Did you hear the one about the dumbass who almost drove his car down into the service pit of his local quick lube shop? I missed doing just that—by about three inches (half the width of a car tire). So, how was your day?

The problem is that we have lost the ability to explain our strength to ourselves. Interestingly optimistic assessment of American culture in our time… (I tend to be the one who frets over the alarmingly hemorrhaging state of our culture — mired in trash-talking-television, grotesque SUVs and whatnot — so I like to have a little light to dispel my fears, from time to time.)

Now, this is old news to you avid awards-show fans, but I forgot to mention it before: freakishly-talented artiste Shana, for whom I’ve done art on occasion, has received a first-round Grammy nomination in the Children’s Music category. And yes, we are all mighty proud as all heck of our favorite person-whose-name-rhymes-with-yellow-fruit.

Pet lizards eat dead owner. Film at eleven? I certainly hope not.

Shudder.

Reptile news interests me because, as some of you know, I’m the happy owner of a small python. I’ll have to show you someday. Still, there’s a big difference between this man’s six-foot-long lizards of a species known to be aggressively predatory and my three-foot-long snake of a species known to be extraordinarily docile. So, not to worry. Snake and I have a much better rapport going anyway.

I made a startling and mildly disturbing discovery today. Gentle reader, I invite you to follow with me on the trail of intrigue: Over time I had come to notice how many of the music CDs that I took with me to listen in the car would develop glitches and skips almost immediately, within a day or two of playing on the road. I concluded that my car CD player was jinxed, somehow scratching discs while playing them, so I got out of the habit of taking original CDs on the road — only homespun CD-Rs would do, Hilary Rosen be damned. (These too developed glitches on the road but I figured these were easier to replace.) Now, just this afternoon when I went to the car I noticed the windshield was still covered in dew, even though it was in the high 60s F, breezy and sunny. The dew was on the inside of the glass! You see, it had rained for about three days here, all stormy and chaotic and, well, water leaked into the car, as it’s won’t to do with some ragtops… but this time it didn’t have opportunity to dry overnight, because of the continuous pounding… Well, it was so damp in there even the CDs I’d left there in their case were damp… Wait a minute… Plastic doesn’t rust, of course. But it makes a mighty convenient petri dish for mildew to form, especially in warm, humid Florida. So get this, my discs have skin disease. Just wiping the surface won’t do the trick — mildew leaves a ‘scar’ of sorts on the playable surface that futzes up the disc.

(Mind you, I sharpened the image considerably) The disc itself doesn’t look that bad to the naked eye, but look at how much grime is there! It’s a wonder these discs play at all.