Back at work, I was delighted to find that I was surrounded by people who had brains that actually function. After being gone a few days, I had forgotten how brilliant my co-workers are -- generous, patient, and wise too. The burn out of being gainfully employed can really work nasty, dark voodoo on you. The sleep-dep, the grind of getting things done, and the terrible glimpse in the mirror each morning can dig you into a groove that is hard to bounce out of. In this case, and I know this is unusual, it's not the people I work with who make it difficult. It's really my own laziness that shoots a long shadow through my work day.

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No. I'm not going to make any jokes about Stella (aka Terry McMillan)and her groove. That poor woman has been through hell. And I respect any writer who works hard and gets people to read her stories time and again.

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Now that I've returned from the road, I have to admit that it's wonderful what a few days away will do. Of course, my brain stopped working at a point in the not-so-distant past -- some time before I departed. I could not tell you when (it stopped working) because, well, it stopped working then. It's an angry Catch-22, ain't it?

So I arrive back in town only to hear that the President has again, and repeatedly, suggested a connection between 9/11 and Iraq. Will the American people bite on that one again?

It's a genuine question. I can't tell anymore. It seems as if large groups of people have accepted that connection without much critical consideration. But now? Still?

Perhaps the polls that show Bush has dropped below the 50% level suggest that we have had enough.

Our cat came back. We are still on the road. But we heard our cat is back. We could not imagine returning to a house with no cat. The haunting would have made us very sad people.

The road trip continues. I did manage to get wind of the spin Rumsfeld put on Russert just before going on air on Meet the Press. Russert does his best. I think he also wants to continue interviewing folks. Can we forgive him?

Hello from the road, again. It's been five days now, and we have found it difficult to access any news. What should I know? I would probably have learned if there had been any cracks in the Aruba case. Were we to discover that, say, the U.S. was torturing prisoners in an isolated prison on a remote part of an underdeveloped island, such news would never reach me. If the Aruba case had changed at all, I am certain that agents would pound down the door and let us know the update.

Like all the other official stories, the one that is covering the truth is doing so with extreme efficiancy. We may never know the truth of the failure of the battle of Iraq.

The ordinary lives of our soldiers have been taken away in order for the Bush administration to pursue something that has yet to be explained to us in terms that are not insulting, patronizing, or abusive of fear and sentimentality.

The next step? Do nothing more than insist that you be treated with respect and that the explanations given to you treat you as if you were intelligent.

Thank you for reading. The tone of these messages are sure to be less preachy as things start to turn.

I want to know more about the Gen. who disputes the administration's view of things in Iraq. To be continued...

On the road: we went tidepooling on the lowest tide of the year. Did we miss the longest day of the year? How could you miss it? We did not celebrate it. It was too exhausting (we spent the day on planes and standing in Budget rent a car lines). Hey, they upgraded us to a minivan. (That may be the saddest thing a vital young man could be happy about. Thank God I am not a vital young man.)

John McCain wrote an intro for the new Doonesbury book. Some things may be going better than we thought.

California and the U.S. -- The Slide Continues

Economists have said it before: California is due to ride its economy downward. But the bubble kept expanding, as housing, food, gas, and all other prices continued to ride high above the rest of the nation. Now we get another negative forecast, and I tend to believe the predictions. The rest of the nation can feel the pull downward. We all pay more for the things we need most, but our salaries stay level and, in effect, go down as we pay more for health insurance.

Who feels the pinch? Let me know.

A Note on Production Slow Down: Late June is probably the hardest time to look for a lost cat. The foliage is peaking, and the brush is thick. I looked for our 14 year old cat most of the day, as he disappeared last night shortly after midnight. He's only done that once before, and was back by the following evening. Much gloom in the household. He usually is lounging in the sun next to me as I write.

Problem is, we leave on a trip tomorrow. We'll be flying two states away. We hope the next door neighbors treat him well if he returns. They said they would. Neighbors are wonderful people.

As we'll be on the road, I may not post much. We'll see.

We don't really know what causes autism. But a report released June 15 suggests strongly that some scientists and government officials have a suspicion that a preservative used in common vaccines administered to children could be a factor. The article, written by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and published in the online version of _Rolling Stone_ , asserts that a government coverup is hiding a connection between tetanus and other shots given to infants and documented cases of autism:

According to a CDC epidemiologist named Tom Verstraeten, who had analyzed the agency's massive database containing the medical records of 100,000 children, a mercury-based preservative in the vaccines -- thimerosal -- appeared to be responsible for a dramatic increase in autism and a host of other neurological disorders among children.

