Musings on the O Brother Where art Thou Soundtrack

I'm in a better mood today, thank God. I woke up with a scratchy throat, and when I spat out the mucous was yellowish. Still, I don't think I have the flu because when I get to work it disappears.

I'm listening to the 2001 Grammy Record of the Year, the 'O Brother, Where art Thou?" soundtrack, which I bought several months ago. I must have been a hillbilly chick in a former life because I totally love this kind of music. It's either that or it's all those episodes of that country music show Hee Haw that I watched as a child. I have vague memories of Minnie Pearl with her hat with the price tag hanging off the brim and Buck Owens and lots of hay bales and horses.

The movie itself was so fun. I made the mistake of watching it in Marin County instead of SF. I spent the whole time laughing during the movie and if I had been in SF, there would be other people laughing. In Marin, it was so silent you could hear a pin drop. I have to watch movies in SF, because here I have the same sense of humor as most of the people in the audience. It's the not same outside the city proper.

I noticed this phenomenon when I watched Shakespeare in Love in SF and then in Redwood City, which is on the Peninsula. In the SF viewing, you could hardly hear the movie because people were laughing at every other line. In Redwood City, the movie maybe got three laughs.

Whoever did the cinematography for O Brother is a genius. The colours were lush and it made the south look so beautiful. Woody Allen did the same thing with NYC with Bullets over Broadway and Broadway Danny Rose. NYC looked so unbelievable stunning in those two movies. If you didn't know anything about NYC, you might even feel inclined to move there because it was so clean and pretty. I haven't been to NYC since 1991 and friends tell me Guiliani cleaned it up and made it look like NYC Disneyland for the tourists. I find that hard to believe, but I'll reserve judgement till I see it for myself. NYC is such an old city, that unless they built new buildings, I don't see how they can make it look brand spanking new.

The funniest part of O Brother was when the KKK was dancing. I don't know what it was about that scene that was funny, but I just burst out laughing. I thought the Coen brothers made an interesting political statement about the South and our two political parties. The Democrats sold the South out, selling their new deal politics, when they were just as bad and sometimes even worse than the republican southerners. Alot of longtime southern democrats, including democratic blacks became republicans because of what the democratic party did, and who can blame them?

I'm starting on a new eating program to go along with my fungal and parasite cleanse. This new way of eating is supposed to starve the yeasties and the parasites so they never come back. I have to go off sugar of any kind, including fruit and anything that has mold in it like peanut butter. I found this new eating prgram on the Net from a woman who was taking the same parasite killing formula I am. She dropped five sizes in about three months.

I don't even care if I lose that much weight, I just want these evil fungals and parasites out of my body. My stupid parasites are so ungrateful. They had such a good deal, you know, living in my body. They had all the junk food they could eat. I 'm a total chocaholic, so they got all the sugar they wanted. But they had to go and spoil it and ruin my health. Now, I'm determined to be rid of them.

I was reading more about candida die-off reactions on the Net today, and I found out that the candida yeasties make you crave food that they want to eat. I was totally craving peanut butter last night and the candida love peanut butter. Those stupid green fungal parasites are controlling my life and it makes me mad. No one controls me, especially my eating. I refuse to be controlled by a green mold living inside of my pancreas and stomach lining.

I refused to let myself be controlled by speed, and then by alcohol and I'm sure as hell not going to let fbombing green parasitic molds control my life. God, it's like so rude for those little critters to try to control me, the host. I was so damned mad today. I vowed to root their butts out of my system. I'm going to break my addiction to sugar and carbos. I should be able to do this. I've had far worse addictions than sugar and carbos.

Take for instance speed. In my wild youth, I never felt comfortable unless I had 30 hits of speed on my at all times. Why 30 hits? I never knew, but I had to have 30 hits of pharmaceutical grade speed on me at all times. But when I crashed and got sick for a month and couldn't hold a teacup without shaking, I gave up speed.

I did the same thing with my ciggiliciouses. Okay, when I'm with my friend who smokes, I have a ciggie, but only then. It's not like I'm buying a pack on my own. I only smoke ciggies when I'm with very close friends who smoke or when I get too wasted at a party. And it's conditioning and habit, not addiction.

I also gave up booze, another abused substance of mine. Greg used to talk about how it wasn't good that after a fun drinking weekend, we'd both get moody, nasty and had violent headaches by Wednesdays, not to mention major anxiety fits. And I was okay with that for a long time. I could avoid the three day anxieity attacks as long as I kept my blood alcohol levels up. If you've ever wondered why your friends are sometimes so moody and crank? Well, it's because they're off their schedules and not keeping their levels up. If you're going to drink heavily, you've got to do it intelligently and keep your blood alcohol level at an even keel. If you do that, you don't get moody, you don't get cranky and best of all you don't get those scary anxiety attacks. So what if I couldn't go more than three days without a drink? At least it was still three days and not one day. I have standards. I was never a binge drinker. I drank socially all the time, that's all. And besides, Greg and I used to joke about gettng our reservations ready for our stay at Betty Ford, so it wasn't like I didn't know I was a closet alcoholic.

I only I gave up booze was because I didn't want to be beholden to that brown liquid in a glass bottle. I didn't like thinking that a liquid in a brown bottle had that much control over my life. And my anxieity attacks were so happening so often, I had to give it up. I was at a point, where I was so afraid to leave my house. I mean, who wants to live like that, right? So I gave booze up slowly and now I can go forever without a drink and not care. Having to drive to work helped too I must admit. I just hated driving hungover in that bad south 280/101 traffic every morning.

So if I can give up speed (still my favorite stimulant after all these years), ciggiliciouses and booze, I can certainly give up sugar and carbos for 40 days or however long it takes to get rid of my evil ungrateful candida yeasties.

I got very excited last night thinking I was going to start my new writing schedule, but isn't it always the case that just when you make new plans to change your life something gets in the way.

I went to the gym to workout and it was so hard and I was so tired. Instead of my usual 45 minutes, I only could complete 30 minutes. Then I went to Rainbow Grocery to pick up a few things and then went home. As soon as I entered through the door, it was like a starving spirit entered into me and I was ravenous. I ate a handful of almonds and then some dried apricots, then handfuls of mixed nuts. After all those snacks, I was still starving. I remembered I had a cooked chicken in the fridge and so I ate a few pieces of that and I was still so very hungry. I made a dinner of spaghetti with mushrooms, and it wasn't only until I finished dinner that I realized I had stuffed myself to death.

My stomach felt so distended and my head had started to throb and I felt depressed. I lit a few candles, turned of the lights and put on Mozart's Requiem for the Dead. I lay down wondering what in hell was wrong with me. I fell asleep and woke up with the sniffles. I finally went to bed and when I woke up with morning with a scratchy throat and more sniffles.

I was contemplating whether to call in sick at work, but decided I would just tough it out. Remarkably, my sniffles died down as soon as I got to the office, so I was relieved that I probably didn't pick up the flu. I started a new cleansing program on Saturday to rid my body of a fungal and parasite infection, that my holistic healer had diagnosed. Of course, he forgot to tell me that when you try to kill your fungals and parasites, you get a die-off reaction.

The little critters's bodies get deposited into your blood stream and your immune system becomes so overwhelmed that you get flu like symptoms. The die-off reaction also leaves you feeling tired and out of sorts and some people have reported feelings of depression. Great! Well, this explains what happened to me in the last 24 hours.

God, I hate feeling sick and tired and depressed. I don't mind feeling sick or tired or depressed, but not all three at once. It's like someone telling you your mother died or something.

I love cleansing routines. I think it's better to have the stuff come out of your body than to live inside of you, but the cleanse always leaves me feeling worse before I get better. I asked my holistic healer what a fungal infection was and he said to think of a fruit turning green. Tthat's what my insides look like. Lovely image isn't it? Now I'm starting to have a makings of really bad headache. There's nothing like toxins flooding through your body and giving a killer headache.

I think I'll take a bath as soon as I get home and soak in those expensive crystal salts I bought from I spa I went to last year. I"m afraid to eat because eating seems makes the die-off reactions worse, but I know if I don't eat I get nauseous. I can't win on this one, can I? I really wanted to finish Crazy Eddie before February ends but at this rate, I don't think it's going to happen. I hate this, I totally hate this.

My holistic healer told me 70% of my health problems will be solved once I get rid of my fungals and parasites. I hope he's right. I hope this painful die-off reaction that I'm experiencing does something for my general health because it's not doing a thing for my mood or my writing.

Here's some material for my baseball story. Jim Rome is saying that there is a news report from this year's baseball spring training camps, where managers are saying that the athletes are showing up at camp overweight. Rome said there's no reason for baseball players showing up fat at spring training because baseball is so competitive now. Then he said, "What is spring baseball training camp? A fat farm for baseball players?" How funny!

I want Jim, my baseball player, to be kind of overweight like that short stop from the NY Yankees who played for them in the 2000 season and fell over his feet in game 5 between the NY Yanks and the Oakland A's. Wish I could remember the guy's name, but I'm really bad with names.

Then there was talk last year in the local papers here that the reason Livan Hernandez, the SF Giants pitcher, was having a bad year was because his father was dying. I should have a scene where Jim, baseball player, is having a bad media day because he's playing so badly and the media asking him if his bad playing is due to his father's illness.

I love The Jungle. Jim was playing all the recent sports meltdowns, the Mike Tyson meltdown, the Jim Mora meltdown, some other hockey guy meltdown, etc. It's fascinating when players and coaches melt down in front of the media. Don't they know it's going to get replayed over and over again on sport talk radio shows all over the country? I think I want my baseball player guy to have a melt down in front of the media. Oliver Stone had media scenes in his football player movie Any Given Sunday, which I totally loved by the way.

