Author Archives

Tippy Gnu

I chase unicorns, which are symbols for unique ideas and experiences, and sometimes I post about them. Heck, I'm retired, so what else is there to do? I also write books, which can be read or downloaded for free, on my blog site.

Saving Egan

By Tippy Gnu on February 26, 2016 • ( 15 Comments )

Don’t flush your life away. Call We Care Line!

I was snoozing away at the Suicide Prevention Hotline, where I volunteer. Suddenly my supervisor shook my shoulder and woke me up.

“Tippy, take line three. It’s Egan. He’s a regular. I think I can trust you to handle this guy.”

Egan Obendorfer. I’d never heard of him before, but I was fairly new to this job.

“We Care Line. Tippy here. What’s up, Egan?” I yawned, while wiping my bleary eyes.

“It’s in my hand right now. I’m ready to do it.” the shaky voice on the other end said.

I felt my heart explode into overdrive. This was a real one. This guy really meant it. How could an idiot like me possibly talk him down? I just wanted to throw down the phone and quit, right then and there. But I couldn’t. A life was on the line. A drop of sweat dribbled down my neck.

“Let go of it!” I gulped. It was the only thing I could think of to say.

“Oh no, I’m doing it. I’m lifting it up to my mouth right now.”

“Wait! Think of your wife!”

“I don’t have a wife. She divorced me. I’m opening my mouth wide now.”

“Your children! Do you have children? Think of them!”

“My children hate me.” this insufferable self-inflicter said. Why do people have to be so difficult? Then I heard a dog bark.

“Your dog! What would your dog do without you? Think of him.”

“Her. And she bit me this morning. I’m putting it in my mouth, right now.”

I heard a kind of slurping sound, like he was sucking on the end of it. I plugged my ears, anticipating a loud bang. But then I realized I had to listen, in case he had some final words. And he did.

“There, I did it. And I’m going to do it again if you can’t talk me out of it.” he finally spoke.

Did what? How do you commit suicide twice?

It took a few more minutes of dialogue for Egan to explain that he has an eating disorder. He worries that he’s eating himself to death, so when he goes on a binge he calls the Suicide Prevention Hotline.

On this occasion he had a bucket of Ben and Jerry’s Peanut Buttah ice cream in front of him. Delicious stuff. Even his dog was begging for it, and all cause to bite him earlier in the day had been forgotten.

This gave me an idea, and I convinced Egan to share his ice cream with his dog. And this renewed his relationship with his best friend.

Egan only ate half a bucket of ice cream that day, and his dog got the other half. So I was pretty successful, if I say so myself.

There are many Egans in this world. Suicide isn’t always a sudden event. Some people commit it slowly, whether by eating, drinking, drugs, smoking, or maybe by just not taking care of their health. Their deaths are not usually entered into the suicidology statistics. They’re sneaky at killing themselves.

But at least I was able to help this one person. And after the call, I felt content enough to catch a few more z’s. It had been a good day.

Disclaimer: My Suicide Prevention Hotline is fictional. If you’re feeling hopeless and would like a skilled, trained counselor to talk to, try calling the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline, at 1-800-273-TALK (8255). They’re real, and available 24/7.

Hillary’s Generic Grandiloquent Speech to Wall Street

By Tippy Gnu on February 24, 2016 • ( 5 Comments )

The initial rough draft of Hillary’s speech

Bernie Sanders points out that Hillary Clinton has made $200,000 a pop for delivering speeches to Wall Street. He implies that these speaking fees are nothing more than bribes from Wall Street executives, so that she will do their bidding once she becomes President, and he’s challenged Hillary to release transcripts of these speeches.

But it seems Hillary will not be releasing these transcripts. But don’t worry. I managed to bribe a disaffected Wall Street employee, who works in a mail room, and he has provided me with the very transcript that Bernie has been asking for.

And yes I use the singular, “transcript,” because as it turns out our former Secretary of State was lazily giving the same generic speech over and over again. C’mon Madam Secretary, for 200 thousand mazumas you couldn’t write a fresh new speech each time? But that’s how it is. There’s only one transcript. However I must admit, it’s a grandiloquent stemwinder. Here it is, because I want to share it with you ~~so I can become rich and famous~~ in the interests of the greater public good:

HILLARY’S GENERIC GRANDILOQUENT SPEECH TO WALL STREET (final draft)

For scores and several hundred years, ya know, our mothers and fathers brought forth on this continent new corporations, conceived in profit, and dedicated to the proposition that I’m gonna get 200 large for a speech, any speech, even if it’s one I lift from Abe Lincoln.

Now we are engaged in a great business transaction, testing whether any big corporation can long endure paying this much money for a speech. We are met at a great auditorium of one of these corporations. We have come to dedicate a portion of that corporation’s profit, as a final resting place in my purse. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate, we can not consecrate, we can not hallow this vast sum of money. The brave employees, still working and laid-off, who struggled at this corporation for a fraction of what I’m getting for this piddly speech, have consecrated this money, far above my power to add or detract.

