The latest from Fuddle, MN

Lileks today can be broken down, more or less, into sections.

SECTION 1 involves the narrative of a trip to Chuck E. Cheese. He always likes to complain about these trips (and adds a delightful bit of misogyny, because when he explains that they are necessitated by his wife playing cards with her female friends, he always calls the card games "hen parties" or something else you'd expect to hear issuing from a 1950s cartoon dad with a rolling-pin lump coming out of his head as he sits at a cocktail bar commiserating over a Harvey Wallbanger), today's entry makes it crystal-clear that the trips are really more for him than they are for his six-year-old daughter. It's almost charming, in a sad, egomaniacal way.

SECTION 2 involves him scolding people for not buying his book. Hey, I'd do the same thing, if I had a book. Or anything else people might want to buy.

SECTION 3 involves the story of his daughter playing the piano, and is pretty cute, and thus contains no grist for my Lileks hatemill.

SECTION 4 involves a rare appearance by Mrs. Lileks, who has left Jimbo a note to gather together some stuff for a "drive for the troops" her office is holding. Lileks notes, properly, that "it galls you, really; they shouldn't need anything". True enough, although he stops rather a few steps short of placing the blame where it belongs, with Mr. President Man and his military short-shrifting so he can pay for the upper-class tax cuts the Lileks family enjoys. But they're happy to spread the wealth! The #2 item on the 'wanted' list is "Slim-Jims", which seems like a pretty frivolous thing for a 'drive for the troops', especially considering that our soldiers are, like me, fatter than ever. Also in the top ten list is "sports, hot rods, news and celebrity-type magazines", so Jimbo provides copies of -- get this -- Stuff (which he claims "for some reason...I get for free", ho ho) and the Weekly Standard. So, thanks to his self-sacrificing actions, our brave boys now have the inedible junk food, softcore porn, and right-wing propaganda they need to win the war! Well done, Mr. Lileks!

SECTION 5 involves Lileks telling a story about a dead Marine who got lots of attention at his funeral, which, he claims, makes hash of the criticism that the government has banned filming the returning coffins of dead soldiers. Aside from making no fucking sense (the images of coffins are meant to make the cost of the war a reality for people who might live in communities where they don't have a lot of war casualties, you jackass), this seems to suggest that Lileks believes that symbols have power, but only if they're symbols that he personally endorses.

SECTION 6, the Lileksiest section of them all, involves him deciding that, for reasons somehow connected to this dead Marine and the liberal media or something, he is going to censor his daughter's letter to the soldiers he's sending smut and extruded beef lips to. Make sense of that in your spare time, if you dare.