Well, I guess there's nothing like good old fashioned dramarama in life to get the creative juices flowing. I wrote up my pitch for my baseball story and I even have a working title "Playing Catch with Dad". It's an updated "Field of Dreams" story with the estranged son wanting redemption with the dying father, only this time the Kevin Costner character is a smack talking major league baseball player, irish catholic boy who grew up in the Sunset district of San Francisco, went to SI and went to Stanford insteadl of Cal Berkeley.

In the shower this morning, I decided that the middle of my movie plot wasn't dramatic enough, not enough high stakes in my game, so I upped the stakes and have him come to Pac Bell at mid season before the trade deadlines. He's been playing badly for his team and the team's manager tells him that he either gets his act together or they going to trade him, send him down to minors or worse release him out of his contract. The team has a three game series with the SF Giants and towards the end of the movie, we see him in the third game with his last time at bat at Pac Bell Park. Either he hits a homerun and helps the team or he gets traded or loses his job. I love it. It's so melodramatic.

In the meantime, you have the dying father in the story and the son who's goal is to make peace with the father. You have the younger brother, who was ignored in favor of the star baseball playing son. He didn't even go to SI, he went to Riordan because he wasn't as smart. The brother is a construction worker, who plays on the softball team for a local sunset bar. Baseball playing son pays for the upkeep of the father and mother but never sees them. It's the younger brother who actually takes care of the mother and father. Then there's the baseball player's son who he's starting to have an estranged relationship with. In the beginning of the movie, the son wants to play catch with baseball playing dad but he's too busy and stressed out.

Is this a Lifetime Television for Men story or what? Hallmark? I love my baseball story. It's so interesting to me. It's the sins of the father passed down to the son story, because baseball player's dad was minor leaguer who never made it to the show. It's family dysfunctionalism handed down from father to son. It's the prodigal son theme, with the two sons, but turned on its head, because the prodigal son has all the money and supports the family. It's the generational friction theme with the father and son clashing about why they play baseball. And finally it's the parent and child theme, where the child must deal with with a parent who's dying.

I love my baseball story, it's so interesting to me. How do I make this work? How do I make it interesting and not boring? How do I, as a female, write a story about a middle aged professional major league baseball player and make it believable? My writing group suggested to me that I was interested in writing this story because I needed to resolve my own feelings about my dad, who died in the early 90's. I think they're right. In this story, I could say all the things I never said to my dad before he died. I'm very resolved about the dad thing, but I know I still have guilt for not being there to say my peace with him.

I don't know. I won't find out till I write this story and I'm very interesting in writing this story now. How do I make this work? I'm also dying to now write the ending for my Crazy Eddie story. I'm on a creative roll and I have to take advantage of the energy created by my traumarama crush on cute screenwriting guy from class.

God, I hope I'm not one of those writers who have to have dramarama to write. But I feel so creative right now! It's great! It's a miracle! I love when I can come up with an ending that I really like and that satisfies me. Endings that I really like are the hardest things for me to create in a story. But I love my baseball story ending. I want the dad to flatline while the son is talking. How great is that? It's just like life. Just when you think you've turned a corner, something happens, somebody flatlines. How realistic is that? I love it. I love when endings reflect real life. And it's not depressing, because the last shot will be baseball player guy and his son playing catch in the backyard after the funeral.

It's like my crush on cute screenwriting guy. Just when I thought I was turning a corner in my life and I finally found a cute guy I was attracted to, I blow it, freak out and lose my opportunity for love. But then what happens next, I get my creative spirit back, something that's been lost or dead since November. So my ending isn't depressing either.

I had this whole thing typed out and I accidently hit the sign out button and I lost it. Maybe no one was supposed to read what I wrote.

My crush on the cute screenwriting guy is over. Must have been hormonal thing or something. I don't know. I just know it's gone and when I looked at him today, he just wasn't as cute as I thought. Such a relief too, because I hate distractions like this when I'm in a writing class.

I think I'm going to write a screenplay on my idea for a baseball story. It's my third screenplay idea, but I think this is finally the one I want to work on for class. The baseball story has Pac Bell park in it a symbol and metaphor. Pac Bell Park was built in downtown SF to revitalize that part of SF. My baseball player will find his love of baseball again and remember how it was his father who taught him how to love the game, a father who is now dying and with whom he's had a difficult relationship with since he was 18 years old.

I got the ending tonight on the way home from screenwriting class. I've been struggling for a way to write the ending to my baseball story, struggling for a year on how to end this story without being sentimental, happy and sappy. I'm going to let my baseball player find his redemption and forgiveness with his father, but then the father is going to die right afterwards. I love this ending, it's so bittersweet and so realistic to me. I don't want a celebratory redemption. I want redemption, but I want my redemption to be empty and lonely, like too much too little too late. To me, that's how redemption happens in the real world. It's not a happy fairytale Oprah ending. It's painful and it hurts and the hurt is from deep inside you, so deep you don't even know where it comes from. It's primal hurt, caveman and brutish and painful, very painful.

Maybe I had to have this atraction to this guy so I could have all this traumarama, dramarama in my life, to get me in the mood to come up with this great bittersweet ending for my baseball story. And if that was the purpose of cute screenwriting guy in my life, then so be it. I can't knock the inspiration for a bittersweet ending that I really, really like.

I saw in preview ACT's new play, Blithe Spirit by Noel Coward. It's a good play, some fun special effects but not their best. One of the main characters had a nightgown on with a beautiful silver and lavender floor length robe, which I totall loved. The english accents were okay, although the main male character spoke in some odd accent that definitely wasn't Britt. He was in Athol Fugard's Master Harold and the Boys at ACT last year, and his accent then and the one in this play sounded identical. Guess my friend is right. Some people can do accents and some just can't.

I read an article in the program about the Spiritualist church. Is this a coincidence or what? I watched the movie "The Verdict" with someone from my screenwriting class today, so we could do our homework together. We started talking and then she started talking about the spiritualist church that she attends in SF. What a trip! She said the service is just like John Edward's Crossing Over.

Crossing Over was Amy's favorite show. I wonder if my friend Amy who died in October is trying to contact me. God! Amy used to watch that show every day while she was at home recovering from chemo therapy. She made me watch it with ther one night, since she knew I'd never seen it. She became obsessed with John Edwards and wanted to go see him. He was supposed to be in the Bay Area last year and she asked me if I wanted to go. I said sure. Butwhen she called, the event was sold out.

I miss Amy. She was the only friend I had outside of my writing group, who supported me in my writing. With Amy, I could talk freely about my writing goals and dreams and she would always listen and be so encouraging. I could tell her about my story ideas and she would listen and she even agreed to comment on one of my stories. She was so loving in her critiques and her comments. I couldn't have asked for a better supporter for my writing life. Amy even understood my hopelesly romantic love for Brian and Ellis and my subsequent struggles with them afterwards. The loss of her friendship has left me feeling so alone.

I feel like one of the desperate people you read about who use mediums to contact their loved ones. But it's just too coincidental that I find the spiritualist church connection now and it's similarity to Crossing Over, Amy's favorite show. I feel like I need to go to one of their Sunday services to see if Amy will try to contact me. I never got a chance to properly say goodbye to her. By the time I was able to see her, the brain tumor had turned her brain to mush and she was in an Alzheimer's dementia haze. Amy, my work friend who usd to earn six figures from doing IT consulting work, couldn't even remember what she'd said from one minute to the next. I tried to say goodbye, but how much can you really say goodbye to someone, if you're not even sure they remember who the hell you really are?

And what could I say? I'm sorry I wasn't there for you that last time she you called in August, when I told you 'chin up, everything will work out." I'm sorry that I didn't heed my intuition and call you because I was selfish and didn't want hear about your depression because of your health and work one more time. I didn't know you were breaking down. I didn't know you were fighting for you life. I didn't know that your inoperable brain tumor had start to grow rapidly again and was turning your brain into spoiled swiss cheese. I didn't know that you had stopped eating because you were so depressed. I didn't know and yet somehow I did know, but I just couldn't, just plainly and honestly didn't want to deal with any of it.

That maybe a part of me knew that one of these days you'd give up, because that was your modus operandi, you give up, you walk out, every time, out of every job, out of friendships, out of everything and even your own life. I wanted you to fight, to live longer, but I knew you were tired. Tired of fighting, tired of stressing over your health and your finances. And I'm sorry but I just can't see how anyone can give up. But you did and it freaks me out, because I wonder that there will ever come a time when I'll want to give up again. My attempts at giving up my own life have never worked out and I've just let learnt to let it go because it's never worked out, but the urge never ever goes away.

Is it different on the other side? Are you happy? Are you free? Do you miss life? Do you miss me? Is this you're way of trying to contact me? To tell me you're okay. To tell me that you're happy. To tell me that it's all going to be okay and everything is going to work out. To tell me that forgive me not wanting to call you in August. To tell me that you forgive me. To tell me that I'm going to find another really close friend who totally supports in my writing life the way you did. To not worry because I'll find that wonderful man who's a cross between Brian and Ellis and that I'll have that bouncing baby boy you saw in my future when you read my tarot cards.

I still don't know if I'll go to the spiritualist church. What if nothing happens? What if something does? I've never liked the idea of people channeling spirits, how do they know they're not channeling evil spirits? I know I'll have to resolve my own feelings about this issue for me to attend a spiritualist service. But if it gives me the chance to hear from Amy again, then it will be worth it. I miss her, her friendship and her support for my writing life.

I've been feeling bad for the last two hours that I've had such evil thoughts about a guy I don't even know. He read a few poems and I have such judgments about him based on his poetry, his voice and the way he looked and dressed. I'm doing the thing that I hate so much, judging people on first impression. I hate when people do it to me so I try not to do to other people. It's such bad karma. And what a waste of my precious energy to talk about some guy that barely registered in my mind.

I guess it's only because it's issue of the day because two members of my writing group find him attractive and I just don't get why. My intution, which is usually right, tells me he's a bitter person, full of ego and full of himself. He also strikes me as the kind of guy who has issues with women, lots of them. But I guess because he wrote a poem about his relationship, which he prefaced by saying it was a relationship poem, not a good relationship, not a happy relationship, not a relationship that I fondly look back at with love, but just a "relationship poem". Everyone in the room laughed knowingly, because what was unsaid was this relationship was a bad one and everyone knows about those kinds of "relationships". I think what impressed most of the women there, everyone except me that is, was the poem was about his girlfriend. You could practically here the silent "ooohhhh's and aaahhhs" in the room thought of by all the women in the room. Poetry boy is writing about his girlfirend, how sensitive, and how sweet, how anti frat boy. Never mind that the poem is a sarcastic tome to how many women he though his girlfriend had slept with before him and how this fact was slowly eating away at his heart and soul.

But then again, I don't know. I think I was the only woman in the room who felt how insincere and bitter the poem was and what do I know about poetry anyway? I can just read people's vibes pretty darn well since I'm supposed to be clairsentient, able to feel things in my body, and claircognizant, what most people call gut instinct. And my gut instinct is screaming 'freak, freak, danger, danger' in a screechingly loud voice. I think poetry boy writes poems like that to get laid. But give the guy credit right? It snared two of my friends into his tired act. God, one of them seems a little miffed because he acted like he didn't want to have sex with her. I love my friends, but are they that blind and dumb?

Whatever. But then on the way home from grocery shopping tonight, I got so depressed. I hate being different from other women. But it's always been this way for me and I don't know why. My spiritual healer says it has something to do with the fact that I'm this elf-human thing and that I will never feel like ever fit it anywhere. And she's right. I just don't fit ib, especially in an artsy fartsy crowd. But damn! I took that crazy enneagram test and I tested at 4, I'm an artist. Of all people, I'm supposed to be artsy farsty as hell. In fact, I'm supposed to be able to out artsy fartsy anybody. What gives? Maybe it's that damned 5 wing, which is the intellectual. My stupid damn intellectual side won't let me fool myself that way and put on airs and that too cool for TV and too trendy for the average person attitude.

It's an elf girl's life to always feel left out of any crowd. But like any good elf girl, I know the best thing to do to get me out of my depression. Shopping. I stopped by a mall on the way hom. I went to the GNC first, and bought this new mineral which is supposed to help me not feel cold. I freeze at temperatures less than 80 degrees, which is not a good thing is you live in a city where the average year round temperature is 60 degrees. I didn't even blink an eye at paying $22 for a bottle of 30 pills. Hey, if helps me to stop from being cold all the time, it's worth it.

Then I went Macy's to look for my favorite pair of jeans. I found the pair I usually buy and there was another pair in a lighter colour for $13, my lucky number, so of course, I had to buy them. When do you ever see jeans for $13. It had to be a good sign. Then I went to Borders and bought a book by Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a german christian philosopher whom I really like. Bonhoeffer was one of the few christians who fought against the Nazis and was later imprisoned and killed by them for his beliefs. He's an interesting philosopher to me because of his willingness to speak up against what was so obviously wrong.

But I was happy for only a little while before the depression came rolling in like the fog. I wonder if I just need to start writing my stories again. I've been too busy, too tired and too lazy this month to write and not writing seems to have put me off kilter, made me feel out of balance, moody and unable to sleep. I hate this feeling. And I feel crabby as hell too, so crabby that I'm having evil, nasty and bitter thoughts about a poetry man that I don't even know.

It's late now but I'm going to stay up and crank 1,000 words out. I know once I get back into my creative space, I'll feel happier and not think such bad thoughts. Or at least if I do, the bad thoughts won't linger like a bad hangover but flit across my mind gently and quickly like a young doe in flight.

I wonder if listening to Jim Rome's sports talk radio show, The Jungle, has changed my taste in men.

I went to a poetry reading yesterday to hear this woman from my writing group read her poems. The room was full of stereotypical artsy looking SF types with women in trendy dark skirts, velvet burnt out scarves and boots, men with leather jackets and beards or politically correct rumpled hair. Everyone had that affected and bored, I'm a struggling artist attitude, with pinched faces like they needed to go to the bathroom but weren't going because it was politically incorrect or something. The smell of patchouli was killing the scent of the giant cala lillies that seemed as out of place as I was, in this dark, "trendy and cool" scene.

And there I was, still wearing work khaki pants, white tshirt, black cardigan and red antique bead japanese necklace, an outfit I put some conscious thought into on a pit stop home. I was trying to look casual, relaxed and somewhat artsy, but when I surveyed the party, my outfit looked positively conservative and almost virginal.

It's not like I hadn't been to events like this before, but this was the first time I felt like such a fish out of water. And the men. They all looked so pasty like they were molding right there in their leather jackets and black jeans.

I think I really am different from most women when it comes to what is an attractive man. I can’t believe a friend thought that one thin, older, white haired and bearded poet was attractive. But he’s that stereotypical poet/artist type and I've never found that look was particularly attractive. First of all, I really don’t like very thin men. It's so annoying! My crazy mother instincts come blazing out and I just want to stuff food down their pie-hole till they gain some weight.

Secondly his poetry about that woman in the shower was just bad. How neurotic and such a show of low self-steam. Here’s a guy who’s paranoid about how many men his woman has slept with. Like who the hell really cares. And why would a guy even be concerned about stuff like that. It's none of his business how many men his chick has slept with and the fact that's he's written a poem about it, makes me think he has a problem with women with a past. Does thing guy want a virgin? Is he so lacking in self-esteem that he would prefer a woman with no sexual experience so he wouldn't feel so inadequate. His kind of poetry is not a good sign.

A friend thought Jim Rome sounded like a frat boy and I didn’t even know she really hates that type. But I know this friend would probably find skinny white haired poet guy attractive, because he’s so anti-frat boy. Maybe that’s his attraction for women. He’s the total opposite of the typical dumb male. Because he's not a frat type, as a woman you start to think that he's like this better kind of guy. But I don’t know. I think artsy type guys are wolves in sheeps' clothing. White haired bearded poetry guy was so sexist in his poetry, so selfish, so self absorbed. He seemed like the kind of guy who would write you a beautiful poem then break up with you in the next breath. This guy would probably never be caught dead at a football or baseball game.

A few years ago, I wouldn't have cared if a guy was into sports, but now I care. A few years ago, I might have been just little bit interested in white haired beared poetry guy, but not now. A caller on Rome's show called guys from SF, "those sissy wine sippers from the West Bay" and I think he made a good point.

But then I've never had a problem with frat boys. First of all, my college was so small, we didn't have frats and sororites so I never associated with them on a regular basis enought to have bad opinions. Secondly, I've always been athletic and worked out at a gym, so I'm used to guys who are healthy looking and who work out. Third, my few experiences with frat boys have all been good ones, so good in fact, that I've only ever dated frat boy types and even married one once.

Okay, I take that back. I've dated a few non frat boy types, but my experiences with these guys were horrible. I couldn' t watch football on Sunday. They weren't into March Madness. And we never went to baseball games to sit in the sun to drink beer. And I'm really not that that into sports.

So is Jim Rome changing my taste in men or did he just reinforce it? I don't know. All I know is poetry writing pasty thin artsy boys are just so not attractive to me right now, where before they at least showed up on my hottie radar screen if only for just a little while.

I just made my third sale at Half.com. Somebody is buying this CD that I bought and then found out I hated. I also sold a couple of books that I bought but never read. I'm so excited. Usually I just dump all my CDs and books at the Goodwill truck, so it's nice to get paid for this stuff. My stuff is listed for prices lower than anyone else and I'm sure this helps my sales.

I just listed my Velvet Underground box set Peel Slowly and See minus disk 4 on Half.com. Disk 4 is the only one I listened to. I left it on the floor accidentally one day, and then stepped on it. I didn't know CDs could crack, but then I never stepped on one before either. I saw the boxset listed in this CD club I belong last month, and broke down and bought it.

Disk 4 is my favorite Velvet Underground album. It's the self titled Velvet Underground album. The cd included in this boxset is the original version that Lou Reed and company submitted to the record company. The record company hated it and brought a producer in to remix the album and then subsequently released it.

I was so tempted to not even buy another boxset since I only liked that one disk. I found the two versions of the CD on the Net and was going to just buy those, but I didn't like having an incomplete box set.

Someone else on Half.com was selling just disk 1, so I decided to list my incomplete set. Maybe there are other people like me who have lost a disk. There was a guy selling disk 4 on Half.com and I tried to buy it, but then the seller pulled out of the deal. I was so bummed. I was going to list each disk desperately but if someone just wants to buy that one of the disks, I'll sell it to them.

I love this selling thing. I bought a pair of red cowboy boots from someone who was selling them outside her apartment building and that was years ago. I loved those boots and wore them to death. I still have them but the soles have cracked and I'm can't decide whether to get them repaired or just buy another pair of red cowboy boots but in suede instead of leather. I don't even know where I would be able to find red cowboy boots in the SF Bay Area. The best selection of boots are in Texas or in Dener, at least from what I've seen from the trips I've taken there. Maybe a place like Fresno would have a good selection of boots. The best country music stations in California are in Fresno area. You can find stations that even play old country music, with songs like "Whiskey I love you". But when would I ever need to go to Fresno?

