I hope you were watching late-night tv last night.

Cheney shoots hunting partner.

How often does comedy like this come around?

The Daily Show was ridiculously brilliant. Thanks to Crooks and Liars, you can watch it here. (It's about 10 minutes long, about 15 mb and in Quicktime format. Feel free to download it to your own desktop.)

On Late Night Dave opened with "We found the weapons of mass destruction... and it's Dick Cheney, ladies and gentlemen." Biff was running around the set in hunter orange, shooting into the lights ... and a hunter dummy fell to the floor. Dave's Top Ten:

Top Ten Dick Cheney Excuses

10. "Heart palpitation caused trigger finger to spasm"

9. "Wanted to get the Iraq mess off the front page"

8. "Not enough Jim Beam"

7. "Trying to stop the spread of bird flu"

6. "I love to shoot people"

5. "Guy was making cracks about my lesbian daughter"

4. "I thought the guy was trying to go 'gay cowboy' on me"

3. "Excuse? I hit him, didn't I?"

2. "Until Democrats approve medicare reform, we have to make some tough choices for the elderly"

1. "Made a bet with Gretzky's wife"

Now, Whittington has had a heart attack, which either blunts or sharpens the comic edge depending on how dark you like your comedy. But I loled and rofled a lot last night.

The world has truly gone mad.

Kelly Clarkson won a Grammy. She beat Paul McCartney.

I can't think of a single category of anything in which Kelly deserves anything more than Paul.

Been There, Renamed That. (revised)

So upset with the Danes are the Iranians that they've renamed Denmark's famous pastry. The Danish will now be called the "flower of Muhammed."

Those tricky Iranians know that they don't have a food worth renaming. Aha! Gotcha, Denmark!

Just a speck of sand.

As most of you know I have rejected the Abrahamic religions as templates for living. I don't believe in a patriarch who rules the universe. I don't believe in an afterlife. I believe in doing no harm, in easing others' suffering, in leaving the world a better place for future generations, and in living simply and honestly.

Imagine my quandary in attending to God As We Understand Him ("gawuh") and a Higher Power ("hp") in the Big Book. Yikes.

I am told that my hp can be anything -- a toaster -- so long as I can turn my life over to it and seek its guidance. Kitchen appliances aside, I'm okay with a power greater than myself in the universe, one beyond my ken, but I still have trouble personifying it.

The Greeks didn't understand the motion of celestial bodies. How can the sun move by itself? It can't, of course. Some outside force must push it or pull it across the sky. And the best explanation of that motive force for the Greeks was a person, but not just any person: a supernatural person.

So "god" is shorthand for "things we don't understand about the universe," like a black box composed of our ignorance, or a person with all the knowledge we lack, embellished with human virtues. It certainly makes conceiving of the infinite a whole lot easier. Then all we need do is talk to him -- pray, meditate -- to gain that knowledge.

I can conceive of a higher power in the same way that I can conceive of consciousness. Consciousness makes us greater than the sum of our biochemicals, although individual molecules or cells cannot conceive that they are part of a greater whole. What if our consciousness is just another cell in a greater consciousness, as one speck of sand on a beach?

So do I turn my will over to the beach? Or to the old guy, wearing garters and shorts, collecting shells at low tide? Heh -- Gawuh as beachcomber, retired from Jersey.

Perhaps, just by acknowledging my status as a speck of sand, I have turned my will over to a higher power. I'm just having a heckuva time praying to the other sons of the beach for enlightenment.

I intend no offense. Except for that last line, of course.