The boss forwarded this to me, from New York City, where he is attending a conference. It is an essay, or a transcript (I'm not sure which) from Keith Olbermann, former sportscaster and only journalist in America today with the cojones to point at The Shrub and say "The emporer is buck nekkid."
"Sept. 11, 2006 | 8:32 p.m. ET

This hole in the ground

Half a lifetime ago, I worked in this now-empty space. And for 40 days after the attacks, I worked here again, trying to make sense of what happened, and was yet to happen, as a reporter.

All the time, I knew that the very air I breathed contained the remains of thousands of people, including four of my friends, two in the planes and -- as I discovered from those "missing posters" seared still into my soul -- two more in the Towers.

And I knew too, that this was the pyre for hundreds of New York policemen and firemen, of whom my family can claim half a dozen or more, as our ancestors.

I belabor this to emphasize that, for me this was, and is, and always shall be, personal.

And anyone who claims that I and others like me are "soft,"or have "forgotten" the lessons of what happened here is at best a grasping, opportunistic, dilettante and at worst, an idiot whether he is a commentator, or a Vice President, or a President.

However, of all the things those of us who were here five years ago could have forecast -- of all the nightmares that unfolded before our eyes, and the others that unfolded only in our minds -- none of us could have predicted this.

Five years later this space is still empty.

Five years later there is no memorial to the dead.

Five years later there is no building rising to show with proud defiance that we would not have our America wrung from us, by cowards and criminals.

Five years later this country's wound is still open.

Five years later this country's mass grave is still unmarked.

Five years later this is still just a background for a photo-op.

It is beyond shameful.

At the dedication of the Gettysburg Memorial -- barely four months after the last soldier staggered from another Pennsylvania field -- Mr. Lincoln said, "we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract."

Lincoln used those words to immortalize their sacrifice.

Today our leaders could use those same words to rationalize their reprehensible inaction. "We cannot dedicate, we can not consecrate, we can not hallow this ground." So we won't.

Instead they bicker and buck pass. They thwart private efforts, and jostle to claim credit for initiatives that go nowhere. They spend the money on irrelevant wars, and elaborate self-congratulations, and buying off columnists to write how good a job they're doing instead of doing any job at all.

Five years later, Mr. Bush, we are still fighting the terrorists on these streets. And look carefully, sir, on these 16 empty acres. The terrorists are clearly, still winning.

And, in a crime against every victim here and every patriotic sentiment you mouthed but did not enact, you have done nothing about it.

And there is something worse still than this vast gaping hole in this city, and in the fabric of our nation. There is its symbolism of the promise unfulfilled, the urgent oath, reduced to lazy execution.

The only positive on 9/11 and the days and weeks that so slowly and painfully followed it was the unanimous humanity, here, and throughout the country. The government, the President in particular, was given every possible measure of support.

Those who did not belong to his party -- tabled that.

Those who doubted the mechanics of his election -- ignored that.

Those who wondered of his qualifications -- forgot that.

History teaches us that nearly unanimous support of a government cannot be taken away from that government by its critics. It can only be squandered by those who use it not to heal a nation's wounds, but to take political advantage.

Terrorists did not come and steal our newly-regained sense of being American first, and political, fiftieth. Nor did the Democrats. Nor did the media. Nor did the people.

The President -- and those around him -- did that.

They promised bi-partisanship, and then showed that to them, "bi-partisanship" meant that their party would rule and the rest would have to follow, or be branded, with ever-escalating hysteria, as morally or intellectually confused, as appeasers, as those who, in the Vice President's words yesterday, "validate the strategy of the terrorists."

They promised protection, and then showed that to them "protection" meant going to war against a despot whose hand they had once shaken, a despot who we now learn from our own Senate Intelligence Committee, hated al-Qaida as much as we did.

The polite phrase for how so many of us were duped into supporting a war, on the false premise that it had 'something to do' with 9/11 is "lying by implication."

The impolite phrase is "impeachable offense."

Not once in now five years has this President ever offered to assume responsibility for the failures that led to this empty space, and to this, the current, curdled, version of our beloved country.

Still, there is a last snapping flame from a final candle of respect and fairness: even his most virulent critics have never suggested he alone bears the full brunt of the blame for 9/11.

Half the time, in fact, this President has been so gently treated, that he has seemed not even to be the man most responsible for anything in his own administration.

Yet what is happening this very night?

A mini-series, created, influenced -- possibly financed by -- the most radical and cold of domestic political Machiavellis, continues to be televised into our homes.

