Moe found out that a local umm....adult establishment is running a voter registration drive. And it looks like some of those dancers are just crazy for Kerry! So Moe is looking for a few slogans that will help Kerry cash in on the new voting niche. Double D's for Democracy!

Now, it's time for the 'rama part of link o rama. Want to whore yourself in my comments? Now is the time. Go for it. Any post on any topic. Link away.

Hey, wear your digital brown shirt proudly! Make Al Gore smile!

Update: My pet link of the day: Give to the Special Operations Warrior Foundation, via Bill.

A note to Devil Ray fans:

Your team is only five behind the Red Sox. It would be very smart of you to cheer on the Yanks when they face the Sox this week. If we put all of our good vibes together, we can double whammy Boston with our nefarious groupthink.

Meanwhile, Allah sends proof that Mr. Met was indeed Mr. Vet.

I'm not buying it. Looks to me like he was trying to do the YMCA, not plant a flag. I mean, he might have served, I'm not doubting that. But in what capacity? Entertainment director? And just how old is that deranged bobblehead, anyhow?

Update: Those are not the Devil Rays! It's Farenheit 1918!

Thus begins quite a week for Yankee fans. Subway Series this weekend and the Red Sox during the week. Will the House that Ruth Built still be left standing at the end of these two series?

I’ve explained the difference between the Yankee/Met rivalry and the Yankee/Boston rivalry before. Or at least my take on it. I hate the Mets with a broad, sweeping hatred that knows no depth nor width. It is endless, black and unforgiving. I hate the Red Sox with a vague sense of loyalty to my team and a certain yawning complacency that comes with having the upper hand in a rivalry for so long.

I do prefer to rumble with Sox fans rather than their Met counterparts. Met fans are like little children. They stick their fingers in their ears when you confront them and they can often be seem having ugly tantrums. They are also less likely to give an inch when discussing baseball. Boston fans will grudgingly admit to the greatness of one Yankee or another. Met fans will chant Jeter Sucks for as long and hard as New York Ranger fans yell chants about retired-ages-ago Denis Potvin. Two peas in a pod, those Met and Ranger fans. Sucks is about as good as their insults get.

Sox fans are good to argue with. They come right at you, they are relentless. And they know how to throw down. I always enjoy a good spar with a Boston fan. A spar with a Met fan just leaves me feeling like I kicked an infant.

So here I begin my ten days (The Yanks head to Shea the weekend after this to finish off the Subway series) of antagonizing Met and Red Sox fans. Sure, the results of either series may cause be a bit of regret in being so obnoxious, but I’m a firm believer in having fun while you can. And this is fun.

• standard talking shit about the mets disclaimer: This is meant as no offense to two of my favorite Mets fans. There are exceptions to every rule.

• second disclaimer: Yea, I know that Mr. Met is a vet and fought for this country. Let's try to separate the man from his ugly ass costume, ok? It's a dumb, funny looking mascot.

Now I actually feel good about all the money I've dumped into the Home Depot cash registers since we bought the house.

Retailer Home Depot Inc. is donating $1 million in tools and materials to support the U.S. military in Iraq.
The company said it is sending eight truck trailers to the military, filled with 100,000 tools and materials, including shovels, table saws, concrete mixers, safety scaffolding, power generators, light bulbs and jackhammers. The donated goods left San Diego on Thursday.
Earlier this year, the company also donated $1 million, as well as a million volunteer hours by its employees, to help military families repair and maintain their homes while a family member is deployed. The company said it has more than 1,800 employees currently serving in the military effort. It has about 300,000 employees nationwide.

Thank you, Home Depot and emplyees.

Let me tug on your heart strings briefly with some lyrics:

You raise me up, so I can stand on mountains;
You raise me up, to walk on stormy seas;
I am strong, when I am on your shoulders;
You raise me up: To more than I can be.
© Josh Groban

[ten second movie of shaky crowd scenes as the class sings the song]

As far as pop lyrics go, those are incredibly sappy, the kind of lyrics that make you retch unless you're really drunk or really PMS.

But when those words are heard as sung by a choir of 100 fifth grade boys and girls who have dedicated the song to their parents and grandparents and you can actually feel the sincerity flowing out from their voices, I dare you not to cry.

