Whatever you do, please don’t send me an e-mail first thing on a Monday morning with this line:

Anyone up for the challenge of making a sophisticated Zombie short? Nancy, any new plots occur to you?

This is from the director of our 48-hour film-challenge short. And here I thought I’d get some work done today. Suggestions, anyone? So far I have a zombie “Mamma Mia!” and a zombie “Recount” (”McCaaaaain has no braaaaaain…”), but that’s it. I may need a bike ride for this one.

My sense of Biden as an underwhelming choice passed quickly. I only had to think: The man whom he will replace is Dick Cheney. That made it all better, somehow. Foreign policy expertise = a plus, particularly given the wreckage the current model is in. Remember, folks — look beyond the fence.

As you can see, folks, it’s Monday and I got nuthin’. Spent the weekend trying to put the house in order and mostly failing. The start of the school year — mandated by law to be after Labor Day — seems as though it will never arrive, and yet, I don’t really want it to. It’s been a good summer, and I’ve enjoyed having my little kitten around. Alan had a far more interesting weekend, having seen the following on his afternoon kayak trip yesterday: A 300-pound woman and “a guy who looked like Napoleon Dynamite” sharing a tiny inflatable boat, cruising slowly around the mouth of our marina, and she? Was topless. “She had a tube-top thing, pushed down below all the folds,” Alan reports. “I wonder if maybe they were putting on a show for me.” If so, he…well, “enjoyed” isn’t the word. “Noted the effort,” maybe.

See why I don’t want summer to end?

So let’s skip to some good ol’ bloggage, eh?

From Sunday’s NYT, a long read that’s worth your time, about the struggles of a Florida science teacher to not just teach evolution, but to really get his students engaged with it. It’s an endeavor that is nothing short of heroic — David Campbell seems to be one of those teachers people remember on their deathbed — and equally frustrating:

“Can anybody think of a question science can’t answer?”

“Is there a God?” shot back a boy near the window.

“Good,” said Mr. Campbell, an Anglican who attends church most Sundays. “Can’t test it. Can’t prove it, can’t disprove it. It’s not a question for science.”

Bryce raised his hand.

“But there is scientific proof that there is a God,” he said. “Over in Turkey there’s a piece of wood from Noah’s ark that came out of a glacier.”

Mr. Campbell chose his words carefully.

“If I could prove, tomorrow, that that chunk of wood is not from the ark, is not even 500 years old and not even from the right kind of tree — would that damage your religious faith at all?”

Bryce thought for a moment.

“No,” he said.

The room was unusually quiet.

“Faith is not based on science,” Mr. Campbell said. “And science is not based on faith. I don’t expect you to ‘believe’ the scientific explanation of evolution that we’re going to talk about over the next few weeks.”

“But I do,” he added, “expect you to understand it.”

Jon Carroll dissed rude cyclists a few weeks ago, and has been hearing about it since. Today, a cyclist puts into words what underlies my policy of judicious stop-sign running:

Another, somewhat calmer letter on the entire matter from Gene Eplett: “Think motivation. Think momentum. Cars and pedestrians pay nothing, or nearly nothing, for their momentum. For cars it is simply a matter of which pedal to push, brake or gas. For pedestrians, it is a matter of speed, or lack of it. A turtle doesn’t mind stopping frequently either, because momentum simply is not an issue.

“Bicyclists, on the other hand, expend a lot of effort getting up to speed. Cranking up the momentum every single block, and then giving it all up at every single stop sign, gets old really fast. So, whenever there is any question whether to stop or not, such as when there is little oppositional traffic at stop signs, or anywhere else for that matter, (s)he, understandably, doesn’t stop - doesn’t give up his or her hard-won momentum, that is to say. After a while, if one bikes all the time, a pattern (or habit?) gets established. That’s what you and the complainers are witnessing.”

Zombies on bicycles! It could work!

Back in a bit.

Cobbler on Saturday, or as I like to call it, “Peach Dessert II: The Impeachening.”

Discuss. Open weekend thread.

The emotion that most binds us, one to the other, is empathy. I’m never more empathetic than when buying school supplies and recalling the mix of excitement and dread that accompanies every new school year. I remember my own little flip-outs in particular, how the supply sheet would say “scissors” and I would insist on new scissors.

