I’m not sure where this comes from. Just more idealistic pacifist bullshit, I suppose.
Is it just me, or do these ghastly displays of military hardware and rows and rows of robotically obedient marching adolescents make others sick to the stomach? Isn’t it about time we stopped comparing the sizes of each other’s dicks? Was Darwin wrong? Are we evolving at all?
Especially now when we witness one little boy’s ego throw the world into turmoil is it not time to simply say no?
Guns do not make us strong. They camouflage our weakness.
There’s no point in getting too upbeat about this. I have learned this over time.
But I did manage to get a 3rd place in this years first round heat. It is hardly a spectacular achievement. Each heat had about 35 entrants and there were about 120 heats. Only the first 10 in each heat progress to round 2, but that still adds up to about 1200 people, and very few of them would have a track record as bad as mine.
I did manage a 2nd place in in the first round of this event a few years back, only to crash out in the second round …. so the results are predictable this year too.
But anyway, it needed to be 2000 words or less and be a thriller concerning a divorce lawyer and the idea of ‘priceless’. Before anyone says anything I will confess that it’s not very thrilling. I have also always covered up my geaneology since the judges are all Americans (I think), but this one is undeliably Australian.
**
Priceless.
Dr Howard Riley, a prominent and wealthy Sydney
surgeon, seeks out unconventional representation to negotiate his
divorce settlement.
*
You know that she has hired the most expensive legal representation available because you have already witnessed the steady stream of funds bleeding from your account. And you are well acquainted with her lawyers, a team of smiling Armani-clad mercenaries with offices at your own Macquarie Street address. Divorce breeds nastiness, and professional nastiness comes at a price. She would have expected you to do likewise, paying through the nose for hired guns, but you have elected to adopt an approach more akin to guerilla warfare.
And so it is that you find yourself, not in the standard perfumed leather and mahogany offices of legal royalty, but walking from the carpark to a dingy bar down by the quay. You sidestep your way through the ferry terminal and across a river of umbrella-bearing Japanese tourists before entering the cavernous squalor of the Downunder Bar. The sun is setting over the harbour bridge and the shards of light finding spaces between the clouds only serve to amplify your temporary blindness.
Exchanging the aromas of diesel fumes for those of stale beer and antiseptic, you locate him at a table staring absently into an empty glass. He is recognisable immediately from old photographs of better times, himself and his now ill-fitting suit having only grown older and shabbier with the years. He slides a card over the table that formally introduces him as Daniel. J. Silverstein, Legal Consultant and Private Investigator. You do not offer to shake hands because you sense in him that the essence of his trade in hatred has, long ago, found its way into the very pores of his being, and you know him instantly to be the type for whom the terms justice and retribution are easily interchangeable. He is, in other words, perfect.
“I understand that you were once a partner in McDermott and McDermott,” you say.
“McDermott-Silverstein-McDermott,” he corrects you, “I took the rap for those guys and now I’m just a conjunction.”
“You realise that that’s who Clara is using?”
“I most certainly do. So, I’m as keen as you are to take them down, Dr Riley.”
“She’s a bitch,” you inform him, by way of legal direction.
“Aren’t they all? When the former Mrs Silverstein, speaking of bitches, chose to side with the McDermotts during my alleged embezzlement case, they threw in our divorce as part of the deal. Revenge will be sweet.”
A tattooed waitress addresses you by way of a raised false eyebrow and you say, “two more of whatever he’s having,” in keeping with the dark poetry of the moment. You turn again to Silverstein. “What dirt have you dug up so far?”
He reaches into his tattered briefcase and refers to his notepad, “I can easily connect her with several coke dealers, a dodgy tantric masseur, and the leader of some fake religious cult.”
“Her artist friends? No surprises there. What about a lover? Who’s she sleeping with?”
“She’s been granting carnal favours to a rugby league player of some notoriety. A big ugly bastard.”
“She’ll fuck anything if it works in her favour.” You take a swig from the glass that has been placed in front of you before continuing, “but listen, you need to come up with something better. Couldn’t she be implicated in some kind of major crime? Murder or the like?” You are not entirely serious.
But he is, and looks you in the eye, whispering, “she could be. Evidence has a habit of popping up at the most inconvenient moments. For the right price.”
The sun has gone now and you are aware of a heavier darkness drifting into the bar, making you shiver. “I am a highly respected surgeon, Silverstein. I don’t want to get mixed up in that sort of stuff.”
