It's you and me against the world, kid, she mumbled to herself

If it's bittersweet you like, I've got half of that.

Today I marched through the false Spring leaning into an invisible wind. My red shoes, intended to cheer me up, were clean and neatly tied. I wrote a check for brain improvement, drank coffee, fought back waves of fear and horror, and cracked jokes. The following adjectives described me: glib, nuanced, dyspeptic, melancholy, narcissistic, irritable, anxious, fearful, itchy.

There was a madman walking up Dover drive as I arrived for therapy. He stopped to carefully comb his big bristly grey madman's beard and then went back to humping it up the hill. Later he showed up at D's and smoked in the corner looking like the wise homeless madman in a movie. However, I think he was just a regular madman.

You can't be the chorus in your own play, it turns out. You're stuck with "protagonist". Stupid rule.

whoa nellie

Bush uses new nickname for senator


LINCOLN, Nebraska (AP) -- Sen. Ben Nelson finally has succeeded in getting President Bush to stop calling him by the nickname "Nellie."

Bush had been referring to the Nebraska Democrat as "Nellie" since 2001.

Nelson disliked the nickname and had asked the president to stop using it.

The president likes to give people nicknames. He has called Vladimir Putin, the president of Russia, "Pootie-Poot," while aide Karen Hughes gets "High Prophet."

But Bush heeded Nelson's request to scrap his moniker, and at the recent White House Christmas party, the president referred to Nelson as "Benny."

"The president had a twinkle in his eye when he called me that," Nelson said. "He knew what he had done. I said, 'Thank you, Mr. President."'