As much as I would love to give you a Bleat Full of Gusto on this fine October Thursday, I’m working on six hours of sleep here, and the head keeps nodding forward into the keyboard. The highlight of the day, pathetic as it sounds, was a visit to the brand-new Target store in Edina, and I covered that for buzz.mn. I forgot to include the punchline, though: the store had only been open for a few hours, and they were already out of Wiis.

So I worked all day and I worked all night, except for making supper – rote spaghetti with pre-cooked ultra-nuked Johnsonville Sausage Rods – and a dog-walk with Jasper, which was boring for me and heaven for him. All that magnificent fresh urine. I did not encounter roving bands of youths, as had been reported by a neighbor this morning – she had the gall, the cheek, the pure flaming presumptuousness to think she could drive her car down the alley; little did she know that four youts from the neighborhood high school had decided it was 4:20 time, and they would just stand in the middle of the alley and huddle around a joint. They did not move for her car. She persisted. They parted. Later she observed them entering a neighbor’s car parked in the alley, and she shouted a warning. They slunk off, muttering something about the alley being public property, and declared her to be a Bitch.

“They’re just brazen,” she said. Why shouldn’t they be? If the cops don’t show up when someone breaks into your house and drives your car up on a retaining wall and tips it over, as happened a few nights ago up another alley, why should they think they’ll suffer a jot of distress for opening up someone’s car and getting inside and looking through the glove compartment? It was open, after all. 

Dear Santa Mayor! For Christmas I would like less crimeinals plees and also a pony.

This afternoon I went to school to make sure (G)Nat got to her new afterschool activity – she’s being handed off from one post-school activity to another, and I didn’t know who knew what. Since the

new activity took only an hour, I sat in the car outside the school, pushed through some comments on buzz.mn using the iPhone, listened to the radio, and read a book. I was sent a copy of Norman Podhoretz’ “World War IV,” a subject about which will occupy the rest of our days. Of all the books I’ve received in the mail recently, it’s the most sober recap of the war thus far. I’m only 50 pages in, but already feel a certain sinking feeling when I read some of the examples of rhetorical clarity that came out of DC in the days after 9/11, before obfuscating diplo-fog returned to shroud everything in the cosseting talk of stability, process, engagement, and other twigs we use to build a fence against the rough beast prowling our perimeter. I read the book with some trepidation, since my name shows up in the index. What did I say? Well, I’ll find out.

Note to Amazon: something needs a bit of tuning, somewhere. Unless these are the phones preferred by terrorists who remotely detonate subway bombs:

I don’t intend to make YouTube Thursday a regular feature, but it’s possible; O the wonders we find; is it not wrong to husband them for ourselves? Okay, then. Yesterday was Pac-Man’s Birthday. So. Homage Le Remix:

Hilarious Real-World Reenactment by kids who were a decade away from zygote status when the rest of us were pumping quarters into the Pac-Maw:

Mortifying transmogrification into Pasta Form:

If that Pac-Man Pasta seems too salty, well, wash it down with HoJo Cola!

This week’s Bleat Radio Theater showcases a summer replacement show: Presenting Charles Boyer. A rake, roué, boulevardier, suave Continental – or flat broke sociopathic confabulator. You make the call!

New seven-page Stagworld update, written tonight while weary. See you tomorrow at buzz.mn, and here after that.