I was reading an article in the NY Times yesterday on a Ralph Ellison biopic on TV, and I was surprised to find my college alma mater, Grinnell College mentioned. Like nobody knows where the hell is Grinnell is, or Grinn City as it's sometimes called by people who went to college there, and nobody cares. And there it is, showing up in the February 19 NY Times.

Grinnell is a great small school, student population 1,200, stuck in the middle of the Iowa cornfields. Hardly anyone from Iowa went there. In fact, my friends and I figured out that 30% of the school's population came from NYC and maybe at least 50% came from suburbs on Chicago's North Shore.

I've been thinking about my first love Michael lately and it's a strange coincidence that Grinnell College, where we both met, is mentioned in this article about Ralph Ellison. The Invisible Man is, at leaset it was when we were 18, Michael's favorite book. He begged me to read and I never did. I bought it to please him and told him I read it, but then we never talked about it again. I guess I should read this book after all these years, because it is a great book. The NY Times articles said he never finished another book, and spent the rest of his life trying to create his next masterpiece. Sounds depressing doesn't it?

I was trying to remember what my favorite book was when I was 18 and I so don't remember those days. I kept my journals from my college years and I guess I could read them to see if I recorded it. I doubt that I did though. I know I became obsessed for whatever reason with James Joyce's book of short stories, "The Dubliners" when I was 18, so maybe this book was my favorite. I was also really into Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlett Letter and wanted to have some kind of blazing letter like S for stupid or I for Idiot or U for ugly embroidered on my clothes, but that was a high school obsession and I don't think it counts.

I had the strangest dream this morning. I was dreaming I was with the band U2. This was was strange only because I haven't bought any U2 cds in a long time, even though I still like their music. Then in the dream, I kept waking up because my left knee was killing me and then going back to sleep and going back into my dream with U2. When I finally heard my alarm go off this morning, my knee wasn't hurting at all.

So I'm dreaming I'm with U2, but in the dream I know I'm dreaming and I wake up because my knee is killing me, then I go back to sleep and enter the dream again and then I finally wake up, I know I've been dreaming about dreaming and U2. What it all means I don't know.

I've liked U2 for a long time and in the shower this morning, I remembered buying their album October and Pretty in Pink by the Psychedelic Furs at the same time. October had two great songs that I remember, Gloria and I Fall Down. I wish I'd kept both albums but when my stereo broke, I sold all my albums thinking I'd replace them with CDs one day, but I still haven't gotten around to doing that.

I'm listening to Jim Rome's The Jungle. He's so funny. I even saw him at his tour stop in Oakland. He was great! I first discovered his show during the 2000 election because I got so bored listening to all the political brouhaha that all the talk radio show hosts kept going over and over again. I was surfing the AM dial and I heard Jim's voice. I recognized it from his TV show, The Last Word. I'm not into sports show but I noticed Jim Rome while channel surfing. He was this kind of cute guy sitting in a chair and always talking about sports. I only stopped to listen to him once because he had a take on The University of Hawaii, my state's big university and I had to listen to that. I found the sports talk on his radio show so refreshing after all the political correct BS that sometimes happens on talk radio shows.

From the first hour, I was hooked on the show. When Jim gets new affiliates, he says that it takes two weeks for people to like the show. I'm not into sports that much but I got into the show after one hour. I love the way he talks about sports and how brutal he is. I love his takes on life and sports, especially his rant about "softball players". I think the people that call the show, who are called "clones", are so funny. I feel like I'm a spy in a world I know nothing about, the world of men and sports. Sure there are women who call the show, but when I went to the tour stop in Oakland, there were very few women there. I brought a guy friend with me and we started talking to a couple from Arizona, who had come always to Oakland to see Jim Rome. The Arizona man automatically started talking to Charlie thinking he was the Jim Rome fan. When Charlie told him he didn't know anything about the show and that I was the one who invited him, the Arizona people were so shocked, they didn't know what to say. I wionder if they were embarrassed that they wrongly assumed I was just along for the ride. I guess in Arizona only men listen to the show, even though Jim says himself that he knows for sure a lot of women listen to the show but just never call in.

The last three days at work, the reception for picking up the radio station that carries The Jungle was so bad. Some bible banging christian show was interfering with the signal and I was starting to go through Jim Rome withdrawal. This was horrible especially right now, because I wanted to hear his takes on Jon Gruden going to Tampa Bay and Steve Mariucci and the 49ers. But today, the reception has magically cleared up and I can listen to The Jungle clearly again.

There's a guy on right now from Nocal (that's Jungle speak for Northern California) who's talking about Al Davis and the way he dresses. Something about a cross between Starsky & Hutch, members only jackets and his elvis glasses. The people who call the show are so funny. Leigh Steinberg, the sports agent that the movie Jerry Maguire is based on, even sometimes hosts the show when Jim goes on vacation.

I have a story about a baseball player that I'm dying to write. He'll be a smack talking middle aged baseball player who doesn't have a good relationship with his dad. From listening to The Jungle and listening to sports interviews where men in sports talk about their fathers, all men in sports mention how influential their dads are if they had one growing up. I thought it would be interesting to write a story about sports guy who has a troubled relationship with his dad and what that would be like. I had a trouble relationship with my male parental figure and the baseball story would be a good way to explore my own feelings but as a different character and a male one at that. I sometimes wonder that if I had been born a boy, I would have had a better relationship with my father like my brothers, but I'm not sure. My brothers said their relationship with dad wasn't that great either.

If there is sports guy who's a bad relationship with his dad, I haven't heard him in an interview yet. I'm sure bad relationships with dads exists but I guess it's something that doesn't make for good sports interviews or athletes just don't talk about it. Even Randy Johnson of the Arizona Cardinals in his interview after their World Series win, talked about how he wished his dad was alive to see him win a world series.

Below are the results of KDFC’s most romantic classical music poll.

1. Moonlight Sonata - Beethoven
2. La Boheme - Puccini
3. Bolero - Ravel - famous for being in that old movie '10'
4. Piano Concerto #2 - Rachmaninoff - first love played this for me one night, but then he was the ultimate romantic!
5. Swan Lake - Tchaikovsky
6. O Mio Babbino Caro - Puccini - the opening song from 'A Room With a View'
7. Piano Concerto #21 - Mozart
8. Canon in D - Pachelbel
9. Scheherezade - Rimsky-Korsakov
10. Lakme: Flower Duet - Delibes
11. Paganini Rhapsody - Rachmaninoff
12. Spartacus: Adagio - Khachaturian
13. Adagio for Strings - Barber
14. Romeo and Juliet - Tchaikovsky
15. Thais: Meditation - Massenet
16. Romeo & Juliet - Berlioz
17. Tristan & Isolde - Wagner
18. Piano Concerto #1 - Chopin
19. Nocturne #2 - Chopin
20. Liebestraum - Liszt
21. Adagietto - 5th Symphony - Mahler
22. Etude in E - Chopin
23. Gymnopedie #1 - Satie
24. New World Symphony - Dvorak
25. Fantasie-Impromptu Op.66 - Chopin

I didn't think I was that into romantic music but I own a lot of the works listed, if only because I own alot of Chopin not to mention Barber, Satie, Liszt, Rachmaninoff (who doesn't own Rachmaninoff), Beethoven, Tchaikovsky and Mozart. I really am surprised by how much of this list I own because I don't consider myself a romantic at all, but this is also a list of very popular classical pieces that are played alot on the radio and used for many movie soundtracks. So maybe I'm not that romantic after all, I'm just a collector of popular classical music.

I'm deciding on whether to continue attending a class on the Book of Revelation that my church is offering on Wednesdays. I have to confess it now, I LOVE CONSPIRACY THEORY! I listen to Art Bell every night and I just totally love listening to all his guests, especially the ones who talk about how the world is coming to an end, the ones who talk about the black ops agencies in the government and how everything is one big conspirary. I totally love it. It's so interesting and so entertaining.

So the first class on Revelation wasn't good, at least for me, because they made fun of all the doom theorists. Then there's my experiences with my spiritual healer/medical intuitive. She's cleared me of all kinds of beings, being who are mentioned in Revelation. Is is true? Honestly, I don't know but alot of those little aches and pains I've had since forever are gone now and hey, you can't fault someone for getting rid of your physical pains.

I don't know. I think I want to be ignorant of what the Book of Revelation is really about. I mean, who really knows anyway? It's all speculation at this point and for me, the doom speculation is far more entertaining than anything out there right now. I would never dismiss the book as a fantasy. There are too many unexplained things in this world that I've seen to do that. Perhaps it's just better for me to be entertained nightly by Art Bell and his guests and for me to feel so privileged that I get to listed to all the wonderful theories that are out there about our world.

There were a couple of links to articles on the Blogger homepage about people who blog and how drekkie the blogs are. I first started blogging because I read an article in the Washington Post about blogging and thought how fun - online journal. Writing is my hobby and I saw it as one more way for me to write.

The blog for me is like a mini journal. I have another journal that I write in and then this is my online journal. There are thoughts that I've written in my personal journal that I never want anybody else to read. Sometimes I take thoughts from that journal and post them here, but I never take things I write here and put them in my personal journal.

I got my first fanmail from someone on Sunday who had read my blog. That was shocking because it's someone I don't even know and I'm like my blog is so boring, I can't believe someone read it. But at the same time, how cool is that! There's someone out there who read my ramblings and I guess liked them enough and was kind enough to send me an email.

As someone who writes for a hobby, you have to live with the fact that probably no one outside your own personal circle of close friends and people who you might in writing class or writing group with, will ever read your writing. So if no one reads my blog I'm used to it But it's fun to think that other people that I don't know and will probably never meet, have read my blog and enjoyed what they found here.