The documented truths of the last fifteen years are replaced by bald-faced lies; the talking points of the current regime parroted; the whole sorry story blurred, by spin, to make the party out of office seem vacillating and impotent, and the party in office, seem like the only option.

How dare you, Mr. President, after taking cynical advantage of the unanimity and love, and transmuting it into fraudulent war and needless death, after monstrously transforming it into fear and suspicion and turning that fear into the campaign slogan of three elections? How dare you -- or those around you -- ever "spin" 9/11?

Just as the terrorists have succeeded -- are still succeeding -- as long as there is no memorial and no construction here at Ground Zero.

So, too, have they succeeded, and are still succeeding as long as this government uses 9/11 as a wedge to pit Americans against Americans.

This is an odd point to cite a television program, especially one from March of 1960. But as Disney's continuing sell-out of the truth (and this country) suggests, even television programs can be powerful things.

And long ago, a series called "The Twilight Zone" broadcast a riveting episode entitled "The Monsters Are Due On Maple Street."

In brief: a meteor sparks rumors of an invasion by extra-terrestrials disguised as humans. The electricity goes out. A neighbor pleads for calm. Suddenly his car -- and only his car -- starts. Someone suggests he must be the alien. Then another man's lights go on. As charges and suspicion and panic overtake the street, guns are inevitably produced. An "alien" is shot -- but he turns out to be just another neighbor, returning from going for help. The camera pulls back to a near-by
hill, where two extra-terrestrials are seen manipulating a small device that can jam electricity. The veteran tells his novice that there's no need to actually attack, that you just turn off a few of the human machines and then, "they pick the most dangerous enemy they can find, and it's themselves."

And then, in perhaps his finest piece of writing, Rod Serling sums it up with words of remarkable prescience, given where we find ourselves tonight: "The tools of conquest do not necessarily come with bombs and explosions and fallout. There are weapons that are simply thoughts, attitudes, prejudices, to be found only in the minds of men.

"For the record, prejudices can kill and suspicion can destroy, and a thoughtless, frightened search for a scapegoat has a fallout all its own -- for the children, and the children yet unborn."

When those who dissent are told time and time again -- as we will be, if not tonight by the President, then tomorrow by his portable public chorus -- that he is preserving our freedom, but that if we use any of it, we are somehow un-American...When we are scolded, that if we merely question, we have "forgotten the lessons of 9/11"... look into this empty space behind me and the bi-partisanship upon which this administration also did not build, and tell me:

Who has left this hole in the ground?

We have not forgotten, Mr. President.

You have.

May this country forgive you."


And then there is this, from The Rude Pundit, who also went to Ground Zero to see the elephant President.

9/11/2006

Reporting From Ground Zero on the Fifth Anniversary of the Last Good Day:

Yesterday, on September 10, when he read that George W. Bush was going to lay a wreath down in the middle of the hole in the ground that was the World Trade Center twin towers, the Rude Pundit decided to head on down to Ground Zero to see his President in person. He expected massive crowds and a crazed media circus, because this was, after all, the President returning to the site of his iconic image, of the moment that cemented the nation on its present disastrous course. He had never seen Bush in the flesh and wanted to look on his actual physical form, get a measure of the man so many of us have spent so much time despising.

When he emerged from the subway through the WTC Path Station, the Rude Pundit was greeted by protesters, also expected. He saw drumming Buddhist monks and their monk-y wannabes drumming along flanked by large black balloons, behind a flag-draped coffin and signs demanding that the soldiers be brought home. Stopping a couple of young women in tight black shirts that read, in Arabic and English, "We will not be silent," the Rude Pundit asked, "Did you wear those intentionally? Because of the guy who couldn't get onto the plane?" They said they were aware of the incident, but, no, they wore the shirts because, indeed, they would not be silent.

The most protesters were from different groups calling for the "truth" about 9/11 to be revealed, the ones who, to varying degrees, believe the events of the day were supported and/or engineered by the U.S. government, the Israeli government, or some combination of them. Someone associated with the conspiracy-theorizing viral video sensation Loose Change gave the Rude Pundit a DVD of the film, which he will watch, as he told the guy, "skeptically." One 9/11 truth seeker was in a screaming fight with what can best be described as one of the "Crazed Old Coots For America," the various old guys decked out in American flag clothes and pro-Bush regalia spoiling for a fight. At least they didn't try to go toe to toe with the Grandmas For Peace, also there, also holding signs. One of the Grandmas said, "I just can't stand what Bush has done to us all, so I came down here to let him know."

