I learned a lot from reading Jaws in my early teens. Daria, Todd and I went to visit Dad at his house in Toothless, Virginia where television reception was sketchy and programming was downright terrifying. In a way, it was a relief that Dad’s nearest neighbors were cattle because at that time the movies in the nearest town’s theater were three years old and kids got married at 14 for lack of anything else to do but each other. Dad told us not to leave the house when he went to work but there was little temptation to leave, no place to go and Dad’s Playboy and Penthouse collections to study. The summer I read Jaws we’d set up a long jumping pit in the driveway, a calisthenics circuit and an archery range. Though long jumping into gravel and the subsequent abrasions held great appeal, amateur icthyology was pretty keen, too. Mr. Benchley knew lots of things I, a landlocked teen reading “I never thought this would happen to me” letters, did not know. He’d read the Bible, for instance and introduced to me the idea that I could and might read it myself one day. He knew that if you’re switching wines you should use a different glass or rinse out the one you’re using or expect flatulence. He also mentioned that if you fuck your police chief friend’s wife you can’t expect a shark cage to keep out the Wrath of God. This seemed like an important point that summer, when I read Jaws 27 times. That is not hyperbole. And canst thou catch Leviathan on a hook?

Nope. When Auntie InExcelsisDeo said, “Save the date. Monday is getting married Friday, 23 June 2006 in Frederick, MD and you will be there,” I could see a giant set of teeth swimming toward me armed with crab puffs and squinty-eyed suspicion. When I said, “I love you dearly but I’m not going to any bridal showers,” Auntie laughed and issued as sincere and loving a death threat above 110 decibels as I have ever received. So I went. And as much as I tried to say, “I’m not rocketing the length of the Jersey Turnpike, blinking in Delaware and staring myself comatose across the unchanging asphalt and trees of Maryland so I can sweat in the most uncomfortable clothes I own and shove an envelope full of bills down the sticky back of my cousin’s wedding dress after she and her Twenty-Something friends inexplicably dance to Taking Care of Business” my refusal somehow didn’t stick, those teeth got perilously close and I called up my ex-boyfriend Paulie Gonzalez.

Tata: Dude, like, dude…!
Paulie: What’s the matter?
Tata: Monday’s getting married, death threats, formal wear.
Paulie: I’ve got new truck without a complete paint job. We’re going!
Tata: …awesome…

Even so, a Friday evening wedding is tricky business. Gifts must be sent in advance. Outfits must be assembled and packed with care. Maps must be obtained and studied. Family phone numbers must be carefully coordinated. Homes must be secured. Pets must be cared for. Children become a common responsibility. Monday’s wedding invitation gave us the name of one hotel, one set of directions and Auntie I. said, “I want my family around me.” In the weeks leading up to the wedding, when my resolve against crossing state lines crumbled, I found the appointed hotel full. Another hotel in the same complex was full but a third was not. Since the hotels’ front desks were less than five hundred yards apart, it didn’t make any difference where I threw my pajamas on the floor so long as the floor wasn’t a parking lot and the room around it wasn’t also a parking lot, Auntie I. would have to settle for a more generous family orbit.

That theme music is starting to sound a little…fishy…

I don’t think much about loneliness until loneliness sits down next to me and orders drinks on my tab.

Grandpa: Domy!

Only Grandpa and Scout call me that. I will punch anyone else who tries it.

Grandpa: Thank you for the Father’s Day Card!
Tata: I love you! It’s the least I can do.
Grandpa: I won’t use it, though, until I pay off this other credit card.
Tata: It’s a gift card, Grandpa. You can get 35 pair of socks, if you want to!
Grandpa: What did you say, dear?
Tata: You can buy all of Sears’ sock department, Grandpa, it’s a gift card.
Grandpa: Yes, dear, but I don’t want to get in trouble with it. Just because I have it doesn’t mean I’ll use it.
Tata: Well…okay.

He hates when I buy him presents. I gave him basil plants and he made Mom take them. It was too extravagant a gift. Seems like a problem you’d solve with marinara sauce but my solutions may be simplistic.

