Where oh where to start, dear diary? It's been just about a week since my wisdom tooth freaked and blew my head up like a honeydew. I believe photo evedence can be obtained from attendees in Jacksonville and St. Petersburg. I'd considered cancelling, but fathead or no, I don't get to Florida that often and after my cracks about Pearl Jam I really had no choice but to take the stage. Special thanx to codiene/tylenol and the doc who prescribed it. All better now.

As the House of Misrepresentatives winds up it's summer session, a persistent murk in my head is starting to clear. Something seems patently suspect when people who profess to loathe the government go to great trouble and expense to occupy it. Conservatives accuse liberals of capricious generosity that does not reflect the level of self interest that the average citizen deems appropriate. Therefor, a true conservative cannot claim to be acting wholly in service to the citizenry, as this would be practicing the soft-headed liberal dogma of putting others before oneself.

Presidents obviously get a giant payoff. Aside from being fixed for life, you get at least 4 years of Michael Jacksons or Bill Gates lifestyle. You don't ever have to go back to work. You'll always have parties to go to. Even if you're a knucklehead there are still a lot of people who take you seriously.

Most congressmen wind up pitiful if not villified during their time in office, and this presumably is why term limits are so popular and also unnecessary. Lately people run for office on term limits- getting in and out quickly. So what can you accomplish in a delicate job at which you are determined to gain no experience?

You can make contacts. You can interact with corporations in a favorable way when crafting and voting on legislation. Sans term limits you could try to stay in office, internationalize your contacts and gain stature as an ideological standard bearer. You could leave office when you feel like it, pretend to have no plans, and find yourself very soon on the board at one or more major corporations, raking in stock options, vacationing at your second home in Beliz and putting the screws to some fresh new term limit pol. Or you could get 4.5 mil for regurgitating into a word processor.

As far as I know, none of this is a secret. A lot of people are thinking "yeah, why not me?"