Others there wanted freedom for Taiwan or pronounced the end of the world is nigh so it was time to get right with Jesus. One guy walked through the crowd screaming that homosexual soldiers rape Iraqi babies. It was hard to tell what side he was on.

Moving away from the station, looking for a place to watch the President do his wreath-laying solemnity, the Rude Pundit walked along the perimeter fence, looking around at all the security, the Secret Service with their tell-tale earpieces, the snipers on balconies and rooftops. Along the fence, people stared at mounted pictures of the day five years and a little over 12 hours ago. Every so often, there would be someone crying behind sunglasses or looking as if they had just finished or held back tears. Some wore pictures of loved ones on chains or shirts; some carried flyers that were reminiscent of the missing posters from back then. This time the flyers told short stories about the life of the dead person. One group wore name tags that said, "Surviving Family Member." It looked like two familes, one white, one Hispanic. They were being guided by an Asian woman who pointed out where each tower had stood. One of the Hispanic men posted a flyer over a "Post No Bills" sign. It was about his sister.

Walking past the lists of names that wrongly label everyone who died one of the "Heroes of 9/11" (sorry, but you don't get to be a hero just because you died at a certain place at a certain time unless you actually did something heroic), past Fire Station 10 and the soon-to-be open 9/11 Visitor's Center, the Rude Pundit was struck by how, compared to what he expected, very few people were actually there. Certainly not more than a couple of thousand. The President of the United States, the leader of the free world, the man who stood on the ruins and made such poignant promises to us, was going to be back at the ruins and, in as much as such numbers have meaning, on the eve of the fifth anniversary of the attacks. Shouldn't it have been packed? Shouldn't we have all stood shoulder to shoulder to watch? As pornographically as Bush exploits the event and makes Americans into victims, shouldn't more people have wanted to mourn with him? The Rude Pundit's seen more people out here on ordinary summer days.

He looked through the barrier fence down into the footprints of the towers. The long ramp that leads to the center of the pit had been theatrically lined with the flags of, one presumes, all the states and nations that lost people in the attacks. He heard bagpipes and saw honor guard, police and fire officials, and others down there. He thought about how small George Bush was going to seem from this vantage point, as close as one could get to the event without actually being inside. He was just going to be a teeny-tiny man in a great big hole, laying a wreath for America in a temporary reflecting pool.

Then NYPD officers, politely, to be sure, told all of us who stood there wanting to watch our President, some of whom wanted to mourn with him at least distantly, that we had to move out. The area was going to be secured. In fact, most of the perimeter would be secured and no one would be allowed close enough to the fence to see the President. No, the only way to truly see him would be to watch him on television. Where he wouldn't seem so teeny-tiny, so reduced in scale to the epic destruction that surrounded him. And, indeed, when you watch video of the event, with the Bushes, Mike Bloomberg, George Pataki, and Rudy Giuliani lined up and walking down the ramp, they forcibly look out of scale to the vast construction site around them. However, from anyone who could see from above, see the actual context of the event, they were very, very small.

The Rude Pundit walked out of the secure area as they put up barricades. Now, with the fence itself off limits, the crowds thinned out even further. Maybe this was the intention, for George Bush to have a private moment of mourning, except, of course, for all the TV cameras there. After thinking about heading to an Irish pub off Fulton Street where he often hopelessly flirts with the raven-haired Jersey girl behind the bar who can yank a tap like nobody's business, he decided to head home. The train station was closed because the President was going to be near it. So the Rude Pundit walked uptown a bit, past the protesters, past the press vans, past the police, and he hailed a cab.

It was only 9/10, after all. And it looked like it might rain.

She piles all of her clothes on the bed, and jumps off.

That pile is all of the clothing owned by me or the RLA. The random carnage surrounding the pile is everything else that ever lived in our one closet.

I had a shit fit this weekend which nicely coincided with the big Elfa sale at the Container Store, and the results will be posted as soon as tomorrow, if the installation goes as well as I anticipate.

I also got to play with my Dremel this weekend, and I went around the house like a mad woman, cutting the heads off of all the protruding nails in the terrazzo. The former owners of our little Casita des Zapatos put nasty beige carpeting over all of the terrazzo floors. While I was able to rip up the carpets, even before we moved in (first thing I did when I got the keys and the RLA left me alone in the house for a couple of hours), I've never been able to remove the nails without tearing up huge gouts of terrazzo. Since it's hard enough to find someone to polish and seal the stuff, much less someone who can do repairs, I left the nails in (they're only around the edges of the rooms). But yesterday, armed with my Dremel and a stack of extra reinforced cutting disks, I got rid of the nail heads and left smooth little steel dots that are virtually invisible.