Grandpa: Where’s your mother? Do you know where she went?
Tata: She’s gone to Maryland for my cousin Monday’s wedding.
Grandpa: What did you say, dear?
Tata: She’s gone to Maryland for a wedding.
Grandpa: What town? Do you know what town, in case the guys down at the Vets ask?
Tata: Frederick, Maryland. I’m going tomorrow.
Grandpa: Oh, thank you, Domy! And you’re going tomorrow! Ha ha!

When Grandpa’s done talking he’s done. If he’s already said goodbye and you say, “One more thing – ” expect the next sound to be a dial tone. He hangs up on Mom twice a day at least.

Tata: I love you, Grandpa!
Grandpa: Talk to you soon!
Tata: Talk –

Click. He’s a very old man who goes to the Veterans of Foreign Wars post, of which he is a founding member, every day at four for two beers. He is worshipped by the younger members, which I have seen with my own eyes. He has a lot of friends. People take him hither and yon, care for him and cook for him. Mom monitors his doings with an iron will from four states away. I don’t know if he’s lonely. When he cheerfully hangs up on me I sure am.

I woke up just after five this morning for no good reason. A good reason might be that a well-oiled Mr. or Mrs. Universe contestant baking croissants, filling my house with the aromas of buttery pastry and fresh coffee; sunlight through the blinds, birdsongs, the music of pleasant breezes through the leaves. Criminy, I need bedroom curtains. Anyway, tossing and turning produced no results so I’m up and reading the Blogosphere. Fortunately, as Siobhan says annually with great vehemence and perfect diction, “I’m on vacation. Everyone can bite me.”

Tomorrow night, my family gathers in Frederick, Maryland for my cousin Monday’s wedding. I hate weddings with a fiery passion so I’m really looking forward to the ceremonial hungover drive home. This morning, I have an appointment with Rosana, my hairdresser; this afternoon, an appointment with soap operas and nail polish. Don’t think for a minute primping can be skipped or minimized. We’re being photographed for posterity, here. Monday’s great-grandchildren had better snap to attention when long after we’re pushing up daisies they find these pictures, curled around the edges, mildewy, faded, and containing not a single head of hair its natural color.

These things must be done precisely and with conviction. No one is going to photograph me with the slightest hint of a Sicilian lady-mustache – not without a sombrero and an arrest warrant, anyway. Yesterday, I was sitting in a meeting in a building I don’t usually go to, with people I see once a month, give or take a month when deadlines tighten. My boss Gianna is conducting the meeting and it is, um, being conducted to its conclusion when Gianna says, “Okay, that’s it, thanks.”

Tata: Lorna, what color eyes do you have?
Lorna: What?
Gianna: What?
Tata: What color are you eyes? I can’t tell from here.
Lorna: They’re brown.
Gianna: Did you bump your head or something?
Tata: Ten of us are in this room. If Lorna had blue eyes that’d make it five-even and statistically –
Lorna: The proportion is wrong.
Gianna: No more coffee for you! You’re cut off!
Tata: It’s just the kind of thing I notice. Also: everyone’s wearing black shoes and I’m an excellent driver.
Gianna: Call me when you’re doing this excellent driving so I can get off the road, huh?

The Devil is in the details and he is not alone.

Gerda and I have an amusing ritual our co-workers have been slow to notice.

Tata: Ohmigod, are you still here?
Gerda: I can’t stand the sight of you!

And –

Gerda: Must you – like – breathe?
Tata: Must you – like – like?

These scenes play out with snorting, foot-stomping and head-tossing, so it’s either way teenage or the Kentucky Derby. The other day, I was standing next to Lupe’s desk when Gerda walked by.

Tata: How tall are you?
Gerda: What? About five-five, I think. Maybe five-six.
Tata: Get out! Without the giant shoes?
Gerda: Five-five!
Tata: How can you talk to me with your pants on fire like that?
Lupe: …that’s not nice…
Gerda: What?
Tata: [snort, head toss]
Gerda: [snort, head toss, stomping off]
Lupe: See? I told you she was tall.
Tata: Yeah, I owe you five bucks.

