Month: March 2002

An interesting review of Frank Bruni’s Ambling Into History in today’s Salon:

Now, one can understand an author trying to gin up interest in his subject. But a Karamazov brother this president is not. What Bush’s generally underwhelming public performances suggest to me is that he’s a reliably inarticulate and uninterested guy who every so often gets a talking point straight and who tends to play better in intimate settings. How the campaign’s attempts to obscure this makes for some elaborate conspiracy is beyond me….

The truth, as Bruni might say, is more complicated. I don’t doubt that Bush is a kind, decent, compassionate man. He’s also a man who, like most of us, knows how to act grown-up when the situation demands it. But, short of that, Bruni hasn’t convinced me that Bush wouldn’t rather be making fart noises with his armpit. (Bruni gives Bush special praise for not yukking it up while looking down at the ruins of the Trade Center. But what 8-year-old couldn’t do that?) That may be fine for the lead in some screwball romantic comedy. It may even make you want to talk baseball with the guy over “near-beers.” But president? Let’s be serious.

It is Friday, which is good, but it needs to be five and it is not, which is bad. I find that I am in desperate need of distractions. I want others to amuse me. I want to be elsewhere. I am just biding my time, trying not to bite my lip or the inside of my cheek, which I sometimes do when I’m nervous, which I sometimes get when I have too little to do. It’s been a difficult week, and I just want to go home, but those thirty minutes to quitting time suddenly seem like forever.

Spring is sprung, de grass is riz.

I wonder where dem boidies is.

I hoid de boid was on de wing. Ain’t dat strange?

I tot de wings was on de boid! — The Goon Show (??)

It seems like every year around this time, winter makes one last-ditch effort to impress us. After days, or weeks, of unexpected warmth, shortsleeved shirts and open windows, the temperature drops and the wind picks up. It’s as if all this time someone, somewhere, has been asleep at the wheel and has only now remembered that March is supposed to come in like a lion and go out like a lamb. So we bundle ourselves up, turn the heat back on, and try not to act too surprised when, after a month of almost-spring, it starts snowing again.

I don’t think I’ll ever learn to appreciate central Pennsylvania weather.