I am alive but not writing in my blog. So funny because I was just thinking about my blog yesterday and how I've evolved from someone who was really into my blog and keeping it up to someone who only writes occasionally.

It's not that there aren't things happening in my life because there are. I am going to South America in February to visit Machu Picchu and then on to Easter Island to see the stone heads with a tour group. The actual tour is called "Power Moon at the Andes" because there's a full moon during one night of the tour and there is a ceremony planned in the House of the Moon. The tour will visit Incan sites at the Sacred Valley, Lake Titikaka and the Crystal City - Machu Picchu.

I only wanted to go on this tour because I had the idea to place part of my elf novel on Easter Island, and I thought well, if I'm going to write about Easter Island I'd better go and see the place. Two months later and I received an invite for this tour and a couple of weeks ago I told my new boss about it and he encouraged me to go. He said "it is a once in a lifetime experience and if I didn't go I was crazy".

So I'm going. The tour is booked, I have permission to take the time off from work, and now I'm busily shopping for items I need like waterproof hiking boots, a new camera and a new pair of running shoes. I can't believe I'm going because the tour cost a ton of money due to the Easter Island trip. Flying to Easter Island from Chile is so not cheap! Plus it will be the high season in February since it will be summer in South America.

My new boss is so great. He is such a nice guy and very appreciative of me and encouraging. I'm so glad I moved departments. But you know it's still an 80/20 world out there as far as work goes. I love my new boss and new department and the people are so nice, and I believe that's the good 80% of my job. Then there's the other bad 20% being that I'm still doing the same stuff and having to to work with my evil old coworker, who hates to work because she's a senior manager. But my new boss knows and he told me to let him know when I'm unhappy. I don't know how to tell him it's all the time.

I hate the 80/20 rule. I woke up thinking I am finally in a job I really like where I like my boss and the people I sit and have to interact with on a daily basis. Then right before I leave for the day, I feel like if I had all the money I would so quit this job tomorrow. People really make for a good or bad working environment. 80% of the people I totally love at work and 2o% of them absolutely make me miserable to point of me wanting to quit.

I was kvetching about something and our assistant says to me, "You're always whining, why don't you leave?" That really got me. I think she was having a bad day because she messed up on something, so she totally projects on to me. I mean, that woman is the biggest complainer on the floor. But it only got to me because she's right. I should stop bitching unless I'm willing to do something about it.

I'm never going to get away from the 80/20 rule. I let myself fantasize all day that I was 100% happy with my job, and then I got bitch slapped by the universe to remind me that the 80/20 rule is a cosmic universal law.

Where are u?
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Memo to Trader Joe shoppers. Never get in a line without a bagger. You'll be in line for an hour even in a short line.
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So this is my San Francisco Towing story. I was in my car on Saturday running around doing errands. I had to go to Fed Ex Home Delivery in South San Francisco to pick up a package, then since I was in that part of town I decided I needed to go to Target, Bed Bath and Beyond and Marshalls to look for things to buy. I found the cutest Spode Christmas plates at Marshalls and some really cool storage boxes, when the lights in the store went out. Talk about scary! The clerks made everybody get out of the store, and I was so bummed because I finally found items I wanted to buy. It had been raining all day and I guess something happened with the section of the mall stores. Then I headed over to Nordstrom Rack and ended up picking up some undershirts for $8 a piece. I drove back to the city and went shopping at Andronico's for groceries and when I came back, some jerk had parked his car so I couldn't get into my driveway to park my car.

I was so freaked out. I've lived in this place since 2004 and no one had ever blocked my driveway before. I knew they were new neighbours living next door so I buzzed their door bell thinking it was their car. No one came out. After about five minutes, I got so mad I just started screaming for them to open up. Still no once came out. Keep in mind that it's still raining a little and I'm getting soaked despite being under an umbrella.

I guess I was so loud my downstairs neighbor heard me and came out to see what was going on. He told me I needed to call San Francisco Parking and Traffic to get the car towed. So I go upstairs call SF P&T and thinking that they would get here quickly. In the meantime, some guy who lives two houses away comes over and talks to me about the parking offender. He had seen the car before and told me about his own getting cars towed out of his driveway stories.

