In another teachable moment of another momentous age, Grandfather Lenin famously told us that liberty is so precious it must be carefully rationed.

Yes we can, comrade!

And as Vin and Vito hurtled today toward their beachside dacha, they felt themselves filled with the milk of human kindness and eager to transcend the sordid history of recent times. In fact, they've invited Dennis Kucinich to come have a beer with them. First a beer, then an lower-east-side style beatin.'

Eh, I'd rather see Bazzukajoe have a beer with Joe Biden. Can you imagine the amazing stuff that Cuz Joe could get Doltin'Joe to say? Make it pay per view and the deficit could be cut in half. It would be high entertainment.

Here at Berea-Rose, I have spent the last week or so reclaiming the back room from Da Chimpz. For three years the room has looked like a Gaza Strip back-alley. Last week I moved all seven metric tons of Legos to the basement and ran the carpet cleaner -- all day, with about eight refills of the detergent tank. The wastewater I poured out of that thing didn't just look like sewage, it smelled like sewage too -- years of fruit juice spills, compressed Pop-Tart crumbs, and skid-mark overflow from overly intense Nintendo-playing... all ground into the weave of a world-weary broadloom.

But the room looks great now: wide open, just some folding chairs and some music speakers. And windows that open but have screens. Take that, you blood-thirsty insects of dusk.

Yeah, I think I have to go back down there and enjoy the last few scraps of daylight as they retreat to the western sky... Yeah baby.

Butterfly time. Gus busted a move today. Broke loose. Flew the coop.

We noticed this morning that Gus's chrysalis had become translucent -- we could see the outlines of the wing patterns. I took some snapshots this morning after dropping Da Chimpz at camp. I had no idea how close we were.

Late this afternoon I decided to open the garage and check on them, and that's when I saw that Gus had freed himself.

When Cookie and Mojo got home I showed them and they were excited. After dinner we went to the neighbor's backyard (where they grow some flowers, unlike my backyard) and we had a brief release ceremony. Very brief -- Gus apparently had an urgent appointment across town. He gave me enough time to snap a couple of pictures but not enough time to get the video camera rolling.

Oh well -- Ted should be liberating himself in a few days. I'll be sure to have the video-cam on standby.

Last weekend I took a detour from my normal regional shopping route to get us a new hammock. I've had the old one set up in the garage (all cars are banished) and decided it was time to upgrade. This one is a fabric weave -- a bit more comfy than the rope kind I've been swinging in for 10 years. Opened it up, chained it up to the frame, and noticed all the tags.

There were no less than 11 tags sewn to the thing: warnings in English, warnings to foreigners, warnings to launderers, and the obligatory "it is unlawful to remove this tag" tag.

My favorite tag assured us that the hammock complied with the various guidelines, rules and regulations duly imposed and promulgated by the California Bureau of Home Furnishings.

Bureau of home furnishings? No wonder the state is bankrupt.

But such is the state of the world. Even Alane was appalled by today's news headlines, saying "who would want to kill Mexican midget wrestlers?" Vicious prostitutes. Not as strange as the headlines coming out of D.C. these days, naturally, where the vicious prostitutes actually control government.

I have a big rack of ribs on the grill. That makes me happy.