Random News: June 2, 2022

DISCLAIMER: Zak's Random News is very random and doesn't cover many things, and not everything may be accurate, because I'm just some guy. Go find a real news source.

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Good morning. It’s June 2, 2022, and it’s a Thursday. No idea what’s coming next, so let’s find out together…

• It’s exactly 30 miles, door to door, between my home in Redondo Beach and the Anaheim Convention Center, located literally next door to Disneyland. Despite that, it feels like I’m in some other country, or possibly on some other planet, when I arrive there for the NAMM Show each year.

• Maybe I’m being dramatic, or poetic. But it’s sorta true.

• I know a lot of you were watching that trial between those actors. I literally have no idea what it was about. Someone wrote something mean about the other, was what I gathered. Anyway, it seems to be done. I’m sure it was very important and affected your lives in some meaningful way.

• Meanwhile, there was another mass shooting yesterday, this time in Tulsa, OK, when a guy with a semiautomatic rifle and semiautomatic pistol killed four people and himself, and injured others at a hospital complex.

• This happens in America at many times the rate it happens in other countries due to the easy accessibility of guns. No other reason is feasible, because if the cause was mental illness, video games, weed, or whatever else the gun lobby would like you to believe, those same factors are prevalent everywhere else. But it doesn’t happen everywhere else. It happens here.

• The leading cause of death in people aged 1-19 is now firearm-related injuries. Children are more likely to be shot to death than any other cause. More than any disease. More than car accidents.

• This is America.

• Pride Point: Lynda Carter tweeted yesterday, “I didn't write Wonder Woman, but if you want to argue that she is somehow not a queer or trans icon, then you're not paying attention.”

• It’s day 99 of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Russian soldiers are committing war crimes, some so horrific that I’m not going to mention them here. Justice must be served.

• It’s Queen Elizabeth II’s platinum jubilee today. She’s been on the throne of the monarchy for 70 years. I like her. 

• The world’s largest single organism is now known to be an underwater seagrass meadow in Australia. It is one lifeform that covers 70 square miles. It’s about 4,500 years old, and grows by cloning itself.

• I don’t like crowds and I don’t like noise, and yet I’m heading to an incredibly crowded and noisy place. After I finish this trade show, I always consider becoming a hermit in a hole somewhere.

• Today in history… 1774: The Quartering Act allows British soldiers to be housed in private residences, leading to what we now have as the Third Amendment to the Constitution. 1835: P.T. Barnum’s circus starts its first tour of the US. 1919: Anarchists set off bombs in eight US cities. 1997: Timothy McVeigh is convicted for the bombing of the federal building in Oklahoma where 168 people died. 

• June 2 is the birthday of the first First Lady Martha Washington (1731), composer Edward Elgar (1857), drummer Charlie Watts (1941), composer Marvin Hamlisch (1944), hockey great Larry Robinson (1951), philosopher/activist Cornel West (1953), and comedian Wayne Brady (1972).

I’m stressed today, but tomorrow I’ll be fine. It’s easy (and quite normal, I should add) to become self-absorbed when you’re in the midst of some kind of trauma, and I’m not always the easiest person to be around at such times, so thanks to those who put up with me in the thankfully rare occasions that I’m reacting as such.