To write something light again! Something airy and bouncy. Something like the Absolut "Boum" advert. What does it mean? Protesters and riot police fill the streets of Paris. The former are dressed simply and wave yellow banners that catch the sun, and obviously arc righteous; the latter in black armor, faces hidden, outnumbered but armed and obviously wrong. The chants grow insistent, the police lower their clubs and coil into formation, the music rises, a lone man runs into the street and swings at the cop -- with a pillow that explodes in a slow-motion shower of feathers. A mid-century French pop song kicks in -- "Boum," by George Trenet, jaunty and arch, and in time with the music the battle unfolds as a vast pillowfight, a dance of joy, pillows dropped from hipster-piloted biplanes in the sky, swung by old ladies leaning out of windows as police rappel down the sides of buildings, swinging their own pillows ... but the cinematography is that of urban warfare, unsteady and shot from low angles, prismatic glares. The action peaks, the camera pulls back into the sky, fade to the Absolut text.

I must have watched the video ten times today. It's a tiny jewel. A light and airy minute. And I can't help but feel unnerved by my enjoyment. What does it mean? Joy defeats coldness. Beauty prevails. But then it is so smooth, the entities are so symbolically vague: force, resistance, idealism. They are perfect representations, but of what it is not quite clear, just as the music has a feel but the lyrics are meaningless. And does this give one the power to superimpose any meaning one chooses? Or is it the perfect appropriation of all those symbols, their denaturing, with only one symbol meaning anything at all: the Absolut name, not just a vodka but part of an economic culture that produces more meaningful protest in a commercial than in reality.

An entire MySpace narrative in 24 hours: decide to update profile that I never touched after registering. Receive invites a zillion strangers, one of them seems to have attended my college, is in my profession, at a cursory glance has normal-seeming friends. Doesn't hurt that she's hot. Accept invite, send invites to other friends. Update profile a bit more. The accepted invite sends another message, we go back and forth a couple times with quick impersonal missives, she asks if I want to go to lunch. I'm out of town, I say, and in [blank]. I'll be in [blank] in June, she says. Etc. She writes to say she's going out for supper and will miss "chatting" with me. I ask why she's so friendly to someone she hardly knows, she says she's "interested in me." Late at night she sends a "I wonder what you're doing now" message. Now totally creeped out, send an I'm-uncomfortable message, change privacy settings, block my "friend." But my real name was in my profile address anyways, she could remember it, trace me easily. I think, why am I even doing this? I already have plenty of friends, a good job and reliable network of professional contacts; I already spend too much time in front of a computer, and have enough trouble keeping up relations with these friends, pursuing the literary and journalistic projects I should, et cetera. So I quit MySpace.

So caught up in “Princess Yuki Walking” that I slowed from forty miles an hour during the fast parts to fifteen when it slowed, without even realizing it.

The inheritance of whole systems at successive scales above the genetic; what would this look like? Whole systems stratified according to which characteristics? Their interactions with other systems?

Encountered a skunk tonight after reading about skunks in R.D. Lawrence’s “The Wildlife of Canada.” Didn’t feel scared -- retreated a few steps, he stopped, I stopped, he went on his way. In the night I could hear the sounds of urban life, but also skunk in the grass; the two are not exclusive.

Is a secular democracy the only form of democracy capable of protecting human rights? This seems to be the assumption -- that church and state must be separate -- but must they necessarily be?

Is it worse for, say, 1000 people to be forcibly deprived of their life and freedom, or for twice that number to be deprived of life and freedom, but by (avoidable) circumstance rather than active oppression?

Smells of conditions, such as bemusement or good fortune, the latter of which would have a rather different smell than success, and the former a hint of vanilla.

... the name of the sensation felt when disembarking a plane and walking up a ramp so gently sloping that it seems flat, and you’re not sure why your sluggish balance lists.

Could our paradoxical ability to feel more compassion for a suffering animal than a suffering person be rooted in our tendency as children to empathize more easily with animals, which are alternately examples of freedom or of comradeship in dependence, and generally less difficult to understand than distant and complicated people?

Something made me recall these things together: a New York Times story on the banking of stem cells for future repairs of athletes, the more vicious nature of contemporary hockey and a short story about a group of soldiers who find a dog. The soldiers live in a blasted-out chemical wasteland, genetically modified to metabolize dirt and stone, and after frequent battle -- or even self-mutilation, or violent play -- are treated with medical techniques that can regrow new limbs and fuse mangled bones. At first they don’t believe the dog is real, because nothing natural could live in such a toxic environment, but they are eventually won over by its toughness, and soon come to feel affection for it -- affection being a forgotten emotion. But the dog is too difficult to care for and finally they eat it. Is the relationship between the ability to treat injury and the inability to care causal? Of course not. But somehow these characteristics have flowed in opposite directions in hockey, where players then as now fought hand and foot, but were not in the past thoughtless.