Philip Weiss and Zo‰ Heller

Dear Zoë,

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Actually, I think I would respect you more. While I always thought of you as supranational (you're from England, right, but I seem to remember you have an Australian or South African or American parent or grandparent?), I've never thought of you as being supraserious. Myself I fell off the serious log a couple of years ago. Lost my footing. Got wet, pissed myself. I've been OK since, but I'm still waiting for my dad to give me permission to be non-serious. Which he'll never give me.

So why are Barbie sales off? What's your take?

I would have read the Wall Street Journal myself but they were sold out the first place I went this morning and I wasn't equal to the two-block walk to the next place, not in rubber sandals (ever since I stopped being serious I started dressing like Barbie), in this heat.

Slinking back, I meditated on my career at the Philadelphia Daily News, 20 years ago, when I wrote the weather story and they told me that surveys had shown it was the No. 1 reason people read the paper. It was a lesson about reality I failed to absorb, bent as I was on seriousness. I wrote belletristic weather stories, maddening the copy desk and the readers, hungry for information. Now I identify with those readers.

I think of Kosovo as an alternative reality for the power classes. The ethnic Albanians--yes. But who cares about the incinerated Serbs (the Greens Party sends out terrifying e-mails from Serbs living through this)? Everyone is now talking about the winners and losers. Myself, I am grateful I didn't stick my neck out, never expressed publicly what I said in private conversation: that an air war had never won a battle in modern ... I had no idea what I was talking about.

How is the heat down there? And are you wearing any rubber?

Philip

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