laws and fear of cops means that he may have hatred for the citizenry of Westwood. Now, I’ve been in Westwood many, many times, and yes, I am often filled with murderous rage in that burg. But wouldn’t that also make me a threat? Man, when I have a bad stand up set in ANY town, fantasies of mass murder and suicide prey upon my mind like a hawk tearing open a squirrel.  So, I guess I’m a threat. Where’s MY barrage of bullets?

The cops didn’t chase him down on foot. Maybe the “deadly force” this suspect posed was that of a massive coronary these fat and dull and lazy pigs might’ve had, had they given chase (on foot). Still, maybe they could have gotten in one of their many, still running cars and driven to him, maybe they could have even overtaken him. Cops do know that cars are faster than people, right? Please tell me they do. Fair play? Maybe they thought it unfair to use a car against a human… So. They shot him. Bullets are much smaller than cars.

Were they afraid that he was going to kill one of the very few people driving cars on that freeway at that ungodly hour? Seems to me the only life that was really in danger was his own.

Maybe that’s it!

Maybe they just couldn’t allow this miscreant to run willy-nilly into freeway traffic and pose a deadly threat to himself! HIS OWN life in danger now!! Someone’s life is in danger! His own! KILL HIM!! You can’t just let a person take his OWN life! That’s wrong! So. Kill him!

Makes Perfect fucking sense.

Fucking pigs.

Alright, Scorsese, you’ve proven you can make great movies that don’t involve Italians stomping each other, which is great! Now. Can we have some more movies with Italians stomping each other?

Alright, Scorsese, you’ve proven you can make great movies that don’t involve Italians stomping each other, which is great! Now. Can we have some more movies with Italians stomping each other?

The First Capitalist

I wonder quite a bit about this. Who was the first capitalist? Obviously, this is probably an unanswerable question, since this person most likely predates the written word.

If we think about the most basic definition: “an economic system characterized by private or corporate ownership of capital goods,” it basically means, someone owns something, then wields power over those that do not. Often too much unreasonable power over the rest of us. We then have a choice: work for them, or seek out a way to own our own capital, or means of production, and then wield unreasonable power over others.

But who was that first guy?

I imagine someone near the beginning of our primordial evolution, when we were barely able to formulate a rational thought that was not animalistic or based on instinct and emotion; when we were just beginning to farm our own food, and corral our own animals for sustenance, he looked at all the people pulling together to gather up enough food in this time of plenty to get through what they knew would be a time of scarcity just beyond the horizon, and said, “This is now all mine!”

My musings further envision a angry, confused mob beating him senseless and banishing his beaten and bruised body to suffer the pitiless world without the help of the many.

Sadly, at some point, another greedy fuck promised a few of the bulkier, less intelligent of our ancestors a special, loftier, lazier place in his imagined new world order, and wrested power from those that deserved it: the many. 

And through threat of violence and starvation did capitalism, in it’s earliest, amoeba-like form, came to be created.

And since then, what, if anything, has changed?

Oh, if only we were as wise and energetic and unapologetic of our stance for the many as these people I envisioned in my imagination to be.

If only…

Hipsterism: the only movement that few, if any practitioners thereof, admit to doing. Not unlike bowel movements.

I have such disdain for myself that if you ever compliment me on anything, I’ll probably insult your taste in people.

If you get into a fender bender and refuse to pull over, leaving your vehicles in the middle of the street, ignorantly believing that area now to be a “crime scene,” then I hope your mother hates you as much as I do.

It doesn’t bother me if some dick thinks he owns his girlfriend, and gets all pissy when I look at her, what bothers me is that he thinks he owns the photons reflecting off her ass.