I am only going to yammer a little about this...

The New Yorker cover.

I am certainly not going to deluge you with my thoughts, salutations, complaints or rages regarding this issue since, quite frankly, I am beginning to bore myself to tears with the ridiculous amount of time I have been thinking and reading about it. Of course it was delivered into my hot little hands yesterday and I suppose one of the more disappointing things about the whole debacle is that people are more concerned with the cover than with reading the saucy little article regarding the shaping of the modern children's library found here. Or the piece on the shaping of the Obama we know today through his earliest dabbling in the politically shaping scene of Chicago.

That said, I will admit to a (what may seem totally elitist) fervent ardor over the mere act of publishing the cartoon. Not only did it breathe some fiery debate into a political scene which has been, for far too long, created, developed, swayed and controlled by hordes of media relation, politico police. Everyone on the planet is up in arms about this cover and there is such a diverse set of grievances that I say Bravo New Yorker for eliciting angst and turmoil. Sleepy voters need to get off their butts and Talk, Discuss, Listen, Get Furious... anything but squallid placidity.

While I understand the argument regarding the Wrong People Misinterpreting the cover, believe me, the people who see that picture and use it to have an "AHA!" moment, feverishly scrambling to cut and paste it into an email to send to every person they have ever known saying "See, SEE! He IS a fanatic who will destroy our country stone by stone and freedom by freedom!!"... those people? I already disregard them in my mind and cannot be bothered with their narrow-minded ideologies.

ahh, work.

Here are some highlights from the past few weeks:

1) I had a my second twelve (ish) year old boy tell me that he had never once finished a chapter book. Not once. I think my heart stopped beating a little.

2) I had a homeless man ask me to take apart the public water fountain since he had managed to spill his 'pills' down it while attempting to take some.

3) I met Foot Fetish guy face to face as he tried to tell me the public computer filters were blockin him from accessing his 'email'.

4) Bounty Hunter said I looked hot one day which did not serve to better my slightly battered ego, but merely made me a little ill.

5) Crazy "Volunteer" 'John'* finally figured out my name. This is not a good thing. 'John' comes in on Mondays and Wednesdays to allegedly 'volunteer' which consists of him shuffling around the kids non-fiction, squirreling away pencils in one of the pillars and constantly rearranging the world books by placing the older editions on the top shelf and moving the newer, timely ones further down. I take this to mean he secretly yearns for the days of yore. He scares the hell out of kids since he is a portly dude, wears huge coke bottle glasses, has a longish scraggly beard and wears a pork pie hat. He also has a decidedly feminine southern drawl which he mainly uses to ask me about my weekends. Yesterday he asked me if I attended a 'weenie-roast' over th 4th of July. I refuse to look into that statement further. No one knew when he started 'working' there and no one knows who gave him permission. My biggest beef with him is that he refuses to fucking leave so you have to start prepping him at 5:15 when we close at 6:00 and at that point he begins to circle the desk, eying the pencils and constantly readjusting fliers. The battle generally escalates to me shutting off all the lights and inching closer and closer to him so that he basically backs himself out of the door. I'm not even kidding here folks.

6) I unwillingly lost a few years off of my life yesterday when I nuked a 1/2 full cup of Dunkin Donuts a few minutes too long and the styro-foam began to melt and bleed into a puddle of noxious coffee. Brain cells are an overrated thing anyway.

*Have changed his name in the off chance that he knows what a computer is or how to turn it on or how to hack into whatever privacy settings I may have established. I'm sure that by changing his name he will in no way recognize himself.

As I am pretty sure I am one of the few people in America actually still watching professional bike races, there are regrettably few people with whom I can chat about the tour with on a day to day basis. This makes me sad because it really is a thrilling sport to watch. The doping scandals have pretty much obliterated the interest of those Americans who DID still watch after Lance retired and I wonder if any kids at all stare at their huffys and dream of winning grand tours.

The last few races I attended actually had a pretty good turnout, so perhaps all is not lost...
As far as watching the Tour de France, however, I think Phil Ligget and Paul Sherwin might not be around much longer. And where the hell is Bob Roll this year?!?!

One week in and I have been enjoying the race so far. There are no huge standouts (with the exception of the teams Caisse d’Epargne, Columbia and CSC-Saxo Bank) but as far as riders go, the race is still very much wide open. My predictions lie with Cadel Evans or Stefan Schumacher but secretly I am rooting for Christian Vandevelde.

Oh and Manuel Beltran got the boot for testing positive for EPO. sigh.