New Mexico is currently – arguably – America’s most dangerous state. Read this post about Albuquerque. Remember that in 2023 a desperate NM governor declared a health emergency that made it illegal for anyone to carry a gun for thirty days. Everybody went nuts and boohooed and fuckyoued and i’ll sue your assed but the poor woman had just had enough of eleven year olds reduced to bloody pulps and she couldn’t think of anything else to do. She had it in her silly mind that murder by gun has something to do with guns.

Things are still so bloody in NM that I would avoid the state. An artsy weekend in Taos, sure; but don’t, for instance, let your kid go to college there. As we speak, the University of New Mexico is locked down – on new student orientation day! – because a shooter has already killed one person and injured another, and the police can’t find the guy.

What I’m trying to tell you is that statistically you’re significantly more likely to get blown away in and around Albuquerque NM than in most other places in this country; and even if you dodge every bullet, you might find it a little traumatizing to be in this ultimate gunny setting all the time. There are tons of colleges in Boston.

****************

They caught the dude but haven’t identified him yet. Based on voluminous precedent, let’s play Pin the Tail on the Suspect.

He’s a guy.

He’s nineteen years old.

Skinny.

White.

Lives with mom and dad, who own twenty guns. He owns ten.

Name long Mayflower kind of thing: Edwin “Win” Stackpole the Third.

Everyone who knows him knows he’s nuts, “and I always tell everyone,” says an acquaintance to a reporter, “that he shouldn’t be anywhere near guns.”

*******************

I was off on the age by one year. Nineteen seems young, but in fact the killer was eighteen, and he killed a fourteen year old.

 [T]he four were hanging out in the dorm room — which belonged to one of the occupants, a student — playing video games when the shots rang out. He said police were still investigating why gunfire erupted. He also declined to discuss why the 14-year-old was on campus, or what relation he had to others in the room.

Ooooh motive let’s see… The babe wouldn’t stop playing Bulletstorm and it pissed off the teenager who has been looking, for some time, for an excuse to shoot off one of his guns. There’s your motive.

***********************

18-year-old Suspect Arrested in Shooting at University of New Mexico that Left 14-year-old Dead

In current American terms, 18 means ‘veteran shooter.’ Gun-onset age keeps dropping, so much so that soon the more routine headline will read

14-year-old Suspect Arrested in Shooting that Left Ten-year-old Dead

and so on, over the years, down the line.

And hey – capitalism.

Just as Banquo’s Ghost returned to haunt Macbeth’s dinner, now Epstein’s ghost continues to hover over Trump’s Oval Office.

******************

 [I]t’s difficult to muster any sympathy for the Mar-a-Lago Macbeth, as Epstein’s ghost plagues him like a sleazier Banquo.

*****************

I get why several commentators compare Trump’s haunting by Epstein to Macbeth’s haunting by Banquo: Two powerful men, in hard-fought, seemingly secure possession of political dominance, cannot escape, and eventually are perhaps brought low by, the return of the repressed. Their past deeds rear up, eerily reincarnate manifestations, for the world to see.

Yet the second writer’s use of the word ‘sleazier’ points to problems with the comparison. Because after all Banquo is a moral exemplar, come to torture Macbeth with guilt over his crimes, while Epstein is a moral catastrophe, a ghost vindictively gleeful at Trump’s entrapment by Epstein’s degeneracy.

UD suggests that another ghost story – the Henry James fiction “The Turn of the Screw” – might be a better comparison. For the primary ghost here – Peter Quint – seems not only evil, but evil in a very Epstein way: He seduces children. The plot of the James work revolves around the narrator’s failed effort to protect children from sexually threatening adults; and what better echo of the sorry tale of the world’s failure to protect Epstein’s victims? Or of Trump’s failing effort to protect himself?

‘Did any of the masseuses … perform sexual acts for Jeffrey Epstein?

I have just answered the question.

No you haven’t.

I have.

No you haven’t.

Yes I have.

You are refusing to answer the question.

Let’s move on.

I’m in charge of the deposition. I say when we move on and when we don’t. You are here to respond to my questions. If you refuse to answer, the court will bring you back for another deposition.’

******************

UD‘s gonna guess Ghislaine is exactly the same person today.

