A work in (or no longer in) progress: Toward an Index of The 9/11 Commission Report:

Bin Laden, appearance of, in the titles of official US morning briefings
 — “Bin Laden Threatening to Attack US Aircraft” (June 1998), 342
 — “Strains Surface between Bin Ladin and Taliban” (January 1999), 342
 — “Bin Ladin to Exploit Looser Security during Holidays” (December 1999), 342
 — “Bin Ladin Evading Sanctions” (March 2001), 342
 — “Bin Ladin’s Interest in Biological, Radiological Weapons” (February 2001), 342
 — “Taliban Holding Firm on Bin Ladin for Now” (March 2001), 342
 — “Bin Ladin Determined to Strike in US” (August 2001), 342

That is so weird. It turns out that if you call up a politician and say “I want to kill you,” they’ll charge you with threatening someone’s life. What is this country COMING TO when we have NO FIRST AMENDMENT RIGHTS? How could he have killed a politician through the telephone anyway? Why are politicians like Senator Patty Murray so afraid of free speech and these telephones? Why isn’t it understood that when we call up total strangers and say “I WANT TO KILL YOU” it obviously just means “I DISAGREE WITH YOUR POLITICAL CHOICES AND HERE IS WHY?”

Were you wondering why you felt a little weird yesterday? Why your equilibrium was off, why you were so cranky and walked in the wrong direction when you got out of the subway? It wasn’t just a case of the Mondays, silly: a powerful geomagnetic storm was bombarding the planet with a cloud of charged ions moving at 500 kilometers per second. It was a total coronal mass ejection!

NASA’s SOHO spacecraft picked up the nasty shock wave of solar wind on Saturday. Scientists predicted it would take three days to arrive, but this one was booking. “It hit earlier and harder than forecast,” says Doug Biesecker of the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Space Weather Prediction Center in Boulder, Colorado, to New Scientist’s Rachel Courtland.

I’ll say. I didn’t know which way was up. Luckily, the storm was not strong enough to knock out any power grids-as happened to the Hydro-Quebec grid in 1989, when 6 million people were left powerless for six hours. It did make for some very pretty auroras in Iceland-which is already lucking out with that cool newly erupted snow volcano. More disturbingly, but also kind of awesomely, that illustration of the earth’s geomagnetic field makes it look like the planet is being attacked by a giant space spider.

Speaking of spring! I liked the Jennifer Steinkamp programmed-trees-in-the-wind video at MASS MoCA back in 2008, but this one, which just showed at the Armory, is pretty perfect for the right now.

The transition from March to April, as we all know, is most often associated with madness, daffodils, spring crocuses and the blazing yellow branches of forsythia now rising like a thousand sunbeams around the city. In Washington Heights, however, it is the hellebore that now takes the stage, with a more subdued and gothic charm.

Like dark chocolate and certain wines, the hellebore perhaps requires the acquisition of a ‘taste’ for its less-than-ebullient flowers — which have a tendency to hang their heads, as if never completely removed from the pain of the world — and ungainly leaves, which, though generally evergreen, tend to turn brown at the edges after enduring a winter like the one just passed. (These leaves can be cut off to make way for the new growth every year.)

The plant is fearless — there are many varieties hardy to at least Zone 4 — and is always the first to send up blossoms in the late-winter garden before ushering in the spring.

The hellebore has a long history, dating back to at least the ancient Greeks, when it was used to poison Alexander the Great in the lost city of Babylon. But like many toxic substances, when administered in the proper doses, it offers more benign effects: today’s disappointed college basketball fans should note that it was used to cure the daughters of King Midas “after they were touched by madness and found running naked through the streets screaming.”

I don’t know where I read this — and I might have imagined it — but I’m pretty sure that hellebores, once established, can live for decades and possibly centuries (not that the plant presumably cares about such delineations of time).

We have several patches of hellebores in our garden, all varieties of Helleborus x hybridus (winner of the 2005 Perennial Plant of the Year, BTW), including the ‘Mardi Gras Parade,’ the ‘Ivory Prince,’ and a black form, the exact name of which seems to have slipped through our less-than-perfect record-keeping system. (I fear we may have filed that piece of information with a tax return, so if anyone works at the IRS and sees it floating around, can you please send it back?)

