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prescribe an MRI
Saturday, September 27 2008
It was a rainy day and the greenhouse excavation was a muddy mess, but I nevertheless finished the job of backfilling the sixty foot drainage ditch, meaning that unsuspecting Bambis running along the top of the escarpment won't break a leg. Today's work would have been considerably easier had I done it a day ago, when the fill dirty was still dry and nearly as fluffy as whole wheat flour. But there's only so much grunt work one can do in a day, so today I found myself hauling five gallon buckets full of mud. It was as if I was packing the ditch with refried beans.
Once I'd filled the ditch to the top, I sprinkled dry leaves, grass, and branches over it to restore its natural appearance and lessen the chance of erosion. Once I was done, you'd have to know I'd dug a two to three foot trench through the forest in order spot the few remaining signs (mostly piles of large muddy rocks I'd removed).
Meanwhile back in the house Gretchen was watching a women's basketball game, and I could hear her shrieking and carrying on with every exciting play. I showed up to catch the last few seconds as the San Antonio Silver Stars, playing at home and down by one point against the Los Angeles Sparks, somehow managed to launch a ball in the last one second of the game. The ball bounced off the backboard twice before reluctantly dropping through the basket, and everyone (particularly Gretchen) went crazy. (The members of any team playing Los Angeles are automatically the good guys.)
Later Gretchen was watching a DVD of an Earth, Wind and Fire concert from 1980. Back in the those days all pop bands had to wear ridiculous costumes on stage, but Earth Wind, and Fire took it to the extreme, wearing stuff that today can only be found at gay pride parades (and those guys were straight!). Something about the materials, their colors, and a few unfortunate hairlines seemed to accentuate the sweatiness of the performers. Indeed, every time I look at pictures or film from those days, everyone looks to be suffering through a horrible yellow-hued heat wave.
Like many internet-savvy Americans, I've been consuming all the Sarah Palin schadenfreude (Palinfreude) I can find on the web. The Katie Couric interviews will all, of course, go down as classics. And so will all the related Saturday Night Live skits and even the strange tale of the Sarah Palin impersonator on the streets of New York City. But what sense can we, as thinking, literate citizens make of this debacle? The best explanation I've read so far is Has the McCain Campaign Broken Sarah Palin?, although I suspect the article's judgment is a little too kind. Remember, Palin got to where she is today by mastering a series of tiny political ponds, largely avoiding the scrutiny of the media at every stage, riding the aw shucks authenticity ticket straight to the top. She doesn't have to be as articulate as even the average American to have gotten to where she is today. For her role as a non-emasculating female Republican candidate, all she's had to do was look good, talk tough, and espouse the political views of a trilobite. But on the national stage, particularly after eight years of Bush (who got where he is by doing essentially the male version of the same), I think Palin's candidacy is a complete tear down. Unscripted, she's not even half as articulate as George W. Bush, a fact that would, if I were her doctor, cause me to prescribe an MRI. Palin's only hope at this point is that a very talented and articulate Sarah Palin impersonator can be found to debate Joe Biden (and do the other heavy lifting of the campaign).
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