I like to think that in life things happen for a reason even as I go about doing things for no reason other than that they amuse me. Sometimes a news story gives me both.

Portugal fan Orlando Fonseca, 29, was furious to hear crashing, screaming and shouting from Kim Koeon upstairs as his team played Iran.

What he didn’t know was that Kim, 30, had fallen through her broken third-floor window and was clinging to the sill by her fingertips.

As Orlando leaned out to shout, she fell – straight into his arms.

Orlando, from Wandsworth, South London, said: “I saw this girl hanging by her fingertips. Suddenly she just let go and amazingly I was able to grab her as she went past. It all happened so quickly.”

It’s a bloody miracle! The witness provides the punchline. Whatever you do, don’t try hearing this in one of Eric Idle’s character voices.

Student Dimitris Themistocleous, 19, who saw Saturday’s drama, said: “It was unbelievable – like she was a trapeze artist and they’d rehearsed it.

“Otherwise it would have been splat. She’d have died for sure.”

It’s like I wrote that scene myself. All it’s missing is a banana peel and Dawn French.

This morning, I received an email from the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee and Barack Obama asking me to contribute to their fund.

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. once said that “The moral arc of the universe is long, but it bends toward justice.”

Dr. King was right, it does bend toward justice.

But it doesn’t bend on its own. It bends because for over two hundred years, we have had the courage to put our hands on that arc and move it in the direction of opportunity, equality, and justice.

Our metaphor is already a little bent but let’s move on, shall we?

This November, these efforts will culminate in a historic opportunity to bring back the America we dream of. When Democrats retake the Senate, we will show that we don’t have to settle for the Republican agenda of fear and division anymore.

We don’t have to settle for a Republican agenda that tells us we can find the money to give Paris Hilton more tax cuts, but we can’t find enough to protect our ports or our railroads or our chemical plants or our borders.

Oh no, he didn’t! That just wouldn’t sound as scorny coming from Chuck Schumer.

We don’t have to settle for the closed-door deals that give billions to the HMOs when we’re told that we can’t do a thing for the 45 million uninsured or the millions more who can’t pay their medical bills.

And we don’t have to settle for a Republican agenda that gives billions away to the oil companies and then tells us we can’t invest in the renewable energy that will create jobs and lower gas prices and finally free us from our dependence on the oil wells of Saudi Arabia.

Oh, the opprobrium!

But if we are going to win, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, the largest national organization supporting the election of Democrats to the US Senate, must raise $1 million dollars before June 30th and its FEC filing deadline to close the fundraising gap with the Republicans.

Never before have Senate Democrats been so united behind one singular goal.

To catch Karl Rove with Boy Scouts and a jug of KY?

To help us blow past our fundraising target, a group of Democratic Senators have agreed to match your donations dollar for dollar – meaning that your gift is instantly doubled. If you have ever thought of giving to the DSCC, now is the time.

Please make a secure online contribution of $50, $75 or more. Your donation will help the DSCC elect Democrats in Senate races across the country.

Yeah, you’re blowing, all right. Have I mentioned my three jobs? My austere lifestyle? That I live simply and like it that way? The DSCC should try it sometime. It might make them more sympathetic to those people Congress sold down the river last year with the bankruptcy bill.

The National Republican Senatorial Committee is already running television and radio ads smearing Democratic challenger Jon Tester – a farmer whose family goes back three generations in Montana – as too liberal for the state. They’re singing from their same tired song book – gay marriage, flag burning, higher taxes. We can’t let them do it this time – and we won’t.

Dude! You’re in office and you’re not stopping them now.

The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee is responding to the Montana attack ads, but this is just the first of many, many such ads to come in tight races all across the country. The DSCC must be ready to respond to Republican attacks wherever and whenever they occur. But it is not enough simply to respond. We need your help so that Democrats can define themselves before negative campaigning begins.

Well, I would care a lot more about this definition thing if Democrats cared less about getting it from consultants than from the people. In fact, since the Dems can’t sell us all down the river fast enough they have a lot of fucking nerve asking for money and faith. TBogg’s got more.

