I’m speaking of Michael Bérubé, of course.

So, dear readers, for the foreseeable future, this blog will try to serve as a respite from the End Times, which, as I learned upon returning to the United States, have officially begun in Lebanon. I must admit that the shock of re-entry, at such times, can be quite severe. Over the weekend, as I caught up with email and bill-paying, I discovered that most European nations (including the ones we’d visited) had judiciously condemned Israel’s disproportionate and profoundly counterproductive response to the latest Hamas-Hezbollah outrages, whereas the warbloggers, hatemongers, and assorted End Timers on these shores were condemning those European nations for appeasement of terror, etc. Nick filled us in on the details as we drove back from JFK through central Brooklyn. Janet, who’d managed to avoid all news of the dying world for six weeks, became numb. She had asked me, as we walked up and down our mountain on our last day in France, for a small dose of Wingnut News so that she could try to re-acclimate to the U.S., and I told her about David Horowitz’s advanced-dementia campaign against the Travel section of the New York Times. But even that tidbit, which sent her briefly into anaphylactic shock, was inadequate preparation for the crisis in Lebanon.

“Holy Mother of Moloch, Nick,” I said as I weaved through Atlantic Avenue traffic. “What part of ‘disproportionate and profoundly counterproductive response to terrorism’ don’t these lunatics understand?”

Nick looked askance at me, silently.

“Oh, yeah,” I murmured. “The all of it part. Right.”

I will begin the week, accordingly, with something small and inconsequential. Because our travels involved a level of planning that made the Apollo-Soyuz mission look like a casual get-together for tea, we had to fly from Dublin to Nice at 6 am on July 8, which meant that we had to “wake” “up” at 3:30 after meeting friends for a few pints in Grafton Street. All went well, even though the Dublin Airport had had not one but two bomb scares in the previous week. But when we touched down in Nice, I discovered to my dismay that a previous passenger had decided to deposit a wad of gum on the floor under my seat—and I made this discovery not by picking up the gum with my sneaker but by picking it up with my unshod sock, for I had foolishly taken the liberty, in trying to catch a bit more sleep, of discreetly removing my shoes at some point during the flight. I therefore walked all through the Nice airport (and customs) with a most unpleasant sensation in my left foot, as my sock began to adhere to the inside of my sneaker. When at last we retrieved our baggage and I was able to obtain a replacement sock from my suitcase, I excused myself, and retired to the bathroom to de-gum myself while Janet and Jamie made their way to the rental-car desk. But alas! The gum in question turned out to be an adhesive of extraordinary tenacity, such that the sock was now chemically bonded to the lining of the sneaker: as I slipped off the sneaker, the lining remained attached to the ball of my foot, dangling from the damaged sock. Indeed, the wad’s remarkable staying power suggested not only that it was a virulent strain of gum I was dealing with, but also that it had been deposited on the floor of the fuselage not very long before it found my foot. For even after I managed to rip the sock free, the gum-residue on the sneaker lining was sufficient to mess with the new sock, thereby requiring me to take off the shoe again, this time to try to scrub the lining with hot water in the hope of counteracting the powerful adhesive properties of this most vexatious gum.

[sure, I realize he’s more verbose even than I, but he can spin a good yarn from his experiences while dazzling you with his repartee; charming man, I say, and a fantastic read]