Parents strongly cautioned (against watching this obnoxious video)

When we left The Simpsons Movie tonight at the very, very end of the very, very last credit (wow, it takes a lot of Koreans to animate 90 minutes of comedy) to make sure we caught the very, very last joke, the Mr. noted that it had been a PG-13 film.

"Are you serious? Because Bart was naked? Surely not. Because Otto had a bong?"

The world that we live in, I swear. And while I'm not sure I'm up to googling nude Bart Simpson, cartoon character or not, I have learned that the movie got the "Parents strongly cautioned" label for "irreverent humor throughout." Of course! It got the rating I associate with movies that are scary or violent but designed to do big box office because it's funny! That seems about right.

The video clip is the "nude scene", by the way, though Bart is about as anatomically correct as a Ken doll. I include it mostly because I'm amused that in Germany, Homer apparently sounds like a chicken.

Oh, and what are the cops saying? "Stop in the name of American squeamishness!"

HA ha.

The long and the short of it

I'm sure that, try as I might, I've already given my daughter's future therapist plenty of fodder, but at least, at least! I've never hauled my daughter in to get all her hair cut off because her father fell in love with a waitress's Dorothy Hammill 'do at Denny's. It's a wonder I ever went out to eat with my parents again.

What brought on this sudden childhood flashback? My mom was here tonight, dropping off her granddaughter and checking on my post-op status, when finally the question that I've been watching her hold in all spring and summer finally burst from her lips.

"Are you growing your hair out on purpose?" she asks, a little urgently, and I manage not to laugh at her. What is it with my parents and their lifetime obsession with my hair?

"Yes," I say slowly, as she shakes her head. And somebody give me a dollar, because I did not say, and everybody else likes it, or the strip club requires it, or even, you think I just missed my hair appointments for six months?

But I do say, "and is it growing out of your head?"

And she concedes that it's not, and that thus it's not her business, that there's no earthly reason that she should care why I've decided to let my own hair on my own head grow longer, and yet, she can't help but have an opinion. Perhaps I should tell her that it's cheaper than therapy.

But really, while I'm thinking of it, I should warn my daughter, who has more hair than I ever have or will. "If you ever go eat with Grandpa and Grandma, and you get a waitress with really short hair, and Grandpa gets this look in his eye, 'Call home!'"

Getting down to it

One more day 'til August, one more day to laze away 'til some imaginary screen door bangs shut on the most summer-y part of the year. Right now, unable to concentrate on anything--my nagging schoolwork, my cluttered kitchen table, my list of second-opinion doctors to call--for more than moments at a time, I might as well be a neighborhood kid wandering between the air conditioning and the humid summer air, waiting for somebody's mom to yell: "In or out!"


On the one hand, it's hard to blame that kid, exasperating as she might be. It's hot out there.

Then again, the a/c ain't free.

Good grief.

Hours later, the table cleared and the calls made along with all those other little tasks that add up to nothing but a way to avoid the real work that I should do and the mysterious queasy feeling I'm not sure I want to identify, I feel better, a little more focused. Fake accomplishment is apparently better than none. Perhaps I'll run for office!

Or perhaps just try to get through tomorrow instead. One more day of July, one more day of what I'll call summer. And then really, I'll do school. A month later than I said I would, though I've already been to the building twice, been thinking about it, I swear, but still more than a week before I have to be there, more than two before I have to teach. That's so not what I intended, but it's what I should have figured, me and the last minute having worked so closely together for so long now. Honestly, it's more of a running start than I've ever given myself before. And tomorrow--tomorrow's still July.

Maybe I'll even feel up to driving, go stock up on cheap notebooks or whatever the ads say is marked down to nothing-- that's school, that's preparing, even if it's not a lesson or syllabus. Because I guarantee you I'll have students who'll arrive that first day with one notebook for everything, or a pencil and no folders, or some other combination of just not what they need, and fixing that and giving them a good start is just what I do. So maybe tomorrow I'll get ready for that, and what do you know it'll still be July--and I'll be ahead.

I bet it was that damn McDonald's coffee woman

While I had made my peace, more or less, with the whole surgery business today, I can't say I was looking forward to it. I was, however, looking forward to those lovely hot blankets that the nurses have always been so quick to offer to combat the overly air-conditioned air. I'm sure there are medical reasons not to let your patients develop hypothermia on the ward, but that toasty cotton sure does feel good, too.

"That's the best part about the hospital," I say to the approaching nurse, and suddenly, her face is apologetic.

"Now what?" I ask.

And she explains that someone was apparently, or at least supposedly, burned (with a blanket?? how sensitive can skin be?), and now they can't turn the warmers up high enough. Instead, she'd be more than happy to compensate by plugging a hose into my gown and blowing hot air up my butt. How cozy. She commiserates, admitting her preference for making her patients comfortable with layers, but the days of old fashioned comfort, let alone warm feet, are apparently gone. It's lukewarm blankets or a vacuum-cleaner on reverse, but nothing I really wanted.

I should have taken it as a sign.

Bonds goes deep? Nah, just cheap

Do you think if you stand real close to Barry Bonds you can hear his little bitty brain rattling around in that great big skull of his? I swear, now he's even making Jim Rome (ESPN's designated hot head) look all grown up and rational.

The other night,"Boston pitcher Curt Schilling said refusals by Bonds and Mark McGwire to address accusations of steroids use are basically admissions of guilt." (Yep.) Since Schilling said that on Bob Costas' HBO show, Bonds fired back that Costas is "that little midget man who absolutely knows jack shit about baseball, who never played the game before.''

Ooooh.

Costas, for his part, again offered to interview Bonds, in any number of circumstances, but also added, "As anyone can plainly see, I'm 5 (feet) 6 1/2 and a strapping 150,'' he said in a telephone interview. "And unlike some people, I came by all of it naturally.'' So he was professional and funny in his opinions, but hell, he's Bob Costas. That's what I expect him to be.

But Jim Rome? Mostly I just expect him to hurt my head. He might be smart; I can't listen to him long enough to know. But he got this right, and anybody who piles on baseball's not-so-great swollen wonder is okay by me:

From Thursday's Rome is Burning:

"When backed into a corner without a good response to a fair question, play the 'You're a midget who never played the game' card,'' Rome said. "How is Schilling suggesting you cheated Costas' fault? The fact that he never played the game has nothing to do with whether you cheated. It's completely ... irrelevant. The question is not whether or not he played the game, it's whether or not you cheated.''

Yes, no, maybe so.

"But can you do that, can you say 'no'?"

That's my mother, asking if it's possible for me to refuse the seemingly ridiculous treatment my least favorite doctor has suggested might be necessary depending on what she finds when she goes poking around during Friday morning's surgery. Which of course I'm having: a July Friday in the OR is practically tradition. How else to face the end the summer if not with a general anesthetic?