I would buy Obama’s deference to leaders in the Democratic party if I felt that were any leaders in the Democratic party (Anyone? Anyone?) but he doesn’t seem to want to fill the void and so we end up with a bland parsing pol who spends all of his time trying to not leave anything distinctive on his permanent record…and we already have an Evan Bayh. Personally I’m tired of Democrats who are obsessed with process and talking about how they need to get their message out. There comes a time to decide what you stand for…and then stand for it.

I don’t have a horse in the 2008 Presidential election and I’ll vote for any Democrat short of the Joe’s (Lieberman and Biden), I only have one requirement for my candidate: someone who can win. And for that, and because both parties bases are pretty much set in stone, you need someone who can excite the mushy middle (also known as the “independents”) and I don’t think that you can get them off the couch them with more mush.

If you want to lead the party, then lead. Otherwise stop wasting my time and sucking the air out of the room…

I have invested time, money and energy into the Dems over the years and I am still waiting on returns. Note to fundraisers: show me results and I will come back to you. Show me no more anti-choice candidates. Show me solid voting records on gay rights. Show me that you support organized labor and the issues of the poor. Show me corporate interests aren’t more important than the people’s. Show me you understand and support the Constitution, including and especially the Bill of Rights. Show me the same courage you’ve demanded of our troops by bringing them home. Show me you can balance a checkbook.

Then you can ask for my help.

I was a good girl, then bad good girl, then a bad girl, then a good girl again, then I was a bad girl, then a very bad girl, and here we are today. Somewhere in that list, I bought baby furniture; somewhere else I married the Fabulous Ex-Husband(tm) and those events are unrelated. People have fine ideas about what we should do and when and how and I couldn’t care less. Too many rules! Moving on –

The other day, I found messages on my voicemail at work. At first I didn’t recognize the voice, then it dawned on me: that’s the voice of Miss Sasha’s bio-father. I tossed him out twenty-two years ago and never missed him for a minute because I’m much too selfish to care about grass stains on today’s synthetics once I’ve thrown them out on the lawn. Miss Sasha heard little or nothing much about him from me because her relationship with Mr. Collected His T-Shirts From the Sidewalk has nothing to do with his and mine. She has to forge her own relationships with her relatives and her own ideas. He has a son, so Miss Sasha has a brother, a teenager who wants contact with her. Miss Sasha thinks that’s marvelous. I think it’s fantastic that Miss Sasha has a sibling I didn’t have to crochet myself. They will have each other. Everybody’s happy, except for one thing…

My place of employment has chosen to put all sorts of information online that might not be in the best interests of its employees. Where we work, our schedules, our meetings, our phone numbers are all up someplace. Mr. Pot-Addled found my work phone number online and called it at 2 in the morning. While he’s no threat to me anymore because Miss Sasha is over 18, I felt vaguely queasy that I was so easily found. For more than ten years I had an unlisted home phone number. What a waste of money. If only I could call the phone company and say, “Listen, the job’s screwed me here. Can I at least have back my pittance?” If you’re a thoughtless department manager boldly publishing details about your employees, keep in mind they have lives you don’t know about and sometimes those lives find their way to your workplace with pounds and pounds of ammo.

Mr. Ancient History isn’t the type. I have one Ex who is the type. I didn’t know if he would let me leave until he didn’t kill me. So you see my desire for stabbing-free workplaces is an earnest one, and as such, I hope employers quit publishing directories and schedules before phone trees let us press 9 for our killing spree floor maps.

That’s too much customer service.

Horoscopically speaking, I was supposed to be deliriously happy Friday and who was I to argue with the cosmos even as the police cars raced into my apartment complex while I was leaving for work. Sure, I was curious but I decided to think about how some lucky people get to disrupt whole neighborhoods before breakfast with lights and sirens.

