Do Landscapes predict your personality?

Last night I met up with the estimable Tara, and we wandered around the Tremont Art Walk in the thunderstorms, getting called "Lil Mama" and getting completely drenched, almost simultaneously. I wasn't too impressed with artistic output. Asterisk had some minimalist display in the upper room that was completely lost on us, and downstairs they had the room of penises. But in between were some pretty cool hanging lamps the size of punching bags. Doubting Thomas had, absolutely, the best show of the night with some cat named Jeff Pasek. Oh, if only I had like 500 extra dollars to spend on art, but unfortunately I'm not an addict, I'll just live vicariously through my friends. He had four or five landscapes that were just beautiful. Tara and I had a long discussion about what our fantasy picks of the litter said about us. Some guy Sean who works there chimed in with a cheap vodka shot and confirmation that indeed, the one I wanted for my bedroom was actually the majority winner. Wouldn't life be better if you woke up to a wall of beautiful art every morning? I'm inspired to clear off the bedroom walls completely and start collaging.

After we were too wet to really "walk it off" anymore, we drowned kittens went to Prosperity and got combative over some champagne and hummus, since Tara seems to think if only people knew about how awful animal husbandry was and how easy eating vegetables was, they would stop this madness in its tracks. To which I responded, feta soaked pita in hand, that people do know, they choose to not acknowledge, and they don't care about animal rights because animals are not people, and people are not essentially decent. See look, I'm not essentially decent. I have a pound of soppresseta in my fridge. Pigs died so that I could eat them on crackers while watching reruns of Star Trek Voyager. But, she says in that sweet obstinate smile, all the grain we would save from not eating beef would feed the world! No, I say in my considerable less sweet way, because no one would grow that wheat anymore since they couldn't make as much as a profit off it! Or they would, and it would be so expensive as to make it that poor people still wouldn't be able to afford it. No, I say, you have to have a government force people to all give up meat, and then already have the infrastructure in place to feed everyone off seaweed and yeast. And then cows would probably go extinct anyways, cause we wouldn't need them anymore. But you'll never accomplish this person by person, never ever ever Ms. Optimist. Leading to the question of the night, is extinction better than torture? Should we just kill everyone off? Of course, that's not the issue, we know that. But when talking with your newly turned vegan friend, you try like hell to not really argue the questions that have import, but only touch on them slightly, and smile, and be slightly ashamed.

I'm obnoxiously cynical, and yet Tara apologizes to me for being too vegan preachy? Whatever, she's the soul of everything right with the world, and I'm the girl who likes to take pictures of the trainwreck.

Now the next door neighbors are having a wedding in their backyard, and the DJ is playing a lot of Kenny G right now, but I suspect that will get funked up later. Or rather, we hope it will. You forget in quiet places like this how much sound a neighborhood can hold. It makes you want to start banging large metal canisters up and down the streets. At least, it makes me want to. Launch rockets between the houses. Oh, but for the 4th of July, but for sweet release of juvenile destructive tendencies, would this not all be a hollowed out wreck of burnt wooden frames and gunning motorcycle screams? Our controlled psychology through legal holiday?