It's sort of like what I heard about in a sermon about praying. You pray to reaffirm your relationship to the person you're praying to. God doesn't need you to pray to him, you yourself need to pray to him. It's an odd concept I know. In the movie Shadowlands, a student of CS Lewis tells him "we read to feel we're not alone." I think writing for me is the same; I write to feel I'm not alone. When I write about my characters, especially the ones that are so unlike me, it gives me comfort to know that their experiences are the same as mine. Maybe I get that from my acting training. In acting, you have to have to find something from your own life sometimes to get the emotion right for the character you're playing. In writing, I do the same thing.

Still, it's sort of weird to know that other people might be reading my blog but comforting at the same time, especially when someone tells me they enjoyed it. I'm hoping that means we're all the same type of human being, just in different bodies, from different cultures and with very different experiences.

Okay, I just checked the TV guide. It's not Othello. It's The Italian Girl in Algiers by Rossini. How embarrassing! I think I thought it was Othello because I read article about the opera version of Othello in the Pink Section and I just assumed it was now on TV.

Speaking of The SF Chronicle, they had three essays/articles in there today that after I finished reading thought "who the fbombing hell cares!" Honestly, is it any wonder that people in the rest of the country think we're freaks. The three essays were for such stupid issues, not big issues like war or homelessness or poverty, but a stupid dumb issue that honestly only people here care about. Everyone but me that is. It's so not even worth mentioning because it is an issue that I know I have a politically incorect view about and just mentioning it makes me mad and makes me want to move to another city.

There are so many other big events affecting our lives and so many other things the newspaper could be writing about, but they devote three articles/essays to an issue the country and the rest of the world doesn't give a rat's ass about. Didn't these people, who are obviously writing to promote a point of view, take a marketing class? They really need to figure out how their cause better because the way they're doing it, just makes there cause irrelevant and I'm sure that's not their intention. Their good intentions in my humble opinion, do nothing to further their cause but instead harm it by not making it relevant to what is going on with the rest of the country and the world. It's sort of sad really because the cause has merit but not if it's being marketed by complete idiots who should know better.

Othello is everywhere. The opera version of Othello is on TV right now and a few weeks ago, they had the modern BBC version of Othello. The BBC mod Othello was very good although I agree with one reviewer I read, when he said that it was hard to believe that a top notch police detective like Othello could be fooled so easily. The Iago character or Jago was much better in the BBC version and they give him a bigger part to where the veiwer sees him reaping the rewards of his treachery. How very realistic of the Britts.

I saw Othello on stage at ACT a few years ago and it was very good. The Othello actor was very strong and he has to be to make the play work. I saw another version done by a director friend of mine and the woman playing Desdemona was so bad. She played Desdemona like a valley girl air head and spoke that way, all whiney and nasally and so spoiled, that at the end I was so happy that Othello killed her. I don't think that was the right reaction to have at the end of Othello.

I love opera. It's all so dramatic. It's soap opera story lines set to great music. And the costumes and sets are great. I saw a Stravinsky opera a couple of years ago. The famous welsh tenor Brynn Terfel was in it. I don't remember the name of the opera but the story was quite good and the plot reminded me of the dot com failures that were happening at the time. Stravinsky is not the best music for opera, but the costumes were beautiful and the set for one of the scenes was spectacular.

I got so peevish from my last post that I went into my kitchen and cleaned it. There's something energy releasing about cleaning. Sometimes if I get too freaked out, I bake because it takes alot of concentration and I lose my freaky feelings. But baking isn't very good for weight when you're the only one eating your creations. Sometimes if I bake and don't want to eat it, I take it to work. It never fails that every company I've ever been at, if you put free food in the kitchen it's gone in half an hour. What is about free food in the kitchen?

I'll try to post more stories on my ISP webpage today. There are couple of stories I finished for writing classes I've attended. Since they were assignments, the quality is not very good. But I have this new theory, that I have to write about five really bad, country song, Lifetime television or Hallmark movies (which I secretly love because they're so bad), stories before I write a story that's even semi-decent. Maybe it's true whoever said, if you read junk, you write junk. Well, I love Temptation Island 1 and 2, Lifetime television movies, Hallmark movies, Anne Rice, Stephen King and every now and then Danielle Steele (she's the best trashy writer there is), so is it any wonder I write trashy stories. I like these stories because they were good teaching tools for me and I guess I could work on them to make them better, but I want a record of my bad trashy writing so if I ever get really good and famous, which of course may be never, I can look back and see how far I've come.

There's even a story I might post which was my final in one writing class. What a final huh? Write a short story on the given topic. I got an A on that final, so I'll have to post that story. Then there's those other half written stories. One of my writing teachers, Peter at UC Extension, said that not finishing your stories is bad for you psychologically. Well, I guess I can add "not finishing stories" to my long list of what's wrong with me. Some of these story ideas started out as great ideas, but something got so lost in the execution that I'm not sure it's worth raising them from the dead. You know, how you think something is a great idea, then when you actually do it, you're like, "Oh My God, this sucks!" It's like that with some of my half written stories. Does it do anyone any good to finish really bad stories? I just don't so. Better to just chalk these stories up to "Great Idea - Bad Execution" and be done with them, and that's what I've done. These stories will always be there if for whatever reason, I "feel" like I need to finish them, but until then, I let them stay raw, bad and unfinished. Wow, I think that phrase makes for a great title for a story, "Raw Bad and Unfinished."

I went to church today and I feel really bad because I want to start exploring our sister church. It's funny how you always take new members classes when you first want to join a church, but they never teach classes on how to leave a church. I love the people in my church; these people are like second family. But our church has changed, really changed.

The minister who was there when I joined left and went to a church in Minneapolis, Minnesota. I don't blame the guy for wanting to leave. He and his wife had three kids and San Francisco is a hard place to have children if you don't make a lot of money. His older daughter never took ballet lessons. Every little girl should have ballet lessons. Even I had ballet lessons and I grew up without that much money.

But pastors don't make that much money and this guy was a rising star in the Presbyterian denomination, well thought of, and he sat on the board of McCormick School of Theology. The guy was bound to go and go whereever he wanted to. It was just a matter of when. After he left, the church had a series of interim pastors for about a couple of years and that's hard when a church loses its leader. And the old minister was a great sermonist. You always felt like he was speaking directly to you and talking about your life. I've come to realize that sermonizing is a gift and this minister definitely has it.

I had stopped going prior to minister's departure and I still feel bad about that. I was starting to get involved in other things and I had my own spiritual routine at home going, so I stopped going to church for community worship.

I started going to church again after 9/11 because I felt such a need to be close to people who were worshipping in community and it made me realize how important corporate worship is. It's fine to do your own practices at home and that works really well, but worshipping in community is such an important part of leading a spiritual life, if only to know that there are other people struggling with their faith like you are.

A couple months after 9/11, the church installed a new pastor and I liked him at first, but he's a little more conservative than the other guy and not the rising star and not a good sermonist. Alot of the people I liked have either left now or are dead. I mean, there's still great people there, people I really,really like but the church has shrunk and all the people my age are gone.

Now at our sister church, it's a whole different story. Their memberships is in the 4,000+ range, while ours is 200+. And they have so many people my age, that I feel very comfortable there. Our sister church has always been a little more conservative than my own church, but with this new pastor, our church is starting to look like it's going to be even more conservative than they are.

Our one associate minister in the church jokingly said christians are persecuted in SF and someone corrected him and said 'ignored not persecuted'. My only thought to this was 'if you don't want to be ignored in our modern 21st century society, you better not be boring, you better have something to offer people other than whining about how the church is losing attendance and therefore that means persecution."

And this is where my biggest problem is. My church is losing relevancy in my life and I don't know if it's because the minister is a boring sermonist or he's just too conservative for my taste. I don't want church to be irrelevant in my life and I feel bad that I have to leave my home church, where I've been a member now for almost 10 years, so I can have relevant church services.

What really bugs me is the new minister never talks about 9/11 and what it meant-what it means now, never talks about the dot gone economy we're experiencing in San Francisco, never talks about the war on terrorism and it's important to us and to the country, never talks about American Taliban and what this issue means for parents everywhere, never talks about the heaps and heaps of homeless people at our church door and on the street, never talks about the rising unemployment where at least 25% of church membership is employed, etc. He never brings up anything relevant to issues that are affecting my life in one of the most biggest cities in the country and certainly one of the most watched cities in the world.

All he talks about is the bible and that's fine but relate the bible back to important issues now, big issues. The head minister from our sister church came to give Thanksgiving service at our church and he talked about 9/11, airport and airline security and what that day meant to all of us. No, all our head minister and associate minister are concerned about are how the christian church is ignored in SF and how they're going to bring "GOD" to San Francisco.

Well duh! He's already here in other christian denominations, other churchs in our own denomination, other religions and those churches have huge memberships. Some people don't get it. If you want to be noticed, be relevant, be interesting but don't be boring and out of context, out of step with the general society.

And after all these complaints, I still feel bad about wanting to explore other churches. How can I leave my church family, people who you've come to know over 10 years? But I will if they make church irrelevant for me, I will. And to me that's the ultimate evil, most un-christian thing anybody can do to me, make church, religion irrelevant.

I've spent all day building a home page on my ISP and added a link on the right called "Writing Pieces". There you'll find stories I've finished or stories I'm working on. The only story up there is the main one I'm working on called Crazy Eddie. It's about a woman who comes home to find her boyfriend stuck in a pool of blood. In the story, she goes to the desert to figure it all out and I'm at the part where she comes back and is having a conversation with the cop assigned to her case. It's in total free write stage so it's like raw as blood dripping steak. I hate to edit until the story is finished and I plan to finish it this month.

I included stories in previous posts but I'll separate them out to this new home page I built soon.

