It suddenly occurs to me, she refers to herself in third person using her given name. There is something innately wrong with this, as wrong as the use of the hippocampus to describe pearls to swine. Climate change can wait for today, today it is sunny and Sunday it will rain. We only need 48 hours of warning you know.

I woke up with a bad hangover. All that testimony left me feeling I might have chosen the wrong side of history again. They finally found that little girl who was strangled and left in the dirt, abducted from her bedroom by the assailant years ago. They also found a teenager whom he strangled.

Of course he raped them. Of course he did but we must wonder, since they are only bones and hair, was it before or after they died?

I'd like to be Louis CK right now or Bill Cosby. It's so close to home. She tells me he revealed another of the victims today, a would be polygamist who bought rings but not promises. A medical doctor no less. The bearer of the human torches we all ought to be but fall far, far short.

She refers to herself in the third person. She is never in the room in this act, always an observer or wanting to be observed. Like the hippocampus. The mysterious organ that rules all the planets or is 'thought to'.

Everyone is watching us all the time. We watch each other now, we count our numerous likes and even have a means for disliking each other without seeming to mean it as personal attack. We can delete this or that, we can edit it a little more and I assure you, the shot heard round the world kept me awake all night long. Because that wasn't a shot that was fired, it was a whole army marching into the fray, throwing themselves on their swords and remembering every last incident as if it were yesterday. I don't know but I am 100% certain about certainty. More like 50% in the virtue department. I know I am never wrong because no one truly purports to be wrong. Instead they just label it, dress it up with I'm sorry, no offense intended et cetera.

Those two girls pictures are on the front page of the free Mexican paper down at the store. I had no idea that the older girl was so beautiful. I love that the Mexicans do it this way, no holds barred. In other countries they show you the real photos. From car accidents to mass gang war shootings and beheadings. If life wasn't already so real I'd say, just wait, it's gonna get real, real soon.

Did I tell you I babysat and the kid's father cornered me in a garage, tried to feel me up and french kiss me? I got away. I got away from several sexual predators. Aren't they all? Hunters versus gatherers? I'm pretty sure I was raped but only if I change and insert a few variables. Pretend that I had not spent hours and hours in front of the mirror practicing to be a woman who needed a sperm donor.

She tells me now she hates them all. Her trust has been broken. Her ideals have been shattered. I want to say welcome to the club honey but instead I try to tell her: born alone, die alone, men = women. God's up there, here's the master copy of the test. Check it out. Yes, you were assaulted because you would never agree to do this if that variable were visible. But you see darling, they never are truly visible. Your windows are never really locked, your valuables are often stolen right from under your nose and it takes a good long time for you to see that they are missing. All those rights you did not really see as worth defending: your pussy. vagina. cunt. birth canal. Someone told you, told us all, that paying lip service to the labia is enough to physically guard it from invasion.

My mom's best friend Vera was raped with an ice pick. An ice pick. It left her barren. In more ways than one. She died a hopeless drunk with COPD.

Barbie refers to herself in the third person time and time again. As if she was never born, as if she will never die. As if the mechanics of the ruse are not as visible as they are. All that make up. We must all be clowns or geisha girls. We all have to side against the perpetrators or there must simply be something wrong with us. Because at the core of this problem is the fact that we are not in charge of our bodies anymore, like we were in the seventies and had guiltless sex. We are all molls in the mafia by now, dressed to the nines or naked. Forced to pretend that WASPs who go to binge drinking schools because their parents have money to burn were actually virginal girls in the safe confines of the cloister.

I'm surprised they did not attack the Jesuits too. I'll just throw that in for fun. Luckily, most of the nuns turned to each other. At least in my town they did. My best friend is a lesbian. She had five rotten step fathers in a row. Another person's father killed a man for assuming he was not just homeless but he was gay. The professor's body lay rotting in the tent for days before it was discovered.

We are on this wild pendulum ride now and there are no easy answers but the least we can do is not allow another pedophile strangler necrophiliac to live another day. By reducing our complaints to old stories of dry humps gone wrong. Or dads of the kids we babysat trying to indulge the fantasies engendered in them by Penthouse models with small tits wearing tiny kilts.

It's called a value system not a virtue system. We all know sexual abuse is wrong.

Fire Alarms of Citarum

Now, this is a new patio.  Same old stars and planets.  I think of the days when we'd not think twice over shooting out the streetlights, pulling the lever on the fire alarms even though they'd catch us with the blue dye on our palms, the place where our futures were written.  This is a new patio and a loving couple pass by just before dawn, clicking their tongues at the dog that they raised from just a puppy, that sweet smell of pup and love, that unifying element, that status quo of Western Civilization.  A dog named Boo whose abdomen exudes the memory of everyone's first bike and lost tooth.  This is a new patio but it's been here since the beginning of time.  Waiting for the sunrise this morning, waiting for the happy Mr. and Mrs. Smith to pass by, eager to improve their heart rates, lower their systolic BP.  Yes, that too, that too.  If I shot out the streetlight, things would come into focus but I don't own a gun.  Yet. I'd have to keep it out of reach where it would be of no use, would have to learn how it works and then, worry about it working, worry about how to keep it clean.  A well aimed stone would do the trick anyway and rocks are free, no hate speech intended.  They'd run to fix the EPA approved of lamp though because  in this hemisphere darkness is the enemy.  It looks too much like night. Mr. and Mrs. stride into the distance, holding the sin of their flashlight, praising and examining the character of their dog as the sun revives all this stuff one more time.  They'll be off to work in a few hours, the stores will all be open and no one will be the wiser. The price of Indigo is 4 billion somethings.  It says so on their hands.