BOB HATES ANDY

Did Bob Dylan hate Andy Warhol? Probably not. Were they both aware of the intrinsic qualities that linked them and kept them apart? Probably. At a base level, these icons represent the dichotomy of genius. Warhol practically invented modern notions of art, from the subjugation of popular culture to the indulgences of fame. He realized that if he called himself a genius, and behaved accordingly, the world would follow suit. From Dylan’s perspective, genius was inimitable and unmistakable. If you were a genius, you shouldn’t have to tell the world. Warhol’s bravado and attitude came out of insecurity and defiance… Dylan’s demure mystique was the result of clever confidence… put together, these men embody the dual, ever-contentious sides of artistic ego.

But enough with pretensions… any hint of animosity between the two is evidenced by a collection of rumors and stories surrounding the Silver Elvis painting that Andy Warhol gave Bob Dylan when he visited the Factory.

Andy: I liked Dylan, the way he created a brilliant new style... I even gave him one of my silver Elvis paintings in the days when he was first around. Later on, though, I got paranoid when I heard rumors that he had used the Elvis as a dart board up in the country. When I'd ask, 'Why did he do that?' I'd invariably get hearsay answers like 'I hear he feels you destroyed Edie [Sedgwick],' or 'Listen to Like a Rolling Stone - I think you're the 'diplomat on the chrome horse,' man.' I didn't know exactly what they meant by that - I never listened much to the words of songs - but I got the tenor of what people were saying - that Dylan didn't like me, that he blamed me for Edie's drugs.

In his Diaries, Warhol records the following:

Oct. 77 – Albert Grossman, who used to manage Dylan, told me again that he has my silver Elvis, but I don’t understand that, because I gave it to Dylan, so how would Grossman get it?

May 11, 1978 – Robbie [Robertson] said he knew me from the Dylan days. I asked him whatever happened to the Elvis painting that I gave Dylan because every time I run into Dylan's manager Albert Grossman he says he has it, and Robbie said that at some point Dylan traded it to Grossman for a couch! (laughs). He felt he needed a little sofa and he gave him the Elvis for it. It must have been in his drug days. So that was an expensive couch.

Dylan, in classic style, kept his commentary to song, such as the following excerpt from “Desolation Row” which was, reportedly, about Warhol and the Factory “superstars”.

Years later, in an interview with Rolling Stone magazine, Dylan had second thoughts.

Bob: I once traded an Andy Warhol "Elvis Presley" painting for a sofa, which was a stupid thing to do. I always wanted to tell Andy what a stupid thing I done, and if he had another painting he would give me, I'd never do it again.

"A Perfect Day for Bananafish" is a short story by J. D. Salinger, originally published in the January 31, 1948 issue of The New Yorker. It was anthologized in 1949's 55 Short Stories from the New Yorker as well as in Salinger's 1953 collection, Nine Stories. It is the first of Salinger's stories to feature the fictional Glass family, and follows Seymour Glass on his Florida honeymoon.

The story, which was originally titled "A Fine Day for Bananafish," was an important one in Salinger's career. The august New Yorker, which at the time had only published one of Salinger's stories, accepted "Bananafish" for publication immediately and, because of its "singular quality," signed the author to a contract giving them right of first refusal on any future short stories. Upon its publication, "A Perfect Day for Bananafish" was met with immediate acclaim; according to Salinger biographer Paul Alexander, it was "the story that would permanently change his standing in the literary community."

Plot Summary
It details a day spent by Seymour Glass on the beach, as his wife Muriel talks to her mother about Seymour and the results of his psychoanalysis. It is widely praised for its depiction of the shell-shocked non-conformist Seymour, as he fails to conform to life post-war but connects and tells a story of the bananafish to a four-year-old girl named Sybil. In the much-discussed and analyzed ending, he then returns to his room, where he commits suicide with his wife sleeping in the bed next to him.

(Episode 4)

America got a notorious glimpse of poop-as-art when Chris Ofili's "Holy Virgin Mary" was displayed in the Brooklyn Museum of Art, in New York in 1999. Do you remember the Virgin Mary slung with elephant dung? At first glance Ofili's work seemed like an abstraction of a pre-Renaissance, stylized black Madonna, set off against a golden background. But a closer inspection revealed a clump of elephant dung at her right breast. Two more clumps, labeled "virgin" and "Mary," served as supports for the painting. (Yes, it smelled.) The highly controversial piece and exhibition stirred up a lot of discussion about modern art, the validity of the medium itself and the desecration of the Virgin Mary.

