Lileks invents a new syndrome.

On the way out I checked the periodicals rack. Esquire. Hadn’t read that in a while. Flip through it; hmm, an article on Stem Cell research. Title: “Please stand by while the age of miracles is briefly suspended: How the president is trying to kill my daughter.”

And I put it back. Yes, of course that’s what he is trying to do. There cannot be any possible other way to put it. Fine. Loaded everything in the car, drove to the mall to meet the family for supper. Then I went to Barnes and Nobel.

Oh my.

I do my bookshopping on line; I often find the long wandering chains of Amazon links more fruitful than bookshelf browsing, but I go to bookstore as often as I can just to see things ordered differently. The store had many tables of Current Events and Politics, and if I can sum them all up: Bush Needs to Be Dismembered and Fed to Jackals Who Will Barf Up The Chunks For the Maggots To Consume, by Garrison Franken. I’ve never seen anything like it.

SBHFS. Sudden Bush Hatred Fatigue Syndrome.

If the clerk had said “did you find everything you were looking for?” I would have answered “inasmuch as I was seeking a corner of the store uncontaminated by politics, no.” But she didn’t ask. Off to Starbucks to read the book.