“You probably didn’t want to get mixed up in underaged prostitution, either. But these things happen.”
He is easy to dislike. “I didn’t ask for a lecture in morality,” you tell him, “hookers rarely provide birth certificates.”
He shrugs his shoulders and you detect a grin, “it’s funny how documents and dates always find their way into these things. You wouldn’t be the first guy to get screwed over by a mix up in timing. Even anniversaries are matrimonial landmines. The former Mrs Silverstein’s birthday, was….”
“Forget all that. What’s the current Mrs Riley asking for?”
He reaches into his briefcase again and produces a document printed on McDermott and McDermott stationary from which he reads. “The house, the furniture, the artwork, the BMW, 50% of the share portfolio, and 50% of the cash….. she seems fully acquainted with your offshore accounts.”
“And what do I get?” you ask, aghast.
“Well, I have looked into that and I must tell you that 50% of the cash and shares is hardly an insubstantial amount. She’s also offering you the Mercedes and the dog.”
“Does that sound acceptable to you???”
“What sort of dog is it?”
Daniel J. Silverstein knows more about dogs than art, it transpires, so you attempt to educate him. “The artwork is worth more than all the rest combined.” You know this only because your interest in art is based entirely upon its extraordinary inflationary characteristics.
He is shaking his head, “I have seen her artwork, and I doubt that it would fetch more than $30 at a garage sale.”
“Her paintings are worse than worthless. She admits so herself. This is about other people’s paintings, her collection. Real Art. The expensive kind. She’s got three Olley’s, two Whiteley’s and a Sidney Nolan classic. That’s just the Australian stuff. All purchased with my money. There’s a Jackson Pollock hanging over the fireplace that she acquired only a few months ago.”
“Worth?”
“Oh, God knows. She’s the expert. Olley maybe a million each, The Nolan probably a lot more. We’ve been offered seven million each for the Whiteleys…”
“I see.”
“The Pollock, though, is priceless, evidently. She hasn’t stopped boasting about the bargain she got it for. She loves that painting. But she knows I’d sell it in a heartbeat.”
Silverstein considers this fresh information carefully, “Priceless? Really? So, you’d let her have everything else if you could just keep the Pollock? Even the house?”
“She can have the house. I moved out just after the Pollock moved in. For me it’s mostly just a receptacle of bad memories. But she won’t part with the Pollock. Forget it. She probably looks at the bloody thing as often as she looks at herself in the mirror. We need some sort of bargaining chip to prise the rest from her grip.”
Silverstein is looking into the middle-distance. “She’s booked an overseas holiday,” he says thoughtfully, “and she wants this all sorted first. We might be able to rush her into a mistake.”
Silverstien has clearly done his research.
The rain is falling as you are driving back to your hotel and your mood has darkened. The phone rings and it is your wife and you say, “yes,” expecting the usual expletive-laden rage in reply.
But her voice is calm and measured. “Howard, darling. I’m impressed. I doubt that you could have found a lower form of humanity with whom to wage war against your own wife than Danny Silverstein. What rock did you find him hiding under?”
“Are you having me followed, Clara?”
“Oh, Howard, you poor sap. I’ve been having you followed for years.”
You terminate the call and immediately realise that you are, indeed, being followed. The black van behind you has been there for too long. When you slow down it overtakes you and then pulls across in front, blocking any possible escape. Three large figures emerge, two of them carrying baseball bats. You watch in horror as they nonchalantly approach your car and raise the bats over their shoulders. You hear the sound of breaking glass. The third of them beckons you to wind down your window which you do because there is no obvious alternative. “Excuse me Sir,” he says politely, “but I could not help but notice that your headlights have malfunctioned. I feel compelled to remind you of the danger that motoring on a dark wet night such as this might hence expose you to. So, I urge you take particular care. Good evening to you, Doctor.”
You remain stationary as the van pulls away and discover yourself measuring your own pulse. How did he know you were a doctor?
You have only just entered the safety of your hotel room after navigating the streets in fearful darkness when the phone rings and this time it’s Silverstien on the other end and there is tension in his voice. “Listen Doc, I’ve got good news and bad news. The good news is that your wife may soon be implicated in a double homicide. The bad news is that photographs of our mutilated bodies will be the primary evidence. So, it’s all bad news, really. I had an impromptu chat with a few of your wife’s associates after leaving the bar. They’ve given me a final offer for you to sign. It’s an all or nothing type arrangement, and my strong professional advice is that you should sign it. It’s coming to you by courier tonight.”
