I am much funnier when I am drunk...

... I know this because I notice people laughing all around me when I am. And that is even before I appropriate a lampshade for my head.

My sister-in-law commented the other day that they "ought to just plug up that well in the Gulf." I tried to explain how deep it was under the water but she trumped it with "Well, don't they have any divers?"

A lot of people fault BP for this whole mess and think they are dragging their feet in cleaning it up. For the life of me I cannot see the profit in losing all that oil, destroying the company's reputation, having to lay out $20 billion over 4 years, and the destruction of the drilling rig (those aren't cheap either). I am sure they have insurance of some kind for the rig but, like my homeowner's insurance, I am also sure there's a fairly big deductible.

In addition to faulting BP itself, people are boycotting BP gasoline. This, of course, might hurt a worldwide corporation a bit but devastates the very small business owner who actually owns and operates most of the BP gas stations in the US.

We are going through confirmation hearings for another Supreme Court nominee. Elena Kagan turns out to be not nearly as liberal as she was made out to be. At least, in front of that committee. I have learned one thing. She doesn't pronounce the "g" for any word ending in "ing". Imagine that, a Dean of Law at Harvard and she cannot pronounce "judging", it comes out "judgin'." Downright folksy, don't ya think? I almost expect to hear a "y'all" thrown on the end now and then.

Ms Kagan is doing her best not to be controversial. All nominees do this. No one really believes what she is saying about her ideology (which she can't seem to define) or politics (about which she is vague beyond being a life-long Democrat) not "interferin' with her judgin'."

It's just a game we play. Like a small child reciting a poem or the pledge of allegiance for a bunch of adults. The child has an advantage, she doesn't understand the words, she's just reciting them from memory. And, unlike the committee, the adults are people she actually looks up to.

She'll sail through this nomination process, they say. Probably so. And we'll all wonder why she seems so different once she gains that life-long job.

It's all just an illusion, isn't it? Life, I mean.