He Hates Those Cans!!!

Howdy Friends. We're Back. More or less.

We'd like to say that our long absence is due to the fact that our cousin took a lot of pills and died, which she did.

We'd further like to excuse our absence by remarking that she killed herself after her husband, a deacon in their evangelical church, admitted to playing hide the tabernacle with her twelve-year-old-daughter, which he did.

We wish our twelve-year-old cousin's words upon learning of her mother's death hadn't been "If I hadn't told, she would be alive." But they were.

Sadly, that's not why we've been gone: we've been gone because we just don't have much to say. We'd like to reflect upon our cousin's death by quoting extensively from Hume's essay "Of Suicide," or from Nietzsche's touching remarks on the subject in Twilight of Idols, or perhaps even just by saying something funny about Seneca or Petronius, two guys who knew something about the art of dying. But we're sick of Hume, we're not grieving for her, and furthermore we're not really grieving at all: we just haven't been feeling very garrulous.

If there's still anybody out there, and you have any thoughts about things we might say, the suggestion box is hereby open. Until then, consider the beach.

Yes, friends, the Israeli army scored a huge victory today in their ongoing war against beach sand. A family on a picnic somehow got in-between the artillery shell and the intended target; The Guardian UK just reported that

The shells struck a large crowd at a beachside picnic, killing six people and wounding more than 30 others, the Palestinian health minister, Bassem Naim, said. A woman and two young children, six months old and 18 months old, were among the dead, medical officials said. All of the dead were believed to be related.

We are unsurprised: sand has long been known to employ human shields.