So Saturday found Sonya and I jumping in the truck and driving to Poinsett Lake Park in Harrisburg, Arkansas for a family reunion.

Just the location mentioned above should give you a good idea of how this thing is going to turn out.

Honestly, I had no idea I was related to some of these people! There was the Harelip Family, two women who had obviously had cleft palates repaired by an untalented surgeon. There were also several Pentacostals, whom I did not know our family contained. I caught them giving my sister Julie (who was wearing shorts and make-up) more than a few disapproving looks. There was also Huntin' Woman complete with crispy permed hair and camo clothes. When my other sister, Dawne, saw Huntin' Woman she started humming Dueling Banjos. Quite appropriate.

And there was another woman there wearing the Coeur de la Mer. I am fairly sure this was not the original, recovered from the depths of the Atlantic, but a convincing reproduction.

Really, now, I've no doubt these are all wonderful people, but come on. They were frightfully goofy.

It was actually pleasant, though, in that I got to visit with some cousins and other family I don't usually see. So it was nice - and entertaining!

We also had a pleasant ride back with my niece Laura coming along with us.

"I couldn't take any more of that," she said as she settled into the middle seat of the truck.

It's nice to sit down with a teenager now and again and hear what's cool amongst the young people. Laura is a sweet girl and talked honestly and openly with us about music, drinking and high school kid's nasty penchant lately for shooting each other.

My niece, at any rate, has a good head on her shoulders and will be just fine.

And speaking of family, I understand I have some new readers in Jonesboro. Hi kids! Make yourselves at home.

Sonya and I, despite having done very little actually, have been strong consumers this weekend. We've spent money at the jewellers, the liquor store, the grocery store, the drug store, the video store and McDonald's in the past two days. We are positively hemmorhaging money around here!

Most Interesting Purchase of the Weekend: American Anthem, the mid-eighties flop starring Mitch Gaylord (an unfortunate last name that I'm sure hindered his further success) and featuring a surprisingly catchy tune from Andy Taylor. Sonya, who must have every piece of Duran Duran memorabilia, no matter how marginal, was thrilled to find this flick on the bargain shelf at Midtown Video.

Anybody remember how that tune went?

Sing it with me, now!

"Take it easy, on yourself..."

This afternoon we had a lovely and civilized afternoon on Kent and James' deck. Grilled burgers and icy-cold beer. It was lovely.

Shortly after we got there it came a short, heavy burst of rain. Kent and James had placed their wooden chairs outside around their (mercifully covered) table.

"Chairs, chairs, chairs!" Kent yelled as we all hustled about the deck, trying to gather up drinks and cigarettes. We all dashed back out into the storm and grabbed chairs before rushing back inside. Everyone - and the chairs - were soaked. It promptly quit raining. We dried everything off, though, and had a lovely evening, sitting out in the dusk, listening to James regale us all with the Melrose Place-like goings-on at the salon where he works. It was very grown up, really; sitting in the back yard, drinks in hands, discussing all manner of gossip while the noises of Midtown went on around us and medical helicopters passed by overhead every few minutes. Very nice.

This mailing list that I'm on tends to go off-topic quite a bit. Way off-topic. Suffice it to say the list is not dedicated to the discussion of high school shootings, but that is all they've discussed since last Tuesday. The topic has been well and truly hashed out, but there seems to be no end in sight.

Friday night I contributed my part to the debate. I thought it was quite a fine piece of writing, and I also thought it put an end to the discussion. Forty-eight hours later and there has been not one response to my post.

"Maybe they're afraid of you," Sonya theorized, "your intellect may threaten them, and they dare not address you directly."

"Nah," I said, shaking my head, "it's a clique-y, who-knows-who kind of thing. They're probably not even getting my messages."

This is the same mailing list I posted my "Brownie Joke" to last week, so I may be on some sort of black list now.

Anyway, for the sake of posterity here's my take on the horrid events of this past week.

The thing is, after something like this, the fingerpointing has to happen.
We live in a society where shrugging off personal responsibility is
something of an art form. Litigous America is built on finding someone else
to take the fall for your own foolishness.

This is, of course, ridiculous.

Marilyn Manson, goth lifestyles, Doom, the Matrix, guns...the accusations
almost have to happen, now, as we (by we I'm speaking for the human race
here) struggle for answers to something that is inexplicable. These things
are indulged in by thousands, millions every day and the results are rarely
as horrifying as what we've seen this week.

The parents? Certainly we have to give them a long, hard look. They're due.
They contributed (or failed to contribute) something essential to all this.

But what outrages and frustrates us most is that the two shooters - the
nexus where blame could be most easily placed - have slipped away from us.
American justice is slow, true, but harsh, and sometimes vicious. Had these
two lived, they would have almost certainly faced the death penalty, but
not before a long stretch of bleak, institutional life broken up
occasionally only by anal rape and the prospect of a shiv in the kidneys.

Our culture frowns on speaking ill of the dead, and simply saying "those
two were fucked up" lacks the satisfaction of quashing a subculture or
backing the media outlet of choice into a corner. That's what we have to
say, though.

Young? True, they were young, but one was a legal adult and the other
nearly so. And when a person goes on a killing spree, gleefully gunning
down their fellow students, we have to admit that there was something
seriously and fundamentally flawed with these two individuals. The nature
of evil is far too tenuous a thing to debate here, but I think when we see
the school pictures of our two shooters we are looking into the face of
evil, or at least as close as it can come in human form.

Why did it happen? Why Auschwitz? Why Oklahoma City, or Nanking? Why Manson
and his creeping footsoldiers or the killing fields of Cambodia? These are
places where those who were wrong on such a basic level seized control and
spewed their foulness across the landscape. It happened, and it is horrible
that it happened, but we may never know why, regardless of the changes we
make in the aftermath.

We are howling because we have been denied closure.

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