According to Marc Ambinder at The Atlantic Magazine online:

Two major stars of the Democratic foreign policy establishment — former Sens. Sam Nunn and David Boren, have just endorsed Barack Obama and have agreed to serve on his national security team. Nunn served as the Democratic Party’s coverman in foreign policy debates for two decades. He voted against the 1991 Gulf War and thereby gave many other Democrats permission to take that political risk. He’s a social conservative in many respects, too. More recently, Nunn has associated himself with the cause of nuclear nonproliferation. He spent 8 years as chairman of the Armed Services committee in the Senate. Boren left the Senate in 1994 and is a former chairman of what used to be called the Senate Select Committee on intelligence. He also spent 16 years as governor of Oklahoma. In the statements they provided to the Obama campaign, both Nunn and Boren sound Obama-esque notes. Here’s Nunn: “Demonizing the opposition, oversimplifying the issues, and dumbing down the political debate prevent our country from coming together to make tough decisions and tackle our biggest challenges.” Here’s Boren: ““Our most urgent task is to end the divisions in our country, to stop the political bickering, and to unite our talents and efforts. Americans of all persuasions are pleading with our political leaders to bring us together. I believe Senator Obama is sincerely committed to that effort. He has made a non-partisan approach to all issues a top priority.” Last summer, Boren held private talks with associates of Mayor Mike Bloomberg about a possible independent presidential bid.

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By Jonathan S. Landay and John Walcott,
McClatchy Newspapers

WASHINGTON — The war in Iraq has become “a major debacle” and the outcome “is in doubt” despite improvements in security from the buildup in U.S. forces, according to a highly critical study published Thursday by the Pentagon’s premier military educational institute.

The report released by the National Defense University raises fresh doubts about President Bush ‘s projections of a U.S. victory in Iraq just a week after Bush announced that he was suspending U.S. troop reductions.

The report carries considerable weight because it was written by Joseph Collins , a former senior Pentagon official, and was based in part on interviews with other former senior defense and intelligence officials who played roles in prewar preparations.

It was published by the university’s National Institute for Strategic Studies , a Defense Department research center.

“Measured in blood and treasure, the war in Iraq has achieved the status of a major war and a major debacle,” says the report’s opening line.

At the time the report was written last fall, more than 4,000 U.S. and foreign troops, more than 7,500 Iraqi security forces and as many as 82,000 Iraqi civilians had been killed and tens of thousands of others wounded, while the cost of the war since March 2003 was estimated at $450 billion .

“No one as yet has calculated the costs of long-term veterans’ benefits or the total impact on service personnel and materiel,” wrote Collins, who was involved in planning post-invasion humanitarian operations.

The report said that the United States has suffered serious political costs, with its standing in the world seriously diminished. Moreover, operations in Iraq have diverted “manpower, materiel and the attention of decision-makers” from “all other efforts in the war on terror” and severely strained the U.S. armed forces.

“Compounding all of these problems, our efforts there (in Iraq ) were designed to enhance U.S. national security, but they have become, at least temporarily, an incubator for terrorism and have emboldened Iran to expand its influence throughout the Middle East ,” the report continued.

The addition of 30,000 U.S. troops to Iraq last year to halt the country’s descent into all-out civil war has improved security, but not enough to ensure that the country emerges as a stable democracy at peace with its neighbors, the report said.

“Despite impressive progress in security, the outcome of the war is in doubt,” said the report. “Strong majorities of both Iraqis and Americans favor some sort of U.S. withdrawal. Intelligence analysts, however, remind us that the only thing worse than an Iraq with an American army may be an Iraq after a rapid withdrawal of that army.”

“For many analysts (including this one), Iraq remains a ‘must win,’ but for many others, despite obvious progress under General David Petraeus and the surge, it now looks like a ‘can’t win.'”

The report lays much of the blame for what went wrong in Iraq after the initial U.S. victory at the feet of then-Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld . It says that in November 2001 , before the war in Afghanistan was over, President Bush asked Rumsfeld “to begin planning in secret for potential military operations against Iraq .”

