(reminder via Amber)

may i feel said he
e e cummings

may i feel said he
(i'll squeal said she
just once said he)
it's fun said she

(may i touch said he
how much said she
a lot said he)
why not said she

(let's go said he
not too far said she
what's too far said he
where you are said she)

may i stay said he
(which way said she
like this said he
if you kiss said she

may i move said he
is it love said she)
if you're willing said he
(but you're killing said she

but it's life said he
but your wife said she
now said he)
ow said she

(tiptop said he
don't stop said she
oh no said he)
go slow said she

(cccome? said he
ummm said she)
you're divine! said he
(you are Mine said she)

(You are Mine said she)
anonymous

do you wonder if i'll be able to get through?
sometimes i wonder if i'll make it past all the little things she did to you.
do you wonder if her pictures will fade?
not the ones of her face,
but all the little photographs that litter the path at your feet,
that weigh you down like tiny paper anchors,
pictures of the way she saw you,
all the little things she made you believe about yourself.
those photos superimpose over mine and filter them and make you believe
i'm like her.
i'm not.
the pictures i take of you are somewhere in the future,
lost in Chile,
fluttering around the peaks of Mt. Everest,
floating over the steps of Machu Picchu.
sometimes in the pictures you're sleeping;
i zoom in on your closed eyes
after i've kissed them
and take photographs of your secret-eyed smile
and in my pictures
you dream only of me.

1. No report of whether the shark had a friggin' laser beam attached to it's head

Scientists have new evidence that the great white shark populations of Africa and Australia are related. A great white was tracked as it swam from Australia to South Africa, on a 99-day trip that covered more than 12,000 miles of ocean. The shark was dubbed "Nicole" after the most deadly creature on the planet, Nicole "Queen of the Damned" Kidman.

2. They say that alligator tastes like chicken - a big, scaly chicken that doesn't digest very quickly

I think everyone has seen the picture of a 13-foot Burmese python that died after swallowing an alligator in the Florida Everglades. Wildlife officials were not surprised, as they have noticed a trend over the last 20 years of pythons not just surviving in the Everglades, but thriving (Go here for an article about the python invasion of the Florida Everglades).

The story and the picture are amazing, but I think what is so exciting about all of this is that it screams comeback vehicle for Burton Leon Reynolds, Jr. (since Striptease and Boogie Nights didn't really do it for him) and Jon Voight (the actor, not the dentist).

3. Go ahead. Touch them. They feel so real, don't they?

Prosthetic testicles for dogs. Only in America. He's sold more than 150,000 pairs. No word on how he conned the dogs into replying to his emails, the subject lines of which read: "from bubby roybal ATTN:DO CONFIRM THE RECEIPT OF THIS EMAIL IMMEDIATELY! $BAa:d!!!M';R Retain your NATURAL LOOK! Raise your SELF ESTEEM the natural way! [?.856!K."

On the radio this morning, the DJs discussed this article in the Cleveland Plain Dealer detailing an incident in which a 19-year-old University of Ohio co-ed admitted to participating in some "heavy petting" with Nick Lachey - who plays K-Fed to Jessica Simpson's Britney, AND who writes a sports column, AND is the new face of A&F, AND who remains relevant only because of his marriage to the one-time pop starlet (which is now reportedly over). The young lady in question explained that Lachey approached her and asked "what kind of stuff is there to do in this town?" The couple ended up back in Lachey's hotel room and engaged in a hardcore make-out session. The opportunity to go further was there, but the woman explained that it seemed wrong to go further since he's "really married." The most interesting part is that the woman admits to bearing a striking resemblance to Jessica's younger sister, Ashlee. I'm not saying it's wrong to make out with a girl who looks like your wife's younger sister, but I am saying it's wrong to make out with a girl who looks like Ashlee Simpson. (Quick aside: Is it just me or has Jessica Simpson gone crazy with the plastic surgery? Her face looks bizarre and plastic-y and very different than it did a year or two ago. And not in a good way. That's not to excuse Lachey and his alleged philandering ways, however.) If I were Lachey, and thank the good Lord that I am not, I would blame all of this on Ohio.

For heavy petting of a different sort (and included on the advice that the following would guarantee that this would be an award-winning post), here is a link to famous monkeys throughout history and a link to some monkeys with a banjo. Award-winning? I blog. You decide.

UPDATE: Obsessive Law Student has what is essentially a first-hand account of the Lachey affair (and some advice for Jessica and the other woman) here.

