I’m a high-ranking, highly-paid congressional staffer with a responsible, sensitive, job, and I forgot that I put four ammunition magazines and eleven rounds of ammunition in my bag.

A fawning portrait of Annie Leibovitz in the Financial Times finds the fact of one room opening to another in her house remarkable.

Police are investigating a quadruple shooting at a Hollywood baby shower that left two people dead and two others hospitalized early Sunday morning.

The alarms are beginning to go off — “With the increase in vaccine hesitancy that has been going on since the Covid-19 pandemic, we’re seeing [whooping cough] outbreaks occurring in kids who are not vaccinated.” — but no one’s listening, and with our incoming HHS secretary we can expect the return of a rather wide spectrum of painful and sometimes lethal childhood disease.

Essentially, our country is about to assume the ethos of ultraorthodox Jews – no or few vaccines, and if you have a problem take it up with yahweh – in its approach to contagious illness. What to do?

Remember this mantra: NOTHING BUT NORTHEAST. The northeast states have the highest rates of vaccination; the death-adoring dummy states in the south and west have the lowest. If they don’t kill their kids via the Beretta left on the bed, they’ll do it bacterially.

But you and your kids don’t have to live in Disease Vector RFD. The entire northeast territory of this vast land remains polio and rubella free. Get thee thither.

This one’s from Oklahoma. A driver got pissed when a woman in front of him was kind enough to let another vehicle go in front of her, so the driver drove up next to the woman and aimed his gun at her.

As you see, he explained to the police that he only wanted to intimidate her — maybe she’ll think twice in the future about letting other drivers into her lane — not shoot her to death.

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Oh. This one’s also OK. How do you go on a retreat in Oklahoma?

[S]everal people saw [a local football coach] point a gun at [another coach], who was in a hot tub at the time. The affidavit says [Forrest] Mazey fired a shot outside of the cabin the coaches were staying at in McCurtain County.

… The affidavit says several witnesses heard Mazey making jokes while pointing the gun at the victim.

“Kind of made fun of the situation, laughed about it, made fun of him for being scared,” said [one source].

You pussy!

Thanksgiving poems stink of kitsch.
I search in vain for even one which
Leaves off redemption and the kids
The wife who saved me from the skids
The mom whose deep abiding love
Gave my rear a needed shove...

Instead of thanking friends and God
I'll thank the books that showed me Odd
Kafka, Beckett, E A Poe
Their twisted landscape helped me know
That sentiment is fine and good
But most of life's in darkest wood

Both tykes and leaf blowers look like yellow-jacketed aliens.

Benjamin Allen Wemp … is not a student at [Clemson] University.

[Officers on campus] handcuffed Wemp and took [a] loaded revolver off of Wemp’s hip … [They also] removed a fixed blade hunting knife from Wemp’s possession. [University police also] found that he was wearing body armor, an ammunition belt containing several rounds and … was keeping a second loaded revolver in his pants pocket…  Wemp was at Mell ​Hall with “Visions for the World,” a religious group…

The Forbes 30 Under 30 list has become a meme in the past few years as a few of the honorees have found themselves indicted on fraud. The Forbes-to-Fraud pipeline includes FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried and Caroline Ellison, co-CEO of Alameda Research; fintech Frank founder Charlie Javice; and “Pharma bro” Martin Shkreli.

Add Joanna Smith-Griffin.

Texas is among the twenty-one states where abortion is banned or severely restricted. In Idaho, nearly a quarter of the state’s ob-gyns have left since the ban went into effect, and rural hospitals have stopped providing labor and delivery services. In Louisiana, three-quarters of rural hospitals no longer offer maternity care.

First such place UD has visited.

See this post for background.

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The University of Wyoming Board of Trustees voted 6-5 Friday against allowing concealed carry in certain areas of campus, setting up a likely future confrontation with a Legislature that’s increasingly pushed to ease gun restrictions.

The vote followed strong opposition from students, staff, faculty and other community members who cited concerns over safety, gun violence, declining enrollment, mental health issues and campus culture. 

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Well lookee there. Vote was as close as close can be, but EVEN IN WYOMING the obscenity of concealed carry is occasionally recognized.

Now you know next thang UW trustees is gonna do is GET RID OF THEM GIRLS on the BOT cuz if you look at the vote breakdown, it was them squishy ladies done did the dirty. Only one guy voted with the gals; pro-concealed was hunderd percent male. GIRLS OFF THE BOT!!

SUNRISE, MONASTERY, SHENANDOAH

The clouds move left and I move right
The moon's a relic of the night

Sunrise winkles in the sky
A long rough patch of pinkeye

Conjunctive globes along the ridge
Must be some symbolic bridge

Between rhymed verse
And universe


Cemeteries lie at left and right
One for the monks pre-flight

The other green and no embalm
Dropped in a godless bed of calm

But near Saint Benedict just in case
Heaven turns out to be a place

A natural grave on sacred land
This ambivalence I understand


The sun's now bright but the world's still eerie
Acres of Terror Management Theory

Find us walking slowly along the Shenandoah River.

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UD brought:

Graham Greene, “Under the Garden”

Malcolm Lowry, “The Garden Path to the Spring”

Camus, “Lyrical and Critical Essays’

Kolakowski, “Religion”