Rumsfeld, who was closely allied with Vice President Dick Cheney , bypassed the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the report says, and became “the direct supervisor of the combatant commanders.”

” . . . the aggressive, hands-on Rumsfeld,” it continues, “cajoled and pushed his way toward a small force and a lightning fast operation.” Later, he shut down the military’s computerized deployment system, “questioning, delaying or deleting units on the numerous deployment orders that came across his desk.”

In part because “long, costly, manpower-intensive post-combat operations were anathema to Rumsfeld,” the report says, the U.S. was unprepared to fight what Collins calls “War B,” the battle against insurgents and sectarian violence that began in mid-2003, shortly after “War A,” the fight against Saddam Hussein’s forces, ended.

Compounding the problem was a series of faulty assumptions made by Bush’s top aides, among them an expectation fed by Iraqi exiles that Iraqis would be grateful to America for liberating them from Saddam’s dictatorship. The administration also expected that ” Iraq without Saddam could manage and fund its own reconstruction.”

The report also singles out the Bush administration’s national security apparatus and implicitly President Bush and both of his national security advisers, Condoleezza Rice and Stephen Hadley , saying that “senior national security officials exhibited in many instances an imperious attitude, exerting power and pressure where diplomacy and bargaining might have had a better effect.”

Collins ends his report by quoting Winston Churchill , who said: “Let us learn our lessons. Never, never believe any war will be smooth and easy, or that anyone who embarks on the strange voyage can measure the tides and hurricanes he will encounter. . . . Always remember, however sure you are that you can easily win, that there would not be a war if the other man did not think that he also had a chance.”

To read the report:

www.ndu.edu/inss/Occasional_Papers/OP5.pdf

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I went to work today and actually got stuff done.

I was pretty proud of myself and very grateful to get out of the house.

I’ve agreed to sit on the board of directors of a new non-profit foundation and I attended the organization meeting in the early evening.

Afterwards, I went to Flip’s for a salad because I’ve not had anything green to eat in several days.

That’s when I noticed my smile has changed.

Several people came into Flip’s while I sat at a table next to the West doors and many of them were attractive (and less attractive, I’ll admit) women.

I smiled as they entered.

But, it was a lips-together smile.

I used to have an automatic show of teeth smile.

I got pounded by one or another less self confident woman on more than one occasion because I’d smiled at someone while with them.

I was “flirting”, I found out.

Apparently, there are acceptable smiles and there are flirting smiles.

Who knew?

I’ve also noticed other changes.

Not all that long ago, if I saw a woman wearing nice jewelry or a nice scarf or great shoes, I’d say so.

Not any more.

Flirting.

Used to be, if I was where there was music and I had a mind to, I’d ask someone to dance.

Little did I know that asking someone to dance was just short of “Wanna kickit?” and at least a prelude to an engagement.

It’s flirtatious.

Nowadays, I just listen to the music and keep to myself.

The oddest part of all that is that I’m not dating anyone. Haven’t dated anyone in more than a year.

Now, I get it that if I walk up to you with a big smile, remark on your earrings and ask you to dance that the combination is likely a flirt, although I’ll also say that for me it’s often just a matter of I’m happy, think your jewelry is nice and would like to dance AND THAT’S IT. I still see, finally, that the combination can be interpreted as having an ulterior motive.

So, what I’d like to know from my women readers — daughters and sisters should feel included — do any of you pay attention to such details of your behavior? Are there things you don’t do around guys that seem perfectly natural, but that you avoid so as to finesse how your smile (or whatever) might be interpreted? Do you always just smile naturally or do you sometimes censor how you smile, what you say and what you do? Is it for you learned or just naturally you know what to do and what not to do in the circumstance?

