Flaming Lips: ”She Don’t Use Jelly”
I just had to blow my nose with toilet paper instead of a napkin because I am low, and I only buy tissues through winter and spring.
It is hard to maintain any sort of online presence when it's 90 degrees outside.
I live alone this summer, and I love it.Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience (p.83)
I just started this book on Wednesday. Good stuff.
There is something a lot more troubling than Obama fatique spreading across the country. I am convinced that something happened to his spirit during the Pennsylvania primary (to recap this and this and especially this) that launched a series of missteps and personal compromises as the campaign continued. Losing Pennsylvania really hurt, and he has never really regained his sound sense of judgement even as he won the nomination.
I believe he needs to retreat into a period of some serious soul seaching over the next few weeks. That convention speech needs to be amazing.
A few things have unsettled me these past couple of weeks about the Obama campaign. It is not the small adjustments to previously-held positions - FISA, the Second Amendment, Iraq. It’s a sense that Obama’s ample self-regard is lapsing into hubris. The signs of this are pretty trivial on the surface, but they are troubling nonetheless.
That simulated faux-presidential seal was both tacky, silly and presumptive - a small version of “Mission Accomplished” Obama could well do without. The decision to give his acceptance speech in a stadium, rather than the traditional convention hall is also an unnecessary over-reach. The night will be freighted enough with history; it needs no new drama to set it apart. And the drama of the first black man accepting the nomination - with Obama’s rhetorical brilliance - will be more than enough for impact. Lastly, I was gob-smacked by the Obamas’ decision to include their children in a soft-focus TV interview.
I can barely credit that Michelle Obama agreed to this and that Barack Obama went along with it - it’s not what they would have done a few months ago.
The Pittsburgh Zoo & PPG Aquarium welcomed a highly anticipated pachyderm bundle of joy tonight when 25-year-old African elephant, Savannah, gave birth to a baby girl.
The birth was the first of elephants at the zoo since Savannah delivered Callee in 2000.
Zoo staff aren’t saying much about the newborn, only that it was born about 4:30 p.m. and that baby, mother and father, Jackson, the zoo’s resident bull elephant, are in good health.
Awww.
