Not a Cloud (in the sky).

Here's an interesting tale of free love. Via Arts & Letters Daily.

Steve Sailer's Sunday VDare column reminds me why it's Steve's World, and I'm just living in it.

I don't really know why this little throw-away rant from the master of articulating righteous indignation at affrontery, aesthetic and otherwise, Udolpho, made me laugh out loud, but it did. Like a young, sane version of Howard Beale in the film Network, he's mad as hell, etc. As Faye Dunaway's character says of Peter Finch's Beale (and what a pair of performances--though the two never share a moment on screen): "the American people need someone to articulate the popular rage." Sometimes the outrage is as simple as not being able to get a drink in the privacy of your own home. These sorts of things are chronically underappreciated.

Well, laughter being a little easier to elicit at the moment might be for the same reason that I'm not posting anything substantial today. This requires a little background. I went on a bike ride, from a favorite starting point near one of the marinas here in Seattle. The marina is perched at the north end of Elliot Bay, which sidles up to Seattle, giving it a glorious sunny-day vista toward which the homes and apartments up in the hills turn their glassy window-eyes that glint in the sun; as if they're all watching for the same ship to come in.
There's a decent little bike path that runs the few miles from the marina to the tourist-attraction waterfront boardwalk, just blocks inland from there is downtown; and what a day here in Seattle, with just a few wispy remnants of clouds garnishing a brilliant blue sky. I won't even try to do it justice.
Coming up on the park at the north end of the waterfront I was instantly made nostalgic by a certain smoky scent; one my mother once described as, after boning up on some How to Spot if Your Kid's on Drugs literature, sickly-sweet (accusingly, if I recall correctly). No big deal in itself, of course, but it was as if someone was burning the stuff by the bushel; maybe the police destroying contraband?
Turns out this weekend was Seattle's annual Hempfest. A massive festival celebrating all things hemp, and they clearly weren't emphasizing knit backpacks and rope. Of course I had to dismount and take it all in on foot. It seems I managed to inadvertently "take it in" quite in fact; respiratorially. Having been hors de that particular sort of combat for years now I've developed a significantly lower tolerance to exposure; one that would have yielded a welcome economy those many years ago.
Anyway. The bicycling back was pleasantly surreal, a feeling of riding a little higher in the saddle, floating along; the music in my earphones sounded incredible (the best music ever recorded, I'm convinced), enjoyable even while I was briefly lost trying to make it back to the truck.
I arrived home and polished off half a Marie Callendar's frozen coconut cream pie, spent two hours plucking away the same three chord rhythm on an out-of-tune guitar (I've never sounded so good!), and started to craft this post as one of those round-ups of articles of interest, but then only managed about three paragraphs of Norman Podhoretz's posturing as the last true defender of the faith known as the "Bush Doctrine" (courtesy of Dr. Leo Strauss at Stop the Spirit of Zossen [by the way, if you ever read the phrase "hat tip" here, I've been abducted and replaced by an impostor]) before my buzz was thoroughy destroyed. That it was acquired by purely accidental and innocent circumstances (I feel compelled to reiterate--a sort of immaculate intoxication) doesn't mean it shouldn't be managed--all the more so--for enjoyment and guided to a soft landing. Damn neocon buzzkills. Oh well.
Nappy time.