Maus: A Reader's Tale

Maus I: My Father Bleeds History written by Art Spiegelman, published by Pantheon Books on August 12, 1986 approx. 159 ps.

Maus II: And Here My Troubles Began written by Art Spiegelman, published by Pantheon Books on September 1, 1992 approx. 144 ps.


I think it would be incredibly difficult to generate some form of work about the Holocaust simply for the fact that the general public assumes that they know all that they need to about the matter. They have been informed of these events almost entirely through what was deemed appropriate in junior high textbooks from the fine editors at McGraw-Hill.

Now, calling the Holocaust an "event" is a vast understatement. It is not merely an event. It is in fact one of the most horrifying examples of human nature ever to be displayed. But perhaps even that is an opinion that limits the scope of the Holocaust as subject matter. A blanket statement such as that, while very accurate, denies the notion that the Holocaust was not just a moment in history, but an actual experience that actual people endured.

Art Spiegelman's Maus is one such work that aims to tell the story of his father Vladek with the Holocaust as a backdrop as opposed to the crucial story element. Granted, the Holocaust shapes the story as it is being recounted, in the end, it is a story about a man. Or in this case, a mouse.

Spiegelman tells the story in 2 narratives. The frame narrative is that of Art visiting his father to record the story of his life in the concentration camps in order to write the memoir you are reading. The other narrative is from Vladek's point of view and his direct experiences in Poland and Germany. While these two perspectives seemingly blend into one another, there is no mistaking the distinction in tone between the two. Art views his father in a very subjective way. He finds faults in Vladek's frugality and stubbornness and, at times, seems to even disdain the man his father has become. While this may sound like a harsh judgement on Art's part, a lot of it stems from his inability to impress his father. As far as Art sees it, "nothing can make him happy." Along with that, part of Art's narrative deals with the mental stress from writing and collecting his father's story.

On the other end of it, readers are given a glimpse into Hitler's Germany and the lengths that both of Art's parents go to in order to escape and reunite. It is through these sequences that readers get to know Vladek and how he became who he is. Where Art's portrayal is that of a senile old man, the readers get to see the clever and resourceful man he was. Whether it was utilizing his experience in different occupations to avoid the gas chambers, or trading food for clean clothes to survive the conditions, Vladek had an answer for almost everything. While much of his experiences had to do with luck, his quick wit kept him alive on multiple occasions.

In Steven Wu's review of the book, he mentions the inability of the text to do anything "beyond merely representing the raw historical material" and how small of a reaction Vladek's experiences elicited. I can't disagree more with this opinion. I feel that the representation of Vladek is the one thing that separates this graphic novel from an encyclopedic recounting of the times. His story gives the readers something personal to attach themselves to when reading the story. Statistics go a long way to express the extent of the Nazi's actions, but does little to accentuate individual stories. Personal experiences can only be found in firsthand sources such as these and this is one of the most redeeming qualities of the book.

The graphic novel gets its namesake from the way the characters are portrayed. The Jews are mice, the Germans: cats, Polish: pigs, Americans: dogs, and so on and so forth. While somewhat inconsistent (Anja is terrified of rats? The Germans (cats) have dogs (not Americans though?), I think this portrayal works well. Going into reading this novel, I assumed the animals would take on a manner similar to Orwell's Animal Farm. That is, operate as animals (albeit talking animals) in an ultimately human world. Instead, the characters represent their nationalities through their depictions as animals rather than just being different looking humans.

At first, I was a bit upset that they were not more like the animals on Manor Farm. In my quick reaction, I couldn't quite identify why this portrayal would be needed if the characters were essentially human anyway. While I'm not entirely sure how the other countries fit in, I do, however, find the cat-mouse dynamic a very important piece in telling the story. As mentioned earlier, the Holocaust is more of a backdrop to this story and the motivation behind the events that occurred are not really touched upon. In a sense, the dispute between the Germans and the Jews seems as natural as the dispute between cats and mice. Throw in the Americans (dogs) for good measure, and you essentially get the food chain that shows just how much the Jews mattered during this time period.

A representation such as this would only be possible through Art's chosen medium: the graphic novel. This choice alone demands a great deal of praise considering the widely held opinion of comics as 'low art.' For Spiegelman to bring such a weighty topic and profound memoir to this art form is nothing short of impressive. If this style puts off any potential readers, you can definitely put those apprehensions behind you.

