SUNDAY STREAM OF CONSCIOUSNESS

Child Protective Services should establish permanent presences at all Little League fields. What passes for "constructive criticism" in the subjective view of some parents is remarkably venomous and mean-spirited . . . The most bizarre thing that people affix to their cars is not those oddball trailer hitch covers, "W-04" oval stickers or even the "our-family-is-this-big-AND-Christian" fish family emblems. By far the strangest are the decal memorials to deceased loved ones affixed to car windows. What connection did the car have to the death? Then again, LOST feels the same way about those impromptu roadside memorials, some of which are in such treacherous places on local roads here that one imagines the shrine builder has a copycat impulse or suicidal streak someplace . . . now the special Prosecutor has a date specific handwritten Cheney note about Valerie Plame which was written about a week before her name was leaked? Dick's gonna need the XXL Orange jumpsuit . . . memo to the Catholic hierarchy STOP talking about a boycott of "The DaVinci Code." If your intent is to dissuade people from seeing it, stop giving it "banned in Boston" temptation aura by publicly calling for a boycott . . . Mothers' Day was originally conceived of (oops now, THERE'S a bad pun) not by Hallmark or American Greetings, but during the Civil War? Probably by some Mom who was tired of all the killing and hatred, at least that would make sense . . . anyone who really enjoyed Stephen Colbert's speech at the White House correspondents dinner should find a video of Al Gore's opening skit on last night's SNL - - a quasi-humorous look at what a Gore administration might have confronted . . . most of the world hates or is afraid of us, we've gone from significant surplus to massive deficits, we sort of fought one war with minimal force, then pulled out of that one prematurely to fight against a country that had done nothing to us, and we've killed or maimed over 20,000 of our young people, and countless persons from Iraq, New Orleans is still a mess and hurricane season is upon us, and a good chunk of Congress is more focused on its next poker game and/or illicit lay. Yep, 9/11 changed everything.