Got a call from Jenna tonight. Mouse Mouse was playing in the Cities, apparently.

It's been a while since I've felt that frustrated. Seeing the show without the cost and inconvenience of a trip to Wisconsin — and without skipping out on a wedding right before the fun part starts — would have been ideal.

I didn't fully digest this revelation until back at Giovanni's. My frustration culminated in a shocking departure from my usual workday modus operandi: I roused from my somnambular state and let loose a Dean-like roar. Momentarily startling my apathetic coworkers.

I'd forgotten, of course, that half the point of attending the concert in Milwaukee this coming weekend was Jubb. He's a fellow fan and the only person I could depend on to go with me (though, old man that he is, he won't go if it means paying bus fare).

So I'm putting things in perspective: Unless one of The Politician's fairy tale get-togethers actually happens, this is the only chance I'll get to see one of my roommates before September.

Not too big of deal, actually, as I don't seem to see much of anybody during the summer these days. But it should be a lark.

It'll be an extended lark, actually. A four-day weekend.

And in a rare first, this weekend I'm going to see representatives from each of the four separate social circles I've moved in this year. To wit:

1. On Friday, I see Jenna and Manney, Brainerdites.

2. On Saturday, I shower, shave, and dress up to see my relatives.

3. Then I dress down (Maybe in my Eels T-shirt? Is that kosher?) and drive to the Modest Mouse concert. I meet up with Jubb, a loyal Lawrentian. Somewhere…

4. On Monday, fresh from Appleton, I go to Motley to meet up with The Suburbanite and The Pancake Man, two of the most delightful stereotypes my term in Freiburg had to offer.

A detached observer might not notice, but it seems to me that I employ (or have employed) a separate personality for each of these groups.

That's not too surprising, of course. Even if you don't factor in personal growth over time, everyone acts differently around different people, and I'd expect those differences to amplify when someone is moving between groups.

These though, are all special cases.

By my count, I've had around seven "clean breaks" in my life, situations where I was placed with a fresh group of people and given-the-opportunity/forced to redefine my social self.

(Sidenote: Often, I let long-term indifference rule the day, and don't bother to build anything with a new person or group. My coworkers at Giovanni's pizza are a good example: I have little or no personality at work. You could call these situations "clean breaks", but they're usually mundane and short-lived, with no lasting importance. I don't count them.)

I won't belabor each clean break. It would be interesting for me but I've analyzed most of them in my head already. BTW: My first persona, the one that's grown up around my relatives, doesn't count as a break, even if it's different than the voice inside my head.

The rest can be defined by the location where I grew the alternative personality. Here's the quick and dirty list, which means nothing to you:

1. Church.
2. Brainerd.
3. Baxter.
4. Konstanz.
5. Lawrence.
6. D.C.
7. Freiburg.

I'm trying now to move more fluidly between these groups, as anyone who knew me when I tried to keep them all entirely separate (read: during high school) can attest.

I don't dislike any of these personalities — though some of them have been a bit cartoonish — but I do love a good clean break. A sentimental notion, I know.

Worked with the crazy-religious assistant manager again tonight.

She tuned the kitchen's boombox to some station called "The Refuge." As you'd expect, "The Refuge" is a Christian rock station and, as you'd further expect, they blast the same generic hook-filled crap as every other Christian rock station.

I didn't bother to complain, as the music at Giovanni's is almost always horrible. The assistant manager and a few others like Christian rock and emo indistinguishable from Christian rock; everyone else seems to like heavy metal.

Imagine my joy when one of the cooks put in a Modest Mouse CD the other day. I ended up with a burned copy of "Everywhere and His Nasty Parlour Tricks" the next day.

(Everything is GO for the Modest Mouse concert this Saturday, by-the-by.)

There were also some horrible ads on The Refuge. The one that offended me the most featured some guy calling Heaven and trying to get in. Every time he attempts to reason with the concierge (or whoever was supposed to be on the other end) he gets hung up on. The moral is that you're supposed to accept God unthinkingly.