"Of course I can say no. My body, right?" I say, a little perplexed. But I can tell by her tone she's not convinced, though no Supreme Court decisions govern this choice. Is this some kind of generational thing? Some kind of Doctor Knows Best instinct with a side of Anything for My Daughter, even though she admits the proposed treatment sounds like terrible overkill, an ordeal to be sure?

Weird.

And so for the moment, I shake it off. Let's get to Friday first, and hope that the old fashioned Out Damn Spot option comes through instead. And if it doesn't, my medical luck running that way this year, well then we can have the heavy sighs, and the are you sures, and the I don't knows, and the if you say sos, but, in the end, the decider is going to be who the decider is going to be. Me.

For Christina

The Guardian's Digested Read of Harry Potter and The Deathly Hallows

Harry Potter took off his Invisibility Cloak as he entered the Dursleys' house in Privet Drive. He was back where it had all started six books previously. It had seemed much more fun in the beginning. No Muggles queuing up at midnight; no Winnebagos on the film set; just him, Ron and Hermione and a box of magic tricks. Now, he felt a little jaded. Still, he thought, if I can keep it together for another 600 pages, I'll be off the hook. Free to pursue a different acting career.

His reverie was interrupted by the arrival of Arthur Weasley, Ron, Hermione and 10 other familiar characters. "We've got to get you out of here," said Arthur. "The protective charm runs out when you are 17, and You Know Who and the Death Eaters will be after you. Six of us are going to take some Polyjuice potion to create some decoy Harrys."
Harry knew he was up against it this time. A favourite character from an earlier book had been killed off within the first 80 pages. That Rowling woman meant business. "OK," said Harry, grimly, as Ron and Hermione embraced. "There might have been time for that kind of adolescent awakening in books five and six. Now, it's time to get serious."

Hermione recovered her customary poise. "You're right, Harry," she replied. "The Ministry has been taken over by Voldemort, and the Order of the Phoenix is compromised. Nowhere is safe. You must continue your quest for You Know Who's Horcruxes."

The scar on Harry's forehead burned, but an intense migraine was a small price to pay for giving the reader a chance to find out what Voldemort was doing and catch up with more back story.

It was the morning of Fleur's wedding to Bill Weasley and Harry, Ron and Hermione were examining the strange bequests they had been left in Dumbledore's will.

"Why have we been given this effing rubbish?" Ron laughed. "I've told you before that book seven is not the place for jokes and swearing," Harry answered sternly. Just then he saw Ginny passing. He didn't know why - though he suspected it was something to do with letting the reader know that although he was a goody-goody on the outside, he was a rampant horny hetty on the inside - but he kissed her passionately. "Stay safe for me," he whispered knowingly.

"I've found a strange mark in this book," exclaimed Hermione. "What do you think it means?" Harry frowned. "I've no idea," he murmured, "but my scar will start hurting again soon and we'll find out." Sure enough, the tingling sensation soon returned.

As he came out of his dream, which revealed yet more back story about Dumbledore, Harry intoned solemnly: "It's the sign of the Deathly Hallows. We must find them and the Horcruxes."

Harry, Ron and Hermione had criss-crossed the country getting out of ever-tighter scrapes with wizard spells, but still Harry felt no nearer to knowing what to do. Yet he had the strange feeling everything was becoming clearer.

"I'm leaving you two," Ron declared one day. "I need to create some narrative tension." Harry was lost again but a Patronus spell led him to the Sword of Gryffindor. He had to step naked into an icy pool to retrieve it. "I knew getting the lead part in the school production of Equus would come in handy," he thought.

"I'm back," said Ron, as Harry's scar continued to reveal yet more of the seemingly endless back story. Sometimes Harry didn't know if he was awake or asleep, alive or dead, as so many old characters flashed through his mind. "Don't worry," said the figure of Dumbledore. "This time, no one knows what's going on either."

So Harry made his way back to Hogwarts to face Voldemort. It would end as he had always known it would. With everyone wondering what JK would do next.

The digested read, digested: Harry Potter and the End of the Gravy Train.

Cover to cover

I used to be a reader, a dorky kid who tried to calculate how to get the most cheap paperbacks from the classroom book order, an adult whose fondest furniture wish was always for built-in bookcases. I'd still take the bookcases, and the room that would hold them, but these days they wouldn't fill up nearly as fast, unless I piled my issues of Newsweek and Sports Illustrated on the shelves before they hit the recycle. The number of books I've finished this year is shamefully slim. I blame the Internets.

Because I read, all the time, websites, and blogs, and online versions of out-of-town papers, but something with a dust jacket and a binding and pages? Not so much, anymore, or at least not lately. But I did it last night, and again today, sat down and read a book from start to finish, the way I once did all the time. And was it worth it? Well no, not in the sense that the book was all that good, because it wasn't. But it wasn't a waste of my time, either.

What did I read? The latest Harry Potter, the media machine disguised as a kid's book that arrived at our house Saturday both because my daughter had to have it and because I wanted to read it before being spoiled by all the non-book reading that I do. The other Harry Potters are the first books of mine that my daughter took off my shelf and read, but this wasn't some big mother-daughter moment. If the books meant something to me, I suppose I could make it into one, and you bet I value the fact that she wants to plop her increasingly big-kid self down on the couch next to me and read, but I think I got the biggest kick out of her wide-eyed, "Wow," when I told her I was finished with the book. Speed-reading won't be impressive for long, especially once she realizes she's as fast as I am, but I'll take whatever wonder at the meager skills of her mother she's got while it lasts.

HA!

Although it's true that I can probably count on one hand the number of baseball commentators who I can stand to listen to, let alone enjoy, I really have no patience for Joe Morgan. I'm not as fired up about it as those guys over at FireJoeMorgan.com, but any time I try to watch a game on ESPN, I end up muttering my own commentary back at the TV thanks to his "unique blend of ignorance, inexplicable anger, arrogance, and haughtiness." He's just an idiot, of the Tim McCarver school, who ruins my baseball-viewing pleasure. So it was with a special kind of glee that I read this column by Phil Mushnick of the NY Post, (writing about last Sunday's game) to learn that Morgan's also a big fat liar:

Cardinals-Phillies was part of ESPN's pathetic "Sunday Night Baseball" coverage. The Phillies were about to become the first Major League Baseball team to 10,000 losses. And Joe Morgan, ESPN's No. 1 baseball analyst, a fellow whose wisdom is often laced with convoluted, confounding and contradictory nonsense, was moved to tell a national audience about the significant role he played in Phillies history.

The year, Morgan told us, was 1964, that calamitous season when the Phillies blew a 61/2-game lead with 12 games left by losing 10 straight. Morgan said he made his major-league debut late in '64, against the Phillies. And it was in that game that his RBI single beat the Phillies, extending their infamous losing streak to eight or nine.

