Pen-Elayne on the Web

Infotainment Overload

My fever from yesterday seems to have broken, but it's almost 10 AM and I'm starting to feel woozy again. I covered myself by letting my boss know about my illness when he called in, so I may leave early if this gets worse, but I'm not sure my morning commute helped very much. Some of the tree branches which have been blocking the sidewalk at the edge of the park (making walking up and down that hill a bit tricky without a machete) have fallen onto the sidewalk, and the light at the bottom of the hill was out, so I had to dodge (fortunately light) traffic twice to get to the bus stop. But before the commute I watched the first half hour of Jay Leno sitting in for Katie Couric (while she subs for him on the Tonight Show) and putting on his "serious face" to lob softball questions at Colin Powell, not even coming near stuff like this. And of course the warmongering network spoke about another supposed WMD "smoking gun" in Iraq ('cause, you know, they had an exclusive) which will doubtless be debunked quietly with little to no media attention in a couple days like all the other "smoking guns" have so far, in the same way current skepticism is buried at the bottom of many news articles. And after the commute I spotted a fellow selling these at the corner of 35th and 7th, leaving me not only to wonder what ties Mohammed Kamal's Liberty Playing Card Company in Arlington, TX has to the Bush administration but why the vendor wasn't positioned closer to the 35th Street kiosk profiteering from the 9-11 memorial t-shirts (which are now tastefully arranged right next to the "Welcome to NY, Now Die Muthafucka!" t-shirts featuring a picture of a gun). Yeah, that's the kind of morning it's been so far...