These kids with the skateboards. They rumble under the highway like Jets and Sharks, like Montagues and Capulets, like skateboard against bicycle, in as far south as you can go in Philadelphia without being in the the Navy Yard. The skateboard guys built these ramps, that I know. And who can blame them for being P.O.ed when surfers of another look try to ride the very waves they built.

But this is Philadelphia. You find its essence in the corners, if not in shadow, certainly in shade. This scene under the highway felt good to me. Fathers respectfulling trailing their awe-struck 12-year-old sons, wearing helmets and riding bikes. When a skateboarder does a good trick, or survives a stunt, their fellows applaud by tapping their skateboards onto the concrete like pool cues on a wooden floor after a winning shot. I like that.

What else? Oh yeah, everyone in Baghdad got killed yesterday.

Or was it only two or three hundred? A general got fired. Everyone's all upset.

Is it Tet yet?

You tell me. When was our Tet in the Iraqi War? At what moment did the war in Iraq seem as hopeless as the war in Vietnam, at what moment did we all get it, liberal or conservative or don't give a shit. In Vietnam it happened in January 1968 during the widespread and costly Tet Offensive by Iraqi citizens which in those days we called Viet Cong. Charlie is now Hajji. He looks like anyone else. He'd as soon kill your ass and a couple of hundred innocents as he would blow himself up. Which seems to be his problem. Hajji doesn't care. He's already dead.

It's hard to fight a dead man. He has an unfair advantage. He's smarter than our president.