My friend Nick Ut from the A.P. took one of the photos in this compilation.

The downtown skyline of L.A. showcased against a backdrop of snow-capped local mountains! What we get here in So Cal after it rains, when the weather's cold. Always means the local mountains get prettier!

Nick Ut was the guy who took the photo of that little screaming Vietnamese girl who was running down the road naked after being napalmed. A LANDMARK photo. Won him the Pulitzer Prize. Really summed up the cost of war - in a single searing image.

And yet, there he'd be, crouched down low in front of the "gang bang" (what we called that gaggle of reporters and camera crews that usually assembled at big press events). It always blew my mind to be standing behind him in the scrum - to cover something like Cybill Shepherd getting her star on the Walk of Fame or some other such foolishly mundane thing. After he'd come up with that Vietnam War shot...

+1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000!

Our daughter's kindergarten teacher carried a tote bag with her that carried the inscription: "I touch the future. I teach."

SO true. I've never forgotten that. Really makes you think. And it always gives me a valuable perspective on how critically important our teachers are. We owe our teachers our future.

Hmmm - that's the first thing I noticed. All a bunch of white men standing in that line.

As far as I can see, that is. Perhaps there are women in that line, and maybe other non-whites. But sheesh - the glaringly obvious demographic. And what does THAT say about America?

Yeah. Enough guns to arm everyone in America. Oh yeah, I feel safer alright.

Excellent! What's your band's name?

A VERY worthy cause. My husband came over to me a few hours ago and mentioned how it was gonna be a very sad Christmas, and he was crying again. We've both cried many times since it happened. Hard to get it out of your mind, and every time I see my son, I hug him. He still lives at home. I hug him a lot.

SUPERB words to the wise:

"If you cannot sent your kid to school without an armed guard, you are living in a failed state." That about sums it up. In a single sentence. They would have us turn this country into an armed camp. What the freakin' HELL??????

I'm just very gratified to see the coverage of it - all negative.

I love this! But knowing the mentality of the bad guys, that bumper sticker on your car

would probably get your tires slashed. That's what happened with my "War is Not the Answer," "Dean for America," and "bush KNEW" stickers.

And yeah. I call 'em bad guys. Because they are. Because of their agenda. Because of what they do.

LOVE IT! It's in our best interests to let this go til the new year.

When the new year arrives, and brings with it a new Congress, some of the assholes who love obstructing stuff like this will be GONE. Many of them republi-CONS who'll be replaced by DEMOCRATS. We have more momentum on our side as of the new year. If the CONS were really smart, they'd cut a deal now while they still have the numbers (and the bad-guy sympathizers) in Congress and the Senate that they do.

Yeah, CONS. Just try getting something done when Elizabeth Warren is one of those new folks you're gonna have to deal with in the Senate. Try getting your way when your two favorite House loudmouths, joe walsh and allen west, are GONE and thus no longer able to hog the spotlight and propel your obstructions farther forward. Both of those schmucks will be GONE, replaced by DEMOCRATS, who don't share the same walsh/west head-up-your-ass ideology and have no plans to start doing so anytime soon. Better the devil you know, and all that.

So try to get your deal NOW. While you still have what's left of your waning power base.

Well, seems to me what needs to be done is to address questions like this one head-on.

What's the underlying point of questions like these? That MC Hammer still rules the day? (As in "You Can't Touch This.&quot I'm not trying to put you specifically on the spot, Skip Intro. But this has to be looked at.

I have found in my own personal experience that many of those posing questions like this, thoughtfully bringing up all the reasons why we really CAN'T sort this out, or come to some meaningful answers and implementation, or that this is too big a mountain to climb, are in a subtle way suggesting that this is in too many ways an unsolvable problem. If you present too many hurdles, and they're too wide and too tall and too large and too permanently cemented into place so they can't even be moved, well then, chances are the annoying do-gooders of the world will throw up their hands and give up in discouragement before they even get started.

That's yet another aspect of this multi-headed strategy we need to adopt and push forward if we're going to make ANY headway at all. The mindset.