And, also clothes. For a lot of reasons, I tend to be in suit and tie when almost everyone else is more casual. Does that make how I act seem more flirtatious to you? No question that a woman’s apparel can affect how men react to them. Buttoned up to the throat and skirt to the knees is different from tube top and micro-mini jeans skirt from a man’s perspective. Do women also have “rules” about how men dress? They say some women look at our shoes first. Do they? Do you?

I get some attention from some people for supposedly being a “womanizer”. That’s not at all how it feels from my insides; to me, it seems like I’m shy and clumsy when it comes to the ladies. It seems to me that having that reputation is an impediment and not an advantage. However, I don’t really know. I don’t even really know if that is my reputation. I do know that sometimes the reaction by women to me seems like voter reaction to politicians — that I’m a guy who will say or do anything to get elected but after the first Tuesday in November, I can’t be found. What, if anything, can or should I do to avoid this reaction and reputation?

I’m really asking here, ladies. As much as I’ve enjoyed being a batchelor and slumming around my house passing gas and scratching myself, it’s spring and the day will come when I will want to go out and date and look for Flibbertigibbit’s “The One”. This time, I’d like to start off on the right foot and give myself the best possible chances of meeting someone.

Not my choice for the best film of all time, but certainly my own all time favorite.

Blogblah

Thanks to the well-wishers and particularly Mom and Oz and Deb who made home visits.

One thing I’ll say about being confined to quarters for four days: it’s boring as hell.

Even food tastes bad when everything tastes of snot. (sorry about that image, but it’s true.)

I’ll tell one amusing story about being sick and too unwell to go out on Friday and Saturday night.

My eyes have been very liquid, runny as if in tears, and it’s made it hard for me to read the internet and I’ve been reduced to watching some TV, including last night’s SNL.

So, I went to the local CVS drug store to get some cough medicine. Trouble is, I don’t drink alcohol even in medicine. Yep, I don’t even use mouthwash with alcohol and get a brand that’s alcohol free. So, Nyquil is out since it’s got more alcohol than liquor store beer or most wines.

But, when I got to the drug store, my eyes were so blurry I couldn’t read the labels to find the ones with no alcohol (almost all of them use alcohol).

So, I had to go home, take out my contacts, take an antihistamine, and go back to the drug store.

Kinda amusing that I’d be so particular, but I also realized that all I had to do was ask the pharmacist when I was there the first time.

You don’t think so good when your head is full of snot.

The sinus headache was one of the worst parts of this. I didn’t want to move out of bed at first because my sinuses were banging gongs inside.

The other bad part was deep fatigue and body ache combined with sore ribs from coughing spasms.

Sleeping helped and by Saturday, I felt much much better. But, I knew better than to get out because I was just too weak to socialize. Today, I’m just bored. I just finished reading 560 comments on Politico’s website about the Obama “bitter” remarks. I can’t say I read anything worth reading, I was just reading one idiot blasting another with a soupcon of Republican shadenfreude thrown in now and again.

I think I read and care more about politics than anyone else I know. I have reached the limits, though. I’m just plain tired of the Dem party primary and wish it would be over and done. Right this minute, I don’t even care who wins or how, I just wish the crap would end. I’d be happy to stick with it if we were talking about the war in Iraq or the economy or even health care, but we aren’t. I don’t care about Hillary’s misspeaking about Bosnia and I don’t care about Obama’s “Level II Kinsleyan Gaffe”. I don’t care about “street money” in Philly or Evan Bayh in downstate Indiana or Obama’s 25 point lead in North Carolina or Hillary’s 13 point lead in Puerto Rico.

I’m every bit as sick and tired of talking heads on television as I am of blogger bombast.

And, even though I’m better and plan on being at work tomorrow, I’m sick and tired of being sick and tired.

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Looks like I’m not getting out of the house. I was home all day Thursday as well.

I’ll miss my Friday night dinner with friends, but I can’t really tell if I have allergies from all the lawn mowing on my block or if I’ve got some respiratory illness that might be contagious.

