hot times burn

Another viscous day. The Olympics provide an occasional hurrah between the ads, which I gather are very expensive but necessarily, together with often-breathless commentary, interrupt the wonder I can feel at these young men and women doing wonderful feats in an often crap-happy world. Boy, are they terrific ... despite how terrific NBC insists they are.

The Olympics and the mass migration out of the Middle East and the Pulitzer-hungry New York Times Magazine devoting an entire issue to a single take on those ravaged lands. The piece is due out tomorrow, I gather, but someone passed it along yesterday and I'm about half through it ... poignant tales of the people -- or at least some of the middle-class ones -- caught in a maelstrom that the well-written article tries to deconstruct and then, of course, fails ... but not for lack of trying. The people who should be reading and considering such an article are probably far to busy combating terrorism or some such ill-defined essence... or anyway, shoring up our enemies.

And there is something naggingly depressing about the Republican presidential candidacy of Donald Trump. To have such an embroiled and mentally-snaggled-toothed adversary who will lose the presidency ... what does it say for this country that such a person could seriously be considered? I have a hard time imagining all Republicans as being satisfied with what is brash and delicious when so many are in need. But that's just my fault, I suppose.

Bleah.