The MINDSET. The idea too many people still have - that reminds me of the catechism classes I sat through in Catholic elementary school. The priest comes in and initiates the lesson and discussion for that hour. The kids ask questions. And I noticed that my classmates would come up with all kinds of "what ifs" to ask the priest about - that just might force him to go outside the talking points, and sometimes were just plain goofy. "Well, what if you're... and the rule says... but you couldn't... " and so forth. Sometimes they'd really be outlandish and rather ridiculous. Made me think some of these fellow classmates of mine were just farting around to hear themselves talk and to "have the floor" and get everybody to look at them while they were muddying the waters. Part of me wonders if I'm hearing the grown-up version of that. I was on the phone with a girlfriend a couple of nights ago and every minute of our conversation that involved the school massacre, she had some loop hole or exception or reason to present, to make the case that whatever we'd try to do or want to do was just impossible, unworkable, impractical, unrealistic, whatever. I kept explaining that this was a multi-pronged problem that needed multi-pronged approaches and attempts and answers. She still had a "well, what about the Mexican drug cartels and smuggling weapons in and..." ALWAYS a loophole. And I finally got fed up and told her - "okay then. So then I guess we do NOTHING, correct? We just shouldn't even bother, true?" I had to drag her kicking and screaming to the begrudging acceptance of the idea that if you can't have the whole pie, why not try for at least a slice of it? Her mind was SO set, SO pre-programmed to find all the hurdles and stop there, without ever trying to figure out - since they're all way too high, well, hell, what if we tried to go around them, or dig a little ditch underneath them to let us crawl under them. Or could they be moved slightly? Or could we put a step-stool in front of some of 'em? Or one of those bouncy things the gymnasts use to approach the vault?

Jesus, Mary, and Joseph!!!! It was like arguing with this series of cartoon trees or obstacles that would pop up in your way as you tried to cut your way through the jungle. And every time you'd cut through one, another would appear, or maybe another several.

When one is talking about sins and all the "thou shalt nots" and that's one's default position whenever the issue is raised, or posing situations that seem hellbent on making it impossible to enact ANY changes or reforms or restrictions, it's just too complicated, insurmountable, a real Gordian Knot, then I think it's fair and reasonable to ask - "what's really going on here? What's the REAL agenda at work here?" And then RESIST EVERY SINGLE GOD-FORSAKEN excuse for giving up and throwing in the towel before the fight even begins.

Yeah, no kidding. I started decorating a couple of weeks ago. It's been awfully busy around here

and I slowed down. Now, I have no motivation to resume. Just not in much of a mood. And it's been said here already, but I've cried every day since it happened, also. I'm sure most of America has. This is just a complete sucker-punch. And I'm in California. Clear across the country from Newtown, CT. I find myself thanking God every time I think of my kids actually surviving to adulthood. But hell, they're no safer than any of the rest of us, as long as there are gunworshippers stalking our country, with their unreachable attitudes. You can't reach some of them. That precious gun of theirs might as well be a golden calf. I just don't see it. I just don't get it. It's sheer insanity to me.

I've been touched by gun violence twice.

I went to high school with a girl who had three brothers. One weekend, the three boys all went out to the outskirts of town to go shooting together - to this large, professional, open-air shooting range. Well supervised place, well maintained, good facilities, very professional. Only two brothers came back. One of the bullets ricocheted and struck one of the boys and killed him instantly. That family was never the same again. They just closed up. And closed down, I guess.

And later on, we became friends with a remarkable woman, very gifted as a medium. Very spiritual, and she was amazingly accurate. Kind and generous. Almost a mentor to my son. She helped police solve crimes and find missing people. We'd hit it off the minute we were introduced by a mutual friend who'd known her since they were kids. One day that third party called me up with the news that our friend had just shot herself - after shooting and killing another family member. They'd evidently been arguing. My son felt as though he'd been hit in the face by a 2x4. We were REELING. For months. NEVER saw that one coming. Especially with HER. Murder-suicide was NEVER something any of us had ever really thought deeply about, period, much less imagining that it could possibly happen to someone we knew.