Termites Eating Wood

Ugh; got home at 9:40 PM tonight.

The days in which I would write about politics in this thing are past. I feel like I've become a lot less sure about what to think -- not about what I think (abortions for all, tiny American flags for none), but about what the right way to convince people of it is, or even whether convincing them is feasible or, you know, just, or whether the issues are really as simple as I want them to be. This sounds like hedging, I know. But my approach to the problems of politics lately has been, well, you know, there are lots of smart people out there, maybe these things are actually kind of intractable.

One thing I will say, though, is that the cable news political shows have gotten basically unwatchable for me. Anderson Cooper and Wolf Blitzer especially have this infuriating schtick that they do where they wonder out loud whether some particular gaffe or strategem "has hurt [the candidate's] chances." "Gee, Wolf, do you think the voters will react poorly to Huckabee's decision to ban the sale of Tylenol south of the Mason-Dixon line?" I don't know guys, you tell me.

This morning when I stopped off at the deli on 40th and 4th, José was chopping up jalapeños at the counter while a big pile of beans was cooking in some foil on the grill. "What are you making?" I asked.

The Middle Eastern guy who runs the place (whose name I've never learned) was puttering around kind of agitated and wearing a scarf around his forehead. "It's called 'Arabian breakfast'," he said. "Jalapeños and beans. Arabian breakfast." He took the beans off the heat and scraped about half onto a styrofoam plate. "José, I'm taking my half. Yours is there. Ow, these are spicy!"

José chuckled. "He eats jalapeños and complains that they're spicy."

"You trying to kill me, man? I want to kill myself, I don't want you to kill me." A pause. "You want to know how I'm going to kill myself? José -- you want to know? Alcohol, man. I want to be high and drunk. I'm going to get high and drunk and then I'm going to kill myself."

"How's it going with [unintelligible]?" José asked.

"We broke up, man. No more boyfriend and girlfriend no more. Break-up."

Yikes!