…the forthcoming posthumous/unfinished third novel by my main man David Foster Wallace touches upon a theme with which I’d recently been obsessed.

The novel is about people who find their mindfulness by taking on ultra-routine jobs at the Internal Revenue Service.

As D.T. Max quotes in The New Yorker, Wallace’s idea was that “Bliss—a-second-by-second joy and gratitude at the gift of being alive, conscious—lies on the other side of crushing, crushing boredom. Pay close attention to the most tedious thing you can find (Tax Returns, Televised Golf) and, in waves, a boredom like you’ve never known will wash over you and just about kill you. Ride these out, and it’s like stepping from black and white into color. Like water after days in the desert. Instant bliss in every atom.”

I haven’t been pursuing employment at the IRS. But I have had a sequence of temp gigs for the county that involved equally rote tasks, performed accurately and performed all day. I found a great peace in simply going somewhere, doing something, and doing it well.

It may well be that my current search for renumerative employment could lead me back into the stress-filled realm of hustling for individual bottom-feeder freelance gigs.

But I’d enjoyed the clerical equivalent of chopping wood and carrying water. I could really do it some more.

It’s been a few weeks now since the big Seeds of Compassion mega-conference.

What have we learned?

In terms of left-brain rational learning, not a whole lot that hasn’t been said repeatedly in three decades of new-age philosophy. You’re a child of the universe. Be honest. Be conscientious. Be empathetic. Be kind to people. Take care of one another, especially kids. Spread love and joy. People are more important than power or profits. War is horrible, but so is repression. Vengeance only begets more vengeance.

But from there, the lessons got more subtle.

I’ll just mention one lesson invoked several speakers in the cablecast events—the lesson that empathy is deeper and more personal than mere sympathy.

Tim Harris’s blog, Apesa’s Lament (apesmaslament.blogspot.com), has been an outspoken critic of the city’s current homelessness policy. Harris believes Mayor Nickels is doing too little to find homes for people, while doing too much to harass the homeless into invisibility.

Harris recently noted that, earlier this year, official city documents called Nickels’s policy “consistent and compassionate.” But more recent documents, issued after the Seeds of Compassion conference, bill the city’s homeless policy as “consistent and humane.”

As Harris comments, “The word ‘compassion’ implies a certain amount of connectedness and having something at stake.” Conversely, he describes the adjective “humane” as “more associated with children, animals, and other somewhat helpless creatures.”

This distinction goes beyond the homeless and beyond our own town.

Do we treat other people (even the others we want to help or love) as The capital-O Other, as some exotic-but-lesser life form? Or do we acknowledge that we ARE they, they ARE we?

Taking this approach further, we belong to the same human family with all the group-types we Seattle liberals love to bash. Wal-Mart shoppers. Red-staters. Suburbanites. Churchgoers. Condo owners. People who eat meat. People who watch television. People who don’t smoke pot.

Yes, even white straight males.

• Two suburban high school teachers took part in an antiwar protest. The administration wants to punish ’em. Students are rallying around ’em in support.
• It’s the first, probably exaggerated, snow scare of the season.
• How not to hide pot in your car: Package it as a Christmas present.
• The tragedy surrounding the failed UW-devised AIDS vaccine moves further from “noble failed experiment” toward “real scandal.” A UW researcher allegedly faked test data and altered lab images. (The researcher in question was conducting AIDS-related research not directly related to the vaccine trials.)
• Reverse-sprawl dept.: Ski maker K2’s moving its head offices from Vashon Island to south Seattle. The products will still all be made in China.
• The SeaTimes posits two Eastside transportation solutions: Add passenger rail, cancel plans to widen I-405.

• Protestors almost stopped an Army cargo shipment from the Olympia waterfront to Fort Lewis. You’d think the officials in charge would know better than to sneak anything even peripherally associated with the Iraq war past the turf of Evergreeners….
• An Eastern Washington political scandal that doesn’t involve closeted gays: A newly-elected Republican member of the Yakima city council has admitted his wife posted a bunch of anonymous blog posts bashing the guy’s Democratic opponent.
• Just a week after the Roads n’ Transit referendum’s crash n’ burn, King County’s getting into the foot-ferry business. It’s taking over the Vashon-Seattle passenger-only route from the state, and looking into adding cross-Lake Washington service.
• Meanwhile, the county also planned to raise bus fares a quarter. It’s the first such rise in six years, and it comes just as County Exec Ron Sims is trying harder to push folks onto buses.
• And Gov. Gregoire says she’s taking over responsibility for planning and funding a replacement for the 520 bridge. R n’ T would’ve only funded a piece of the megaproject’s cost anyway.
• In a stunning blow to pundits who’d claimed last week’s local votes showed an anti-tax fervor, the measure to allow future school-funding votes to pass by a simple majority seems to be passing.
• In biz nooze, Redhook Ale Brewery (Seattle’s first microbrewer, dating back to 1982) is fully merging with Portland’s WIdmer Brothers. The combined firm will be based in Portland and maintain both companies’ brands…. Starbucks prepares to issue its latest financial results Thursday, amid questions whether the chain’s lost its way while supermarkets and fast-food chains add better cups o’ Joe…. Amazon.com’s launching an exclusive line of gay and lesbian themed jewelry items; visual motifs weren’t mentioned, but let’s hope they don’t include those ugly saturated-color rainbows.

