who says i like right angles?

i know senators are responsible to their constituents who elected them, but it seems wrong to me for senators to uphold the interests of their states to the detriment of the country. maybe senator lieberman has convinced himself that plane-mounted lasers should really be priority during wars in countries without air forces, even as our country scrambles to right itself financially.

in new mexico this unconfirmed atheist prayed aloud, barefoot and alone in a tiny, dark dirt-floored new mexican chapel. it was quite enjoyable, only partially due to champagne, beer, and red wine.

dear ants on my kitchen counter and elsewhere in my apartment,
i keep my apartment clean and i spray vinegar around because i read that you don't like it. i didn't want to poison you; i just wanted you to take your appetite elsewhere. can't you take a hint? please don't make me resort to spraying any more raid and asphyxiating myself even more. i will beat you, and your casualties will be numerous. so just eat the delicious poisonous bait i left for you and get the fuck out!

dear economy c/o 500 index fund c/o vanguard,
stop eating all my moneys! don't make me invest in campbell's soup!

dear $800 eaten by the stock market,
i tried to do something responsible with you and your 2200 friends. i'm sorry i didn't spend you like normal money. you really deserved to be turned into cool junk, not evaporated.

dear wachovia,
why don't you have a branch in new orleans? it's a major city and now i am going to take away all $355 in my checking account away from you.

dear office chair i bought from target,
how dare one of your legs crack even though you cost only $25. because i leaned on you in all kinds of unreasonable positions, i am going to forgive you and fix you with duct tape.

dear self,
go to your freaking classes! all of them! all the time!

with great annoyance and a little self-loathing,
v.e.h.

i'm in mississippi now. mom picked me up in new orleans this afternoon and now we're sitting around her house in mississippi, waiting. it's a horrible feeling to wait for something that might rip your life apart. i'm not really interested in being eloquent right now so all i have to say is shit. shit, shit, shit.

i'm at UNO. i'm taking sociology, geography, environmental science, spanish, and english. so far, so good. between driving down here, cleaning up my filthy new apartment (it's clean enough now and i'm settling in), and going to classes, i've been busy just about every second since early saturday morning.

hurricane gustav may be coming here. it is too far out to tell where it's going to go so i'm trying not to think about it today but internally i'm freaking out a little. it goes without saying that a bad storm would be especially devastating to new orleans right now while people are still trying to get their lives back together. i can't even imagine the blow it would deal on people - emotionally, financially, and in every other way. so many people are on the fence about whether they even want to be here and another bad storm will make up a lot of their minds. it hurts my conscience to say this, but i hope it goes anywhere but here.

mom and i went to the catskills a few weeks ago for a little summer vacation. we did some light hiking, went to olana (frederic edwin church's estate), and went to a modern dance performance at mount tremper arts.

this is the view of the hudson river from olana:

august, 2008

"Guns. Everywhere guns.

Let me start this discussion by pointing out that I am not anti-gun. I'm pro-knife. Consider the merits of the knife.

In the first place, you have catch up with someone in order to stab him. A general substitution of knives for guns would promote physical fitness. We'd turn into a whole nation of great runners. Plus, knives don't ricochet. And people are seldom killed while cleaning their knives.

As a civil libertarian, I of course support the Second Amendment. And I believe it means exactly what it says: "A well-regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed." Fourteen-year-old boys are not part of a well-regulated militia. Members of wacky religious cults are not part of a well-regulated militia. Permitting unregulated citizens to have guns is destroying the security of this free state.

I am intrigued by the arguments of those who claim to follow the judicial doctrine of original intent. How do they know it was the dearest wish of Thomas Jefferson's heart that teen-age drug dealers should cruise the cities of this nation perforating their fellow citizens with assault rifles? Channelling?

There is more hooey spread about the Second Amendment. It says quite clearly that guns are for those who form part of a well-regulated militia, i.e., the armed forces including the National Guard. The reasons for keeping them away from everyone else get clearer by the day.

The comparison most often used is that of the automobile, another lethal object that is regularly used to wreak great carnage. Obviously, this society is full of people who haven't got enough common sense to use an automobile properly. But we haven't outlawed cars yet.

We do, however, license them and their owners, restrict their use to presumably sane and sober adults and keep track of who sells them to whom. At a minimum, we should do the same with guns.

In truth, there is no rational argument for guns in this society. This is no longer a frontier nation in which people hunt their own food. It is a crowded, overwhelmingly urban country in which letting people have access to guns is a continuing disaster. Those who want guns -- whether for target shooting, hunting or potting rattlesnakes (get a hoe) -- should be subject to the same restrictions placed on gun owners in England -- a nation in which liberty has survived nicely without an armed populace.

The argument that "guns don't kill people" is patent nonsense. Anyone who has ever worked in a cop shop knows how many family arguments end in murder because there was a gun in the house. Did the gun kill someone? No. But if there had been no gun, no one would have died. At least not without a good footrace first. Guns do kill. Unlike cars, that is all they do.

Michael Crichton makes an interesting argument about technology in his thriller "Jurassic Park." He points out that power without discipline is making this society into a wreckage. By the time someone who studies the martial arts becomes a master -- literally able to kill with bare hands -- that person has also undergone years of training and discipline. But any fool can pick up a gun and kill with it.

"A well-regulated militia" surely implies both long training and long discipline. That is the least, the very least, that should be required of those who are permitted to have guns, because a gun is literally the power to kill. For years, I used to enjoy taunting my gun-nut friends about their psycho-sexual hang-ups -- always in a spirit of good cheer, you understand. But letting the noisy minority in the National Rifle Association force us to allow this carnage to continue is just plain insane.

I do think gun nuts have a power hang-up. I don't know what is missing in their psyches that they need to feel they have to power to kill. But no sane society would allow this to continue.

Ban the damn things. Ban them all.

You want protection? Get a dog."

Molly Ivins, 1993

mama is coming home from her month at harvard today.

m'sister and her other half

longlong time no post. recently i:

went to west virginia for a long weekend of mountain relaxation.





went to new orleans for a short weekend of mengis family reunitedness:



& went to new york for a normal-length weekend of my sister's perfect nuptial celebrations (highlight: the hora).

the end.

a tall, slim, muscular man wearing only a flannel shirt tied loincloth-style around his hips yelling "WHERE'S MY FATHER AT?" ran onto 16th st out of rock creek park tonight, stopped in front of my moving car, motioned the cars in the other lane to keep going, forced me to stop, and jumped onto the hood of my car. he proceeded to climb up the windshield onto the roof as i sat beneath him in shock. fyi: it is really, really scary to have a crazy jungle man attack your car while you are sitting inside it at night in dc. when the police showed up, jungle man was immediately face-down on the ground with his hands behind his back. apparently 3 cops are far more intimidating than my car horn and i. my heart is still beating double-time.