February 21, 2005

• It’s Georgeraham Linkington’s Washday.

  The holiday slipped right up on me.  I’ve written before about my
  idiosyncratic relationship to chronological time (my time is more
  Chirological) and Greyfox mentioned in one of his recent updates here
  that without my computer I didn’t have the necessary chronological
  reference point to be able to use a calendar.  But now that I know
  what day it is, I’ve decided to take a day off from the task of
  relating the personal and family events of these past weeks without our
  computer, and talk about the news instead.

  Hunter Thompson shot himself to death.  The original gonzo
  journalist was hanging out with Hells Angels around the same time I
  was.  I was present on the wine country run where he got beaten up
  because the Angels didn’t think he had the proper attitude of respect
  toward them.  I can’t help wondering what impelled his final act
  of self-destruction.  Considering his lifestyle, it could have
  been a drug-fueled accident, drug-induced suicide, or an attempt to
  escape the physical deterioration and pain from a lifetime of toxic
  recreations.  One thing evident in all of the man’s writings is
  that there were ever so many things more important to him than life and
  health.  With him gone, the planet is suddenly not such an
  ironically funny place as it once was.

  US government spin doctors are trying to say that prez shrub isn’t
  responsible for pulling the covers on his own youthful drug use because
  he believed it was a private conversation with someone he
  trusted.  Yeah, right.  My advice/plea to journalists: 
  lay off, let the story die, before they panic and invade some other
  country or fake a terrorist attack in this one to create a
  diversion.  We all know the man is not responsible, period.

  And, in local news:

  REUTERS

  12:31 a.m. February 21, 2005

  ANCHORAGE, Alaska – A 44-year-old Anchorage man had his penis
  surgically reattached after it was cut off by an angry girlfriend and
  flushed down a toilet, local police said Sunday.

  The events unfolded about midnight on Saturday, after the pair had been
  arguing over an impending breakup, an Anchorage Police Department
  statement said. At some point, the two decided to have sex and the man
  agreed to let the woman tie his arms to a windowsill.

  But the woman used a kitchen knife to amputate her partner’s penis and
  flushed it down the toilet, police said. She untied the man, drove him
  to a local hospital and was cleaning up the bloody scene when police
  arrived at the home, according to the statement.

  Summoned by the police, workers from the local water utility pulled the
  toilet up from the floor and were able to recover the severed penis,
  which was rushed to the hospital for the successful reattachment
  surgery Sunday morning.

  Police declined to identify the victim, but said his assailant was
  35-year-old Kim Tran. She was charged with assault, domestic violence
  and tampering with evidence, and jailed without bail.

  As I listened to a somewhat more detailed version of this story on
  Anchorage’s public radio station this morning, several comments came to
  mind.  Upon further reflection, I just wish I could have listened
  in on the conversation of those utility workers and the dispatcher who
  called them in on that job.
   

  • 12:06 pm
  • 11 Comments