psycho killer

hobbit

sophistication

river in springtime

the damage done, or, having a car in the suburbs and what it does to you

(no, this is not all mine)

nathan contemplates what he has wrought

(orecchiette with sundried tomatoes & chickpeas)

snippets, or, oh the things you come across when you clear out the space under your bed

"I am two months short of being twenty-two years old now, and yet that number, 22, still seems huge to me. When I was little, my father would invite his senior thesis advisees up to our house in Westchester for a barbecue every spring to celebrate the turning-in of their theses. For years I imagined that these young women who appeared in our house every spring were old, sophisticated, and completely in control of their lives. Well, I turned in my senior thesis a week ago and I'm still waiting for that 'grown-up' feeling that I imagined all those years ago.

Sometimes, for a split second, I will almost catch it -- that sense of being an adult."

(April 1998)

bedroom wall

letter of the day

To the Editor:

“In Economic Drama, Bush Is Largely Offstage” (White House Memo, front page, April 3):

Far from being of concern, Americans should be encouraged by the fact that President Bush is “detached from the nation’s economic woes,” given his success in other policy areas.

We should all be glad that he is in Eastern Europe (where most people have enough sense to pay no attention to him) “arguing about who should get into NATO,” rather than trying to fix a catastrophe caused in no small part by the anti-regulatory policies of his and like-minded administrations.

If only he had been similarly detached from foreign policy earlier in his administration, perhaps we would not be mired in Iraq as we are today.

In any event, let us hope that Mr. Bush vigorously pursues this policy of detachment from all areas of policy, foreign and domestic.

Robert S. Lee
Houston, April 3, 2008

"In that direction," the Cat said, waving its right paw round, "lives a Hatter and in that direction," waving the other paw, "lives a March Hare. Visit either you like. They're both mad."

"But I don't want to go among mad people," Alice remarked.

"Oh, you can't help that," said the Cat, "we're all mad here. I'm mad. You're mad."

"How do you know I'm mad?" said Alice.

"You must be," said the Cat, "or you wouldn't have come here."

-Lewis Carroll

videos of the day, however dated

Jon Stewart & Bill Moyers

Closely followed by Beirut's Elephant Gun, an oddly quaint, if debaucherous, video if ever there was one.

And lastly, for Erik, this. I tried to find Look at the Wind Blow, to no avail, so this'll have to do.

81% & other semi-newsworthy tidbits

According to a recent NYTimes/CBS News poll, 81% of Americans believe that the United States is headed in the wrong direction, up from a mere 69% last year and a wispy 35% at the outset of the Iraq War. Just look how far we've come.

Coincidentally enough, 81 is also the number of pages in a memo by the notorious John C. Yoo. This infamous memo, written in early 2003 but just recently made public, is basically a roadmap for the Bush administration to get around various laws prohibiting torture and other legally (not to mention morally) questionable behavior.

In the vein of Henry the Hexapus, I was amused to see yet another article on the octopuses of the world. (Am I the only one to always want to write octopi? I mean, octopuses? It just seems so wrong.)

In from Chris earlier this week, a disturbing tale of dogs gone wild. Quite literally. Can you imagine 30,000 - 200,000 semi-feral dogs wandering the streets of NYC, or any city, for that matter? That's what the residents of Bucharest have to deal with every day, and it's only going to get worse.

Speaking of NYC, welcome to my world - the adventure of weekend subwaying.

And last, algae. When we were kids growing up a block away from Mohegan Lake, we were always grossed out by the algae slowly encroaching on our swimming spot. It smelled bad, it felt slimy, and it was killing the lake. But apparently algae's the wave of the future, renewable-energy wise, at least. And I say all the more power to it.

thursday night

out on the town with julie & dave

maureen's moment of grace

Y'all know by now my general feelings of disgust for Maureen Dowd, so I'll avoid the whole anti-Maureen diatribe here and just say that I was somewhat blown away to find today's column actually quite moving. For all of you Hillary Haters out there (and we all know Dowd's one of them), for everyone begging her to drop out, to give up the fight, and condemning her for not doing so already, I leave you with this:

"But the ultimate favor Hillary can do for the Illinois freshman is to fight him full-out until the finale and then gracefully release him so he can find happiness with another.

Hillary's work is done only when she is done, because the best way for Obama to prove he's ready to stare down Ahmadinejad is by putting away someone even tougher."

-Maureen Dowd, Hillary Hater Extraordinaire

I would add that a free ride to the Democrat presidential nomination, as he was given to his Senate seat three and a half years ago, and as he would have been given without Hillary these last couple of months, would have done nothing to prepare Obama for John McCain and the coming onslaught of the conservative hate machine that he'll be facing come autumn. (Did you see how he's a radical abortion extremist in today's Washington Post? It's already begun.)