If pseudo-remorse plus lies equals a shorter sentence, then she’s ready to perform.

The lethal cruelty, I reckon, remains.

Zut alors! Now ze game it is on.
Here's the lawsuit from Brigitte Macron.
And the statement from Candace?
"Ah shit man oh man, this
Is totally very pas bon."

Heard this one before?

[Logan] Thorp walked up to the church side of the building and tried to open the doors, which were locked. He pressed the buzzer and a member of the church staff came to the door …

Thorp pushed past her, despite her telling him the church wasn’t open. The staff member summoned the superintendent, who found Thorp in the sanctuary. The superintendent talked with Thorp for a while, trying not to agitate him. Eventually, Thorp tried to walk down the preschool [corridor] but found it locked, and the superintendent directed him to the exit.

On his way out, Thorp said he would have kicked the glass in if the church staff member hadn’t let him in … After he left the building, Thorp stood on top of his truck and used his hands to mimic holding binoculars up to his eyes pointing at the church. When the superintendent asked what he was doing, Thorp made a motion with his finger and hand going across his neck as if to indicate a threat of harm.

******************

Amazingly, he not only failed to shoot up the place, but was just convicted of carrying a gun on school property. Should keep us safe from him for a year or two.

… follow the honor killing trial.

Lovely that the attempted murder was filmed.

Lovely that Fatima has the guts to take the stand.

Not lovely that people willing, in public, to kill their daughter exist among us.

France, Austria: They’re making it illegal to cover up children. Bravo.

Neighborhood pool, Baton Rouge. It has been closed, mere days after it was inaugurated.

That’s in Louisiana:

The honor code of “guarding your respect” and “he had it coming” endures. [It’s] possible to “risk your life just by insulting the L.S.U. Tigers.”

“I’m more concerned now than when I wrote [a 1998 book about it,” said a local history professor.] “People are armed to the teeth.”

And by people I mean eleven year olds.

Once all the money’s in your pockets, the system can collapse, and all the people in its hospital beds can go fuck themselves.

The Tom and Daisy Award goes to Ellen and Portia.

Comedian Ellen DeGeneres and her wife, Portia de Rossi, are preparing to list their sprawling U.K. farmhouse for a staggering $30 million—after living there for just one month …

[J]ust one month after moving in, the duo ha[s] already decided to move on—having snapped up a much more extravagant dwelling … [In the earlier house, now on the market, they enlisted] a team of 70 workers to rush through renovations so it would be ready … as soon as possible.

… DeGeneres and de Rossi [faced] objections from neighbors over their proposed development of the abode, with three local councilors raising concerns that an extension might “increase flood risk in the village” and “disturb Roman remains.” [O]ther residents expressed concern that the hedge and wire fence at the comedian’s home could lead to flooding if trash gets “caught in the fence” and limits the “flow across the field.”

… that it’s not pronounced Gizzlane. All of America will learn the delicate French pronunciation. Gheelen.

Took a Picture This shot of a tall something growing out of one of my pots on the deck, and the name came back HAIRY ASTER.

UD said it aloud and started giggling. And giggling.

She said it aloud, slowly, to Mr UD, who laughed about it for exactly one second and then said to UD, who was still giggling, “It’s not that funny.”

“Herb Rapp lives,” said UD. “If my father were alive, he’d be laughing twice as long as I’m laughing.”

She meant to say, you know, that she got her sense of humor from her father.

‘Manufacturing could become a strong element of Wyoming’s economy, complimenting energy, agriculture and other sectors.‘

Economic inequality has reached a staggering milestone in Silicon Valley: just nine households hold 15% of the region’s wealth, according to new research from San Jose State University. A mere 0.1% of residents hold 71% of the tech hub’s wealth.

He got so desperate that he gave it to the … American Cancer Society. The idea is that they sell it and pocket the money – tens of millions, if there’s any justice in the world – for their good works.

But no one wants what is now the ACS’s house, a vast metastasized monument to greed and contempt.

No one has lived there for years.

And as the years go by, the ACS has attempted to solve its problem (taxes, upkeep, security?) through surgery. It has cut and cut and cut and cut the asking price for this diseased thing.

Today they did more cutting. It’s all the way down to $25 million.