Okay, so far it looks like my archives aren't disappearing along with my posts like there were earlier. I had such a good post written earlier, so let's see if I can do this again.

No movies today. This morning I just realized I've been out every night this week so today is really my only free day. When you're out every night of the week, it's amazing how messy one's apartment gets. This is my day to clean up, put things away, decompress and just generally hang out.

I turned down a free ticket to some one-woman show tonight but that was okay. One-woman shows are usually like over extended standup routines and they're either really bad or really good. Most of the time bad. I wanted to get caught up on my Oscar movie watching this weekend, but I have until Palm Sunday March 24 to watch them all, so it's not like there's any kind of rush. But I did rent Ghost World so I'm still on track.

Seeing The Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring again was great. I was able to concentrate on the special effects, costumes, makeup and the characters more. It never fails but every female friend who's ever seen this movie eventually ends up saying to me, 'Who was that blonde'. Legolas is such an elf hottie and his looks appeals to such a diverse group of women. Personally, I think it's because he's a brown eyed blondie. Such a rare coloring for men, that when you see one it stops you dead in your tracks. But he does have a very pretty face. He's so angelic looking or at least what you've been taught to believe is what angels are supposed to look like. Does this mean it's every girl's dream to have sex with an angel like Jane Fonda in Barbarella? And by the way, that angel boy was a hottie too.

It's cold out and not rainy like the weather forecasters said it would be, but I'm staying in and watching TV. The best thing about daytime TV watching on Saturday is the plethora of schlocky TV movies. There's a vampire movie marathon on AMC and right now some bad 80's movie called Fright Night is on. It's a got a really bad sound track full of synthesizer music, which means they're probably using old Prophet sythesizers, an 80's company that got bought out by I think by Sony. Madonna used them on her first reconds and the Prophets were used to make the helicopter noises in Apocalypse Now.

Roddy McDowall is in this movie and he's his dapper swishy if not a little freaked out self. It's hard to believe how many movies that guy got himself cast in, isn't it? Gotta love those Hollywood connections.

Francis Ford Coppola's Bram Stoker's Dracula is on next. A guy friend loves this movie for its very fine rack action scenes with Winona Ryder and that other girl and their diaphonous nightgowns. Gary Oldman is very good in this movie, but then he's good in everything. And then there's Keannu Reeves. I'd let him bite my neck any day, he's such a hottie.

I've been fooling with my blog page trying to add better links for the archives. It's hard when you're like me and you have little or no knowledge of html, but there are some good posts in the help section on how to do things so I use those.

I had an earlier post but I lost it when I tried to publish it. A friend of mine who's a website genius, having been paid to design sites for JC Penneys, Penzoil and Michael's, told me that java script is unstable and I've been using java script to redo my archives. I think I fixed the problem but I'll have to test and find out.

My spiritual healer told me that you’re only attracted to someone who is either your soul mate or your soul partner. So which one is screenwriting guy I wonder. She said it’s good to be in a marriage with a soul partner but necessarily your soul mate, only because you'll have a lot of left over karmic issues to deal with. I guess now I just need to find out if screenwriting guy is a soul mate or soul partner. I guess it’s nice to know that if I’m very physically attracted to someone he is either a soul mate or soul partner. I didn’t know that before because they are very few men I'm really that attracted to.

I wonder how this explains an attraction to movie stars and rock stars and other celebrity types. Are you attracted to them because of seeing them all the time and therefore it's familiarity? Or are they really your soul mate or soul partner? It has to be the familiarity thing because so many people love these celebs. I love Keannu Reeves but only because he looks like guys I grew up with and well he is such a cutie. Then there's the Fiennes boys, Raffe and Joseph. They can have me any day. I would also add Russell Crowe, Nicholas Cage (he's so cute who cares that he's losing his hair), Tom Cruise only because of Top Gun and I'm sure there are few others but I can't think of them right now. Oh yeah, Val Kilmer because of The Saint.

So I submitted my blog to the eatonweb portal and they've got me listed under NEW blogs. Does this mean I'll get emails from people reading my blog or will my blog just go unnoticed due to lack of graphics and interesting written material? I don't think I care either way.

This is my online journal and although the thought of complete strangers and my friends for that matter reading about the way my brain works give me the majorly serious willies, there's something so cool about other people finding your life interesting enough to read about it. I can see you friends wanting to read it, although that's probably quite a stretch too, but strangers?

That poor dead bug outside my window caught in the spider web is really dead. I haven't seen him move all day. It's supposed to rain over the weekend so I'm hoping that the rain sweeps him away so I don't have to stare at this dead bug body whenever I look out of my window at work. Who knew that a spider's web could be so strong because this was a big bug?

I'm off to see The Lord of the Rings for the second time. Everyone said to see it twice because the first time you get so blown away that you can't concentrate on anything. I wonder if I'll like it as much the second time around. I rarely see a movie more than once in the theatre. If I have to see it over and over again, I wait till it comes out on video and I guess now DVD and buy it and then watch it nightly till I'm sick of it, which of course never happens. I think I've seen The Matrix over 10 times and I still so loooove this movie. But then again, I've seen the A&E version of Pride and Prejudice five times and I never grow tired of Elizabeth and Mr. D'Arcy.

For screenwriting class we have to see a movie as homework beside work on writing our screenplay and this week's movie is The Verdict. Last week's movie was Witness. I've never seen The Verdict. It's an old movie starring Paul Newman. It's got to be old right? When was the last time you saw Paul Newman in a movie? I was going to rent The Spanish Prisoner, which was written by David Mamet who also wrote the screenplay for The Verdict, but I decided on Ghost World instead. I have to see what's so good about this movie since it got nominated for Best Screenplay adapted from previously published material. I was going to try and see The Man Who Wasn't There and Mulholland Drive at the bargain theatre on Saturday but I may be movied out by then. I also thought of seeing In the Bedroom on Sunday but seeing this movie might just a bit too much.

What can be wonderful and at the same time devastatingly heartbreaking is being able to find information about your old loves on the Net. Such a depressing thing to do on Valentine's Day I know, but at the same time it's nice to find out that men that you thought you loved in your life are happy and well, even though sometimes it's like opening an old wound.

I was listening to KDFC earlier and they were playing the top ten most romantic classical music as voted on by its listeners. They played Rachmaninoff piano concerto # 2, which made my cry because my first love Michael played the piano part for me one night. I haven't heard that piece in a long time even though I've owned it for years to remind of that occasion.

I found Michael's website one day using Google. I just typed his name and clicked on every link till I found this website with a picture of him. He hasn't changed at all. He owns this production company which produces industrial films which apparently are award winning. It made me happy to find out that he was doing something creative for his life because I know that this was important to him. There was a line in Anne Rice's The Queen of the Damned, where one of the vampires says he doesn't need to be with his love but he did need to know that she was alive and going on. I feel the same way about Michael and all my ex-loves. I just need to know that they're alive and going on with their lives and are happy.

Sometimes I wonder if Michael thinks about me at all. He was my first love but I'm not sure what role I played in his life. I know he kept all my letters because he would refer back to them in conversations or letters with me and remind me of things I said to him in the past and say things like "reading through all your old letters". Does that mean something other than the fact that he's a pack rat? I don't know. And then I think it doesn't really matter what he thought or what any or them thought or if they still remember me or if I'm a memory they threw out of their heads a long time ago. What matters to me is what I feel because I can't control what they feel. My old loves will feel what they feel and that's really their issue not mine, because it's not something I can control. I can only control what I feel and I prefer to feel love, because I think in the end, at the end of my life, love is the only thing that's going to matter to me.

And I've been lucky too because I've laid to rest all my traumas about them, all of them. Well, maybe not all. I'm still working on Brian, but that's still relatively new and what's left is just regret for what couldn't be and what hurts is he seems to have gone on and gone on with a vengence without me. But he's pragmatic like me, he would go on, just as I would have if I had obligations to like he did. It's hard sometimes, to take my own regret about him when I know full well that we were never really well matched and that I told him as much. But regret is what I feel, or more loss really because what I miss the most is his friendship more than I miss an actual relationship with him. The loss of a friend to me seems so much harder to bear than the loss a boyfriend who was never really a friend.

But the night is young and delight awaits on this Valentine's Day night for me and I must leave this brief interlude into my past knowing that a better and brighter future awaits me.

Outside my window at work, a bug with wings got caught in a spider web. I’m not even sure what kind of bug it was, but it may be a wasp. It was struggling all day having been caught in the morning. And now as I look outside my window at the end of my work day, the bug is dead but the spider hasn’t come to collect the prize. For all that struggle, I hope there is a spider. Poor dead bug. I hope his body is recycled and eaten by the spider.

I feel like that bug caught in some weird web with this man from my screenwriting class. All of this will make for a good story though so I know shouldn’t begrudge the experience. I don’t even know the guy.

The bug is still alive. He’s not dead because I saw his legs moving. I wish I could free him but I can’t. Maybe if I free him, I can free myself from this web of physical attraction and lust.

So like this is really spooky. This is the astrological forecast for today 14 February 2002 from my fave Brit astrologer Jonathan Cainer. Like my most ultimate freak of all freaks fantasy is the screenwriting hottie wants to jump me the same way I want to jump him. He was kind of staring at me in class but that never means anything, does it? I don't believe in love at first sight, lust at first sight definitely, but not love. But I'm willing to experience love at first sight if this is it. God, I want to have this man's babies, that's how bad it is. Anyway, here's my forecast for today.

"There's a somebody I'm longing to see, I hope that s/he turns out to be someone to watch over me." I'm not sure really, whether this is the song you are secretly singing, or whether it is simply the tune that is being hummed hard in your direction by a certain person who feels sure that you are indeed that special someone. But I don't suppose it much matters. All we need to establish is that there is now significantly more romance in your life than once there was. Be careful. You are in danger of losing your Aquarian reputation for being cold and uncaring!

