Posted via web from third image.

Posted via web from third image.

If homeowner’s insurance worked like American health insurance, it would not only pay for fires but also cover utility bills, replacing broken appliances, baseballs hit into the window and all the food, drink and paper towels that pass through the kitchen. Certainly, a company could offer an insurance product that covered absolutely every expense of living in a home. But such insurance would be phenomenally expensive and full of ultra-complex rules; the insurer would also acquire an incentive to dream up excuses to deny payment. Just like American health care insurance!

— Gregg Easterbrook, “Tuesday Morning Quarterback”

Politicians seem to live in a two-dimensional world (think C.S. Lewis’ “flatlanders”), while the rest of us are out here in 3D, pleading with them to see features they simply aren’t built to recognize. Put another way, our representatives present us with black and white on health care — Bad Option A, and (totally different but just as) Bad Option B. Thus you have the “public option,” and the “leave it alone” camps battling for supremacy.

(You haven’t heard Republicans saying, explicitly, “leave it alone.” They talk about “sensible reforms” that are supposed to come if the Dems scrap all their current plans and go back to the drawing board. This is kind of like me saying, “Sure, I’ll exercise more, just as soon as I start getting enough sleep the nights before.” In other words, it ain’t gonna happen.)

Leave it to a football column to provide a far better alternative. In his “Tuesday Morning Quarterback” article at ESPN.com, Gregg Easterbrook takes a break from dissecting plays and mocking the punt — no, he says, it is NOT that risky to try on fourth down — to present a quite cogent and perfectly simple argument: Insurers should face price-controls, and providers should have to offer non-insured individuals the same pricing they offer insurance companies. (More quotes after the jump.) (more…)

“Democrats think the constitution says what it doesn’t and the Republicans think the constitution doesn’t say what it does. We’re lucky to have such a wide choice.” — random commenter at random blog

Joe “You Lie!” Wilson has been made into a randomized website. (H/T to @JakeTapper)

My main criticism with “conservatives” (most who label themselves as such deserve the sarcastic quote marks), put most aptly by the always insightful (and actually conservative) Andrew Bacevich:

Only those who recognize the omnipresence of sin—recognizing first of all that they themselves number among the sinful—can possibly anticipate the moral snares inherent in the exercise of power. Righteousness induces blindness. The acknowledgment of guilt enables the blind to see. To press the point further, the statesman who assumes that “we” are good while “they” are evil—think George W. Bush in the wake of 9/11—will almost necessarily misinterpret the problem at hand and underestimate the complexity and costs entailed in trying to solve it. In this sense, an awareness of one’s own failings and foibles not only contributes to moral clarity but can help guard against strategic folly.

So far, I’ve worked on a “creative exploration” for a growing bank in the region; rewritten a direct-mail piece I thought was “done” months ago; drafted new copy for an ad touting a certain industrial complex’s “green” features (which, honestly, are few); filled out tax forms; perused eBay for a power source, which is lacking from the otherwise fine Apple display on my desk.

I’ve also wondered whether or not I have a truly original, truly interesting “campaign” in me… and, if I do, will any of our relatively conservative clients go for it?

On Saturday, Shelley was having some girls over, so I decided that, when I got off work, I would go have a beer at Entourage (a weird upscale club stuck in Bowling Green) before I went home.

The best laid plans of men…

First, work took longer than usual; I got out at about 10 ’til midnight. I walked to Entourage, where I was informed there was a $5 cover — despite the fact that there was nothing special going on! Weird. Only slightly daunted, I decided to walk across the street to a place called Utley’s… not really my style, but it’s owned by a sales rep I deal with (he works for a local foodservice company), so I figured I’d give it a go.

I walk in, and there are at least 300 people crowded like sheep to slaughter inside this place. A bit more daunted, but determined nonetheless, I made my way through the circus and managed to get a Stella Artois, one of my favorite beers. Of course, I didn’t want to be inside with the clowns and clownettes inside — the boys dressed like they’d just finished mowing the grass, the ladies like they were planning to audition for Hugh Hefner — so I went to head outside.

Except it was midnight by then, and for some reason it’s unlawful to sit on the sidewalk with a beer at 12:01, but not at 11:59.

I finished my beer quickly — and didn’t much enjoy it with all the foolishness going on — and headed off to go home, thus completely daunted at this juncture. And that’s when I heard someone yelling my name.

I turned around, and it was this dude Tony. Tony is maybe 23, at most, and has been a huge Foxhole fan for many years; his bands have always kind of sucked, but at least he tries (?), and he’s got a decent heart. So I sat down on the sidewalk to talk with him for a moment; he and a friend were grilling me for Foxhole info: When will we play again? When will our new album come out?