Of course, SF P&T doesn't come right away and I had to call them to find out if someone was being sent. The neighbour guy felt sorry for me and called again for me. I think SF P&T didn't come right away because I kind of felt bad about getting someone's car towed, so I told the dispatcher that I wanted the vehicle cited but not towed. Neighbour guy told me I needed to get the car towed because the vehicle owner had parked in his driveway once before.

A SF Parking and Traffic person finally shows up an hour later, and talk about being in small world, neighbour guy recognized the P&T person as some he had met a party 10 years ago. How weird was that. The P&T person ran a license plate check and told us that the car was registered to someone in Santa Ana. I was like thinking that if the car was local, meaning the owner lived in the neighbourhood, then I didn't want to get the car towed because I didn't want to get hassled by my neighbours. But once we found out the car was from Orange County, we called for a tow.

Then downstairs neighbour guy from my building came downstairs and asked me if I was getting the car towed, because if I wasn't going to do it then he would. Honestly I still feel so bad about towing that person's car. How freaky would that be to go to the spot where you thought you parked your car, and then seeing your car gone. I know my first thought would be "OH MY GOD, someone stole my car." No way would I think that I got towed, unless of course I was parked in a very iffy spot like this dumb jerk who parked in my driveway.

And it's not cheap to get your car from out of San Franciso Towing. Besides the $75 blocked driveway ticket, I think it costs about $300 to get your car out. Talk about welcome to San Francisco for someone from Orange County; block a driveway and get your car towed and pay around $400 to get your car. That's an expensive lesson in San Francisco park etiquette, don't you think?

It's been so long since I'v written and the year is flying by. I think I picked up a bug last week from our department assistant who had been sick for three weeks. I came back from lunch on Wednesday and I was sitting at my desk, when all of sudden I just wanted to throw up. I was in the bathroom talking to our assistant and she said her symptoms started out the same way. I woke up with a headache, which didn't go away and my stomach was so quesy. The director of my department became very concerned about sick germs being spread, so she said I should go home.

I left and got home around 3 pm and slept till 6:3o am the next day. I didn't sleep the whole time, but I kept taking 2-3 hour naps. My stomach was quesy the whole day. I couldn't anything with oil and nothing would stay down. Finally I ate some yogurt and that seemed to be okay. I went to the work the next day, but my stomach was still quite quesy and I didn't really normal until Sunday.

Our poor assistant had no PTO to draw on when she was out of the office for 15 days, so she didn't get paid. Thankfully our company has a short-term disability policy so she'll be able to get paid once she fills out all this paperwork. That's the bad thing about getting sick and being on a PTO system. If you don't manage your PTO right and keep some in your bank, if you do become ill and you don't have any PTO left you won't get paid. And if you do have PTO and you become ill, they will use it first.

I like to carry over at least 10 days from PTO every year for illnesses, and it's not like I don't take any time off. I take over 10 days of vacation a year, and some years more and some years less, but never the full 20 days. Some people at work look at their PTO as 20 days of vacation which it's not if you think about it. On the PTO system your vacation and your sick time is something you have to manage. When I left my last job, I had about 30 days of PTO left and received 6 weeks worth of extra pay when I left. Talk about a nice little bonus of sorts.

At the Oakland airport on the way to Burbank. There are a ton of people walking around in USC gear because it's homecoming for USC, and people are flying down south for it. Someone just spilled their large cup of coffee in the walkway. And something I haven't seen in ages, policepeople walking around with a drug-sniffing, bomb-sniffing dog.
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Wow, that was wild. All of a sudden my laptop speakers stopped working. I could hear sounds when I plugged in headphones, but not the external speakers. I thought for sure I had blown my speakers and needed to buy a new sound card.

But, former not by choice help desk person that I was for six months, I decided to peruse the Dell Support forums. Not surprisingly, I found several posts on the same problem. I read a bunch of answers to this question, and decided to try a solution that kept popping up -- uninstall the sound driver and reinstall it. The answers to this common problem was that the main reason speakers stop working is because the sound drive has become corrupted.

The first time time I did it, it didn't work and I was so bummed. But then I thought maybe I didn't really uninstall the driver because I didn't get a message about my laptop finding a new device. So I tried uninstalling the driver again, and this time I got a message saying that asked did I really want to install the driver. I hit okay, rebooted, and sure enough I get the message the says my laptop has found a new device. I reinstall the sound driver, run the new update, and YEAH!!!! My external speakers started working again.