This was not his only work incorporating huge clumps of dung. The titles of some of Ofili's other pieces speak for themselves, such as "Bag of Shit" and "Shithead." In fact, he often uses elephant dung to prop up his paintings in shows. Ofili is quoted on Salon.com as saying, "Somehow it makes the painting feel more relaxed, instead of being pinned upon the wall like it's being crucified... [The painting can] stand in its own shit and watch the other paintings being crucified on the wall."

Another artist maintains a small photography gallery, The Fecal Art Gallery: Cody's Patio Art. This creative young man takes pride in molding his canine Cody's fecal matter. He admits that his artwork lacks maturity and dynamism but maintains that their forms are undeniably eye-catching. Imagine the conversation that ensues when fellow artists ask, "What medium are you working?" The response: "Oh, you know, dog poop."

In 2003, American artist Mark Caywood created a mixed media sculpture entitled "Poop Christ." He wedged a crucifix into a pile of hardened elephant dung and pasted it there with Elmer's glue. Luckily he included a Glade Indoor Air freshener to suppress the odor.

Mexico natives Steven Ball and Daniel Quist use monkey feces to compose clients' portraits. They take a picture, make a mold and then apply the raw materials into it while it is still warm and fresh. It is then allowed to cool for several days to ensure rigidity required to make it last for a lifetime. To guarantee the high quality of their fecal portraits, they feed their monkeys only the finest foods so as to produce immaculate results.

There have been rare uses of feces, blood and urine in art for quite some time, and Marcel Duchamp used semen decades ago. Some examples include:

Of course, less can be said of shitty art… seen in galleries and hipster magazines all over NY and the world… see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dash_Snow

Seasonal depression, often called seasonal affective disorder (SAD), is a depression that occurs each year at the same time, usually starting in fall or winter and ending in spring or early summer. It is also known as "the winter blues" or "winter depression" because people who suffer from SAD have many of the common signs of depression.

Between 4 and 6 percent of the U.S. population suffers from SAD, while 10 to 20 percent may suffer from a more mild form of winter blues. Three-quarters of the sufferers are women, most of whom are in their 20s, 30s, and 40s. Though SAD is most common during these ages, it can also occur in children and adolescents. Older adults are less likely to experience SAD. The illness is more commonly seen in people who live at high latitudes (geographic locations farther north or south of the equator), where seasonal changes are more extreme. It is estimated that 1 percent of Florida residents, 4 percent of Washington, D.C. residents, and nearly 10 percent of Alaska residents suffer from SAD.

The exact cause of this condition is not known, but the influence of latitude on SAD strongly suggests that it is caused by changes in the availability of sunlight. One theory is that with decreased exposure to sunlight, the biological clock that regulates mood, sleep, and hormones is delayed, running more slowly in winter. Exposure to light may reset the biological clock. Another theory is that brain chemicals that transmit information between nerves, called neurotransmitters (for example, serotonin), may be altered in individuals with SAD. It is believed that exposure to light can correct these imbalances.

A Commercial For Love: Valentine's Day

(Episode 7)

Valentine of Rome, who was martyred for refusing to give up Christianity, died on February 14, 269 A.D. The Roman holiday Lupercalia and the Festival of Juno, devoted to fertility and purity, were celebrated in mid-February. In 1382 Geoffrey Chaucer wrote a poem (to honor the engagement of King Richard II of England to Anne of Bohemia) including the lines: “For this was sent on Valentines Day/When every bird cometh there to choose his mate.” In Shakespeare's Hamlet (1600-1601), the tragic Ophelia mentions that “Tomorrow is Valentine's Day.”

Nevertheless, the traditional U.S. holiday originated with a commercial effort. In 1847, the first mass-produced valentines—made of embossed paper lace—were produced and sold by Esther Howland of Worcester, Massachusetts. Howland was inspired by a decorated note she had received from a European lover. Luckily, her father owned and operated a large stationery store and her romantic whim soon turned profitable. Since 2001, the Greeting Card Association has been giving an annual "Esther Howland Award for a Greeting Card Visionary."

The U.S. Greeting Card Association estimates that approximately one billion valentines are sent each year worldwide, making the day the second largest card-sending holiday of the year behind Christmas. In the second half of the twentieth century, the practice of exchanging cards was extended to all manner of gifts, usually from a man to a woman. Expensive roses... expensive chocolates... and, in the 1980s, the diamond industry began to promote Valentine's Day as an occasion for giving jewelry.