Morgan added that Phillies manager Gene Mauch was so upset he threw over the buffet table in the clubhouse, hollering that his club had just been beaten by "a Little Leaguer!"

Great story. But unless Morgan was confusing himself with Reds rookie infielder Chico Ruiz, it never happened. As several readers were moved to write, the Phillies played the Reds, Braves and Cardinals during that losing streak; Houston wasn't in the mix.

Furthermore, Morgan, though called up in 1964, did not have an RBI that season for Houston.

And he did not make his big-league debut in '64, either. That came Sept. 21, 1963, when he went 0-for-1, pinch-hitting against the Phillies. The next day, Morgan did have an RBI single to beat the Phillies, but those Phillies were well out of the race and not in the throes of a historic collapse; they'd actually won four of their previous five games.

Get your story straight, Morgan. Or--even better--shut up!

The fan club

Odds are, the softball season ended tonight. Oh, there are a couple of games that could be made up, but given that those same contests have been rained out twice already, and given the mood as the girls gathered around the pool for pizza, it seems safe to say the season has come to a close whether they play 8 more innings or not. Thanks to the school calendar, the summer's again winding down just as it's getting started, and the girls are moving on to other things. Our little league's not set up for playoffs or any kind of champion, and so, by design, it just kind of ends. There are team parties and parent-purchased trophies, because, you know, everybody must win--though at least we did really win this year--but officially, according to the city-supplied ribbons, we're all "participants." I'm trying not to roll my eyes at the whole set-up when, once again, Kirsten saves the day.

Tonight, in her ill-advised bikini and flip flops, she'd be indistinguishable from half the team, except that she accepts the bobble-headed trophy that the coach's daughter picked out with the same enthusiasm that she did everything else this season. I just love this girl, and I don't even know her last name.


When the party ends and the kids are finally extracted from the pool with the help of a little kid-brother puke, I resist the urge to catch up with Kirsten's dad and tell him, one more time, how much I've enjoyed watching his daughter this season. I'm afraid my enthusiasm might be getting a little weird. But honestly, I've never seen anything like it: his girl was just born to catch, and seeing her behind the plate has made my softball-watching summer.

It's not just the Molina-worthy pick-off move with which she threatened every runner, and, more than once, snagged 2/3 of an inning's outs. Or the way she flipped off her mask and hustled after every ball, no matter how inconsequential. Or the way she tried to shift the infield over when a lefty came up to bat, as if our infield would notice. It was all those things and more, but not because they made our team better. As erratic as these new fast-pitch hurlers could be, it was truly no small feat to catch nearly everything, but her skill was only part of what drew in me and everybody else who watched every game from the center bleachers.

She just loves to play, and so we just loved to watch her. There's no drama or attitude in her, just everything you'd want in a ballplayer. She's normally so consistent and even-keeled, a 10 year-old professional, that when her head hangs a bit because one of our kids misses one of her throws, we can't help but yell encouragement. And that night she broke out of a little slump with a stand-up double, we were as happy and excited for her as the little fist pump she couldn't hold in showed she was for herself. No wonder her parents sit way down the line, away from our chatter. Honestly, though, I think Kirsten's as oblivious to us as she is to everything else when she's on the field. She's just there to play her game, as hard as she can, as much as she can, until she steps off the field and becomes a regular girl again, and for that, we love her. Even if we don't know her last name.

All the President's Enablers

By PAUL KRUGMAN

In a coordinated public relations offensive, the White House is using reliably friendly pundits — amazingly, they still exist — to put out the word that President Bush is as upbeat and confident as ever. It might even be true.

What I don’t understand is why we’re supposed to consider Mr. Bush’s continuing confidence a good thing.

Remember, Mr. Bush was confident six years ago when he promised to bring in Osama, dead or alive. He was confident four years ago, when he told the insurgents to bring it on. He was confident two years ago, when he told Brownie that he was doing a heckuva job.

Now Iraq is a bloody quagmire, Afghanistan is deteriorating and the Bush administration’s own National Intelligence Estimate admits, in effect, that thanks to Mr. Bush’s poor leadership America is losing the struggle with Al Qaeda. Yet Mr. Bush remains confident.

Sorry, but that’s not reassuring; it’s terrifying. It doesn’t demonstrate Mr. Bush’s strength of character; it shows that he has lost touch with reality.

Actually, it’s not clear that he ever was in touch with reality. I wrote about the Bush administration’s “infallibility complex,” its inability to admit mistakes or face up to real problems it didn’t want to deal with, in June 2002. Around the same time Ron Suskind, the investigative journalist, had a conversation with a senior Bush adviser who mocked the “reality-based community,” asserting that “when we act, we create our own reality.”

People who worried that the administration was living in a fantasy world used to be dismissed as victims of “Bush derangement syndrome,” liberals driven mad by Mr. Bush’s success. Now, however, it’s a syndrome that has spread even to former loyal Bushies.

Yet while Mr. Bush no longer has many true believers, he still has plenty of enablers — people who understand the folly of his actions, but refuse to do anything to stop him.

This week’s prime example is Senator Richard Lugar of Indiana, who made headlines a few weeks ago with a speech declaring that “our course in Iraq has lost contact with our vital national security interests.” Mr. Lugar is a smart, sensible man. He once acted courageously to head off another foreign policy disaster, persuading a reluctant Ronald Reagan to stop supporting Ferdinand Marcos, the corrupt leader of the Philippines, after a stolen election.

Yet that political courage was nowhere in evidence when Senate Democrats tried to get a vote on a measure that would have forced a course change in Iraq, and Republicans responded by threatening a filibuster. Mr. Lugar, along with several other Republicans who have expressed doubts about the war, voted against cutting off debate, thereby helping ensure that the folly he described so accurately in his Iraq speech will go on.

Thanks to that vote, nothing will happen until Gen. David Petraeus, the top commander in Iraq, delivers his report in September. But don’t expect too much even then. I hope he proves me wrong, but the general’s history suggests that he’s another smart, sensible enabler.

I don’t know why the op-ed article that General Petraeus published in The Washington Post on Sept. 26, 2004, hasn’t gotten more attention. After all, it puts to rest any notion that the general stands above politics: I don’t think it’s standard practice for serving military officers to publish opinion pieces that are strikingly helpful to an incumbent, six weeks before a national election.

In the article, General Petraeus told us that “Iraqi leaders are stepping forward, leading their country and their security forces courageously.” And those security forces were doing just fine: their leaders “are displaying courage and resilience” and “momentum has gathered in recent months.”

In other words, General Petraeus, without saying anything falsifiable, conveyed the totally misleading impression, highly convenient for his political masters, that victory was just around the corner. And the best guess has to be that he’ll do the same thing three years later.

You know, at this point I think we need to stop blaming Mr. Bush for the mess we’re in. He is what he always was, and everyone except a hard core of equally delusional loyalists knows it.

Yet Mr. Bush keeps doing damage because many people who understand how his folly is endangering the nation’s security still refuse, out of political caution and careerism, to do anything about it.

Lest we forget

This story makes me so angry that I can't compose a coherent sentence (I know, what's new), so you'll have to read about this administration's oh-so-typical cover-its-collective-ass-non-response to the formaldyhyde that was sickening hundreds of the occupants of the trailers that FEMA finally provided yourself.

I did, however, like this response, though at the moment it strikes me as perhaps a bit too kind:

"But other lawmakers charged that FEMA's response augurs poorly for the nation's emergency preparedness. "I haven't seen this level of government incompetence outside of the nation of China. . . . And they executed an official in China for not having done their job," said Rep. Jim Cooper (D-Tenn.), alleging parallels in lax consumer regulations and an uncaring government.

"No one is asking for that here, but how about a simple application of the golden rule?"

The last straw, unless it's not

This time last year, I was on my way out of the cancer doctor's office for the last time, having had my lump officially certified to be nothing. I was never really worried about it, having no history of breast cancer in my family and a surgeon who was both absolutely sure it was an always-benign kind of tumor and obligated to take it out once the radiologist worded her report in a certain way. So, it came out, and I got my souvenir scar, some Percocet that did not a blasted thing for me, and my first and I assumed last brush with serious medicine for a long, long time.

Yeah, well.

This time this year, I assume nothing. And though there has been plenty of medicine, little of it has been serious. Potentially serious, maybe. Could have been, might have been, let's just be sure, if the results had been different, you just never know, just in case let's call 911 but in the end it's nothing, or at least nothing that a little medication can't handle, or if not that medication maybe this one, kinds of things, though we all did quite fervently thank baby Jesus that I didn't lose consciousness when I had that seizure while I was driving the car alone.

But now, five months since I started wandering through this medical maze, I must go Saturday to see if I'm headed to the operating room for the second July in a row, and I have to say I can barely stand the thought of it. It won't necessarily be bad news, and, as they say, better out than in, but, I just don't wanna. I have been the patient, been the patient, been the patient, and mostly, been a patient patient. I have given the blood, peed in the cups, been x-rayed and scanned and palpated again and again and again. I have had sticky electrodes put in my hair and fire-y sticks poked in unmentionable places. I have taken the pills that make me sick and the pills that take my appetite away and the pills that give me instant bronchitis and, for the love of God, the pills that prevent me from enjoying a beer. And still, when I go to yet another -ologist for one thing that turns out fine, an excruciating test for nothing, what do I get but an "oh, by the way, you better call your other -ologist for this 3.5 cm thing that is growing where it ought not to be."

And while, in the end, that might turn out to be my lucky break, a miracle that someone noticed it before it really needed noticing, the reason that everything is happening for, right now, I'm tired. Of all of it. And I really just wish it'd go away.

Giving Barry His Due

That's the title of this week's Life of Reilly, the SI column in which Rick Reilly gives his suggestions for commemorating home run 756, "a dishonest moment produced by a man who has denied using performance enhancers despite a silo of evidence to the contrary."

A few of my favorites:

• *Get Bonds's autograph at the ballpark--on the bottom of an affidavit which reads, I set this record with the help of performance-enhancing drugs. I am a very large jerk for doing so.
  
• *Call the Hall of Fame and ask which cap will appear on Bonds's head in his Cooperstown exhibit--the size 7, the size 7 1/2, or the size 8?
• *If you're watching TV, flip to something more plausible, like MacGyver.
• *Send rabbits' feet, four-leaf clovers, and two-headed pennies to Alex Rodriguez and Ken Griffey Jr., letting them know that you're pulling for them to pass Bonds like he's a hitchhiker in an orange jumpsuit.

Hey, W! Bin Laden (Still) Determined to Strike in U.S.

By Maureen Dowd

Oh, as it turns out, they’re not on the run.

And, oh yeah, they can fight us here even if we fight them there.

And oh, one more thing, after spending hundreds of billions and losing all those lives in Iraq and Afghanistan, we’re more vulnerable to terrorists than ever.

And, um, you know that Dead-or-Alive stuff? We may be the ones who end up dead.

Squirming White House officials had to confront the fact yesterday that everything President Bush has been spouting the last six years about Al Qaeda being on the run, disrupted and weakened was just guff.

Last year, W. called his “personal friend” Gen. Pervez Musharraf “a strong defender of freedom.” Unfortunately, it turned out to be Al Qaeda’s freedom. The White House is pinning the blame on Pervez.

While the administration lavishes billions on Pakistan, including $750 million in a risible attempt to win “hearts and minds” in tribal areas where Al Qaeda leaders are hiding and training, President Musharraf has helped create a quiet mountain retreat, a veritable terrorism spa, for Osama and Ayman al-Zawahiri to refresh themselves and get back in shape.

The administration’s most thorough intelligence assessment since 9/11 is stark and dark. Two pages add up to one message: The Bushies blew it. Al Qaeda has exploded into a worldwide state of mind. Because of what’s going on with Iraq and Iran, Hezbollah may now “be more likely to consider” attacking us. Al Qaeda will try to “put operatives here” — (some news reports say a cell from Pakistan already is en route or has arrived) — and “acquire and employ chemical, biological, radiological or nuclear material in attacks.”

(Democrats on cots are ineffectual, but Al Qaeda in caves gets the job done?)

After 9/11, W. stopped mentioning Osama’s name, calling him “just a person who’s now been marginalized,” and adding “I just don’t spend that much time on him.”

This week, as counterterrorism officials gathered at the White House to frantically brainstorm on covert and overt plans to capture Osama, the president may have regretted his perverse attempt to demote America’s most determined enemy.

W. began to mention Osama and Al Qaeda more recently, but only to assert: “The same folks that are bombing innocent people in Iraq were the ones who attacked us in America on September the 11th.” His conflation is contradicted by the fact that Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, as the Sunni terrorist group in Iraq is known, did not exist before 9/11.

Fran Townsend, the president’s homeland security adviser, did her best to put a gloss on the dross but failed. She had to admit that the hands-off approach used by Mr. Musharraf with the tribal leaders in North Waziristan, which always looked like a nutty way to give Al Qaeda room to regroup, was a nutty way to give Al Qaeda room to regroup.

“It hasn’t worked for Pakistan,” she conceded. “It hasn’t worked for the United States.”

Just as we outsourced capturing Osama at Tora Bora to Afghans who had no motive to do it, we outsourced capturing Osama in Pakistan to Mr. Musharraf, who had no motive to do it.