Each of the fifth grade teachers yesterday gave a short speech before handing the certificates to each of their students. The principal and vice-principal gave a speech as well. And they each said the same thing, in essence: They are so hopeful for the future of this world because of the potential they see in our children. Their character, thirst for knowledge, respect for each other and work ethic made these teachers and administrators so proud that each of them actually beamed as they glanced out at the children. And the kids beamed back.

When those boys and girls stood up to sing the closing song, I had this overwhelming sense of hope.

The kids are alright.

Like any parent, I worry about the world we are raising our children in. I worry about the future, about safety and terrorism and war. Our kids are growing up with a fear we never knew. Sure, I had the shadow of the cold war hanging over my childhood, but it was almost like fiction. It was a what if scenario, a boogey-man. My kids have seen the towers fall. They have seen a gaping hole in the side of the Pentagon. Fear isn't a mysterious shadow that follows them around. It is a solid, living, breathing monster.

Of course, they don't think about it all the time, but it's there. It's there on cloudy days when the planes fly too close for comfort. It's there when the breaking news sound chimes on the television. It's there in their dreams sometimes, and it's there in the poetry and fiction they write.

But the fear does not cripple our children. I look at the kids I know and I see a determination to move on, to make things better, to figure out how to make this world work. When I was their age, everyone wanted to be either a fireman or a teacher. These kids want to be leaders. They want to take charge of the world so they can make it peaceful and safe. Being fifth graders, they still have the lofty goals of dreamers; they want to be president. They won't settle for much less. Ask my daughter's peers, the fourteen year old kids, what they want to be and they talk about becoming senators and congressmen. They want to be policy makers.

See, the children are our future. Whitney Houston was right about one thing, at least. We have to let them lead us but in order to do that, we have to teach them how to lead. We have to teach them what is important. We have to show them the way.

After spending the day yesterday reflecting on those sentiments and resolving to strengthen the ways in which I lead my kids to be honest, caring individuals, I came across this. It appears to be a video of Arab children re-enacting the Nick Berg beheading.

This is not the firs time I've seen young Arab children being taught to hate and kill Americans and/or Jews with glee. It won't be the last. But it horrified me so much that took away every ounce of good feeling I had left from the day.

Those children are the future. Will they eventually become the adults who go after my own children? Will they one day come to America to fly planes into buildings or set off dirty bombs? So, I am raising my children to want peace, hope and prosperity for all nations, but there are children of other nations being raised to kill, kill, kill.

How do we combat that? How can we still have hope for our future generations when our enemies are teaching their own kids to only hope for death to the infidels?

Perhaps we cannot win. Not if the bloodlust and violence is handed down like that. Not if it is taught in schools - which was evident in pre-war Iraq, among other places - not if it is taught at Palestinian day camps, not if children are being taught to kill the Jews, kill the Americans, slice their heads off their necks.

How do we instill hope in our own kids when it just might be a false sense of hope? What if we manage to take out al-Qaeda, take out al-Sadr's martyrs and instill a beautiful wonderful democracy in both Afghanistan and Iraq, only to have it all undone by the children of those martyrs and killers, who were educated by would-be suicide bombers and hateful murderers? Is this a war that we are destined to fight forever?

You raise me up, so I can stand on mountains;
You raise me up, to walk on stormy seas;
I am strong, when I am on your shoulders;
You raise me up: To more than I can be.

Perhaps this is all a matter of interpretation. One parent's mountain is another parent's jihad. I raise my children to hope and dream and work for a world where everyone just gets along, as liberal as that sounds. Another parent raises their kid to hope and dream and work for a world where only people like them exist, all others must die.

Yes, the children are the future. Not just ours, but these children and these children who are smiling and hopeful and no longer being taught to hate.

At this point, I can only hope that there are more like you and I than there are like the others, that our children's dreams will somehow outweigh the nightmare visions of children indoctrinated with murderous lessons.

Peace. Prosperity. Hope. Of course that's what we all want for our kids. So how do we reconcile that with what they want for their kids? Or are we destined to fight this war of ideas and civilizations forever?

a few end notes, below

Blah blah blah viaJeff

What a busy week. I was going to apologize for the lack of posting, but Treacher told me to never apologize for not blogging and I generally find it good practice to listen to him.

