Look at the nice illustration Google put together for the birthday of Yosemite National Park. Thanks to anarchist Republicans in the House of Representatives, today's "Google Doodle" also marks the closing of all U.S. national parks. Even the parks' websites are shut down.

Tom Cruise in that Top Gun movie, Han Solo, and that U.S. Airways pilot who landed a busted passenger jet in the Hudson River are some of the many dashing heroes we think of when we consider the heroic American pilot. But human pilots just aren't necessary anymore.

We are a religious nation, even though that religious belief is rapidly fading and notoriously shallow. What we hunger for is real communion with the sacred, the unexpected voice of a mysterious god that occasionally speaks directly to our consciousness, as the old gods spoke to Moses and Mohammad or Achilles and Odysseus. This is why 200,000 people followed Horse_ebooks on Twitter. Horse_ebooks was our inscrutable god speaking in riddles.

beard: Ancient arcane term for a gay person's pretend heterosexual partner. Since the legal establishment of gay marriage, refers exclusively to lovingly tended long whiskers worn by urban men working in offices.

People have ideas all the time. Say you've got an idea to ship old restaurant food to people far away. That's worth $3 million, right there. Maybe you've got an idea about liberty and freedom and taking a pile of your death guns to the local Starbucks. That's no longer a good idea. Maybe you're a busy entertainer who likes to "talk back" to gossip blogs, or a hamburger hero who makes the news for spending $140 for a single monstrous "sandwich" of bacteria and bits of cow anus, or maybe you're a simple Christian blessed with the ability to beat the devil out of your 80-year-old girlfriend. These ideas are "neutral," regardless of their particular charms.

A good way to routinely bum yourself out is to set "Google News" as your Internet home page. But last night, something magical happened on that usual grid of gloom: The top stories were good news: Pope Francis and Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, the elderly men recently chosen to lead their respective communities, had again made headlines for words of kindness and reconciliation.

An empty bar is best. You just pick a seat where there's light enough to read, and the bartender comes right over. Then there are the busy nights, when people crush around the bar three deep and getting a drink seems impossible. What kind of supernatural skills are necessary for getting a cocktail on a Saturday night?

Every town has its weird history, and even the newest housing tract of wet stucco and green 2x4s has some kind of buried backstory. The island city where I live today is loaded with Gold Rush tales and Victorian mansions, but the fact that Jim Morrison spent his formative years around the block is not something you can learn about at the local historical society.

is that a thing now?: 1. Feigned ignorance of something impossible to avoid that you could quickly look up on the very device you've just used to type is that a thing now? 2. A symptom of amnesia requiring immediate medical attention and long-term hospitalization.

If you use the popular text-message service called Twitter, then you've surely seen an endless stream of messages each afternoon announcing the arrival of "420," or 4:20 p.m. This means people have begun smoking their marijuana. Yet "beer o'clock" does not come until 5 p.m.

Labor Day is a complete rip-off. Labor isn't celebrated at all—instead, a single day's break from labor is celebrated. You might think this is a stupid thing to care about, because Labor Day is really just about getting drunk in your yard, again. But that's actually evidence of this very successful con job pulled on you, the American worker (or unemployed person, or discouraged worker, or "grad student"). You probably don't even believe in Labor Day.

Up in the High Sierra of Yosemite National Park today, a monstrous wildfire is racing through 200 square miles of dense piney forest. The "Rim Fire" is only one of about fifty major wildfires across the American West today, but everyone has at least heard of the majestic Yosemite Valley with its glacier-carved Half Dome and summer traffic jams of vacationers seeking waterfalls and hamburgers, so this is our official Natural Disaster of the week.

It was going to be the greatest outdoor sports spectacle in history: weird giant sailboats racing against each other in the grand natural amphitheater of the San Francisco Bay all summer long, with hundreds of thousands of happy spectators watching from the Bay's 400 miles of shoreline. At least that was the idea when billionaire and Oracle CEO Larry Ellison, after winning the right to choose this year's location for the America's Cup sailing competition along with his victory in 2010's race, chose the bay instead of the more customary open ocean. Instead, it's a giant flop with "races" that usually consist of a single awkward catamaran bouncing around by itself in the fog.

With record numbers of Americans keeping dogs and cats as pets, we are plagued by many unwelcome consequences. House cats are inflicting brain damage on their human hosts with a feline disease spread through the animals' fecal matter, which people store in their homes—usually in the kitchen. When the cats are sent outdoors to defecate, they kill staggering numbers of wild birds, leaving many of our cities without any avian life beyond the feral pigeons roosting safely upon the ledges of tall buildings. Then there are the dogs, which use the entire city as one great, unflushable toilet. There are valid arguments against the existence of all dogs, but even animal lovers can agree we need to do something drastic about the "toy breeds."

Independence Day is the worst of America's joyless national celebrations, the day when everyone will predictably act like a buffoon and nobody has the decency to Opt Out. From Park Slope to Silver Lake, from Phoenix to Saint Paul, the whole nation of grudge-laden bores will wrap themselves in the old Red, White and Blue in another futile attempt to out-patriot their enemies.

Today is Flag Day, America's most important holiday. And while it might seem like a good idea to wear flag wings over your bikini or use a tattered Old Glory as a summer blouse, such actions are illegal. But because there's no enforcement or punishment for hurting the American flag, freedom is constantly under assault.

Memorial Day means many things to many people. It is almost summer, it is a time to drink, there are sales in the hellish big box stores, etc. But mostly, it is a time to solemnly remember military personnel who died while on active duty. Sorry, veterans!

In your sun-drenched Tuesday media column: Ed Schultz has opinions still, rape and Twitter debated, newspaper paywall detractors, the Mirror Awards vs. Fox News, and Ken Layne leaves the internet behind.

There are book deals happening today! Bloggers will publish, governors will not, and a peculiar, and speculative, sci-fi series lands a publisher.

• The New York Blade, one of the two big gay and lesbian newspapers in New York City, has suspended publication and laid off most of its staff. [NYT]
• How many books can you possibly read about Bernie Madoff? Who knows, but there at least four books about him scheduled to hit stores this fall. [Crains]
• David Rohde, the New York Times reporter who was kidnapped in Afghanistan with his translator in November and released a couple of weeks ago, returned to the Times newsroom to a standing ovation yesterday. [NYT]
• James Frey's young adult novel has been sold to HarperCollins. [NYT]
• Wonkette editor Ken Layne has sold a book to HarperCollins, too. [NYO]
• The battle between CNBC's Dennis Kneale and bloggers goes on. [Dealbreaker]