“Message in bottle pulled out of River Thames contains Nigerian inheritance ‘scam’ letter”

by Christopher Farnsworth

I showed up just after the shooting started. I was maybe five minutes behind the gunman at Terminal 3 at Los Angeles International Airport on Friday. I was on my way to Vegas for an early birthday celebration for my brother when, according to the authorities, a 23-year-old named Paul Anthony Ciancia decided to work out a lunatic grudge against the Transportation Security Administration with an assault rifle. One TSA employee, Gerardo Hernandez, was killed, and at least three other people were wounded.

LAX is old news already. It was lost in the weekend cycle, even before a man in a motorcycle helmet opened fire at the Garden State Mall in Paramus last night.

It seems like this has been happening a lot. We’ve apparently learned to tolerate a level of human sacrifice that would make an Aztec priest queasy. With all this practice, you’d think we’d be better at dealing with it by now. But we’re not. At least, not when it happens to us.

The police had pulled up just ahead of my cab. People were outside the airport doors, talking on their phones, visibly shaken, some crying. And some were still headed inside, still trying to catch their flights. Finally, a traffic cop who’d blocked the road yelled at them to stop entering the airport. A young man with a thick German accent yelled back at him, something like, “Well, nobody will tell us what’s going on!”

He was right. What sticks with me now is the curious reticence of everyone around to speak up. Most of the people who’d fled the terminal were on their phones — either looking for information passively or communicating with friends or followers — or gathered in small, quiet groups. Other people hung nearby, as if waiting for the right moment to interrupt.

I can understand that reticence, because I felt it too. It seemed somehow the height of bad taste to ask people what was going on. Even the traffic cops were quiet. They probably lacked information, just like us, and they probably also wanted to avoid yelling anything that might cause a panic.

It was, honestly, the most polite I’ve ever seen people at LAX.

I found myself taking pictures and tweeting, even after the cops told us to clear out. I even saw a guy from the bomb squad go by — his nametape read SCULLY — and yet I still hung around. I spoke to three witnesses who’d been in line for security, just before the shooter opened fire. One man said the shooter put the gun in his face, and asked him if he was TSA. When he said no, the shooter moved on. He wasn’t hurt, but I didn’t think he was anywhere near all right.

I’ve covered shootings and crime scenes in the past. I know, in a sort of abstract, intellectual way, that bullets can tear through cinder block and hit people dozens, even hundreds, of yards from where they were fired. It was only when the cops began delivering information — by yelling “Shots fired! Shots fired!” — that I stopped playing with my iPhone and joined the flight attendants sprinting down the roadway. “He died while Tweeting” suddenly seemed like a really stupid epitaph.

Once everyone stopped running, I walked down the exit ramps from the airport, where people were starting to gather, and where the cars were backing up. A guy wearing a sport coat went running by in the opposite direction, dragging his carry-on behind him. Again, nobody seemed willing to tell him anything, so I told him there was a guy with a gun still running around loose inside. That slowed him down, but it actually didn’t stop him.

I realized there was no reason for me to stick around, so I found a cab and got a ride home.
I looked online for news and found that as quiet as everyone at the airport was, there was no shortage of people bellowing their theories online. It seemed like the level of certainty about what happened at LAX increased geometrically with the distance from the actual shooting.

This is what I heard: There were two shooters. (No. Just one.) The shooter was an off-duty TSA agent. (He wasn’t.) He’d escaped with the crowd. (He didn’t.) He had an AR-15. (Close, but no.) He was dead. (No. Wounded in the head and leg.)

And there were people who “joked” about a dead TSA screener as “nothing of value lost,” or dribbled their nonsense about false-flag operations and practice dummies and fake blood. I also got at least one troll on Twitter who implied that this never would have happened in a place with open-carry laws. Maybe these people thought they were being funny, or making a salient point about Obama, or even blowing the lid off the whole conspiracy. Maybe they even believed they would have been John McClane if it happened to them.

