As I've been fond of reminding everyone I've run into the last few days (because I'm something of a smarmy shit), I have been embedded in a cabin-like structure on a hillside in the Echo Park neighborhood of Los Angeles for over two weeks now. I've been busying myself with serious business -- happily without television and disconnected from tiger blood, the blood in the streets of the middle east, and various civic demonizations of public employees. (My mom, a former teacher, is not psyched!)

(NOTE: Here is the video about which I'm writing this post. Check it out here. I'd prefer to be delivering it as an embed but the new standard in embeds, iframes, no longer seem to work on Arcades! Get with the new technology people!)

Here's a picture of my Pacific idyll:

Nothing fancy, really, but this image captures the feeling. I imagine this as the view as seen through a hummingbird's eyes -- an infinitesimal creature capable of stillness, yet always buzzing to hold their place in the air.

Anyhoo, as I prepare to re-enter civilization with a vengeance, this speech from a few days ago by "documentarian" (quotes necessary!) Michael Moore stirred my deepest bits. There is a fair bit of demagoguery here and, perhaps, a share of bad faith (the issue which is really most responsible for tearing our culture apart). But he gets to the emotional and intellectual gist of things in a way that I can get behind.