The preservative has long been suspected as an agent in autism related effects. Informed mothers and fathers have been debating with pediatricians for years, and only the most assertive parents have managed to avoid having their children exposed to this potentially damaging ingredient. Kennedy reports that some researchers suspect "a link between thimerosal and speech delays, attention-deficit disorder, hyperactivity, and autism." Kennedy is now going very public with this information, publishing his findings and lining up television appearances. Apparently, the topic has proven too controversial for ABC, which first was reported to have cancelled Kennedy's scheduled appearances on its programs, then switched back. So we can expect to hear more about this now that a network has been persuaded to run with it.

The news really is not so new. According to Kennedy, both the government and several large vaccine manufacturers have been aware of the dangers for some time:

Vaccine manufacturers had already begun to phase thimerosal out of injections given to American infants -- but they continued to sell off their mercury-based supplies of vaccines until last year. The CDC and FDA gave them a hand, buying up the tainted vaccines for export to developing countries and allowing drug companies to continue using the preservative in some American vaccines -- including several pediatric flu shots as well as tetanus boosters routinely given to eleven-year-olds.

This story appears to be going mainstream largely due to the name recognition that Kennedy brings to the information. I have no sense of why he is coming out with it now. I suspect it is timed with something else that is brewing. But certainly, the information is useful to us, especially to parents.

Please let me know what you have heard about this story and about Kennedy's motivations in releasing it now.

Thanks for reading.

My third year of being a father -- can you stand a Dad post? This morning, we had a picnic in bed. My daughter fed her stuffed animals with necklaces of plastic beads. We dropped toast crumbs on the covers. My wife sponged tea from the comforter.

I walked to buy a paper. Alone. Took the long way past the park. Wore my Tevas.

We rode bikes to the Y, daughter in tow. Swam in kid pool. Ate tacos after -- then bright green and blue ice cream from Baskin-Robbins. (Turns crap fluorescent green. Don't be shocked.)

I try to avoid journaling here. Father's Day is a current event.

Thank you for reading.

40 Million Credit Cards Can't Be Wrong.

So someone hacked into Master Card and got credit numbers for 40 million of us. Hard to imagine how many bad things might come of it. Most likely, a large number of us will discover some weird activity on our accounts -- only the discovery will come when you're stranded in the creepiest gas station in the universe, a thousand miles from home, with the guy behind the register grinning and saying your card has just been shut down, and, by the way, you'll have to pay for the gas and Mountain Dew in cash.

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So an intrepid hacker or two found their way into our credit. How does that crime compare to the 150 million dollars L. Dennis Kozlowski and Mark H. Swartz stole from Tyco when they were its top executives? Not to mention the 430 million more they made by selling shares after they had artificially inflated the stock.

Rage your hand if you're surprised. Kozlowski's lavish parties and other ego stroking behavior attests to the power one derives from looking a little like Dick Cheney, a subtle cross between Phil Collins and Jim Belushi (do I really need to link you to all these sour pusses?).

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When was the last time someone stole something from you? When did you last steal?

Note on focusing on people's looks: I'm am finding it so difficult to comprehend the magnitude of making 430 million dollars in stock sales that I must fall back to what I do understand: the durability of pop stars from the 80s (yes, Dick C. was a star even then).

Mick Jagger and the Rolling Stones' assertion, "You can't always get what you want," is, sadly, as worn out as Tony Alva's sneakers. The song has been nearly lost to commodification, as now it seems to be associated with a new reality TV show that involves Tommy Hillfinger (sic) and scissors. Still, like all good art, it will outlast the forces that, through their exploitation, seek to wring all life from it. There is something in the DNA of the song (and the Stones) that resists total destruction.

The point is that you must "try some time." I love those three words. You must try. Perhaps not right now. Just some time. The hope of the message seems excellent. The song is a spiritual. The audacious chorus at its intro signals that Mick and the boys knew it was a redemptive song. And the sad narrative, that suggests dark motivations and tragic fallout, challenges but does not weaken the hope.

