The Year of Dying Famously

This can’t be good.

I mean … damn it. Keith Coffman reports for Reuters:

Police said a gunman opened fire outside the New Life Church in Colorado Springs after Sunday services and that three to five people had been taken to local hospitals. No fatalities were reported.

Police said they had detained a suspect but gave no details about his condition or a possible motive.

In an earlier incident, 70 miles away, two people were killed and two were wounded shortly after midnight when a gunman entered a training center for young missionaries in the Denver suburb of Arvada, police said.

Right. that New Life Church:

The New Life Church, which has about 14,000 members, was founded by pastor Ted Haggard, who resigned in disgrace in 2006 after admitting to sexually immoral conduct.

Right. That New Life Church. As Noel Black puts it:

Despite the homophobia that pervades the church and its teachings, almost everything about Haggard’s church is a flaming testament to his repressed homosexuality and meth-ish megalomania.

Don’t get me wrong; I was as surprised as anyone that Haggard actually got caught. Just because everyone knows you’re a repressed, hypocritical piece of shit doesn’t necessarily mean you’re stupid enough to get caught. But those of us who live in Colorado Springs knew something was up. And we knew because the church itself told us everything Haggard was hiding.

I’m caught between reports.  Another I just found says that there are five dead at New Life:

El Paso County Sheriff Terry Maketa told AFP there was “one gunman down” and “four deceased, possibly one wounded” in the incident but said the casualty toll was “preliminary.”

This is just not what anybody needs right now. The best we can hope for is a completely random tragedy. Anything remotely more complicated only detracts from the value of the human toll. What is it about the holiday season this year? What the hell is going on?

I guess we have to stay tuned.  Or not.  ‘Tis the season to be jolly, after all.

Famous hookers

Seriously, what’s going on here? Dan Popkey reports for the Star Tribune:

Four gay men, willing to put their names in print, have come forward since news of U.S. Sen. Larry Craig’s guilty plea. Two said they had sex with Craig, one said he made a sexual advance and the fourth said he paid him unusual attention.

They are telling their stories now because they are offended by Craig’s denials, including his now famous statement, “I am not gay, I never have been gay.”

David Phillips is a 42-year-old information technology consultant in Washington who says that Craig picked him up at a gay club in 1986 and that they subsequently had sex.

Mike Jones is a former prostitute who last year told the world he had sex with the Rev. Ted Haggard. Jones says Craig paid him for sex in late 2004 or early 2005.

Greg Ruth was a 24-year-old college Republican in 1981 when he says he was hit on by Craig at a Republican meeting in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho.

Tom Russell, now 48, is a former Nampa, Idaho, resident who lives in Utah. Russell said his encounter with Craig occurred at Idaho’s Bogus Basin Mountain Recreation Area in the early 1980s.

Now just … just … okay, look. It’s just that Benjamin Nicholas, the hooker who got some attention last week as rumors swirled around his possible connections to retiring Senator Trent Lott actually wrote The Stranger, a Seattle newspaper, last year to chastise Mike Jones for violating the Reverend’s confidence.

It’s a world of laughter, a world of tears.
It’s a world of hopes, and a world of fears.
There’s so much that we share that it’s time we’re aware
It’s a small world after all!

I hate that song. But it managed to be useful at least once before I die.

Clockwise from top left: Jones, Haggard, Craig.