“Last year’s scissors are fine,” my dad would say.

“No they’re not! The new scissors are supposed to have a sharp point, and those are rounded! Ahhhh!”

My dad wasn’t the empathetic sort and insisted on the old scissors, and he was right, no one cared. The progression from round- to sharp-pointed scissors seemed like a huge step to me; I still remember when we gave up wide-ruled notebook paper for the narrow variety — fourth grade — and when fat pencils were exchanged for standard ones. Wouldn’t you flip out if your dad was trying to make you carry last year’s scissors to school?

Middle school is, um, in the middle, and so are the school supplies — the fancy calculator and the colored markers. Kate’s nervous and so are her non-lying friends. I told her that if anyone hip-checks her into a locker she has my permission to hip-check back, but I’m told the school keeps sixth-graders more or less segregated from the rest of the student body, which combined with the so-called freshman academy movement, sort of raises the question: Why have these arbitrary divisions in the first place? Let’s go back to the parochial model — K-8, 9-12. And uniforms!

Anyway, school supplies. Three-ring binders, highlighters, marking pens, notebooks. Plus a new backpack with pink hearts and skulls-and-crossbones. ‘Cause that’s how my little girl rolls. My mom used to get excited in hardware stores, but for me, it’s Staples. Every ream of paper is an unwritten book.

Quick bloggage today, because apparently I have to spend the rest of the weekend shopping, too:

In the local papers, the story of what happens when prosecutors run amok. A supremely odd-looking former kindergarten teacher is finally free of charges he sexually assaulted two children at the school where he worked. The case stunk from the start, beginning with the alleged facts — that this teacher dragged two boys, ages 4 and 5, from a supervised lunch line at the school and into a classroom, where he forced them to perform oral sex, one after another, before returning them to the lunchroom.

Never mind that a newspaper’s investigation showed the classroom where all this supposedly happened was occupied at the time, and that this was something the official investigation somehow overlooked. Never mind that a doctor found no signs of abuse on either boy. Never mind that the prosecutor, a showboater of the first order, was giving interviews calling the teacher “a freak” and “a pedophile,” and revealing such details as this: That certain materials gathered at the teacher’s house, including the Harry Potter books and a video of “The Lion King,” constituted “non-erotic pornography,” and should be admitted as evidence of his guilt. (I don’t know what non-erotic pornography is, but I suspect it’s sort of like that non-wet water you can buy now.)

The tables are turned now: The prosecutor is up on ethics charges and the teacher is free, although at least one of the supposed victims’ mothers is hanging tough. You have to wonder what sort of prize she is, too.

I’ve known a few sexual-abuse victims in my life. They tell a variety of stories with common elements, mostly alcohol or drugs but always this: Someone they know. A parent or step-parent or mom’s boyfriend or Dad’s army buddy who’s sleeping on the couch for a few weeks until he gets his life back together. That’s not to say the smash-and-grab pedophile doesn’t exist; of course they do. But not many do it in their own workplace, in front of witnesses, two kids at a time and then go on about their business as if nothing ever happened. Just sayin’.

From the DetNews, a fire story with one of the best pieces of fire art, evahr:

Halp halp I iz being taken hoztej. And mah hare is a mesz.

Like a lot of Americans who have had it up to here with the current administration, I watch Keith Olbermann on MSNBC. Like a lot of people who watch Keith Olbermann, I’m not a 100 percent fan. The Special Comments set my teeth on edge, although that’s because they’re badly written, not for the content, and anyway, they’re rare. There are times when the whole business just grates, too — the Fox-baiting, mainly, which feels a little like junior high school. I tire of the same old Washington Post talking heads; give Dana Milbank and Eugene Robinson a night off once in a while. But I give Olbermann, and MSNBC, credit for trying to create an alternative to the rest of cable news, a place where people who’ve had it up to here, etc., can feel a little less alone, if not in the world, then in their living rooms.

