7:50 AM Busy day ahead, with many duties - Gnat, groceries, phone work, ECFE class, column at night. Nothing but quick bites today, alas.

Had a merry morning dream: I was standing outside the Thunderbird Motel having a cigarette with Tim Blair, when entire chunks of a Mercury spacecraft started raining down on the lawn.

In my dreams I can smell cigarettes, but I no longer want one. I suppose that’s a good sign. What plunging hunks of NASA-stamped fuselages bouncing off the lawn of a suburban motel signify, I’ve no idea.


9:41 AM Raining. Rather serious rain, too. I’ll have to resquirt the patio; yesterday I doused the cracks with life-killing deathsauce from the fine folks at Dow. I heard Gaia herself weep as her precious weedy children wither and die. Now I’ll have to reapply the stuff to make sure the weeds are vanquished. I’ve given up on the lawn, which looks like a sample book for prairie infestations, but I’ll be switched if spurge gets a foothold on my patio. A man has to take a stand, he does.

So very tired. Stayed up late watching “Enterprise.” Nice to see the Tellurite Mining Pigs back; been a while. Haven’t seen those boys since “Journey to Babel.” Watching the actress who played T’Pole, and who spent the episode in her underwear drenched in mate-sweat, I was reminded of the first question I asked The Doctor (from Voyager) when I interviewed him on the occasion of the series finale: so, now that you no longer have to wear a formfitting jumpsuit, are you going to start slamming the cheeseburgers?

If that had been a Voyager ep, they would have put Harry Kim in the quarantine room.

If that had been Lexx, they would have put Seven of Nine in the quarantine chamber.

If if had been Star Wars, it wouldn’t matter who was in the room because everyone would still be too pissed off by the Ewoks and Jar-Jar to notice.

It’s too early to be this dorky. Shut up.


10:04 AM Hey, good news! Syria no longer occupies Lebanon. It’s a free nation and independent country that chooses its own rulers.

12:28 AM. I would like a nap now. I could take one if Gnat napped. Or I could make some coffee. Each option has its own benefits and drawbacks. The drawback of a nap: it does not taste like coffee. The drawback of coffee: lacks the soft surcease of one’s cares. But both go well with whiskey. Call it a draw.


1:59 PM Entry at LFG:

US military interrogators are breaking down the resistance of Iraqi prisoners—by forcing them to listen to Metallica, the Sesame Street theme, and Barney the singing dinosaur .

Reached for comment, Ramsey Clark wailed, “This is a clear violation of the Geneva Conventions! Dear God, what’s next? America's 'Horse With No Name?' The Captain and Tenille?? The ... the ... gulp ... the monstrous 'Hokey Pokey???'”


I think the Hokey Pokey would be perfect. Think of it: the prisoners have a world view that involves complex rituals and intricate systems of belief. A worldview in which there are elaborate rules for what is and is not permitted. So we hit 'em with the Hokey Pokey for ten hours straight until their entire cultural paradigm collapses, and they realize that putting one's feet in and out & shaking them all about is what it's all about. That's it. That’s all there is, friend.

I was going to post this on LGF, but the browser choked. I blame the rain.

2:50 PM Well, dang. I just got a call from AM1280, asking me to host a dinner & speech for Michael Medved over at the St. Paul Grill. I would have said yes, but the event begins in five hours. The original host had come down with the grippe. I couldn’t do it - Gnat duty. Dang. That would have been fun; a free meal, head-table status, a chance to shoot the breeze with Medved.

5:30 PM The taco meat is simmering; time to check OpinionJournal and Achewood.

Dig those insane Hiram modules.

(You need to go back about five days to make sense of that, if you're not already an Achewoodsman.)

The parent discussion at ECFE was interesting today - had to do with sibling dissent, and of course I know nothing about that. The closest thing Gnat has to a sibling is Jasper Dog. In one respect he’s like another two-year old, clueless in how he affects others; every day I swear I save Gnat from being knocked down the stairs by Jasper. But he has a dog’s desire for pack unity and safety, and hence regards the new swingset as a Grave Danger we stupid two-legs cannot comprehend. We had to stop taking him to the park, because he barked in panic everytime Gnat got up on the playsets. It just struck him as wrong, on every level. Now she has a treehouse / swingset / slide of her own, and he’s agog that we brought this instrument of peril into our own territory. He follows her up the gangplank and whines; when she takes the slide back to earth he follows her down. I expect one day that he’ll coppertone her pants when she tries to climb the ladder. Although the other day we were up in the treehouse portion, and he realized he could see for miles; he could see dogs down in the glen, see dogs coming up the street. He could see peril for miles. Sometimes I look out the back window and see him in the treehouse, paws on the railing, looking out for random canines who’ve come to ruin his urine dispersal scheme.

7:40 PM Supper, nap, dogwalk. Now I’m trying to figure out what I’m going to do for the column.

Uh oh. The radio just said my name again. Hugh Hewitt said that the military’s use of bad music suggests that “Lileks is advising them” on how to break prisoners’ will. Ah, well, that’s a reply to what i wrote on Little Green Footballs, I thought, then I remembered that I didn’t post anything. So now the radio is reading my mind.

I’ll let this one pass. Friday there was another great long insult against my good name and musical tastes - he passed off Dan Fogelberg as one of my favorites, for heaven’s sake. Let it go, I thought. But then he called Jasper a poodle.

A poodle. By implication, a French dog.

This is not a poodle.

I was going to ask for an apology - assuming that the contrition of a dog-slanderer would mean anything. But I decided to take the high road. To wait.

You see, I have a fearsome weapon at my disposal. It’s the talk-radio equivalent of a neutron bomb. No producer can screen it out. Once unleashed, it poisons the show for years to come. It turns the host against the audience; it makes foes of friends who know not that they are participating in the prank. And that’s if I set the phaser to stun; if I set it to kill - well, I hope it doesn’t come to that.

If ever I announce my plan, you’ll know that I have been suffered an insult to my honor far greater than a man should be expected to bear.

Oh yes. It’s that good.

Should Mr. Hewitt simply say, on national radio, to dozens and dozens of top markets, that “Jasper Dog is a fine American mutt, and I apologize for implying otherwise” I will sheath my weapon. Don’t make me do it, Hugh.

I know, I know; I've picqued his curiousity. I expect he'll take the bait. Stay tuned.

Crimeny, it's late: back to work. More tomorrow, as usual.