“My wife’s associates? Three monsters in a black van?”
“That would be them.”
“Footballers?”
“Maybe. But more than handy with baseball bats as well. I’m at the hospital now. Two
broken legs and a fractured skull.”
“Should I come round?”
“Fuck, no. Stay away from me. After this conversation I’m off the case.”
“Then what’s the deal?”
“She gets everything but the Pollock. And the dog. Though I reckon you can keep
the Mercedes.”
“Wait. The Pollock? Are you sure?”
“Take the deal.”
“I mean the Pollock?? Mine? It really is priceless, you know. Is she insane?”
“She certainly comes across to me as certifiable, but I’m not taking her to court over it. Forget about my bill. I’m cutting my loses. Goodbye.” The phone goes dead.
You are surprised that Silverstien has been so easily intimidated but thankful that he has somehow pulled off a miracle. The Pollock!! It’s a terrific result for the price of two headlights.
So, when the paperwork arrives you check the wording carefully and place your signature below hers. You hand it back to the courier with explicit directions to have it certified by morning. The Pollock is yours.
Two weeks later the sun is shining brightly through the drapes when there is a knock at the door and three hotel staff enter carrying a large frame wrapped in brown paper. You already have a reputable art dealer downstairs waiting and you call for him to be sent up. He is up in a flash and it is with the hands of a surgeon that you carefully remove the wrapping to unveil the trophy. The masterpiece is revealed.
“Very unusual,” he nods, “Pollock is not normally known for his life-size giraffes.”
“But there it is’” you announce proudly, directing him to the bottom righthand corner, “Pollock August 1958. One of his later works.”
“Very much later, I’m afraid. Jackson Pollock died in December 1956. This looks more like something my granddaughter did last week.”
You know you’ve been had and your self-esteem has hit rock bottom. The smart-arse art dealer was laughing as you pushed him out of the door. Silverstein’s phone is dead and a search of all hospitals provides no record of his admittance. In your rage you lift a chair and hurl it at the painting, receiving little solace from the sound of splintering wood and ripping canvas, but revealing an envelope bearing your name which has fallen to the floor. You open it and find inside a photograph of a couple sunning themselves on a tropical beach. The happy pair are the former Mrs Clara Riley, and Daniel J. Silverstien, Legal Consultant and Private Investigator.
I can’t find Mr Linky, but the prompt comes from here.
This is a very long winded way of asking a question (above) that has always troubled me. Because, and I am being honest here, when it comes to poetry and prose, I don’t really know the difference.
Good poetry, in my opinion, is just good prose with frequent line breaks. Presenting prose as poetry somehow adds a certain literary credibility to the same set of words. Although it also enhances the risk of artistic ridicule. Poetry is simultaneously a more arrogant form of expression and a potentially suicidal one than is prose.
I responded to a challenge that required a 144 word prose response to one line in a poem from Amy Woolard which said ‘what does it matter that the stars we see are already dead’, and my initial (144 word) response was …..
*
What does it matter that I no longer bother To look at the sky That there’s no sort of sadness Can still make me cry It turns out there’s nothing That money can’t buy That I have no more questions But I still don’t know why What does it matter that the stars we see Are already dead This book we read Had already been read From the scars I carry I’ve already bled Jesus rose from the grave And immediately fled He’ll not give us this day Our daily bread What does it matter that the mountain we climb Is no longer so tall That the atom we study Is no longer so small That the walls that protect us Might so easily fall That the God that we prey to Won’t answer our call What does it matter? Nothing matters at all
*
Now clearly that’s not prose, but nor is it poetry. What Amy has written is quite beautiful, of course, but I still question if it were represented as follows, would it still be poetry or would it be prose?
*
I can’t love them if their hands aren’t all tore up from something, guitar strings, kitchen knives & grease or burns from heaving the window ACs onto their crooked old sills, come June.
Fighting back.
