January 13th 2007, the day I bought my first car. What did I get? A Taliban Truck, natch. I feel we've got a lot to learn (methodologically, that is) from global guerrillas, and their strong endorsement of late 80s Toyota pickups carries weight with me.

More info and pictures (obviously) soon.

UPDATE: Made it home. The truck, tentatively christened Moamar, performed beautifully on the drive up, although there's a non-critical leak in the coolant system. Good to be home: frigid night air and a hot tub an exotic turnip soup. Nice.

There's a lot of political talk about dirty hippies, the phantom which animates so much of our power elite. The reasons for this must be dark and deeply psychological, but I really don't care. This is a generational fight I have no interest in wasting cycles on.

On my Jetblue flight back, VH1 Classic had a bit about the 60s and drugs, and they had some old footage of Kesey, both the Paul Newman-looking Acid Test version and the more familiar Pleasant Hill farmer. That guy was the MF man, and it's a shame their whole scene got busted down on so hard.

So yeah, hippies are annoying I know. I don't want to talk about crystal healing either. But, on the other hand, Florida Gator fans are annoying too. So maybe it's just people and not just hippies who are annoying.

Anyway, I'm back in California. Just another freak in the freak kingdom.

Apple TV looks interesting and surprisingly affordable. I'd like to see what success early adopters have in hacking it up, because if I can SSH into this thing and trick it out I'll probably buy one. If it can be a media center and a solid network hub/firewall, I'll drop $300 to have a purpose-built device as that's a good pricepoint vs me building my own.

For reasons lost to the dream I'm having dinner at the White House. It's not really the White House of course, and the part of George W. Bush is (natch) played by my father, but for the purposes of the dream it is the White House and he is the President.

I'm sitting in the dining room alone at a bare eight-person table, shortly joined by a kind of schlubby companion, known to be an obsequious courtier and who I also somehow know is named Josh. Annoyingly, he takes the seat next to mine out of all the other seven . This will be awkward because I won't know if people are speaking to him or to me at dinner.

The Bush daughters arrive, played by somewhat more vampy versions of themselves. Dumb-blond Jenna briefly flashes us two Joshes in the style of girls gone wild followed by Barbara (the more intelligent and ergo more attractive), who crawls across the wooden table to the far corner seat with the exaggerated, cat-in-heat style hips of a stripper working the rail.

The table is set, and various "grown ups" filter in. Laura Bush is Laura Bush. For some reason there isn't enough wine or wine glasses to go around, and Dubya/My Father rations out tiny quarter-glasses into various mugs and short cups from the dregs of a magnum bottle. For reasons lost to the dream I know we will still all become drunk, although I also find it improbable in the moment that there isn't more wine, a functionally unlimited supply, to be had in the White House, and that what we do have to drink is rotgut.

Conversation is indistinct. There is discussion of a legal brief -- schlubby courtier Josh is some sort of lawyer -- which will have to be approved by Cheney. He is never seen but rather felt as a presence, perhaps just in the other room. George makes a comment about how "we don't like being disturbed in the mornings around here," and -- scene missing? -- the next thing I know I'm waking up on a couch with a hangover.