Let's see, now, the Democrats and their weasly leadership have apparently decided that their constituents are just like them: having no principles or the courage to stand up for them.

Our letters and emails to our representatives and senators are answered with meaningless platitudes -- insulting condescensions that patronize us. Evidently, we are judged too naive to understand the stakes or the political necessities of our Byzantine government.

So, our only option is to speak with our votes, and the only vote that will express our displeasure is no vote at all. We must, somehow, express ourselves most loudly by NOT VOTING. Let the results be read in horror, as countless Democratic politicians finally wake up to the will of the electorate they have abandoned.

As hard as it may be to do, we must STAY HOME on election day. Give the government fully over to the Republican party, and thus THROW OUT the spineless Democratic party, in full!

Only then will the Democratic Party leadership be taught a lesson. Only then will the Republican Party get the full and ignominious blame that all history will heap on them.

So, we live in a culture that is obsessed with youth and youthfulness. Our aesthetics are skewed (unnaturally, in my opinion) toward youth, to the exclusion of virtually all else. That someone abuses his station in life to engage in one-handed IMs with 17-year-old boys (they're 16 when they are actually serving as pages, so they must be older afterward) is foolish and annoying. But it is not at all surprising, and it is hardly the worst thing that Congress has done in recent memory.

The shock being manufactured all around on this infinitessimally important story is prurient in itself. It has all the prose and none of the poetry of Humbert Humbert's salivating obsession. Lolita is a Larry, and no one gets killed. Nabokov would have had a good laugh, I'll bet.

We should all take a deep breath and let the self-righteious Republicans do their own mud wrestling.

You nailed "Jericho," Heather (you don't mind if I call you Heather, do you?) Like you, I was seduced by the quaint 1980s nostalgia for nuclear attack -- life was so much simpler back then, when we only had those damn commies to deal with. The strangely composed (and slack jawed, as you note) face of Our Leading Man also made we want to see more. Alas, the story has already fizzled, like that last sputter of the Geiger counter. It would take a strong, near nude scene with OLM (unlikely at in that slot) to keep my attention.

I didn't make through "MIT," because I suddenly remembered how much I dislike Anne (gay? not so much) Heche. Sorry, just a bit of mild hetero-dabbling-with-the-gay-thing-phobia. Makes me long for a horrible tree-spiking episode.

"Smith" just seemed ridiculous, from the start, a pock-marked version of the real thing: "Mr. and Mrs. Smith."

As for "Lost" -- I know, I know, I'm jumping the gun. But I had a very distinct moment about 15 minutes into the season opener when I suddenly realized that I just didn't care, anymore. I've been jerked and twisted around by this bunch of characters for too long. Whatever happened to Gilligan, the professor and Mary Ann? If I could have put all of the writers in those Central Park Zoo cages and water-boarded them until they wrote the final episode, I would have.

Great writing, Heather. I hope your dating is going well.

Hastert Palmer

'nuff said.

Isn't it interesting that we seem to be wallowing in a lot of fantastic doom, just now? Heroes, Jericho, Lost, et al.. Wouldn't it seem that the world is full of crazy real life enough? But something about danger makes us dwell on it, revel in it. Who will save us? I'm all for the Japanese guy. I thought I was gonna get really tired of his hystrionics, but I'm actually experiencing a strange elation, mirroring his unfettered enthusiasms. He's a true invention, original and fun to watch.

Oh, yeah, Heather. I've got to admit, after giving Battlestar Gallactica a change (due in no small measure to your critique), I'm being won over. Some of the characters really annoy me, and it slips easily into a kind of Galaxy of Our Lives, sometimes, but there are some really great scenes stollen out of a whole range of movies and plays, from Stalag 17 to Henry V. It's fun catching the references. All art is theft.