So I was going through my archives from the wayback machine. Thank jeebus for that thing. There's so much from this site (pre-asv domain) that I just didn't have. I'm trying to copy everything from archive.org over to Notepad so I can finally have full, complete archives.

In the process, I came across a few things I had been looking for, and some I had forgotten about. There are a lot of you who weren't around in the early days, so maybe you'll enjoy these. Let's face it, I have zero blogging mojo tonight. Hey, it can be like a clip show! If The Simpsons can do it, so can I. So welcome to the first ASV clip show/flashback episode.

It's a big day in the ASV household. DJ graduates from elementary school today.

Now, you might not think that graduating from fifth grade is all that big a deal, but it is to us, because DJ is putting behind him a lot of bad experiences when he walks out the door of his school today.

Most of you went through DJ's experience with him. The Bully. The big problems came last year and the beginning of this year, but there were a lot of smaller instances in the years before leading up to the fourth and fifth grade battles.

So, on this day, I would like to thank all of you for your assistance during the bully era.

It was through your advice and support that I was able to tackle the problem with the school in a way that resulted in the situation being resolved in the best manner. There was personal advice, legal advice and the imporant advice of those who had been through the same situation themselves. When I confronted the principal, I was armed with enough information to not feel intimidated into letting the problem go.

But you helped me with more than that. Those of you with stories of your own to tell taught me how to help DJ handle the situation. Your advice was invaluable. The retelling of your bad experiences (and I appreciate how hard it was for some of you to write those memories down) helped a young child get through his own bad times. Oh, yes, it helped his mother as well.

An update is in order, I suppose. Fifth grade started out horribly, but ended up on a good note. DJ learned not only how to face his bully, but how to turn him into a friend instead of an ememy. That did wonders for his self confidence and he was able to form more friendships instead of shying away from the other boys in his class. He finished the year by being voted the MVP Athlete by his classmates. He has dozens of friends, most of whom, in a wonderful coincidence, live on our new block.

I don't know how this all would have turned out if it were not for the amazing support I received from the blogging community.

Thank you for making my son's year turn out so well and thank you for helping me turn him from a small, scared boy into a happy, self confident one.

When DJ heads up to the stage today to collect his diploma, I'll be applauding not just my son and all the hard work he put into making this year work for him, but you all as well, for giving me the groundwork to help him make that happen.

Thank you.

Remember Dave from Sketches of Strain? Dave doesn't blog anymore because he he's been busy making music. And now his old label has been talking to him about doing an album of lullabyes. He says every band has at least one great lullyabye.

me about doing an album of great
lullabies. Every rock band has one. We're not looking for classics
like, "Hush little baby/Don't say a word/Blah Blah Blah..."

It would be a song of lullabies Moms we know would like to sing, like
"MLK" by U2" or "Angel" by Sarah McLachlan.

So he's asked me to ask you: What are some great rock and roll lullabyes (or is that lullabies?)

I told him that you would supply many answers to this question. Because you will.

By the way, Dave says hi to those who wonder about him. He's doing great; singing, writing songs and getting ready for grad school. He sends his love along with this request.

Middle School Graduation Day - 2004 - Nat (right) and friend Kayla.

One down, one to go. Tomorrow DJ leaves elementary school behind and in September I'll have to deal with a double bout of new school trepidation. But for now, summer awaits us. Glorious summer with its long days and sweltering temperatures and 5 million species of bugs. Yay.

Interesting aside about the AP article (you know, the one that stated my age as 31!!): I've received several emails from virtual strangers who saw the article at one place or another. One person grew up in my town back in the 40's and wants to know how the town is doing. Another went to high school with me. Another thinks we may be related. I'm just wondering if Dave the Van Man is going to call. It's been very cool to get most of these emails. I guess that the ridiculousness of writing about a site in an online article but not linking the site doesn't stop some people from using good old Google to find the site in question.

I have some blog catching up to do so this post was just supposed to be a quickie to say congrats to my getting-older-by-the-minute daughter. But I'm kind and caring, so I'll share with you the two things I did get around to reading today, both of them brilliant in their own way.

Bill gives another course in Moonbattery 101. It features two other bloggers, burritos, Peter Fonda and some classic moonbat scenarios.

Gerard Vanderleun is a must read today. Sample from his biting piece of satire, Berners-Lee: Internet 2 Will Deploy Ahead of Schedule, Winer to Own 1:

In the second announcement, and more exciting announcement, Tim Berners-Lee said that the old Internet was being given to Dave Winer, of Userland fame. "From this day forward," Berners-Lee said, "Dave will own Internet 1, and all sites therein. Dave will immediately be granted root access to all servers, and will be allowed to decide who can be on his Internet, and what they will be allowed to say. As a provision of this grant, Dave understands that he not be allowed on Internet 2 at all."

The next sentence is killer.

I'm pretty behind in my blog reading this week. If you've got a good link, drop it in the (now perma-linkable) comments.

Oh. Analog Mouse lead me to this great link: Heavy metal wear for babies. My favorite: Two Minutes to Bedtime.

Update: Rather Biased (which should be on your list of reads) confirms a scoop:

In an interview, CBSNews.com sales director David Ghiraldini verified the existence of the relationship but declined to discuss the partnership or its ethical ramifications for a news organization profiting from the sale of controversial political books, especially since CBS News isn't known for being particularly friendly with conservative authors.

Also: Pop-Up Jihad.

Allah said in the comments last night (see how handy the new comment permalink has become already!):

I've always pictured you that way. Late 1970s, beat-up car, proto-Benatar haircut, maybe a cigarette between your lips -- and "More Than a Feeling" coming through so damn sweetly on the 8-track.
Sometimes I imagine you're wearing a baseball shirt with a decal of the Boston album cover on it. It depends.

Well, I didn't drive until 1980 (didn't turn 18 until summer after graduation), but Allah sort of sums it up.

First car: 1973 Oldsmobile Omega. Beat up, dented and a hideous shade of space-age blue. I think I did a pass on the Benatar haircut, as she had that frizzy/curly Flashdance thing going on in 1980 (three years before Flashance even came out. Trendsetter!). What I was going for was pure Joan Jett, which was really like a feminine version of the Joey Ramone cut. I guess it worked because people often told me I looked just like Joan Jett. Although if they were really drunk, they mistook me for Joey Ramone.

Damn, I was so cool with those bangs plastered down to my face, cemented there by virtue of hair gel or, when the hair gel was empty, toothpaste. Yes, toothpaste. Did wonders for that sleeked down look. Interestingly enough, in the mid 80's toothpaste would be used to spike up hair, ala Billy Idol. Such a versatile product. Did you know that you could use white toothpaste to remove green ice pop stains from your kitchen counter? I kid you not.

Big digression. Sorry.

Anyhow. I was a big fan of the baseball jersey band tees. They made up about 90% of my wardrobe. I loved the way the iron-on pictures would crack after two or three washing, giving the shirt that lived-in look so no one would ever guess that you were a new (poser) fan of a band; the cracks in the shirt made it seem like you were there from the early days. You know, back when Joan Jett was a Runaway. Even though the only thing you knew about the Runaways was from the gossip you read about them in Cream Magazine, because there wasn't a record store within forty miles that sold that kind of music. Heavy metal? Yep. Disco? Sure. Bleach blonde tough chicks? Think of the children!! Damn. Cherrie Curry, Joan Jett and Lita Ford. I know some men who would give up their lives for a few minutes alone with that trio.

Where was I? Oh, the car. Granted, the Omega wasn't such a "cool" car but that's ok, because it didn't last long. When I was teaching my younger sister how to drive, she obviously forgot that a red light means you should stop, so she did not stop. Unfortunately, the woman coming at us from the right knew very well that her green light meant go and go she did. Right into us. We held a dignified memorial service for the Omega and I held a grudge against my sister for years.

Oh, I was wearing a ZZ Top baseball jersey the day the Omega was murdered.

I actually did have a jersey with the Boston album cover on it. It was one of those thick, cumbersome iron-on decals. Not the kind that cracked easily; it was the kind that never faded, never wore out. When you moved, the decal moved, as if it were an entity apart from the shirt. When you sat down, the decal would cause your shirt to sort of pop out, so it looked like you had boobs at your midriff. I could often be seen trying to push the decal part of the shirt up a bit, so I would appear to have some kind of bosom. I teased the boys with the warped spaceship of the Boston album cover. Anyone trying to cop a feel would only get a handful of iron-on.