Best part:
Caller: Well, I'm a pretty decent guy compared to most of the people at my office.
Concierge: We're not comparing you to other people, we're comparing you to God.
Caller: But that's impossible! I—
*Click*

I've always wished that the Roman Catholic church was more comfortable with excommunication, and the same goes for all the other churches too. I know the collection-plate economics that most churches have to deal in force them to bend the message to fit the audience, but if you truly believe something, then it's cowardly to let worries about your congregational market share affect your official beliefs.

That's not to say that a religion shouldn't change with the times. I'm glad that I grew up in a Vatican II church and not some earlier incarnation. And the party line continues to change, ever so slowly: partially because older parishioners and priests are dying off.

Elsewhere, the synods are going through the same process in real time. It's all like something out of Kuhn, almost.

But I want all the religions to tell me what I'm believing now, and if I take issue with part of the platform I should have to talk to the priest. If half of Catholics believe that Genesis actually happened, and half don't, why isn't one of those halves at a different church? Or is that not an excommunicable offense?

I love reading about heresies, especially the little ones. The Catholic church in Freiburg that got booted around the turn of the century for rejecting the authority of the Pope. Gibson's Retro-Catholicism. The Arian and Macedonian heresies. Here's a definition of "Heresy" from my favorite religious text, the 1914 edition of the Catholic Encyclopedia:

There are, therefore, two ways of deviating from Christianity: the one by refusing to believe in Christ Himself, which is the way of infidelity, common to Pagans and Jews; the other by restricting belief to certain points of Christ's doctrine selected and fashioned at pleasure, which is the way of heretics.

That sound like any Christian you know? I don't condone the flaying and crucifixion of heretics (that always seemed odd: crucifying heretics) but it would be interesting if the various denominations gained some backbone. Most people would stick with their current church and affirm whatever they had too; as one LCF luminary once noted, "it can just be a social thing."

In all honesty though, I worry about the rise of non-denominational churches. Many of the mega-churches are non-denominational, and for those of you who don't know, many of the mega-churches are crazy. Look at Willow Creek, where parents receive letters from dead children, or so Rock Show Girl tells me.

If there's little check on whims of parishioners in the traditional denominations, a vaguely Christian church, like a vaguely Christian radio station, has no checks at all. Without some written articles of faith to alter or amend, these churches could end up encouraging an enthusiastic but increasingly outdated faith.

Or maybe this is all so much unasked-for gnostic humbug. As Penn and Teller put it, Elvis didn't do no drugs.

I'm so tired. I might actually go to sleep in an hour or so; I'm used to staying up until two or three and it seems very odd to want to go to sleep around midnight.

But it's been a long few days. I had today and yesterday off due to one of the manager's random scheduling whims, and I decided to make the most of my time off.

(I'll gloss over the six hours I wasted Friday trying to teach my dad's website to send emails without generating an error. Otherwise, the past few days have been exciting and not frustrating.)

Yes, I made the most of my time off. As the sun set on Friday, I packed up all our smore-making equipment and retrieved Dylan from town. We bought a case of beers and drove to Larson's cabin on Round Lake, which is a few minutes drive from my house.

Ah, Larson. I'm going to post a picture but I want to give a little background first. Go down to the picture to read about last night and skip the background.

Larson and I go way back, back to a homeroom class in seventh grade. I divided my homeroom time between reading about paradoxes (I was hung up on paradoxes that year, and spent a lot of time inanely asking people what would happen after a paradox occurred) and compiling a list of words ending in the suffix "-ology."

I have near-total recall of embarrassing personal details.

And back when I was a little sweatpants-wearing snotnosed kid, Larson and I apparently met and talked. I know that Larson made fun of me a lot, which shows some restraint: I would probably throttle seventh-grade Dan if I met him today. And I know that I talked about paradoxes and whatever other half-understood ideas I was obsessing about. I don't remember any other interaction, but there must have been some.