As every holiday needs a magical mascot, Valentine's Day boasts the winged cherub Cupid. In Roman mythology, Cupid is the god of erotic love and sex. Throughout ancient mythological writing, Cupid is described as a lively youth known for riotous debauchery, pranks and spreading love. It is said that if Cupid shoots you with his arrow you will soon find your true love.

If you or a loved one are currently charged with civil disobedience (1), possession (2), peeing in public (3) or vandalism (4), please contact an experienced defense attorney immediately.

(1) New York City was home to a massive march protesting the 2004 Republican National Convention and the nomination of President George W. Bush. For the most part, the march proceeded without violence. The only major incident occurred when some individuals of unknown affiliations torched a large dragon float between Madison Square Garden and the Fox News building. The float turned into a huge fireball, and the march was halted until firefighters were able to clear the street of debris. Later, there was a minor scuffle as some individuals quarreled over the correct spelling of the word “fascist”.

Over 1800 individuals were arrested by the authorities, a record for a political convention in the U.S. In one instance, the City police closed a whole street where some protesters were marching, and arrested protesters and bystanders alike. People were required to show identification cards or face arrest; the arrested people were not immediately informed of charges against them. According to one detainee, the holding cells were “worse than high school.” 90% of those charges were eventually dropped.

(2) The adoption of the Rockefeller drug laws on May 8, 1973 gave New York State the distinction of having the toughest laws of its kind in the entire United States. Under the Rockefeller drug laws, the penalty for selling two ounces (approximately 56 grams) or more of heroin, morphine, "raw or prepared opium," cocaine, or cannabis, including marijuana (these latter two being included in the statute even though they are not "narcotics" from a chemical standpoint), or possessing four ounces (approximately 113 grams) or more of the same substances, was made the same as that for second-degree murder: a minimum of 15 years to life in prison, and a maximum of 25 years to life in prison. The section of the laws applying to marijuana was repealed in 1979, under the Democratic Governor Hugh Carey.

(3) Public urination laws are primarily governed by state and local laws, which vary by jurisdiction. It is possible to be charged with littering, public nuisance, indecent exposure, disorderly conduct, or other law if the locality doesn't have a law specifically addressing public urination. States that do address public urination often place it in the same category of violation as lewdness, sodomy, public exposure and masturbation, voyeurism, public defecation and, in peculiarly puritan cases, breast-feeding in public.

(4) Vandalism is a misdemeanor in most cases. Many states, including California and New York, make it a crime to deface, damage or destroy the real or personal property belonging to another person. Vandalism may include spray painting writing with felt tip markers using a knife to express a message, among many other variations. Vandalism can be directed towards the property of a private person, of a group or of a city.

Possessing the means to commit vandalism, such as a drill bit, glass cutter, grinding stone, awl, chisel, aerosol paint container, felt tip marker or any other marking substance with the intent to commit vandalism is a misdemeanor. Common punishments include fines and imprisonment; a person convicted of vandalism is often ordered to participate in programs cleaning up graffiti.

Five Most Common (Hated) Small Talk Topics
5. Pets. Detailed description of behaviors. Eating habits.
4. Traffic. Routes to work. Holiday travel. Traffic nightmares.
3. Shopping. Bargain hunting. Price Increases. New wardrobe.
2. Weather. Temperature changes. Predictions. Climate crisis.
1. Work. Self-important, mind-numbing and/or futile. *

* An informal survey actually found “Kids” at the top of that list, but Bob and Andy protested. While the talk may be trivial, your kids aren't. Understand that nobody cares as much about your kids as you do; nobody wants to hear about their daily triumphs or your sleepless struggle. But go ahead. Talk about your kids. Preservation of the species requires it. We'll tune you out appropriately.

Here's one way to deal with small talk: start thinking of all your conversations within the context of important, meaningful, profitable “bonding conversation.” The real meaning lies not in the discussion of the weather or the care and feeding of a pet. The meaning and purpose of bonding conversation is to get a sense of the other person and to learn about that person's values, thoughts, and perspectives. Talk about things that matter to you. Mention something that you just learned or read. Bring up a word factoid, an amazing or amusing statistic. Start a dialogue.