Either way, I feel like crap. Yesterday, I slept 8 hours, got up for four hours, slept four hours, got up for 4 hours and went back to sleep for 8 hours.

The only thing I want to do is cough and blow my nose. Walking from the bed to the bathroom leaves me exhausted and getting to the kitchen is a matter of desperation not convenience.

I missed the call, but it seems that West Coast sister has another grandchild, meaning that the family has expanded by two within the past few weeks. I also missed — for the second week in a row — my usual Thursday at Flip’s with the fabulous K.O.

I’ve tried to get excited over political news, but to tell you the honest truth, I just don’t give a darn right now.

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this cheered me up. sketch comedy contest on YouTube. Had to use the word “indubitably”.

Supposedly, this is a post-ironic world. Irony was killed by a song full of coincidences, I’m told.

I’m here to tell you this is not true. Irony remains with us.

Read this story about a woman arrested for a drunk driving one-car accident on her way to Bible study.

The last paragraph is important because it makes the irony all the more poignant.

You couldn’t get away with such awesomeness in a fiction story, but real life is full of surprises.

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P.S. I almost forgot. This isn’t irony, but it’s in that territory. I was over on a blog called TalkLeft, which is essentially a Hillary website these days. Anyway, they are talking about how unfair it is that Sen. Clinton’s story about a woman and her unborn baby both died because they were without health insurance and couldn’t pony up $100 for a hospital that spurned her. Not exactly the truth exactly the way Sen. Clinton told the story, but not so far off, either, it’s just more complicated than that. Anyways, all these Hillary supporters are talking about how unfairly the NY Sen. is treated in comparison to Sen. Obama and they come up with the theory that it’s the fault of the media, just like what the media did to Al Gore and Kerry and how useless the media was in the runup to the war. I’m pretty confused at this point. It’s the Left Wing media that’s hard on Hillary but it was the Right Wing media that was hard on Gore and Kerry and President and First Lady Clinton. But it’s the Left Wing Media because it’s the bloggers at Talking Points Memo (Josh Marshall) and Daily Kos (Markos Moulatis) and … Matthews and Olbermann and Pat Buchanan (?) … and … watch this YouTube video called Mad as Hell, it’s gone viral and it’s all about how unfair they are being to Hillary, who is only fighting for all of us true and real Democrats who will vote for McCain before Obama.

I’m glad I’m not a blind partisan or anything.

laocoon

Is it McCaining with you?

I thought I’d get to see one of my favorite bloggers, Andrew Sullivan, tonight at OCU, but he cancelled because he’s got the flu. Likely story.

Oh, well, I’ll just go to Rococo’s for the jazz jam tonight instead. That’ll show ‘em.

I want to mention that I very much liked Paul Medina’s work at JRB last Friday. Very strong images and innovative presentations pleased my eye and teased my thinking/emotions.

I had a quiet and somewhat productive weekend, but I spent almost all of it alone at the house with the cat, who got his ass whipped by another neighborhood feline. I rescued him from the magnolia tree in the front of the house, but he had obvious signs of being the loser of some titantic battle.

Rock chock Jayhawks. I’ll root for the Big XII team every time and they looked awesome against North Carolina.

Chief campaign strategist Mark Penn was demoted, but not out and out fired from Hillary’s campaign. This is the second major shakeup at the top of her campaign since February 5. I’ve been in campaigns that were behind and not catching up and it’s not so much fun as being on the winning side. Today’s Gallup Poll puts Obama 9 points up over Sen. Clinton and polls indicate that she will not get the double-digit win she needs in PA., is in a tie in Indiana and far behind in North Carolina. Her reality check seems to be bouncing as three more superdelegates came out for Obama over the weekend.

I can feel the April 15 tax deadline looming over me like today’s cloudy skies, cooling off the warm spring and my desire to get out of bed at 7 a.m.

Let there be light, and there was light and it was good.