That porchlight’s browned inside with moth husks again & I can’t climb a ladder to save my life, i.e., the world spins. Even when it’s lit, it’s half ash. Full-drunk under a half-moon & I’m dazed
We’re all still here. Most of us, least. For the one & every girl gone, I sticker gold stars behind my front teeth so I can taste just how good we were. I swear I can’t love them if they can’t fathom why an unlit ambulance on a late highway means good luck. I hold my cigarette-smoking arm upright like I’m trying to keep blood from rushing to a cut. What’s true is my shift’s over & I’m here with you now & I’m wrapped up tight on the steps like a top sheet, like the morning paper
Before it’s morning look up & smile. What does it matter that the stars we see are already dead? If that’s the case well then the people are too. Alive is a little present I give myself once a day. Baby, don’t think I won’t doll up & look myself fresh in the eyes, in the vermilion pincurl of my still heart & say: It’s happening again
*
Anyway, I wrote a second response to the prompt which, though precisely 144 words, still fails really to qualify as either poetry or prose. Just a few words strung together.
*
We are sitting on a mountaintop, you understand. The air is thin and our brains are compensating for the lack of oxygen by shutting down certain non-essential functions.
Logic is often the first thing to go under these circumstances.
It’s difficult to say whether the dope we are smoking or the romanticism of the campfire into which we gaze is enhancing our reality, or placing chemical limitations upon it.
“What does it matter that the stars we see are already dead?” I ask, deliberately staring into the heavens, “or that those that are born beyond our event horizon shall remain forever invisible?”
You forcibly exhale a long arrow of smoke, and I watch as the very idea of it evaporates and surrenders itself to the cosmos.
“That’s a difficult question,” you respond, “but what is your favourite flavour of ice cream?”
“Chocolate,” I say.
*
If you are still reading at this point, and I don’t know why you would be, have a listen to the following, from J.P. Donleavy, one of last century’s great masters of prose, and tell me if it’s actually poetry or not.
Here follows an extract from the Australian Broadcasting Commission’s website (a daily local news service funded by the public). I repeat it here because it might help to explain the Australian perspective on the 2nd Amendment, which the majority of us (I believe) view as utter lunacy. At the same time we are perhaps deluded in believing that anything can be done about it. The report would seem to explain that the ownership of deadly weapons lies very deep in the American psyche, and that is just not an idea that we can easily grasp. To us it sounds as crazy as ….. actually I can’t really think of anything that sounds quite that crazy. Everybody wanting to own a pet gorilla would make a lot more sense.
24 hours, seven mass shootings — as an election looms, what does a day of gun violence look like for the United States?
A “smart and loving”, “very outgoing person”, her family says she has a vibrant energy and a signature smile.
She dies at the scene. Four others, all aged between 16 and 20 years old, are also shot and taken to hospital.
The gunman flees.
In the hours to come, nearby residents will go out into the street to scrub the blood from the cement themselves.
It is the first mass shooting of the day. There are six more to come.
Hundreds of children and teens already killed by guns in 2024
There have already been 4,138 deaths linked to gun violence across the United States in 2024, according to independent research organisation the Gun Violence Archive (GVA).
Among those killed, 355 were children and teenagers. More than 350 incidents were “unintentional”.
GVA defines a “mass shooting” as “a minimum of four victims shot, either injured or killed, not including any shooter who may also have been killed or injured in the incident”.
Bede Harris, an expert in constitutional law at Charles Sturt University, says while every state varies, all “ultimately come up against the problem that … the US Supreme Court has the final say”.
The US constitution enshrines gun rights under the Second Amendment — saying a “well-regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed”.
In 2022 the Supreme Court ruled that local governments could regulate, but not eradicate, the core right to bear arms — labelling gun rights as a fundamental right.
“And because the US Supreme Court case law that’s been established over the decades is relatively lax, many attempts by states to limit gun ownership fall foul of the US constitution,” Dr Harris says.
“I mean in Arizona … you can walk around on the streets with a gun openly strapped to your belt, but you can’t do that in New York.
“Even in an ideal world where it was changed, there’d be a severe practical problem of then reigning in gun ownership because there’s hundreds of millions of firearms in the US.”
Illinois, where the first mass shooting of March 31 took place, is a “national leader”, ranked third in the country for its gun laws by gun control advocacy group Everytown.
“Illinois is surrounded by states with much weaker laws,” the non-profit says in its state report card.
“And an outsized share of likely trafficked guns recovered in Illinois are originally purchased out-of-state — especially in Indiana, just across the border from Chicago.”
‘The wrong place at the wrong time’
One hour after the first mass shooting in Chicago there will be a second one, this time almost 1,400 kilometres away in Dublin, Georgia.
A car pulls up outside a home on West Avenue, and someone in the car fires multiple shots at a crowd of people.
