My Alto Voice in the Choir

Oh, America...you sad, gunslinging whorehouse...Ah freedom.

                                                    Jeff F.


I have no interest in those of you who like to collect, carry, protect yourself with and otherwise support the narrow interpretation of the Second Amendment.  Your exultation in your conceal and carry status or your photos of your gleaming gun cabinets are nails in the coffins of all the people who've died these last few weeks, culminating in the fourteen deaths yesterday of people who work with the developmentally disabled. Like Sophie. Yes, I'm making an emotional decision. You've made your decision, a decision that I believe is immoral and cowardly and based on nothing but fear and craven impulse. I have no interest in speaking with you nor in living alongside you.

I have nothing to add to this bit that Mary Moon at Bless Our Hearts wrote in her inimitable style and would only add that I refuse to listen to anyone, ever again, justify their lack of support for extremely strict gun laws.

What sort of guns did those gunmen, still on the loose, use today to calmly murder fourteen (at last count) people at a center for developmental disabilities in San Bernardino?
I don't know. But I can tell you this- the guns, whatever kind they were, were manufactured for one purpose and one purpose only and that is for the murder of human beings. Many human beings. As quickly as possible.

At this point, I don't give a shit what these crazy white men (it's always crazy white men, isn't it?) have or had as a motive to make them do what they did. I don't CARE if they needed mental health care that they were unable to get. I don't care what their religion was or their social or non-social lifestyle was. I don't care what video games they played or what their neighbors thought of them.
All I care about is that they were able to get these guns, these weapons of evil intent and the ammunition to go in them and use them to kill innocent people.
And of course it's always "innocent" people. School children, people in church, people in movies, people seeking health care services, people at an awards ceremony at a center for people with developmental disabilities.
Look- anyone who would do what these men do is mentally ill. That's a given. Whether they are teenagers who want to kill their fellow students or grown men who want to gun down abortion providers- they are sick.
That is not at question.
But here's what is- what sort of deep sickness has infected us as a nation which would allow this direct cause and effect to still be legal? What is it about us as a society which makes us hesitate for even a second before outlawing these sorts of weapons? What has happened to us as a species that would allow this to happen over and over again?
I don't even care if the second amendment DOES protect the rights of people to buy these guns (and I don't think for a second that it does). Let's amend the damn amendment. Because our babies are being killed.
And we are the laughing stock of the world.

So how do we do it? How do we, as a nation, say no more? 
Look- I'm at the point where I'd let the government declare martial law and send agents to every house in the nation to collect these guns. Which, of course, would lead to civil war and unbelievable bloodshed because that would prove to the gun insanists (yes, I made that word up) that the very thing they've been yelling about as a defense for owning guns has finally come true.
Nothing is going to happen overnight. It just isn't. This is a problem and a horror that may take decades before we see some results. Is that a reason not to begin the process? To outlaw these guns?
The horror and evil of slavery wasn't solved in a day. Hell, we're still suffering the consequences.
BUT IT HAS TO BEGIN SOMEWHERE!
And this absolutely undeniably psychotic love affair with guns that a certain segment of American society has must be stemmed. The finger has to be stuck in the dike, no matter how huge the force behind it threatens to be. And no jokes allowed- this ain't funny.

I'm preaching to the choir here. I know that. But let me remind you- don't vote for anyone who wavers or waffles on gun control. Just don't. Stand up and let's begin to start the process of getting these guns out of the hands of the insane. And no one in this whole world really believes that background checks really work. We have to just stop selling them. And even, dare I say? Making them?

Day Two: Gratitude Posting

Yesterday, I joined my friend Jeneva who had posted on Facebook that she was going to salvage the last six days of the second worst year of her life with gratitude. I told her that I'd do it with her on yesterday's post.

I'm grateful today for the card that Ms. Moon sent me of the Airstream trailer on the beach that now graces my blog. That card appeared at just the right moment and is a testament to those people in my life who truly know me and who share their lives and allow me to share mine.

Now, who'll join me in the Airstream and gratitude?


1. I'm grateful for my strong and healthy constitution.
2. I'm grateful for the card that Ms. Moon sent me of the Airstream trailer on the beach that now graces my blog and that is testament to our friendship.

Dr. Paul Weston

I'm pretty sure it was him, sitting there at a little table with his head bent, reading. I walked past him, on my way out of a cafe where Oliver and I had grabbed some lunch. I had leftover meatballs and tomato sauce in a plastic container, he had a book. He looked up and smiled.

If I could or would or did, I'd have fainted.

I watched that show, In Treatment, religiously when it was on a few years ago. I got so involved in it that I'd drive around the city thinking that if only Dr. Paul Weston were my therapist, my life would be perfect. I imagined all sorts of scenarios, both ethical and unethical. Of course, my obsession was not with Gabriel Byrne but with the tortured, intelligent character that he played. I write all of this perfectly aware of my folly and of how ridiculous it sounds. I figure, though, that Ms. Moon writes rhapsodically of Keith Richards and Radish King of Tom Cruise, so humor me. I wonder what those two ladies would do if they nearly bumped into their own true celebreloves and made eye contact?

Ms. Moon?

Radish King?

In defense of weirdness and against earnestness and chakras

for Ms. Moon:



If you're partial to Tom Waits and Keith Richards, you might enjoy this. If you're into earnestness and chakras, you probably won't.

