Rusty Drainpipe Throat

Well, today my throat feels like a rusty drainpipe. My throat, and up into my nose and sinuses. Had to drive in to town early this morning -- and we got a surprise inch of snow overnight, hello -- to have blood drawn at the clinic in advance of next week's semi-annual visit to the doctor. Ran a few other errands while I was in town, then back home. And have been spending most of the day since just lying around and feeling semi-miserable. Fortunately the little work I needed to do today I could do from home, and I can afford to take tomorrow off if I really have to.

And in the meanwhile, I'm fit company for neither man nor beast. Pardon my French, but I feel like shit. What am I doing lying here? I should get up and fix myself a hot cup of beef broth.

State of the Union

I skipped Obama's State of the Union address last night, and went to bed early instead. These speeches become such a stock annual event, I can pretty much guess in advance what's going to happen, from the sergeant at arms announcing the entrance of various congressional and judicial dignitaries, to the bromide proposals which sound like they're promising everything but will end up delivering nothing, to the obligatory Ordinary Americans who have been selected on some tearjerker basis ("little Timmy on his crutches") to sit in the audience and be introduced during the speech for their nationwide 15 seconds of fame.

I was further ahead getting another hour's sleep last night. Whatever nonsense breaks forth in high places, it will go down either with or without my obeisance paid in the form of soberly virtuous attention to the ringing annual declamations of SOTU. If that be civic blasphemy, so be it.

Damn Cold

You know, when it gets down to, say, 15 or 20 below, if I don't have to go anywhere, I just don't. No thank you, I'll stay at home, stay indoors, stay warm, preferably wrapped up beneath a wool Indian blanket on my sofa.

Tangibly Inhuman

On one of the more thoughtful and interesting left-wing blogs I follow, I stumbled across what strikes me as probably one of the most truth-telling blog comments I've ever read:

The left and the right have at least one thing in common they are both tangibly inhuman. Reptilian I would say is the proper category for both.

Talk about cutting through all the bullshit and telling it like it is. I've always thought of myself, I still think of myself, as somewhere right of center. But in recent years it's hard to survey the political and cultural scene without lapsing into despair over the uniformly distributed tangible inhumanity of most of those who are activated and engaged, regardless of whether they're on the right or on the left.

Time Speeds Up

Busy, busy, busy. I don't know what's happened to my schedule, this past week or so. Well, yeah, I do know: all of a sudden a couple of irons too many in the fire, due to circumstances beyond my control. And it doesn't look like it's going to let up any time in the week to come, either.

Talk about a sudden turnabout! And when I do have a free hour, about all I can do is lie down, stare off into thin air, and vegetate.