Midmorning, I drove out to a university farm in either East Brunswick or Milltown, depending on which of those “Welcome to…” signs is a bold-faced liar. Trout bought a share in an agricultural program wherein undergrads and and grads study growing stuff by growing stuff and once a week during the season picking stuff, which civilians pick up and convert from a weekly quiz into salads and seasonal herbs. It’s a popular program, especially since you don’t have to be affiliated with the university or drive a Volvo to buy in. Anyway, the sun was shining, the air was warm, my car was moving smoothly with traffic and a simple, meaningless song was playing on the radio. You have had a moment like this. One hot summer night twenty years ago, I was in the Melody Bar with Johnny and some other friends. The whole place was a dance floor that night. People danced on the stairs, in doorways and at the bars. It was utterly fantastic to feel young and beautiful, to dance to song after song we loved or had never heard before but it didn’t matter which with the heat, the booze, the flowing bodies, and after hours of this thrilling, sweaty trance and just before three, the DJ’s last song proved a silly, perfect surprise: the Monkees’ I’m A Believer. As one, everyone turned back to the people they were dancing with, laughing, and yes, what could one hope for on the dance floor at three but this simple faith in love, a song from our childhoods, but this gorgeous sense that this three minutes could be no more full and we could be no more alive? And Friday, with the sun shining, the air warm, the car moving smoothly and Billy Idol’s Mony Mony playing, I felt enchanted and free, buoyant and timeless – as if I could be no more myself, filled with simple joi de vivre, than I was at that moment. Then I turned in the farm’s driveway and was greeted by a young woman dressed in a fake fur Pebbles outfit, causing me such Unexpected Costume Glee I could only stand in the shade, jumping up and down. Back at work, one of my co-workers sent the daily absence list around and I was on it for half a vacation day I’d totally forgotten I had to take, so I went home and opened my windows to let in the afternoon breezes. A friend was arriving in on an afternoon train. We were meeting up with the – cough! cough! – editorial board of Blanton’s And Ashton’s for refreshing adult beverages later. I baked cookies for a party, washed clothes, polished my nails and watched soap operas. That’s my surreally joyful Friday. I am having an exceptionally happy weekend, all in all, and as I write this I’m sitting in the family store, surrounded by pretty things that smell great while the Dixie Chicks play on the stereo.

It’s not realistic to assume that tomorrow I’ll feel as good, or that good days in a row mean life is generally improving. Next week: I have three days off work and a family wedding two states away. Don’t worry. I’m assuming events will take a turn for the craptacular before breakfast. Too bad I don’t have lights and sirens.

I call Sears. Forty-five rings later.

Guy: Appliances.
Tata: Hi. I bought two air conditioners. When I opened the boxes, one contained an installation kit and the other did not. I called Sears Parts & Repairs’s galactic headquarters and they said I should march over and pick up the kit. Do you have one?
Guy: No. Some air conditioners don’t come with installation kits.
Tata: I bought two identical air conditioners so I’m supposing that if one required it then the odds are exceptionally good the other needed it too and perhaps at the factory, they were having a bad day with wood screws.
Guy: That would be very unusual.
Tata: I’m agreeing with you in the hope that you’ll tell me whom to call next.
Guy: Parts & Service. They’re here in the same building but they’re like a different universe. They don’t even keep the same hours.
Tata: Can you transfer me?
Guy: Oh, hell no. They’ve got their own phone lines, too!

Forty-five more rings. As Grandma used to say, “Tempis is fugiting!” She was too polite to say, “…you bastards,” but she thought it often.

Guy 2: Parts & Service.
Tata: I bought two identical air conditioners. One box contained an installation kit and the other did not. Can you mail this to me?
Guy 2: Model number?
Tata: Ah, the flaw in my plan! I left this at home.
Guy 2: Give me the model number and I can get this to you in a couple of days.
Tata: And they say true love is hard to find.

Last night, Lupe picked me up. We braved the permatraffic of Route 1 North after rush hour so we passed only two impeccably placed accidents – eventually – to turn around at Woodbridge Center and head south. If you have never traveled this particular stretch of road or met civil engineers, you should watch out for the trickster gods in more conventional forms like wolves and door-to-door Bible salesmen. The intersection of Woodbridge Drive and Route 1 has been reconfigured a handful of times in the last ten years to accommodate unchecked development and oblivious luxury item shoppers. It used to give me great satisfaction to avoid this mall, knowing it was at least for a time the mall in the continental U.S. where you were most likely to return from shopping to find your vehicle had been boosted. We turn onto Route 1 South. Lupe takes three short breaths, turns right and guns it for the invisible strip mall we know is behind the trees. Then, she parks.

