Day 104: Alternate reality

It seems like a lot is going on these days... are we headed into the next Great Depression? Is this what October 1929 felt like? (Oh, wait -- October's not until next month.)

Running is kind of an escape. During this morning's four miles (again, unintentionally fast), I enjoyed another autumn sunrise, and watched my breath-clouds dissipate in the early chill. However, as usual, I listened to a "Talk of the Nation" podcast, and that brought me back to reality. Unpleasantly. I prefer "Car Talk," which makes me laugh even as I run, but there's only one of those a week. I guess I could try to download the 20 years of back episodes, but that seems silly.

Bush just finished choking through his address-to-the-nation. I watched NBC initially, but Brian Williams actually wouldn't shut up in time for Bush to start talking, and NBC switched over to the White House even as Williams kept talking, obliviously, in the background. Over at ABC, Charlie Gibson (an old friend of my brother's) had some anodyne closing remarks before the broadcast returned to its scheduled presentation: "Dive of Death," featuring stupid magician David Blaine hanging upside down over Central Park. Actually, some of Blaine's card tricks and other such stuff are pretty freakin' amazing... it's just the dumb stunts -- hanging upside down, living in a glass box, being buried alive or in a cube of ice -- that are annoying.

Millions of people are upside down on their mortgages and car loans, and one man is physically upside down in Manhattan. Only in America, kids, only in America.