"that's main st. #1, anytown usa, sir, and the name's ma'am"

there's quite a bit to be said for a little personality. you know, a bit of spunk, an element of freshness, some imagination. in fact, breaking convention is really the key to keeping things interesting. and keeping things interesting, now that is important. it cannot be stressed enough just how important that is. let us ponder: think back (and it may require a very long jump back) to the last, say, sunday afternoon when you weren't yet old enough to have lots of stupid crap to clutter up the day and yet also no longer young enough to sustain any form of self-entertainment or any significant amount of time. put simply, when was the last time you were bored. and i mean BORED. like not only can you not think of anything to do, but if you could you wouldn't want to do it anyway, and god forbid someone else try and think up something you could do because if they know what's best for them they'll stay out of the whole thing. yes, you're bored and it's made you horribly cranky. after all, what's more frustrating than being fully aware that there are plenty of things out there just waiting to engage you, and yet finding yourself unable to to be engaged. boredom. when it strikes seriously, it's practically a medical condition. really think about that feeling. it's awful. now imagine that it was a condition. imagine the scariest of the scary: a life of incessant, perpetual boredom. (maybe people prone to boredom should wear one of those medical id bracelets so the rest of the world can be privy to understanding exactly why they're so ornery and surly all the time. then we could all just say, "ohhhhh, now i get it, s/he's got 'the boredom.'")

what to do when we have identified such a horrible force at work? among some of our very own, even (there are some pretty dull people out there)? we do the only thing we can; we come up with the best tool available to counter the horrific state. here, it seems to be that our best defense would be to produce or create things... objects, places, people, outfits, art forms, art, theatre, film, dance, books, letters, ANYTHING... that are interesting. it's really very simple, even mathematic: let's say that life works on a scale of 1 to 10, 1 being unbearable due to prodigious dullness and thus excessive boredom for the liver of said life and 10 being absolutely ecstatic due to constant stimulation. and let's say, in general, it is desirable if things hover somewhere near the middle, allowing for stimulation most of the time, but also budgeting for those oh-so-necessary times when — for the sake of one's health or sanity — one simply must function on dramatically reduced brain capacity (you know, if something truly traumatic were to happen for which the psyche simply was not prepared; mistakenly catching a few seconds of a bush appearance on television, for example, when you were channel-flipping trying to ascertain which of the law and orders had a better plotline tonight — dastardly business that'd be!) so if a dull entity should arise, threatening to tip the balance in the favor of ennui, order is restored when something of the opposite persuasion — here, something worthy of a little interest — is perceived. so if we're holding steady at around a 5 and we were to encounter someone like ferris bueller's high school teacher (you know it, "bueller, bueller, bueller," etc), the scale would be knocked off balance, reaching a 3 or a 3.5. the class he's teaching turns out to be a painstaking analysis of the utilization of statistics in determining the likelihood that a book on top of a desk will remain on top of said desk and we drop very rapidly to a 2 for most, a 1.75 or others (that's clearly quite a dramatic example). fortunately, just after we are dismissed from mr. monotone's class and are attempting recovery while staggering down the hallway, an announcement from the loud speaker informs us of the possibility that a rabid dog is loose in the gym (never mind how it got there). this is interesting. thus, the scale is tipped back toward the equilibrium. throw in that the rabid dog that may be loose in the gym also seems to be barking threats of mass destruction (no, not weapons, mr cheney tattle tale man) in morse code and, poof, there you go. we're at least back to 5, possibly elevated to a solid 6. you get the idea: balance.

