Bismarck

is the name of the rabbit in Women in Love. I had to read 262 pages to get there, but it was worth it. I was somehow afraid that there wouldn't really be a rabbit, or that it would be there but I would miss it, that it would be some kind of arcane allusion that I would be expected to recognize as a reference to Plato's Allegory of the Burrow, or, more likely, Nietzche's uberbunsch. But no. It's just what I'd hoped, an imaginary garden with a real toad in it.

On a different subject, I know it is much maligned, but Wait Wait Don't Tell Me is really funny. I like to listen to podcasts of it while I run. Today, I heard a riff on financial and government-themed porn: "Bear Naked Stearns," "AIG-spot," and, of course . . . "the Stimulus Package." And then my favorite "Diane She's So Feinstein" with . . . "the Minority Whip." Maybe you had to be there, but I was laughing out loud and all the other wholesome Seattlites propelling themselves around Greenlake on Saturday morning gave me strange looks.