A filmmaker in San Francisco got permission to film the Golden Gate Bridge under the auspices of communicating the relationship between nature and the bridge. His real goal was to capture the many suicides and suicide attempts that occur there every year. I understand the concerns of his detractors who don’t want to advertise the popularity or possibly the ease of access that is the Golden Gate, but I would be interested to hear the stories of the jumpers and the patrolman who have to try to talk the jumpers down.
Kevin Briggs, a friendly, sandy-haired motorcycle patrolman, has a knack for spotting jumpers and talking them back from the edge; he has coaxed in more than two hundred potential jumpers without losing one over the side. He won the Highway Patrol’s Marin County Uniformed Employee of the Year Award last year. Briggs told me that he starts talking to a potential jumper by asking, “How are you feeling today?” Then, “What’s your plan for tomorrow?” If the person doesn’t have a plan, Briggs says, “Well, let’s make one. If it doesn’t work out, you can always come back here later.”
Over the past few weeks I have had to answer “do you think about hurting yourself?” several times — and no, I don’t…at least since I was just out of high school — so I certainly feel safe watching it, but I wonder about people who do have suicidal thoughts, suicide ideation and the people around them. Especially as an adult I feel I have conquered the “absurd” thoughts that would lead to any ideas that life would be better with out me and I am curious about people who still do.
A friend has one of those in-the-walls sound systems that didn’t tempt me until this article (carried by the bane of my wife’s existence — seriously, she may be so complacent about the Playboy© subscription because of her hatred for Sound and Vision) was connected in my mind with this device which connects and controls your iPod.
After viewing the ever-so-popular post-inauguration party picture of Jenna Bush, I asked my co-worker if he thought I was too old for Jenna Bush. I expected him to say I was too married for her. Instead he said, You’re not white enough.
Buy and build your own cube city with these toy sets of cubes and cube dwellers.
Simon Hoegsberg is showing The Thought Project where he randomly stopped and interviewed people on the street about what they were thinking at just that moment then took their picture. It’s a fairly honest portrayal and refreshing to peruse.
—I hate when the only link to an item is at the root of the web page. At some point Simon Hoegsberg is going to change exhibits and this link will be irrelevant.—
The year-round blogging solution to Blackwell’s list (but wittier) is Go Fug Yourself which persents with clever lines like
Tired of the endless glam grind, Maggie Gyllenhaal retires from acting and opens her own filling station
for pictures like this
—(Culled frem my list of Blog Lines reccomends!)—
—This is dedicated to the new pho-kid and his mom!—
So many of my friends are married WAY beyond their means. Sherman’s Lagoon explains how today.
Don’t know if you caught Onstead’s latest jibe yesterday, but the idea of Biblical fan fiction is one of the cleverest irreverant wish-I-had-thought-of-that things I’ve seen in a while (and the folllow-up in today’s story is pretty good, too.)