Zeldman:

Saturday, or was it Sunday, the TV networks began running commercials again. Carrot Top shilling a 1-800 number while cracking panty jokes in a laundromat. Babes With Guns, a very special season premiere.

We are blessed with a rich culture, woven from thousands of years of European, African, and Asian art, philosophy, and political thinking. But you wouldn?t know it to look at the junk we put on TV and export to the world.

Suddenly pop culture looks like excrement smeared by a mental patient.

Of course it always did. But suddenly the shallowness feels shameful. Am I the only one who feels this way? What dream have we been living in?

Somehow in my pursuit of happiness I failed to notice that children were dying in Iraq.

Somehow when car bombs exploded in London, or gunfire ripped the West Bank, I felt a moment of sorrow and disbelief, then went about my business ? never realizing that love was my business, the world was my business.

We use love to sell mouthwash.

The thing is, I am under a cloud ? literally. A cloud of pulverized metal, asbestos, and human beings blankets my city.

I find it hard to work, hard to think. Like my mother when she began to come down with Alzheimer?s, I find myself at a loss for names, a loss for dates, a loss for titles of books I?ve read.

I say, “that guy, that actor, who married that woman, actress, who was in Batman” when I mean Alec Baldwin.

I say “that fucker” when I mean bin Laden.

That one doesn?t bother me.

The thing is, like everyone, I keep putting one foot in front of the other.

The thing is, I feel helpless as an embryo.[via wood s lot]