So it's Valentine's Day today and I decided to walk around my office to see who got flowers. I'm glad I'm working in a small office in a burb of San Francisco, where everybody is laid back and not so status conscious. When I worked in downtown SF in a bigger very corporate office, there was this pressure to get flowers on Valentine's Day and if you didn't get them, people noticed. Most of the time, I think people sent flowers to themselves but bragged that their boyfriends/significant freaks or hubmeisters sent it to them. The receptionist area on Valentine's Day was the place to hang out to see who was getting delivered roses, flowers, balloons, stripograms, etc.

I didn't walk through the whole office, but I did see one bouqet. I'll have to walk through the rest of the office later to check for more flowers. Most of these women who I work with are married with little kids, so I'm wondering if they're going to get flowers here at the office or later from their hubbies and kids.

Valentine's Day at the office has always been traumarama experiences for me. I'm like one of those pathetic people who have never gotten flowers at the office. My boyfriends have always been the "I Hate Valentine's Day" types who wouldn't be caught dead succumbing to the crass commercialism and pressure of the day or at least letting other people know except me that they did. I would get dinner and flowers but never at the office. One year, I think it was 1996, I actually thought I might get flowers but I got nothing and I was so pissed. When I confronted the guy later that afternoon on the phone, he said "You know I'm not into commercial holidays". After that, I threw a shit fit and hung up on him. I think I wouldn't have been so hurt if one of my "office friends" didn't keep asking me all day if my boyfriend was going to send me flowers. Why I thought this freak of nature was going to send me flowers is still a mystery to me to this day. He so wasn't the type and I knew it, but I think I got caught up in the pressures of the day.

The Valentine's Day incident was just one of his many indiscretions, so I dumped him a few months later. Actually I first dumped him in November when I found out he was sleeping with other women, but we got back together with him around New Year's eve, so I was dumping him for the second time. You know years later, this same guy is still calling me wanting to get together. He calls me like three of four times a year to see how I'm doing and always suggests getting together. I even went to dinner with him once because I ran into him at Union Square and he offered to buy me dinner. He's a nice guy and everything but I was never into him back then and I'm not into him now. I'll have to write more about this guy later because he's a piece of work. I think I'm the only woman who's never bought into his act so my resistance is fascinating to him and he just can't give me up.

The first time called me back in 1998 two years after we broke up, I asked him, why are you calling me? And he said "because I think about you all the time." This was funny to me so I told him "You know, that's funny because I haven't thought about you at all". There was like this dead silence on the phone for about five minutes, but he soon recovered. Poor guy! I would actually feel more sorry for him if he wasn' such a jerk, but he is, so I don't.

I'm still having fantasies about the Beautiful Boy from my screenwriting class. I've never been so sexually attracted to someone I've never spoken to before. It's got to be karma or a past life thing or it's my damned hormones. But it is fun. Is that what Steve meant when he broke up with me because there wasn't this spark between us? There was a spark, but it was very small and I was so afraid of it back then. Compared to my crush on Steve, this attraction is like a blazing bonfire and I'm being burned in a totally silly way. I have never met a man in my life that was so jumpable. Well, there was Paul. But I worked with him and got to know him so he became even more jumpable. But this guy, I don't even know this guy and I'm thinking I just want to jump him and jump him now. It's hormones, it's got to be hormones, like ovulation or something. But you know, it might be kind of fun to date I guy I wanted to jump constantly from the get go, instead of someone I had to get to know to jump. Is there a difference? And I know the sex will be good and I'm never wrong about that aspect.

But all this mental stimulation is bad because I know the next time I see him, which won't be till February 25, I'll just freak out and not talk to him. I feel like I'm reliving being a 13 year old and I hate it, because that age was so depressing for me. And after all these years, it's not getting any better.

I guess I'm in the mood to rant about my writing habits. I told someone in screenwriting class that I write my journal on my computer. This person looked me straight in the eyes and told me I couldn't do that. And I'm like, why the hell not. I've been doing it for months.

I have a job where I'm usually waiting for things to finish like programs, queries or analyses and started writing out my thoughts into a Word document. Now I just do it all the time because it's fun and it's therapeutic for me to just write about the random thoughts in my brain and the petty details of my life.

Then there's this blog, which is like another journal for me and to which I post sometimes the same entries from my Word journal or just totally new entries. And it seems everyone is blogging or posting to an online journal so I know I'm not the only one.

I know there are some writers who have to do their writing manually by hand using pen and paper. Most published writers use their manual or electric typewriters. My pc is just like a typewriter for me. I've been writing on the computer since I was 18 so I'm just used to just freewriting on to the screen. I've heard people say that you edit yourself, but I really don't. Word does annoy me because it tells me most of the sentences are too long or fragments, but other than that I appreciate the instant spell check.

Is this a generational thing? People who aren't used to typing on computer will naturally feel that handwriting is the best and for people like me, who have been around computers most of their life don't see the difference between writing by hand or writing on the computer other than the fact that when you write into a document, you can actually read what you wrote. I took a typing class in highschool, which I totally hated because I made too many mistakes and never typed fast enough, but that class has come in handy for writing on a computer since I don't really have look at keyboard when I type.

I think I just shocked that person in screenwriting class, like it was politically incorrect to journal to a Word document or to the Net, but I love it. And I think other people do too.

A writing rant about selling out.

I don’t want to write the great American novel and now I don’t even think I want to write something that’s good enough to win any prize. I love the Anne Rice and Stephen King books but they’ve never won elite prizes for writing like Booker, Pulitzer, Nobel or a National Book Award. And those writers are my favorites because they tell good stories. They may not have the most poetic writing in the world, but god can they tell a good story. And that’s what I want to do; tell a good story and entertain my reader if only for just a few hours.

Maybe it’s a product of my lower class upbringing, but I have no pretensions like Jonathan Franzen. I’m a reverse snob. I don’t want my books in snotty bookstores where regular people are afraid to go in because the snotty book people treat you badly because of your writing taste. The best thing about a company like Amazon.com is you can indulge your own peculiar tastes in book and because it’s all anonymous without judgments, it’s the most democratic of all book shopping experiences.

I know all my friends, especially CF will hate my writing. CF never even liked my Art is Scary story even though JW loved it and everybody who saw me perform it loved it. She’s not very generous that way, which is sad. I am happy for her when she’s successful but she has never celebrated my success or told me any of my stories were any good. JW loved my stories and for his insight I will always be grateful.

CF is so quick to judge that Jane Campion sold out on the ending of the movie "The Piano, but I think that’s a judgment. I know I’ve said people have sold out but the more I look at being at artist, the more I think that art is a collaborative process and that one has to compromise to get one’s art in the world. And I’m starting to think that it’s not selling out and to say sell out is a elementary understanding of the business. I just know right, I’ll be accused of selling out. But you know, whatever. Those people who don’t want to sell out can spend the rest of their life resenting other people’s success and not having the time and energy to create their art.

I need to be commercially successful to buy my free time. And what is so wrong with masses and masses of people want to read my work? It just means that more people can relate to my work, which would so cool because that would mean you were in touch with how normal people think. I don’t think I’m normal so to write something that lots of other people like, normal people, would be so fun and great for me.

There’s nothing wrong with people’s attitude about selling out. I just think society has brainwashed everyone into thinking there’s something wrong with appealing to massive amounts of people. It’s society’s way of keeping the artist from creating and producing art; to denigrate successful artists. Art like theatre needs an audience to live, art produced to appeal for one or a few is not art but some self indulgent piece of art that only a few people will like. And that’s fine. But art that captures the imagination of a lot of people I’m beginning to think, is like tapping into the universality that exits in all of us. This tapping of the universal mind is what I think true art is about because it’s the most real, the most widely read and watched, because everyone that sees or reads it can relate.

In honor of Waylon Jennings who died today who wrote one of my fave country song "Mammas, don't let your babies grow up to be cowboys".

From the NY Times today. Worst Country Song Titles of All Time Until the next Time.

