The lull before the lull.

• Author: Clinton, Kate
• Position: A brief somewhat humorous look at some summer happenings - Column

So the Southern Baptists are boycotting the Nation of Disney because it offers health benefits to employees and their partners. There's time well-spent. Boycott Disney. You'd hate to spend time helping to rebuild burned-out Southern churches.

Sidebar: After thirty-one churches were burned, the Justice Department took notice. The gumshoes began to suspect that the fires were racially motivated and perhaps not set by self-hating African Americans as they had first suspected. After they established that Clarence Thomas had an alibi.

There are going to be some mighty disappointed Southern Baptist Mouseketeers this summer. Too bad Tammy and Jim's Themepark and Holy Water fun village shut down a while back.

And now Southern Baptists can't go to Ontari-ari-ari-o, either, since Canada also approved partner benefits. Who knew that the side effect of all these same-sex benefits would be a viable containment policy against the spread of Southern Baptist fundamentalism?

I don't do well during those crazy, lazy, hazy days of summer. I mostly want to lie down naked on cool tiles in front of a big fan and sip a tall, sweating Julep. Lately, though, I've been thinking I can't blame my lethargy entirely on the weather. No, I think it's a combination of blockbuster-movie overload, summer politics, and a personal unwillingness to use a guru or Ouija board to contact famous dead people.

The blockbuster-movie phenom seems more deadening this summer than ever. The beachhead of each weekend is attacked by wave after wave of tedious assaults--Mission Impossible, The Rock (Mission Impossible with a story line), The Cable Guy, Eraser, Independence Day (a movie about aliens taking over the White House, a GOP theme).

There are variations: The Hunchback of Notre Dame--try to picture Charles Lawton as huggable. Striptease--Demi Moore running the gamut of emotions from A to double D.

But each weekend's movie is cartoonish with special effects...