MIMI LETS US GRACIOUSLY GLIDE INTO THE WEEKEND Ending the week on an up-note is important. In fact, one of the things you probably remember from "The A-Team" is that every episode ended on an up-note.

FROM THE DEPARTMENT OF "NO WAY, THAT DID NOT JUST HAPPEN"

Slicked-back hair, mirrored sunglasses, suit and tie, this jag-off in a Jaguar is speeding through a yellow light in River North, and---for real---he is blasting the Phil Collins song "Sussudio" on what is no doubt a very expensive car stereo. I was like: Wait, was that Patrick Bateman? Please tell me that was some sort of prank, like the guy is participating in a rousing game of Rich Person's Truth Or Dare, because why, why, why would you listen to "Sussudio" in the car, where other people can hear you? I mean, maybe you are allowed to keep the Phil Collins CD in a dark closet and throw on "Sussudio" when you are cleaning the house or something, but even that is skating on some very, VERY thin musical-taste ice, mister. The only possible use I can see for that song is maybe using it to clear the last few cokeheads out of your house when dawn is breaking and you need the party to be OVER, NOW. (Somebody call Sartre, quick: I am having a new vision of existentialist hell where it is always five in the morning and everyone is doing coke and there is always Phil Collins on the stereo. Oh my god I have to go lie down.)

EVERYBODY'S WORKING FOR THE WEEKEND Even in 2256. I wonder if he knew he was going to get caught.

Federal investigators have arrested an enigmatic Wall Street trader on insider-trading charges - but he insists he's a time-traveller from the year 2256. Andrew Carlssin, 44, hasn't convinced investigators though.

An insider says, "We don't believe this guy's story - he's either a lunatic or a pathological liar. But the fact is, with an initial investment of only $800, in two weeks' time he had a portfolio valued at over $350 million. Every trade he made capitalized on unexpected business developments, which simply can't be pure luck. The only way he could pull it off is with illegal inside information. He's going to sit in a jail until he agrees to give up his sources."

... In a bid for leniency, Carlssin has reportedly offered to divulge "historical facts" such as the whereabouts of Osama Bin Laden and a cure for AIDS.

All he wants is to be allowed to return to the future in his "time craft."

THOUGH THERE IS THIS PERSPECTIVE StopJayGarner.com provides a different perspective on Jay Garner than David Ignatius does. I just want to know if there is anyone in our government who hasn't either built weapons systems or worked for a friggin' oil company!? Sheesh. Why do I suddenly miss drunks like Andy Jackson?

JUNEBUG Kasey Chambers *and* Sonic Youth in one weekend. Guess where I'll be June 14 and 15?

DEBRIEF ME Slate's Fred Kaplan says a wrap-up briefing by the military about the Iraqi campaign could answer a whole lot of questions, which assumes the military wants to even answer them. The biggest question -- bigger than the role of special operations or the whereabouts of chemical weapons or the military being blindsided by general anarchy following their victory -- is Kaplan's first: What happened between weeks one and two that so quickly and quietly changed the war's tempo and dynamic?

At the end of Week One, you may recall, "quagmire" was the phrase du jour as the Army and Marines found themselves bogged down with thin supply lines, a monster sandstorm and rear-guard sniping from Um Qasr northwards. The general sense, even within the ranks, was that the assault on Baghdad was going to be delayed until the middle of April or later. At least three Iraqi divisions sat between the U.S. and the city. And then, suddenly, American troops were on the streets.

Reports from Jordanians who managed to escape Baghdad after volunteering with other Arabs to fight the Americans indicate that the Republican Guard and regular troops literally packed their gear and quit, leaving some Feydaheen and Arabs facing the Americans alone. Rumors of secret deals abound.

None of which is a knock on the military. Whatever deals were struck and changes were made in the planning ultimately saved thousands of Iraqi and American lives. But it would be interesting to hear the Defense Department's version of the timeline, the adjustments and the end results.

