It's fall, which means I may occasionally be writing these entries in a sweater. But that's not all.

Traditionally, this is when people start thinking about football, the World Series, and Halloween costumes. The other noteworthy event this fall is the upcoming elections, and that means tons of political ads on TV.

I really don't know why they bother. Last I checked, the American public was deserting our representative democracy in droves and opting for the simpler Parliamentarian system. Instead of choosing candidates, an increasing number of people just vote straight party line tickets, perhaps because it's less work.

I can see a certain virtue in that, too, but I still frequently throw my vote away on people not aligned and beholden to either of the main two parties.

As often as not, I vote against a candidate simply based on their commercials. I usually write them a letter, too, letting them know why. So far it's done no good, but I like to let them know that, while I support their stances, I don't take kindly to being manipulated or considered a fool.

This year the Democratic Party has discovered that a majority of Americans finally caught up with me and dislike George Bush, a man for whom I've never cast a vote. Many of the Democratic candidates here in California whom I'd like to win unfortunately have glomped onto this dislike and their ads contain little except pictures of their opponents smiling with the president.

Guilt by association.

I'm thinking someone at the DNC has determined this is the best way to insure a victory, but it turns me off. I was excited to see Jerry Brown, our former governor Moonbeam, was running for something this year and was all excited to put him back on the state payroll. Then, I saw an he, too, decided the best way to put forth his agenda was to show his Republican opponent smiling with Bush. Now it seems I'm once again forced to write a letter, this time to his campaign, and to throw away my vote on some Green or Libertarian guy who has no chance of winning.

I just wish the candidates would tell me how my life would be better if I voted for them.

I've never met the man, nor anyone who's claimed to, but I bet when he wasn't mucking about with geometric shapes Abraham Maslow was a decent enough sort. If he had kids, I bet he took them to the movies and bought them popcorn and cotton candy.

I'm not as high up as I'd like, but I'm trying to be comfortable where I am. I know, that isn't easy considering we're talking about needs instead of wants, but I'm nothing if not a rebel.

And, one of the worst sort of rebels, the Internet variety. Effectively nameless and anonymous, I can be a bully and Internet tough guy and continually seek to drag others down to my level, a practice that's neither rewarding nor practical.

Still, I must be lacking something crucial. It's been thirty years since I was introduced to Maslow, and I can't say as I've advanced very much at all in that time. I've momentarily bettered myself, but I've never been able to get it to stick. The most likely culprit is my lack of drive, but it's entirely possible I'm just overlooking something evident to the rest of the world.

Oh, sure, I once described all of life on the back of a blue 3X5 card, but I lost it.

I wouldn't have thought it possible that there would be something sadder and more useless than plastic bags with zippers, but that just shows the limits of my imagination. The depths to which the American public will sink to reward marketing breakthroughs and their own laziness and fondness for new may reach deeper than I'd allowed.

!@(heinz.jpg)

It's evidently too much to ask people to turn their squeezable bottles over to dispense the product. I have no idea what, other than laziness, would make anyone think these mustard bottles with the label printed on upside-down are what the world's been waiting for, but I guess they're all the rage now. I bought this one because it was cheaper than the typical, upright, style, but I'm less than impressed.

Oh, sure, it saves me turning the bottle over, and if you add that one second to all the mustard used in this great country, I guess it adds up to a lot. Probably even enough for us to have time to cure cancer or resolve the homeless or health care issues.

I thought we'd reached our bottom when another marketing genius decided it was too much work to seal a plastic bag with our fingers, but I was wrong. I grew up with wax paper surrounding my sandwiches, then, later, those plastic bags that had a flap and were supposed to seal. I could never figure out the intricacies of those, but the later version, with the seal, were something I could manage.

Then, they came up with the colored ones so you could tell by the purple or green that you'd managed to correctly align the seal, but I found that less than helpful. Even if I left a gap, I still saw the mixed color. I always found it easier to see if I could press any more air out to determine if the bag was completely sealed.

