Cramming my brain

This weekend I read almost all of The Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan. It's an amazing book, not only elucidating this country's sick food production system, but also linking it to economic disaster in the nations to whom we ship our cheap corn, throwing their own farmers into ruin, and leading to (among other things) the influx of illegals across our southern border. And now he is campaigning to change it by writing in the New York Times Magazine and being interviewed on NPR (and where else I don't hear about) about the farm bill (up for renewal this year) that sets it all up. This man is a phenomenon!

So then I graded some lab reports last night, and today I wrote my two final exams.

Then I came home and watched two brilliant documentaries on Sundance channel: "Sir! No Sir! about the rebellion of soldiers during the Vietnam war, and "Ground Truth" about soldiers returning from Iraq with crushing emotional damage (PTSD) and the realization that they had been turned into monsters for no reason and no honor. Immediately then, I watched something beautiful, an hour of "Planet Earth," and right after that two hours of "Waking the Dead," a BBC series about chasing after cold case murderers -- this time about a mummified sexually conjoined couple that falls through the ceiling of an old bank.

My head is crammed with, what is it, sugar plum fairies? More like a nature sandwich between slices of horrific suffering and frantic witty sleuthing, with wine.

That's five straight hours of TV, and the dog missed his walk. I wonder what I'll dream about tonight. My head feels like a kaleidoscope, and it's all wonderful.