This guy's just great.

I think I'm turning into a James Lileks groupie. Today's Bleat is chock-full of juicy Lilek-ness. Some choice excerpts:

Re: Folk music

I hate that stuff. My dad had a Kingston Trio record, and even at the tender age of 7 I could tell this stuff was for dweebs. The sound probably hung in your clothes like cigarette smoke; you’d pass bullies, they’d twitch their nose, hiss “Tom Dooley!” and beat you up. It’s so frickin’ earnest, that’s what kills me. And so lyrically inane: “If I had a hammer.” Well, what’s stopping you? Go to the hardware store; they’re about a buck-ninety, tops.

Re: The new gay bishop, Rev. Gene Robinson

This story has irritated me from the start, and it has nothing to do with Rev. Robinson’s sexual orientation. The guy left his wife and kids to go do the hokey-pokey with someone else: that’s what it’s all about, at least for me. Marriages founder for a variety of reasons, and ofttimes they’re valid reasons, sad and inescapable. But “I want to have sex with other people” is not a valid reason for depriving two little girls of a daddy who lives with them, gets up at night when they're sick, kisses them in the morning when they wake. There's a word for people who leave their children because they don't want to have sex with Mommy anymore: selfish. I'm not a praying man, but I cannot possibly imagine asking God if that would be okay.

. . .

Who are you to judge? is the standard response, and I quote Captain James T. Kirk when asked the same question by Kodos the Executioner: who do I have to be? I’ll tell you this: my nightmare is losing my daughter. The idea of leaving her on purpose is inconceivable, and I don’t care if Adriana Lima drove up the driveway in a '57 BelAir convertible, tossed me the keys and asked me to drive her to Rio, it ain’t gonna happen. I made a promise when I married my wife, and I made another when we had our daughter. It's made me rather cranky on the subject of men who don't stick around.

. . .

If he’d cast off his family to cavort with a woman from the choir, I’m not sure he’d be elevated to the level of moral avatar – but by some peculiar twist the fact that he left mom for a man insulates him from criticism. It’s as if he had to do it. To stay in the marriage would have been (crack of thunder, horses neighing) living a lie, and nowadays we’re told that’s the worst thing anyone can do. Better to bedevil other lives with the truth than inconvenience your own with a lie. Right? If others are harmed in the short run, eventually they will be happy because you’re happier. Right?

Read the Bleat daily. You'll thank yourself.

The rest of his site, which is extensive, is perhaps the world's finest internet time-suck in existence. Explore the site and you'll find yourself unable to do work, partially because you can't stop clicking and partially because you're laughing too hard.

And unlike Dave Barry (whom I also like) he doesn't think everything's a good name for a rock band.