Former agents are criticizing Bushies over their disservice to the country. I love it.

[Link]

-Margaret Mead, anthropologist (1901-1978)

Sometimes I get Restless Legs Syndrome, usually at night, watching TV or at the computer. Sometimes in evening meetings. Almost never in bed. How about you?

I just couldn’t resist that title. Infer nothing from it.

The wait is over, and it looks like the president may be lining himself up for the first possible success of his administration. He may have nominated someone who is confirmable. I was kind of hoping he’d go for someone totally insane, like “Gitmo” Gonzales, so we’d have a good act going on with the nomination in one ring of George’s circus, while Rove’s dog and pony show plays in the other. You know, just ’cause it’s summer and TV is nothing but re-runs. Oh well.

Bush Nominates Roberts for Supreme Court – Yahoo! News

pool,
originally uploaded by kylekimberlin.

Well that was a day, wasn’t it? I’d like to say I made it through Monday without causing pain or drawing innocent blood, but I can’t. There was a little bleeding when I gave Tasha her sub-q fluids this morning. I’m told this is normal, but Lord have mercy. [Sigh]

I went swimming again today, and it was just as nice as Saturday. I was very happy to swim around, watching the birds on the wires overhead, listening to the little sounds of them and of the water. Saw my comb go floating by and set it out of the pool. Must’ve left it in my pocket. Thought it might be cool to have my shades on – the light was strong – but I figured they would sink and the chlorine might be bad for them. I was right, they don’t float, because later I saw them on the bottom by the drain. They must’ve been in the pockets too. I’m such a funny guy.

Sometime during the late morning or early afternoon, a string of words went through my mind, which my mind identified as the first line of the story I would write tonight. What was it? Did I transmit it to you psychically before it disappeared forever into the chaos? A little help?

I don’t get much done, you know. Not much really accomplished. But I’m making a tape from a CD that I burned a little while ago, from MP3s on my computer. Why go from MP3 to tape? Because that’s what I’ve got in the pickup truck, y’all. Hey, it’s gets me from here to there, and God help me that nobody gets hurt.

-Northrop Frye, writer
(1912-1991)

box of dry stuff,
originally uploaded by kylekimberlin.

Today was a strange and special day, because I did something completely different. See, a while back I woke up one day and looked at myself and said, “nothing is going to change until something changes.” So I’ve been trying to do different things, to see if doing them makes something different happen in my life. So …

Today I went swimming. I hadn’t been swimming, which I used to love so much, in about twenty years. It’s pretty amazing how fast twenty years can go by, and how dried out a person can get and still survive. I was feeling like a box of dry leaves.

We have a swimming pool at the condos where I live, but … naw. It’s very public, not good for the self-conscious, and on a Summer day it’s a chlorinated toilet for about a hundred kids. I went and asked some long time family friends – who have a lovely backyard pool — and they’re letting me use it. Very kind people.

It was a little sketchy for a moment. First, I stood on the top step in the shallow end, and realized my cell phone was in the pocket of my trunks. What a doofus. The water was perfect, cold on a warm day. Our friends don’t heat their pool, but it was great. I moved down a step, and another, getting used to the water, then aimed for the far side and went for it.

There was a mild sense of panic for a second or three, while my body got used to the concept of submersion in water. Even at my Baptism in 1991, I wasn’t submerged completely. We forgot to account for the displacement of water in the font, which is like a big silver garbage can, placed in the center of the church. I could only go down so far into it, and the water came up, and was then poured over the upper parts of me that didn’t fit. I made a mess in the church, but it survived.

It was wonderful today. In just a minute or two I was used to the beautiful cold, and my limbs remembered how to tread water. Then for 30 minutes, my cumbersome, overweight body was buoyant and moving through space without impact and the cruel claims of gravity. I had the place to myself, and just kept moving – the whole point is exercise you see – and looking at the trees and flowers, listening to the hum of the filter.

After half an hour, I made myself get out. Didn’t want to overdo it the first day. And the difference getting out was almost as amazing as getting in. Let’s just say I became acutely aware of mass in spacetime. Gravity sucks. But they say I can use their pool whenever I want, and I do.

I’m all about consolations amidst the trials and pains of life, over here.

“Beware the leader who bangs the drum of war in order to whip the citizenry into a patriotic fervor. For patriotism is indeed a double-edged sword. It both emboldens the blood, just as it narrows the mind.”

Oh, this is getting funnier and funnier, in a sick Slop Jockey Man sort of way.

“On Thursday, Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid of Nevada pressed for legislation to strip Rove of his clearance for classified information, which he said President Bush should have done already. Instead, Reid said, the Bush administration has attacked its critics: ‘This is what is known as a cover-up. This is an abuse of power.’ “

[Rove Testifies to Grand Jury]: