Robert Iger is why the Yankees lost. 

 … I wouldn’t normally ask you to read a long piece by Joan Didion in The New York Review of Books, you’re supposed to be working, after all – nose to the grindstone!  But this one’s good.  And it’s time-saving.  Because Didion extracts Cheney from (among other things) all those books you said you were going to read:  The One Percent Doctrine, Richard Clarke’s Against All Enemies, The Halliburton Agenda, Hans Blix’s Disarming Iraq, etc. 

I’m partial to her subtle smackdowns:

His own official spoken remarks so defy syntactical analysis as to suggest that his only intention in speaking is to further obscure what he thinks.  Possibly the most well-remembered statement he ever made (after “Big-time“) was that he did not serve in the Vietnam War because he had “other priorities.” 

And this – Didion revisits a discussion between Cheney and Colin Powell (September ’02) where Powell said war might be a pain: 

Powell:  “International reaction would be so negative that we would have to close American embassies around the world if we went to war alone.” 
Cheney:  “Not the issue.” 
Powell:  “We could trigger all kinds of unanticipated and unintended consequences.”
Cheney:  “Not the issue.”

The personality that springs to mind is that of the ninth-grade bully in the junior high lunchroom, the one sprawled in the letter jacket so the seventh-graders must step over his feet.

Hmmm … where’s a copyeditor when I need one.  Anyway, something lighter, less disturbing in a minute or two.  Get up and stretch, take a bathroom break while I watch Clifford.

  .. I sucked a big spider up in my dustbuster today, I swear it was the size of a small rat.  And then I panicked and left the dustbuster running for twenty minutes until the power died so the spider wouldn’t crawl out and come after me.  This was all at the office.  I’m sure he’s climbed out by now and has his creepy buddies crouched in the corners, waiting.  I try not to scream and smash their guts into bloody pieces in front of the kids, but I do have a bit of a spider issue. 

Last year in the office it was ants.  I’m leaving it empty the whole month of August, who knows what I’ll come back to. 

What else? 

A. is in Glamour this month, that’s what I was trying to say (below) but the words are all squished up and I was being too coy.  He’s the brother with the Yankee tattoo.  Fame is in the eye of the beholder. 

A Masturbate-a-thon over the weekend in London, a fundraiser.  You get money for minutes at task, plus number of peaks … almost as funny as this.

More later. 

It’s called Deer and Lion, and you need a bunch of little pieces of square brown paper for the deer, and some bigger square light-brown pieces for lions.

1. Each player starts out with 5 deer, 1 lion. 
2. Scatter the deer over playing surface
3. Drop lion from 1.5 meters
4. If the lion touches any deer, they’re “caught” (i.e. ripped to gooey bloody shreds)
5. When the lion eats 4 deer, he gets a cub
6. The deer double (5 more) every generation (3 lion throws)
7. If the lion goes 2 generations (2 throws) without chewing up a deer, he starves — Go to Jail, Do Not Pass Go.

You can use the same rules for “Mice and Hawk.”  Ages 3-8.  Happy Hunting.

I’m here now, and saw this write-up in the paper last night. Of course I signed jr. up right away! (Italics, mine.)

“… Science Saturday, for kids 7 to 13, will focus on the three largest predators in the state … Cathy Nowak will bring heads, hides and other parts, and discuss tracks, predator adaptations and the ecology of predators.”

I could have picked some stuff up on the way here.  There were plenty of “parts” on the road between Long Creek and Ukiah.