thus we have arrived at the fundamental import of, as vernacular has it, "keepin' it interesting" or "shakin' it up." it's vital, essential; it's life force. we are completely dependent upon the idiosyncrasy, the quirk, the different in someone or something else, the distinction, the invention, the novelty, the detail, the oddity, the "flaw", the contrast, the discrepency, all of it. they are what make it possible to get through the day. consider your day. the simple things. i have never seen the word "omelet" spelled correctly on the chalkboard of the coffee cart and breakfast grill i pass every morning on my walk to work (often different, never right). my favorite spot to sit in my favorite coffee shop is on the end of a delapidated and saggy couch with a disfigured pillow, if you want to call it that. i sit on that couch often to read a book. a book that interests me. it's a window seat, too, so i take in the passers-by. there are some interesting people out there and i can see them through the window. another daily thing, the food coop at which i shop actually has a catalogue of records all kept on index cards. yes, you heard me, index cards. you remember them? rectangular, you write on them with pens... yes, you can write things down on them and put them in these other things called file cabinets. office records on index cards? who knew? or consider some notorious fashion atrocities, another good exmample: ala cher or dolly parton (who, by the way, once said something that's just too lovely not to mention since she came up: "it takes a lot of money to look this cheap" LOVE that). people can sport hideous outfits, combinations that genuinely want to make you shield your eyes, but you can't deny that those people interest you. i am always grateful when a walking fashion cauchemar enters the scene because, as dar williams has it when she notices someone noticing someone else, when i see someone like that, i get to "play the artist" and be inquisitive or imaginative. all these seemingly insignificant things contribute to not feeling bored with our lives and the things and people that traipse into, onto or about them.

keeping all this in mind, i find it somewhat paradoxical (bear with me here) that we are constantly — and i mean constantly — declaring to ourselves, each other, and oh, yeah... all those people who don't live in america, too, that we are such an incredibly "fast-paced" society. you know, the united states in 2005, never a dull moment here, right? we've got things to do, we've got things to do while we're waiting to be able to do the primary things to do, we've got space fillers to take care of any sort of lapses in between those things to do, and then we have fillers for the time when we've decided that what we are going to do is not do anything. which is ok, because we never really have any time in the first place, right? the internet, the cell phone, the ipod, the blackberry, all of it... it all makes for an air of an ostentatious, high-speed, mechanism-type plane of existence. never a dull moment. not us. but i often feel as of late that it's really just the opposite; it's precisely because we don't tolerate dull moments, that we have hoards of them. we just fail to notice because we're too busy with our fillers and our TTD [things to do, see above]. consider how all of our devices actually affect the way things work. we talk (or, take your pick and insert here: play video games, download ringtones, take pictures, etc) on cell phones while we walk. listen to ipods on the train. e-mail on blackberries on planes. GOD FORBID we have a thought. whatever would we do with such a thing? e-mail has made the art of letter-writing as obselete as a movie on beta (yeah, i don't know what it is either). entire books — huge stories of entangled webs of lives and moments and wars and relationships — have been pieced together using nothing but letters. see now, i find that interesting. netflicks, fresh direct, online shopping...they take care of the need to leave your apartment for food, movies, clothing and anything else you might desire. good thing we don't have to go outside; something might "happen," we might meet someone, see something, think something about something we've seen or someone we've met. yikes. gives me chills just thinking about it. remember when you had 4 different remotes on your coffee table? it was always a shot in the dark as to whether you'd grab the right one and if so, your brain could recall what exactly you were to do with it once you did. not to worry now, though, because we have developed the omniscient remote control. i'm not saying i relish in inconvenience (especially electronically induced inconveniences), but you get my point. or back a second to the index card filing system, which of course at every other venue in this country has been replaced by computerized logs. remember when there were librarians who knew about books and things that people wrote in them? take a walk to your local library and tell the librarian you're looking for a copy of "a handful of dust" by evelyn waugh because you heard "that little lady's quite a firecracker and wanted to check her out." i'd be willing to wager that he or she won't bat an eye. (sincere apologies to you stellar librarians out there; i know you know your stuff, and i also wouldn't dare to assert that all librarians from the days of the dewey decimal were competent). it's the same job, and yet look at the difference in the mold for its contribution to the shaping of the person in it. seems to me we are asking for the dull, going out of our way to conjure it up...

let's play quick association. ready? THE 1950's!

did you think "conformity?" though i feel most of us have no idea of the social, historical, and political context for this fairly intense era of convention and "the norm," many of us at least know that it took place. we know that all the houses were lined up in rows and they all looked the same and had women who all looked like each other in the kitchen cooking meals for the kids and her husband who would return from his job that was just like every other woman's husband's job in the car that was unrecognizable among all the other ones on the block because — you guess it — they all looked alike. what a torturous existence, we think. we anjoy mocking it. we make our leave it to beaver jokes and generally look down upon that time and its inhabitants as ignorant, silly, trivial. we even made a movie out of the sentiment not too long ago ("pleasantville"). but i wonder if we may be better served by easing off these sort of judgments about those laughable, ovaltine-drinking primates. until, at least, we take some time to process our own societal and cultural frameworks.

