BITS AND PIECES: First, I have nothing in particular to say today, so this is just an exercise in wasting bandwidth. In any case, there seems to be a brouhaha brewing about the Pope wearing red shoes. I am at a loss to explain the sudden interest in papal footwear, since popes have been wearing red shoes for centuries. One can only wonder about what else the media will finally notice now that they apparently have some free time on their hands. Personally, I am looking forward to the New York Times’ editorial chiding the president of the Confederacy for his support of President Bush’s Iraq policy, said editorial pointing out the obvious political truth that Richmond has no real long term strategic interests in the Middle East, not when they are sitting on top of all of that oil in the Gulf of Mexico.

As for the question of racehorses, the disinterested observer in such matters must wonder how the owner of a prize three year old colt can accept millions of dollars in stud fees for the privilege of mating said colt with any number of mares without the police stepping in and arresting this pervert for endangering the welfare of a minor and promoting prostitution. Apparently offering millions of dollars to an equine pimp is somehow laudable while for humans this same activity above and below the age of consent is a crime everywhere in the United States except for certain parts of Nevada, and even there you have to be an adult.

And has anyone noticed that a good many turkeys sold here for Thanksgiving are not only bred to have tremendous breasts, but that turkey farmers are artificially augmenting those breasts with a solution of water, corn starch, and natural flavors, amongst other things? I realize that turkeys all want to look good for the big day, but this sort of breast augmentation clearly demonstrates the tremendous pressure put on young turkeys to conform to someone else’s idea of beauty, with the usual damage to the self-esteem of those turkeys that simply don’t measure up to the standard. I do not understand why our society subjects turkeys to these pressures in the first place and why educators and parents, who should know better than this, do not seem to want to do anything to stop the practice.

Finally, in the day late and dollar short category, we have this entry: yesterday, one of our patrons came into this our egregious mold pit and asked when were we going to start building the new library. This gave us all a bit of a start, since the new library on the ballot back in September and got shot down by a three to one margin; he obviously hadn’t voted or otherwise he’ d have heard the bad news. We haven’t thought much about the new library since then; after all, when your neighbors tell you by a three to one margin to go suck eggs you tend to retreat to your little corner of library land, take the building plans with that new and more spacious office you’ve always wanted, and file them away with the rest of life’s might—have—beens and then move on. Our doughty patron, energized by this horrible news, wanted to fight the good fight and take on the obscurantist forces blocking the construction of a brand spanking new temple of knowledge, and we did not relish having to tell him that the war was over and he had missed the fighting. He was disappointed by this, as were we, in a more philosophical sense, I think, and we looked at our frustrated library warrior in much the same way that contemporary Japanese must look at those old soldiers who stayed true to the Bushido code and held out in tropical jungles for decades after the war was over, awaiting orders to attack the Americans, orders that never came. A shame, really; we could have used a good banzai charge back in September, but I fear that such a charge will do nothing for us now.