In my experience, hellebores do not require more than dappled sunlight and are therefore ideal companions to the ferns and hostas and other staples of the woodlands garden. They are also very drought-tolerant, which is good news if you live in area where water costs a fucking fortune (as it probably should, although we can save that topic for a panel discussion on ____).

The hellebore can help to sustain our optimism (albeit in a muted and age-appropriate form) during the coming weeks, when the sun may be bright but the wind is still cold.

Matthew Gallaway is a writer who lives in Washington Heights. His first novel, ‘The Metropolis Case,’ will be published by Crown.

Oh, remember that guy, who was almost mayor of New York City, and maybe would be if you’d turned out to vote? He had to go and get a job.

Last week we talked about celebrating the sacrifice of money and sweat in the process of creating something horrible-sort of the end of camp, in this age when everything pleasurable is good, even if it is very bad? (Maybe the actual death of irony, ten years late???) Now comes the official celebration party for Troll 2, pretty much officially the worst movie ever made. Writes Wired: “And unlike the winking reverie that greeted Snakes on a Plane, the affection for Troll 2 wasn’t the result of studio marketing; it was born of the Internet’s sincere (or at least ironically sincere) appetite for undiscovered crap — and the desire to share it.”

The news that South African song lyrics have been declared unconstitutional-recently performed was a “Zulu ditty” of very recent historical provenance “with lyrics that say ‘Dubula ibhunu,’ meaning ‘Shoot the Boer,’ the Afrikaans word for farmer that is often held to refer to whites in general” (and this happened concurrently with the murder of a white supremacist)-seems as good a time as any to point you to this 1973 Jet feature on Eartha Kitt and her work both in Watts and South Africa. It goes like this: “But the one ghetto which has also found a special place in her heart is in Swaziland, South Africa. Although she was bitterly assailed and criticized last year for playing to segregated audiences there, Miss Kitt explained that she did it to turn the spot light to one of the worst crimes against Black humanity-South Africa’s racial apartheid.”

It’s been far too long since we’ve had an installment of “reading magazines whilst getting pedicures,” but recently I have had my mind BLOWN by a magazine. Oh yes. I can’t even begin to explain how great the May issue of Architectural Digest is. Their theme is “People and Places.” Which is a radical departure from every other issue since 1920. And just like their December 2009 cover. Holy crud, this magazine!

Yes, that is Scottish not bisexual rogue Gerard Butler, shoeless in his Chelsea love pad, on the cover, provocatively shot to display-well, if he were a naked cat, he’d be showing both the meat and the veg and also his little pink cat spot? (Sorry, but look at that! That’s a weird way to be on the cover of a magazine!) These jeans are funny too, I’ve seen them before, they’re not Dior, I think, but can you see the funny seams above the ankle? What are those?

Anyway, then we go inside his monochrome beige screw-pad, which, SERIOUSLY, YOU GUYS, you would just start giggling? It’s the now version of the swinging London shag pad, sort of. I mean, listen, I rather admire Gerard Butler. He is a big lout who likes to laugh and doesn’t seem to care about things too much, or at least, didn’t until recently maybe? And this house does seem like he was like “I WANNA HAVE FUN AND BE A DUDE HERE, JUST HANGING, MAYBE WITH SOME BROS.”

It is apparently 3300 square feet and on two floors? Also Butler has a “penchant for old crumbling walls.”

Okay THEN they go to Sting and Trudie Styler’s house in London? Which is all about a renovation of a house from 1700, which involved propping up 100 tons of house to deal with the garden and the family room? It was VERY ARDUOUS. (Also exquisitely expensive no doubt.)

Then there’s Robert Zemeckis (Back to the Future II and III!) and his castle in Tuscany! Also hideous! Obviously a great view, but you know, it’s TUSCANY.

