I haven’t had the chance to watch last night’s “Daily Show”, but please, for the love of god, tell me they did something on the President of the United States acknowledging, almost cheerfully, that he’d lied to the press last week.

Crooks and Liars has the video here.

Gotta say, though, it wasn’t the admission of the lie that I found most sickening — it was the way Bush admitted it, patiently explaining to the assembled White House press that he had to lie about keeping Rumsfeld on in order to make those pesky reporters stop asking about whether he’d be keeping Rumsfeld on: “The only way to get you onto another question was to give you that answer.”

It’s these moments, when he lets the mask of geniality slip and reveals just how much he holds the rest of us in contempt, that are so crucial to the understanding of the Bush presidency and its relationship to the American people.

Jon Stewart’s rhetorical question — “Do they think we’re retarded?” — is funny, but it’s just a little off the mark. The truth is, Bush really does believe he’s the smartest guy in the room.

Explains a lot about the last six years, doesn’t it?

That’s not a political calculation, but the number of dental anaesthesias that fail to take, according to my dentist.

He told me this as we were sitting in his office, wondering why I still had sensation — oh, such exquisite sensation — in my lower jaw.

Dental appointment rescheduled. Tooth still broken. I repeat, for posterity: It can always get worse.

On the upside, it looks like the American people finally decided to put the brakes on the whole going-to-hell-in-a-handbasket thing, so that’s nice.

Rolling Stone gets New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd to interview Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert. Read it here.

Precisely two years ago, I wrote a Starweek piece that suggested “The Daily Show” might prove to be the secret weapon that turned the 2004 election for John Kerry — think of all those red-state kids, newly eligible to vote, who’d gone off to college and discovered the program just in time for the election.

Ah, well. Better luck this time.

So I’m sitting in the “Saw III” screening Saturday afternoon, running my tongue along my teeth — as you do — and I think, “Huh, that feels a little sensitive.” And I thought no more of it.

Cracked tooth. Infected nerve. By Tuesday afternoon I was gobbling Advil like M&Ms and regretting having gobbled actual M&Ms earlier in the week, since all those hard candy shells can’t possibly have been good for my poor, weakened enamel. (Damn Halloween and its seductive advertising materials.)

Anyway. I’m now gobbling Tylenol in addition to Advil, and popping three antibiotic horse pills a day in the hopes of clearing the infection long enough for my dentist to be able to assess the state of the tooth.

Next Wednesday.

How’s your week been?

You know, “surrounded by family” is one of those phrases I never really considered literally, until last night.

The funeral’s tomorrow at noon. Benjamin’s Park Memorial Chapel, 2401 Steeles Avenue West. Firefox 2.0 is acting a little wonky at the moment, so click on the URL below for further details:

www.benjamins.ca

Regular programming will resume eventually.

It ought to be comforting to know the worst day of your life is behind you. It ought to be, but it isn’t.

I had a dog. She was a marvelous yellow Labrador retriever, and she was with me from the age of eleven weeks to thirteen and three-quarter years — more or less my entire adult life.

Thirteen and three-quarters is pretty old for any dog, and she was noticeably slower over the summer. Arthritis in the back legs, a tendency to rasp when her salivary glands overran her ability to clear her throat (and being a Lab, her salivary glands were pretty active), a bit of hearing loss. We scaled the walks back a little on really hot days, and put her on a couple of anti-inflammatory drugs to help with the soreness, and that seemed to help.

In August, she started to be a little wobbly, and her right hind leg seemed unsteady. My first thought was that she’d started to build up a resistance to her meds, and I checked with her vet — a very, very capable doctor named Larry Wilder, at the Lawrence Park Animal Hospital — to recalibrate the dosage. It seemed to help.

A couple of weeks later — on the first day of the film festival, as it happened — she tweaked the leg while we were out walking. Later that night, she fell off the bed and sprained it. She couldn’t put any weight on the leg at all, and hopped around for a few days while we waited for the sprain to heal.

It never did.

We took her to the hospital for X-rays on September 15th, and that’s when they found the tumor. Osteosarcoma. The same cancer that killed Terry Fox. The prognosis was two to four weeks, six at the most.

She made it to October 10th, and then, when standing up was harder work than it should have been, when her appetite was beginning to go, when she couldn’t quite find a comfortable position to sleep — when it was obvious that things were turning downward — I set up the appointment.

They do it with a barbituate overdose. It was painless and even peaceful: The dog literally goes to sleep, and a minute later her heart stops. We were right there with her; we cradled her head and told her we loved her, told her everything was going to be all right, told her she was the best dog in the world.

We were lying, of course.

Nothing will ever be all right again.