Today is Thursday, January 4, 2023.     It’s getting late here since Elliot and I watched an absurd horror movie from 2021 called Malignant which was directed by horror maven James Wan, and it is on Netflix.    I chose it because of Wan’s impressive number of hits including the Conjuring series of films detailing the adventures of paranormal investigators Ed (Patrick Wilson) and Lorraine Warren (Vera Farmiga).    This film starts off creepily enough with two very good-looking people living in a vast house in Seattle who are expecting a baby.  The wife, named Madison Mitchell (Annabelle Wallis), is dealing with her wastrel of a husband who admits to a drinking problem, but first, he throws her against the wall in their bedroom which awakens a sleeping beast which we don’t see until the middle of the film.  This reawakening leads to a series of grisly murders of former doctors at a former research center that has subsequently closed.   At the last twenty minutes or so, we are witness to the most absurd transformation of a murderer who is living in the body of its host, Madison, who was born with the name of Emily and was given up by her birth mother.    Initially, there is some good work with camera angles and the such that produce a tense atmosphere, but when the identity of this rampaging killer is revealed, it devolves into, as one critic wrote, a “ballet of blood,” with an entire precinct wiped out by this superhuman demon.    Anyway, this is too much exposition of a not-very-satisfying horror film.    This is one you can miss. 

Otherwise, Elliot and I spent most of the day buying cat supplies since we hope to adopt a kitten or adult cat at the Northshore Animal League, in Port Washington tomorrow.   We were going to do this on Saturday, January 6, the third anniversary of Donald Trump’s rotten insurrection, but we’ve decided against it, not because of the significance of the date but because of the anticipated weather forecast that has the potential of snow in it.    But who knows what might happen anyway?     There’s no forecast of snow or rain tomorrow, so it’ll be the day we’ll attempt to bring home a new feline pet.  We’re both psyched since it’s been more than a year since Jocelyn died.   So we’ll see how it will work out tomorrow. 

Since we live in the Wild, Wild West, another shooting is in the news, and it’s only the fourth day of the New Year.  This time a 17-year-old gunman killed a sixth-grader and wounded five people at an Iowa school.     This unsurprising piece of news is reported in an online CNN article by Andy Rose, Dakin Andone, Evan Perez, and Christina Maxouris in which this numbing occurrence becomes all too familiar.  The school was called the Perry High School near Des Moines, Iowa. 

The five people wounded include four students and one school administer, officials said.  The school’s principal, Dan Marburger, was among the injured, according to officials in another school district where Marburger was an alumnus. 

The attack was one of at least four mass shootings that have unfolded in the country in 2024, according to the Gun Violence Archive.    It also marks the second U.S. shooting on school property in 2024, according to a CNN analyst.

The shooter was a student at the high school and it has been reported that he is dead of a self-inflicted wound.

The gunman was armed with a pump-action shotgun and a small-caliber handgun and had also made a number of social media posts around the time of the shooting.

The assault erupted on the first scheduled day of classes of the new semester, according to the district.

The only silver lining of the attack - if you can even call it that – was that it occurred very early in the morning where there were very few students and faculty in the building.  And classes had not yet begun. 

Perry is about 40 miles northwest of Des Moines and has a population of about 8,000, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.   

Late Thursday, the Iowa governor, Kim Reynolds, responded with the same fucking platitudes, and with no real serious measures to combat gun violence, by saying, “Our hearts are broken by this senseless tragedy.”    Of course, Reynolds is a dyed-in-the-wool Republican.   So what would you expect from a repugnican in this situation?    Real action?  No way!

So we’ll keep our fingers crossed tomorrow and hope for the best.

Stay safe and be well.