I love those computer support forums, because they really are a help sometimes. I was really freaking out, but thinking, okay, I've blown my laptop speakers, no biggie because I can still get sound out of the headphones. But that would have been such a drag!

I used to do that all the time when I did my help desk stint - when something was not working and I couldn't figure it out, I would reinstall the software because most of the time it solved the problem. My coworker told me that it didn't matter if we couldn't figure why the computer wasn't working, just get it working again and do it fast. 10 years later, the reinstall the software solution still works.

At the foodcourt at Westfield Centre, where Bloomingdale's is. I had pasta pomodoro at Pastamoto and it was ghastly. I will not be eating there again soon. I am so not in the mood to write tonight, but I forced to write two pages front and back.

There is such a strange energy in the air these days, that maybe I am being affected.
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At the Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival sitting by the Rooster Stage waiting for Boz Scaggs to come on. But I'm only staying for awhile and then I'm going to see Ricky Skaggs
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Somehow I got in the mood to play those free games on the msn.com website, and ended up playing Chainz 2. I usually suck at games, but I did really well on this game and got to level 6. I think this is a cosmic joke of some kind because I am actually quite good at finding the links in the chain of events in real life and in my job. What a hoot.

God, I think you can really waste your life playing these games but they are so fun. I can see how people can get really into it and play the game till the get the highest score and figure the game out.

I should have gone to a movie tonight, but there isn't really anything playing that I am dying to see. I saw 3:1o to Yuma last week. The cinematography was beautiful especially if you like the dessert scene. Russell Crowe was fabulous as usual and so was Christian Bale. It was a gritty western and everyone looked incredibly dirty, like bathing was not a regular thing in those days. It would be fun to see the original to check out the differences.

What else. I worked from home today because our floor is being renovated and we are relocating to a different floor come Monday. It's going to be weird because for the last 6 years the person I reported to was located in a different city. On my new floor, my cube is going to be right outside of my boss' office. I mean we get along great and all, but I can't remember the last time I've had my boss so close to my working area. For the last month, we've been in the same row but at least there was some distance. That wasn't too bad, but right in front of his glass cage of an office is going to be an interesting experience. I wasn't supposed to be sitting that close to him, but he decided that since we work so closely together it wouldn't be a bad thing.

My boss knows I like logical reasoning, so when I questioned him about the new seating arrangement he like totally gave me these logical reasons that he knew I couldn't argue with. I mean what was I going to say to his face, that I don't want to sit next to you because you're my boss. I'm like sitting there listening to him trying to come up with a logical and rational reason why me sitting right outside of his office was not a good idea, and I came up blank. I think this means my boss totally has number and I'm not sure that's a good thing.

He knows I hate reasons that don't make any sense, and he so used it against me so I couldn't argue back and tell him I wanted to sit somewhere else. It's a good thing he's a totally nice, smart and very fair kind of boss because otherwise I think I'd have to figure out some way to retaliate against him for figuring out how to get me to agree to something I think he knew I was not very happy about.

I'm at the Palms hotel in Las Vegas having their buffet lunch. They have an amazing pie collection for dessert. The price of the lunch buffet was half the price of the buffet at the Mandalay Bay hotel, where we ate yesterday.
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M-Square was definitely a soulmate and a soul partner, but he was so not in the light and making bad decisions for his life. What's the point of being with your soulmate and soul partner if the person is not on the same level as you are? It's hard enough to keep moving towards the light, to keep moving towards what you want, to keep trying to be on purpose and the live the life you think god wants you live - without having some guy who you feel so connected to that you feel like you've loved this man for thousands of years, pull you down into the darkness and the abysss.

I just heard the song "Soulmate" by Natasha Beddingfield and I totally love it. Unfortunately, it is only available for sale on iTunes in the UK because it hasn't been released in the US yet. Not sure if I want to start buying songs at UK prices because the exchange rate between the english pound and the dollar totally sucks right now.

I love the lyrics and found them by googling.