Fastforward a few years. Watch as my wardrobe changes from ugly sweatpants to tight ugly jeans. I get glasses in eight grade after discovering I'm legally blind, but otherwise this fastforwarded version of my life shows the gradual triumph of aesthetics. I'll stop the tape somewhere between my ninth-grade "deluded misfit" phase and my tenth-grade "milquetoasty catholic" phase. There's some overlap, obviously.

Yes, apparently that's how I ran back then. I call that Run Mark I. But here you can see where Larson and I really hit it off. In high school we started hanging out after school, and after we decided to be hetero-life-buddies (a term Larson has had to explain very slowly to a number of girlfriends) our friendship became a lot more symbiotic.

I would live vicariously through his often ill-advised adventures and try to provide some sort of moral guidepost in the downtime. Larson, in turn, would try to give me the commonsense advice I needed to survive in the real world and clue me in on slang words that my relatively sheltered upbringing had left me ignorant of.

I'd like to think that some fraction of all that advice kicked in at some point, and has actually helped me out. But I see you looking at him, back when he had his original chin, watching this particularly hilarious clip — the one where he asks Graham, quite shamelessly, where Scotland is — and I can see your point.

Larson might not have been the best person to go to for advice, but I was jealous of his autonomy, and even if he had different goals romantic and otherwise, his ability to reach those goals revealed a dedication that I probably lack. If some of his ideas and plans seem foolish, especially in hindsight, it's still admirable that he was able to carry them as far as he did.

I mean, some people may think that the Internet is a good place to meet people and start a relationship, and they're wrong, but they rarely get very far. Armed with the same bad idea, Larson has started at least two serious relationships with people he met online. My life would be a lot different if I had his resolve.

And that was Larson and I. We've had less and less contact as the years went on and our already unlikely friendship (as Larson once so aptly put it: "Why are we friends?") became steadily unlikelier.

I hadn't seen Larson for two years, we figure.

So here's the shocking picture:



That's Dylan on the left. I think that Thursday was his 22nd birthday, and I think he managed to top my birthday for sheer outrageousness (in the "shocking" sense). That's Larson in the middle; he used to be one of the strongest guys in school, and it was surprising to see him looking pudgier.

On the right is Larson's latest Internet girlfriend, who — if she's pissed that I'm not using her name — should note that I always avoid using a guy's girlfriend's name until it's clear that I'll see her quite often.

We had a few beers and enjoyed an Eagle-Scout-quality bonfire. Larson and Dylan did most of the talking, as I felt no need to jabber on and on. All too soon, however, things went sour between Larson and his girlfriend and they spent the rest of the night talking about their feelings.

Well, I thought to me-self, I'm glad I don't have to be responsible for anyone else's feelings anymore, at the very least. Dylan, my only Brainerd friend without a girlfriend, probably echoed that sentiment.

So I'm a lightweight, and there was quite a bit of substance in me after all that sitting around the campfire with the cooler right there. Suffice it to say that Dylan and I kept going while Larson was away.

Which made me unprepared for what happened next. After a while in the car, Larson returned and I had to talk to his girlfriend. Which was ridiculous, but I didn't have the wherewithal to argue at that point in time. I readied my best talking-to-the-RLA voice and ducked in the car.

Let the record show that I'm still a gaping well, into which secrets can be thrown and never return. But I think that my talking to her was ridiculous, because all parties acknowledged that Dylan and I were blameless for whatever was wrong and that we didn't know anything about their relationship, and, it follows, the fight. So what could I possibly add?

As I now see it, there was no reason for me to talk to Larson's girlfriend except narcissism on her part. Wanting people you've just met to think highly of you is normal and human, but turning what should be a vague wish into an actual goal, and taking conversational measures to achieve that goal as if it actually mattered… well, that seems crazy, even for extroverts.

