They'll Cut Your throat if You Let 'Em

I was in Manitoba last week when Slaughterhouse 5 happened on the bus at Portage La Prairie. It was a bizarre thing to be driving by the place they day after it happened. Manitoba isn't one of those places you'd think would have such occurrences, but apparently things they are a changin' out there, too.

That same week two young Indian men were tasered, and one of them shot and killed, by the police - that would be the RCMP who have provincial duties in Manitoba. Winnipeg has had it's share of ghastly murders - little kids, etc and the problems of reservation life, and off-reservation life have been made the stuff of Jackson Highway's plays.

I would imagine that one would have to be pretty hardy, and good natured, to live in Manitoba, particularly in a Manitoba winter. For that province seems to be a kick-back to the original sparsely-populated state of the pre-Columbian continent. North of Lake Winnipeg, or it's little sister, the province is largely formless and void. There isn't even much road kill. You can rocket along empty roads with none but the ravens for company - maybe they explain the dearth of road-kill. One can only imagine the perceptions of neophyte Europeans HBC, or Nor'west traders, Eastern European immigrants or a Toronto Orangeman laying eyes on a valley bottom. Manitoba is lovely in a well-watered summer, but I know that won't last. Couldn't imagine what it might do to somebody from China.

Two day's later another story from around the other side of the world, about another decapitation. This time on a little Aegean gem - Santorini. Somebody killed and removed the head of his girlfriend and took it round her village showing it off. Like the bus-master, he managed to cow the witnessrs, I guess with the sheer horror of what they were seeing. On the bus, the passengers managed to close the door and trap the killer there until police arrived. On Santorini, the police arrived, one was stabbed and the headsman stole a police car. In the ensuing pursuit the killer was shot five times and was arrested. He was in serious condition in the hospital. On the bus the killer decided to break a window and escape. He might have thought about that sooner had he been compus mentis, but the police took him without tasering, anyway, although his face looked a bit lumpy the next day.

Closer to home an altercation that started when somebody apparently mis-identified a man whom she thought had sexually assaulted her, wound up with the man thumped, coshed with a two-by-four, and stabbed all on a main street, by four of the young woman's friends. Some interesting considerations. First, Molly Pitcher - who thinks she recognizes a sexual attacker - even though he's old enough to be her father and in the company of his wife and another woman. Instead of calling authorities, this spitfire rounds on him in a Tim Horton's. Must have been quite the sexual assault.

Then there's the victim. He reacts by going to the local police station to ask assistance in explaining that he's not a sexual attacker. The police accommodate his wishes but Jezebel had retired to other quarters. The victim, to celebrate his new-found security decided to take a walk down main street. It just so happened the vixen lived on Main street, not only that she got another chance to interact. Not having been present when the police declared the chap a 'good guy', she approached some hi-testosterone male acquaintances to assist a damsel in distress. Four of them did. In short order they put the boots to the dastard, punched the piss out of him, nailed him with some lumber and for good measure punctured him a time or two. All were able to make good their withdrawal before the local constabulary arrived on scene. But identification didn't take long and all 5 - sweetheart and swains - were booked like Dano on the 5-Oh.

I don't even want to think about the 5 mental midgets who deputized themselves defenders of whatever virtue this young miss has left. But it concerns me to think that there are such young louts, with too much time on their hands and edged weapons in their pockets. There are, and they are legion. Unemployed and umemployable - walking bad attitudes with head fogged with whatever substance they can get into themselves. Nothing to do but adjust their privates in public and use the F-word in some hitherto undiscovered ways of communicating. They're going to make an interesting demographic.