UH OH So, this image could be entirely appropriate. If I was a shaman and believed that rocks spoke to me, or something. Take a look at the current state of the Holiday Tree of Hope on the west lawn of the U.S. Capitol. Bleak, bleak, bleak.

WHAT I NEED I need new music. Or old music. I was thinking about getting Aaron Copland's "Appalachian Spring," for some reason. And Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds have a new release out. Your suggestions are welcome.

HOW TO STOP WATCHING TV WITHOUT MISSING OUT Television Without Pity is designed to either allow people to stop watching television entirely, or to entice them into watching far more TV than is humanly possible. It's a tough call. Snarky writers pen clever, detailed reviews of just about every freaking show on the tube mere days after Joe chooses to send Melissa packing (for instance). Most of the reviews are detailed enough that you don't even need to watch the show. At all. Snifty!

PARALYZED BY POP Rhett Miller gets self-conscious, then not-so-self-conscious, then appreciative... Well, he chats with Detroit's Metro Times about rock. How about that?

MAKE WAR FOR FLORICANE Referral Risk is your online opportunity to claim a little sliver of the globe for me. And, naturally, I'll invite you to my palace for tea once the inspectors leave. I'd prefer somewhere in Africa, if you don't mind concentrating your attentions there. Namibia, maybe. That's right, down there in the southwest corner of the continent.

DAKOTAN NUCLEAR PROLIFERATION The U.N. is reacting strongly to reports that North Dakota -- "a remote, isolationist state" -- is in possession of hundreds of nuclear weapons that can threaten its neighbors, reports the Onion. "The man at the center of the controversy is North Dakota's leader, Gov. John Hoeven. Having risen to power in 2000 after amassing tremendous wealth in the private sector, Hoeven lives a life of comfort and excess inside the heavily patrolled North Dakota governor's mansion, a lavish dwelling paid for entirely by the state, while many of his people engage in subsistence farming... Hardly at the forefront of technology in other aspects, North Dakota has a largely rural population and a child-poverty rate of 14 percent—a fact critics have been quick to point out... 'North Dakotans live a horrible life of isolation and deprivation, struggling to grow crops in a hostile, sub-zero climate while their indifferent government routinely prioritizes bolstering the state's military might,' BBC World correspondent Caroline Eagan said." Go get 'em, Kofi!

I JUST WANNA BE ME! Ah, the Onion. There's nothing quite like unpeeling it -- "I wish I were more like my online persona... In the real world, I am at best ignored and at worst mocked and scorned. Yet, if my persecutors were playing Half-Life Team Fortress, they would be whistling a different tune as I expertly sniped them time and time again. Would my old high-school nemesis Doug Kilkrane have knocked my books out of my hands every day before science class if he knew the fear I strike into the hearts of opponents at Buffy The Vampire Slayer trivia? What has Doug Kilkrane done, other than throw baseballs well and date Amy Cass? Dick."

THE BAGHDAD RETROSPECTIVE The Cuban Missile Crisis, the current tensions with Iraq -- this too shall pass? There really is nothing quite like hindsight when it comes to wishing you'd made different decisions.

THE BEST OF... TOMATO NATION It's a web log with coffee mugs, and a snazzy lo-fi look. And, best of all, good writing. Each entry is a link to bigger and better expository essays. Here's a snippet from "Let It Snow" to tide you over: "The social contract of driving -- if such a thing exists at other times, which I believe is open to debate -- goes right out the window in a snowstorm, especially for eighteen-wheelers, who wouldn't slow down for a Biblical hail of chipmunks, much less a measly half inch of slush in the Poconos. While I don't particularly care if the driver of a semi containing eight tons of frozen spinach wants to hydroplane down the steepest mountainside in Pennsylvania on his own time, nor do I want to come to on the shoulder wearing the guard rail as an ascot if he hits a slippery patch and sends my airbag-less Honda triple-lutzing off the road. It's just spinach, J.J. McClure. Slow down."

LIBERAL THOUGHT IS DYING Thank you, Todd Gitlin, for demonstrating that it is possible to simultaneously set forth with logical arguments about the state of American foreign policy and culture even as you acknowledge that popular liberalism is embracing some of the more insipid perspectives on world affairs available. Gitlin writes in the new issue of Dissent Magazine that, "anti-Americanism is an emotion masquerading as an analysis, a morality, an ideal, even an idea about what to do. When hatred of foreign policies ignites into hatred of an entire people and their civilization, then thinking is dead and demonology lives. When complexity of thought devolves into caricature, intellect is close to reconciling itself to mass murder. One might have thought all this obvious. On the evidence of two of the works under review, it is not." He goes on to review and critique several new publications, including Gore Vidal's latest diatribe and essays in Granta and The South Atlantic Quarterly, before concluding that "this is no easy time for anti-anti-Americans, for the Washington usurpers in power actively dare the world to hate the country they bestride. The small-minded Bush cadres are so benightedly self-interested, so contemptuous of world (and American) opinion, so reckless in rhetoric, so heedless of argument, that they will for the next two years pose an immense challenge to people of good will everywhere -- to resist their overweening designs without succumbing to barbarism. This is the high-wire act we are called to perform. The auspicious news is that a goodly proportion of Americans -- on many issues, a majority -- are straining to leave them behind. Quite literally, on issue after issue, the regime in charge does not represent America. This is good news, but it is not necessarily operational news. It entails a sizable moral and intellectual challenge alongside a political one-to sustain complexity of thought about the America these plutocrats command, to stand in their way without bitterness, to refuse to give up on the higher American possibility. Intellectuals must not permit sloppy thinking to cede the usurpers an American future they have not earned, and that, with luck, they will not inherit."

