Being a western boy I’ve grown up with forest fires all my life. In Colorado, where I’m from, a fire almost burned down our ranch the year I was born and totally decimated the forested mountain in whose shadow our home lay. I haven’t written much about the spate of forest fires we’re having in NorCal recently but the air quality is now so bad, the visibility so poor that I can’t see more than 2 miles - that I had to say something.

Fires in California are dangerous because such large portions of the coast are heavily populated that when one occurs it almost always causes property loss and death.  In addition the introduction of non-native, highly-flammable species like the Australian Eucalyptus mean that forests which once burned slowly and evenly are now more like tinderboxes spiked with firecrackers designed to explode and spread burning embers farther and faster than those fighting the fires can keep up with.

Who can forget the Oakland Hills fire of 1991?

The Oakland Firestorm of 1991 was a large urban fire that occurred on the hillsides of northern Oakland, California and southeastern Berkeley on Sunday October 20, 1991, almost exactly two years after the Loma Prieta earthquake. The fire has also been called the Oakland hills firestorm, the East Bay Hills Fire, and the Tunnel Fire (because of its origin above the west portal of the Caldecott Tunnel) in Oakland. The fire ultimately killed 25 people and injured 150 others. The 1,520 acres (6.2 km²) destroyed included 2,843 single-family dwellings and 437 apartment and condominium units. The economic loss has been estimated at $1.5 billion. At the fire’s peak it would destroy one home every 11 seconds.

This is what we deal with in California on a regular basis. We live in the San Francisco hills facing Oakland and thankfully the winds blow in from the ocean and head east, which is why the Oakland/Berkeley hills are always in such danger and we’re not. Still there are those days, mainly in September and October when the air is thick and hot and still and I look at the stand of eucalyptus across the road and know that all it would take is one spark from some careless person to burn down our entire neighborhood - just one cigarette…

I’m finally finished with my paper on the Etruscans. I say finally not because it was boring or anything but it’s a particularly dry subject involving research through medical journals on genetic markers - not my cup of tea. At least it’s through though. Now I can turn my attention to the final piece of my graduation puzzle - my thesis.

This evening I was sitting and talking with a friend when a burning sensation came from my eye, the eye with the sty, and then my vision clouded. I realized the sty on the eye had popped and was draining a rich mix of eye juice and purulence into my eye socket. Instead of being horrified I was excited - my eye sty had finally popped and was now relieving itself of its foul infection. Luckily I was able to avail myself of some Cipro eyedrops which I used to reduce the chance of infection and now my beauty, my precious beauty, has arisen as if awoken from a deep spell, just in time for Gay Pride weekend.

The Republican Party is a dead rotting carcass with a few decrepit old leaders stumbling around like zombies in a horror version of ‘Weekend With Bernie,’ handcuffed to a corpse.

Not me, tired GOP hack Robert Novak said it.

The new report detailing the Bush administration’s politicization of the Justice Department is yet another nail in the coffin of their political doom. Bush appointees regularly vetted applicants and interns for ideological loyalty to the Republican party and denied interviews to those deemed too “liberal” or who they suspected of belonging to the Democratic party. Outstanding law students from Yale, Harvard, Colombia and NYU were regularly denied interviews because those law schools are viewed as “ideologically suspect.” Applicants were even disqualified for belonging to the Nature Conservancy, a non-partisan environmental group which works with businesses to buy ecologically sensitive private lands and preserve them for the future. All of this is in direct contravention of federal law which prohibits hiring or firing on the basis of political or ideological bias.

I hate this president and his administration and the Republican party with the burning fury of 10,000 suns. I want to see the Republican party destroyed, permanently. I loathe everything about the President and the Republican party and I want to see all Bush appointees guilty of besmirching our constitution lined up against a wall and shot to death after a trial chaired by the very people they tried to disenfranchise.

I have an enormous sty on my upper eyelid which hurts and is uncomfortable and more importantly is marring my beauty - my precious beauty. I get one of these around every three years during the allergy season and it sucks. I have to wear sunglasses all the time, even when its cloudy or early in the morning like yesterday when I took my cat to the vet and the vet staff prolly all thought I was a cokehead - which I’m not.

I’m going to go see SATC today, which I’ve been meaning to do but just haven’t until now.

Today my myself, my BF and a couple of our friends caught the ferry to Angel Island, rented bikes and spent the day cycling around the island’s perimeter. It was a beautiful day for it - sunny, clear and warm. Now I’m sunburned and exhausted but happy.

Last night I saw the most amazing heavy reddish-orange moon which sat like a fat lollipop low on the horizon. As it rose higher it became less colored but when it was first visible it was amazing - I’d never seen anything like it before.

I think I was robbed by a TSA worker, or someone who was in my apartment in New York shortly before I left.

Today I was sitting on my bed surrounded by various detritus when I suddenly felt like opening my jewelery box and looking at my sparkling jewels - which mainly consist of dog tags from Israel, cuff-links and an assorted necklace. I realized when draping myself with these expensive baubles that several items were missing:

1. A solid silver pair of Gucci dog tags.
2. A solid silver magen David necklace from Tiffany.

Now I’m unsure when/where these things disappeared because I rarely wear jewelry anyway - so I don’t even know if they were in the jewelry box when I put it in my hard-sided Louis Vuitton luggage for the trip home. But they’re definitely missing.