Soulmate by Natasha Beddingfield

Incompatible, it don't matter though' cos someone's bound to hear my cry
Speak out if you do you're not easy to find

Is it possible Mr. Loveable is already in my life?
right in front of me or maybe you're in disguise

Who doesn't long for someone to hold who knows how to love you without being told
somebody tell me why I'm on my own if there's a soulmate for everyone

Here we are again, circles never end. how do I find the perfect fit?
there's enough for everyone but I'm still waiting in line

Who doesn't long for someone to hold who knows how to love you without being told
somebody tell me why I'm on my own if there's a soulmate for everyone

If there's a soulmate for everyone

Most relationships seem so transitory
They're all good but not the permanent one

Who doesn't long for someone to hold who knows how to love you without being told
somebody tell me why I'm on my own if there's a soulmate for everyone

Who doesn't long for someone to hold who knows how to love you without being told
somebody tell me why I'm on my own if there's a soulmate for everyone

If there's a soulmate for everyone

Check the Soulmate song on youtube.

I have joined the rest of the modern world and just purchased the new ipod nano in red.
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I went to the Summer of Love festival in Golden Gate Park. I was only there for a couple of hours but I saw some great rock legends from the 60's. Ray Manzarek from The Doors was there. He lives up in Napa and played keyboards for this guy reading god awful beat poetry. Then Barry from Country Joe McDonald and the Fish played some killer 60's acid rock music. And then The Chamber Brothers came on and "Time has come today". I love that song and it was really cool to hear it live. Country Joe McDonald came later but by then the summer of love 40 years later had soured for me. People were drunk and stoned and a freaky hippie dude tried to push me into the bushes to get to his place, and by the second time someone bumped me and I almost fell into the bushes again I decided it was time to go home.

My fascination with the 60's is dead. When I was younger I kept thinking how cool it would be to live in the 60's and be part of the revolution. But 40 years later it doesn't seem much has changed, and maybe the revolution was nothing but media hype.
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So last Thursday I moved down to new floor, and honestly it's like I'm starting over again in a new job even though I know some of people on the floor. I am feeling so stressed out and I am totally channeling my insecure nerdy teenage self. I don't ever remember feeling this stressed when I started a new job, but then it's been awhile since that has happened.
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I was thinking about M-Square today and you know one of the major reasons I went out with him was because he said he played football for the University of Hawaii. My biggest fantasy in high school was to date a UH football player, and M-Square helped me to fulfill this very old fantasy of mine. Notice I said date and not marry. That was probably why things went so south with us. I should have just been satisfied to date him and then left it at that. What was I thinking dreaming about marriage. My fantasy image couldn't be sustained by reality, and a bit of OC reality at that and straight from Laguna Beach no less. I had my own real world rude awakening just like on mtv.
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I was mailing some letters today, when I noticed a sign on the mailbox which said "any letter over 13 ounces must be mailed in person at the post office because of a heightened security alert.". This is new for me, or is this old news for everyone else.

I'm at my local Starfreaks writing this and a Grateful Dead song is playing. I am on writing jag and about to finish chapter 2 of my next novel. If I keep up this pace I may have a finshed first draft by the end of the year, which would be amazingly exciting.

My new writing routine is to take notes on my story and what I'm writing about that day, if I get a seat on the N Judah. Then I head to Starfeaks to write for an hour. This is my third day of this new routine and it's working so far. My only problem is I am way too tired to workout when I get home. This part is not working. I'm thinking I have to get up an hour earlier and workout then, but I hate to get up early. I will have to resolve this issue soon because I so need to keep working out.
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My baby brother is so cool. He remembered that I kept talking about wanting a gold plumeria bracelet. He's been saying since May that he was going to buy me one, and he finally sent it and I picked it up today. I found a picture on the Net that sort of looks like the bracelet he sent me.

My bracelet has 10 plumeria blossoms on it and my brother says he bought it from Hallmark Jewelers at Ala Moana. The back of it says it's 14k gold and when I asked my brother if it was expensive, he said it was mid-range. The gold is not sanded but very smooth.

I've been researching prices for these kinds of bracelets and he must have at least spent over $300 on it. I love my bracelet! I feel so hawaiian wearing it. I've been wanting one of these bracelets for years, but it seemed like such an extravagant thing to do. I mean I do love jewelry and I love buying pieces for myself, but it's still a big deal for me to spend more than $200 on a piece. Buying a 14k gold plumeria bracelet has always been one of those items I told myself I would buy when I got a big chunk of money, but it was a "someday I might buy it" kind of item.