…to Nobel Peace Prize winner Al Gore. I believe the standard lefty-blog-O-sphere response is to ponder that, had the ’00 election not been nakedly stolen, we’d have a “peace president” instead of what we got.

…the fanatics revert to old patterns. Today’s lesson: the “experts” who’ve dusted off the ol’ Vietnam-era “domino theory” and applied it to Iraq.

…the highly appropriate question, whether anything Bush has ever done I/R/T Iraq has ever not been a total disaster.

…Turns out the whole Iraq misadventure may have really been about the oil. At least, that’s a conclusion one might be tempted to make after reading about the proposed sweetheart deal that would allocate windfall profits to the big oil companies while giving ’em vast control over the future of that country’s oil industry.

…with probably the best Christmas cartoon from the Golden Age of the movies, Hugh Harman’s Peace on Earth. (This is the one where the last battle that destroys the human race is the war between the vegetarians and the meat eaters.)

…quite a passionate pro-impeachment speech.

…to be reading this who doesn’t know what to do on Tuesday, here’s a handy checklist of Republican scandals and failures.

…the endgame in Iraq is upon us, and withdrawal’s inevitable. The politicians and the media just don’t know it yet.

…some sobering thoughts about the Belltown shootings, and about the whole Mideast-violence debacle in general: “When war is made to be the only solution there can be no winners.”

• The April Belltown Messenger is finally out, delayed due to equipment installation at the printer. It’s got a big essay by me comparing five of the neighborhood’s churches on an aesthetic/cultural level.
• Should antiwar activists learn to think more like warriors?
• Imani Mance asserts, meanwhile, that “activists can no longer afford to be broke.”
• Peter Steinbrueck dislikes the new development rules that allow more highrise towers with nothing but blank walls at the sidewalk level.
• The NY Times has scrapped the dozen or so pages of stock prices that used to fill its back section, figuring anybody who really wants them can find them online. Now, if they’ll only start printing the investment data that really counts these days–the going rates on eBay for role-playing-game “strength points.”
• If Mac computers can now seamlessly run Windows, how will software companies still be persuaded to write applications for Mac OS?
• We apparently missed the demise of Dark Shadows creator and Night Stalker producer Dan Curtis.
• But we did catch the death notice of George Carlson, a real-estate executive who dabbled in television. His show, known locally as Northwest Traveler and syndicated as simply The Traveler, ran once a week at 7 p.m. for 13 years. The show was a simple travelogue. Carlson, in the studio, would interview some local affluent couple, who then narrated 16mm film footage of their last trip to India, Egypt, Taiwan, or some other place where the natives don’t even speak the same language we do. Because this footage was silent, Carlson stuck syrupy library music behind the narration. It was all a relic of a simpler time, one might say.
• Bill Nye the Science Guy goes to Waco, TX; gets a silent protest when he politely disses creationism.
• If you’re going out Friday in Seattle, you might consider attending the book tour by leading progressive bloggers Markos Moulitsas Zuniga and Jerome Armstrong, plugging their political repair manual Crashing the Gate. They’re speaking at 7 p.m. at the Labor Temple, 2800 1st Ave. On the Eastside, they’ll be at Marymoor Park at 11:30 a.m. Saturday. Be there. Aloha.

• Are progressive teachers being witch-hunted by right-wing goon squads?
• My ol’ hometown is located within one of the most populous U.S. counties that doesn’t have a four-year college. That might change one of these years.
• Guess what? Initiative hawker and professional demagogue Tim Eyman’s behaving just like a lying, homophobic bigot.
• Is ex-Seattleite news anchor Lou Dobbs becoming a “mad prophet of the airwaves,” or is it just a big ratings stunt?
• Will right-wing corporate forces soon try to censor the Internet?
• Tom DeLay–out; the system of coordinated corruption of which he was a cog–still in.
• The ought-six Mariners: Looking pretty good, except for the bullpen.
• Daylight Savings Time is back among us, bringing sunsets after 7:30. Damn, it feels good.