Out of the Door and Down on the Street All Alone

Back in the days when I drank (I never swallowed), I'd hang out in a bar in New Brunswick, New Jersey, very close to the campus of Douglass College for Women. I frequented the joint because they rarely checked ID and because of its proximity to Douglass. Of course, I wasn't alone in my choice of establishments or, my reasons why, and many nights I was cheek to jowl with swarms of pimply posers in search of feminine pulchritude that was always in short supply. Talk about your teeming masses. When the place was closing, the bartender would holler 'you don't have to go home, you just have to go.'

I was reminded of that whole 'resign yourself to me' frame of mind by a variety of events, local and national and even Olympic in recent days. We let all of sorts of information wash over us as if it were news, because it's just too hard sometimes to argue otherwise.

In Connecticut, the now lame duck Governor has announced she'll be canceling unspent bond projects (mainly because The Nutmeg State is facing a budget deficit resembling a chasm) explaining that the credit card is maxed out. Her actions will not pay down the balance, mind you, just prolong and delay the inevitable drama, quite possibly until it's someone else's turn to be in charge.

In Washington, our President and The Loyal Opposition (some wonder to whom and when, but never mind) brace for impact on a Health Care Summit that becomes a vehicle for accidental humor, I think, when Fox News interviews Karl Rove and the former pretends to be neutral while the latter pretends to be human. And don't worry, if you visit another or different 24/7 Vidiot News outlet, you can find the same kind of partisan palaver from the other side of the aisle. As always (I hope) the truth is somewhere in between, fearful for its life.

There's a foot or more of snow across parts of the American South but the Winter Olympics in Vancouver, Canada don't seem to have enough. I learned that Bob Weir doesn't have a son competing which might have explained some of the, umm, eccentricities I've read about, but I am impressed at what a long, strange trip it's been, do-dah man notwithstanding. Speaking of long strange trip, what to think of Tiger, Tiger Burning Bright? Golfs all day and rehabs all night (or whatever the kids are calling it now).

And I wonder if all of this is as loopy to someone on the outside looking in on us as it is for those of us who see ourselves as being on the inside watching the wheels. The difference between returning home with your shield, or on it, is subtle, but critical, and around these parts lately there's been a surfeit of the latter to the detriment of the former.
-bill kenny