Yea, I had no boobs back in the day. They used to call me flatsy, which was better than what they called my neighbor, who also had no boobs to speak of (hey, she's a carpenter's dream: flat as board and easy to screw!). Well, that was in junior high and my neighbor eventually grew a nice set of ta-tas that looked suspiciously like wadded up tissues. Me, I waited until the 90's to get my share of breasts, after I had kids. I might have been a really late bloomer, but at least I didn't go by the name Kleenex for years.

So what does all this have to do with anything? Nothing, really. Just reminiscing and wondering if it's too late in life to go get that Joan Jett haircut again.

You now have the ability to link to individual comments, in case you want to single out a particular commenter for his/her brilliance and/or moonbattery.

However, in the process of installing the proper code, I messed something up so now some of the comments are bold and I'll be damned if I can figure out what the hell happened.

Take the good with the bad. You get comment permalinks (as requested by millions!), but the annoying bold will stick around a while.

Very, very busy at work today, hence the light posting. Came home and decided to have family time at the mall tonight, where we spent four hours feeding the economy. We are such good Americans. Well, I'm trying to justify the money we spent tonight, so humor me.

I have some really important things to do right now. Like download a few of these.

Random thoughts:

I've been playing with the Leftinator, which just cracks me up, yet saddens me at the same time when I realize that there are people who write paragraphs just like this - and mean it.

Clearly, Colin Powell's parade of lies is solid evidence of the flagrant lies promulgated by the political donor class. Presumably, Bush’s argument for war brings about a McCarthyism which threatens everything we hold dear. Perhaps for the first time since the late 1940s, the pro-Sharon neoconservative cabal brings forth the police state which has come to pass. It appears that the influence of Leo Strauss leads our attention to the final subjugation of the Middle East, beginning with the $90bn invasion of Iraq.

Heh, I think someone left this as a comment over at Jeff's.

After the dreaded news today, I kept thinking where do we go from here? Which was a mistake, as I spent the rest of the day with Axl Rose's voice singing where do we go, where do we go now, where do we go (ayayayayayayayayayay). Please. Make it stop.

So I'm really liking that Franz Ferdinand song. See also, Velvet Revolver, Jet, Dashboard Confessional and Brand New.

Before you go and say anything about my "modern" musical tastes (because everyone knows I'm an old fart, I'll have you know that I was rockin' out to Boston in the car on the way home from the mall. I know my kids and husband were snickering, but they just don't understand what the classic in classic rock means. But the thing about Boston is, it just doesn't sound right if it's not on 8 track.

As for the rest of the world:

Hope dangles on a string
Like slow spinning redemption
Winding in and winding out
The shine of it has caught my eye

The South Korean hostage has been killed.

Kim Sun-il was 33 years old. He had three college degrees. He had a family and many friends who remember him as a determined, quiet man.

Kim Sun-il was a victim of the war on terror, a victim of the enemy we must defeat. Faster, please.

[My leftie readers may now commence with the "He was killed because......" cliches]

First, let's talk about context. Two different sites linked to this post of mine (no, I will not do those sites the favor of giving links. They both seem a bit obsessed with me, one to the point of frightening me just a bit).

In their rants against me, the authors of both sites choose to sift through my words and come up with something palatable to their readership, if not entirely true. What they refer to is this passage:

Right now, in my anger, I want to go to war with the entire Middle East, save Israel. I want to annihilate them. I know it is unreasonable and I know it isn't right. I know it's a horrible thought, but it's there, at the tip of my brain, trying to get me to shout it out to the world. Kill. Them. All.

They did not reference the rest of the post at all, which would have given their readers a better feel for my anger and a sense of how raw it was at the time I wrote that. Both authors also chose to gloss right over the fact that I admitted the thought was horrible and unreasonable. Perhaps these two men have never had a gut reaction to terrorism like I have. In fact, I'm willing to bet they never had a reaction like mine at all because, judging from their sites, we're only getting what we deserve.

Perhaps I might have stayed at their sites and argued my position in the comments, if not for the tone. One site's author and commenters are so hateful towards me there's just no point in trying to defend myself. The other author, who once declared that he was devoting his entire blog to disseminating my words, parlays his rant against me into a rant against Jews and Christians and, well, I lost interest in what he had to say pretty darn quick.

