The turmoil in the sports world requires me to make this confession. In the last few months, driven by the urge to understand what it is like to be Tiger Woods and inspired by an old Prisoner episode, I have been working on a device that can transport my mind into another body. I have made remarkable, but as you shall see, mixed, progress. This weekend I have made my first two trial runs. Yesterday, thinking I should first do some animal testing, I beamed my brain into Big Brown for the running of the Belmont Stakes. That went well for a minute or so, until I realized that I had no idea how I was supposed to be running so fast, and what the hell are these two extra feet all about? You all saw the results. So, I was up all last night tinkering, thought I had fixed a problem with the virtual transference induction filter, sufficiently so that I felt good about grabbing Roger Federer's body for the French Open final. That worked a lot better, but, the thing is Rafa is so good that you can't be even the teensiest bit off your game, or you get blown into the weeds. Well, I was so surprised to find myself thinking fluently in four languages, and Nadal's topspin being that much more of a distraction, that I rather embarrassed the worlds number one player. So, for Wimbleton, he's on his own.

OK, so y'all think this is preposterous? Anyone got a better explanation for BB running out of gas a half mile from immortality? For Federer, possibly the purest tennis player ever, looking almost like a weekend hacker dropped into Roland Garros at an inopportune moment? Yeah, I didn't think so. (Note: Rafa played awesome tennis and almost certainly would have won without my meddling. )

So, I've got three and a half days before Tiger tees off at Torrey Pines. He's coming back from knee surgery (I know that one!). Maybe no one will notice if I drop in for a few holes on the back nine on Friday... Let's talk ethical quandry...

Maybe I should try politics. I couldn't be more tone-deaf than Hillary, and although I'm older, (YIKES) I'm even more inexperienced than Barack Obama. I can do the podium thing. I know the names of several world leaders, and I feel your pain. A thousand points of light. Fear itself. I paid for this microphone. Tear down this wall. Put food on your family.

I don't know what's happened to John McCain - lately he's been looking, and sounding, like an anamatronic skeleton escaped from a Pirates of the Carribean set. Things are looking bleak. I don't thnk Obama can get elected without Hillary on the ticket, yet there's no way he could govern with Billary running the East Wing. McCain isn't a dreadful fellow; I have to believe that things would have gone much better if he had survived the Rove sliming in SC in 2000 and sent Shrubya packing back to his 'ranch' in Crawford. This decade certainly couldn't have been much worse for it. But, now, we simply have got to root out the Christo-Nazi-petro-military-industrio nitwits that have rained disaster after expensive disaster upon us for the last many years. For better or for worse, Obama is our only hope. I guess what I need to do is beam myself into McCain's body and be my usual tactless, profane, idealistic self for a couple of months (note to self, check program to see what happens if host body expires. Also, pay FrontierNet in advance).

Oh, flights of fancy. Anything to avoid recapitulating mundane day to day events, lived under the ominous bass notes of oil and food prices slipping the bonds of gravity. To the small number of people who have recognized the long-term insustainabilty of our urb/suburb/exurb organization (perhaps most urgently explained by James Howard Kunstler) this doesn't come as a surprise. But that it is happening NOW, damn, I thought we had at least another decade before realilty would kick in. And I don't believe that there is any way of convincing the Chinese and the Indians, who have managed, in their way, for centuries without them, that automobiles and highways are, at best, a mixed blessing.

The pictures above, in their blandness and fuzziness, capture the sense of my recent days. We've got a cloudscape from behind the Tompkins County Regional Airport, a brilliant sunroof (ok, driver's seat) cam shot of Ithaca Falls, and The Pond at about 7:00 am yesterday.

OK, it's 1pm time to get into my gas guzzler, and effectively spend four dollars in order to pick up a five dollar newspaper, and maybe some lunch, and listen to Click n' Clack, the Tappet Brothers.