Flying the coop

I'm back home, still living with the kitchen remodel project. The rain's stopped and I walked over to 24th St. for a slice of pizza for brunch. There's this pizza place on 24th and Shotwell called Mr. Pizza Man, run by Brazilians; they've opened other branches around the city now. A gigantic slice with four topings will run about $3.50 -- expensive for a "slice" of pizza, but actually equivalent to a small pizza you might order at a national chain. The post-storm sky was a brilliant mix of soft blue and blindingly white clouds. A squall still blows over from time to time.

I meant to go away for a few more days this week, but I'm staying home to help out around here. At least Cris has actually gone in to work today -- a rare occurrence, she telecommutes 9/10th of the time. So I have the house to myself, except for the carpenters, and they're shut off in the kitchen, much to the dismay of the cats, who are afraid of but also curious about what's going on in there.

Link of the day: some pretty pictures by Tim Davis. (link courtesy randomwalks)

Speaking of carpenters: In my slovenly laid-off state I was watching "Today" this morning, and they had a segment on some advertisements that neo-liberal columnist Arianna Huffington has produced for television. Huffington is worthy of her own biopic; she's sort of the Tammy Faye Bakker of the political right. The ex-wife of a formerly prominent Republican politician, she's reinvented herself after that politician -- a former candidate for California governor who was defeated in 1996 -- came out as gay and dropped from sight. Before then, she was a sort of Ann Coulter figure, if older and heavier -- a lacerating conservative macher who used her wealth and connections to influence national policy. Since then she's turned around and become a neo-liberal. So her latest thing is a series of television advertisements alleging that driving an SUV supports terrorism -- the same logic used by the government's anti-drug commercials. On "Today" she debated against the editor of "Car and Driver" magazine, who quipped, "Never mind those ads [not the same as Arianna's ads, by the way] that say 'Jesus wouldn't drive an SUV' -- Jesus was a carpenter, and if he were alive today, he'd probably be driving the biggest pickup truck he could find!"