The daily digest of Twin Cities culture | Secrets of the City

For those of you lulled into complacency by auspicious recent events such as Britney's brief flirtation with lucidity, it's important to note that, not only is the entertainment industry still pumping out fucking loons at a heretofore unheard of pace, but our politicians are providing ample evidence of a world view so profoundly divorced from reality that it's likely

It started like this:

My 13-year-old daughter walked into a room where I was reading and my husband was opening a bottle of wine (which she would tell you is what we're always doing, except when we're working or yelling at her) and said, "You remember when I went to Karl and Julia's when I was in third grade and their nanny let us slide down that huge dirt hill all afternoon and you got really mad because it was so dirty and dangerous?"

"Yes," I said, without raising my head.

So it's not just your imagination, it actually is true. Those zero-calorie sodas people are popping left and right and up and down, ordering with their cheeseburgers and large fries and drinking instead of coffee in the morning or wine at night, actually lead to (or, as they say in medical-speak, "are linked to") metabolic syndrome, which is a fancy way of saying fat and all its attendant ills.

This morning, around 7 a.m., a senior White House economist citing unexpected job growth last month pronounced the U.S. economy "still strong" and said he does not believe we are headed into a recession.

If you're like me you're both encouraged by this news and slightly perplexed. The world as viewed by Edward Lazear, chairman of the White House Council of Economic Advisers, does not appear to be the same one I'm looking at — and living in — each day.