There is little 'comic' in this comic. The art style is appropriately sketchy and foreboding which, for me, help to convey the atmosphere of the times. Similar to Schindler's List, the chosen color scheme is black and white. Maus even avoids the obligatory 'girl in red' to alert its viewers that there is imagery afoot. Instead, Art uses clever images within his own drawings (hidden swastikas, animal masks for disguises) that would make even the most articulate novelist blush. I think this is a great example of how to really utilize a graphic novel to tell a story.

This book should be applauded for its ability to transport its reader both historically and emotionally. By placing the reader's focus on a specific person's story during this treacherous time, one can get a sense of both the overall scope, and the individual struggle. The Holocaust brings about all sorts of evocative images when even mentioned and Spiegelman continues that trend within his graphic novel. But rather than hammer in just how terrible it was, Spiegelman delivers a narrative that has as much heart, as it does horror.

Matty Sung is an English Education major at San Francisco State University. This is his first review.

Jazz by Toni Morrison

Toni Morrisons book Jazz is categorized as contemporary fiction and more specifically drama. The plot of this book revolves around an older couple, Violet and Joe, and the ups and downs a marriage can take over time. The back of the book describes it as "...a story of passion, jealousy, murder and redemptions, of sex and spirituality, slavery and liberation, country and city". Reading this very long sentence one would think that this book is going to be extremely intriguing and would be as inspiring and deep as Morrisons previous work. Morrison is well known for her writing in period pieces that mainly have to do with racism, love, and death. She was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1988 and won the Nobel Peace Prize in Literature in 1993. She is most well known for her amazing work in The Bluest Eye, Song of Soloman, and Beloved. Although Morrison is a very talented writer this book fell short of her normal stature. As the back of the book reads there is a lot going on in this book but unfortunately it is all just barely touched upon and leaves the reader confused. There is also no original storyline to keep the reader intrigued. I chose to read this book because of Morrisons reputation of fantastic writing but was sorely disappointed in the quality of this story.

To start with, this book is very stereotypical; husband and wife don't talk anymore therefore husband cheats on wife with a younger woman and small town gossip ensues. Don't worry I am not giving anything away, the reader finds all of this out on just the first few pages. It is then slowly explained in detail throughout the entire book but you get the main parts of the drama at the very beginning. Violet and Joe are the married couple that this story revolves around, even though there were corks in their personality they seemed very generalized as a boring old couple. Violet comes to a realization early on that she is not the woman that she once was, saying "She[Herself] didn't used to be that way. She had been a snappy, determined girl and a hard working young woman, with the snatch-gossip tongue of a beautician" (page 23). For such a well-known writer I was hoping for a more original plot, although there were some parts that I thought were unique there were not enough of them to sway me from being bored at the basic love story plot. I will give her credit in the fact that both Violet and Joe had twisted minds; Joe killed his lover because he knew he couldn't keep her and Violet mutilated the body of her husbands mistress at the public wake. But still this wasn't enough to intrigue me to read more; she did not delve enough into their psyche to explain anything.

Flashing back and forth in time and changing narratives every few pages without any notification to the reader was the basis of this book that made me go "what the heck?”. There were far too many times when I did not know who was talking or where in time we were. It was extremely distracting and would take several pages to figure out. There was an entire 20 pages devoted to a time period before either of the two characters were alive and as the reader I was not able to decipher who the narrator was or their purpose in the story until the entire section was done. This background would have been helpful if it were more clear but as it is written it was just frustrating. The reader will spend more time trying to figure out the timeline of the story then actually reading the pages.

As I mentioned before the book was supposed to be about "passion, jealousy, murder and redemptions, of sex and spirituality, slavery and liberation, country and city". I can see why this was advertised because that is what the entire book was about but at the same time it never fully dove into any of the subjects. Morrison just barely skimmed the surface with all of those issues so that it was there but not developed. I never cared or rooted for any of the characters because none of them were talked about enough for me to have a strong hold on who they were and what they wanted. The narrator jumped around so much that it never fully went into who each person was and why I should care which is the main reason why we read! We read to learn about other people and be a part of their story; we read for anticipation and anxiety; we read for romance and friendship. All of these vital aspects of a good story were just barely touched upon; it was there but not developed enough to become a real story.

