the weather finally cooled off a little, but the humidity went up, and i'm not sure if it's a fair trade. one thing i can say is, the first day that it's not in the nineties, and i'm enjoying being outside a little. first thing i did was take the dog out for some throw; she lives for that throw, and the first time the weather turned, we went out with the ball, and now she gives me these big large-brown-eyes look every time i move. what she loves the best is to catch the ball in mid air with her huge mouth, and then turn around with her little swagger as if to say, i'm doing my job. he throws the ball, i do my job.

people are getting finely tuned to the raucous blather of the presidential race, and only the tough will survive. fiorina got her moment in the sun, but she prattled off some lies about the planned parenthood video, and the fact is, womenfolk care about health, and don't appreciate lies all that much. one could argue that, while she was a front runner, she could have widened her appeal, used her exposure to haul in an audience, but she may not stand up to the close scrutiny that will ruin her. and the same goes for trump - one really only has to pay attention for a short while, to realize that he speaks from the hip, and doesn't think very much or very clearly - is it possible that people will get sick of this? cruz is consistent, but he's a demagogue. kasich is consistent, but he can't think of a single woman to put on a ten-dollar bill, outside of mother teresa, who is not american. apparently, american women are pretty much off his radar.

my definition of the middle is that it is mostly women. in fact women are the majority of the entire electorate, but they are the overwhelming majority of the middle; the vast majority of us men made up our minds long ago. we used to think of the working-class catholic autoworker from dubuque as the middle, but he lost his job, after most of his counterparts went republican. they, as i'm saying, are not the middle; whether they are unemployed or not, they've made up their minds. it's the younger people, working class, second or third-generation immigrants, that are trying to make up their minds. they are conservative, but they're not idiots.

traditional wisdom says the race goes to the person who gets the middle, so the primaries are for figuring out which person is best for each party, and that doesn't necessarily prepare them to win the middle. if a candidate has to be extreme to win their party, so be it, but they have to come back to the center to win it all. this will be easier for bernie than, say, for huckabee, who has already proven that he cares more about god than about the constitution, and in his desperation he even offered to go to jail for his beliefs. even trump would be smart enough, i think, to say the constitution has some merit, but, trump is making sixteen guys extremely desperate, and anything could happen.

i could talk about this stuff forever, but what's the point? it'll all play out in its own time, and nothing i say would make much of a difference, at least not here. one interesting thing is that it's extremely fixed in time. tomorrow, there will be a different set of clowns, a whole new backdrop. the picture grinds forward, and things look different. you'll read my words, and say, why does he care about fiorina? it's because she's in the limelight, today. it's her moment of fame.

in the football picture, 89 out of 93 football players got degenerative brain disease, which makes me feel guilty about even caring whether tech beats arkansas this evening in fayetteville. i'd kind of got wrapped up in local fever; people around here couldn't help it, when tech beat a couple of small-school losers, and started the season with a perfect 2-0 record. they are realistic; they know tech can't beat all the big boys, in this case tcu and baylor, but they have hope, they love football, and we have a home team to cheer on. it's a wretched feeling, knowing we're cheering these poor boys right into degenerative brain disease. i'm determined to get out of this moral crisis. i had resolved not to watch the games, not to support the team, financially or even by turning on the television. but i found myself keeping track of the score on the computer; i couldn't help caring about tech and the people around here, and what was happening. my wife, on the other hand, says she has no problem not caring. and if it leads to their death, we should stop it, no question about it. change this culture to a soccer culture, why not? sports are good; soccer is good; football is fatal, like meth and war. stop killing our boys.

i've been working on the calendar, the new set of stories, and the autobiography. the autobiography appears mostly on this very site; if you look below, posts done in italics are part of the autobiography, which is called just passing through: true stories from out there - it's actually autobiography mixed with travel stories, but all true to the best of my knowledge. I find myself a little confused, sometimes, about the actual facts, and i'm certainly capable of getting them wrong. but if i can get them on paper, and study them, i think i can do a reasonably accurate job of getting them on paper. i can tell you this: no simple genealogy will get my life straight, or do nearly as well as i could do on paper. so i might as well get it in writing, the best i can.

then, it's going to get hot again. september is the cruelest month, but it does cool off, albeit not until hallowe'en. can't come soon enough.