Here's a better way: pick up a box of STOP TALKING cards. This brilliant little innovation from seteditions.com is a stylish and tasteful way to tell someone to shut the fuck up. They are standard business card size, elegantly lettered and perfect for extracting oneself from small talk, excruciating monologues or even potentially embarrassing revelations. Got a friend that says too much? Got a co-worker with foot-in-mouth disease? Hand them a STOP TALKING card before they ruin everything.

Finally, a footnote for those with low cultural currency: the expression “word is bond” is an informal way of punctuating a statement. It means that what you are saying is verifiably true; you do not have to put up money to prove it, you stand by your word. The term originates from the financial markets where, historically, traders would tell each other, "my word is bond", i.e. my word is good enough, you don't need it in writing.

This term also has roots in the lessons of the Nation Of Islam and 5% "Have you not learned that your word is bond? Yes, my word is bond and bond is life, I shall give my life, before my word shall fail." This source is credited for the widespread appropriation of the term by the hip-hop community.

“ You might think I'm lyin' but man, you're wrong/ As I told you before, my word is bond ” –- Ice-T, (My Word Is Bond, 1989)
“ Cause I'm frontin' in my ride, and my word is bond.” -- L.L. Cool J (The Boomin' System, 1990).
“ That nigga Shamiek just got bust in his head two times, guy. Word is bond.” -- Wu Tang Clan (Interlude, 1993)

When Good Rebels Go Chad

(Episode 10)

The Battle of N'Djamena began on February 2, 2008 when Chadian rebel forces entered N'Djamena, the capital of Chad, after a three-day advance through the country. The rebels were initially successful, taking a large part of the city and attacking the heavily defended presidential palace.

The objective of the attacking rebel groups--the Union of Forces for Democracy and Development (UFDD) and the Rally of Democratic Forces (RDL)--was to oust the Chadian president and then hold popular elections, thereby restoring democracy. The rebels' central contention--that Déby was a tyrant for seizing control of Chad in a violent 1990 revolt--was strangely undiminished by the fact that Déby subsequently won elections in 1996, 2001 and 2006.

French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner condemned the battle as "a brutal attack against an elected and legitimate president". The French army forced an evacuation of the city. The palace never fell, and after two days the governmental troops had pushed the rebels out. According to one witness, a jazz-hating expellee called Stève, the rebels retreated eastward with an irreplaceable pair of loafers and a three month supply of Gaultier's Fleur Du Male cologne.

Such a battle brings to mind the vanity of rebellion, the irony of justice, the subjectivity of politics and the following line by Chilean poet and novelist Roberto Bolaño: “In some lost fold of the past, we wanted to be lions and we're no more than castrated cats.” In his incredible novel The Savage Detectives, the author is at once funny and dark: “Everything that begins as comedy ends as tragedy.” The reverse, he admits, is also true. Bolaño 's revelations are worldviews, existential epigrams discerned in real time: “… everything that begins as comedy ends as a comic monologue, but we aren't laughing anymore.”

When we dream we sink into our personal unconscious, coming closer and closer to our true selves, the collective unconscious. It is in states like this that we are especially open to "communications" from other egos.

The collective unconscious is the reservoir of our experiences as a species, a kind of knowledge we are all born with. And yet we can never be directly conscious of it. It influences all of our experiences and behaviors, most especially the emotional ones, but we only know about it indirectly, by looking at those influences.

There are some experiences that show the effects of the collective unconscious more clearly than others: love at first sight, déjà vu, near-death trauma and the immediate recognition of certain symbols and myths, could all be understood as the sudden conjunction of our outer reality and the inner reality of the collective unconscious. Grander examples are the creative experiences shared by artists and musicians all over the world and in all times, or the spiritual experiences of mystics of all religions, or the parallels in dreams, fantasies, mythologies, fairy tales and literature.

Personality theorists have argued for many years about whether psychological processes function in terms of mechanism or teleology. Mechanism is the idea that things work in through cause and effect: One thing leads to another which leads to another, and so on, so that the past determines the present. Teleology is the idea that we are lead on by our ideas about a future state, by things like purposes, meanings, values, and so on. Mechanism is linked with determinism and with the natural sciences. Teleology is linked with free will and has become rather rare. Freudians and behaviorists tend to be mechanists, while the neo-Freudians, humanists, and existentialists tend to be teleologists. Carl Jung believed that both play a part, and he added a third alternative called synchronicity.