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UPDATE: The jazz at Rococo’s was smooth and cool. I actually applauded several sets. I treated myself to coffee and a hot chocolate pudding pastrycake with whipped cream and cocoa shavings drizzled with a chocolate sauce. The Jayhawks came from 9 points down with two minutes to go in regulation play and came back to win the national college basketball championship in overtime play against the Memphis Tigers. It was a very good game between two excellent teams. Storms flashed and thundered through the metropolitan area, whipping the leaves of budding flora in my neighborhood — a natural symphony I’ve always liked. Peace out.

God, grant me the serenity to accept the fact that the practice of law will not change to suit my needs of the moment; Courage to change my attitude and focus more on solving my clients’ problems and less on what I get out of it; and the Wisdom to know that bitching and whining only make things worse.
Amen.

Sorry, but I don’t have time to post more today. I’ve got to go to work.

Blogblah

Thanks to those that responded to yesterday’s post. I love you. All of you.

I think 20 years this year is long enough to bitch about practicing law (although I took out a couple years to teach). I can either find a way to like it or find something else to do that will make me happy.

From ’68 to ’82, I had about six years in the newspaper business when I was happy about going to work the vast majority of the time. The other eight years, I liked it most of the time but not as much. Both years I taught, I looked forward to most of my days in the classroom and even those days I didn’t look forward to the day, once I got there, I found something pleasing almost every single day. Grading finals over Christmas break, not so much.

Since 1987, going to the office to practice law has been dreadful as the norm. Some of those years, I might only enjoy 10 days out of the whole year on a professional level. I rarely feel like it’s been rewarding. I can even do it fairly well, when I actually get down to work. It must hold something because I know happy lawyers who like what they do and make a good living. For me, it’s a beating. If I could figure out how to get there, I honestly believe I would enjoy being a Starbucks barista or a Barnes and Nobles bookseller more than this. I don’t think that’s what I’ll do and I hope I can come up with something even more fulfilling and satisfying, but as monotonous as those jobs may be I’d rather do that than what I do now. For one thing, you have a lot more pleasant interactions with customers at those two places than you have people with a problem. I don’t have so many pleasant professional interactions. People are under stress and emotional and/or are being paid $200/hr to give me shit and make problems.

I bet I told my children a hundred times “Do what you love and love what you do and the money will follow.” They both seem pretty happy doing what they do and they seem to get along somehow. Doesn’t mean they don’t have problems, it just means that neither one of them loathes what they’re doing.

Again today, I was told to write. In fact, I was told to write even if I know I’ll fail.

I’ve been doing this blog since Sept. ’05 and I’ve written more than enough original material to comprise a book. Hundreds of posts and comments on other blogs pad the accumulated writings of Blogblah. In addition, behind me at this desk is a four foot shelf of handwritten journals, year after year for eight years. The equivilant of at least 10 hefty books, although it’s a couple dozen slim volumes. I’ve written a dozen short fiction stories. I also have hundreds of pages of novel ideas that I got bored with and just stopped.

Want to know why I just haven’t jumped off and tried a writing career? I have a readership of 40, that’s why. I’d starve. I see people more clever than me writing and not getting published. Nobody reads anymore, folks. Maybe you missed that, but it was in all the papers. Publishing has turned into a tough game. I’d write chick lit if I could. Love to turn out a John Grisham, but that’s not what I write. I spend enough time at B&N leafing through Editor & Publisher to know a little of what I’m talking about. I’ve read books on getting published (it amuses me that such books exist) including books by Henry Miller, Anne Lemont and Elmore Leonard. Do you know WHY such books exist? Because there are so damn many people who want to get published. You can’t swing a dead cat in a coffee shop without hitting a would-be writer. The cup runneth over.