ANDY GRIFFITH IN BAGHDAD I don't mean that headline to sound as snitty as it might, but reading David Ignatius' piece on Jay Garner this morning brings Mayberry to mind. Garner is in charge of the reconstruction efforts in Iraq, and he comes to the task with what feels like an appropriate amount of humility and concern. And optimism, which may feel like naivete to many. But I think naive optimism is exactly what is needed right now -- naive, as opposed to blind, optimism. It will be very easy for skeptics to roll their eyes at the task ahead, but if you take the current reality -- Iraq is unstable and currently occupied by American troops -- as a starting point, you're just an ass if you want the status quo, or worse, to rein supreme. Garner and his group (which includes my friend Jenny, a linguist) have a massive task ahead of them, and they are bound to fall short in many significant ways. But I -- and I expect many Iraqis -- hope they leave the country in better condition than they found it. Ignatius has another tip:

If there is one Arabic word I would place in Garner's phrase book, it is karameh, or dignity -- the value at the core of Arab political culture. Saddam Hussein ruled, in a sense, by humiliation -- by his ability to inflict pain on his citizens and their families. Unless you played his game, you were nothing. The Iraqis won't be able to get the dignity they crave from Garner and the Americans. They will have to create it for themselves, in building a new country.

Constructing Iraqi democracy may seem like a naive goal, but it's a big, noble ambition and worth the pain it will require. Garner says that when he thought this week about the enormous task ahead, he got choked up with emotion. So should we all. What America does in postwar Iraq will test us as much as the Iraqis.

AN OUTSTANDING BOOK CHAT Michael Dirda meanders both whimsical and maudlin in today's chat at the Washington Post. Dirda is the senior editor of the Post's Book World, and always full of curious gleanings. I was captured today by his perspective on fiction and nonfiction, though I felt it was a tad generalized --

My point, though, remains: Novels give us a glimpse of life and show us how we might live; they also emphasize aspects of love. Nonfiction--and by this I mean history, biography and philosophy--appeals to more settled hearts and souls, who are trying to make sense of things and understand the world they already inhabit (rather than dream of inhabiting). Novels are romantic, nonfiction is classical. Novels are for dreamers; nonfiction for realists. All these remarks may seem so general as to be fatuous, but I do maintain there is some truth here. I know for a fact that I now have less interest in contemporary fiction, at least by new writers, than I did at 24 or 34. These books speak too much of a world I will never see or see again. Right now, I've lived 54 years and seem to be as ignorant as ever--hence I turn to history, etc. and back to the great classics of, yes, fiction. But I don't find myself gravitating to new poetry and new novels. Which, of course, troubles me, considering my job.

BEFORE THE BOMBS Here's a look at Iraq in its splendor, courtesy of some thoughtfully posted e-cards featuring old Iraqi postcards.

I'VE GOT YOUR POETRY MONTH The CSMonitor's poetry site is another good stopping place for perusers of poetry. Here's their poem of the month for April --

Argument with a master
by Elisavietta Ritchie

When walking, just walk.
When sitting, just sit.
Above all, don't wobble.
–Yun-Men (d. 949)

I can't "just walk,"
I can't "just sit."

I wobble on
from milkweed bloom
to Georgia pine
counting petals,
raking needles,

watch one tattered
monarch perch, probe
the milkweed's throat,
one heron land
on a bared bough,

my mind a nest
of wet-winged thoughts,
wait for the best
to wobble forth,
rev up, take off.

Someday I'll fly,
just fly, and straight.

AH, SWEET, SWEET FILE UNKNOWN Boing Boing points a finger at Time, whose archives are suddenly missing a March 2, 1998, article by former President George H. W. Bush and Brent Scowcroft titled, "Why We Didn't Remove Saddam." The winning excerpt -- shown in Boing Boing's post -- looks like a snapshot from our current reality. And then there's the question of why the article has vanished from Time's archives...