Of course, it is a seriously deteriorated message. So what. Derrida at the very least (and I believe it is not a lesser thought at all) reminded us that the stories that are unspoken or suppressed may be the ones that offer our most significant information. Those who have the power to make their stories heard are not necessarily the ones who transfer our most valuable stories. How do the recorded stories suggest the narratives that have been ignored?

Please document the version you know. What I want is to hear the other story. And when your story goes public, I will likely get what I need. Iddybud is putting it out there and making us remember. We can't really have too many bloggers talking about it. You know what I mean. Indeed, what is it about the memo that suggests it does not require further inquiry? It is not "rehashing" to talk about the Downing Street Memo. We must repeat it: You can't always get what you want, you can't always get what you want, you can't always get what you want. You will not get away with what you wanted, Mr. President. We will come back to it again and again.

Thank you for reading.

CBS San Francisco TV (KPIX, CBS5) news hit a two-for-one: They covered both the Downing Street memo and the California tsunami warning in the same newscast. Yesterday, I questioned the silence of coverage on both topics, drawing an off-the-cuff comparison between the two (yes, the comparison was a playful stretch, so sue me). In the case of the earthquake, we can understand the 24 hour delay. But it took TV news much longer than 24 hours to get to Downing Street.

Looking forward to several cycles of investigation into why Bush and Blair felt it was legal to fit intelligence around policy. All signs indicate the move toward war marched forward rapidly when neither dangers to the U.S. nor links to terrorism had even the thin substance of rumor. In fact, the memo indicates a healthy, and (now) cleary accurate, skepticism on the part of British intelligence.

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Rumors of the Big Wave

I live near Mavericks, and so my interest in large waves is a local habit. That I compared an offshore earthquake and the potential for an accompanying tsunami to a British memo that smells as rotten as burglars in suits stuffed with large amounts of U.S. currency breaking into a D.C. hotel named Watergate is merely evidence of an overly associative imagination. The connection: some events appear not to merit notice. The earth moving beneath the sea, well, yeah, it's an event that is born to drown. Iffy Brit intel guys who can't write clear memos, indeed, their ethos is up for debate. But it's all we have, and we must use what truth might rise from what goes unsaid or what gets said poorly.

Did you know that for years no one believed there were waves at Mavericks? And get this, the place is literally under the radar, as it sits offshore from a large satellite dish. I know I'm free associating. But maybe you and I can imagine into place all the information we need to see things, to change them, and to be good citizens again.

By the way, another earthquake hit southern California today. Tell me if you felt it.

Thank you for you time.

Like the man said, "It's okay to eat fish cuz they don't have any feelings." Maybe. They probably felt the 7.0 earthquake 80 miles off the coast of northern California Tuesday night. I'm sure someone in Crescent City had visions of his garage swept away in a tsunami. Picture a man, Snoopy-like, riding a pitched roof out to sea.

Please write and let me know what coverage you've found of this large temblor. Will it be ignored as effectively as the Downing Street memo?

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Garages: if not for them we may not have Apple Computers or Hewlett-Packard, both invented while the family car was apparently parked on the street. At twenty years old, Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak fiddled away in a garage, inventing the Apple. How it is that garages spawn such legends about work and innovation? Is there poetry in technology? In a garage? Perhaps. I surprise myself even to think it. I'm the luddite who still frowns at the telephone.

But without garages and electric guitars (tinkered into existence by Les Paul) we would not have garage bands. Iggy Pop may never have gone on to grind against the broken glass -- or become the soundtrack for a cruise line commercial. Nirvana may never have stumbled into loud and soft. Jack White may never have invented (or re-invented) the new pop. Or kept his ex-wife on board just because she was there at the beginning.

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In Jobs' commencement speech at Stanford, he romanticized the individual's quest for meaningful work:

You have to trust in something -- your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever -- because believing that the dots will connect down the road will give you the confidence to follow your heart, even when it leads you off the well-worn path, and that will make all the difference.

He offered the freshly-minted graduates wise reflections; megalomaniacac or not, he's one of the great figures in technological innovation. His fuzzy proclamations of faith might carry some water.

A theme: for him, dropping out of college made all the difference. Of course, those graduates no longer have that option.

Perhaps a listener might pull that IPod out of their ears and flee to the next garage -- before it is swept away in the rising tsunami that nobody heard about.