ah yes, america in 2005. the efficiency. the productivity. the awareness. the individuality! or is it the mass consumerism, the idiot in the white house... oops. ah yes, the, uh, fast-pacedness, the incredible universal intelligence? we're just so frighteningly interesting. or frightening for that matter. (utopias can be pretty sketchy, right aldous?) so maybe just frightened? the perk, we remember, of comformity is that it's safe. we can make ourselves unrecognizable; as unrecognizable as a sedan in the driveway of a development in 1953. and we don't need the cleaver house to do it.

i leave you with the following, excerpted from an article entitled "name change to protect the innocent," written by stacey showe in the times.
...a little tale about a road called hooker lane. not crackwhore circle, not prostitute place. just hooker lane...

those who walk the street on hooker lane here in the cos cob section of town are people of the l. l. bean-wearing, exercise-the-dog sort, and they're tired of the giggles and the borscht belt zingers that follow the mere mention of their address.
"when you order something from a catalog, for example, and you give the street, there's snickering, always snickering," said nick kopeloff, 66, a retired physician and an avid photographer, who has endured 27 years of such reactions.
"it's grating," lisa o'connor, said.
It's so grating that the residents want to change the name. In recent months, they gathered signatures of 9 of the street's 11 homeowners on a petition seeking the change. this monday, the representative town meeting — consisting of 230 people elected to represent the town's 12 districts — is scheduled to vote on rechristening the street stonebrook lane. for a town where lacoste shirts and country club memberships are a virtual birthright, even the genesis of the new name seems apt: a resident suggested it after spotting the name in a new westchester development on his way home from playing golf.
from more than 30 names, all as bland as vanilla pudding, they winnowed down the list and took a vote. stonebrook lane was the victor.
dr. kopeloff said it has a "nice, innocuous ring to it."

a nice, innocuous ring. yes, that it does.

o captain, my captain...

"thanks for pointing that out, captain obvious"
i forget who first said that phrase to me but it was a long time ago and i remember thinking it was very silly — just a pointless and irritating thing to say. however, i pondering things lately, i began to wonder if there isn't some merit in the concept, after all. then i started to think that perhaps a good many of us are completely missing what such a phrase has to offer. furthermore, i was dumbstruck to conclude, quelle mockery those of us who use the phrase from time to time (i've admitted nothing) captain obvious is making of us! let us first consider when its use might be appropriate:

to something like
"if you drop that ball it will fall due to the principle of gravity" one could certainly reply with a "thank you, captain obvious" there; sort of an indignant way to say, "i am already aware of this, and why does it matter?"

there is also the seriously self-evident context
"you're soaking wet" (said to someone who just stepped from a swimming pool). sure, works here, indicating a sort of inherent redundancy: "why are you vocalizing something we all know to be true because we can see with our own eyes?"

then there is the more severe are-you-a-total-moron use
"'there' and 'their' sound the same but they mean different things!" used after this kind of comment, "captain obvious" is particularly biting and really just means, "duh."

ok, now that we've looked at the way the phrase functions on a practical level, one can see that it's basically not a nice thing to say. in fact, it actually cannot stand independent of sarcasm. thus, anyone who uses such a phrase is — said simply — putting someone down while asserting their own knowledge or general intelligence.

my point, then, (and you were starting to doubt that i had one) is this: poor capt o has gotten a real bad rap. indeed, i fear he has been sorely misjudged. we are quick to write him off as silly, and if we do give him any actual thought (of which he, like anyone else, is certainly worthy), we inevitably conclude that he's just plain obnoxious. we have come to associate his name with disdain, pretention, arrogance, and insult. and yet, at the very same time, while we assert all this knowledge and pompousness using captain o as a vehicle for our dirty work, we are breeding the very opposite: ignorance. indeed, we have done captain obvious a grave disservice and i believe the only obvious thing about the whole thing is that some credit should be given where credit is due.

therefore, i challenge you to take another look at our misunderstood friend.

what important information, for example, might the captain have to impart if we simply drop our intense — and most unreasonable bias — for a second and just pay attention?