Hanging on my bulletin board

In the spirit of Ms. Moon posting a hilarious New Yorker cartoon, I pulled down this one, which has been hanging on my bulletin board for years. My favorite is the Cinema Abbey. I think if you click on it, you'll be able to read it more clearly.

Another favorite is this:

That's it tonight, folks, unless you want me to get up off my bed and do a dance.

David Sedaris made my stomach hurt last night.

This is the book Sedaris recommended this year -- a tradition  on his tour

Yes. I laughed so hard that not only my stomach ached, but my face muscles did, too. In fact, for a second I thought that I'd dislocated my jaw. He read a few new essays, the recent dentist/medical system/socialism essay from The New Yorker, told very dirty jokes, read from his diary and otherwise charmed the audience of thousands at UCLA last night. He dissed animals, particularly dogs (you would have howled, Ms. Moon), and spoke a lot about taxidermy and owls. He is just about the weirdest, sweetest humorist in the world, I think, and I love him. He's definitely the only person who can tell the foulest of jokes and get me to laugh so hard I spit saliva. I've seen him now at least six  times, and each time I'm convinced that if he only knew I was out there in the audience, he'd be one of my best friends.

Here's an excerpt from the recent essay in The New Yorker, titled Dentists Without Borders:

One thing that puzzled me during the American health-care debate was all the talk about socialized medicine and how ineffective it’s supposed to be. The Canadian plan was likened to genocide, but even worse were the ones in Europe, where patients languished on filthy cots, waiting for aspirin to be invented. I don’t know where these people get their ideas, but my experiences in France, where I’ve lived off and on for the past thirteen years, have all been good. A house call in Paris will run you around fifty dollars. I was tempted to arrange one the last time I had a kidney stone, but waiting even ten minutes seemed out of the question, so instead I took the subway to the nearest hospital. In the center of town, where we’re lucky enough to have an apartment, most of my needs are within arm’s reach. There’s a pharmacy right around the corner, and two blocks further is the office of my physician, Dr. Médioni. Twice I’ve called on a Saturday morning, and, after answering the phone himself, he has told me to come on over. These visits, too, cost around fifty dollars. The last time I went, I had a red thunderbolt bisecting my left eyeball.
The doctor looked at it for a moment, and then took a seat behind his desk. “I wouldn’t worry about it if I were you,” he said. “A thing like that, it should be gone in a day or two.”
“Well, where did it come from?” I asked. “How did I get it?”
“How do we get most things?” he answered.
“We buy them?”
The time before that, I was lying in bed and found a lump on my right side, just below my rib cage. It was like a devilled egg tucked beneath my skin. Cancer, I thought. A phone call and twenty minutes later, I was stretched out on the examining table with my shirt raised.
“Oh, that’s nothing,” the doctor said. “A little fatty tumor. Dogs get them all the time.”
I thought of other things dogs have that I don’t want: Dewclaws, for example. Hookworms. “Can I have it removed?”
“I guess you could, but why would you want to?”
He made me feel vain and frivolous for even thinking about it. “You’re right,” I told him. “I’ll just pull my bathing suit up a little higher.”

Read more http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2012/04/02/120402fa_fact_sedaris#ixzz1tpKc9cAi

Word Verification

I know that I read on Ms. Moon's blog that the new word verification requirements and procedures on Blogger are supposed to be a way to preserve some of the old typesets or something like that, and while I enjoy a good typeset, I haven't enjoyed entering weird word and number combinations over and over the last few days on other people's blogs. I've also gotten far fewer comments on my own blog despite a huge surge in visitors, so I can only imagine hundreds of you peering at the screen and trying to decipher the blurry configurations only to give up any attempts to either agree with my damnatory words about Santorum or damn me to hell for my heresy.

So, I've dismantled my own word verification and fully expect the comments to pour in, both spam and otherwise.

Let's see what happens.

Carol of the Day

Ms. Moon, vocal disliker of all things Christmas, dared me to post this video for today's Carol of the Day. I admit that one of the Christmas carols that I actually despise is The Twelve Days of Christmas -- the piddly, repetitive melody and stupid words drive me nuts -- but my heart warms a bit with The Twelve Gays of Christmas. So, with apologies to those of you who agree with Bill O'Reilly (anybody?, anybody?) that Christmas is desecrated and dead, I give you:

Bad Sport: NOT an inspirational post

I'm inspired today by Ms. Moon of Bless Our Hearts's post titled Attitude Adjustments. You might want to click on over there and read first before finishing here. Or not. It's up to you.

I, like most cognizant folks of contemporary culture, am saturated with doing good, feeling good, feeling virtue, feeling Zen-like, seeking to understand the positive pathways of the brain and how to ensure them, being mindful, counting my blessings, listing things to be grateful for, etc. etc. Every now and then, though, I'd like to surrender. I'd like to say to those people whose kids are really young or newly diagnosed that you know what? It's not going to get better. It's going to get worse. Your mind and your nature will be chipped away to such a fine point, you'll be capable of pecking at any closed door and slipping through. You'll be bitter and angry and self-righteous and you'll get things done, but you'll also do a lot of crying in the shower and sliding down the proverbial wall. 


I would like to be the John McEnroe of parents of disabled children. I'd like to curse at the ref when I miss a shot, scream at the fans and maybe even throw my racket and storm off the court. I'm out of here, I'd shout, I'm through with this shit.


I suppose it's actually time to meditate.