Those stories are a lot neater, a lot cleaner, and a lot more comforting. We’d like to believe we’re safe, first of all, that the checkpoint will keep the terrorists away. And that if somehow these systems fail, we’ll see some hero rise and handle every threat fast and hard. In my day job, I write those kinds of stories.

But that’s fiction. Something like this reminds us that removing our belts and shoes doesn’t mean much if a guy is toting an assault rifle. We discover how much we don’t know, how much is desperately uncertain, even as it’s all happening right in front of us. Sometimes, we find out that we are the extras in someone else’s idea of an action movie. From close up, all I could see was that we are still terribly vulnerable to each other. Maybe you’ll see for yourself, when it happens again.

Christopher Farnsworth is the author of the President’s Vampire series. He lives in Los Angeles. Photo of LAX’s control tower in 2009 by Pedro Szekely.

Watch this video, buy this record and get yourself some tour tickets. I am tired of telling you what’s good for you. (I mean, I’m tired, but I think we both know I will continue to tell you what’s good for you so long as I continue to do this.)

Spider, Man (Sorry If You Get That Theme Song Stuck In Your Head But I Have It There Too Now So Why Should I Be The Only One Who Has To Suffer)

What’s that you say? An arty comic about a man and a spider making sandwiches on the anti-social web? By Awl pal Amy Jean Porter? Available for pre-order at a discount right now? I’ll take two!

“Turn being alone into a positive. Do things you enjoy doing alone, like reading or walking. But make it part of your routine to be around people. Join a club, volunteer. If all else fails, have dinner at the bar in your favorite restaurant. Talk to the bartender.”
 — Here are some tips to help you get over loneliness. It sucks to be sad, but I guess given everything that goes on it is probably inevitable, and as long as sorrow is what they’re serving up you may as well take it at a table with somebody who might at least smile at you and make you feel like you’re not invisible. I mean, if that’s your thing. Some people actually don’t mind being alone. Or, more accurately, they have come to the conclusion that they are completely detestable creatures whose mere presence is an awful reminder of the myriad human failings to which we are all susceptible, and they make every event they attend that much more awkward and uncomfortable by showing their stupid faces, so they have resigned themselves to the realization that it is probably better for everyone if they stay far away from anyone good because that is about the best they deserve and they don’t really even deserve that. But that’s just someone I know, the rest of you should totally get out there. Also, sometimes this helps.

How is it only Tuesday? It feels like it should be, like, Thursday of NEXT WEEK already. It’s probably the clocks, right? I could use a nap right now, and I am as far away from being a baby panda as it is possible to be. Man, I do not see how we’re getting to Friday at this rate.

The question “Could a low-salt diet help stop you snoring?” might just as easily be phrased as “Is life with a low-salt diet worth living?” although I suppose the answers to those questions would be wildly at odds.

Samuel Shepard Rogers IV is 70 today, and among the many things he has done in what any fair observer would have to call a pretty interesting life was co-write the song above, which if you start listening to now might be over by the time Sam turns 71.

“How long can food stay in your freezer?”

“Canada’s largest city, where I grew up, is a sprawling, crowded, diverse, fabulously wealthy and increasingly exciting place. It’s Canada’s New York City (the nation’s finance capital), San Francisco (technology) and Los Angeles (entertainment) put together, and is by almost every measure a world-class city. There’s only one thing holding it back: An adolescent’s obsession over what other people think of it.”
 — Did you know that people who live in Toronto are called Torontonians? I mean, I guess it makes sense, but I never really spent any time considering the nomenclature, because, you know, it’s Toronto. It may be Canada’s New York City, Canada’s San Francisco and Canada’s Los Angeles put together, but all three of those things have “Canada” in front of them, so AUTOMATIC ZZZZZZZ. Anyway, their mayor has been in the news lately because of something about crack-smoking on video, it happens, life will move forward as it always does and pretty soon we will forget all about Toronto once again, but in this brief moment while they have even a small sliver of spotlight, I would like to make this suggestion: From now on they should call themselves Torontulas. I mean, that sounds pretty badass, right?