So I have it now, and I'm like so happy and excited. My brother told me when we were together in LA in June that I was now his favourite sister, because I was the only one he didn't have to worry or financially take care of. He is so funny; like I would ever expect him to do that.

First of all, he's my half brother and I never had any expectations that he would take care of me. My brother inherited money from his dad's family, include several pieces of property on the island of Oahu, because he was the only male grandchild. Along with money and land, my brother also inherited several museum quality chinese antiques. But my brother is also a workaholic who's been working since he got out of high school, including a stint as a male model. So it's not like he's just been lazing around and spending his inheritance. He even dabbled in stocks for awhile and made a small fortune doing call and put options. He went to college and trained to be a real estate appraiser and finally decided four years ago to open up his own business.

The guy like works all the time. When I stayed at his house last January, he was getting up and starting work at 6:3o am and keep working till around 8 pm. Even when we were in LA in June, he was checking the boards for appraisal jobs. He's on like some list for a large bank where he's the one they call first. God, I wish I had his energy!

My brother is very generous but he's also very frugal. He likes to spend money on the things he thinks are important and then totally be tight-fisted about everything else. It used to annoy the heck out of me, because he would harass me for buying $100 silk Tommy Bahama shirts, but my brother says if things go right financially he'll be able to retire in a few years. I wish I had his bank accounts and his frugal spending ways.

I was out having drinks with friends at Faz on Steuart Street, and as we were walking past Boulevard Restaurant I saw this woman who looked so familiar. I knew she wasn't anyone I knew, but then it dawned on me that it was Famke Janssen from X-Men. She was coming out of Boulevard with some guy. Her featuress were exotic and so beautiful and she was Hollywood thin, but she didn't look as good in person as she did in the movie. She actually looked a little tired. She was wearing one of those long sweaters in a beigish colour, jeans that were rolled up and gorgeous high heeled black leather boots.

Her and her man were walking up Mission Street to probably Hotel Vitale. I normally never ever recognize famous people, but her face was so distinctive. I told one of my friends about her and when she looked at her, she agreed with me that it was Famke. What a hoot! She actually looked quite distinctive even for San Francisco, which is saying alot.

I went to the Feast of Lanterns the weekend I was in Monterey in July. My friend who we were visiting took this picture and sent it to me.

I'm watching VH1's "The Fabulous Life presents High Priced Hollywood Hotness". The announcer says that the average celebrities exercise 3 hours a day. That's a lot. I remember when I was at the spa in Utah I worked out four hours a day with a two hour morning hike from 6 am to 8 am and then a two hour aerobics class. I lost 2o inches after one week. I was also on a strict vegan diet and even went to vegan cooking classes.

Looking good isn't cheap either. Now that I'm older it seems to be all about maintenance on a regular basis. I was never that good about keeping my brows plucked and waxed, but I now have an appointment every three weeks to have someone do it. I've gotten facials, but it's never been a priority, but now I am getting them every three months.

People keep telling about an article in the New York Times that came out a few weeks ago about the amount of money some women spend to look good, and they're not even Hollywood stars. I'm thinking to myself, is this why I'm not measuring up? Because I'm not spending enoug money.

One expense that is so worth it is a personal trainer at the gym. I did it for a year once and I loved it, but it does add up financially. One of these days, I'll go back to getting a trainer. I had a great trainer who was a body builder in the army. He was tough, maybe too tough. He trained me so hard on weights that I would often get colds because I was overtraining.

I think it's true whta the announcer is saying. The first thing anyone does when they receive lots of money is to spend it on getting their body flaws fixed. Whether it's getting a bigger rack, a better nose, a smaller tummy, a tighter face, or whiter teeth.

Speaking of teeth, a friend of mine constantly raves about getting her teeth whitened. She does it all the time. I asked my dentist about it and he told he could do it but if I wanted to do it myself, Crest Premium White Strips work just well. The only advantage to whitening your teeth at the dentist's office is it can be done in one or two apointments. But my dentist told me it's addictive and that once you get it done, you want to keep doing it. He said most people have it have it done every two years. I'm trying the Crest Whitestrips that I bought at Walgreens, but I'm not regular about using them. Once I run out of strips, I'm going to the premium variety. I think the white strips do work, but I have a hard time keeping the bottom ones on. My teeth aren't super white, but I think the strips have lightened them a little.