I told him I had no idea if we’d ever play again, and highly doubted, against my best hopes, that another album would ever get finished. I told him how one-third of the band now live in Texas, how I have a wife and two kids, one with autism. I told him that there’s not much interest, since we never play shows and haven’t released a thing in more than three years. He and his friend wouldn’t hear it — “You gotta see it through!” they said, “You have to finish your dream!”

The conversation has stuck with me, obviously, but I have no way to explain to Tony that dreams are just that. They’re little glimpses of a perfection that won’t be found, and that even were we to record the album with our producer of choice — which strictly speaking is impossible at this point, since we’ve asked him three or four times and been rejected at every turn — the “dream” wouldn’t be nearly so sweet as we’d like to hope. It’s hard to write music… we manged to finish, mostly, that part. It’s hard to schedule six people in one place for a week or more, it’s hard to carve out the time even if you can schedule it. It’s hard to share a room with those people for so many hours, listening to/playing over and over and over (Glenda, are you reading this?) the same blanking guitar riff, waiting for it to come out just right.

Who would buy it? Not very many people, not now. Who would publish it? Maybe Scott at Burnt Toast, our label, would, but only because he’s a super nice guy with disposable income.

Yep, every question comes with an unsatisfactory answer. Every question, that is, except this one: What would it mean to me?

And that’s where Tony has it right. Because despite the fact that I have no time, no energy, no vibrant excitement about such an endeavor, and despite the fact that there are five other things in my life that are more important and which do and SHOULD take precedence… it would, if it were possible, mean the world to me.

“The world” is a big place… a dreamy place. When you get a glimpse at it, grab it. But we can’t just overboard, because it’s not only our world, but everyone else’s, too. And so the final Foxhole album remains a dream to me. And there’s nothing wrong with dreaming.

THINGS THAT WORK

Me, at least 70 hours a week at this point (and many times well over that)

Communion of the Saints

The espresso machine, thank God

Falafels

Hot baths

The stop lights in downtown Bowling Green… all the time, even when there’s not more than two cars driving within a ten-block radius of one another

Faith

My lawn mower, half the time

THINGS THAT DON’T WORK

My DVD player.

The big milk fridge at Spencer’s

Getting to bed before 11 p.m.

Reason

The preferences in iWork ‘08

My lawn mower, half the time

The hero as a young man

He was born with a simple — and popular for the ’80s — name: Justin, meaning just, fair, righteous. His true first name was Roy — king — and the world could certainly use some just kings, both then and now. He was a bright child, but a dark cloud hung low in his skyline. He could never put a name to it, nor a meaning, nor a reason. But there it hung, all the same.

He grew into a wise (if not entirely success-driven) young man, but the cloud lingered still. It took various forms: despair, malice, apathy, conceit. Justin was never fully in its grasp, but he couldn’t escape the feeling that an encounter with true disaster lie swiftly ahead. He took up many careers: journalist, author, restauranteur. None fulfilled, and none did anything to shake the uncertain feeling that played the role of parasite in his tumultuous heart. He stayed near enough to his birthplace, an hour-and-a-half out, far enough to avoid constant contact with family, but close enough to allow him access when his soul needed repair or his belly needed that particular salve that comes only through a mother’s meals. This was his life, one which was discontented yet oddly comfortable.

The hero during dark days... but the worst was yet to come.

It came quickly: Out for a walk in the cool night air, he saw a mysterious light, peeking through a crack in the wall of the flophouse down the street. He feared to go in, knowing the time of night and the sordid affairs taking place within… but his curiosity knew no bounds. He turned the knob slowly, opened the door swiftly (this was his time-tested method of going into a place without causing a stir — nay, turning nary a head, even in the quietest jaunts).

The light knocked him to the ground, and as quickly as it came, the light went out.

***

He woke in another place, a metropolis filled with traffic and noise and smog and such neon that he’d never before seen. It was grim and gritty and full of souls like his.

Or, we should say, how his once was. Because when he arose, naked, from the hotel bed, he knew something had changed. He was different, he was utterly another.

He put on his clothes — jeans, casual-cool shoes and long-sleeve T, his veritable uniform as of late — and stepped into the hotel hallway. He reached out to the elevator’s call buttons, and was drawn to push the wrong one. He was going UP, not down, although he couldn’t have told you why.

Into the elevator, he kept going up: Penthouse floor, do not pass go, do not collect. When the bell rang and the carcass carrier opened its mouth to allow him passage, he walked directly to a set of steel doors — NO EXIT | NO ADMITTANCE. But still he went, and with the stealth he’d used throughout his troubled existence.

Up a flight of stairs, out onto a rooftop. This was a landscape completely foreign to him, but one he suddenly realized had been calling him his entire life.

And that’s when the light returned, the exact instant that Roy Justin became Quantum, the teleporter: