… en vie??

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She.

On one of the last occasions I purposely socialized with Brett, I witnessed him respond to a semi-hostile remark, not by defusing the situation, but by throwing his beer in the man’s face and starting a fight that ended with one of our mutual friends in jail.

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My title comes from this poem.

Her name is Julie Swetnick.

The White House has just placed Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross in charge of its effort to appoint Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court. Ross will be the public face of Kavanaugh’s defense.

UD plays online robots (and gives herself only sixty seconds per move). She’s wondering when/if all of the new Scrabble words will actually be added…

She’s especially excited about OK and ZEN. It’s about time!

…drops.

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[His Yale roommate] said that he never witnessed Kavanaugh engage in any sexual misconduct, but did recall him being “frequently, incoherently drunk.” He described [Deborah] Ramirez as a vulnerable outsider. “Is it believable that she was alone with a wolfy group of guys who thought it was funny to sexually torment a girl like Debbie? Yeah, definitely. Is it believable that Kavanaugh was one of them? Yes.”

This rings so true to ol’ UD — the terrible coincidence of sophisticated entitled men and a clueless female innocent. Whatever else the truth and falsity of the charges against Kavanaugh, this statement, which goes to the cruelty and danger of men in certain kinds of groups, rings true.

President leaves the stirrups.

… up to his evil tricks again.

… more of a possibility with the death of Anthony Bourdain in France.

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Nobody heard him, the dead man,
But still he lay moaning:
I was much further out than you thought
And not waving but drowning.

Oh, no no no, it was too cold always
(Still the dead one lay moaning)
I was much too far out all my life
And not waving but drowning.

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A 2016 New Yorker article about the suicides of two high-profile French chefs.

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Reading and thinking about Bourdain, I find myself recalling August Kleinzahler’s comment on his wild and brilliant brother, who killed himself at 27:

He wasn’t designed for the long haul. Not everyone is.

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I am fucking furious with him.

This reaction, from one of Bourdain’s friends, rings very true to UD, since the same sort of anger was certainly her first reaction to her father’s suicide.

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In line with my two recent posts on horror:

“Sometimes I wonder how all those who do not write, compose or paint can manage to escape the madness, the melancholia, the panic fear which is inherent in the human condition,” wrote Graham Greene in his second autobiography, Ways of Escape, a book which the chef, author and travel show host Anthony Bourdain, who died on June 8 at 61, kept on his nightstand.

— so successfully fashionable that her name is on quite a number of UD‘s things, even though UD is unfashionable — has committed suicide at the age of 55.

Since Spade was a massive success – at least in public, worldly terms – and a very high-profile person, her apparently out of the blue death will generate much speculation.

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Longtime readers know that this blog has, for a long time, had what to say about suicide. (Type suicide in my search engine to read my thoughts on the matter.) In the very early hours of this particular case, I’ll venture only the following: We are most likely going to discover that Spade had long suffered from severe depression.

Other possible reasons include a recent diagnosis of a bad disease, despair at a relapse into an addiction, or a sudden psychotic onset either in response to a family tragedy, or in response (most frighteningly) to absolutely nothing that anyone is able to discern.

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She was found fully clothed, her 6ft 3in frame slumped on the floor, having hanged herself with a black silk scarf.

That was wealthy New York fashion designer L’Wren Scott, in 2014. Spade also hanged herself with a scarf.

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The clear persistence of suicide throughout history suggests that it is a part of the human experience. Until we live in a radically different time and consciousness, one where people are never driven by internal or external demons to look for a way out of intractable suffering, we are not likely to be effective at eliminating suicide altogether. However, because the act so powerfully prompts those of us left behind to reflect on the sacredness of life and the role we individually and collectively play in easing the suffering that results in suicide, it leaves in its wake a deep inspiration to act; to care; to create webs of support that might catch those among us whose suffering becomes intolerable.

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UPDATE:

Kate Spade Suffered Years of Mental Illness,
Sister Says. Suicide ‘Not Unexpected’

Sing it.

He was prez but the world was bare
He didn’t feel love anywhere
He told himself he didn’t care
He pushed a window open wide
He felt an emptiness inside
To which he just could not relate
Brought on by a simple twist of fate

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So.

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UD has long wondered whether she’s got what it takes to write for the tabloids. She was reminded of this when she saw the quick cheap way some woman who works at a university in Fresno just got herself MUCHO publicity by calling Barbara Bush a racist.

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Don DeLillo says

Everything we need that is not food or love is in the tabloid racks. The tales of the supernatural and the extra-terrestrial. The miracle vitamins, the cures for cancer, the remedies for obesity, the cults of the famous and the dead.

My Bush/Daniels shocker – whose fundamental idea derives from simply conjoining two big names in the news – goes in one of several directions.

1. Supernatural: Stormy Daniels is inhabited by the ghost of Barbara Bush; she now shamefully repudiates her adult industry past.

2. Religion: It can now be revealed that in her last days Barbara Bush reached out to Stormy Daniels and converted her to the true faith.

3. Illegitimate Child: Stormy Daniels is the wayward child Barbara and George Bush were never able to acknowledge: UNTIL NOW.

4. Lesbian Affair: George Bush the Elder privately resented the powerful and possibly consummated attraction between these two famous women.

5. Political Conspiracy: Barbara Bush was put to death by the same man who threatened Stormy Daniels because both represented forces threatening the political and financial empire of the Trump family.

… Mr UD muttered over this morning’s breakfast.

He began reading them to UD.

“TURTLE THAT USES GENITALS TO BREATHE IS THREATENED.

SPERM BANK SEEKS DONORS. MUST BE A COMMUNIST.”

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“Well, as to the second,” said UD, “Didn’t Mao say “A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single drip?“