Deaf Mutes and Gunplay
This isn't really funny, but it's hard not to laugh at the numerous non sequiturs contained, perhaps inevitably, in this local article.
To make a long story short, there's this deaf-mute guy (DMG), living with his deaf-mute parents (both of them), and visiting the same house were DMG's sister and brother-in-law, both (!) of whom also were unable to hear or speak. I was shocked enough about the genetic uniformity of the whole DM family, but only as I wrote this did it occur to me that the brother-in-law is legally, but not biologically, related, which makes the whole thing even more surreal.
Anyway, the family was arguing, presumably in sign language, over selling the family home, when DMG shot his sister and b-i-l dead with a 20-gauge shotgun (again, ! -- that's a big-ass gun, suitable for hunting eighteen-wheelers).
There are too many odd lines to identify favorites, but I'll leave you with one of the odder ones: "DeLuca said Simich Sr. and his wife tried to get help from the next-door neighbor but had difficulty explaining what had happened." This after they ran from the house; the article didn't explain how they knew to do so, so one can only assume they were in the room.
This reminds me of the tremendous difficulty my hometown weekly newspaper had, five or so years back, when an old friend of mine back when he was a very young man died as a woman on a California highway. The obituary manifested the most adorable pronoun difficulties one might imagine in such a situation, as it wrestled with whether to write about the him the town remembered or the her she had since become.
Some things are just hard to write about, and my sympathies go out to the reporter who, I'm sure, did her best.
To make a long story short, there's this deaf-mute guy (DMG), living with his deaf-mute parents (both of them), and visiting the same house were DMG's sister and brother-in-law, both (!) of whom also were unable to hear or speak. I was shocked enough about the genetic uniformity of the whole DM family, but only as I wrote this did it occur to me that the brother-in-law is legally, but not biologically, related, which makes the whole thing even more surreal.
Anyway, the family was arguing, presumably in sign language, over selling the family home, when DMG shot his sister and b-i-l dead with a 20-gauge shotgun (again, ! -- that's a big-ass gun, suitable for hunting eighteen-wheelers).
There are too many odd lines to identify favorites, but I'll leave you with one of the odder ones: "DeLuca said Simich Sr. and his wife tried to get help from the next-door neighbor but had difficulty explaining what had happened." This after they ran from the house; the article didn't explain how they knew to do so, so one can only assume they were in the room.
This reminds me of the tremendous difficulty my hometown weekly newspaper had, five or so years back, when an old friend of mine back when he was a very young man died as a woman on a California highway. The obituary manifested the most adorable pronoun difficulties one might imagine in such a situation, as it wrestled with whether to write about the him the town remembered or the her she had since become.
Some things are just hard to write about, and my sympathies go out to the reporter who, I'm sure, did her best.
posted by Moon | 5/03/2005 02:08:00 PM
2 Comments:
Or not so surreal if they met in, say, a school for deaf mutes.
ya think? {shakes head.} of course that's how they met -- or in some other support venue or another. but it's funnier my way. and anyway the focus was on the hackneyed language of the article, and the hopelessness of trying to make it any better, or more pun-free at least.
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