… you completely blank on the Nashville Scene’s You Are So Nashville If deadline and miss submitting your entries by a couple of days. At least that’s true in my case. I remembered that I hadn’t thought about the deadline in awhile on June 25. Oops.

I’m disappointed that the entries I compiled will not make the pages of the latest YASNI issue, which makes its debut today. (It isn’t online as of this writing, but it should be appearing later today.) It would be a shame to keep these silly notions of what makes our city such an eclectic and intriguing place to live under wraps, though, so here they are. Enjoy.

• Your Messiah didn’t speak English, but your landscaper sure better.
• You can’t decide what scares you more: turning into Atlanta or turning into Memphis.
• The closest your SUV has come to off-road is the Hill Center parking garage.
• You think that Orange County and New York have nothing on the Real Housewives of Green Hills.
• You wonder whether Bill Hobbs has a soul.
• Your Juvenile Court Clerk spends more time in his bathrobe than his office.
• You’re outraged that Davidson County voter registration data was stolen, but relieved because you’re not registered.
• Your gay community opens its doors to churchgoers marching for family values, not the other way around.
• You hear Out Loud is an excellent stereo shop.
• Vanderbilt is the team you hate to love.
• You wish Catherine Darnell were still around to distinguish the Harding Road “Hill Center” and the Green Hills “Hill Center” in snooty socioeconomic terms.
• You’re hoping Karl Dean will have a chance to address the non-hockey items on his mayoral agenda by his second term.
• Your solution to homelessness is destroying panhandlers’ natural habitats.
• Your blue blindfold obscures your view of the Hustler Hollywood store–and the homeless man begging for lunch across the street.
• You brag about switching to Green Power–and your second place finish in Metro’s annual holiday lights contest.
• You’re OK with Gaylord building a new convention center of their own, so long as it features a Flume Zoom.
• You carry your iPhone as a badge of honor because *you* stood in line for it at the mall–instead of having your record label’s intern do it for you.
• You’re outraged that Microsoft Word thinks “Opry” isn’t a word. (WordPress agrees.)
• You have season passes for the Schermerhorn *and* the Music City Motorplex.
• You’re thrilled that Bart Durham finally landed Nashville its “first soap opera.”
• You’re concerned that Nashville can’t possibly support Ghost Ballet for the East Nashville Machineworks *and* the Nutcracker.
• You find yourself wondering just how hot the Hot Yoga really is.
• You’ve started cheering for the ghosts instead of rooting for Pacman.
• You think Pacman has had a few too many power pellets.
• You fondly recall the era when Pacman was just a video game, not a public nuisance.

NBC News has chosen to call the situation in Iraq a civil war as of this week. Many other news outlets are doing the same. Here’s how President Bush responded when asked that question today:

“No question it’s tough, no question about it. There’s a lot of sectarian violence taking place, fomented in my opinion because of the attacks by al Qaeda causing people to seek reprisal.”

My point here, though I did not vote for Bush in 2004 and objected to the war in Iraq prior to its onset, has nothing directly to do with which side of the aisle the president or anyone else is on. This kind of non-answer to a reporter’s question, once lauded as an effective media relations tactic, is not only hurting public discourse in our country, if you ask me, it is damaging public opinion of anyone who uses it consistently. Democrats do it just as much as Republicans, and I think it’s hurting America.

The Bush administration spent six years refusing to answer questions, even ones that it was silly to refuse to consider. Now that the balance of power has shifted in Congress, the administration is finally beginning to address its critics humbly and openly, relatively speaking, despite what Bush did or did not say today. If the administration had learned how to do that even six months ago, it might not be dealing with a loss of seats in both sides of Congress today.

I think it’s fine to have talking points to get across in any interview, but it isn’t fine to just parrot them back incessantly as if the question were never asked. It’s really a moot point by now any way because the media is so accustomed to public figures doing this. CBS went ahead and did what Bush was trying to avoid by clarifying the president’s position: “President Bush said Tuesday that the sectarian violence rocking Iraq is not civil war but part of an al Qaeda plot to use violence to goad Iraqi factions into repeatedly attacking each other.”

Just say “yes” or “no,” and then tell us why. We’ll all be a whole lot better off, if you ask me.