BRING ON THE NOISE As Michael Kelly notes, the response from the public and the Congress to President Bush's call for $15 billion for AIDS programs has been dim. It should be loud -- a standing ovation. I wouldn't care if Idi Amin was offering this sort of program; I'd stand up and applaud. Kelly notes that "the scope of the AIDS plague in southern Africa is nearly beyond comprehension... about 30 million people have the AIDS virus, including 3 million children younger than 15. There are whole countries in Africa where more than one-third of the adult population carries the infection. More than 4 million require immediate drug treatment." And they're not getting it. And they might now, because a Republican President is either pandering or compassionate or both -- "$15 billion, and not just for babies -- for vast programs of treatment with the cheap generic drugs, for wide-scale condom distribution. Billions in taxpayer money. For condoms in Africa. In a recession. In a time of record budget deficits. It is a rare and wonderful thing."

MEL GIBSON'S PASSION Hollywood's third most powerful man (and most powerful sheep farmer) is going out on a limb, asserting his cinematic and spiritual visions in a movie that no one wants to distribute. "The Passion," currently in production in Italy, recounts Christ's last hours in the long dead languages of Aramaic and Latin with no subtitles. In addition to being a pop movie icon, Gibson is a old school Catholic who thinks Vatican II was a bad idea. I don't expect this will be as amusing as "Monty Python's Life of Brian."

WHAT I'VE READ Visit Cultural Digestion for my new, short reviews of "God's Mountain" by Erri De Luca; "The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay" by Michael Chabon; "The Passion" by Jeanette Winterson; "Silence in October" by Jens Christian Grondahl; "Blessings" by Anna Quindlen; "See No Evil" by Robert Baer; and "Bush at War" by Bob Woodward. New CD reviews coming soon. Scout’s honor.

TO DANCE AGAIN Lawsuits now behind them, the members of the Martha Graham Dance Company have hit the floor running, twirling and leaping for a spotlight series in New York City. The Post provides the back story to this icon of American dance, and the company that hopes to carry her legacy: "One of the most important American artists, Martha Graham has often been compared to other genre-benders like Stravinsky, Picasso and Joyce. She did for dance what Henry Ford did for transportation. If ballet was the horse-drawn carriage, Graham's modern dance was the Model T: more powerful, with a sleek, bold, aggressive look, unlike anything anyone had seen before. Starting in the 1920s, Graham yanked the art of dance in an entirely new direction..."

GET YOUR LAUGHS ON The Gena Rowlands Band is sexy. And they have a love song featuring Jesus and King Kong. And their music is dreamy, grating and relaxingly sonic, all in one sharp dose. Read all about it in the City Paper -- "When you title your songs "The Last Words of Lesley Gore" and "Garofalo, C'est Moi," they better be pretty damn good. We happily report that THE GENA ROWLANDS BAND delivers, sonically, lyrically, attitudinally, every which-ally way." Did I mention Bob Massey made all the ladies swoon recently?

SMART CHICKS DIG BOOKS Welcome to another site I love, which lives up to its tagline of being "smart, witty, literate as hell." Hell, they've got their own Book Club!

TAKE ONE "Russian Ark" is making its way into American art movie houses, leaving audiences simultaneously marvelling at its technical accomplishment and wondering at its lack of concentrated focus. The Detroit Metro Times sets it up for us -- "Russian director Alexander Sokurov, with Russian Ark, has made a film that consists of a single 96-minute take. The result is both impressive and puzzling. With over seven months of preparation and over 800 actors and extras employed, the film is a technical marvel. But Sokurov (who had an early creative relationship with Tarkovsky and shares with that director a particularly Russian streak of mysticism) is less a storyteller than a creator of moods and suggestive anecdotes. So while we’re pulled along by Ark’s inexorable movement, the feeling of missing the point is a recurring concern." The creation of a movie done in one 96-minute take through more than a mile of the Russian Hermitage Museum is awe-inspiring on a technical level -- the filming, the positioning, the sets and costumes. The next challenge for an inspired director will be to meet the technical standards set by Sokurov, and add to them heart, passion and a storyline.

A FORUM FOR PROGRESS IN AFRICA The first session of the new African Union opened this week in Addis Ababa, bringing together African leaders at a time when the continent faces a host of severe problems -- debt, the spreading HIV/AIDS crisis, conflict, and the threat of famine. And yet the opportunities for the organization are real; the AU hopes to capitalize on the tens of millions of native Africans living in Europe and North America as it establishes a central bank, parliament and court of justice for the continent. It's a long shot, obviously, and yet the AU already has taken firmer stands on many issues than its debt-ridden, archaic predecessor.