Then, awhile ago, they decided that sealing the bag by hand was too pedestrian or something. In an effort to further discount any notion that there's benefits to manual work, they added built in zippers to the bags. Not only does the zipper require much more plastic than the bag itself and a few more steps in the production, from what I've seen they're just encouraging people to be lazy.

Yes, I know we live in a fast-paced society with much to do and those who can't keep up are relegated to sad, dismal lives of looking up and longing for what might have been, but if we weren't so quick to reward whatever's new, we may make some quality progress.

Or, maybe, we'll just hire more immigrants to do all of our mundane chores.

No car for me.

Maybe I wasn't quick enough returning his calls, or maybe he's a flake or mad at me, or had some other flavor of misgivings, but it appears the car thing isn't going to be happening. Not today, anyway, and maybe not this car.

There are other cheap cars, equally crappy I'm guessing, available all the time, so it's not as if I won't ever get a car. It just may not be a convertible with a stick, two things I really wanted.

It's safe to say that over half of my cars have been ragtops, but I can think of only two that were automatics, and both of them were gifts from my parents. I rented an automatic once, and was shocked at this "point and drive" mentality. It was almost as if driving weren't something you did but merely had happen around you.

No wonder there are so many accidents.

Today marks the observance of one of those grade B holidays, one that quite a few people get off but that I suspect isn't celebrated at Indian Casinos. That would just be wrong.

Lots of youngsters on message boards are showing a lot of nervousness about yesterday's nuclear test, the one performed by North Korea. In this case, I find age to be a good thing, a mollifying factor, if you will. While many of today's kids are freaking out, some of us have experienced this nuclear fright quite a few times. I'm not saying the test is a good thing (and I can only hope our president doesn't respond in ways I think likely), but I've peered more than once into the end of civilization and am, perhaps, a bit jaded as a result.

Although I know better, I'd like at least one kid to say, "Oh, this is what it feels like."

In personal news, my crappy car won't be delivered until tomorrow. The guy selling it told me Friday he'd call Sunday after fixing the three things he promised to take care of. He'd fasten up the exhaust system (it's only solid back to the catalytic converter he installed), replace some missing interior panels, and take care of the keys and locks. The ignition system, when I saw it, was dangling, and Mark had been starting the car with a screwdriver.

It took him several rings to answer his phone, and he didn't sound as chipper as I'd hoped. He sounded less happy when I reminded him that I'd need a new smog certificate (the one he'd gotten was in June, and they're only good for ninety days).

"I guarantee you it'll pass," he said. "If not I'll buy the car back."

I stuck to my guns. "Why don't you take care of it, and we'll do the car thing Tuesday instead of Monday?"

"What about the cost?" he asked. "Will you cover that."

"Last time I checked, it was the owner's responsibility."

He muttered something about spending more money on the car, but agreed to eat the cost and give me the car Tuesday. I let him know that instead of delivering it, I'd be willing to come pick it up, and he acted as if he liked that. I could understand his unhappiness at spending the extra money (he'd put quite a bit into the car to get it registered and off the "non-functional" list), but it looked to me as if he was pretty much breaking even. Maybe he expected to make money on his car investment, but I think that's pretty unrealistic.

So, no car today, but maybe tomorrow.

I'm not sure when it was, but some time yesterday there was a drop of liquid in my nose at a time when I'm accustomed to having such a thing. It may have been when I first woke up, or it may have been sometime in the middle of the night.

I have no idea how I got it, and I doubt there's any single reason, but I'm hoping it's just a cold and not e.coli or bird flu or anything like that. Still, I reviewed what I've been eating, just to make sure.

What I eat is divided into a few groups, just like the government does.

The food group is comprised of ham, chicken breasts, beef steaks, bacon, and things that swim in salt water that have bones.

Then there's the group that's made up of the things food eats and contains such delicacies as wheat, aspargus, green onions, potatoes, carrots and all those sort of things.

