President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran, right, met President Hugo Chavez in Venezuela met before heading to New York for meetings at the U.N.

Looking at this photo, I imagine other people looking at it - Bush, Cheney, Rove, etc. - and what their reactions might be. I gleefully imagine seizures. It could only be more amazing if Kim Jong-il and Castro were there for this lovefest. I don't know why this entertains me so much.

I recently read Goodnight, Texas by William J. Cobb and it was so bland and so mediocre that I don't even know how to approach it critically, what it is I could say about it.

All this UN business prevented me from eating lunch in Bryant Park today. Much of midtown was blockaded, and so I ate in the courtyard of some boring office complex, determined to eat outside on this last gasp of summer - this beautiful, warm day.

Maybe the problem wasn't the book, but me. This journal and its lack of activity here evidence of that potential problem, of an inability to think critically about anything, or to devote attention to anything other than planning my calender, meeting up with friends, drinking booze, drinking coffee, or, as I did yesterday, consuming sour pickled goods at the Pickle Fest on the Lower East Side.