That’s why I blog. It’s what I do. I write. I write a lot. Often. Sometimes, more than once a day. Sometimes for hours. Look at yesterday’s post. Look at how many references to philosophers, popular culture and classic literature. Look at the length of that baby. Knocked that sumbitch out off the top of my head in about an hour. Not possible if you don’t write as much and as often as I do. It takes practice to turn out the drivel on this blog, baybee. Just exactly who do you think would pay to read that whining? Millions of Americans sitting on the beach just can’t wait to hear me kvetch about my pointless life. I write, but again, so what? If you’re one of the 40 people who have ever read this blog, you already know. Sometimes it’s OK, sometimes it’s boring, sometimes it’s better, but only if you already know me. It would be nice to have one of the two qualities most needed in a writer: I’d like to be clever or insightful, but I’m not particularly either one. So, if you want to know why I don’t kick off the traces and write, it’s because it would be pointless, stupid and meaningless, just like this blog.

I’m frustrated, sad and frightened.

I didn’t go to work today, in fact I didn’t leave the house.

I’ve been sitting at my desk smoking one cigaret after another.

I loathe my profession. I dislike the adversarial nature of the practice of law. I’ve been plowing this field for 20 years and it’s never been good to me. I’m trapped into a life that regularly leaves me feeling stupid and ineffectual and cowardly, regardless of the reality.

The promise of making a decent living in the practice of law has so far eluded me. I’m not a very good businessman and my business reflects my disinterest and half-hearted attempts to do better.

Yet, as I near the age of 60, I can’t imagine where I could go from here. Who would hire me?

I made my own decision about my social life more than a year ago that I would be better served by not dating. I thought long and hard about it. In most ways, that seems like a good decision in retrospect. There has been a downside, of course; there is a downside to everything. There are days like this one when I’m not just alone, I’m lonely. I wish I had a shoulder to cry on, a cheerleader to buck me up and a companion to bounce thoughts back instead of the echo chamber inside my head.

In the job market, the reality is that my age would be a large obstacle to beginning a new career. Similarly, in the dating market the truth is that I’m not much of a catch.

I’m fortunate that I have enough to recommend me that I have a cadre of close friends. I value them more than gold. I have a supportive family that sometimes likes me less than at other times, but is loyal and loving even in the times I’m not at my best.

This is not the despair of depression. I’ve been there and I know that “black dog” (as Winston Churchill called it) all too well. I’m not overwhelmed by darkness. I see that I have been fortunate in more respects than I can here enumerate: I’m smart, well educated and relatively healthy; I certainly am not homeless, without wardrobe nor hungry.

This is also not the “restless, irritable and discontent” of my alcoholism. This is not something I’ll drink over. This is not something that I have a finger to point in blame. I have no resentments about this, except perhaps with myself and my sometimes unwise choices.

It’s just where I am.

I wish it were so easy for me as to simply have faith in God that I am in his care and will receive what is best for me, if not what I want. I wish I could turn to non-attachment and the path to nirvana or unification with the universe. I’ve poured over the Tao de Ching, studied the Gospels, immersed myself in Rome’s Stoic emperor Marcus Aurelius and pondered the analects of Confucious. They appeal to my intellect, often striking me as holding wisdom beyond measure. Today, they elude me.

Lately, I’ve been proactive with my interior life. I’m in the process of seeing a psychiatrist who is helping me find the right medications to control my depression. I go to AA meetings, having seen what failing to go brings. I plan activities I find enjoyable: I see my friends on Wednesdays and Fridays, go to art openings and next Monday, I’ll go see Andrew Sullivan, one of my favorite bloggers, at OCU.

Meanwhile, I have writing projects that lie fallow. I don’t know why I’m not in pursuit of that. My studio hasn’t been used to produce even the smallest watercolor or sumii in months. I inexplicably walk past that door in the hallway dozens of times a day without a flicker of interest.

Right this minute, while I write this, it’s quiet in the house — with no one to disturb, there’s still no music to entice me.

I hate this cigaret that burns between my fingers. I get up and hack and cough for a half hour every morning, smoking and choking both at the same time. The very thought of giving them up scares the living shit out of me even though I know beyond all reasonable doubt that they are killing me.