Pressed by reporters on why we haven’t captured Osama, especially if he’s climbing around with a dialysis machine, Ms. Townsend sniffed that she wished “it were that easy.” It’s not easy to launch a trumped-up war to reshape the Middle East into a utopian string of democracies, but that didn’t stop W. from making that audacious gambit.

The Bushies, who once mocked Bill Clinton for doing only “pinprick” bombings on Al Qaeda, now say they can do nothing about Osama because they can’t “pinpoint” him, as Ms. Townsend put it. She assured reporters that they were “harassing” Al Qaeda, making it sound more like a tugging-on-pigtails strategy than a take-no-prisoners strategy.

We’ve had it up the wazir with Waziristan. Surely there are Army Rangers and Navy Seals who can make the trek, even if it’s a no-man’s land. If it were a movie, we’d trace the saline in Osama’s dialysis machine, target it with a laser and blow up the mountain.

W. swaggers about with his cowboy boots and gunslinger stance. But when talking about Waziristan last February, he explained that it was hard to round up the Taliban and Al Qaeda leaders there because: “This is wild country; this is wilder than the Wild West.”

Yes, they shoot with real bullets up there, and they fly into buildings with real planes.

If W. were a real cowboy, instead of somebody who just plays one on TV, he would have cleaned up Dodge by now.

Moving day, again

I moved again, the other day, though it wasn't my idea. I've moved so many times that my actions are automatic, my patterns predictable, a tic triggered by cardboard boxes and packing tape. I liked where I had settled and would much rather have stayed, but, despite the muttering, the bitching, the ranting, and the raving, once I got started, I almost couldn't help but work efficiently: stripping the walls, clearing the shelves, filling boxes in an altogether organized way. It's just second nature. Then, right on schedule, it got tedious.

I didn't have time to quit, to wander away and come back to my mess some other time or, even better, some other day, so I had to skip right to phase three: randomly packing boxes full of crap I probably will never need, just to get it out of my sight. Sure, it's a character flaw, made worse by being the teacher called on to teach everything to whomever walks through my door. I might need that Albanian-English dictionary. I might use that chemistry book from the class they don't teach any more, not that I ever understood chemistry. It could happen. Just like that one time when the biology teacher switched back to the old book and I, more prepared than any boy scout, had two. See? Thank baby Jesus I have no budget; if I did, I'd need to figure out how to get a Ryder truck into the hall to move my junk to my newly exiled spot. Because yes, it's my classroom, not my home, that I'm moving, but August through May, what's the difference?

Though I know there will be much cursing when I go to unpack those same boxes, I plow through the tedium, even managing to fill the recycle bin and the big trashcan I stole from the hallway in the process. Finally, I face that last layer of debris, the stuff that seems as if it should all fit in one box but instead could fill ten more. Where's a lighter when I need one? Doesn't anyone around here smoke anymore?

I eventually decide against challenging the sprinkler systerm, tenure not being that permanent, throw the last bits into empty file cabinet drawers, and call it done. With all my stuff down from the walls, out of the closet, and off the shelves, the space is no longer mine, so I go to see what will be.

And honestly, the new digs kind of suck. They're far from everything but the band room, which means I'm in for students who are chronically tardy and an all-day, everyday serenade. Then again, come basketball season, maybe I'll acquire a new appreciation for Rock and Roll, Part Two. In the meantime, there's no closet, no bulletin boards, and one misplaced network connection when I need at least three. But there's carpet! everyone keeps repeating, as if I'm a kindergarten teacher who sits in a circle on the floor. And I have promises, too, for cabinets, and a white board not covered with musical staffs, and who knows, if I can force myself to be the squeaky goddam wheel, I may really get those things.

What I have for sure is the loyalty of the custodial staff who thinks I got cheated in this deal right along with them (they had to clean two rooms twice), and that's worth plenty. And I also have a challenge--to make this room function, to make it my own--and I'll be damned if I'm not kind of looking forward to it. That's a good thing, of course: the world does not need one more disgruntled teacher. But whatever my feeling is, it's less about work and more about moving. A new place, no matter how crappy, has always inspired the same reaction. I guess it's easy to love the impression of a fresh start, at least until I look into those jumbled file cabinet drawers, or those sloppily packed boxes full of nothing I'll ever use. But that bit of reality will come later. Much, much later. In the meantime, don't tell anyone, but I'll be down here in the South 40, enjoying my imaginary blank slate.

Best headline of the day

From the AP: Bonds Calls Himself an 'Embarrassment'

It's not for the right reasons, but I'll take what I can get.

The 20

"Here goes nothing," I say, and we walk across the parking lot, past the maroon and gold balloons, through the double doors and into the golf course clubhouse full of who knows who. And for a split second, it is like high school all over again, because, faced with a room full of people, all I want to do is leave. But, I have paid my money, and I'll take my chances. High school was a long time ago-- 20 years, in fact. And oh look, the bar.

With my margarita and an invitation to a table, the night begins to fall into place, and while it never really gets less surreal, it does get more fun. I sit for a bit, resisting the urge to tell one of our tablemates that she turned out way better than I ever imagined she would and going with, "You look great!" instead. I look around the room, matching up the faces at the banquet tables to the virtual yearbook photos in my head--subtracting hair, adding a few pounds, thanking baby Jesus for name tags--and then I go mingle with people I've mostly known since grade school but haven't seen since the 80s, and how odd is that.

Somehow, it turns out to be fun and satisfying in way that's hard to explain. I don't even know what we talked about that filled so many hours-- just the most basic of catching up--married or not, kids or not, jobs or not,--who's here, who's not, who do you know, who do you see, where have ya been. Isn't this something, don't I know it, great to see ya, though. There are very few trips down memory lane, few remember whens, but I think we all feel good to be with people who did know us when, even if--especially if-- nobody feels like telling the stories. I laugh when somebody has his, "I love you guys," moment, and he hurriedly adds, "no really, even if I hadn't been drinking, I'd still love you guys. You're who I grew up with." And that we are.

The reunion committee, last remaining clique of the class of '87, seems to think this night was about high school, or even, heaven forbid, that we are still in high school or that those rules still apply. They're even more wrong about that than they were when they didn't try to track the rest of us down. It is about the past, of course, and reconnecting, and a little seeing and being seen, but that's not really the same as high school. Except for the urinal photos. And the tickets for racing down the highway on the way to the afterparty. I admit--as a witness, not participant--that was pretty high school. But it was only 20 years: how much do you expect people to change?

Line of the day

Or, perhaps, the line of our days, from the NYT's Frank Rich:

"But even a stopped clock is right twice a day."

