Sometimes the news is overwhelming and awful and directs me towards just checking out entirely, but a salve comes from an unexpected place and reminds me that things have always been terrible and today is not an aberration, and oddly, the knowledge that America has always been screwed up gives me a sort of vaccine to today’s sickness.

For whatever reason, two weeks ago, the town of Grimsby (Lincolnshire, England) came up in conversation with my family, and I offhandedly remembered that Elton John had a song about Grimsby on his album Caribou (1976), and today I decided to listen to the album while I was coding. Dang if one of the album tracks, “Ticking”, isn’t about a gun nut going berserk in the USA and leaving death in his wake.

And immediately, a litany of songs of senseless violence sprang to mind. Boomtown Rats’ “I Don’t Like Mondays” (1979). 10000 Maniacs’ “Jubilee” (1989)…. (perhaps you have your own memory to add to the list — please comment if you do).

I am conflicted to see in retrospect how I grew up in a stew of senseless violence and internalized it all as just another part of being American.

Fuck that.