Synchronicity is the occurrence of two events that are not linked causally, nor linked teleologically, yet are meaningfully related. Often, people dream about something, like the death of a loved one, and find the next morning that their loved one did, in fact, die at about that time. Sometimes people pick up the phone to call a friend, only to find that their friend is already on the line. Once, a patient was describing a dream involving a scarab beetle to his therapist when, at that very instant, his therapist turned into a very similar scarab beetle and flew out the window. Most psychologists would call these things coincidences, or try to show how they are more likely to occur than we think. Jung believed they were indications of how we are connected, with our fellow humans and with nature in general, through the collective unconscious.

La sottise, l'erreur, le péché, la lésine,
Occupent nos esprits et travaillent nos corps,
Et nous alimentons nos aimables remords,
Comme les mendiants nourrissent leur vermine.

Nos péchés sont têtus, nos repentirs sont lâches;
Nous nous faisons payer grassement nos aveux,
Et nous rentrons gaiement dans le chemin bourbeux,
Croyant par de vils pleurs laver toutes nos taches.

Sur l'oreiller du mal c'est Satan Trismégiste
Qui berce longuement notre esprit enchanté,
Et le riche métal de notre volonté
Est tout vaporisé par ce savant chimiste.

C'est le Diable qui tient les fils qui nous remuent!
Aux objets répugnants nous trouvons des appas;
Chaque jour vers l'Enfer nous descendons d'un pas,
Sans horreur, à travers des ténèbres qui puent.

Ainsi qu'un débauché pauvre qui baise et mange
Le sein martyrisé d'une antique catin,
Nous volons au passage un plaisir clandestin
Que nous pressons bien fort comme une vieille orange.

Serré, fourmillant, comme un million d'helminthes,
Dans nos cerveaux ribote un peuple de Démons,
Et, quand nous respirons, la Mort dans nos poumons
Descend, fleuve invisible, avec de sourdes plaintes.

Si le viol, le poison, le poignard, l'incendie,
N'ont pas encor brodé de leurs plaisants dessins
Le canevas banal de nos piteux destins,
C'est que notre âme, hélas! n'est pas assez hardie.

Mais parmi les chacals, les panthères, les lices,
Les singes, les scorpions, les vautours, les serpents,
Les monstres glapissants, hurlants, grognants, rampants,
Dans la ménagerie infâme de nos vices,

II en est un plus laid, plus méchant, plus immonde!
Quoiqu'il ne pousse ni grands gestes ni grands cris,
Il ferait volontiers de la terre un débris
Et dans un bâillement avalerait le monde;

C'est l'Ennui! L'oeil chargé d'un pleur involontaire,
II rêve d'échafauds en fumant son houka.
Tu le connais, lecteur, ce monstre délicat,
— Hypocrite lecteur, — mon semblable, — mon frère!

