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| Kill Yourself, Just Don't Do It On My Time | ||||||
| For this week's article, instead of writing about politics like I normally do, I have decided to put forth a kind of public service announcement. With the increasing number of public suicides or suicide attempts taking place in recent years, I felt it was necessary to make a message clear to the public, and it is a message that has needed to be said for a long time. The message is as follows: if you are depressed, feeling down, or suffering from a terminal disease that would lead you to contemplate suicide, please do it in the privacy of your own home, because the general public, including myself, doesn't give a damn about your personal problems. | ||||||
| Last Wednesday morning, a 25-year-old Compton man named Juan Manuel Alvarez parked his sports-utility-vehicle on the Glendale Metrolink train tracks wanting to end his life. At the last minute, however, he exited the vehicle, causing the oncoming train to strike Alvarez's car, derail, and collide into another train. According to KCAL 9 news, 11 people were killed and over 200 were injured in Alvarez's suicide attempt. Instead of killing yourself, Juan, you killed eleven others and injured hundreds that had nothing to do with your insignificant problems. Thanks, asshat; because of scum like yourself, people lost their lives. | ||||||
| This story reminded me of another public suicide attempt made in the summer of 2001 by a disturbed woman named Angela Song, who stood on the ledge of the Lake Washington ship canal's bridge in Seattle, and threatened to jump. This particular selfish idiot parked her car on a busy section of Interstate-5 during morning rush-hour traffic, got out and stood on the bridge. Three hours later she finally jumped, but the jump didn't even kill her. Seattle Police Chief John Diaz, in a statement to KOMO-TV shortly after the incident, said, "We had motorists, truckers...people in a Metro bus...screaming at her to jump." That is exactly the point I am making here: nobody cares about your personal problems, and when you tie-up people in traffic or kill others because of your own trivial existence, it pisses the rest of us off. | ||||||
| Apparently what Alvarez did, however, is not entirely uncommon. According to KCAL 9, in Germany "there are 18 suicides by train every week" and "one in 10 survives the attempt." Also according to the KCAL 9 story, "The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report that 112 people nationwide killed themselves using buses, trains and subways in 2002." Alvarez, who had stab wounds on his chest and marks on his wrists where he had tried to slit them, was taken to a psychiatric ward where he will probably live a relatively easy life, which is truly unfortunate for the families and friends of the victims that were killed and injured by the lunatic. Can't we just throw away the rules just this once, and allow them to have their way with Alvarez? | ||||||
| The next time you are feeling suicidal, please, take a shotgun to your head or hang yourself in the privacy of your own home, because, as I said earlier, the rest of us don't want to be tied up or inconvenienced by your pathetic problems. It is because of stories like last Wednesday's train derailment that I really long for the days when Dr. Jack Kevorkian was still in practice. | ||||||
| Copyright Gerry Wachovsky, 2005, and Yahoo! Inc. All rights reserved. | ||||||
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