OK, first you need to know that special agent Jack Bauer found the nuclear bomb in time. I repeat: He found the bomb in time. Using a cessna, they managed to fly the device outside the city and detonate in a remote Mojave location, ideal to contain radioactive fallout. CTU's LA bureau chief, George Mason, who was lethally exposed to plutonium earlier in the day, sacrificed his already-doomed existence and piloted the aircraft. George: You are a true American hero and you will not be forgotten.

I haven't shaved in a week.

Last night's ATC featured a report on the Citgo heating oil deal. Citgo, you might remember, is a subsidiary of Venezuela's state oil company, PDVSA ("pedevesa"). I listened to Scott Horsely go over stuff I reported a month ago for AP...his soundbite with Rep. Bill Delahunt - same guy I talked to. I heard this on the way to Blockbuster to pick up the next installment of "24."

*sigh*


The 'rents are always looking for a way to drag me down to the soup kitchen they volunteer at on skid row, and since my dad's sort-of sick they saw an opening and jumped. I took his place this morning, picking up loads of bread at a Santa Monica food bank, driving it downtown, preparing, serving and cleaning over five hours.

Normally, this wipes out all your negative karma, allowing you to dick people over for the rest of your life and still get a free pass to heaven. But since I was basically guilted into it - coerced worse than an Abu Ghraib detainee - I'm back at square-one.

So I was chopping lettuce across from this guy, who asked me about Venezuela and what I thought of Chavez.

"It's complicated," I managed. I was going on about four hours' worth of sleep.

"Complicated? How is it complicated? What do you mean?" Crap, now I've stepped in it. I forgot how far to the left these volunteers swing. You could tell he didn't want to know what I meant as much as he wanted to explain there was nothing complicated about Chavez's initiatives for Venezuela's majority poor. Dude, it's fucking 8am...can I just dish out some friggin' food and talk politics later? No? Can I at least scrub the split-pea soup smell off my skin first?

Editors' note: This would normally be the part where Dickie explains that serving breakfast to society's outcast, forgotten, exiled, reviled gave him much-needed, newfound perspective - filling him with heartfelt non-consumerist, non-Bill O'Reilly holiday joy and blessings. But fuck that. He woke up at 4:30am. 'Couldn't sleep...again. 'Would love to pass out now...but can't. He was in a shitty mood then, he's in a shittier mood now, and he would rather remain his regular spoiled ungrateful mofo-self, thank you very much. We tried to reassure him that he'd be happily employed soon, but he just mumbled something about it being "complicated," yelled "blegh!" and stormed off. ...So we got nothin'. We hope you enjoyed this post.