He also says this when he links to me: Anyone who claims that anti-Semitism, religious intolerance and extremism are basic tenets of Islam is talking out of their ass.

Well, I never said that. I have said over and over again that the so-called religion the terrorists of the Middle East are practicing is a warped, twisted version of Islam, defined to their own benefit. But don't let that stop you from your baseless conjecture, Josh.

He also accuses me of "murderous indifference" because (and I don't know he comes up with this idea):

She's harboring that belief that seems so common to Americans, that the United States is an indestructible giant; that other countries only exist because we allow them to exist and that all sovereignty but ours is conditional on our approval. Michele reacts to every headline as if her reaction to the death of an American is somehow more significant than the reaction of an Iraqi woman to the death of one of her countrymen.

I hope you are reading this Josh. Read it very slowly, one word at a time and try to comprehend. This is a personal weblog. I write about my personal feelings. I have never interviewed an Iraqi woman about the death of an Iraqi because I am here. Home. In America. I am not a roving reporter and I am not required to seek out and publish all aspects of a story. This is a place where I note my reactions to what's happening in my small world. That does not make my reactions any more important than someone else's. It just makes them visible.

I think - and I've said this before - that Josh and his kind are in a state of denial about the war on terror. They see the war on terror as something we started. They see us as the aggressor and enemy. They see us attacking other nations, they do not see us defending ourselves against terrorists. You and I see a war against the kind of people who would fly fully loaded airplanes into tall buildings; they see it as the U.S. oppressing a religion. It's a shame, really.

When Joshua accuses me of murderous indifference and then says that "Michele and her kind" are throwing punches that will drag this conflict on and on, I bite my lip in frustration.

I see it the other way. When I see people who side with the terrorists, people who think that the car bombers in Iraqi are just innocent people defending their homeland, people who think that Palestinians have the right to walk onto school buses and blow them up, people who think America brought 9/11 upon themselves, I see what I think are the people who are dragging this conflict on.; people who do not recognize a war, who are blind to the fact that there are several groups of zealots out there who want us dead.

I really want to know what Joshua means by murderous indifference, though. That's sticking in my craw a bit.

Donald Sensing wrote a great piece on ways the war on terror could end. He lists four different scenarios. Basically:

• We win and democracy prevails in the Middle East
• The terrorist win and radical Islam prevails in the Middle East, which now absent Israel.
• A massive attack on the U.S. prompts an all out war
• The war on terror drags on forever, with nobody winning or losing

At the end of Donald Sensing's post, he states: Does anyone doubt we must win this war? And does anyone still doubt that we really are at war?

I can answer those questions for you . Yes and yes.

One could surmise that even the "esteemed" members of the 9/11 commission fail to realize the extent of the war we are waging; that there are those who do not realize what could happen if we didn't continue this fight. And it's not just a fight with Iraq - anyone who thinks Iraq encompasses the entire war of terror is not paying attention. Witness Iran:

Some people remember that the folks running Iran today were the "students" who seized the U.S. embassy in 1979 and held 52 American men and women hostage for more than a year, while President Carter fiddled.

Witness Saudi Arabia:

Al-Qaeda says it got help kidnapping American contractor Paul Johnson the New Jersey man from people inside the Saudi security forces.
The militants say sympathizers gave them uniforms to help them capture the American.

And witness countries who continually wage war against their own:

The longer the warfare is allowed to continue, the more a next-few-months mass starvation scenario is locked into place by a combination of public health conditions, and logistics limits on delivering aid during the monsoon season when roads become impassible. This deadly scenario, I believe, is exactly what the government of Sudan wants: Having cleared thousands of square miles and burned hundreds of villages of black Africans, it now hopes to starve the victims so they can never return to claim their land and reestablish their families.

Is Darfur not part of the war on terror? I would think it is. Genocide is just another form of terrorism. And you can bet your last American cent that we would suffer the same fate as those in Darfur if our enemies have their way. If we are going to fight the war on terror, we have to fight it for everyone, not just us.

But first, we must all recognize that such a war exists. And then, we must all agree that the war needs to be won. That it even comes into question is deplorable. And it does come into question. There are those who dismiss the war on terror. As stated above, there are those who think we are evil aggressors. There are those who would put a halt to this important war we are fighting.

And they say I am guilty of murderous indifference? Perhaps they are guilty of projection.