But Dylan and I had a good time. And it was good to see Larson. We slept in the boathouse at my place (I'd sobered up enough to drive a few blocks, by the end of the night) and I dropped Dylan off in town again this morning, on my way to the a birthday party in Chaska and the long day counterpart to Friday's long night.

It was good to see my little cousins and their family; perhaps the closest thing to intellectuals that we have in my extended family. With my gramma there, we had a sort of anti-Republican cabal going, and there was homemade ice cream.

But wow, was the drive a long ways. Totally worth it, both for the group of people I got to see and for the errands I ran on the way down (books, books, books!), but I spent a good six or seven hours in my car today.

And I should have gone to sleep an hour ago. I work tomorrow. Later.

Just watched The Hudsucker Proxy, a zany but (for the Coen brothers) mediocre movie. I had fun though, and I wonder why I never watched the VHS copy of the movie I borrowed from Jinx for most of my Sophomore year.

For about ten glorious minutes three-fourths of the way through the movie, I finally understood the term MacGuffin. According to the Wikipedia, "MacGuffin" is Alfred Hitchcock's term for "a plot device that holds no meaning or purpose of its own except to motivate the characters and advance the story."

I'd spotted a MacGuffin and I was quite proud of myself for doing so. But while I'm pretty sure there was at least one MacGuffin in this movie, I don't know exactly what it/they would be.

I think I have trouble identifying "meaningless" plot devices, in part because years of academic essay writing have trained me to read meaning into (or is it "out of"…) every interesting detail in a given work. And most of the uninteresting ones as well.

I picture Prof Goldgar, once more giving the speech he gave before we read 17th century religious poetry, the same speech he gave again when we read Dryden.

This reminds me of a story… A friend of mine was in a Music Appreciation Class once and he had this old German professor. The professor would play a piece of music, look at the class, say "Vasn't that just beautiful!" And then he would play the next piece… English students seem to think that simplicity and clarity are bad… can't something just be beautiful?

If that sounds sentimental, then I haven't done justice to my irascible professor. Sometimes you can just enjoy something, and that should be enough. But this MacGuffin thing is like a Magic Eye. I could never see those, either.

If I were the king of blogging, I would ban forever the following types of posts:

1. Apologies for not blogging, with a resolution to blog more.
2. Tiny posts summarizing mundane events.
3. Lost-post gravestones like my previous entry.

But I would keep the navel-gazing. Though this interesting but bafflingly complex article at Spiked has given me second thoughts, I think that the potential of the blogosphere has been largely misunderstood.

In every mention of "weblogs, or 'blogs'" in the news today, the emphasis is on their potential as rivals to the entrenched media outlets. The most popular blogs, after all, talk about current affairs and usually try to dissect a single piece of news in an interesting (and, hopefully, unique) way.

But there's another larger element that's often ignored, even dismissed, in stories about the growing popularity of blogs: the diary element.

Now I wasn't thinking of Graham's "Imagining the Blogosphere" article when I started writing this � I read it months and months ago and I can no longer remember the details � but I see that he's already made the point I'm trying to get at:

Though the active core of the blogosphere has received the most attention for its effects on the global mediascape, the much larger periphery of diarist bloggers represents a vital part of this online community.

I assume, of course, that Graham and I appreciate the diarist bloggers from our usual contrasting angles. He sees something living and connected and ephemeral, and I, with my ever-present fear of the merely ephemeral, see something lasting and important. Something "literary."

Those of you who aren't rabid Joseph Epstein fans might not know this, but there are professional essayists. They're the people who churn out articles for highbrow magazines and occasionally parlay those articles into half-philosophical works of nonfiction. Expert navel-gazers like Jeremy Bernstein, Judy Ruiz, and that guy I already mentioned.

I like reading a good essay, and I try to read a few every day so that I can act better than everyone else. I like essays � which actually tend to be more provocative and even-toned than book-length pieces � but even I can see that the economic model is shot.