Summer school

Mis Quince Años Abigail reads the front of the card, the paper and font of the type that would surely mean wedding invitation in my world, but no one's getting married, though the celebration will rival any bride's reception. Instead, Abigail's finally having her quinceañera, despite a seventeenth birthday that arrives in September, and I'm going.

I have known Abigail's family for five years, since well before she actually was fifteen; I know her father, her mother, and her older brother, and if I teach in that district long enough I'm sure I'll know more about her little brother than his name and the fact that he's tall for his age. In a job like mine, you end up knowing things, and people, whether you want to or not. Lucky for me that I want to.

Being a white girl, I arrive at five as the invitation indicates, not thinking anything of it until I pull in to see the wide open parking lot and an ice truck backing up to the entrance. Oh, I should have known. I sit in the car for a bit, signing her card and musing that students aren't the only ones who forget once school lets out for the summer. Come to a Mexican party on time? I shake my head and laugh at myself when I spot Abigail, very beautiful in her very fancy, very pink dress, supervising the ice delivery, so I walk on up to the door.

"You came!"
"I did! But wasn't I supposed to be here at five?"
"Yes, dinner's at five. What time is it?"
"5:15"
"Oh, well, the dinner's not here. But everybody else is! Come inside."

Everybody turns out to be her parents and damas and chambelanes, the quinceañera equivalent of the wedding party, but, not being white people, they don't make me feel out of place for arriving so long before both those who remember about Latino time and those who just live on it. I'm not sure how or why that's true, but it is. We compliment each other's outfits and take pictures in the nearly empty reception hall, and then they make a place for me at the family table and go on and finish getting ready, and it's just kinda fun to be there and watch.

All night long, those kids never forget me the way I'd expect teenagers to do, though it wouldn't matter if they did. Long after the party finally starts and there are plenty of people to talk to, they keep visiting, and so do the other students who come as guests, from George, the 17 year old freshman who only looks like a gang banger, to Oscar, who speaks more English words in a row than he has all year to ask me to come eat at his table.
"Oh, that's okay, Oscar. I'd have to move all my food," I say, gesturing to my half-eaten meal.
"But are you fine?"
"Yes, Oscar, I'm really fine."

As the night wears on, I just sit and talk and watch; that Mexican music is so fast that I could never dance to it. Finally, after the cake is cut and I finish my slice and my conversation, I decide to go and walk to the center of the room to say my goodbyes to Abigail and the others. We're on the dance floor, and I realize the beat has finally changed to something I can move to. So, I don't leave after all. I surprise even myself by dancing with them in a way they'd all been waiting though five years of my excuses for, just like a person, not a teacher. In the middle of the song, Abigail's just graduated brother, Tony, catches my eye and says, "I'll never forget this, Ms. P."

I grin. "That's nice, because it's not really happening."
"Oh, he says, with a knowing smile, "okay."
And the song ends, and I say my last goodbyes, and walk out. Somehow, it's kinda perfect.

I get to the lobby and fish in my purse for my keys, and there's George, who has run out to catch me.
"Ms. P! you danced!"
Ms. P leans her head back and laughs. "Oh, no. Not me."
"Yes, you did. We saw you! Oscar saw you and pointed, and said, 'Ms. P!' so we all saw you."
"Well, okay. I was dancing. I kinda don't want to leave now, George," I say, and I look at my watch, and then back into the hall.

"But you gotta."
"Yeah, I gotta," and there's a pause. "Well, see you in school."
"See you in school."

And for some reason we were all smiles.

A Profile in Courage

Be sure to stick around for Lou Dobbs' telling parting shot.

A Profile in Cowardice

by Frank Rich, NY Times

THERE was never any question that President Bush would grant amnesty to Scooter Libby, the man who knows too much about the lies told to sell the war in Iraq. The only questions were when, and how, Mr. Bush would buy Mr. Libby’s silence. Now we have the answers, and they’re at least as incriminating as the act itself. They reveal the continued ferocity of a White House cover-up and expose the true character of a commander in chief whose tough-guy shtick can no longer camouflage his fundamental cowardice.

The timing of the president’s Libby intervention was a surprise. Many assumed he would mimic the sleazy 11th-hour examples of most recent vintage: his father’s pardon of six Iran-contra defendants who might have dragged him into that scandal, and Bill Clinton’s pardon of the tax fugitive Marc Rich, the former husband of a major campaign contributor and the former client of none other than the ubiquitous Mr. Libby.

But the ever-impetuous current President Bush acted 18 months before his scheduled eviction from the White House. Even more surprising, he did so when the Titanic that is his presidency had just hit two fresh icebergs, the demise of the immigration bill and the growing revolt of Republican senators against his strategy in Iraq.

That Mr. Bush, already suffering historically low approval ratings, would invite another hit has been attributed in Washington to his desire to placate what remains of his base. By this logic, he had nothing left to lose. He didn’t care if he looked like an utter hypocrite, giving his crony a freer ride than Paris Hilton and violating the white-collar sentencing guidelines set by his own administration. He had to throw a bone to the last grumpy old white guys watching Bill O’Reilly in a bunker.

But if those die-hards haven’t deserted him by now, why would Mr. Libby’s incarceration be the final straw? They certainly weren’t whipped into a frenzy by coverage on Fox News, which tended to minimize the leak case as a non-event. Mr. Libby, faceless and voiceless to most Americans, is no Ollie North, and he provoked no right-wing firestorm akin to the uproars over Terri Schiavo, Harriet Miers or “amnesty” for illegal immigrants.

The only people clamoring for Mr. Libby’s freedom were the pundits who still believe that Saddam secured uranium in Africa and who still hope that any exoneration of Mr. Libby might make them look less like dupes for aiding and abetting the hyped case for war. That select group is not the Republican base so much as a roster of the past, present and future holders of quasi-academic titles at neocon think tanks like the American Enterprise Institute.

What this crowd never understood is that Mr. Bush’s highest priority is always to protect himself. So he stiffed them too. Had the president wanted to placate the Weekly Standard crowd, he would have given Mr. Libby a full pardon. That he served up a commutation instead is revealing of just how worried the president is about the beans Mr. Libby could spill about his and Dick Cheney’s use of prewar intelligence.

Valerie Wilson still has a civil suit pending. The Democratic inquisitor in the House, Henry Waxman, still has the uranium hoax underlying this case at the top of his agenda as an active investigation. A commutation puts up more roadblocks by keeping Mr. Libby’s appeal of his conviction alive and his Fifth Amendment rights intact. He can’t testify without risking self-incrimination. Meanwhile, we are asked to believe that he has paid his remaining $250,000 debt to society independently of his private $5 million “legal defense fund.”

The president’s presentation of the commutation is more revealing still. Had Mr. Bush really believed he was doing the right and honorable thing, he would not have commuted Mr. Libby’s jail sentence by press release just before the July Fourth holiday without consulting Justice Department lawyers. That’s the behavior of an accountant cooking the books in the dead of night, not the proud act of a patriot standing on principle.

