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Nobody is allowed to give me any crap about going to New Orleans (in just 10 days, woohoo!). A shootout barely five minutes from my office (thank God we’re moving in three weeks) today left one person dead and another in the hospital.

And I don’t want to hear any crap about “it’s those New Orleans people.” No, it’s not. Southwest Houston has been a scary ghetto for years now. No wonder my mother had a fit when I told her I went to Sharpstown Mall (in broad daylight, I might add).

I don’t know how this city keeps making it into “top ten most liveable cities” lists—the air is horrible, the traffic is a nightmare, and the only cheap housing is in the ghetto or an hour’s commute out of the city down those stinking freeways littered with tacky billboards. I’m sorry, but concrete is not my idea of vibrant. Yes, Houston has great museums and arts and such, but I prefer trees and a place with a more developed sense of history than the “let’s tear down that ugly old theater and build zillion-dollar condos on the site” all too prevalent in this money-driven city.

Kurt Vonnegut Jr. has come unstuck in time. The author and generally delightful curmudgeon died yesterday of brain injuries sustained from a fall.

Reading his powerful short story Harrison Bergeron (full text) and wacky and wonderful novel Slaughterhouse-Five (including the author’s goofy drawings) as a teenager opened my eyes to the sharp beauty of satire and the use of absurdity in fiction to highlight absurdities in reality. Perhaps his work is why I have such an appreciation for levity (or perhaps I appreciate his work because of my desire for levity).

Read Harrison Bergeron (full story linked above). Pick up an old copy of Slaughterhouse-Five.  Think. It’s good for you, even if nothing makes sense!

Michael Jackson is thinking of building a 50-foot robot replica of himself that will stalk the desert outside Las Vegas and “shoot laser beams.” I don’t know, but I think that might constitute a threat to national security. (Hey, they use that excuse for everything else!)