Collections of even the best essays are hardly bestsellers; the personal essay may rank next to the short story, or even poetry, as the most underappreciated literary form in American popular culture. But like the short story (and, arguably, unlike contemporary poetry), the essay is still a form with demonstrable potential and talented practitioners.

How will we save the essay?

Blogging. The base is already there. And while most diary-weblogs are mostly garbage (present company included) there are some good blogs that don't care about the news.

I'm taking this as an article of faith. I don't have any links to give.

If more bloggers can move away from exhibitionistic or nonexistent appeal (the Spiked article above identifies some hurdles) and focus on writing stuff with lasting relevance � and, though it's obviously too much to ask, it would help if the posts weren't trite � we could have a legion of dedicated and experienced, albeit amateur, essayists.

If the web is, as they say, a meritocracy, then the cream would rise to the top. The best navel-gazers and storytellers, the unique and the talented: there's a place for them in the blogosphere, and it's an important place. It's far-fetched, but someone out there could already be blogging a Remembrance of Things Past for the Information Age.

That's all well and good. We all know that there are people out there who, like myself, are willing to waste countless hours scribble scribble scribbling for no reason. And presumably some of them are quite talented. But the economics?

Well, Spiked is my guide there. Their essays are more topical than what I'm thinking off, but it's just one of many sites to make an online-only business model work. Whether through contributions (like Spiked) or with ads (like Wonkette), some blogs do make money. This could be a profitable avenue for professional essayists as well as (assuming the stigma against online publishing could be tamed) quixotic university presses struggling to work with capitalist business models.

For a tenure-seeking professor, having an essay published through a university press website could (and should) have the same cachet as getting a paper copy. For an amateur essayist, any cachet is good cachet.

So this is the part where I come in, sorta. I know that if I stretch for profundity in every post I'll end up falling flat on my face half the time. And I have no use for uncensored navel-gazing; I'm not about to whore out my private thoughts for attention when I have a perfectly good journal to whine to.

But I can at least raise the bar, somewhat, and hope that others will do the same. So here's one for all the diarists out there: I hereby abolish the three "bad" types of posts I mentioned above from this website forever. And I'll use the spellchecker more. It's a start.

Another long blog entry lost. Always copy and paste into a second window every so often. And don't trust the spell check. Don't spell check your very long entry without making a copy, because the stupid Blogger spellchecker could crash your computer with its crappy Java and make you lose an hour's work.

Summary:

1. Moved my dad to a new office. Lost my desk. Room is messier.
2. Talked to Larson today. Will see him Friday.
3. Talked to Jubb. Have to leave a wedding and drive straight to concert on the 31st. Jubb needs a ride to Milwaukee from Appleton.
4. Saw a sign outside of the Ramada: "Good Luck September and Christopher!" Suspect that this old acquaintance from high school may have gotten married.

I was downstairs, getting a glass of water and generally enjoying a brief respite from the demoralizing mess upstairs in my room. I can't think, when I look at this mess.

My dad was home, eating a late dinner and talking to the t.v. Specifically, he was eating my mom's first attempt at apricot chicken and interrogating presidential candidate John Kerry on his nebulous policies.

Loathe to argue with the Fox News Channel's Brainerd correspondent, I nevertheless mentioned casually that Kerry was reportedly still choosing a prospective cabinet, and that we can probably expect more specific policies after some of that behind-the-scenes work is done.

(At least, I hope so.)

I segued nervously into a joke about Kerry I'd heard on yesterday's Daily Show, which I thought my dad might find amusing. He chuckled absentmindedly.

I have to give credit to my dad for his willingness to turn a blind eye to my slinking-out-of-rooms. If he starts to get longwinded (yeah, I suppose I get that from him) I back away slowly. It's a system that works.

And that's just what I did, when he dropped a non-sequitur I wouldn't ever ever touch. Watch me slink.