When the furor followed Mr. Bush from Kennebunkport to Washington despite his efforts to duck it, he further underlined his embarrassment by taking his only few questions on the subject during a photo op at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center. You know this president is up to no good whenever he hides behind the troops. This instance was particularly shameful, since Mr. Bush also used the occasion to trivialize the scandalous maltreatment of Walter Reed patients on his watch as merely “some bureaucratic red-tape issues.”

Asked last week to explain the president’s poll numbers, Andrew Kohut of the Pew Research Center told NBC News that “when we ask people to summon up one word that comes to mind” to describe Mr. Bush, it’s “incompetence.” But cowardice, the character trait so evident in his furtive handling of the Libby commutation, is as important to understanding Mr. Bush’s cratered presidency as incompetence, cronyism and hubris.

Even The Wall Street Journal’s editorial page, a consistent Bush and Libby defender, had to take notice. Furious that the president had not given Mr. Libby a full pardon (at least not yet), The Journal called the Bush commutation statement a “profile in non-courage.”

What it did not recognize, or chose not to recognize, is that this non-courage, to use The Journal’s euphemism, has been this president’s stock in trade, far exceeding the “wimp factor” that Newsweek once attributed to his father. The younger Mr. Bush’s cowardice is arguably more responsible for the calamities of his leadership than anything else.

People don’t change. Mr. Bush’s failure to have the courage of his own convictions was apparent early in his history, when he professed support for the Vietnam War yet kept himself out of harm’s way when he had the chance to serve in it. In the White House, he has often repeated the feckless pattern that he set back then and reaffirmed last week in his hide-and-seek bestowing of the Libby commutation.

The first fight he conspicuously ran away from as president was in August 2001. Aspiring to halt federal underwriting of embryonic stem-cell research, he didn’t stand up and say so but instead unveiled a bogus “compromise” that promised continued federal research on 60 existing stem-cell lines. Only later would we learn that all but 11 of them did not exist. When Mr. Bush wanted to endorse a constitutional amendment to “protect” marriage, he again cowered. A planned 2006 Rose Garden announcement to a crowd of religious-right supporters was abruptly moved from the sunlight into a shadowy auditorium away from the White House.

Nowhere is this president’s non-courage more evident than in the “signing statements” The Boston Globe exposed last year. As Charlie Savage reported, Mr. Bush “quietly claimed the authority to disobey more than 750 laws enacted since he took office.” Rather than veto them in public view, he signed them, waited until after the press and lawmakers left the White House, and then filed statements in the Federal Register asserting that he would ignore laws he (not the courts) judged unconstitutional. This was the extralegal trick Mr. Bush used to bypass the ban on torture. It allowed him to make a coward’s escape from the moral (and legal) responsibility of arguing for so radical a break with American practice.

In the end, it was also this president’s profile in non-courage that greased the skids for the Iraq fiasco. If Mr. Bush had had the guts to put America on a true wartime footing by appealing to his fellow citizens for sacrifice, possibly even a draft if required, then he might have had at least a chance of amassing the resources needed to secure Iraq after we invaded it.

But he never backed up the rhetoric of war with the stand-up action needed to prosecute the war. Instead he relied on fomenting fear, as typified by the false uranium claims whose genesis has been covered up by Mr. Libby’s obstructions of justice. Mr. Bush’s cowardly abdication of the tough responsibilities of wartime leadership ratified Donald Rumsfeld’s decision to go into Iraq with the army he had, ensuring our defeat.

Never underestimate the power of the unconscious. Not the least of the revelatory aspects of Mr. Bush’s commutation is that he picked the fourth anniversary of “Bring ‘em on” to hand it down. It was on July 2, 2003, that the president responded to the continued violence in Iraq, two months after “Mission Accomplished,” by taunting those who want “to harm American troops.” Mr. Bush assured the world that “we’ve got the force necessary to deal with the security situation.” The “surge” notwithstanding, we still don’t have the force necessary four years later, because the president never did summon the courage, even as disaster loomed, to back up his own convictions by going to the mat to secure that force.

No one can stop Mr. Bush from freeing a pathetic little fall guy like Scooter Libby. But only those who paid the ultimate price for the avoidable bungling of Iraq have the moral authority to pardon Mr. Bush.

This is sport?

At one of many points today when I was a kept man -- kept indoors in the air conditioned confines of my home -- when I wasn't, ironically enough, watching "Live Earth," I stumbled across the world paper, rock, scissors championship on ESPN. I'll admit I bought into the "World Series of Poker" phenomena and I turned a blind eye to spelling bees, but this is too much.

That's what fans are for

Although that fact that I bought tickets to a day game in July (game time forecast: 96 degrees, but only! 42% humidity) proves I didn't exactly overthink it, I admit that I wanted to see the Giants when they came to town this season. But not to see Bonds.

Last year, when the new Busch Stadium opened and the morning single-game tickets went on sale was a true frenzy--the season sold out in ninety minutes or some such--I had pretty good luck, and, truth be told, dozens of windows open on two computers, but I didn't get the Giants which I wanted for historical reasons and the number of former Cardinals wearing the orange and black. But not to see Bonds.

This year, I had somewhat lousier luck, ticket-wise, but I did secure the privilege of overpaying for loge box seats in which to swelter while St. Louis plays San Francisco. It didn't occur to me at the time that Bonds would be close to Hank Aaron's steroid-free home run record, but it turns out he's only 4 away from a bogus tie. He shouldn't hit 755 here, thank goodness, though considering the Redbird pitchers that will take the mound, stranger, though no less drug-induced things have happened.

Given that St. Louis was the site of Mr. "Steroids is Bad" McGwire's own tainted record, the latest sportswriterly fashion among the locals has become to chastise anyone who would boo or harrass Barry, painting him instead almost as a victim of his times.

In the end, though, Bonds is just another product of his era. He didn’t change the guidelines for the big leagues, he just adapted to the new environment.

The long ball sold tickets, so Major League Baseball allowed its sluggers to juice up and go crazy -– like so many WWE muscleheads battling to become the Next New Thing in professional wrestling.

Competition is competition and business is business. Pride and greed are powerful motivators. Ballplayers became bodybuilders.

Given the extraordinary stakes, can we really blame these athletes for seeking an edge? Bonds saw the love McGwire and Sammy Sosa got during their home-run derby and wanted some of that glory (and rewards) for himself.

He took extreme measures to add size and power to his frame. He transformed himself into a sideshow freak.

He put himself at risk for long-term health troubles and he became a dangerous example for young athletes to follow.