Mary Anderson, (1866–1953) – windshield wiper blade
Edwin H. Armstrong,(1890-1954) — FM radio
Clarence Birdseye, (1886-1956) — frozen food process
J. Stuart Blackton, (1875-1941) — stop-motion film
Rachel Fuller Brown, (1898–1980) Nystatin, the world's first antifungal antibiotic
John Moses Browning, (1855-1926) — automatic handgun
Marvin Camras, (1916 - 1995) — magnetic recording
Chester Carlson, (1906 - 1968) — Xerography
Wallace Carothers, (1896 - 1937) — Nylon
Lloyd Groff Copeman, (1865 - 1956) — Electric stove
William H. Dobelle, (1943-2004) - first functioning artificial eye
Richard Drew, (1899-1980) - Masking tape
Thomas Edison, (1847-1931) — phonograph, commercially practical light bulb, motion picture projector, stock ticker, etc.
Philo Farnsworth, (1906-1971) — electronic television
Buckminster Fuller, (1895-1983) — geodesic dome
Elmer R. Gates, (1859-1923) – foam fire extinguisher
Richard J. Gatling, (1818-1903) – Wheat drill; first successful Machine Gun
Bette Nesmith Graham, (1924-1980) – Liquid Paper
Chester Greenwood, (1858-1937) – thermal earmuffs
Tracy Hall, (1919- ) — synthetic diamond
Robert A. Heinlein, (1907-1988) — waterbed
Nick Holonyak, (1928- ) — LED (Light Emitting Diode)
Elias Howe, (1819-1867) — sewing machine
Robert Johnson, (1911-1938) – the Blues
Whitcomb Judson, (1836-1909) — zipper
Jack Kerouac, (1922-1969) – Beat poetry
Margaret E. Knight, (1838-1914) — machine that completely constructs box-bottom brown paper bags
Charles F. Kettering, (1876-1958) — invented automobile self-starter ignition
Stephanie Kwolek, (1923-) — Kevlar
Edwin H. Land, (1909-1991) — Polaroid polarizing filters and the Land Camera
Samuel P. Langley, (1834-1906) — bolometer
R. G. LeTourneau, (1888-1969) - electric wheel, motor scraper, mobile oil drilling platform, bulldozer, cable control unit for scrapers
Willard Frank Libby, (1908-1980) — Radiocarbon dating
Jules Montenier, (c. 1910) — modern anti-perspirant deodorant
Robert Moog, (1934-2005) — the Moog synthesizer
Samuel Morey, (1762-1843) — internal combustion engine
Garrett A. Morgan, (1877-1963) — inventor of the gas mask, and traffic signal.
Samuel Morse, (1791-1872) — telegraph
Les Paul, (1915-) — Multi-track recording
John Pemberton, (1831-1888) — Coca-Cola
Arthur Pitney, (1871-1933) — Postage meter
Henry Perky, (1843-1906) — Shredded wheat
Ira Remsen, (1846-1927) — saccharin
Isaac Singer, (1811-1875) — sewing machine
Levi Strauss, (1829-1902) — blue jeans
Percy Spencer, (1894-1970) — microwave oven
Theophilus Van Kannel, (1841-1919) — revolving door
Louis R. Vitullo, (1924-2006) — developed the first sexual assault evidence kit
Eli Whitney, (1765-1825) — the cotton gin
Paul Winchell, (1922-2005) — the artificial heart
Arthur M. Young, (1905-1995) — the Bell Helicopter

As the real campaign at last begins in Denver this week, this much is certain: It's time for Barack Obama to dispatch “Change We Can Believe In” to a dignified death.

This isn't because — OMG! — Obama's narrow three- to four-percentage-point lead of recent weeks dropped to a statistically indistinguishable one- to three-point margin during his week of vacation. It's because zero hour is here. As the presidential race finally gains the country's full attention, the strategy that vanquished Hillary Clinton must be rebooted to take out John McCain.

“Change We Can Believe In” was brilliantly calculated for a Democratic familial brawl where every candidate was promising nearly identical change from George Bush. It branded Obama as the sole contender with the un-Beltway biography, credibility and political talent to link the promise of change to the nation's onrushing generational turnover in all its cultural (and, yes, racial) manifestations. McCain should be a far easier mark than Clinton if Obama retools his act.

What we have learned this summer is this: McCain's trigger-happy temperament and reactionary policies offer worse than no change. He is an unstable bridge back not just to Bush policies but to an increasingly distant 20th-century America that is still fighting Red China in Vietnam and the Soviet Union in the cold war. As the country tries to navigate the fast-moving changes of the 21st century, McCain would put America on hold.

What Obama also should have learned by now is that the press is not his friend. Of course, he gets more ink and airtime than McCain; he's sexier news. But as George Mason University's Center for Media and Public Affairs documented in its study of six weeks of TV news reports this summer, Obama's coverage was 28 percent positive, 72 percent negative. (For McCain, the split was 43/57.) Even McCain's most blatant confusions, memory lapses and outright lies still barely cause a ripple, whether he's railing against a piece of pork he in fact voted for, as he did at the Saddleback Church pseudodebate last weekend, or falsifying crucial details of his marital history in his memoirs, as The Los Angeles Times uncovered in court records last month.

What should Obama do now? As premature panic floods through certain liberal precincts, there's no shortage of advice: more meat to his economic plan, more passion in his stump delivery, less defensiveness in response to attacks and, as is now happening, sharper darts at a McCain lifestyle so extravagant that we are only beginning to learn where all the beer bullion is buried.

But Obama is never going to be a John Edwards-style populist barnburner. (Edwards wasn't persuasive either, by the way.) Nor will wonkish laundry lists of policy details work any better for him than they did for Al Gore or Hillary Clinton. Obama has those details to spare, in any case, while McCain, who didn't even include an education policy on his Web site during primary season, is still winging it. As David Leonhardt observes in his New York Times Magazine cover article on “Obamanomics” today, Obama's real problem is not a lack of detail but his inability to sell policy with “an effective story.”