I love it when I want to write about something, but can't figure out a hook, and then, lo and behold, circumstances align in my favor. Last week I noticed this post on The Right Coast from Michael Rappaport. Prof. Rappaport says that the late Chief Justice Rehnquist was quoted as remarking that if an opinion of his got more than five votes, he knew he's made a mistake. That is, he knew he could have written it a different way and still gotten a majority. Prof. Rappaport compares this to new Chief Justice John Roberts's getting 78 votes, some 27 more than he needed. Prof. Rappaport asks, "Did George Bush make a mistake and appoint someone who was more moderate than he needed to?" A few thoughts.

First, Prof. Rappaport doesn't offer a source for this Rehnquist quote, but I would be a bit surprised if the late Chief was serious. To begin with, it's not as if the Court's votes are secret ballots -- the Chief would have known how many votes his opinions got before he issued them, and could have revised them to shed votes if he wanted. And while the Court clearly doesn't twist arms to achieve unanimous opinions, I don't think any of the Justices scoff at unanimity. In fact, wouldn't the Chief (of all Justices) be happier with unanimous opinions, because they give him a chance to assign the opinions in an equitable manner? Finally, if Chief Justice Rehnquist really believed that opinions of his that got more than five votes were "mistakes," he sure made a lot of them, and didn't make much effort to correct that result. I'm just saying.

Second, I don't think this is how Senate votes work either. There's some amount of game theory here. The 22 Senators who voted against Roberts would probably vote against nearly any Republican nominee. But the other 23 are more variable. Some of them would support nearly any nominee, of any party, but some would probably follow other Senators' leads. If the minority leader or other party elders had opposed Roberts, other Democratic Senators might have followed along. As it was, there wasn't any great benefit or detriment to their vote, since the outcome was a given. My point is just that potential candidates don't fit neatly on a sliding scale, with "most moderate" guaranteed to get 100 votes, and "most conservative" guaranteed to get 51, no more, no less. Once a candidate has that 51st vote sewn up, a lot of other votes will fall in line, regardless of the apparently unrelenting partisanship in the Senate, because there's so rarely any difference in being the 52nd or 72nd vote in favor.

But the Professor's larger point is well-taken: President Bush probably could nominate someone much more outspokenly conservative than Roberts, and still get that nominee confirmed (even if it meant ending the filibuster). Instead of taking that course (it would seem), Bush nominated White House Counsel Harriet Miers. As it turns out, we may find out how close Bush can cut it, in terms of Senate votes. Nearly half the Senators will vote for Miers, if for no other reason than they support the President and would vote for any nominee of his. There's some scuttlebutt out there that Miers was among a list of candidates "acceptable" to Democratic leaders, so she may even get their votes. Miers may turn out to be, as Bush promised those who voted for him, another Scalia or Thomas. But she's not exactly firing up the base. Without that element lighting a fire under the Senate, she may struggle even to get to 51.

I'm not going to make any assessments of her qualifications or chances at confirmation; I'll leave that to others. I'll just say I was surprised with the choice. At first, I thought that she might be a super-stealth candidate -- someone who only appeared to be what her critics claimed she was (an unqualified hack), but was instead what her critics on the right really wanted (another Scalia or Thomas). In other words, my first reaction was that if she seemed that bad to them, she couldn't really be that bad, could she? I mean, no one nominated to the Court by this President, with this Senate, in these times, with this base, would really be that bad, would she? So I wondered if she would be a kind of seems-so-comically-bad-she-must-be-amazing candidates. Again, I'll leave the assessments to others while I C my own A. But nothing I've read in the last two days has given me reason to believe that was the strategery on the President's part. Which makes discerning his actual plan all the more difficult, and interesting. Maybe she really was "the best person [he] could find." Maybe he just took Prof. Rappaport's advice and nominated the candidate destined to get the least possible support and still get confirmed. Time will tell.

Africa has been on my mind. I have always been fascinated by the Dark Continent and I hope one day to travel there. Lately, Africa has been a recurring theme in the books, magazines, music, movies, and such in my life. I'm not sure what, if anything, this means.

The September issues of National Geographic and NGS's Adventure Magazine both focused on Africa and reminded me of all the places I want to see from the Sahara to the Nile (despite the vicious kayaker-attacking hippopotami) to the Serengeti, the Kalahari, the Masai Mara, Kilimanjaro, Timbuktu, Madagascar, and so many others. But as fascinating as Africa is, the whole continent is so troubled that I get depressed just thinking about it. AIDS, genocide and ethnic violence, manmade famine, perpetual poverty, magnificently corrupt rulers who revel in the suffering to which they subject their people, violent religious extremism, the destruction of habitat, when I take a close look at Africa it makes me begin to question the humanity of man.