Overall I would not suggest this book. Yes, there were a few interesting parts but not enough to waste time reading the entire 229 pages. Morrison is normally an extraordinary writer but this book just didn't have her heart in it. Stereotypical, confusing, and underdeveloped are not words normally used to describe her books but for this one they are exactly the right fit.

Sierra Baxter is graduating in May 2011 from San Francisco State University with a Bachelors Degree in Communication Studies.

I forgot!

to post earlier! I was out of town and was too swept up in it to remember my homework! My apologies. I also am not quite sure what I am supposed to write about... I guess about the book I am reading but since the others in my group aren't reading the same book as me I guess I will use this time to talk about what has happened thus far in my book.

I am about 100 pages into my book and still pretty confused about what is going on. The basic premise of the book is that there is a man (Joe) and woman (Violet), they have been marries for a long time and in the last few months Joe has strayed away from his wife and was sleeping with a younger woman (Dorcas). Joe recently murdered Dorcas because he knew they could never have a life together and the love for her hurt too much. As you may guess violet was not too thrilled about this and after her death became somewhat obsessed with the woman his husband liked better than her. Violet doesn't seem to harbor any hard feelings or fear towards her husband which I think is weird. In the part I am reading right now Violet is befriending the diseased aunt who she was raised by.

Basically I am confused because they keep switching back from future to present tense with no distinction between them and also have no idea who is narrating. I hope it clears up soon...

Take A Look At Yourself

Are we a nation of racial and religious profilers? Do we (the American people) look at life through a racial lens, constantly making assumptions of other people based on skin color and religious affiliation?

We are a country that mass produce, generalize most things, and make quick assumptions on just about every decision. We like things quick. So, might we like to figure out who or what a person might be as fast as possible? Well, maybe, but I’m going to assume not all of America is as narrow-minded as that. Though, I can say with certain confidence that everyone has had a moment of racial or religious profiling in ones life, however innocent it may have been.

The reason I introduce the issue of racial and religious profiling is that I have just finished the book “Zeitoun”, by David Eggers. In this narrative nonfiction Abdulrahman Zeitoun -- a member of the New Orleans community during the catastrophic natural disaster of Hurricane Katrina -- is taken in to custody for suspicion of looting. With out giving up too much of his fabulous story, Zeitoun is wrongfully detained and later accused of being a terrorist.

Zeitoun is Muslim, an immigrant from Syria, and a native of New Orleans for over 10 years when Hurricane Katrina hit.

Since the terrorist attack on the World Trade Centers in New York City, better known as 9/11, it seems our nation has taken a drastic turn on how we view the Muslim religion and Islamic culture. Zeitoun’s story speaks true to this sentiment. Understandably, immediately after the attacks airport security was heightened among other security issues, but what may be a harder to understand is how religious profiling and discrimination against Muslim’s took on a new rage. Muslim’s living in America prior to 9/11 went through their daily routines, work lives and family responsibilities seemingly unfazed. Yet, after the attacks these same Muslim’s live in a nation where the people they have daily contact with hate or fear them based on their religious affiliation and looks.

As I scoured blogs and articles around the web searching for more insight on this line of thinking I came across a common theme.

The belief that while not all Muslim’s are terrorists, most terrorists are Muslim.

This is of course a fear-based assumption, and indicative of our thinking today, mainly from 9/11, but these assumptions are simply false. In fact, Islamic Extremists make up only 6% of terrorists attacks on America. Yet, the Muslim-American community is wrongfully thrust in to this category and the assumption that ‘they’ are behind every attack on America.

10 years later we are still dealing with the issue. To put it simply, America is still not completely comfortable with the Muslim-American community. One such example is the backlash of the possible construction of a mosque near ground zero. I use the word mosque because that is how the media has spun it to me, but what is really being built is a community center.

Let me say that I do not mean to use “10 years later” as a statement that we should be moved on from 9/11. America should never forget the lives lost that day, and honoring those lives every year is something that should happen.

Rather, I say “10 years later” in reference to the drastic line of thinking that continues to this day. A line of thinking that should not keep continuing to pigeonhole an entire community based on a small group of extremist who affiliate with the same religion as them selves. The issue of the mosque (or community center) is a sensitive one that has radicals on both sides. Clearly the greatest issue is the location of the project, though there is some controversy on how that is being portrayed. I’m not here to get in to the details or the pros cons of the community center -- that is for another argument (click here if you would like to see some pros and cons). Instead, I’m trying to point out that America is still sensitive (61% oppose the mosque construction) to the Muslim-American community, and wrongfully take a small group’s horrific actions and blame it on the entire Muslim faith, and anyone who represents it.