WHY IRAN LOOKS WEST It has been poor perspective that has encouraged most Americans to think of Iran as an Arab nation, grouping it in passing with Saudi Arabia or Iraq in terms of its relationship with the West. The reality is that Shia Muslim-dominated Iran has stronger historical and strategic ties with India, as evidenced by the recent visit of Iranian President Mohammed Khatami to India's Republic Day celebration. Relationships between India and Iran create an interesting dilemma for a U.S. government that is simultaneously engaged in reconstructing (or deconstructing) Middle Eastern political boundaries and fault lines, and in asserting its influence in Central Asia. As alliances and enmities begin to shift and strengthen in both regions -- between the very unstable governments of Iraq, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and India with their religious tensions, stockpiles of nuclear armaments and inherent hostilities -- the U.S. will be hard pressed to develop a cogent, thoughtful policy that helps to maintain (or even enhance) stability.

REAGAN'S REVOLUTION IS HERE Hide the children and brush off your best hairshirt, the revolution in government promised two decades ago by Ronald Reagan has finally materialized. And while you're at it, say goodbye to the "compassionate conservatism" that George Bush used to gain the White House. Here's what the new Bush budget should tell you about White House priorities: The rich get richer -- The proposed new tax cuts that combined with the 2001 cuts will reduce government coffers by 1.85 trillion (yes, trillion) dollars over 10 years. The majority of those cuts benefit the extremely wealthy (empasis on extremely). The less wealthy get dissed -- "Programs for rural development, family literacy, vocational education, environmental protection and public housing revitalization would be cut from levels the White House proposed last year... New controls would be placed on poverty programs, such as the earned income tax credit, school lunch subsidies and Medicaid, to ensure that billions of dollars in subsidies do not go to people not entitled to them." (The Washington Post)

WHEN CELEBRITY COLLIDES There's nothing interesting about this link, except that it features Steve Martin, who in a fit of pique long ago I decided was my only modern entertainment hero. The rest are just baubles. And this isn't even a good Steve Martin link; it's just a current one. But that's what happens when you're a hero -- even the smallest things become consequential.

DAYDREAM BELIEVER She's groovy, industrious and runs one of those rare Richmond stores that litter the streets of larger cities like maple leaves in October. Plus, her first cat was named Popsabooks. There are three trend-setting stores bumping hips on Cary Street; Meredith Tracey runs the one on the left.

TOM KEAN, MEET KEVIN SPACEY. OH YEAH, AND OSAMA BIN LADEN. Former New Jersey Governor Thomas Kean has been asked to head the commission examing the September 11 attacks. Kean's links of association with Saudi Arabian sponsors of fundamentalism, and perhaps terrorism, are mapped out quite succinctly at Fortune Magazine.

SCALING BACK IN SPACE Gregg Easterbrook of The New Republic pens a worthy piece for Time this week on why the space shuttle program should be cancelled. Easterbrook is not anti-science, nor does he wail about how the problems here on Earth should be fixed before we explore the heavens. No, he simply argues that the purpose of exploring space is currently at odds with the systems and businesses we rely on to explore space. And the space shuttle and space station, unfortunately and tragically, symbolize the problem. "For 20 years, the cart has been before the horse in U.S. space policy. NASA has been attempting complex missions involving many astronauts without first developing an affordable and dependable means to orbit. The emphasis now must be on designing an all-new system that is lower priced and reliable. And if human space flight stops for a decade while that happens, so be it. Once there is a cheaper and safer way to get people and cargo into orbit, talk of grand goals might become reality. New, less-expensive throwaway rockets would allow NASA to launch more space probes—the one part of the program that is constantly cost-effective. An affordable means to orbit might make possible a return to the moon for establishment of a research base and make possible the long-dreamed-of day when men and women set foot on Mars. But no grand goal is possible while NASA relies on the super-costly, dangerous shuttle."

FINAL FRONTIERS Two of the Post's best writers, Guy Gugilotta and Joel Achenbach, paint a remarkable and poignant picture of the space shuttle Columbia's 16-day mission. It begins, "The spacecraft was full of life: seven people, many spiders, a nest of carpenter bees, a baker's dozen rodents. Here was moss, yeast, strains of bacteria, cells growing in tissue cultures. In orbit, a silk moth emerged from its cocoon. A fish hatched. Miniature roses and rice flowers bloomed. The final flight of Columbia was something of an anomaly: a pure science mission."

LET'S BEGIN AGAIN You only need to read the first paragraph of David Edelstein's review to know why the world is hanging by a thread in its collective anticipation of this film -- "It's hard to imagine a tighter, more gripping adaptation of Graham Greene's 1955 novel The Quiet American than Philip Noyce's new movie (Miramax) from a screenplay by Christopher Hampton. The story of Fowler (Michael Caine), an aging English foreign correspondent in Saigon who develops a strangely affectionate enmity for an idealistic young American named Pyle (Brendan Fraser), the film is a classical piece of work, swiftly and evocatively told, with a fair amount of narration in the first half but mounting dramatic concision (and dread) thereafter. Sans credits, it runs less than 90 minutes, and Noyce doesn't waste a frame."