Oh, also....
I suppose I should say that theres probably a world of difference between the idea of "Karma" as someone receiving a sort of divine justice and the idea of someone who is a bit of an arsehole being killed/maimed/infected with a horrible disease.

Up til now, the only other thing I could think of was the tale of a young lad, 2 years younger than me, who once got a bit wasted on drugs and decided to try to batter me. After receiving a few punches to the face and still trying to shuffle away mumbling "I don't want trouble" (what a hero I am), he threatened to stab my then girlfriend (though he couldn't have had a knife or I do believe he would have used it on me aftew what followed). I saw a fist heading towards my face again, then after a few moments of darkness I came to with the said chav/ned clamped in my left hand crying and bleeding quite a lot from the mouth. I grabbed my girlfriends hand and tried to walk off, but he followed (drugged up) threatening to kill me and I spent the next 2 or 3 months in fear as he and his mates would sporradically appear around where I live with knives looking for me. After a few months of this, for some unknown reason, he let my friend know that he was a bit worried that I was after HIM and he wanted the whole thing forgotten..... which it gladly was, as I had spent many weeks in fear of him and his mates. Thus ended the first of the only 2 fights I have ever been in.

The upshot of it all is that a few years later, having done this sort of thing to many people, many of them friends of mine, he took his own life. I can't remember the exact details of it all, but I seem to remember he hung himself. Karma? I hope not, I would hate to have that on my conscience. I remember hearing about it and my friends saying how he'd got what he deserved. Maybe I'd have thought the same if my own cousin hadn't also killed himself less than a year earlier after getting himself into a lot of trouble with drugs and stuff.... fell in with the wrong crowd, as it always goes. He was in trouble with the law, his girlfriend was having him charged with assault but was calling him constantly and driving him crazy. One day he just went into the loft of his parents house and hung himself. 20 years old. His dad found him. I still see the sadness on their faces every time I see them 4 years on. Their only child.

I wonder sometimes if anyone talks about my cousin like my friends spoke about that kid who caused me all the trouble. I never really knew that guy, but I did know my cousin and there was no justice in what happened to him, no Karma for the stupid things he'd done, just a tragic end for someone I had grown up with and loved like a wee brother. I imagine that other guy was the same, just a stupid kid who took a few wrong turns.

So I decided not to post that story, because Karma doesn't come into it. I didn't actually mean to write any of this down at all, but it just all sort of came out. And now I don't really know how to finish it.
( baw__bag contains traces of nuts on, Wed 27 Feb 2008, 4:03, 2 replies)

No sympathy, sorry...
If your attacker and your cousin had made other people's lives as miserable as their own through their actions, then they don't deserve sympathy, not yours, not anybody's. The worst scumbags in the world probably have people like you defending them; "they fell in with the wrong crowd", "they took a few wrong turns", as if what happened to them was the result of unfortunate accidents out of their control.

No dice. We're all responsible for our own actions. They had choices, and they chose to wreck their lives, and the lives of people around them. Reserve your sympathy for those who deserve it, not those who made their own bed.
(Musuko, Wed 27 Feb 2008, 12:00, closed)

Don't get me wrong,
I'm not defending those who destroy others lives. Incidentally, my cousin, while being a bit off the rails at the end, wasn't a bad 'un, he was well liked and very bright, he had made his mistakes, though and he just couldn't deal with the way his life went, he was nothing like as bad as the other guy. He did, of course, make an arse of his life for the last year of it or so, which was a result of getting involved in drugs. Perhaps if you were there to hear his mother's heart break at the funeral you'd have a different opinion of what you describe as people like me, by which I assume you have mistaken me for some bleeding heart, forgive 'em no matter what type. I hated that little shit who put me through that, but I also understood what his family were going through and couldn't bring myself to see how they deserved it. Must be nice to live in a world where people are either good or evil though.
( baw__bag contains traces of nuts on, Wed 27 Feb 2008, 17:16, closed)