I mentioned the heightened security post 9/11, in airports and other facilities, as a first step in making America a safer place. You remember the heightened security at airports don’t you? Waiting in lines for hours just to get past that metal detector. It still happens today, in fact, airport security in the past year has taken some heat in its approach to fully-body scans and invasion of privacy.

Recently questions have arisen about whether or not airport security should choose to limit who they search, using racial and religious profiling (singling out young male Muslims coming from the Middle East) to target the people who ‘should’ be searched.

Clearly this has its issues, there are obvious flaws to this approach: it invites terrorist’s who do not fit the profile to easily surpass security, but the major issue is the seclusion of a people based race and religion.

America is split on whether or not racial and religious profiling should be relied upon to further inspect a passenger.

Each side has its reasons why there should or should not be: catching a potential terrorist from causing harm to the United States is a positive. Stopping useless passenger scans and searches, like the women who did not want her breast milk going through the X-ray, would be swell as well.

Yet, the argument being made seems a bit contradicting. For the people who do not fit the alleged profile, having to be stopped for silly reasons may be an inconvenience.

But, think of the people who are going to be stopped, searched and most likely violated, who are not terrorists, because of their race or religion.

What seems worse?

You’d think it would be ridiculous to be stopped because of the size of your toothpaste container, imagine being searched because you happen to be Catholic.

These issues are disheartening.

America can’t seem to find a common ground with its own people. Such is life these days, though, as we must force our selves to sway to the extreme of one side and completely disregard the action of the other.

Topics such as the community center and airport security are sensitive subjects, but subjects that should be addressed.

With us, it seems there must always be a right and wrong, and while some are right and others are clearly wrong, there are just some subjects where a middle ground is needed. Where right and wrong go out the window. Because with both nothing will move forward.

There has to be middle ground, whether or not we come to one is a different story.

Hurricane Katrina and PTSD

Hurricane Katrina destroyed many things: homes, schools, families, and hearts. In Dave Egger’s book Zeitoun he explained one families journey through this natural disaster and the lasting affects it had on their psyches. Zeitoun and Kathy, the leaders of the Zeitoun family, both suffered from some version of post traumatic stress disorder. Post traumatic stress disorder, commonly known as PTSD is an anxiety disorder that can occur after someone experiences a traumatic event that caused intense fear, helplessness, or horror.

There are four key symptoms of PTSD: reliving the event, avoiding situations that remind you of the event, feeling numb, and feeling keyed up. These factors can vary in intensity and make living a normal life extremely hard for a victim of this disorder. People with PTSD can often experience hopelessness, shame and despair and consequently become depressed or develop anxiety, alcohol or drug problems.

Both Zeitoun and Kathy exemplified symptoms of PTSD. Zeitoun had a hard time sleeping; he would stay up late thinking about people and places that have been burned into his brain from that horrible month after Hurricane Katrina. He also said that he would try to avoid driving past the Claiborne house and Greyhound Station because they held bad memories and feelings for him. Kathy had a difficult time as well, she ended up loosing basic cognitive functions like not being able to understand English, loosing feeling in her hands, memory loss, and anxiety.

One of the largest misconceptions of PTSD is that symptoms manifest immediately after a traumatic event. In many cases, it takes a month or two before symptoms are noticeable. They are usually brought forth by stress and/or old memories. Kathy and Zeitoun had a month of high stress and anxiety after the hurricane but did not feel the PTSD effects until a short time after that. Although this couple has shown signs of PTSD and is currently living in the remnants of New Orleans, the center of the disaster, neither of them has sought help.

Hurricane Katrina affected everyone. There is common social theory that exclaims that every person in the world can be connected to any other person in the world by six people, hence its name, six degrees of separation. This theory just proves my point further that this one disaster was able to affect all of America. America which is one of the leading countries in this world right now was shaken up by this fast and unstoppable force. We have experienced natural disasters before but not in a while and not with this big of an affect.

1.2 million people in the northern Gulf coast from Louisiana to Alabama were evacuated under government order, the final death toll was 1,836 people, an estimated 400,000 jobs were lost, about 275,000 homes were destroyed, 705 people are reported as still missing, and it is estimated to have cost the United States a $110 billion in damages.