RICHMOND'S GRANDMASTER OF GROOVY Chris Bopst gets tagged as the host of "Richmond's Most Original Radio Show," which fits the artist-musician-DJ. Bopst serves up a hearty blend of music, ranging from the roots to reggae to rock, on 1320 AM.

BEHIND THE CYBER CURVE Praise be. The old Biograph Theater -- where I first saw the seminal punk classic "Another State of Mind" at the tender age of 14 -- is resurfacing yet again. As a cyber cafe. Oh well. Maybe the art, music and coffee will be enough to lure nearby students from their free high-speed Internet access.

ALT.THEATRE Richmond's Westhampton Theater is closing its doors, which means one less place to see first-run alternative films. It also means that James Parrish and Mike Jones need to get busy with their plans for a downtown alternative film spot.

AH, POETRY MONTH You get smacked by the poetry carp twice today. E. E. Cummings' "maggie and milly and molly and may" always leaves me smiling, slightly disconcerted.

maggie and milly and molly and may
by E. E. Cummings

maggie and milly and molly and may
went down to the beach(to play one day)

and maggie discovered a shell that sang
so sweetly she couldn't remember her troubles,and

milly befriended a stranded star
whose rays five languid fingers were;

and molly was chased by a horrible thing
which raced sideways while blowing bubbles:and

may came home with a smooth round stone
as small as a world and as large as alone.

For whatever we lose(like a you or a me)
it's always ourselves we find in the sea

BLESSING THE BOATS It's still National Poetry Month, which means you get the benefit of two of my favorite poems today. "blessing the boats" by Lucille Clifton almost always makes me sigh.

blessing the boats
by Lucille Clifton

(at St. Mary's)

may the tide
that is entering even now
the lip of our understanding
carry you out
beyond the face of fear
may you kiss
the wind then turn from it
certain that it will
love your back may you
open your eyes to water
water waving forever
and may you in your innocence
sail through this to that

THANKS, BOB From the Gena Rowlands Band homepage: "Danielle from Chicago sent an email to the band address today, not 20 minutes after I had found a note from her from like two years ago, stuffed in a pile of tax forms and crap. Two shrubs outside my window are blooming, their flowers just two shades apart: the near one a bit more golden than the far one. There are more things in heaven and earth, Mr. Bush, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."

TAKING MEASURE OF WAR The most human reporting in Iraq consistently comes from the Washington Post's Anthony Shadid, whose prose and insights blend handidly with his command of Arabic and desire to speak to people on the streets. Shadid's interviews are mostly with the quiet victims -- victims of American or Iraqi boming attacks, of Saddam Hussein's prisons, of hunger and starvation and years of brutal repression. To many of these people, the U.S. invasion is not about liberation or freedom, at least not today. When they measure life before the fall of Baghdad versus life just days into an American occupation, they look at looting and lawlessness, at a city without electricity, water or phones, at the graves of their friends and families. For them, regardless of who calls the shots, this war demonstrates just how powerless they really are.

BANNED FROM THE ROXY I'd heard from some friends that Michael Wolff was smart, clever, that he was a good writer. That he was reporting from Camp Doha for New York Magazine. Then I forgot him. Until I happened to catch three minutes of Rush Limbaugh (yes, I sometimes visit the enemy encampment to see what's in their care packages from home), the three minutes in which the conservative chatterbox castigated Wolff for asking, in effect, "Um, excuse me, one-star General Brooks, but why is the assistant principal of the United States Army briefing the media?" Wolff's own account of events makes for a stellar read into the nature of reporting, and the military's brilliant PR end-run.