Dan's Dad: Well, whatever you think about politics, if you're really a Catholic you can't vote for Kerry. He's in favor of abortions, late-term abortions, gay marriage… well, it comes down to what's more important, your political beliefs or your beliefs as a Christian…

There's probably more, but by then I was upstairs. Safe.

I don't like Kerry's politics. I don't like Kerry. But, to quote Reason's Jesse Walker:

Yet I find myself hoping the guy wins. Not because I'm sure he'll be better than the current executive, but because the incumbent so richly deserves to be punished at the polls. Making me root for a sanctimonious statist blowhard like Kerry isn't the worst thing Bush has done to the country. But it's the offense that I take most personally.

I've been working the closing shift recently, under the watch of Giovanni's crazy-religious assistant manager. To her credit, she's toned down a little over the past few years — though she's still a dead ringer for Peggy Hill.

Our inevitable discussion of religion went surprisingly well. It was Saturday night, and we'd been really busy so it was taking unusually long to close up. She asked me if I had to get up for church tomorrow, I said no.

I think she's whatever religion Jubb is. In any case, her Sunday plans were so obvious that I didn't bother to return the question.

She asked me if my parents went to church, and I explained that, being Catholics, they go whenever they feel guilty enough to attend. She laughed. After all, I wasn't making fun of her religion.

I stand by my assertion that anti-Catholicism is one of our nation's most politically correct forms of bigotry. But I digress.

There was a convenient pause, and I outed myself as a lazy atheist. Not that I think atheists are obligated to have meetings or anything; I just feel that Nietzsche — what with his quixotic search for a moral system not dependent on the Judeo-Christian values — makes the rest of us look lazy.

She took the "lazy atheist" thing pretty well, but I could sense something like doubt in her inward look.

Too bad about Dan. He was such a nice boy…

Of course, if I climbed out of the ivory tower (or "Lawrence Bubble", as my fellow collegians have dubbed our collective delusion) a little more often, I'd realize how rare unadulterated atheism actually is.

In fact, our country is a whole lot crazier than I'd've ever imagined. I stumbled upon this article a few days ago, and I'm still a bit shocked:

Most Americans take Bible stories literally

Since I suspect you won't follow my link, here's a damning quote:

An ABC News poll released [February 15th] found that 61 percent of Americans believe the account of creation in the Bible's book of Genesis is "literally true" rather than a story meant as a "lesson."

Whether people are actually this fundamentalist or simply intellectually lazy enough to accept the miraculous without giving it much thought, I expected a little more from the prols on this one.

I'd always thought they were just keeping up appearances, like that sham nun in DeLillo's otherwise middling White Noise.

But I was wrong. We even have fundamentalist paleontologists.

My one consolation is that professed Catholics were less likely than Protestants to hold fundamentalist beliefs. While the Church (hah!) has taken a more metaphorical approach lately, I'd rather attribute the difference to "lapsed" Catholics who, like me, believe that you can never really shake a Catholic upbringing.

But wait, there's more. We're reading less and less. Last year, around 44% of Americans did not read a book of any kind.

I probably sound elitist. Few people have as much free time as I do. But I think that many of them are like my little brother Matt, who probably hasn't read a book for fun in years. They have free time, but choose to spend it in less enlightening, more social ways.

The recent proliferation and success of angled reporting in this country suggests that people don't like to have their assumptions challenged; they'll seek out the sources that fit best their worldview.

They're lazy in probably the only way I'm not.

Books of any sort put another perspective in one's head, and even works by the same author can lack the ideological consistency (and easily-parroted blurbs) of the Fox News Channel or a Moore-u-mentry.

You risk being convinced of something you didn't believe, when you read a book. So what does this tell us?

We could be heading towards a more personalized world, where an increase in information is joined with a stockpiling of unchallenged assumptions, prepackaged to suit you.