Now if you don't know one of those 1.2 million people then someone you know does. This event was broadcast all over the world on every media platform because of our governments failure to help fast and efficiently from the beginning. With this disaster affecting so many people Americans were sitting at the edge of their seat waiting for the news to tell them what they wanted to hear or maybe hoping that they wouldn't hear anything at all.

The physical damages that this natural disaster cost people is nothing in comparison to the psychological damages it has created. In a paper presented in 2007, professors found that PTSD was diagnosed in over 38% of the people who came into one Emergency Department facility that they were studying in New Orleans. This is more than ten times higher than the 3.6% prevalence in the general US population.

There are good treatments available for PTSD. When you have PTSD, dealing with the past can be hard. Instead of telling others how you feel, you may keep your feelings bottled up but talking with a therapist can help you get better. Cognitive behavioral therapy is one type of counseling. It appears to be the most effective type of counseling for PTSD. In cognitive therapy, your therapist helps you understand and change how you think about a trauma and its aftermath. The goal is to understand how certain thoughts about trauma cause stress and make symptoms worse. The Zeitouns obviously are not reaching out for help but it shouldn’t be the victims having to ask for help. There should be programs and people reaching out to as many of these survivors as humanly possible. With an entire city of people who have survived through a natural disaster like this one we should be stepping up and making sure that it does not effect their psychological development for the rest of their life.

Between January 1, 2011 and March 15, 2011 there has already been 11 major natural disasters.

In just three months thousands of people all over the world have died due to these natural disasters that no one can prevent or even sometimes predict. What if the next one happens to you? PTSD is not something you can prevent either but it is something you can deal with it. There are far too many people with this disorder not getting the help that they need and that needs to change now.

Death by Silk Rope...

The recent YouTube video featuring a white UCLA student complaining about the Asian students on her campus says a lot about the way Asians are currently perceived in our country. I'm not saying she speaks for all white people or America for that matter, but it is worth noting that a lot of what she has to say is often considered common knowledge.

From her annoyances about their families being around to her mocking of the Chinese language (actually, it's not really made apparent what language she is ridiculing, nor do I believe she has the capacity to understand that there exists different languages), this isn't new material, and it's certainly not the worst I've heard.

In fact, this girl wouldn't be alone if she brought up the other stinging stereotypes that permeate a race that is the fastest growing of all major ethnic groups in the US.

I don't want to condemn this country as a place that is ill suited to accommodate multiple races, but I can't be alone in saying that there is far too heavy a reliance on past actions dictating present standards.

There is a sense of stasis in the world of racial revolution where an Asian man or an Asian woman can't be described as who they are without their ethnic prefix as a determiner, setting in motion a wave of harmful preconceptions this country has not noticed enough to change.

I could go on about how these biases pervade multiple aspects of the Asian American life, but I want to look at what I believe to be at the center of a lot of this and that is the misrepresentation of Asian genders.

Eastern ideals have always been at odds with what the West has deemed appropriate for a gender.

For Asians, solidarity and group-mindedness outweigh the importance of self. This focus on the group rather than the individual plays out in a lot of cinema. Martial arts films such as "Legend of the Fist" star a protagonist whose sole motivation for the film is vengeance for his school's fallen master and to bring back honor for himself and his school. There is seldom a love interest in the vein of Western Hollywood where macho heroics win the girl. Being heroic means self sacrifice, wisdom, and loyalty; all non-active qualities.

American heroics by contrast often include independence, bravery, and notoriety. The hero always gets the girl and something probably blows up behind him.

While analyzing conventions in Western and Eastern film is one thing, it becomes another when these notions manifest themselves into actual opinions of people who are representative of these two cultures.

America was founded on the idea of independence. Confidence and self-reliance have always marked a great man in our culture. We consider facing a task alone to be brave and noble and find that dependence can equate weakness.

Asian culture is in no way ethnically more cowardly than our Western counterparts, there just isn't the desire to make such things so public. Asian men, then, come off as meek and effeminate. Asian men are typically portrayed in Western media as number crunchers and video game nerds. The only Asian men given any sort of respect for their physical prowess are the martial artists (and sadly, they've even taken that away from us).

Perhaps it is this de-masculinization that caused Asian men to be considered the least attractive race to females in America.