But to single out Bonds and abuse him as the human embodiment of all that went wrong with Our National Pastime . . . well, that is simply unfair.If fans want to paint angry banners and signs to display at the ballpark, they should criticize everybody involved.

Fans should hold Bud Selig, the owners, the general managers, the manager and the players accountable for what went terribly wrong.

Now, there are plenty of good points there. MLB is profoundly hypocritical on this one, and it's corrupted a great game. But beyond the fact that I'm not sure how any individual is supposed to hold an entire league accountable for anything, let's just get back to Barry, and the implication that he's not really responsible for the choices he's made or that his actions are not for fans to judge.

For one thing, just because an entire regime is corrupt doesn't mean that individuals aren't responsible for their behavior, even--especially-- if they know there will be no consequences. Seems oh, so appropriate this week, even if Bonds doesn't play for the Washington Nationals.

Because really, even for his apologists, what's the bottom line? That Barry Bonds was a jealous jackass who sacrificed his health and the integrity of his sport because he saw he could get away with it no matter how large his head grew? That he wanted to be in the record books and knew he couldn't do it otherwise? That he disregarded his influence on young ballplayers who didn't have access to such finely calibrated chemicals as he and may have permanently damaged their bodies or died as a result? That the money makes it all worthwhile, or understandable, or okay? Don't know about you, but I can judge that, and do.

I absolutely judge Bud Selig and the whole sorry bunch, too, right on back to McGwire, and if any of them ever appear in a batter's box, I'll boo them, too, but tomorrow, I only expect to see number 25 for the Giants step up to the plate. And, assuming I haven't passed out from the heat, I'll be sure to let him know what I think.

this is why

See, the problem with a plan is that if you get all organized and look at the list of bands who'll play, for free, down under the arch this summer, is that either you'll do just what the Live on the Levee's crowd control committee (publicly stated motto: not too good, not too popular) half hopes you will, and say, "oh, who cares, we'll go another time," or, you do go, too early, and bake in the sun to get a seat on the arch steps, since sitting must be better than standing, and fight the ballgame traffic and the families with their coolers and camp chairs and by the time the show starts, way down across the street, your butt is numb and who cares about this band anyway and haven't we seen fireworks three times this week already?

Or, you can decide at 7:24 to try to make the 8 o'clock show since what are we doing anyway but nothing, walk up to the stage after missing no more than a song or two, spot Beatle Bob in the crowd, realize this trio of brothers are not one-hit wonders but actual musicians, including a kick-ass guitar player, who, as Willie Nelson said, may well be Stevie Ray come back to life, and spend more than an hour doing one of the things you love best: moving to the better-than-you-ever-thought-it-would-be music on a summer night.

Good thing I know better than to make a pl*n.

big box/litter box

Cat hair is never charming.

Doesn't that go without saying?

Having lost a pissing contest to my last cat, Cinco, I'm no longer a full fledged Cat Person, but surely everyone but the old ladies with a house full of Tabbies would agree that, once detached from the cat, hair is something to be brushed off or sucked up-- and not something to be featured in a retail establishment as a Reason to Shop Here.

Thanks to the modern miracle and/or curse of preform concrete, a warren of big box stores and strip malls has been sprouting over acres that were once a nursery, and, un-ironically but hysterically, the county's tuberculosis sanitarium. First came the new grocery store, where I'm somehow a little too happy to pay a little too much for, well, pretty much everything, it's so nice and calm and non-crazy-making in there. And the food is better, too, I swear. I didn't think I'd give up the less expensive bag-it-yourself store, but apparently, I'm easy, and what's one chain over the other.

Anyway, while I have no use for the pet food, craft-y crap, and crappy furniture stores that are filling the intervening spaces, let alone the "Hair Saloon for Men," a moral dilemma lurks over in the far corner, under the temporary sign that reads Borders Books & Music, coming soon. If only it were a Barnes & Noble, I'd have no dilemma at all: that particular big book store leaves me cold. I walk in, I walk out, my dollars and debit card safe in my pocket. But my money just leaps out of my wallet at the Borders, just like at the good grocery store, the subliminal messages in the Muzak apparently calibrated just right.

That and the fact that I can find the books.

As opposed to the independent bookseller right up the street,a store that resembles its owner the way that some dogs do. Except that this owner has a cat, and a penchant for random piles. Or piles that seem random, even though they aren't. And cardboard boxes shoved under and above. It should make me feel at home, but it just makes me feel a little nuts. It's not a small space: there's plenty of room for it to be a perfectly lovely store, but it's not, and I kinda hate it, even though I wish I didn't.

And then there's the cat hair. To be fair, the hair's not everywhere, but to my mind, there shouldn't be any. On the cat, I guess, that's okay. It's quirky, it's cute. Oh, look, a cat. In a store. I get it. An independent's gotta do what an independent's gotta do, and aren't we lucky to have one? Well, yes. Theoretically. I suppose. I am glad it's here, or I'd like to be, in the same way I'm glad I can still go to Buhrmester's Paint instead of Lowe's. And I try, I do, stopping in when there's a book to be bought, giving up the discount that the big boxes would buy me off with because I would rather live in a town not completely overrun by corporations, and I'd like to support the little guy, even when she's a crazy cat lady. But when that Borders opens, man. I know it's the cat hair that's gonna do me in.

Better than fireworks

The Circus Comes to Town

According to the Cedar Rapids Gazette, "many Eastern Iowans are hoping to catch a "two-fer" -- a chance to see a former president and perhaps a future president when the Hillary for President campaign rolls into Iowa City and Cedar Rapids with Bill Clinton riding shotgun."

That's all fine and dandy, if not for the fact that the Cedar Rapids event is scheduled for 6:30 p.m. at a downtown city square/park/recently former host to a soup kitchen on Independence Day. Attendance estimates will no-doubt be inflated by the thousands descending on the river banks for the city's exceptional annual fireworks display.

Residents and guests will line both sides of the river on July 4th (so what if it's Wednesday?) as pyrotechnics are launched from the back of the county jail, located on an island that also houses the county courthouse and City Hall. The comparisons to Paris begin and end there.

This gathering should not be taken as a measure of support or disapproval for Hillary -- or Bill, for that matter. Now if they'd just stop calling my house.

Of course he did

commute Libby's sentence, that is.

But I've got a dollar for whomever can identify my favorite phrase from John Edwards' response:

"Only a president clinically incapable of understanding that mistakes have consequences could take the action he did today. President Bush has just sent exactly the wrong signal to the country and the world. In George Bush's America, it is apparently okay to misuse intelligence for political gain, mislead prosecutors and lie to the FBI. George Bush and his cronies think they are above the law and the rest of us live with the consequences. The cause of equal justice in America took a serious blow today."

Happy Fun Meds

If only Phil Hartman were still around to read me the patient information every time I get to try some new pill.