Asking the ocean to be my friend on Facebook

I'm reading Jonathan Franzen's new book, Purity, the kind of intriguing contraption that causes me to both want to close it up immediately and get to the finish line as fast as I can. I don't feel really compelled to continue reading the book for the quality of the prose, but I do want to know what happens in the end.

Politically, I have to call myself passive-aggressive. I'm glad that the US is a nation that subscribes to the concept of the rule of law, but I despair the current Supreme Court and would like all of the Justices' impeached--if that were possible--with the exception of the three women and Justice Breyer.

I've despaired for the most part the presidency of Barack Obama, but I'm going to miss him when he's gone, as I am unable to imagine any of his possible successors having a dialogue with an intelligent novelist, as he had with Marilynne Robinson in the New York Review of Books recently.

Yes, given the grubby little messes our corrupt politicians create and leave behind for us to clean up and the groveling mass of mainstream media that ministers so attentively to the ruling class, there is cause for real despair. But nothing a good long walk along Ocean Beach won't cure.