to clarify: granted, most of us know that if we drop a ball it will fall to the groud because of gravity, but does that really warrant taking the captain's name in vain? doesn't bringing him into it assume a certain piece of knowledge and then promptly dismiss it as not requiring any thought because it's so painfully — yes, you know it — obvious? interesting phenomenon, that: things becoming so "true" that we just assume they always were and that everyone else a) believes it to be true as well and b) knows why it's true, just like we do. consider: the world is round, right? of course. but how was that proven? because lest we forget that it was not all that long ago that everyone was positive that the world was flat. perhaps obvious, then, is the wrong word. or this: the moon generates light and shines at us at night right? a given. but is it the moon shining or is it reflecting light off the sun? oh, yeah, that. even: america is the greatest nation in the world...the very definiton of "superpower" — technological powerhouse, hood of social progress, crusader of all things noble. well obviously. [pause. wait for it, wait for it...] exactly why is that again? oh. try asking someone if they'd mind trying explaining marriage to a 5 year-old: i'd bet you my laundry quarters you'll get something along the lines of, "when two people become husband and wife." but it doesn't actually have to be a husband and a wife, per se, does it? in fact, for us supercool progressive americans, that's a very limiting and discriminatory statement. indeed, complications arise around all these so-called givens. perhaps not everything is so (and now i hesitate to use the word) obvious after all.

yes, poor, unfortunate, misunderstood captain obvious.

isn't it funny how after you notice something for the first time or somehow get something ingrained in your head, it is suddenly omnipresent and instantly profound? it's like our brain is programmed to accept and process only the things that we understand (or that we think we understand, anyway). of course it seems more to us like the world is conspiring against us at every possible opportunity to hit us over the head with whatever it is we've realized. (ex-boyfriend had a lucky number that i swear — I SWEAR — now chases me around incessantly. it's inexaustible the thing: total on my grocery receipt, tracking number of an invoice at work, and never ever fails to be the time as it appears on a digital clock when my bladder waskes me up in the middle of the night to be serviced — i mean what is with that?). anyway, contemplating all this about captain obvious, i was immediately struck by how often and in what venues he keeps popping up. just skimming the headlines of the paper i found myself curiously longing for him, wishing he would appear and make a few points, free all the baggage we've assigned to him and stripped of the discrediting we've done him. i wonder if he'd make it known that the death toll of the earthquake in pakistan has almost hit 80,000 people and with winter upon us and millions homeless and without medical care, food, or anything at all, this is one of the most profound disasters of our era: the boston globe states "pakistan's death toll soared to 79,000 ... making it one of the deadliest quakes in modern times." that's an incredibly straightforward and universal declaration. should be pretty apparent without a lot of effort on our part. and yet, and i suppose i could be wrong about this, it seems to be it's not at all perceived by the general public as obvious. why is that? it is an unfathomable catastrophe. 79 thousand people dead. more dying, and more still who will. everyone i know — i don't exclude myself (i know me) — seems completely indifferent to this. i'd say captain obvious certainly got me there.

bushie and his republicans compatriots are screwing up. royally. foundering, flailing with impressive levels of royal screwed up-ness. i don't think there's a staunch pro-busher out there who can factually defend his performance during katrina. the majority of his own party and worse yet, his own movement (read loony idealogical right-wingers) cannot seem to reconcile his nomination of harriet miers to the high court. delay turned himself in to be fingerprinted and photographed (did you see the mugshot?) as he faces charges of money laundering. iraq is a disaster and it's gotten to the point where he can't really hide it anymore. i mean, let's break it down: his approval ratings, if one chooses to call them that, are lower than they've ever been, and are the lowest of any president in a substantial while. with the non-stop disasters of a bush administration in which republicans also control the senate and congress, lots of democrats i know are breathing huge sighs of relief. according to the polls, there's no way a republican could win the next presidential election. his or her predecessors have simply made too much of a mess for even the most clever of neocons to clean up. i mean, even a neocon with a swiffer jet couldn't get out this stain. lucky for the dems. "i told you so!" "we knew they sucked!" "see, bush really is stupid, after all! i was right all along!" and it is here, once again, that i summon captain obvious' wisdom. urgently, in fact. yes, republicans have humiliated themselves and continue to do so with impressive endurance. but "i told you so" will not win an election. i guarantee it. the democrats have some serious work to do here. finger-pointing, back-slapping and a few celebretory brewskies are not the way to go. captain obvious knows that in order to get elected, gain the faith and trust of a nation, et al takes work. the bush crew has certainly written a nice prologue. but let us not mistake it for for anything other than what it is: an exposition. the rest of the book is left to us... "chapter 1: THANKS FOR POINTING THAT OUT, CAPTAIN OBVIOUS."

