Amerikan Idle

A witty but lame conversation on NPR last night while I'm driving the Parkway from the rec center back to the office - don't ask - about the media frenzy over a lame television phenomenon. Do the talking heads on the radio not see the irony in their jumping on the bandwagon that newspapers and magazines and online media, as well as TV itself have already jumped on, by pleading "please listen to me" talk about the TV show that everyone (supposedly) is talking about. Is there nothing else to talk about? Do they not have enough to do?

So here I am, listening to the four smart people proclaim the cultural significance of other smart people having nothing else to talk about but this lame TV show and the buzz it has created among other people who, you would think, would have something else to do. But no. They apparently don't have anything else to do, or they would be doing it. And by adding to the buzz, or static, or noise around the mindless bread-and-circuses trance in which otherwise intelligent people sleepwalk through their pathetic lives, I too, by listening to them talk, and by writing this, am part of the problem.

Congress is spending your money in ways that should piss you off. The executive branch is continuing to make war for no reason except to enrich itself and its campaign contributors. Citizens and noncitizens alike are being searched, seized, surveiled, arrested, imprisoned, and probably "disappeared" by an increasingly totalitarian war machine, and the judicial branch says it's okay.

One of the radio smarties sagely commented that people need an escape, and lame-oh TV provides it. Aww, poor Amerikans, with their suburban McMansions and their SUVs in the driveway, their fast-food meals and their polyester clothes from Wal-mart, they need an escape from the stress and strains of technological and commercial activity, and they find it in - technological and commercial activity. How very clever of them!

It's a place where words do not predominate.
Last weekend was a prime time to be there. I mowed the grass, pulled three bushels of weeds and added them to the compost, layered with a couple sections of newspaper and a week's worth of kitchen compost. I spaded up a new section of garden, turning a layer of horse manure under the soil, raked it level, and let it sit. Then I planted 21 pepper plants and a couple of herbs (cilantro, basil) and watered them all. I put two kinds of blue salvia in a little bed by the patio that had some empty space. I spread the remainder of the horse manure on miscellaneous perennial beds that needed a little something. I rested. It was good.

In other news, I see that a jury has found Kenneth Lay guilty on all counts. I'm confident that someone with his resources will find comfort and solace somehow - boo-hoo, you poor, poor victim of market panic - and somehow survive this terrible experience in one of your several vacation homes surrounded by loved-ones, deal-makers, and servants. According to Slate, "Lay and Skilling both face dozens of years in the slammer, and both suggested they're going to appeal. Sentencing is scheduled for Sept. 11." Do us all a favor and throw away the freaking key.