I saw Lord of War this weekend and it was the most depressing movie ever - except for perhaps Requiem for a Dream. Both star Jared Leto, which makes me wonder if it's Leto that depresses me rather than the movies. On reflection, I give the edge to Lord of War, because the sadness and sense of helplessness about the dire situation that is Africa far exceeds my sympathy for the selfish drug users who squander their lives in this great country.

(Did you know that Jared Leto is sometimes credited under the name "30 Seconds to Mars"? It's true! I can see it now: Now Showing in a theater near you! Lord of War, starring Jor-El Presley and 30 Seconds to Mars!)

Lord of War is about an American arms dealer who sells weapons principally to African dictators and who is paid in blood diamonds, drugs, and cash. The weapons he sells are instrumental in perpetuating the never-ending violence that plagues sub-Saharan Africa. It's hard to say what was most depressing about the movie, but surely a leading contender is the scene in which Yuri Orlov (played by Nicolas Cage) explains to his brother that if he doesn't sell black market guns to Sierra Leone and Liberia, then someone else will, the villagers will still die, and nothing will have been gained by the noble act of refusing to facilitate the murder of innocents. That Yuri is later released from Interpol custody through the intervention of the U.S. government just makes it that much more disgusting.

The same theme is echoed, to a lesser degree, in a track on Kanye West's new album "Late Registration" (read Rob Sheffield's rather weak review of the album at Rolling Stone). The song "Diamonds from Sierra Leone" touches on Kanye's own conflicted emotions regarding the same conflict diamonds which made gun runner Yuri Orlov rich:

Good Morning, this ain't Vietnam still
People lose hands, legs, arms for real,
Little was known of Sierra Leone
And how it connect to the diamonds we own,
When I speak of diamonds in this song
I ain't talkin' 'bout the ones that be glow'n'
I'm talkin' 'bout Rocafella, my home, my chain
These ain't conflict diamonds, is they Jacob? don't lie to me man
See, a part of me sayin' keep shinin',
How? when I know of the blood diamonds,
Though it's thousands of miles away
Sierra Leone connects to what we go through today,
Over here, its a drug trade, we die from drugs
Over there, they die from what we buy from drugs
The diamonds, the chains, the bracelets, the charms
I thought my Jesus Piece was so harmless
'til I seen a picture of a shorty armless

Kanye is even more conflicted than these lyrics suggest, because the "remix" of this song which you hear on the radio doesn't include the verse I excerpted above. The theme: It's a problem, but it's somebody else's problem. Or maybe: It's a problem, but it's so big that nobody can do anything to solve it.

And some of my desperation and wanting to do something about the tragedy that is Africa is what drove me to join the Coalition for Darfur. However, I have stopped posting the weekly updates from the Coalition for Darfur because, thanks to Centinel, I am no longer convinced that American military intervention would really solve the problem. I'm not sure I was ever really convinced that Western intervention would help, much less that it would actually occur. I was caught up in the mood of "we need to do something" and intervention seemed like as good an idea as any. That's not to say that I think we should do nothing, that as human beings we don't have some moral obligation to work to end the massive suffering in Africa. I don't know what the answer is, but I do know that it's something other than "do nothing" and "invade." Too much is at stake - and I don't mean Kanye's diamonds and my future vacation plans.

Web MD says that "a dislocated jaw occurs when the lower jawbone (mandible) is pulled apart from one or both of the joints connecting it to the base of the skull at the temporomandibular (TM) joints." That is the fancy way of saying that what I did on Thursday night hurt like a sonofabitch. I wish there was a good story behind it, but there isn't. I cracked my jaw and dislocated it on the left side (at least that's what my dentist believes and from the pain I am in I am inclined to agree). My bottom jaw is crooked, though not obviously so, and I cannot close my jaw entirely. I was probably not the best company this weekend, as I frequently (continually?) moaned in pain while trying to eat. From what I understand, whining is not an attractive quality. Advil is not helping, so I'm going to the doctor tomorrow morning. I hope that we can get this resolved without resorting to the Martin Riggs-school of treatment for dislocated joints.

In other news, Onion reports notwithstanding, if President Bush is "the most brilliant man she [has] ever met" then I humbly suggest that Harriet Miers needs to get out more. Frankly, so does Jor-El, err, I mean Nicolas Cage.