All I Want From You (Is Away)
All My Exes Live in Texas
Beauty's in the Eye of the Beerholder
Bubba Shot the Jukebox
Did I Shave My Legs for This?
Don't Put Me in the Ex-Files
Don't Squeeze My Sharmon
Get Your Biscuits in the Oven,and Your Buns in the Bed
Guess My Eyes Were Bigger Than My Heart
He Can't Talk Without His Hands
Heaven's Just a Sin Away
Here's a Quarter (Call Someone Who Cares)
How Can I Miss You if You Won't Go Away?
How Come Your Dog Don't Bite Nobody but Me?
I Bought the Shoes That Just Walked Out on Me
I Don't Know Whether to Kill Myself or Go Bowling
I Got Tears in My Ears From Lying on My Bed Crying on My Pillow Over You
I Got You on My Conscience but at Least You're Off My Back
I Guess I Had Your Leavin' Coming
I Keep Forgettin' I Forgot About You
I Left Something Turned On at Home
I May Be Used, but Baby I Ain't Used Up
I Wanted You to Leave Until You Left Me
I Would Have Wrote You a Letter, but I Couldn't Spell Yuck!
I'd Rather Be Picked Up Here Than Put Down at Home
I'd Rather Pass Another Kidney Stone Than Another Night With You
If Fingerprints Showed Up on Skin, Wonder Whose I'd Find on You
If I Ain't Got It, You Don't Need It
If the Jukebox Took Teardrops
If the Phone Doesn't Ring, It's Me
If Whiskey Were a Woman, I'd Be Married for Sure
If You Can't Bite, Don't Growl
If You Leave Me, Can I Come Too?
I'll Give You Something to Drink About
I'll Marry You Tomorrow, but Let's Honeymoon Tonight
I'm Gonna Hire a Wino to Decorate Our Home
I'm Here to Get My Baby Out of Jail
I'm the Only Hell Mama Ever Raised
It Only Takes One Bar (to Make a Prison)
I've Been Flushed From the Bathroom of Your Heart
I've Been Roped and Throwed by Jesus in the Holy Ghost Corral
Lay Something on My Bed Besides a Blanket
Let's Do Something Cheap and Superficial
Make Me Late for Work Today
My Head Hurts, My Feet Stink, and I Don't Love Jesus
My Wife Ran Off With My Best Friend, and I Sure Do Miss Him
Pardon Me, I've Got Someone to Kill
Queen of My Double-Wide Trailer
Redneck Martians Stole My Baby
Remember to Remind Me I'm Leavin'
Savin' the Honey for the Honeymoon
She Feels Like a New Man Tonight
She Thinks My Tractor's Sexy
She's Actin' Single . . . I'm Drinkin' Doubles
Shut Up and Talk to Me
Thank God and Greyhound She's Gone
The Chick's Too Young to Fry
The Man That Came Between Us (Was Me)
The Pint of No Return
There's a Tear in My Beer
Velcro Arms, Teflon Heart
Venom Wearin' Denim
Walk Out Backwards Slowly So I'll Think You're Walking in
We Never Killed Each Other (but Didn't We Try)?
Who's Gonna Mow Your Grass?
Who's Gonna Take the Garbage Out When I'm Dead and Gone?
Why Did You Leave the One You Left Me For?
You Can't Have Your Kate and Edith Too
Your Alibi Called Today
Your Coffee's on the Table but Your Sugar's Out the Door
Your Negligee Has Turned to Flannel Nightgowns
You're a Hard Dog to Keep Under the Porch
You're Going to Ruin My Bad Reputation
You're the Reason Our Kids Are So Ugly

I think I'm in this weird kind of school girl crush with some guy from my screenwriting class whom I've never spoken too. It's wild because it's so stupid. Maybe it's my hormones on turbodrive but that man is haunting my fantasies and my dreams. I'm letting myself get up caught up in it because I think it will make for a funny story one day, but a part of me is upset that it's happening at all.

You would think that at some point in your life that you get to a certain age where you don't do unexplainable things like having a gigundous crush on someone you've never spoken too, but maybe you never outgrow your ability to do silly things. I don't know. I think if that guy knew, he'd probably be shocked because I'm damned sure it's some grand delusion of mine.

Where it will all lead is a mystery but like everything else, I"m sure there's some rhyme or reason for all of this happening and that everything will work out. It usually does and it always has worked out. But this has got to the most bizarre event that's ever happened to me and I'm curious to know how it will all wrap up. Till then, I guess I'm going to enjoy the ride.

So the Brian saga continues. I had a dream about him on Sunday morning. I was in some sort of jam or trouble, I'm not sure which. But right when things were getting really bad, along comes Brian to my rescue. Only Brian now looks like this guy from my screenwriting class, who I only met last week. It was weird. He didn't look like Brian, but in the dream I knew he was Brian. Anyway Brian starts kissing me in this dream and it was so deliciously real. Next thing I know, he wisks me away and we're somewhere else and I'm waking up in a cold sweat.

How weird. How very weird. I was do disturbed on Sunday, I couldn't even workout. Why would I dream about Brian and then have Brain look like a guy I hardly know from a class I joined just last week. I hate having dreams about people who are no longer in my life and I especially detest dreams where I need rescuing by some man. As if I need to be rescued by a man from anything.

So anyway, I go to my screenwriting class and that guy is there. Only now becauss of the Sunday morning dream, two things happen. One, I'm like so freaked about this guy that I'm afraid to talk to him and two, I found myself becoming physically attracted to this guy like 150%. I swear to god if I started to talking to him, I'd probably jump him. I'm at the wonderful point in a crazy messed up physical attraction where you know that if you just took a whiff of the person, you'd have a mini orgasm. It's bad, it's really bad, to be physically attracted to someone you hardly know in a class, who probably doesn't give a shit about you. It's like being a school girl all over again, except this time you're at the age where if you had gone down a certain path, you'd be a mother of a girl who would be experiecing these feelings.

God, that man in beautiful and I don't even know his name. I kept looking at him covertly, wandering what me smelled like, wondering what his skin would feel like under my tongue, trying to subtley strip the guy and fantasizing what he'd look like naked. It's bad, bad, really bad. I mean, the guy probably thinks I'm like the biggest freak in the world for staring at him like that. He seems like such a nice guy, but I'll never find out now because I'm too freaked out to speak to him. I can't have a conversation with a guy, whose clothes I want to tear off so I can let my tongue do my talking for me. It's bad, really bad to feel this way because it's so out of control, so hopeless and so silly.

I'm absolutely sure he's nothing like I've imagined him to be. And what's worse, I'll never find out because I'm too afraid to talk to him. He scares me and when a man scares me this much, I don't have anything to do with them. Better to let guys like this go because he's to threatening to my self contro.

I know that I'll be in this weird kind of hell from now until the end of class because I'll spend half he class wanting to jump him and the other half freaking out because I'm feeling a 150% attraction for him.

And wha't worse, he's not even my physical type. He's just like Brian. I was never physically attracted to Brian by his looks but liked him because of his personality and his brain. Then we became such good freinds and I started to find so incredibly attractive. But I let all of that go because we were just friends.

This guy in screenwriting class sort of looks like him but is not him. They just have the same boxer/linebacker/pug dog body type. Other than that, the two men have no resemblance to each other. Brian has hazel greenish brown eyes with reddish/brown hair. The new guy has sea blue eyes and brown hair with some gray streaks.

It's so crazy. I just hope that some great story comes out of all this dramarama. And it really is just god awful Brenda dramarama.

God, I miss Brian. I know I'm not supposed to but I miss him. He was such a good friend. I could always rely on him to tell me the truth and he was so smart about so many things. He is one of the few men I really respect as a person. But you know, he just couldn't handle just being friends with me and when he told me, it all got so awkward between us that I think, out of self-preservation on his part and on mine, we parted. But shit, it's like losing your best friend because he's physically attracted to you, how messed up is that?

I think I really hurt him too when I said that I could never contemplate getitng into a relationship with him. As much as I so adore him, he would have been a hard person for me to live with. He's not the most easy going of people and I need that. I need to be with a male partner who's steady and stable and most of all easy to live with and very easy going. When I'm not with this kind of guy, it's been hell and I'm not willing to go through hell one more time. Brian is steady and stable as the rock of gibraltar, but he's not laid back and easy going. He's such a neurotic virgo! As much as I think we could have made a go at being together forever, I think part of me would have come to hate how high maintenance he is. Not to mention that he has a really bad temper and when he gets upset, it's pretty nasty. We were just friends and I got a couple of tongue whippings/lashings from him which left me breathless in their severity and anger.

I wonder what he's doing now. If were still talking, we could have celebrated three years of friendship a few weeks ago. It's all such a sad, sad waste. I'm glad he told me he wanted more than friendship from me. I value his honesty and his comfort level that he obviously had with me to be so honest, but damn! All that physical lust on his part just got in the way.

I did contemplate having sex with him once just to satisfy him, but Amy my friend who died, said that sex would hurt him even more. I could have sex with him for one night and walk away, but not Brian. Brian is too much of a romantic. One night would have led to more nights and then, since he's conservative kind of guy, marriage. And a marriage to Brian would have been way to challenging for my taste.

I miss him though and I think I always will. He's not the guy who got away, that honor goes to Steve. No, Brian is in his own category but I don't think there's a category for Friend You Totally Love but Can Never Marry.

Wow, it's been awhile since I've blogged. I keep thinking of making an entry but then I get sidetracked. I could probably write alot tonight but I'm tired an it's late. I am taking a screenwriting class and just finished bookmarking the websites for the screenwriting magazines which I'm supposed to find for class, but can't find anywhere. I went to the Borders on Union Square and of course, they were all gone. I ended up picking up another magazine not mentioned in class but seemed interesting. It's for international screenwriters, whatever that means. I also picked up a copy of Oxford American, only because they had a screenplay written by William Faulkner and I have to read that.

I like the Oxford American magazine even though it's very expensive. It's all about Southern writers and writing in the South and since I've been told that my stories read like I'm a southern writer even though I'm so not southern, I feel like I should read this magazine.

Borders is an interesting store. Either there are too many salespeople with nothing to do or they dont' have enough help. I guess they just need to improve their scheduling skills.

I am contemplating buying a Palm Pilot. My friend Mel said make sure the batteries are rechargable. I only want to spend about $100 and don't care about color, so I think I might purchase a Palm IIIxe. It has a cover for the faceplate which I like and I found a company on the Palm Message Boards that makes a rechargable battery for this model. The Palm IIIxe is bigger than the M100 and more recent models, but not by that much. The best thing about the Palm is that it's got all these software applications you can load.

You know, this whole Palm Pilot thing only started because friends of mine made fun of me for carrying around three small notebooks; my calendar, my Hello Kitty notebook for notes and a notebook to keep track of my expenses. My friends said I could just carry a Palm Pilot and not have to worry about losing three separate books. The problem is I love my Hello Kitty notebook and I like writing in it. It's not the most efficient way to organize your life but it works for me.

But I'm willing to give this Palm Pilot thing a try as long as I don't have to spend that much money. I lose small things very easily and can see myself easily looking the Palm. It's trivial I know, losing things, but it's the thought that the information I stored on my Plam could be lost forever has always been a sore spot with me.

More later.