Interesting results in Iowa yesterday. New Hampshire will certainly settle a few things. I expect that it will confirm Senator Obama as the Democrat presidential candidate. I also expect that it will not settle anything on the Republican side, but may thin the field further and amplify the differences between the conservative right versus the radical religious right. We live in interesting times. Remember that proverbial Chinese curse? May you live in interesting times.

Pynchon's tome "Against the Day" is a fascinating exercise in reading. It is an exercise. Our protagonists are now mostly in Central Asia, having started in Illinois and Colorado. Labor vs. capital, Okrana vs. HRM's MI6, Buddhists vs. Hindoos, Germans vs. Turks, Albania vs. everybody, it's a rich soup of pre-WWI action/adventure, with dirrigibles and Tesla's power rays. Pynchon, real or not, is a master of the medium. I've started mixing in a bit of his "Mason & Dixon" and despite that book being set a couple centuries earlier, it slips into the subconscious and mixes well into the plot and style of "Against the Day." That's a little spooky, and I hope it has no lasting affect on my own perceptions of reality.

Anonymous model photographed in a parking lot under xenon security lights.