Now, this is scary.... A little later in the conversation, Brownback (a U.S. Senator) actually said, "We declared war," in relation to the invasion of Iraq. Unbelievable! Let's make this clear: WAR WAS NOT DECLARED!!!!!!!!!!!! When I was a kid, there was this word I sometimes heard: "Yutz". As in "What a yutz!" Well, I propose we bring it back, specifically for Brownback. Yutz!

I tuned in the Republican presidential candidates' forum on PBS, in time to see Ray Suarez ask a question. Apparently, Sam Brownback thought the question came from someone named Race Juarez, as he said, "thank you, Race." I just thought it was funny.

A few weeks ago, we were watching Jeopardy , and one of the questions was about George Orwell's 1984 . I said, "I really should read that one of these days." A few days later, we were at a tag sale and Beth spotted a paperback of the book for a buck. So she bought it for me. Now I've read it, finally, quite a lot of years after I should have done. I had read Animal Farm a long time ago, but I had just never gotten around to reading 1984 . Now I'm sad that I let it wait for so long. So I provided one of my little capsule reviews to the book store on Wednesday. But since the blog allows me to spend as many words as I want, I'm going to publish a somewhat longer review here: Stylistically and structurally, Orwell's 1984 is a masterpiece. In addition, it is a triumph of imagination. Orwell imagined a world so thoroughly as to make it seem less a fictional setting than an alternate reality. His book, while fairly short, is as complete as could be hoped for. T...

Last Saturday, I went to a White Park in Concord to listen to John Edwards as he made a campaign stop. Elizabeth was there and said her piece before the John spoke. Their kids were all there too. Going back... I started my day with Beth turning on the DVD of Bobby . It was early, and I didn't really want to be awake yet, so I was sort of fading in and out of consciousness. I wasn't paying especially close attention to the movie, but I was able to basically follow the beginning of it, and I was able to get a bit of a sense of RFK, from the interspersed footage of him on the campaign trail. I got enough of a sense of RFK that I was thinking that he really reminded me of Kucinich. (Or is it the other way around?) I'll be the first to tell you that I don't know a whole lot about RFK. I know he was the brother of John and Ted. I know that he was JFK's attorney general. I know he was running for president and was assassinated by Sirhan Sirhan. And I know that he did a ...