First of all, this beautiful artificial food [via] reminds me of the time I ordered a fake hamburger, fake fries, and a fake lump of green peas, as well as four slices of fake Swiss cheese, from the Archie McPhee catalog. When it arrived I arranged it all on a plate and put into the refrigerator. A month or so later, when it was starting to look good and weird, my then-boyfriend came home late and loaded with his biker guy best friend from high school. Boyfriend came to bed, Biker Guy made himself comfortable on the couch, but before he passed out I guess he needed a snack, so he got up and opened the fridge. "Mmmm, cheese," I heard Biker Guy say. Then silence. Then, "Mmmm, fake."

Last night I was reminded once again that despite my best intentions, political discussions make my eyes glaze over like two yummy little doughnut holes. I never feel like I know enough when it comes to politics; I can discuss aesthetics with you until your tongue swells up, because no matter how ignorant I may be about Cubism or Pina Bausch or whatever the hell, I am confident in my taste and opinions. Not that they're "right" by any means, but if we're talking about art or poetry or dance we can all find something we like or dislike about a work and take it from there. Unfortunately, it's hard to be taken seriously if you approach the nuking of Iraq from an aesthetic point of view.

So last night as I was trying to rustle the Nut back into the apartment for his dinner, two pierced-face intellectual chicks representing California Peace Action stopped me on the sidewalk to frisk my brain, looking to see where I stood on the latest Bush foreign policy outrages. They went on quite spiritedly and fact-filledly about jobs at the local Air Force base and Republicans this and Democrats that, and as my brain turned into Bavarian creme I finally just looked at them, weary guilty political Bush-loser apathy filling my heart, my one-year-old son heading straight for a fresh pile of dog shit on the lawn, and I said, "I am only processing about one-fourth of what you're saying, so let's make it quick. What do you want me to do?" They wanted me to talk to people, to organize!, to join their club, to make phone calls. Nope and nope, I said, thinking, (a) The last time this happened I finally had to give the guy a check to make him leave, (b) They are half my age and twice as smart as me, and (c) Please, God, make them give up and leave. "We take credit cards," chirped the tall curly brunette -- the weaker of the two -- who was quickly silenced by a withering glance. The shorter sweeter bleached sharpie surf babe hurriedly offered me the option of letter writing. I agreed to that, so she handed me a boilerplate and the addresses of my rep and senators. "It's done," I said, free at last, practically running away with the Nut under one arm like a squirming sack of gerbils. The letters were actually quite simple, just asking that our Women in Washington (Capps, Feinstein, and Boxer) vocally oppose bombing Iraq, and it only took me about ten minutes to write them, which I did gladly while ravioli and strawberries splattered all around me (I have excellent powers of concentration). But Jesus Fuck, it felt like the time I spent half an hour at the door with two Jehovah's Witnesses telling me how the Jews ate their babies: two against one, overwhelmed and helpless in the face of facts and agendas.

Well, it was nothing an hour of The Sopranos couldn't fix.

The moral of today's story: Give me brochures or give me death.