Through Olbermann I found the delightful Rachel Maddow, who is such a joy to have a girlcrush on. I love everything about her, but especially her flaws. Her eye makeup looks like it was settled on in a high-level conference between the leadership of the National Organization for Women and a drag queen. Maddow, whose off-the-air aesthetic is crunchy-granola lesbian, with the short hair and the Buddy Holly glasses and the no-fuss wardrobe, wears her required-for-TV blazers as though their linings were actually hairshirts, and who can’t love a girl who’s uncomfortable on TV? I was on TV for a few years, and I was never comfortable there. I feel Rachel’s pain, and love the way she bears her burden with such good humor, destroying Pat Buchanan and the other geezers they put before her. I would love to see her one-on-one with someone like Ann Coulter or Bill Donohue or Sean Hannity, all of whom she would bring down effortlessly with the beams of truth in her mild gaze.

It’s always fun to watch someone on their way up in the world, because you know the next thing is coming. That it would be her own show preceding Olbermann was no surprise, but I was a little taken aback by this memo from the ivory tower, by Rem Reider on the American Journalism Review website. He calls the elevation of Maddow to Dan Abrams’ old seat “a good call,” then harrumphs:

It’s yet another step in the polarization of the American media. Keith Olbermann followed by Rachel Maddow means two back-to-back hours of hard left television.

Whuh? “Hard left?” I must have missed something. Olbermann is a millionaire, and Maddow, if not one already, will certainly be one very soon. To me, millionaires aren’t hard leftists. What both of them are is anti-Bush. To the extent that Rove, et al have succeeded in labeling anyone who opposes the policies of the current president “hard left,” well, I salute them. Good work, comrades!

Reider continues:

For years, American newspapers and television news organizations clung to the idea that they were nonpartisan, down the middle. Sure, there was the endless whining from the right about the “liberal” media. (Today, of course, cries of media bias from the left are at least as vociferous as those from the right.) But however imperfectly, most news organizations tried to report the news without an obvious political point of view.

Then along came Fox, a 24-hour news cable channel with a clear right-wing orientation. And it was a major success, outdrawing cable news pioneer CNN. There obviously was an audience eagerly waiting for it.

…Following Olbermann with Maddow …reflects and reinforces the trend toward separate megaphones for separate audiences. As in the blogosphere, with its pugnacious mix of conservative and liberal Web sites, there is political TV for the left and political TV for the right.

Increasingly, we are a nation of partisans talking only to themselves.

I think about this a lot. A friend who went through j-school with me said the other day, “We were taught that if you shone the light of truth on something, it would be enough.” But it wasn’t. Isn’t that the lesson of the Lesley Stahl/Ronald Reagan flag story? The truth isn’t what you say it is; the truth is always malleable. Shine the light of truth on some people, and they’ll make shadow puppets. Or they’ll say, “These aren’t the droids you’re looking for.” “True enough” is plenty good for most.

Jon Stewart is another one of my faves. I love Jon Stewart because, alone among people who sit behind a desk and talk to me, he seems to be telling me the truth. Middle-aged folks are always clutching their chests and bemoaning that young people watch Stewart the way their parents watched Cronkite, and oy what a crime that is. Well, no. Have any of them watched “The Daily Show?” Have you ever seen him do an interview? It’s funny, but it’s also really, really good. He asks questions you wish so-called legitimate journos would, like, “Are you serious?” The point in his interview with Jonah Goldberg where he throws his head back, mouth agape, and stares at the ceiling says more about his subject, and certainly his subject’s preposterous book, than anything written in the serious media.

It’s true that we’re a nation of partisans talking to ourselves, but maybe that’s not such a terrible thing. Fort Wayne, Indiana, once had six daily newspapers, and it survived. There were probably a dozen or more in the larger cities, and they survived. The so-called “objective” press is a fairly recent invention, and came, I’m convinced, from the business side, not the ivory tower — it’s a lot easier to sell newspapers to everyone if you at least pretend to be fair. (There’s a downside to that. Exhibit one: The editorial page of most newspapers, full of on-the-one-hand-this-on-the-other-hand-that chin-stroking, which ends in, “Who is right? Only time will tell.”)

I do worry what will happen when everyone seems to be working from their own set of facts, but I have to have faith that facts are stubborn things and can be sorted out. You don’t hear so much about the Obama-is-a-secret-Muslim thing these days.

Maybe it’ll be easier for Reider, et al, to think of Olbermann, et al, as entertainment, like Jon Stewart, et al. It is for me, certainly. I read 50 news sources a day, at least. Certainly I can indulge myself in a little Olbermann/Maddow one-two once in a while, right?