We walk up and down the aisles. Neither of us is one of those crazy women with a Shoe Problem. Eyes focused, we make for the running shoes. Lupe picks up white shoes with pink trim.

Lupe: These are cute. Good padding. What do you think?
Tata: I can’t wear cupcakes. Do they have New Balance in colors not found in frosting?

Halfway across the room, we find Adidas, New Balance and a brand I’ve already forgotten in gray. I try them on quickly. The Adidas feel really good. In ten minutes, we found me a pair of running shoes. The purple trim is a bit of a compromise but at least I don’t have to beat myself up on the playground.

Lupe tries on pair after pair of black wedge heels because this season sandals are supposed to appear prominently on medical certificates as Cause of Death. In the meantime, everyone within fifty feet hears my running commentary on shoes made of rope. Women pick them up, look at me, then put them back down. Lupe finds a pair of sandals that fit and flatter, finds me a pair of black shoes to kick off under my desk and a pair of what can only be described as cute sandals. I do not have a Shoe Problem! I mean it! Sometimes, however, this leads to putting on something dressy and finding nothing in the closet but combat boots.

Today, Lupe and I both have New Shoes Glee. I have glee! My everyday shoes resemble Paulie Gonzalez’s Bruno Maglis, which is amusing by itself, but they also feel cushiony and sort of rounded across the bottom. I walk a few steps, laugh hysterically, then walk some more. Lupe’s wedge sandals are just a little higher than she’s used to so she caught herself descending a long staircase with both hands on the banister like she was climbing Everest. The whole world is more interesting when one is flush with new physical sensations. From my co-worker Bob Hosh:

As most of you probably know we have umpteen pairs of Barn Swallows nesting at Hageman Farm. There are, in fact, two nests on the beams of the carriage house above where I keep the riding mower parked when not in use. The barn swallows are now into raising their second brood of the season and they get very antsy when I’m moving the mower in or out of the carriage house. They do a lot of frantic flying and swooping toward me, but never really attack me and I tend to talk soothingly to them and they seem to have learned that I intend no harm to them or their nestlings. So yesterday evening when I was completing mowing the last 3rd of the 2 acre lawn I became involved in an adventure with the swallows! As I was mowing the grass around the horse and dairy barns dusk began to fall and the swallows came out to feed; lots of them not just the four from the carriage house, but many more from the lower section of the horse barn. As I chugged along on the Deere suddenly the air around me was filled with beautiful barn swallows on the wing catching the hundreds of insects flying up and escaping the blades of the mower. What a sight it was to to watch the birds approach only a foot or so above ground catching insects and swerving at the last minute to avoid hitting me on the mower! Flitting past me their mouths stuffed with food I could have reached out and touched them easily. They were having a ball and so was I!

Now if I could only develop such a relationship with the resident groundhog!

I had no idea other people had complex relationships with groundhogs but I’ve bought running shoes for the first time in 26 years. Isn’t anything possible?

Yesterday, in my office.

David: Where’s Lupe?
Tata: I don’t know. I turned the corner and she was invisible to me, too.
David: Do you have dibs on her next?
Tata: Can we claim our co-workers? Because if so, I dibs Nina. Hey Nina, this afternoon I’m taking the cat to the vet. Hope you didn’t have any plans!
David: I dibs Mathilde.
Tata: Where’s my kickball?

In the Good News/Bad New Department, a German man was spared serious injury when he fell off his bicycle and a car ran him over. The bad news is when he got up he weighed 440 pounds.

A 440-pound German man discovered that being overweight can be good for your health – if you get run over by a car.

Police said the extra body mass prevented the 30-year-old man from suffering potentially fatal injuries when a Volkswagen Polo drove over him after he braked suddenly on his bicycle at a crossroads and fell off in front of the car.

“It certainly helped him in this case,” said Sven-Marco Claus, a spokesman for police in the western town of Gifhorn on Monday. “Someone smaller would probably not have been so lucky.”