Books are unwelcome, in that world. Ah, to be the ghost of literature…

And if alliteracy and fundamentalism were to combine?

Well, I suppose Luther would be spinning in his grave, for one. But presumably some omnibenevolent being would step in long before that happened.

(Come to think of it, shouldn't all these Protestants be reading their precious bibles? That's a book, I'm sure it is. I guess they do think it's easier when the priest tells them what's what.)

Of course, it's not just Red America that's becoming more polarized and less open-minded…

Since I already mentioned Moore, I apologize for bringing him up again. You could accuse me of using a strawman if he weren't so popular.

The Daily Show, as wonderful as it is, has been guilty of some cheap shots recently. Cheap shots are typical of the best commentators on both sides of the spectrum, but this is different. This is my show.

I know that it's not supposed to be a bastion of fairness, but for me — don't laugh — The Daily Show has always been moderate.

Not its correspondents or host, of course. Stephen Colbert told Nadar he was a Democrat earlier this week (in an expression of bemused frustration) and Jon Stewart's anti-war stance is clear enough at this point. He can't be blamed for using this exceptionally bully pulpit.

The show itself, though, has always been moderate, wishy-washy, and cynical. Jon Stewart's recent bipartisan smackdown of Bush and Clinton made for one of the best episodes I've seen. Excerpts from it were rightfully aired during his Larry King interview.

In fact, except in some of his more politically charged interviews, Stewart does a superb job of keeping the show focused on the funny and not some "message".

(We get a message anyways, after all. The art that conceals itself, and all that.)

Still, the show has become more biased. I don't watch The Daily Show at school (which is a shame) so I hadn't realized how the war had polarized it. Even if the commentators have their prejudices, their segments shouldn't have clearly partisan goals.

Samantha Bee — one of the newer, hit-or-miss correspondents — went over the line in one recent piece.

I think I already said I was going to bring up Moore again, so here it is.

The subject, to my surprise, was Michael Moore Hates America, a low-budget documentary by an amateur filmmaker that I been looking forward to for some time. Several high-profile (though mostly right-leaning) pundits have already filmed appearances.

Bee followed the director (whose name I won't bother to look up, sorry) as he clumsily attempted to ambush Moore with his own tricks. As a natural extension of his refusal to give interviews to hostile reporters, Moore has refused to be appear in a movie by a hostile director.

Through the course of the segment, Bee managed to make the would-be director look inarticulate and disorganized. Which he very well might be. Moore, who appeared in the skit (it ended with him and Bee ditching the director for a private lunch), came off as some sort of roguish hero.

(That's more troubling, but not surprising. Moore's first film, Roger And Me, is about another such hero.)

The big issue here is not that Samantha Bee airbrushed Moore's hypocrisy (it mocked the notion that he was "notoriously camera-shy" and glossed over why Moore is, in this case, camera-shy), it's that Moore and the 800-pound comedic gorilla that is The Daily Show have combined to discredit an earnest young filmmaker who had to raise money to fly to New York.

It's bullying, and it's bullying with too obvious of bias for my taste. If a show I rely on for a balanced albeit cynical take on the news is going to pander to the likes of Moore… well, I'm not going to stop watching the show.

But unless things turn around, that leaves me with nowhere to go.

I never thought I'd say this, and part of me still doesn't believe it, but: I'll be glad when this high-definition t.v. is out of my room forever.

I cleverly requisitioned the t.v., which will eventually end up in the store my dad is building beside his office, a week or so ago. I played GTA 3: Vice City on it for a bit, long enough to find six more hidden packages, but eventually even I get bored with that.

When Josh bought the game Knights of the Old Republic — which is really quite good, even if it is the 1,245th game set in the Star Wars universe — I requisitioned that, and everything was good.

Except I saw the sunrise this morning. I have a computer, a printer, an Xbox, and a high-definition t.v. up here, but I have no clock (that the one I bought in Germany is on the fritz).