I wash and dry the clothes, fold them and put them away. I do the dishes and reshelve them. I play solitaire on the computer between hours of reading about politics. I write in my journal of my gushing and mixed emotions and the trivial happenings of my day to day quiet desperation. I go to bed.

This is existence, not living. This is waiting in a self imposed prison for an indeterminate sentence of death. I am a character in a Kafka story. I look at the tree outside my window and it dissolves into the vomitum of Sartre’s nausea. The soft velvet veils of television, religion and consumerism are denied me and I long for my lost naivte, a virginity I lustfully flung away many years ago.

Perhaps if I were a woman I could blame men, or if I were black I could blame whites or if I had come from the hardscrabble of some ghetto I could blame capitalism. Please victimize me. No matter how coy your rationale, let me have some thin reed to hide behind, some straw to grasp, some will o the wisp as an excuse.

I thought not.

Yet, I refuse to truck with nihilism. It may be true that none of this will matter half as much a thousand years from now in the big scheme of things, still it matters a great deal to me right now.

Even if life isn’t fair, can’t my life still fare better than this?

Post Script: Since I’m still up and thinking about this stuff, I’d say I’m suffering from ennui. It’s not that stuff doesn’t matter, it’s just that I’m bored with it and I don’t care. I’m all outraged and shit about politics and maybe that matters. Maybe it matters that your baby left you or that he never gets off the couch. Maybe my eternal soul is paramount. Sometimes I think I know what’s important, sometimes I lose track. If I could, I’d croon Ms. Lee’s “Is That All There Is?”. I’m a walking, talking, typing Gallic shrug. I mean, is this really it for me? Is this the best I could do? Is this really what life offers? The best you can do is “Life is suffering; get over it”? Some pie in the sky bye and bye? I see these wretches at some AA places I go and their hands are trembling and I thank God for my sobriety. And, I think I’m damn fine because these bastards want what I’ve got. They are willing to do anything to be me. If they only knew. Being sober is better than not being sober. Now what? One stick in the eye is better than a stick in both eyes. Yeah, great. That’s the best you got to offer? No other choices? I got this great law degree. One of my sisters is fond of telling me how wonderful her life would be if she had a law degree. Right. The practice of law is the pot of shit at the end of the rainbow. It feels like a betrayal, an utter loss. I’m sorry I ever went to law school. I don’t know the answer to your question and I can’t offer you justice, I’m all out. It’s just all bullshit. All of it. Bickering like magpies over meaningless details. Plucking the entrails out of people’s lives. Literally making a federal case out of bruised feelings and 30 pieces of silver. Yeah, I’m one great pillar of civilization, contributing to the betterment of the lives of all mankind all right. This is the apex of American culture? A petite bourgoisie sinecure? Shuffling paper and impoverishing my clients with mumbo-jumbo and jargon is supposed to crown my life’s achievements. Life has been so not worth it, if that’s true. And, maybe it is. Maybe it’s like this one centenarian I interviewed as a young reporter. Maybe living to 100 is nothing more or less than waking up 36,500 times. You get up. You drink coffee. You fold the clothes. You go to bed and do it all over again tomorrow. You can’t even help it. Eventually, you’ll go to sleep. You’ll wake up. No matter how hard you try, you’ll wake up. And, you find something to do until you sleep again. Lather, rinse, repeat. Pointless and stupid. Brute, nasty and short. I am frustrated because life is pointless. All this effort and just nothing other than a big “so what?”. It’s sad to think that it doesn’t get any better, that this is it and there isn’t anything else. We push a boulder to the top of the mountain and it rolls back down again. Every once in a while, we think this is great and we’re happy. We sing in our chains and warble in our cages. I don’t feel like singing just right now. I’m afraid I may never again be happy pushing the boulder up the hill. I can also imagine Sisyphus anguished, disconsolate and tortured. Tonight, I don’t care about Sisyphus. I’ll log off and go to sleep and wake up in the morning.