AND THEN there’s Joshua Bell, the adorable violinist, you know the one, and there’s some 4000 square foot penthouse in the Flatiron District, which looks remarkably as if it has never been touched by a human being, all cold and empty and 80s-chic. (Nice roof, however, which looks directly out toward the clocktower at the foot of Madison Square Park, so you know where more or less to stalk him now.)

BUT WAIT THERE’S MORE. Stephen Huvane, yes the publicist, and his fun-seeming younger lover, and their houses in LA and Palm Springs, which are… nice! I mean, you know, it ain’t the projects! AND THEN! There is TREY PARKER’S “JAPANESE STYLE AT HIS COLORADO RETREAT.” Which is a massive building in Steamboat Springs, which has tatamis and shit. Did you guys know this? It has a TV as long as a drawbridge. There is a tea house. I dunno.

The magazine tails off mightily after that climax with Alan Ladd Jr.’s house in Beverly Hills. You know, it has dining room chairs with puffy covers and stuff. People! Places! I mean, it’s like you don’t know what hit you after experiencing this much crazy.

And you know how the cover promises “Lance Armstrong in Texas”? Eh, it’s just a little thing on his Foundation’s “LEED-Certified” space. (Um, basically, I could get Gerard Butler’s crotch LEED-certified, so, color me not impressed.)

The conditional clauses that come packaged with April 5th’s trending hashtag #DeleteYourTwitterIf are as varied as the reasons one might choose to delete one’s Twitter account even without the advice proffered by someone whose avatar is a close-up of their tramp stamp. With bass notes of generalized-turned-personal rage, it provides a perfect framework for passive-aggressive claims on digital turf, as users stuck with second-choice handles quickly discovered.

fromblueskies: #deleteyourtwitterif you’re using a name someone else wants and you never sign in. *cough* @blueskies *cough*

Not everyone is circling an unused account like a hungry buzzard, however. There is room in this bossy meme for tough love of an achingly specific type-for directives that, despite their open-ended formulations, seem to conjure an exact yet unnamed individual.

FuckYouuimPaidd: #DeleteYourTwitterIf Youu Got 13 Followers , But Youu followinq 894.

LoveKarleigh: #DeleteYourTwitterIf u weigh 500 lbs. and ur bio says u wanna be in the Porn industry.

We are not truly challenged until we attempt to parse the ironies, intentional and un-, that arise from rock-throwing undertaken by residents of the glass Internet. Musn’t they know what they are saying? Musn’t they know that, even if they know what they are saying, they look as if they don’t? These tweeters, we assume, have an incredibly fine grasp of meta-commentary:

Kelseyizbawlen: RT @toadspimp: #deleteyourtwitterif all of your tweets have a trending topic in them.

Tinit2winit: #deleteyourtwitterif you have no social life

bkLYN_b0MbShEll #deleteyourtwitterif yu dnt fukin tweet in English!! Wth is the point??

More mystic and less koan-like are the tweets that leak out of the digital sphere, touching upon a single offense as though it wholly characterizes the offender and describes their absolute value in a social network. They are submitting a rating to the public reputation market. Bearing no strong connection to web-bound behavior, these entries waft up out of the generic haze like mini-manifestos mailed to the editor of a failing local newspaper. They can only be read as masked invitations to group suicide:

01ade: #deleteyourtwitterif you smoke cigarettes

dharrison615: #deleteyourtwitterif you think the Cubs have a chance 2 win the World Series let alone the division this year…All about the White Sox baby

HS_JB #deleteyourtwitterif you’re a hater.

This bitter topic has quickly destabilized, leaving us cold and confused. It is, at heart, too mean to trend for long. But before it dies its young rock star death, is there no way to advance its every form at once? To simultaneously capture its smugness, needling tones, post-ironic stance, dizzying reflexivity and earnest Internet-cleansing effort in an instant of pure self-loathing masquerading as conventional narcissism?

GOONONSMASH: #deleteyourtwitterif you wanna be like me

RATINGS (characteristics rated on a negative to positive scale of -10 to 10):

Flexibility: 6.8
Insight: 3.2
Aesthetic: 4.4
Redundancy Potential: -10.0
Confusing To Outsiders: -7.4

Final Meme Score: -3

Miles Klee is looking at your Internet.