I found
this story online a few minutes ago. I guess after awhile, you find yourself desensitized to a lot of the violence that takes place. But this was pretty shocking to me. Sometimes you wonder what the world is coming to; but then you realize it's always been this way in some form or another.

It's interesting when I'm around people of my parents or grandparents generation and they are talking about the days when things were safer, or better for people to live in as far as violence is concerned. I'm not sure if such assumptions have a lot of veracity to them. I wonder sometimes if a heightened perception of violence is just more apparent given the increased proliferation of media sources (especially electronic and visual).

My grandparents generation, for example, is one in which millions upon millions of people died from genocide- between Hitler and Stalin. My parents generation were witness to the horrors of what went on in places like Cambodia, where a government carried out systemic violence and cultural extermination against its own people. While life in 2005 can be terrible in that people are exposed through the media to violence; it always gives the potential of making us more aware of what is going on in the world (at least in theory).

It was nice to get some good election news as far as the democrats gaining the majority in Congress. I'm not sure it will make a huge difference as far as policy goes, but, it still sends a message that people want a change.

I was surprised Tom Reynolds got reelected, though... I thought people wouldn't want to support someone like that. I was no Jack Davis fan, but I never would have voted for Reynolds if I was in that district.

Any good music that you would recommend? Lately, I've been kind of all over the place in my musical tastes. I like to try most anything except a lot of the commercial rap/country/pop that you hear on the radio or mtv lately.

I should get coffee and get back to working on the "thesis of doom". Theoretically.

What do adult people in Buffalo usually do for Halloween? Do you usually go out someplace or just stay in? What do little kids usually do- is there trick or treating in most neighborhoods? Do they go to some kind of special kid event instead?

I moved here from Jimmytown a year ago and was curious. Last year, I sort of eschewed the Halloween thing to hang out at spot coffee for a date.It was actually really fun... if not kind of an odd day for a first date with someone.

museumchick --
[adjective]:

Banshee-like

Jessica --
[noun]:

A person who laughs at anything (even this entry)

jess --
[noun]:

A person who has the ability to be invisible

'How will you be defined in the dictionary?' at QuizGalaxy.com

"Sex Without Love" Sharon Olds


How do they do it, the ones who make love
without love? Beautiful as dancers,
gliding over each other like ice-skaters
over the ice, fingers hooked
inside each other's bodies, faces
red as steak, wine, wet as the
children at birth whose mothers are going to
give them away. How do they come to the
come to the come to the God come to the
still waters, and not love
the one who came there with them, light
rising slowly as steam off their joined
skin? These are the true religious,
the purists, the pros, the ones who will not
accept a false Messiah, love the
priest instead of the God. They do not
mistake the lover for their own pleasure,
they are like great runners: they know they are alone
with the road surface, the cold, the wind,
the fit of their shoes, their over-all cardio-
vascular health--just factors, like the partner
in the bed, and not the truth, which is the
single body alone in the universe
against its own best time.