See also: “Salad Days, the musical.”

Knock Knock. Who’s there? The new Hamas leader. The new Hamas leader who? Exactly. *** update: a reader writes that the new leader is called Mahmoud Zahar. So I’ve made the following changes to my original post: Knock Knock Who’s there? The new leader of Hamas. The new leader of Hamas who? Mahmoud Zahar. Weren’t you paying attention?

I have no idea why I keep torturing myself this way, but I popped over to Oliver Willis’ place (“like kryptonite to functioning synapses”) and was treated to this sanctimonious twaddle: There’s politics, and then there is morality. George Bush purports to be a Christian, so I hope that he can reconcile himself with his God when he understands the fruits of his deception in getting us in to war,

…Has anybody else noticed how Bob Dylan’s “Like a Rolling Stone” is essentially a hippie-poetic anthem celebrating unapologetic schadenfreude? Not only that, it’s anti-collectivist at heart, and the lyrics — after a proper deconstructive reading — reveal a sinister materialist underbelly to the counterculture aesthetic, one that Don Henley would remark on years later in “Boys of Summer.” Also, that guy on the bike should not be wearing those shorts

There’s nothing to do in Denver when you’re dead. Because you’re dead, remember? Look at what your atheism’s brought you, my son. Repent! Repent!

“Five sets of remains believed to be those of American soldiers who went missing during the Vietnam War were sent home Sunday nearly 30 years after the war ended.” The remains were loaded onto a C-17 transport plane in central Danang, from where they were to be flown to an Army laboratory in Honolulu for identification. The remains were located in central and southern Vietnam by a joint recovery team

My money’s on that vast rightwing conspiracy. It can be so ornery before it’s had its coffee…

Chapter 2: Love At First Sight Go to Chapter 1.      A few years back I met a girl named Elizabeth Seidel. She was a pretty girl with long, coffee-brown hair and willowy arms and legs, the kind of girl whose solid trunk could lure a squirrel out of its tree or give a family of blackbirds reason to relocate. Her eyes were enormous and green — every bit as welcoming