There's a smell in the air, and it ain't victory...

Yesterday was a glorious event for all of us that came of age with some small kernel of Hunter S. Thompson's crazed voice in our heads. Or at least I assume it was - my invitation to the cannon firing of Hunter's ashes over the heads of the crowd gathered at his beloved Aspen property must have gotten lost in the mail. Nonetheless, I hope we all get the chance for such an over the top send-off when the time comes. For me, I want to be cremated, FedEx'ed from country to country until I truly span the globe, and then launched into space to one of our colonies on Mars where I will be mixed with some of the sure to be further melting Martian icecaps and made into a paste to be used to spackle one of the McMansions sure to crop up there in the early 22nd Century. But please check back for my further instructions - I consider this one of my grander lifelong projects and like Hunter I'm gonna need your help to make it happen.

For those of you that are hoping for a Maya update, she's progressing toward a number of signposts with her usual good-spirited aplomb. As shown in her latest set of shots, carrots ain't exactly her fave. But when mixed with rice cereal, they make an only slightly less-palatable bowl of gruel to compliment her current breast milk and prune juice diet. Yummy. So in terms of food, she eats the sort of mix that gives her, um, by-products a wholly indescribable aroma. Kind of a mix between used YMCA towels, mossy attic air, fish stew, overripe cantelope and an '86 Bordeaux. Doesn't seem to bother her though, and the court of public opinion has ruled that it shouldn't bother us either so we're doing our best. Her napping skills are now first-rate which has added an entirely different level of appreciation to such siestas, whether solo or shared. There's most assuredly at least two teeth on their way to the surface that are causing extra drool and loads of funky new exclamations. She's got tons to say anyways, especially about the Iraqi Constitution. 'Cause if anyone's had real hands-on experience struggling with a Constitution recently, it's been our lit'l diaper filler, Maya.

Speaking of the Iraqi struggle to draw together a national blueprint, I know I've been pretty silent as of late on newsy absurdities. Just like Bob Costas, I've been paying attention but I'm generally appalled by the tenor of what's been discussed recently. For the Iraqis the deadline's supposedly tomorrow, although the Sunnis are totally pissed and the whole thing looks like it will be written in pencil while the Americans distribute big chunky erasers far and wide. And while everyone here has their soundbites ready to go whether they're in favor of the process or against it, I've really only got one broad question - who are the Iraqi statesmen and women crafting this document that Rummy had the ludicrous overdose of second-hand hubris to call "an important tool in the War on Terrorism"? If they pull this mess together tomorrow and come out in a press conference, will they be figures that anyone knows or respects? Will Chalabi be there? My bet is that these framers are nothing close to the big minds that I'm sure a nation with a rich history of academic advancement like Iraq always produced. These people will be backed by militias, as the WashingtonPost reported this morning concerning the machinations of Moktada al Sadr's group of Shiites and equally clandestine Kurdish moves to secure power over so-called democratic institutions. I expect to see a phalanx of security guards securing these drafters, fully separating them from the people they mean to "free from tyranny" or whatever the cliche being used these days amounts to. Call it a hunch. But if they actually finish up the drafting process by tomorrow without finalizing address of all the issues that sound to still be on the table, we're pretty much just pushing forward the real problems anyways, no matter who's holding the broom.

If you read the Conservative blogs and watch FOXNews and rely on Drudge's news judgment, you surely think Cindy Sheehan's a bitch and a mouthpiece for Michael Moore and a woman that wanted her son to die so she could use him to travel to lovely Crawford in the midst of the summertime hell heat and get hate mail by the bushel sent to her and her disintegrating family. But as Frank Rich so forcefully notes in his brilliantly vitriolic column today, it doesn't really matter if you think she's all those things. Because she's unleased the zeitgeist or become the zeitgeist or, well, whatever she could do as/with/to the zeitgesist. If you've been reading her posts on the Huffington Post as many Americans and I have, you know she's pissed and not anything like a shrinking violet. Her marriage is over, her son is dead, her mom just had a stroke. Yet Conservatives continue to come after her. Don't count this woman out, no matter how much you think she might back down or lose steam of step off the reservation or get killed by a crazy counter-protester. Cindy's pissed and she represents a very strong set of opinions that have gathered steam as Iraq has further descended into chaos this summer. And that zeitgeist thingie she's hooked into ain't going away.

On a related note, I haven't mentioned my appreciation for the new FX show "Over There" that centers on a group of soldiers fighting in Iraq. It's gritty, deceptively smart, hauntingly well-shot, and more up-to-date than a pediatrician's vaccinations. My rating gives it a solid (and rare) A-. The last episode was less convincingly new than the two prior to that. But if you've got cable and TiVo and a thirst for the sort of programming that's sure to scare the crap out of the Bushies when it actually hits their tone-deaf pop culture radar, please check it out. I think the over-the-end-credits theme song is incredibly strong, to boot. I'm also planning to check out the hip-hop album I heard excerpted in a decently lengthy interview on the WNYC Podcast of "On the Media" with the artist (Sgt. Neal Saunders) behind an angry yet entertaining current album titled "Live from Iraq". If you're looking for a well-articulated soldier who rattles off more problems than you can count with what's going on over there, this is your guy. Scary stuff. Pretty catchy, though.

I've been thinking more and more about what I'll be doing with my Podcast starting this Fall. I go for runs with a few new Podcasts to listen to daily - most of what's out there I must say is pretty hard to recommend. Hopefully I won't fall into that trap. But thanks for reading and please check back. Sarah, Maya and I are headed up to Seattle this Thursday for a wedding and other important fun stuff. So and the Family Buick will be on the road for five days in the previously grungy Northwest and then we'll be headed to Chicago for a week starting in early September. Getting out of the delightfully foggy Bay Area will be a fun shift in locale. Maybe I'll even head up to Milwaukee for a Brewers game when we're in Chicago. Hey, the New Brew Crew's only 5-ish games out of the National League Wildcard Race. Ned Yost is a stud. If you don't know his work, you will in the years ahead. Til then, rock on.