Coming up for air.

It's been a busy week around here. Preparation for the big Christmas Tree Sale. School open house. School picture day. Holiday shopping. MLA preparation. The MLA job search. This thing called work. However, even with all that, I've still mown down about half of Zadie Smith's White Teeth, because it's so damn good. She knows how to write dialogue, and what's more, the narrative voice is fresh and witty. Bemused even.

Meanwhile in the world outside, I find:

• Crazy missing Canoe Man story...apparently he and his wife were getting sloppy, what with getting their picture on a site dedicated to getting other Anglos to move to Panama...I don't know. If I'm going to fake my own death to get some insurance money, I'm going to lay low, maybe even change my name...of course, after a few years on the lam I might get sick of going to bed every night wondering when I'm going to get caught...
• Bizarre MySpace Hoax and Suicide Scandal...Apparently, adults who impersonate children on social networking sites in order to befriend then mock and insult real children aren't guilty of anything, except bad judgement. These fuck-ups lived four houses away from their victim, and the dumbass prosecutor says he can't even file harrassment charges...
• Deus Ex Machina Sports Outcome that keeps the "unbeaten" Patriots unbeaten...I don't watch the NFL, so I caught up with this story via the paper and the internet, but it appears the NFL needs a new storyline, so they're working on keeping their unbeaten team unbeaten. Oh yeah, now I remember why I don't watch the NFL.
• And by the way, how about Bush taking it in the groin from his own intelligence agencies on Iran? Cheney is probably pissed as hell that he didn't get a chance to "massage the data" before this stunner got released. On the other hand, you'd think Bush would be playing up the fact that Iran appears to have dropped their nuclear program in the aftermath of Bush's Iraq Adventure...so maybe Bush could recast his failed oil grab as a deterrent against Iran (you know, "we destroyed one country so we wouldn't have to destroy another..."). But no, Bush must, as he always seems to do, fly in the face of all established evidence and harp on his old talking points. It's like he's simply unable to alter his worldview to fit new realities. In other words, in a Piagetian model, he's all assimilation and no accomodation. Except he doesn't even bother to assimilate the new data into his model. He simply ignores it. So I guess that's closer to psychotic.