I am woman, armed with power tools. Rahr.

The current Rolling Stone cover story is Bob Dylan. The number one Billboard Album is (for the first time in his career) Bob Dylan's newest, Modern Times. There's a new i-pod commercial featuring The Bob. The New York Times' article. The general concensus seems to be that Bob Is Hot.


I feel cheated and dirty. I've loved this man for most of my life and been ridiculed for my obsession, and now he's hot? I mean, I've always been way ahead of the trend, the curve, the whatever, but this is just crazy. Now? Now that Bob is 65 and raggedier than ever, NOW he's hot?

How unfair is this? Now that he and I are creaking into geriatricville, shouldn't I finally have the old goat to myself? Shouldn't my imaginary boyfriend and I get peace at this stage in our lives? Shouldn't he finally have enough time to come to my house for dinner?

No. NOW he's hot. GAH. So fucking unfair. And get this quote from Rolling Stone:

When I ask Dylan what [Alicia] Keys did "to get into your pantheon," he only chuckles at my precious question. "I remember seeing her on the Grammys. I think I was on the show with her, I didn't meet her or anything. But I said to myself, 'There's nothing about that girl I don't like.'"

Oh, girlchild. Do you even know? Do you realize? If The Bob ever said that about me, I would voluntarily allow my ticket to be punched, just so I could have that engraved on my tombstone.

(Heaves a huge sigh) Well, the whole freaking interview is wonderful. He talks about everything from the current crummy state of recording technology to baseball. He's a Derek Jeter fan, and except for the fact that Jeter plays for the Yankees, who could argue? The Bob claims to be a Detroit fan, but I remember that he wrote a song about Catfish Hunter, another NY Yankee. I suspect that the Bob may be a closet Yankee fan, and that might just be the only thing he's ever said or done to make me love him a little less... well that and the whole Born-Again Christian phase. But I've always believed that he only did that to lose money during his divorce from Sarah.

And don't get me started on Sarah. I've said before and I'll say again, it wouldn't have mattered to me what the man did, if he'd written Blood on the Tracks for me, to get me back? It would have worked. I'd have taken him back in a New York minute.

Anyway. After all these years, it seems that the rest of the world has "discovered" Bob. Fine. Now go away and leave him to me.

Wow. What a rotten episode last night was, and only partly because my boy Vinny-the-Loon got sent home. Not that he didn't deserve it, of course. I mean, if couture means hand made, I don't think they mean hand-glued. And why, oh why, oh why did he listen to the voice that told him to put a beige hopsack flower in the middle of the back?

There was plenty in the margins, as it were, to keep me amused: Laura's hand-printed sign that warned "Fleur Champs [sic] making session in progress", the scene of Vincent, buried under a pile of blankets, calling Jeffrey a fuck (high point of the night, IMO), any of the footage of Paris, although why the editors felt the need to use the same bilious green and yellow filters that they use for New York City on the City of Light, I will never know, and the mystery woman on the barge who had a huge tribal tat on her forearm.

But the challenge, to make a couture dress in two days, was patently ridiculous. The footage of Jeffrey-the-Pinheaded-Shmoo cackling wildly about being allowed, nay ordered to make a couture dress was unnecessary and insane. Equally unnecessary was all the footage of Jeffrey trash talking all the other designers and their work.

May I interupt myself at this juncture to say how much I loathe that hack, that creature, that monstrosity? And the fact that he's being given a winner's redemption arc is making me toss my Tangerine Martinis. He doesn't deserve it!

Anyway. They get the challenge and they go shopping in a Parisian fabric store. Jeffrey-the-Pinheaded-Shmoo buys two variations of Ronald McDonald yellow and orange and black plaid. In cotton. Uli buys a dove grey/lavender solid. Kayne buys golden brown ombre, gold foil mesh, brown velvet ribbons, gold lace. Laura buys a black wool knit and a lot of white organdy. Vinny buys gold/ivory brocade and ivory satin. Michael buys blue something, I couldn't tell what kind of fabric exactly. Silk, probably, but not a charmeuse and not anything as nubbly and stiff as a dupioni.