in closing, i offer a few more personal details (yes, there is more to me than the part that just pig-headedly bashes conservatives). i am currently sitting in a coffee shop where i find that i'm kind of cold — seems winter is upon us — and i'm very hungry. i've got a decent walk home and i've an injured ankle. when i get home, i will be reminded that i have still not put away the giant trashbag full of winter clothes that has been the major inhabitor of my room for the last week. i didn't pick up the prescription i was supposed to get. spent way too much money today; will probably do the same tomorrow. and when i wake up tomorrow, while we're on the subject, tomorrow i will have to return to work for another crazed week. i'm going home tonight alone.

and you know what? that's fine. it's all fine. according to my dear new friend captain obvious (who often presents very similar opinions to those of his close friend admiral cliche, do you know him?), i think the key to this being happy stuff is really to be found in living moment to moment. living each momement. attempting to live yesterday or tomorrow today is no more useful than trying to negotiate next thursday last tuesday would be (snap, just you try to wrap your head around that one...). we have to try and stay present, be open, and accept what comes our way. things might not always be exactly the way we might design them were we capable of doing so. but that, too, is just fine. it's all ok because we're here and we're doing our best to live each moment is it comes. can you think of a better time to live it? i can't. basically, i find it boils down to something along the lines of, "the best we can do is to be where we are." i can't think of a much more obvious statement than that one. and yet so very elusive at the same time. in light of all this, then, who really has the last word?

i say, cap'n o: 1
the rest of us: yeah, not so much

the play's the thing

my head is all over the place and i fear for my ability to hone it in at present and scribe anything legible — cognitively legible, that is. (fortunately on a day like this,) due to the electronic nature of a blog, i don't have to worry about the physical legibility.

i find myself still very much lost in thoughts like yesterday's. i guess it's no wonder considering where i'm currently employed. but yes, another sad day for anyone who will take the time to observe it. (note: i'm not necessarily recommending at this point that one should.) well, i suppose that's not entirely true; i know there are some people out there who take comfort in knowing something, whether it be good or bad. so to those of you wired as such, take heart! yesterday afternoon, a 1989 survey in which our very own harriet miers supported a constitutional ban on abortion except to protect the life of the pregnant woman (NOT the health of the woman — very important distinction — and NOT victims of rape or incest).

"a nominee unmasked?"
(a new one-act play from the powers that unfortunately were in 1989)

dramatis personae: harriet miers, survey

act 1, scene i

survey: if congress passes a human life amendment to the constitution that would prohibit abortion except when it was necessary to prohibit the death of the mother, would you actively support its ratification by the texas legislature?

ms. miers: yes

fin

that doesn't make for a very long jump to a conclusion. of course the white house jumped on it citing the vast difference between a court nominee as ms. miers is now and a political officeholder as she was then. and of course she "recognizes that personal views and ideology and religion have no role to play when it comes to making decisions on the bench" (that's mclellan). he just has such a way with words, that one; i find him so frighteningly comforting, don't you? or maybe he's just frightening. but i digress. what really interested me today on the miers front was her bizarre disagreement with senator arlen specter. following their meeting on monday, specter told reporters that miers had "agreed that the constitution protected a right to privacy and embraced precedents that led to roe." which may have been a welcome development in the case, had ms. miers not made a personal telephone call to specter that very evening, to say she "did not recall making those statements."

huh???

specter dealt well, i thought, basically giving miers the benefit of the doubt, not publicly denouncing her version of the story, and thus not making a big stink (we clearly have enough of those). he said he plans to question her on the matter further at a later date. but again,

huh???

i don't normally put too much faith in republicans (pompous generalization yes, but whatever), but specter seems like a rational guy. so what on earth happened? it calls to mind another bushie person who made a similar comment as of late: oh, wait, no — that'd be the leading man himself.

"doing what he does best"
(a new one-act play from the powers that unfortunately were two weeks ago)

dramatis personae: president bush, reporter, unconvinced reporter*

*"unconvinced reporter" should be played by same actor portraying "reporter." this represents shift in emotional and/or behavioral state. see director's notes on staging concurrent appearance of multiple characters.

act 1, scene i

reporter: you’ve taken the time to express that you know her heart, her character. you've emphasized your friendship. so it seems reasonable that over the course of the years you've known her perhaps you have discussed the issue of abortion. have you ever discussed with harriet miers abortion? or have you gleaned from her comments her views on that subject?

bush shifts weight

unconvinced reporter: have you never discussed abortion with her?

bush clears throat

unconvinced reporter: in your friendship with her...?

bush: not to my recollection have i ever sat down with her.

fin

no, ladies and gentlemen, unfortunately i did not make that up. i wish i had, really i do. it would show excellent comic timing and imagination, to mention what might amount to an important insight into the political and media-related happenings of the great nation in which we reside. but, alas... i am merely a messenger. but i shall play my small and humble part with as much gusto as i can muster (doesn't that make you want to say "gusto as i can musto?" what fun!)

so the lights dim on another day in bush's washington...
gee. shakespeare had it right from the start, didn't he? all the world really is a stage. tomatoes, anyone?

untitled (someone help us)

my subway ride this morning was wretched. and it wasn't due to a smelly person, as is so often the case. or someone invading my bubble of personal space. i even got a seat. alas, not the ordinary woes of nyc transit at all. although what bothered me so is unfortunately becoming more and more of the norm in itself. the source of my angst? the new york times. not the times' fault of course. but man, nothing can do me in these days more effectively than merely opening to the national report section of the new york times.

"expert witness sees evidence in nature for intelligent design:"
it would seem that a mr. behe has been travelling the country for the last eight years making a case for intelligent design, therefore challenging the theory of evolution. he is now testifying in the trial that will determine whether this should be taught in biology in a public school district of pennsylvania. "asked whether intelligent design is religion or 'based on any religious beliefs,' mr. behe said, 'no, it isn't. ...it's based entirely on observable, physical evidence from nature." ok. so what would that be then? example please? and he has an answer: apparently the bacterial flagellum is so expertly designed that it's "impossible to avoid concluding that the mechanism was 'a purposeful arrangement of parts.'" well phew. that takes care of that one. totally testable, very scientific. with such definitive evidence, why then, might mr. behe comment that his "'ideas on intelligent design have been subjected to a thousand times more scrutiny than anything i've ever written before.'" one is only left to conjecture that mr. behe's oeuvre must consist of papers arguing against what one might call some scientific "givens:" indeed, newton was actually mistaken, copernicus just a moron, oh, and galileo? well he was a drunk. that must explain it, right? mr. behe, by the way, is a roman catholic. had i not mentioned that? and now to the juicy part. when asked if he had concluded that this aforementioned intelligent designer was -- you guessed it -- god (!), he said yes. BUT he was careful to say that that conclusion was based on "theological, philosophical, and historical facts." facts, of course. good thing he cleared that one up for me. i got nervous for a second. and i'm sure glad that this is the kind of (i will NOT call him a scientist) right-wing, theological nutcase who is speaking on and promoting the "scientific theories" of our day on campuses nationwide.
which serves as a lovely segue to my next point.
(turn the page of the national report)

