• sometimes i feel a bit wistful for those moments that never are shared or recorded, those laughs had by one person and known by no other, those truly private moments that come and then pass, never to be remembered or shared. sometimes i feel a bit happy about it, tho, knowing that no matter how frantically we record and observe and nostalgicize and fetishize and camcord-cellphonecapture-wiretap-historicalize, there will never be a Hard Copy of so much of human experience...something romantic about that. the quiet passing of mental margin notes...those little lines you say to yourself, those tunes you put to funny words, those superstitions that consist of things like your rhyming the word six times before the light changes, or reaching the top stair by the time the chorus comes around again...everytime i read a news story quoting bush on "the google," it trips off the Tribe Called Quest song Da Booty in my mind...but with new lyrics

• getting down to it. elections around the corner. i think the country is overwhelmingly voting democrat. i base this on my having spoken personally to ten million people about their voting choices...please political santa-god, smack karl rove's little pigface and send him and King Fratwurst to prison, please, please

• the (and i've written this before but it occurs to me again and again as i watch shit play out on the world stage) most dangerous thing that bush et al have done to America is not have the artistry to maintain our pretense, our Hero façade, to forego tact and appearance and dive straight for the deep end of the oilfield. when you remove the notion of Good Guy from the Patriotic American mind, all that is left is a will to violence and self-righteousness and domination. You've gutted the silver lining. And if you have people growing up in this nation without even the lie of being world bully for the world's good, but only world bully...you want to talk about threats to American cohesiveness and unity? it's no wonder the Bush Junta (and their disciples) chase enemies in every shadow...they understand that they are creating all conditions necessary to breed and ferment and conjure them forth. stop scaring humans into being pawns...inspire them to carry forth a banner, appeal to the innate sense of rightness and good, make them love America for what the fuck she is (change her now), not a lie. Keep the strong in their stance through pride and willingness to throw down for the big barrio, not frozen small and fawning under the demons of fear. ...someone needs to reread bush and cheney and rummy the little kid book about the wind and the sun fighting each other and competing to get a man's coat off...

• i'm building a regimen of what a human needs to be happy. we have water, sunlight, crafts with the hands, music, and good, healthy food. there is room to play, productivity, and physical and mental challenge. there is of course, nature, laughter, and love. i rearrange it and edit the list over time. i want it to be a practical list that is tried and true that any human could put to use. i have never had a version that did not put dancing right there in the beginning of the day. bang those joints out, get that blood pumping, swing them hips. i'm serious, put on a good tune and jam it out. try it every day for a week and see if you don't become happier, i promise it works—