The world will little note, nor long remember this speech–unless Bernie Sanders insists on a transcript–but it can never forget what I’m being paid. It is for $200,000, to be directly deposited to my bank account, which the employees who have worked here have thus far so nobly advanced.

It is for me, to be here dedicated this great sum of money—that from these honored employees I have increased devotion to that cause for which their bosses gave the last full measure of payment—that we here highly resolve that these employees shall not have worked in vain—that this corporation, under my Presidency, shall have a new birth of profits—and that corporations of the stockholders, by the stockholders, for the stockholders, shall not perish from the earth.

Parole

By Tippy Gnu on February 23, 2016 • ( 11 Comments )

"Prisoners Exercising" by Vincent Van Gogh

“Prisoners Exercising” – Vincent Van Gogh

My wife and I would like to live a few more decades before the natural ebbing of life takes us to another world. We want to avoid being stabbed to death.

“He got parole!” Jay’s mother gleefully announced.

Jay was a dangerous man. He’s also our nephew. How could the state of California do that?! What the hell are those guys thinking, on the parole board?

“Help me, help me, please!” Jay moaned, lying in the front yard of a complete stranger. A woman peeked at him through a window and summoned her husband from another room. Jay was a teenager barely two months into adulthood. Beneath his veneer of desperation lay a darker desperation. Jay was in a blind, drunken rage. He had decided to kill the first person he saw, and he hoped to draw someone from the house.

Why the rage? Was it because he imagined he was jilted, by a girl he had a secret crush on in high school? No, according to the transcript it went much deeper than that. This was merely the trigger.

Was it because he’d been raised by a mother who had abdicated ordinary parental supervision, losing herself in a fantasy world of Wicca and hoarding? Perhaps, but his rage also plumbed deeper than that.

Was it due to living in a house with boxes piled to the ceiling, blocked off rooms, and narrow aisleways between the junk, crowded in with his mother and brother? Claustrophobic conditions can be stressful, but there were even deeper depths to Jay’s rage.

Was it because his brother, who was six years older than him, still lived at home? This same brother who had molested him at a young age, and who bullied him throughout his life? Certainly this could produce rage, but there was still more.

There was also a father who’d been tragically killed in a car accident when he was only two years old. A good father, who would have protected him from his crazy mother and deviant brother.

So Jay had sipped vodka from his hidden flask, while at high school, then walked home feeling angrier and angrier with each step. Normally alcohol calmed his rage, but this time it was like throwing gasoline upon a fire. At home he drank more, until his vodka-fueled rage propelled him from his house like an unguided missile, and with murder on his mind. He vowed to kill the first person he saw.

Her husband left the safety of their front door to assist this prostrate stranger in his front yard. She watched him lift Jay off the ground, then saw the young man draw a knife from his waistband. A bloody struggle ensued, as Jay plunged the knife repeatedly into her husband’s body, and slashed at his defensive arms and hands.

Had Jay been sober, her husband would not have stood a chance. But he drunkenly lost his balance, and in that split-second her husband grabbed a large rock and clobbered Jay over the head. Dazed, he broke off the attack and staggered away.

Within minutes an EMT team staunched her husband’s bleeding and saved his life. Over the next few months and years, surgeons repaired much of the damage to his arms and hands. But he will never be completely whole again, either physically or emotionally.

Deputies tracked Jay’s muddy footprints to his house and arrested him the next day. Initially he plead not guilty by reason of insanity. But later he changed his plea to guilty and received seven years to life. The DA promised he’d never be released.

But now, after just ten years behind bars, he’s being released.

Our fear was that he was crazy enough to hurt someone again. Perhaps us. We’d never harmed him, but neither had the stranger he stabbed, who was simply trying to help him. Suppose one day he showed up at our front door, asking for help? Would we dare let him in? Would we dare to even open the door?

How could the parole board possibly release someone as crazy as Jay? Especially when it was his first try for parole? It’s rare to release anyone with a life sentence on their first time up for parole. What the hell were they thinking? I contacted the parole board for an answer. They sent me a transcript of the parole hearing. I read every page.

Jay has spent the last ten years doing everything possible to reform himself. He’s kept out of trouble, for the most part. He’s stopped drinking, and attended substance abuse and self-help classes in prison. He’s reflected deeply on his crime and his childhood. He’s developed an impressive philosophy about life. He seems truly contrite and empathetic with his victim and victim’s family. He has a detailed plan for earning a living outside prison. And he plans to stay away from his mother and brother after being released.

Here is a man who has not lived in denial. He’s confronted his crime and his childhood with candor, and with determination to change his life.

He made an unusual impression upon the parole board, which they admitted.

The parole hearing occurred several months ago. If Jay stays out of trouble, he will be released before the end of this year. He will settle in a city far away from his victim, and far from where my wife and I live.

After reading the parole transcript we feel less worried about Jay’s upcoming release. But still, who knows?

Only time can prove the wisdom of the parole board’s judgment.