Another aside here: color response and psychology. Yellow is cheap. Orange is cheap. The more pure the color, the simpler it is to describe, the more it appeals to the unintellectual, lower-income masses. Think about it. McDonald's and Burger King use a lot of yellow and orange and bright, pure blue. Simple colors for the kinds of things that you buy with pocket change. Kayne and Jeffrey-the-Pinheaded-Shmoo used yellow or variations thereof.

The more complex the color, the more words it takes to describe it, the more educated and wealthy the person that color appeals to. Ralph Lauren? Deep, blood reds, dark wine-bottle greens. The only fabric that came close to that kind of complexity was Uli's greyish-lavenderish chiffon.

Black and navy blue are power colors. Authority colors. Judges wear black robes. Police wear navy blue uniforms. Laura's maid's uniform YSL... was it YSL?? It was some old respected designer or another... rip-off was black and white. Very dramatic, I thought. I also thought it looked like couture, and was striking in its simplicity. Elegant, even. Unfortunately for all concerned, it traveled back to New York about as well as Angela's outfit traveled to Paris, which is to say, not at all well.

Blue is the most popular color in the spectrum. More people list blue as their favorite color than any other. Blue is the color of the sky, it is the color of water and it is the color of the Virgin Mary. It is calming and peaceful and nobody doesn't like it. It's the color that Michael used.

And then there is the non-color of sand and nothingness that Vincent used. Let's face it. I love(d) Vincent. I GOT Vincent. I respected Vincent... don't ask me why. But this week? He deserved to go. We got some footage of him, and some interviews from the other designers revealing that Vincent did the Daniel Franco shuffle. Bad. Very, very bad. We saw him being snarky. Not so bad, considering the jerky shit Jeffrey-the-Pinheaded-Shmoo says or said: specifically the shit about who cares if Kayne gets sent home or hurt.

Vincent glued his dress together. 'Nuff said about that. He also had to be the smarmiest ass-kisser ever, even more so than Satan-ino licking the toes of Nicky Hilton, when he was sucking up (and is there a stronger description that I can use?) to Catherine Malandrino... and what's up with that bitch, too? I mean, she savaged Angela last week, told her she was just from another planet, and then hires her to work her (Catherine's) New York Fashion Week show? (Makes derisive French noise.) I don't get it.

So. They all make pretty unimpressive dresses. They're nice, but not great. They get their French models and they head off to a barge on the Seine for their runway/party. Somebody throws eggs at them while they are walking, and Michael's dress gets spattered. This whole thing is left unresolved. Who threw them? Why? (Oh, well, let's see: cameras, Americans, beautiful people hoofing it along the Rue? Can't imagine) Were there any repercussions?

The models walk, and walk like real models, something that Kayne proceeds to gush to the models about in another piece of footage that should have been left on the cutting room floor. Can you say obsequious?

Catherine scores the dresses, they continue their par-tay, they fly home to NYC, they re-fit the dresses for the New York models and they walk again. Richard Fucking Tyler is the guest judge, and although he is a FAB-ulous designer and all, boyfriend needs to learn how to shampoo-rinse-repeat. GAH! His hair was as greasy and stringy and nasty as the Great Satan-ino's. And how awful was this episode that I have had to invoke his name twice? Once more and he'll show up, Beetlejuice-like.

And before I do the dress-by-dress, let me say that I thought they ALL were pretty uninspired and unattractive.

Kayne's corset top has one very interesting detail: the back lacing is asymetrical. The gold mesh, with the gold lace with the beading and the brown velvet ribbon over the boning: it's all just too much. Nina Garcia invokes the dreaded "The taste level just is not there." Michael Kors loves the ombre skirt and notes that you don't even see it with all the other crap heaped on top.

You all know that I love me some excess. In fact, I think I used to have a t-shirt that said "Wretched Excess is Just About Enough". But in all honesty, Kors is right. It IS just too much of everything, except taste and restraint. There isn't a hint of either of those two things in sight.

Uli has made the Same Fucking Dress. Again. Except in one color and with beaded lace on the halter top. For some reason, this has the judges just pissing themselves over it. The oohs, the aaahs. "I don't see her wearing flip-flops with this!" coos Michael? Nina? Heidi? One of them, I don't have TIVO, and it doesn't really matter. One of them.

Vincent's dress is awful and I don't want to talk about it. Nina points out that it would have looked better backwards, and what more is there to say than that, really?

