I find it harder and harder to get indignant about anything anymore. There is so much evil and injustice in the world and things just seem to keep getting worse and worse. Politics in America and Britain and elsewhere fill me with a sense of hopelessness. Refugees continue to drown by the hundreds in the Mediterranean and be slaughtered in Syria. The bad guys seem to be winning everywhere.

So it takes something extra to get me upset these days. Here it is: Some madman, some crazy person, or god knows what, has just shot up a garlic festival in California. A garlic festival, for christake! An event devoted to family fun and the enjoyment of food. What kind of diseased individual decides to shoot up a garlic festival? The sheer absurdity of it drives me to despair.

There was a time when I could have at least reassuringly told myself that kind of thing doesn't happen here. But of course we have now lost that innocence. So lock your doors, huddle inside, never venture out, live in fear, go easy on the garlic. What a f-ing world this has become!