I know if I don’t post something soon my big sister is going to call me (probably when I’m trying to nap) to confirm that I’m still alive. I am still among the living, even though two suicides have encased this weekend like tragic parentheses: Zane Vaughn, a local high school math teacher, and Hunter S. Thompson, gonzo journalist.

Mr. Vaughn, whose face dis/graced the TV on the 5s, was arrested for allegedly soliciting a 14-year-old girl via the Internet. When he arrived at the hotel, instead of the girl, the police officer who had posed as a 14-year-old girl on the Internet was waiting. After posting bail—and after at least ten “updates” of the story in the course of a couple of hours on one local channel alone—he checked into a motel and killed himself. There’s something seriously wrong with police officers posing as children, trying to lure adults into criminal activity. There’s something seriously wrong with the media smearing this man’s name and face all over the airwaves without so much as a question of guilt. And then to feel pushed to actually commit a crime—suicide—in order to free yourself from the situation. Ugh!

I’m reading Miller’s The Crucible now. Mr. Vaughn’s situation reminds me too much of the witch-hunting of early Salem. I don’t want to live under a theocracy where so-called intention is just as damnable as action.

God bless Hunter, a fiery Aztec god of writers who rises from the ashes of American hypocrisy. Rest in peace. Blah blah blah.