Still here, still alive, mostly. Diagnosis: bronchitis and a sinus infection.

I haven't looked at the news much today so I've gotten nothing for you there. In fact, all I've got right now is fever dreams that inlcuded Atrios, the Olsen twins and a flapping, giant bird with wings made out of plastic tiles. That could be easily explained by the noise the damn plastic vertical blinds we inhereted with the house make when the wind blows. And the wind has been blowing something fierce today. So the clack-clack-clack of the flapping vertical blinds turned into the clacking of giant bird wings in my dream. As for Atrios and the Olsen twins, some things are better left unanalyzed.

I think I'll do a double dose of NyQuil now in an effort to just black out and not dream at all. I shudder at the thought of repeating that one scene with Ashley and Atrios and the bird's beak....

If anyone out there is a WSJ subscriber and can send me a copy of today's article on Eliot Spitzer and Paxil, I'd be ever so grateful.

Update: Got it! Thanks to everyone who sent me the article. As promised, I am ever so grateful.

More on Spitzer v. Paxil later, if I can gather up the mental energy needed.

I'm sick. That hacking cough, burning chest, can't decide whether I'm freezing or burning up kind of sick. The kind of sick that says Everybody feel sorry for me as I lay here on the couch coughing up a lung and drowning in wadded up tissuesl Except no one will come near me. I am a leper.

I haven't been sick since I had mono back in January. So of course, following the standard rule of my life which states that All Matters Will Be Complicated, I have to use a sick day on a week in which I already need to take two days off. Can't miss the kids' graduations, even if I have to stand in the back of the auditorium and run out to the lobby every time another piece of my lung wants to work its way up my throat.

If today is the first day of summer, then it must also be my baby sister's birthday. The "baby" turns 35 today. So, in the same week that my son gradutates from elementary school and my daughter graduates from middle school, my little sister turns an age that sounds very adult like. 34? Eh, still a kid. 35? Hey, here's that AARP application! Now trade in those Judas Priest albums for some Barry Manilow. And put away the Playstations, for crying out loud. Don't you have better ways to spend your time? Like watching repeats of the Lawrence Welk show?

I think if my sister and I combined the respective ages of our general maturity level, we still wouldn't reach adulthood. So I'm not really worried about her giving up her soul to the old age devil today. In fact, she'll probably even deny getting older. Besides, if we go by the AP article, she'd only be 24.

Anyhow, nothing like some milestones to start off your summer with the image of a cane and housecoat hanging over your head while you're laying on the couch unable to muster up the strength to call in sick. I'm not sick, I'm just old! That revelation causes me to check my boobs. Whew. They aren't saggging down to my knees. I knew my grandma was old when she needed a sling intstead of a bra. Looks like I'm still in bra country. And I haven't developed that baggy chicken skin under my arms yet. Sure, grandma was about 70 when that happened to her, but when you're 41 and feeling the start of menopause already, 70 may as well be 50.

I decided not to tackle any news right now. I don't have the mind for it. Nor do I have a stronge enough constitution today to put up with the backlash that comes from blogging about the news. Odds are good that someone will drop a comment on this post asking why I'm not writing about this or that, the this or that being something the commenter believes I am just not devoting enough time to so therefore I must not care about it. I've a form email ready for that, which states that when the commenter in question pays me to cover the news that he or she wants printed, reviewed and disseminated, then I'll be happy to cover the beat they have assigned me. Otherwise they will just have to settle for five paragraphs about a chest cold and old age.

Happy Birthday, little sis. You're really lucky I don't have the energy to dig up baby pictures of you.

And so, DJ"s baseball season is over. An 8-6 loss, compounded by his striking out three times today, has not left my son in a very good mood.

Good for me that he's at his father's house now, eh?

This was definitely the most enjoyable Little League season we've experienced since DJ has been playing. His team had a great year, he had a great year and his coaches were absolutely wonderful. We're already looking forward to the fall league.

Thanks to everyone who cheered DJ and his team on this year with me.

Update: This AP article about bloggers covering the conventions states my age as 31, so I won't even bitch about the fact that these articles never link to the sites they write about it and that the reporter pulled one sentence out of a half hour conversation.

31! I just lost ten years!

We'll be at the World Series today, watching DJ's team play for their league's title.

Go Red!