Timwatch 12/11 and I Really Wish Jasper Johns Hadn't Stolen my Boat

Tim had Madeline Albright and Sen. Lindsey Graham, who looked rather orange. Clearly, MTP needs a better makeup artist with more varied shades of "generic white politician" in the makeup box. Anyway. Graham is one of a few Republicans who, while I totally disagree with the overwhelming majority of his politics, I can actually respect. This is because Graham, unlike the leaders of his party, doesn't seem to think torturing prisoners is okay. And while it is really, really sad that something as obvious as "torturing people isn't cool" is enough to get me to not totally loathe a Republican politician these days, I'll take what I can get. He really stood up to Rumsfeld back in the Abu Gharib hearings and is always pointing out that he's a JAG, which despite my general disdain for the military I always thought would be an interesting profession. And Madeline Albright...well sure she was fine as Secretary of State and all but what I really like her for is this. So the actual issues/discussion? Apparently things aren't going well in Iraq and oops, mistakes have been made. I watch this show (aside from the Tim obsession part) because I want actual analysis and actual interesting questioning that I'm not already getting from my mass consumption of NPR and the NYT. And I have to say, I haven't been feeling it lately. Maybe because the focus has been mostly on Iraq for awhile and I've always been way more interested in domestic than international policy, but I'm getting sick of the same thing every week said by different people. And the roundtable had David Brooks, who also needs a better makeup artist as he looked sort of greyish, which considering I already don't like him isn't getting him up in my esteem. The only thing really different about this week's MTP in contrast to last week's was the tribute to Sen. Eugene McCarthy.

In other news, I had a totally flat tire. And I don't actually know how to change a tire so I tried to get Kathy's bf John to do it, except this was last night when it was freezing and we'd been to Drinking Liberally and were a little beer-y. And I don't actually have the manual for my car so we didn't have instructions. But when I moved the car away from the curb a bit, I discovered the reason for said flat tire:



That's right, somebody threw a knife into the street right in front of my apartment and I drove over it while parking. So now I have the knife and I'm wondering what to do with it. There don't seem to be any bloodstains, but I didn't look all that closely either. Is this the sort of thing one turns over to the cops? I;d do that but I think the Philly police will laugh at me. They're not very nice. Plus, now my prints are on it. Anyway, I called AAA this morning to have them put the donut on so I could at least take the stupid car to the tire place, and it took them three and a half hours to arrive. This is in marked contrast to the time I called them from Bryn Mawr and they came in 20 minutes. Hmmm, what's the difference between my neighborhood and the Main Line? Not that I'd ever insinuate that AAA services nice white upper-class suburbs faster than they do my, um, transitional neighborhood. Nope, I totally don't believe in stirring up class issues.

I also played Simpsons Trivia Monday. We didn't win (sigh) but we did pretty well. It was really, really fun. And hard. But guess who totally got the Jasper Johns question? Awww yeah.