"nominee meets with committee democrats:"
the nominee, of course, being harriet ellan miers. so she has begun her meetings with the senate judiciary committee, and apparently met with one of my favorites as of late, charles schumer, yesterday afternoon. i thought he had a few interesting comments, as he often does, though none of them were of any comfort. everyone's heard the about that loony james dobson from focus on the family and his assertion that karl rove had personally assured him that ms. miers came from a specifically pro-life church, basically saying that miers would vote to overturn roe v wade. well that's causing quite a stir. and for good reason. and more interestingly, on both sides of the political spectrum. the left is terrified she's a crazy right-wing idealogical (she is a born-again evangelical christian, after all) wolf in crossdresser's -- oops, i totally meant sheep's -- clothing (but she is really weird looking, no?). the right is terrifed that she'll prove to be a souter repeat; that she's not cut out for the task of returning america to its jolly 18th century roots. well, looks like no one wins. according to schumer, when he questioned miers about all the press on her abortion beliefs, she simply said, "no one knows how i would rule on roe v. wade." well, again, that takes care of that. ok. it's not like it's the right of the american people or anything to know what she might be thinking on crucial issues -- issues, mind you, that by every definition of the word are legal precedent; issues that contribute to our status as a developed nation (though give bush a little more time and check back); issues that threaten our fundamental rights to privacy, our fundamental rights as americans. but miers doesn't need to go there. in fact, she doesn't seem to feel the need to reveal much of anything. or there's also the possibility that there really isn't much to reveal. maybe likely, even. schumer: "on many [questions] she wouldn't give answers, and many others she deferred, saying 'i need to sort of bone up on this a little more,' 'i need to come to conclusions.'" bone up? ummm, ok. well it looks as though it may behoove ms. miers if this mysterious process of "boning up" includes some plain old studying of (here's a thought) THE LAW. schumer: "was i little surprised that she did not want to give her view on meyer, which has been established law for decades and you read about in law school? yes." meyers, fyi, was a 1923 -- in case you missed that it was the year NINETEEN HUNDRED TWENTY-THREE -- in which the court ruled that it should be legal for immigrant parents to teach their children their native german. i mean, yeah, i guess i see her point... it would really be going out on a limb to come right out and support something so crazy progressive as that! at least that ms. miers has a good head on her shoulders...

bush certainly seems to think so. especially recently, as there's been a very noticeable shift in his -- shall we call it -- selling of ms. miers to the country as a stellar addition to the high court. remember that whole "harriet's religion and strength of character will make her an extraordinary justice harriet" angle? wait a second. religion? hmmmm. well that might just present a little problem, mightn't it? put nicely by the times editorial page (an oasis these days, offering a moment or two of comfort before i remember who is actually running the country as opposed to who should be doing it):" mr. bush is all in favor of judges strictly interpreting the constitution, but he seemed to have forgotten about article vi. that's where the founders decreed that 'no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office.'" right. i knew that separation of church state thing sounded familiar! so when ms. miers' nomination came under fire from the right and "bush told reporters that 'people ask me why i picked harriet miers,' and then proceeded to talk about the importance of religion in her life," it would seem to be a conflict of interest, shall we say. it is no less than repulsive that something like that could be said of a nominee for the supreme court -- the highest form of the judicial branch, part of the system put in place to check the executive -- in 2005. it is inexcusable. the times editorial sites the 1960 election, in which jfk "struck an important blow for both the separation of church and state and the rights of people of all faiths to be considered for high office when he insisted that his catholicism should have no bearing on his fitness for the presidency." bush and crew wouldn't stand for something like that. regress, regress we must...but it's ok, because he's corrected all that. he is now marketing ms. miers purely on her merit, her great legal mind; a great legal mind which appears to be missing a few key file cabinets.

from intelligent design to a not-so-intelligent legal designer to the ultimate unintelligent designer of disaster. and all between bergen and 34 st. whew.

evolve

i walk in stride with people
much taller than me
and partly it's the boots but
mostly it's my chi
and i'm becoming transfixed
with nature and my part in it
which i believe just signifies
i'm finally waking up
and there's this moth outside my kitchen door
she's bonkers for that bare bulb
flying round in circles
bashing in her exoskull
and out in the woods she navigates fine by the moon
but get her around a light bulb and she's doomed
she is trying to evolve
she's just trying to evolve
now let's get talking reefer madness
like some arrogant government can't
by any stretch of the imagination
outlaw a plant
yes, their supposed authority over nature
is a dream
come on people
we've got to come clean
cause they are locking our sons
and our daughters in cages
they are taking by the thousands
our lives from under us
it's a crash course in religious fundamentals
now let's all go to war
get some bang for our buck
i am trying to evolve
i'm just trying to evolve
gunnin for high score in the land of dreams
morbid bluish-white consumers ogling luminous screens
on the trail of forgetting
cruising without a care
the jet set won't abide by that pesky jet lag
and our lives boil down to an hour or two
when someone pulls a camera out of a bag
and i am trying to evolve
i'm just trying to evolve
so i walk like i'm on a mission
cause that's the way i groove
i got more and more to do
i got less and less to prove
it took me too long to realize
that i don't take good pictures
cause i have the kind of beauty
that moves
-ani