Regimen change.

• Author: Clinton, Kate
• Position: Unplugged

One fall Friday afternoon, late in the Reagan regnum, I was raging with my friend Sandra about militarism, misogyny, hypocrisy, the usual, as we walked the beach in Provincetown. We were bumming. Suddenly, we pulled up short and looked at the gorgeous day we were in and had not seen.

We pledged to make every Friday "Shallow Day" because every other day is "Sartre-day." For a number of years, we'd call each other on Fridays and talk about shallow topics--hair care products, spot removal systems, kids saying the darnedest things. If one of us veered into a riff on triumphal capitalism, media consolidation, or environmental racism, the other cautioned, "Too deep."

In the past two years, we've gotten away from our observance, and I, for one, don't feel well at all. After yet another friend was diagnosed with cancer, I became afraid of the deleterious effects of the bilious, roiling rancor and resentment I've been nursing since the Bush coup. Though I have a professional outlet, thank goodness, I decided to be much more conscious in my daily practice.

When I shared with an African American friend that I was declaring one day a week a Bush Free Day [B.F.D.], she laughed and told me that she and her friends had practiced a variant. "We used to joke, `We can't be black every day.' Some days we just need to be human."

Here are some of my exorcises.

On B.F.D., I don't watch television's 24-7 surreality show, The Whether Channel whether or not to attack Saddam. As if it's whether, not when. On that day, I don't read the papers except to find the crossword puzzle or the same sex vows in The New York Times. It's not that the Gray Lady has become the Gay Lady. I think they reasoned, "Oh, what the heck, it's almost the end of the world anyway. Let them have it already."

On B.F.D., the only regime change I want to ponder is the almost unremarked upon replacement of Jamie Lee Curtis by Catherine Zeta-Jones as uber wireless spokesmodel. What is the satellite dish there?

My regimen is harder than it seems. I used to enjoy...