Asian women, on the other hand, suffer from quite the opposite: a hyper-sexualized opinion from the West.

Madama Butterfly tells the story of Navy Lieutenant Pinkerton, stationed in Japan who, upon leasing a house, also procures a geisha wife: Cio Cio San. Despite her family's objections, the two are wed with the Lieutenant knowing full well he will one day, instead, marry a "real wife."

When Pinkerton returns to America, Cio Cio (having given birth to their child) patiently awaits her husband despite advances from a Japanese prince.

When Pinkerton finally does return, it is with his new wife. And despite Cio Cio's maddening despair, she allows this to happen with no protest. Instead, she dutifully proceeds to take her own life.

What is illustrated here is the Western male fantasy of a submissive Asian bride. It doesn't help dispel this stereotype that Madama Butterfly is the most performed play in America. It perpetuates the idea that not only will Asian women submit to their male counterpart, but that they will do so willingly even more so then they would for their own race.

The other side of this stereotype is the "Dragon Lady." This exotic figure represents the mystique embodied by "Oriental" women. They provide the fantasy of an "aggressive or opportunistic sexual being." One of the more notable types of this character was Ling Woo, portrayed by Lucy Liu in the show "Ally McBeal."

This depiction of Asian women sets forth a series of promises that they simply cannot and should not fulfill. There is a certain fetishization of the Asian female simply because she is not understood or, rather, is thought to be understood.

These stereotypes play on the dominating tendencies of the West towards the East. Consider the occupation of India by Britain or the destruction the US laid upon Japan during WWII and it's easy to see how the East is commonly viewed as something to be conquered.

I'm not illustrating these points to raise the Asian American community's racial issues above those of the African or Latino/a variety nor is this an attempt to compete to see which minority has it worse.

I believe there is a certain insight that is missing from the general American public as far as just who and what we, as Asians, signify. When all anyone sees are Asians within the stereotypes set forth by how we are portrayed, there's little room to prove people wrong. These preconceived notions of what define an Asian man or woman are setting back any sense of progress other races have made in this country.

I don't want to have to play second fiddle to Tom Cruise or the Green Hornet.

I don't want to have to be good at math and breaking boards with my fists to be considered noteworthy.

Even more, I don't want my children growing up in a world that attempts to convince them that they are less than great.

I will hold on to our one role model, though. He's brave, adventurous, kind, and resourceful. Keep it up, kid...



love matty!

New Orleans and Japan

I think I've already generated a sort of response in my head, but I wanted to bring the question up with any one who is actually reading other posts. The recent earthquake and subsequent tsunamis that have hit Japan have decimated their country in a way very similar to Hurricane Katrina and New Orleans. It's hard to make too general of a statement, but I think that the recent activity in Japan will end up being much worse than Katrina. Consider the numbers. The final death toll for Katrina was estimated to be about 4,081 where Japan is already looking at 3,400 lives lost. That same article is touting the disasters in Japan to eventually cost more than Katrina as well considering only about 14-17% of Japanese residences have earthquake insurance.

Despite all of these facts and figures about which was worse, there was another comparison that I am interested in, and that's the looting that occurred in Katrina. If this is bound to be so much worse than what happened in 2005, why is the response so different? Part of my assumption lies in the cultural differences. When you compare both countries, the US' crime rate is much higher but its overall altruism when looking at how trustworthy its people are is much lower. If you look at those same questions regarding Japan, you find the opposite. I feel that there is a stronger sense of solidarity in the East as well. The Western world boasts a DIY sort of mentality where you pull yourself up by your bootstraps and do what you need to to stay afloat. That same mindset does not exist as prominently in a culture that values honor in their society.

With that being said, there is also the fact that other natural disasters have struck our country that did not result in the sort of looting we saw in Katrina. This brings up the idea of the effects of such a disaster on a community that largely lives below the poverty line. For those who still question "why did these people loot?", I think you need to start looking at it as if you were in their position. Despite the fact that you need to survive, think about the inequalities that surround you as a person living in poverty. As harsh as it may sound, looting can lead to less prosperous peoples gaining amenities they might never have dreamed of owning before. I don't mean to cast judgment upon the residents of New Orleans saying that they attempted to capitalize on the disaster, it's just that I can see justification for it on so many levels, I don't understand why the question is "why wouldn't you loot?"

Just thought this might pose some interesting discussion considering what has happened in Japan so recently.


love matty!