LITTLE GREEN IRAQIS Pravda, the ertswhile Russian newspaper, has picked up a report from the fringes that the U.S. invasion of Iraq wasn't about regime change or oil, but about UFOs. Apparently, an alien spaceship crashed in Iraq, and Saddam Hussein offered the aliens protection. In return, they help him bio-engineer some scorpions --

Mohammed Hajj al-Amdar said on the basis of strange stories coming out of that valley: Saddam gave the aliens sanctuary, so that they couldn-t be captured by Americans. Nobody can reach the citadel Qalaat-e-Julundi at night. They say that the aliens created watchdogs for Saddam. The aliens took ordinary desert scorpions and used their bio-engineering to grow the scorpions to giant size. Scorpions of a cow-size! They are wonderful watchdogs: they blend in with the desert, swiftly and silently move on their warm-blooded prey for a decisive attack. Luckless intruders hear just some strange sound from behind stones, then a pincer crushes their necks, another pincer crushes their legs; then the victims is slammed to the ground and beaten with a barbed tail six or seven times. Death comes almost immediately.

SMALL TOWN JOYS One of the subtle pleasures of living in a community for a long time is that you get to watch people you like succeed. I still remember when Kathryn Harvey was selling odd knick knacks and cutesy juice glasses from the 1950s on the second floor of a rickety building on Grace Street in Richmond. Now she's supplying thousands of area children with an overdose of cool whenever they wander into World of Mirth in Carytown.

WHAT COLOR ARE MY VITAMINS? Burpee, the seed people, have a handy nutritional guide to the things we eat, especially the ones that can be color-classified.

SAD GLOBAL REALITIES Iraq may yet prove to be a poor case study in regime change, and the politics that led the Bush administration to engage in this particular exercise of power are absolutely debatable, but as the University of Washington's Daniel Chirot (an expert in ethnic violence) opines in the Seattle Times, much of the world is faltering. And when nation states falter -- as they are in much of Asia and Africa -- people turn to non-state religious and ethnic communities for protection and stability. Which leads to a rising tide of violent conflict on increasingly larger local scales.

Liberal Western scholars tend to dislike extreme religiosity both at home and abroad, and find strong ethnic feelings to be irrational. They have been trying to explain away ethno-religious conflicts for decades, despite growing evidence to the contrary. They blame the legacy of colonialism and globalization, as if saying this might somehow reverse the trend.

Alas, they are wrong, and anyway, all of us are now involved whether we want to be or not.

We celebrate "community," but if ethnic and religious communities command more loyalty than the national state, the chances of conflict are high. Societies with less internal conflict are those that have succeeded, as Americans have done, in creating a sense that the nation is more important than its constituent communities.

The United States can help by remembering these lessons and urging realistic, moderate, secular and non-ethnic programs for reconciliation. Our capacity to get others to do the right thing is limited, but we can promote economic growth by allowing freer entry of products from poor countries.

We can provide more well-guided aid for health, family planning and infrastructure development instead of just preaching sanctimoniously, blocking birth control and imposing tariffs. We can promote cultural exchanges that spread constructive ideas, instead of running silly public-relations campaigns while making it ever harder for foreign scholars and students to visit the United States.

We Americans have not heeded recent lessons. Iraq is a cauldron of ethno-religious hatreds and thirst for vengeance. Are we prepared for the chaos we may precipitate, for the many other such incipient catastrophes around the world, and for their repercussion in our own homeland?

NATIONAL POETRY MONTH REDUX "Knowing robs us of wonder" is how this poem by Chinua Achebe begins, yet "Another Africa," which combines Achebe's words and the photography of Robert Lyons is nothing if not wonderous.

MATH ROCK'S NOT DEAD Metal math wizzes, Atomizer, bring their heavy sounds to Bandito's this weekend. Their bass player, Greta Brinkman, chaffed her fingertips in Richmond's late punk-era bands Unseen Force and Four Walls Falling before escaping to New York to play with debbie Harry, L7 and Moby.

CONTROLLING IRAQ The Washington Post's Anthony Shadid walks the streets of Baghdad and finds calm where the sternly benevolent hand of local Shiite clerics rule the neighborhood. Besides being an interesting story that puts a more human (and more political) face on the Iraqi clergy, Shadid's account points to an undercurrent of tension between the Sunnis and Shiites in Iraq. As the process of creating a stable government in Iraq gets underway, the irony of Saddam's dictatorial authority being replaced by an Islamic government is a real possibility.