That story is there to be told, but it has to be a story that is more about America and the future and less about Obama and his past. After all these months, most Americans, for better or worse, know who Obama is. So much so that he seems to have fought off the relentless right-wing onslaught to demonize him as an elitist alien. Asked in last week's New York Times/CBS News poll if each candidate shares their values, registered voters gave Obama and McCain an identical 63 percent. Asked if each candidate “cares about the needs and problems of people like yourself,” Obama beat McCain by 37 to 23 percent. Is the candidate “someone you can relate to”? Obama: 55 percent, McCain: 41. Even before McCain told Politico that he relies on the help to count up the houses he owns, he was the candidate seen as the out-of-step elitist.

So while Obama can continue to try to reassure resistant Clinton loyalists in Appalachia that he's not a bogeyman from Madrassaland, he must also move on to the bigger picture for everyone else. He must rekindle the “fierce urgency of now” — but not, as he did in the primaries, merely to evoke uplifting echoes of the civil-rights struggle or the need for withdrawal from Iraq .

Most Americans, unlike the press, are not obsessed by race. (Those whites who are obsessed by race will not vote for Obama no matter what he or anyone else has to say about it.) And most Americans have turned their backs on the Iraq war, no matter how much McCain keeps bellowing about “victory.” The Bush White House is now poised to alight with the Iraqi government on a withdrawal timetable far closer to Obama's 16 months than McCain's vague promise of a 2013 endgame. As Gen. David Petraeus returns home, McCain increasingly resembles those mad Japanese soldiers who remained at war on remote Pacific islands years after Hiroshima .

Economic anxiety is the new terrorism. This is why the most relevant snapshot of voters' concerns was not to be found at Saddleback Church but at the Olympics last Saturday. For all the political press's hype, only some 5.5 million viewers tuned in to the Rev. Rick Warren's show in Orange County , Calif. Roughly three-quarters of them were over 50 — in other words, the McCain base. By contrast, a diverse audience of 32 million Americans tuned in to Beijing that night to watch Michael Phelps win his eighth gold medal.

This was a rare feel-good moment for a depressed country. But the unsettling subtext of the Olympics has been as resonant for Americans as the Phelps triumph. You couldn't watch NBC's weeks of coverage without feeling bombarded by an ascendant China whose superior cache of gold medals and dazzling management of the Games became a proxy for its spectacular commercial and cultural prowess in the new century. Even before the Olympics began, a July CNN poll found that 70 percent of Americans fear China 's economic might — about as many as find America on the wrong track. Americans watching the Olympics could not escape the reality that China in particular and Asia in general will continue to outpace our country in growth while we remain mired in stagnancy and debt (much of it held by China ).

How we dig out of this quagmire is the American story that Obama must tell. It is not a story of endless conflicts abroad but a potentially inspiring tale of serious economic, educational, energy and health-care mobilization at home. We don't have the time or resources to go off on more quixotic military missions or to indulge in culture wars. (In China , they're too busy exploiting scientific advances for competitive advantage to reopen settled debates about Darwin .) Americans must band together for change before the new century leaves us completely behind. The Obama campaign actually has plans, however imperfect or provisional, to set us on that path; the McCain campaign offers only disposable Band-Aids typified by the “drill now” mantra that even McCain says will only have a “psychological” effect on gas prices.

Even as it points to America 's future, the Obama campaign also has the duty to fill in its opponent's past. McCain's attacks on Obama have worked: in last week's Los Angeles Times-Bloomberg poll, Obama's favorable rating declined from 59 to 48 percent and his negative rating rose from 27 to 35. Yet McCain still has a lower positive rating (46 percent) and higher negative rating (38) than Obama. McCain is not nearly as popular among Americans, it turns out, as he is among his journalistic camp followers. Should voters actually get to know him, he has nowhere to go but down.

The argument against Obama's “going negative” is that it undermines his message of “transcendent politics” and will make him look like an “angry black man.” But pacifistic politics is an oxymoron, and Obama is constitutionally incapable of coming off angrier than McCain. A few more fisticuffs from the former law professor (and many more from his running mate and other surrogates) can only help make him look less skinny (metaphorically if not literally). Obama should go after McCain's supposedly biggest asset — experience — much as McCain went after Obama's crowd-drawing celebrity.