Jumping Jesus on a pogo stick, where to start? A 440-lb. man on a bicycle? I’m already afraid for his safety. So what happened, huh?

The man dislocated his hip, which local doctors put back in place, but otherwise suffered only scratches and a bloody nose from the underside of the vehicle, police said.

Christ on a cracker, that guy’s lucky. Judging by the next item on the page, MSNBC has strong feelings on the subject.

Click for related content

17 beers a day keep prostate cancer away

Crap, I don’t have time for 17 beers a day or a prostate.

Last week, Mom called in a bit of a huff.

Mom: Last night, my friend and I went to see An Inconvenient Truth.
Tata: (spitting coffee) You did?
Mom: It was important we see it opening weekend.
Tata: It was?
Mom: Our male counterparts were unavailable so we just went.
Tata: You did? You know what? I don’t sound any smarter. What did you think?
Mom: I want you to see it. I want everyone to see it. It’s too important to be missed by anyone. How can we trick your sister into seeing it? Offer to babysit?
Tata: Look at you scheming for the Greater Good! Sure, buy tickets and stuff popcorn in their pockets.
Mom: That Ford Excoriator has got to go! I can’t believe they’re still driving that monster.
Tata: Mom, Tyler thinks Ann Coulter’s misunderstood.
Mom: Then he misunderstands Ann Coulter.

Huh! Look at Mom go! In other news, I have given up trying to think of ways to get my apartment complex to start a compost pile. I’d really like to. I mean, who couldn’t use the free mulch? Anyway, I wait until dark and toss aging lettuce into the forsythia below my living room windows and then I feel weirdly ambivalent and carrots would be a dead-giveaway. When I open my bedroom screens to sweep out grime, I feel like Snow White when the groundhog gives me the eye, the birds tweet madly and a squirrel flies in for an up-close-and-too-personal afternoon snack.

Scraps might just add to the confusion.

The past few days, the media has distinguished itself by dancing like Astaire on the grave of Zarqawi. Our Ginger Rogers in this pas de deux is a military that seems shocked it attained its target, which is not exactly the response you want in your military. Personally, I’d like the boys and girls dropping bombs so well-trained hitting a target is not-worth-mentioning second nature, and I want them so well-adjusted they have the decency to express regret that a job well-done required loss of life in the first place. Unfortunately, my society has gone to war with the press corps it had, not the one I’d like, and not the government, justification or outcome, either.

Human nature is messy, ugly stuff. Humans like the pick the winners and spike the ball. Humans like to kick a man when he’s down, and once more for good measure. Humans like to humiliate a loser and pinch his wife. Humans, basically, are bumfuck cruel and at some times more than others the veneer of civility chips and peels. This is such a moment. A great many people are sick of hearing that children are dying for no good reason while the economy’s tanking and the federal deficit mushrooms, and these people are looking for a ball to spike, a winner, a loser and a fleshy woman to pinch. Cue the kickline.

This would be an excellent moment for us to take stock of what the hell we’re doing. The war doesn’t make any sense. Destroying a city to save it is the reasoning of madmen. If our government’s aim is to win over the populace bombing the shit out of it comes up short as strategy. If our government’s intention was to spread democracy it ought to be noted that desire must arise from the hearts of a people. It cannot be imposed from outside. If our government intended to free a captive society and form a satellite state it will not succeed. A nation cannot simultaneously occupy and release; in the Middle East, we are occupiers, and we are seen as occupiers. Rhetoric is foolishness now. More people will die. More of our brave children will die. More of our treasury will disappear. Our own people will remain divided. This is simple human nature at work.

It does not befit a powerful nation to wage war against a weak one. Any strike against the oppressed does not bring glory – it brings mutual humiliation. The powerful nation loses its brave and patient mien. The weak one may discover its soul in resistance. No good will ever come of it. None is coming, here. Zarqawi’s death accomplishes exactly nothing for us except to bring us more footsoldiers willing to die for our defeat. You know this. You know all this. And yet we see dancing on his grave.

There is a great deal of talk about what a great many people think we are doing. What is it we are actually doing?