Love in the Time of Swine Flu

The WHO upgrades the risk level to 5* and now there are reports of swine flu in my hometown of Chicago, which gives one a little frisson.

A Quiet Day in Iowa as Same-Sex Couples Line Up to Marry

Now New Hampshire and Maine are looking to legalize also.

And there are signs the GOP is rethinking its stance on gay marriage.

Gay and lesbian groups that want this should ally themselves with divorce lawyer associations, see Intolerable Cruelty,** who would no doubt be willing to pony up for the cause.

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The Australian duo Empire of the Sun.

Martin Amis remembers J.G. Ballard.

Tom Bissell writes about David Foster Wallace.

I heard Bissell on the radio once talking about a trip he took to post-Soviet states, like Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan. He laughed as he told how the former communist boss/ current dictator of one of them granted a holiday amnesty and emptied the prisons while he was in the country. Bissell was mugged 4 or 5 times the following days.

Like Wallace, the 41 year-old financial chief of Fannie Mae David Kellermann recently committed suicide. With suicide you can't really explain why, even though Wallace was clinically depressed and Kellermann was under enormous pressure. Others suffering in a similar manner don't do it. In medieval Europe, suicides were denied a Christian burial and superstitiously buried at crossroads with a stake through their heart. As if their heart wasn't already broken.