And even if I did, it would make no difference. I played Warcraft III for six hours straight a few times too. The same goes for Morrowind, Windwaker, and every game I've ever remotely enjoyed, all the way back to Return to Zork and its infinitely harder text-based predecessor Beyond Zork.

I'm not playing KOT tonight. I probably won't touch it for a while. But I fear for my grades once Fable, Jade Empire, and Halo 2 all come out fall term.

So last night was my first night with good tips since I started delivering pizzas in June. I don't know what it is, but people are a lot stingier these days than they were when I first started. On about every fourth or fifth delivery, I get stiffed, and a lot of people think $1 is enough.

A good tip in Brainerd is $2, jerks.

The fourth was probably the worst night. I had all of six deliveries, half as many as normal, and I didn't get any tips until about halfway through my shift.

After work on the 4th I hooked up with Dylan and Amelia, which was cool, and watched the fireworks display over at the high school, which was also cool.

The only downside was that debris from the fireworks kept falling on us: I got thwacked in the chest by a fist-sized piece and from then on, I couldn't help but flinch as I watched various dark pieces, framed against the colorful sky, floating downward towards unpredictable destinations.

And now I'm on vacation. I have the next three days off, and I'm sure I'll fritter them away.

I've lapsed into a somewhat mind-numbing routine, alternating between my computer, my Xbox, and the downstairs television like some especially dorky migratory bird.

But I'm not about to become a total recluse. Not until I've chalked up enough spectacular social blunders to convince Our Bold Hero that leaving his room is a bad idea.

In that spirit, I had an incredibly awkward moment with my mom today.

Some background, because I love to ramble: Our home, like many others, is blessed with a DirectTV TiVo system, which I've scheduled to record the programs my erratic schedule doesn't always allow me to see.

I just realized the full potential of TiVo a week ago, when I set it to record every new episode of The Daily Show. Why I didn't do this last summer, I have no idea.

And I've also set it to record Penn & Teller's show. So far, I've recorded two episodes.

And this brings me back to the story.

With the help of the stars, I'd successfully navigated my way downstairs to watch some pre-recorded television and eat some pepperoni pizza.

I decided to watch Penn & Teller. The subject of the show was New Age crap, and this episode was just a mediocre and lazy as all the other "debunking" they've done this season. Every now and then they brought in an expert, but Penn and Teller spent the bulk of their time mocking the easiest targets they could find.

Halfway through the show, my mom sat down on the other couch. She'd never seen Penn & Teller's show, but I brought her up to speed on the newest target: "Vortexes" in Sedona, Arizona. We've been to Sedona (and I have the oversized T-shirt to prove it) so that was enough to get her to stay.

With eight minutes left in the show, they introduced the next target: tantric sex.

I like the show, and I'd been watching the past twenty minutes, so I saw no reason to abruptly flip the channel. I decided to act like it was no big deal.

After all, I've watched Family Guy with my mom in the room (though I chose the episodes carefully) and I remember sitting next to her in the theater during the nude scene in Titanic, as quietly as I possibly could sit.

So this skeazy guy from Hawaii was explaining tantric sex and all I could think was: please don't show tantric sex. This is a cable show, after all, and whenever they can work in nudity they will.

But they didn't start with nudity. After skeazy had finished his little rant, they showed him teaching a class.

He pulled out a vagina puppet and asked it:
"Can I polish your pearl"?

My mom didn't last much longer after that. She mumbled something about the garbage on t.v. these days and beat a hasty retreat.

Which is a good thing, because when she left I exhaled, and I think I'd been holding my breath since the tantra guy had first come on. Also, it's a safe bet that I was probably blushing.

The rest of the episode was full of saucy vagina puppets and talk of "pearl polishing" and — because I'm totally right about cable — actual naked pearl polishing.

So that was my awkward moment of the summer. Year, even.

I don't think I can go down from here. I almost want to try and do just that, but, well, I have more sense than that…