Waking up to things that everyone else already seems to know

The Books are my personal musical, Oh, hello!, so far this year.

By then I would have read John Barth's Chimera (da da dum, etc.)

(... speaking of Scheherazade:)  At wiki.  And pages at Google.  Comments by Harold Augenbraum at the National Book Awards site: "When I was coming of age in the 1970s, if you didn’t read John Barth you weren’t a young reader."

You won't remember this, either - Jeff Scher

(OK, I'm avoiding going in to the office.) Look at this great animation by Jeff Scher, at the NYTimes.

Hey, Jeff, time passes the same way for people who aren't parenting. And think twice about the cheese-stick thing. Just buy a hunk of cheese and cut it up and save on cost & plastic and whatever voodoo process is used to turn curdled milk into a manufactured object. (I say the same to Lota.)

The more things change...

Well, kids, we're back home, slept in our own bed last night, on and on so long that the coffee was almost cold by the time we had our first cup. Stuff to say, and maybe we will, but first - we sat down to leaf through Lota's postcard collection and see if there isn't something there we might use for this year's holiday card - when we stumbled on the 1904 German postcard scanned below. Oy. Let me only say that we have an 11 year old nephew who is, shall we say, not tall?, who plays the bass fiddle in the county orchestra and who went out this Halloween as a mac daddy and last year as a gangster. Yar.

Each if us, in our own lives, will have to accept the responsibility...

Juju reminds us where it started. Harpers, Bam Bam, the effective use of history. Includes Obama's announcement speech, lo those many months ago.

Quickie reading check

Last week read Chris Buckley's Thank You For Smoking, as a tip of the hat toward his Obama endorsement and all that followed it. Thanks, again, Mr. B.

And the last few days I have been reading my next president's first autobiographical book, Dreams from My Father. It's quite something to hear the young man Obama speak frankly about sex and drugs and rock and roll and race.

As I was looking for links to include in this post, I came across a number of sites claiming Obama did not write his book, etc. Reminded me a great deal of when I was in Hebrew school, must have been 1967 or 1968, and I had a music teacher who claimed and and demanded and railed on about the fact that the Beatles could not have written their songs. The music was too good, too prolific, for these yong, long haired goys to have written. It was a deeply racist, paranoid, generational claim, not based on any demonstrable fact. (The Gershwins? Of Course. The Beatles? Absurd.) Even at the age of 11 or 12 it was clear to me that this man (to whom my religious instruction was being entrusted) was mad. I hope that most people who read the trash thrown at Obama's book see things as clearly. (And, uh, I hope they read the book. )

Bam Bam: Swahili for "That One"

When a crumudgeon points to something hopeful...

I'm guessing DL won't object overmuch to the characterization. He points to the Huffpost piece by Daniel Okrent, reposted at alternet, Bradley Who? Here comes the Obama effect. A nice companion-piece the the Brazile video juju pointed to.

Yes, Election Smackdown

Young dude JH writes:

hey uncle steve have fun and see if obama wins!!!! slap mckain silly!!!!!
http://www.addictinggames.com/electionsmackdown2008.html?r=u

Which is pretty much the same intention Frank Rich expresses in his op-ed piece today:

The question is why would a man who forever advertises his own honor toy so selfishly with our national interest at a time of crisis.