Miyori Ellington, 23, and Sacred Brown 24, die from their injuries. Five others are taken to hospital.
At the same time police three states away in Paris, Texas will start getting multiple 911 calls — someone has opened fire during a block party.
Two men nearby have gotten into a fight that escalates into a shooting and injures four people.
Police say there are approximately 80 empty shell casings at the scene, from various calibre weapons.
At 4:20am, local time, 29-year-old Stefon Barnes is buying a bag of chips at a deli in the Bronx, New York.
He’s a frequent customer, a familiar face for the workers behind the counter.
Despite the early hour the shop is packed with customers, dancing and singing, when a scuffle breaks out – video shows a man in a ski mask attempting to rifle through another man’s pockets.
As the struggle escalates and another man joins in, a gun goes off.
Stefon is shot in the right thigh and taken to hospital in critical condition, where he’s later pronounced dead.
“After the surgery, his heart could not handle it,” his father, Martin Barnes, will tell the media later.
“He was a good kid. [He] never got into any trouble. … He was just in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
Gun ownership rooted in ‘culture’, ‘history’, ‘tradition’
As Stefon is bleeding out, the day’s third mass shooting is unfolding in Jackson, Mississippi.
A 19-year-old is killed and three other people are wounded at 5am at a convenience shop on Highway 80.
The city’s police chief will later tell local media the two people they suspect are responsible “don’t care” about nearby surveillance cameras.
“It’s another situation where young men and individuals do not know how to resolve conflict without introducing guns to the situation,” Chief Joseph Wade says.
The incidents of gun violence — each recorded by the GVA — continue throughout the morning.
At 5:30am in Memphis, Tennessee, police respond to a shooting at an apartment building.
At 5:40am in Colorado Springs, officers arrive at a roadside inn and find a man with a life-threatening gunshot wound. The killer has already fled the scene.
At 6am in Kansas City, 59-year-old Leo Dorch is walking down a residential street, carrying a handgun.
Police receive a 911 call for help and try to negotiate with Leo to put the gun down.
He points the weapon in the officers direction. They open fire.
Missouri State Highway Patrol officials later announce he has been pronounced dead at a nearby hospital.
Everytown ranks Missouri as 38th in the nation for gun laws, and says it experiences “one of the highest rates of deaths, gun homicide rates, and household firearm ownership”.
Kansas City was the scene for a shooting at the Super Bowl victory parade.
The incident, which garnered global attention, saw one person killed and 22 more shot, including 11 children.
University of Melbourne Professor of American Politics, Timothy J Lynch, says for Americans, gun control is more than just an issue with the US government or the legal system.
“I think Australians look at it as a technocratic [government] issue,” he says.
“If there’s a massacre, how do you stop it? You illegalise guns. We did it after the Tasmanian massacre.
“There just seems to be a logic to it, but we don’t have a connection to guns that’s rooted in our culture and history and that’s a very powerful part of our political identity.
“[In the] US gun rights stand not just for a right to self protection … but the whole concept of one’s identity. It’s a tradition, it’s a lifestyle.
“And getting the government to change that, to change your connection to notions of identity itself and where you sit in the culture is really extraordinarily difficult.”
‘It was just mass chaos’
Chicago again becomes the scene of a mass shooting at 2:50pm.
Two men climb out of a car and shoot at a group of four on the street.
Johnveir Winn-Mckeever, 16, is taken to hospital in critical condition and later succumbs to a gunshot wound to the head.
Three other people are also injured.
The fifth mass shooting of the day comes just 10 minutes later, at 3pm in Nashville, Tennessee.
A man and a woman arrive at a busy restaurant — police say it’s unclear what happens next, but an argument between the man and another patron escalates “within moments”.
Shots are fired. Panic breaks out.
“Some people did try to resist the gunman,” says police commander Anthony McClain.
“It was just mass chaos … It may have been something as simple as one person invading another person’s space.”
Allen Beachem, 33 — a volunteer firefighter, military veteran and coach to his children’s basketball team — is killed.
It will be days before 46-year-old Anton Rucker is arrested in a different state.
‘Everything was beautiful … and the shooting rang out’
There are at least six more gun violence incidents recorded by GVA in the hours before the next mass shooting.
In one incident, a three-year-old at a park in Atlanta, Georgia is grazed by a bullet.
Just hours earlier there had been an Easter egg hunt at the same park, residents tell local media.
“It was crowded, everything was beautiful, people was mingling, and the shooting rang out, and everybody started running,” one says.
