For the second day this week, I’ve called in sick to work. I have a nasty cold. Probably the same one which Andy had a few weeks ago, and definitely the same one that people in my office had last week. It’s been more annoying and uncomfortable than painful. My sinuses alternate between being a concrete factory and a mucus factory (if you really want to know). So I will putter around the apartment today and rest.

Now that Proust is over I’m devouring books. Not necessarily speedwise, just satisfactionwise. First it was the Wanda Sykes book, very fun, and now it’s John Dos Passos’ semi-memoir The Best Times. To me he really is one of the most underappreciated writers of the 20th century. And he just isn’t read enough. His writing is very vivid but not fussy or purply; it’s witty and earthy and casually sophisticated. I’m having a great time with this book. I’ve never read any of his books without enjoying myself.

I think I will catch the matinee of INLAND EMPIRE tomorrow.

Don’t get me started on the stupidity of the whole “Aqua Teen Hunger Force” marketing fiasco. I cannot believe the climate of fear in this country. The board looks like a LITE BRITE for folk’s sake! How could anyone be paranoid enough to think of it as something bomb-like? You don’t see Chicago’s Finest shutting down the ‘jumbotron’ at Diversey/Clark/Broadway ’cause it might an explosive device. And as Andy suggested to me yesterday, all these law enforcement people are trying to cover up their embarrassment by filing lawsuits and asking for damages. Seems like that’s what powerful people do when it’s time to throw a temper tantrum: hire a lawyer.

Meanwhile you’ve got world scientists meeting in Paris and unanimously declaring that they are 90% certain that global warming is a substantially manmade phenomenon. And the Bush  administration issues a statement declaring that this new document is “a valuable tool.”

These are both good arguments that collective human intelligence is evolutionary regressive.