The third important food group is liquids. Most of them can be ingested through a straw, but rarely are.

The next group is those things that are listed on nutrition labels or that are sold in small bottles with pictures of farms on them at drug stores and places like that.

Finally, there's the nearly unpronounceable things that are added to a lot of food and that cost more if they're removed or never added to begin with. There are no good reasons to have any of these except they add flavor or increase the food's appearance or longevity. I guess. Maybe they reduce manufacturing costs or otherwise increase profits, like adding water to ham only with more esoteric chemicals than H-2-O.

Like I usually do if I think some germs are taking up residence inside me, I took some aspirin and dug out my small bottle of zinc lozenges. The lozenges aren't holding up too well and are a little past their expiration date, but if I understand one thing it's that all the zinc I'm likely to run across was all created between ten and fifteen billion years ago, so I don't think an extra year or two is likely to cause any noticeable deteriorzation.

I haven't eaten anything unusual except that stir fry that didn't come out as expected, and while I may have napped with a wet head, I often do that. I think it's something that I just picked up from one of those people who failed to quarantee themselves, who selfishly felt the world would be better if more people shared their infirmary.

That, or someone who's used up all his or her sick days.

Oh, and Monday I'm picking up a POS automobile.

About a week and a half ago my solitude was disturbed by some hobo with a bike knocking on my front door. After rousing my dog, Minardi, to a fevered pitch and forcing me to slip on a shirt and shoes to answer the door, he let me know that he saw my rabbit running across the street.

!@(rabbit.jpg)

That I owned a rabbit was news to me, as was the fact that he or she had escaped. I thanked my informer and wandered back in the house to avoid doing housework and pretty much put the matter out of my mind. It would be nice if Mother Nature chose to begin reclaiming this part of the world, but I question her choice of albino rabbits as the first wave. I, personally, would have preferred wild boar.

My avoidance of the rabbit issue, however, only lasted some six hours. Around three in the afternoon I heard some hooting and hollering and went outside to investigate. My next-door neighbors were having their dog washed by one of those mobile dog-washing services, and one of the people involved with that enterprise was chasing something with the aid of our letter carrier. If the United States Postal Service was involved, as they were, I figured this to be national effort and joined them.

The dog-washing girl and the postal carrier were chasing the rabbit, but with limited success. It turns out that rabbits, even ones frightened out of their wits, can do a fairly effective job of being uncaught when they choose. This particular rabbit was very good at hiding under cars as well as scooting like the dickens, and we chased it across the street several times and under no fewer than six cars.

The rabbit, naturally, had some grease spots on it, but that in no way explained our inability to capture it. After chasing it for a good fifteen minutes, another neighbor came out and let us know that the rabbit was a pet of the little girl who lives directly across the street from me. This, while informative, did nothing to further our efforts to catch the rabbit, but the neighbor joined the pursuit, swelling our group to four.

Eventually we gave up and the rabbit just sat in the yard, waiting for its owner to return. I tried out the picture feature of my phone, with the above result. I suppose it's unnecessary to mention I take fewer pictures with my phone than I do answering calls.

A few hours later I saw half the household across the street chasing down the rabbit, and I guess they caught it. It could be that they know its name and can call it, or it could be that they're more practiced at this or the rabbit is more used to them. While the dog-washer girl and our letter carrier demonstrated massive efforts, we were unsuccesful where the family soon cornered and claimed the prize.

Since then, some ten days ago, I've twice seen that family chasing the rabbit around. That the little bunny has an unquenchable thirst for freedom is no doubt a good thing, but what disturbs me is that I can't remember that word used to describe something one starts seeing everywhere once one learns of it.

In this case, I didn't know my neighbors had a rabbit and had never seen them trying to catch it. Since inviting myself into the pursuit, I can no longer even look out my window without seeing a group of waving, shouting people chasing this white ball of fluff. I'm sure it was happening all the time before, but I never noticed.

Still, there are no signs of wild boars.