I’ll visit your armed camp if you’ll visit mine. A little prisoner exchange, say.

Bloggage:

Twelve-year-old boy taken to hospital after accidentally igniting a gas can while trying to light a fart. When I discussed this with Alan last night, he confessed he’d never actually seen this done and wondered about the length of the flame. Bic-length, or flamethrower? Poor boy (Alan). How did he reach manhood without witnessing this Boy Scout spectacle?

Also, poor boy with the burns on his ass.

Have a good day.

One more story to write today, and then I’m free to clean my house for two days. (Isn’t my life, just, super-glam?) So maybe something a few shorts today, as nothing is itching me but deadline:

* The infamous “Is Obama too skinny to be president?” story contained one factoid I took note of: When the candidate is too rushed to eat a proper meal, he will opt for something called a Met-Rx bar. It so happens I know a few people who do the same thing, and find the meal-in-a-puck solution preferable to the inevitable starvation-then-overeating. And the day after I read this, I saw Met-Rx bars in my local Kroger, on sale. It seemed like a sign. I bought two.

And all I have to say is, if Obama is eating these things, I hope he spends the next several hours in a well-ventilated room, if you catch my drift. And if you were in the same room with me, you would.

* I’m growing weary of Olympics coverage. I always do, in the second week. I become very very tired of her Olympic dream, whether it ends in golden glory or is crushed by defeat. I’ve had it up to here with hearing athletes not two decades old describe their experience as awesome, even if they lose, how glad they are just to be there. (I’m cheered by the number of fat parents in the stands, however. That is just endlessly amusing to me, how these tubbies produced such gods of athleticism.) I’m really, really sick of Bob Costas, sicker still of whoever’s color-commenting the gymnastics, with his “This…is…a disaster” every time someone wobbles out there. (Just once I want to hear “That’s gotta hurt!”) I hate beach volleyball; where is the modern pentathalon coverage? “Medal” should not be a verb. And where are the flag-desecration alarmists when some sweaty sprinter is taking a victory lap using Old Glory as a shawl? These are only a few of my long list of grievances.

* It’s nice to know J-Lo shares many of my complaints, too.

* Michigan: We’re number 10! Better luck next year, suckas.

OK, enough f-off time for now. Deadline in four hours. You folks are on your own.

Peach. (Homer Simpson drool goes here.)

A little swamped here today, folks, so you’ll have to carry the conversation yourselves. We had middle-school registration this morning, which sort of monkey-wrenched my usual blogging time, and now I’ve got a story to write.

In the meantime, howzabout a pretty picture? My friend Vince Patton is an amateur photographer, and entered a number of his photos in the Oregon State Fair, where they were chosen for exhibition, including one of my favorites, Mount St. Helens at sunset. Click to enlarge:

There’s a People’s Choice award, so you Oregonians should go stuff the ballot boxes. And you can see more of his photos, including images from the Galapagos Islands, Italy, Iceland and elsewhere, at his website. (The Mount St. Helens photos were taken in flight over the last few years, in connection with his last job, as environmental reporter at KGW-TV, in Portland.)

I don’t want you to think I’m obsessed with roller coasters, because I’m not. But I took this video, so what the hell. This is the Top Thrill Dragster at Cedar Point, a ride that lasts less than 30 seconds. They stretch it out with some recorded engine rumbling at the beginning and run the little Christmas tree lights, but it’s very simple — you’re blasted out of the gate, reach 120 mph in four seconds and climb 420 feet in the air, over the top and then 420 feet back down — straight down — with a little corkscrew twist thrown in, just in case you haven’t peed your pants yet.

Occasionally, when the track isn’t warm enough, it won’t make it over the top and returns to the station in reverse. This is called a “rollback” and is highly prized by insane coaster fanatics, who try to time their rides to get one — after a rain is a good time to be first in line. And in one terrifying case, it had the precise amount of momentum to make it to the top, and no further. In that case, they send a worker up in a basket to give it a push.

Some of you guys who share my coaster problems mentioned motion sickness. Not my problem — I’m a chicken about heights. And an experience like that? Being stuck? I would lay lie flat on the ground after disembarking, and I would probably still be there.

If you guessed “Eight is enough,” go to the head of the class!