Georgia has “some of the weakest gun laws in the country”, according to Everytown.
“[The] state still has a dangerous Shoot First law that allows a person to kill another in a public area, even when they can safely walk away from the danger,” the state’s report card reads.
Bruce Wolpe, a non-resident Senior Fellow at the University of Sydney’s United States Studies Centre, says the gun debate is “deadlocked” for Republicans and Democrats.
“We have more guns in the United States than people,” he says.
“And when you reach that level of proliferation of guns throughout a country, there’s almost nothing that can be done to stop them.
“For Republicans … if you’re a supporter of gun rights, you will be more likely to vote than non-supporters of gun rights.
“On the Democratic side, particularly young people … [gun control] has been a driver of political support.”
Jackson gets its second mass shooting at 8pm, when five people are injured at Mary C Jones Park.
One of the victims is an eight-year-old boy.
Witnesses say the shooting happens during a private birthday party, when 19-year-old Zykia Winford allegedly pulls a handgun from her purse and opens fire.
Along with the eight-year-old and Ms Winford, a 16-year-old, a 20-year-old and a 43-year-old are taken to hospital.
Does ‘extensive suffering’ have to be the reality for Americans?
The GVA ultimately records 248 shootings over the Easter holiday weekend — at least 90 people killed and 228 more wounded.
Everytown says the violence across the Easter weekend underscores an “urgent need for action”.
Angela Ferrell-Zabala, the executive director of Moms Demand Action, says the weekend brings with it “extensive suffering”.
“The fact that celebrating holidays in America is consistently accompanied by overwhelming gun violence is simply unacceptable,” she says.
“This does not have to be our reality.”
In February, former president and Republican election frontrunner Donald Trump told thousands at an event organised by the National Rifle Association (NRA) he would undo all gun restrictions enacted by the Biden administration.
“Every single Biden attack on gun owners and manufacturers will be terminated on my very first week back in office, perhaps my first day,” he told the crowd at the NRA’s Presidential Forum.
President Joe Biden spoke emphatically on ending gun violence during his State of the Union address just a few weeks later.
“After another school shooting in Iowa [Donald Trump] said we should just ‘get over it’. I say we must stop it,” he said.
“I’m demanding a ban on assault weapons and high-capacity magazines. Pass universal background checks.”
Asked whether they can foresee a future in which gun control was effectively in place in the US, the experts who spoke to the ABC are in agreement.
“I think there’s no likelihood at all that the constitution would ever be changed so as to either remove or limit that right … I just don’t see it within the realms of possibility now,” Dr Harris says.
Professor Wolpe says: “There will be no change. Zero.”
“It will take such an upheaval, say the Democratic party becomes the super-majority party and can overcome these roadblocks [in] the political system.”
Professor Lynch agrees, saying gun ownership is deeply embedded in America’s national identity.
“To understand where this right comes from and what it stands for, it’s in the constitution, it’s written down,” he says.
“Now getting rid of guns is like getting rid of the right to religious freedom or the right to free speech. [It’s] extraordinarily difficult to abrogate those.
“And then … it stands for a notion of American identity. It’s a lifestyle choice. It’s a tradition and it’s very hard to shift those in the minds of people.
“Gun rights, I think, will be around for as long as the American Republic itself is around.”
The final mass shooting of March 31 comes at 11pm.
A large group of people are gathered outside a sports bar in St Petersburg, Florida.
Grainy surveillance footage from a nearby home records the sound of gunshots as a verbal argument between a group of men leads to a shoot-out.
Bystanders and cars are caught in the crossfire. Ultimately four people, including a 17-year-old girl, are injured.
“It sounded like a war out here last night,” a witness tells local media.
Well, as far as I know yes, he is, at least at the time of going to press. But I was alerted to an epistle from Micheal Moore, of ‘Bowling Columbine’ fame here, urging the pontiff to do otherwise, or at least a little bit. This news was brought to me by Nan, who enjoys approximately two thousand times the amount of followers than do I, and for good reason.
Her posts are not only reliably thought provoking but guaranteed to promote insightful and educated responses from her legion of followers. Apart from me, of course, from whom such intimidating wisdom leads to generally silly sprays that betray my own lack of education.
So I post below what is both a response to Mr Moore, and a recommendation in somebody that you might do well to follow.
Disclaimer: Nan is not paying me a cent for this endorsement. Yet.
Richmond Road 