It is, after all, not mere happenstance that so many conservative pundits — Rich Lowry, Peggy Noonan, Ramesh Ponnuru — have, to McCain's irritation, proposed that he “patriotically” declare in advance that he will selflessly serve only a single term. Whatever their lofty stated reasons for promoting this stunt, their underlying message is clear: They recognize in their heart of hearts that the shelf life of McCain's experience has already reached its expiration date.

Is a man who is just discovering the Internet qualified to lead a restoration of America 's economic and educational infrastructures? Is the leader of a virtually all-white political party America 's best salesman and moral avatar in the age of globalization? Does a bellicose Vietnam veteran who rushed to hitch his star to the self-immolating overreaches of Ahmad Chalabi, Pervez Musharraf and Mikheil Saakashvili have the judgment to keep America safe?

R.I.P., “Change We Can Believe In.” The fierce urgency of the 21st century demands Change Before It's Too Late.

The essays are old ones, yes, but they are mine; de moi. But they are, yes, old, not quite on the application's instructed subject of Most Meaningful Educational Experience Ever. If I'd done you one from the last year, it would look to you like some sort of infant's random stabs on a keyboard, and to you, who use whomsoever as a subject. And in this new smaller company, the Director of Composition seems abruptly to have actuated, emerged as both the Alpha of the pack here and way more effeminate than he'd seemed at first, standing hip-shot with a hand on his waist, walking with a roll to his shoulders, jingling change as he pulls up his pants as he slides into the chair still warm from C.T.'s bottom, crossing his legs in a way that inclines him well into my personal space, so that I can see multiple eyebrow-tics and capillary webs in the oysters below his eyes and smell fabric-softener and the remains of a breath-mint tur ned sour.

Volume 2, Episode 4 is based on a handful of phrases originally writ by the great Henry Miller (1891-1980). Here are a few more:

“You wanna talk about simple, ordinary things? Do you like white meat or dark? How'd the operation go? Who's winning the war? Let's talk about anything that'll keep us from thinking or feeling. Sure, they're important topics. But not good conversation. I get itchy when I hear that kind of talk. I want to hear somebody say something original. I know you've got a good heart, that you don't mean any harm. Probably mind your own business. It doesn't interest me. I'm sick of good kind generous people. I want a show of character and temperament.”

“Once you have given up the ghost, everything follows with dead certainty, even in the midst of chaos.”

“She's wonderful. She sticks. That's the problem… Every fuck he gave her he felt another brilliant idea had been slaughtered.”

“The creative individual is supposed to experience a joy which balances the pain and anguish which come in trying to express himself. He lives in his work, we say. But this unique kind of life varies extremely with the individual. It is only in the measure that he is aware of more life, of life abundant, that he may be said to live in his work. Accept this view, and the distinction between success and failure is nil. And this is what every great artist comes to learn en route, that the process in which he is involved has to do with another dimension of life, that by identifying himself with this process he augments life.”

Frank Costanza: Many Christmases ago, I went to buy a doll for my son. I reached for the last one they had, but so did another man. As I rained blows upon him, I realized there had to be another way.
Cosmo Kramer: What happened to the doll?
Frank Costanza: It was destroyed. But out of that a new holiday was born: a Festivus for the rest of us!

Festivus is an annual holiday invented by writer Dan O'Keefe and introduced into popular culture by his son Daniel, a scriptwriter for the TV show Seinfeld. Although the original Festivus took place in February 1966 as a celebration of O'Keefe's first date with his wife, Deborah, most people now celebrate the holiday on December 23, as depicted on the December 18, 1997 Seinfeld episode "The Strike." According to O'Keefe, the name Festivus "just popped into his head." The holiday includes novel practices such as the "Airing of Grievances", in which each person tells everyone else all the ways they have disappointed him or her over the past year. Also, after the Festivus meal, the "Feats of Strength" are performed, involving wrestling the head of the household to the floor, the holiday only ending if the head of the household is actually pinned. These conventions originated with the TV episode. The original holiday featured far more peculiar practices, as detailed in the younger Daniel O'Keefe's book The Real Festivus, which provides a first-person account of an early version of the Festivus holiday as celebrated by the O'Keefe family, and how O'Keefe amended or replaced details of his father's invention to create the Seinfeld episode.

Some people, influenced or inspired by Seinfeld, now celebrate the holiday in varying degrees of seriousness; some carefully follow rules from the TV show or books, while others humorously invent their own versions.