I fell on the [bodies] of those already murdered…. During the first moments I couldn’t grasp anything – either where I was or how I got there. I thought that I had gone mad, but when people started to fall on top of me, I regained consciousness and understood everything. I started to feel my arms, legs, stomach, [and] head to make certain that I had not even been wounded. I pretended to be dead.

Miah Cerrillo or Dina Pronicheva? Try to guess!!

Day Two of our mutual observation of the Sisyphean Sand Sweeper, who emerges cinematically from the sea mist.

There he is, far right on the boardwalk, having brushed his bit of silt beachward… He grasps his broom in his right hand as he boards his bicycle … “Does he just do this one opening,” asks Mr UD as we watch him wobble off, “or does he do a line of them?”

He disappears into the haze.

And ol’ UD instantly thought of Don DeLillo’s story, “Midnight in Dostoevsky,” which, as the title suggests, evokes a darker than dark, zero-visibility world, and places in it an intriguing person who emerges from the cloud of unknowing; it then adds two observers who, day after day, discuss among themselves this human apparition. In the story, it’s a rather shabby old man in a snowy empty upstate NY town who every day takes a solitary walk in the snow; here, in our fashionable Delaware beach town, it’s a thready old guy who appears every morning to accomplish obscure self-appointed rounds.

The line is taken from the group Rise Up’s song, The Great Die-Off!

And yes, they’ll be there in person to perform it!!

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UPDATE: And, I mean, they better be, cuz yet MORE traitors to this great blood-soaked country are dropping out of performing! Larry Gatlin and Larry Stewart – you’re showing your true colors, you rats.

Luckily, the NRA was able to sign this group at the last minute.

… Ready for the oven.

But for some reason Don McLean just ain’t in the mood this year.

And neither is the stinkin’ rich genius who made and marketed the gun Wee Hitler used on all them little kids. Hey fella where’s your sense of fun? What’s with you and McLean?

Better not be any more cancellations. We gonna pah-tyyy!!!

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Ten minutes later:

Whoops! Plumb forgot the whole Ukraine thing. But I still love assault weapons, specially for teens!

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U.S. Sen. John Cornyn was slated to speak at the convention but his team told news outlets on Tuesday the Republican had notified the NRA he would not be attending because of an “unexpected change in his schedule”…

F-a-a-a-ck… they’re dropping like… And now that pussy Abbott says he ain’t sure he’s going either…

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Finally some good news! The NRA announces that Motörhead will replace Don McLean and will sing Dancing on Your Grave!

Just let it … hang out there…

Here’s a thought. Start at the bottom, or the top, which, as always, is Mississippi. Number One for least restrictive gun laws in the country. Number One for gun homicides.

Start there. I don’t say try to change it; Mississippi will always be like this.

But, for once, as a nation, pay attention to Mississippi. Gun-wise, it has the worst of everything. Gun-wise, it is, for states that want to change, that can change, the basest baseline. Ask yourself: What exactly is Mississippi doing? How can we not do that? How can we be better than Mississippi?

He arrives in the early morning on his bicycle, on which he’s balancing a broom. Leaning his bike against a bench, he takes the broom and, at the start of each windy walkway onto the beach, begins to sweep the sand off of the boardwalk.

Of course we’ll do something. We’ll make Texas’s gun laws even looser.

America, America, God shed his grace on thee. What other country produces killers like this, able to post $100,000 bail! Even our subway shooters are rich here!

Plus America gave him all the guns he could hope to use to murder a wonderful man just trying to get across town to meet his brother for lunch.

But none of this would be possible without rapid parole and bail for people who shouldn’t get bail and an unsecured public transit system. You need all the elements to be in place. New York, New York! If Abdullah can make it there, he can make it anywhere.

[Depp’s] trial affords many glances inside [his] extravagant yet bleak fortress: the insulating layers of handlers and yes-men; the huge, empty homes loaned out to hangers-on; the noxious mix of paranoia, dependence, and impunity bred by ultra-celebrity; the disorienting suspicion that everything is permitted and nothing necessarily has to be true…

The New Yorker thinks about the Depp/Heard trial.

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Interesting parallels with Michael Jackson, especially the desperate self-drugging. Maybe TS Eliot had it wrong. Humankind cannot bear very much unreality.

… hope.

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And:

Never have I been so ashamed of my country as on February 24 this year…. Those who conceived this war want only one thing — to remain in power forever, to live in pompous tasteless palaces, sail on yachts comparable in tonnage and cost to the entire Russian navy, enjoying unlimited power and complete impunity.

Russia’s ex-representative to the UN in Geneva writes a Dear Vlad letter.

NASA has Identified ‘Something Weird’

Happening to the Universe