Laura's dress gets slammed for being derivative, stark, somber and looking like a French maid. The judges attacked her collar saying that it could have been more alive, and it was... in Paris. Maybe if she'd stuffed some tissue between the layers of organdy?

Michael's dress is a serious piece of architecture, and he is decidedly unhappy with the workmanship. He has (for the very first time, he confides to the camera) done ruching. A lot of ruching. An entire top worth of it, and he is not at all pleased with his own handwork. The judges point out that the sculptural lines of the top do not need the roundy parts on the top (one of them refers to these as "the bunny ears") and, in fact, when the bunny ears are folded down, the dress comes alive and probably could have won.

But it didn't. No. Jeffrey-the-Pinheaded-Shmoo takes back to back wins and becomes (he says) the first contestant in PR history (all both seasons of it) to win a challenge when already in possession of immunity. Thankfully, there will be no further immunity. His dress is yellow plaid on plaid. He claims that his inspiration was the Statue of Liberty. I suppose I should throw Jeffrey-the-Pinheaded-Shmoo a bone here, and acknowledge that he knows that France gave the Statue of Liberty to America, and that makes her a French inspiration... I suppose.

I see no relationship to the SOL at all, except that she is wearing a floor-length toga, and Jeffrey-the-Pinheaded-Shmoo has made a floor length gown... with a slit that goes so high we know what the models had for lunch. Say it with me, fans "Entirely too much tootie!" Maybe a pair of matching knickers would have been in order? There is some sort of folderol going on in the back. There are straps and strings and things hanging off. There is the slit that goes on forever. There is not much else, except the gloating and gloating and gloating of Jeffrey-the-Pinheaded-Shmoo.

And, oh yeah, Vincent and Laura are the bottom two, and my martini glass is at the ready for throwing at the TV if it's Laura getting the auf. But it isn't. Vinny the Loon goes away, too soon for me, and not soon enough for everyone else out in TV land.

There is also the One Big Tease. A preview which shows 1) the announcement that there will be not one, but twospecial guests next week, and 2) Laura having a nervous (pregnant, hormonal) breakdown and telling Tim that she just can't design for the Olsen twins??? WTF?

The OLSEN twins? OK, so the blonde one is a "fashion icon" (bwahahahahahah) but the dark, very very anorexic one? Puh-leeze. Since when has dumpster-diving homeless person layering been chic?

Till next week, sweetiedarlings, keep your scissors sharp.

Actually, I have a new drug. It's called a Cosmopolitan, made with Stirrings mixer, and Absolut Ruby Red Vodka.

I'm thinking about it right now, because I'm in my count down to Project Runway mode. Watching PR is a ritual, and that ritual begins with me not paying attention to what I'm doing because I'm thinking about how in just a few short hours I'll be getting my PR/Tim Gunn fix.

The ritual continues when I get home and toss together my shaker of drinkies, and a dinner to cushion the blow of them. Feed the RLA, the fish, the cat, the dogs and myself. Sip the first of many Cosmos.

Then it's on to the bedroom to take off my school clothes and put on the fuzzy bathrobe. (OOOOOH. Fuzzy Bathrobe.) Wash face. Consider doing a mud or peel-off mask. Consider accessorizing the the Fuzzy Bathrobe with the Bunny Slippers.

Hey! It's a FASHION SHOW, people.

We are into the home stretch, hurricane-seasonwise. September is the month of heaviest storm activity. So far this month, no actual storms here in Miami, just unrelenting rain. Which is actually kind of nice. Everything gets very green, and all the shrubbery gets extra-thick and the grass grows so fast you can almost watch it get taller. If it weren't raining too hard to see across the yard.

There is a newly named storm out east in the ocean. Florence. Tropical Storm Florence. There is a very dark part of me that considers this a bad omen. Florence is my mother's name. I have this uncomfortable feeling that that Florence, should it change course and become a hurricane, could take my Florence away.

I went to visit my mummy this weekend. She can usually make one coherent sentence per visit. It's sometimes a sad thing, like when she announced "I don't know where that is. I'll have to ask Max where he put it." Sometimes its a wonderful thing, like the day she looked around and said "Life is beautiful."

This weekend, though, it was a mean thing, and it made me cry. She wasn't opening her eyes. She didn't seem to know I was there. I held her hand and talked to her. Then I petted her head and she pulled away from me and snapped "Don't do that with my hair."

Great.

I'm going to make myself a cup of hot tea and consider the piles on paper on my desk and what options I have for dealing with them.