The show had a whole section on detox diets. I love the master cleanse and did my first one when I was 23 years old. I used to do the cleanse all the time, but it's been a few years since I've done one. I read the master cleanse is like ammonia for the body so it's harsh. I used to be able to do for two weeks at a time, but I can only take it for three days now. If you're going to do the master cleanse, make sure you get organic lemons, grade b or c maple syrup, and cayenne pepper in liquid form if you can find it. Don't forget to also take a natural laxative like Swiss Kriss. A salt water cleanse during the master cleanse also works well. With the salt water cleanse, you need to drink two quarts of water with two tablespoons of natural sea salt. You drink the mixture all down, then an hour or two later, you should be prepared to sit on the toilet, because the salt will take all the food out of your system. Sounds disgusting, but it works great.

Oh well, gotta go. My second favourite show on tv is now playing "Burn Notice". My favourite show is "The Closer". Monday night's show was great. Kyra's boyfriend on the show gave her an engagement ring from Tiffany's. I want my future husband to present me with a Tiffany's engagement ring. That would be like my most ultimate engagement fantasy! Location and circumstances don't matter, just break out that little blue box.

My prayers go out to the families, loved ones and victims of the Minneapolis bridge collapse. I watched the reports on the various news channels all night long, and it was very depressing. I visted Minneapolis once while in college to see a play at the Walker Center, and I hear it's great town. The scariest thing about the news reports was that they said people liked to carpool in Minneapolis, so the body count and the number of hurt people could be greater. Not a great advert for carpooling was it?

I'm in Monterey at the 40th anniversary of the Monterey Pop Festival in 1967, which they are calling the "Monterey Summer of Love" festival. We saw a Doors tribute band and now we're listening to a San Jose production of the musical "Hair".

I'm having a groovy time. If you could prove you were over 50 today, you could get in for free. There are a ton of hippies here in costume, hippie wannabees, and real one who look like the last 40 years have not treated them very kindly.

So 40 years after the summer of love, there's a republican in the Whitehouse and we are again in a war that many find questionable. What happened to the supposed revolution of peace, love and music?
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I'm at the Shoreline Amphitheatre in Mountain View listening to the band Eisley. They are opening for the group The Fray, who will play later tonight. I am here with two friends, and it's so fun because I haven't been here for a concert in years.
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I am sitting in Union Square waiting for an appointment, and a high school band is playing latin jazz music. The weather is warm for San Francisco. I wish I had a camera on my blackberry so I could upload a pic for everyone to see.
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I was checking the email for this blog and found a fanmail from a casual reader. It's fun for me to know that random people are reading my blog and enjoying what they read, even if it is my bizarro personal life.

The fanmail referred to my relationship with M-Square, whom I haven't spoken to since February 2006 but whom I occassionaly spy on only because he has a profile on myspace. I'm quite pathetic huh! The more I read the comments he gets, the more I realize that us breaking up was probably the best thing that could have happened, and I totally am grateful to him that he decided to leave my life. I think he kind of wanted to beat me to the punc, because I think I probably would have broken up with him sooner rather than later.

For those of you who know the M-Square saga, the dialogue I wrote a couple of days was inspired by him and some of the issues we went through as a couple. 99% of it is totally made up but I tried to write the guy part like M-Square was talking to me, although I know that he would totally protest that I wasn't feeling him and got his way of talking totally wrong.

Memo to guys - if you've been any kind of schmuck to the girl you are dating, for god's sake, don't use that phrase "you're not feeling me" in the middle of an argument. When M-Square said it to me I just wanted to yell back. "No, I don't know what it's like to feel like a lying good-for-nothing freak and I don't ever want to experience those kinds of feelings." The "you're not feeling me" line only works if you're someone the person you're speaking to wants or cares to know what you're feeling, and most people do not want to know what it feels like to be a jerk. People have enough problems about feeling their own jerkiness, so they certainly don't need to feel any of yours.

I've spent the whole night listening to different ring tones, but couldn't decide which one to buy. The ones I really want would be really too loud for the office. I'm sure my cube mates would freak out if they heard a song by Disturbed coming out of my phone. But I love Disturbed songs and they are loud enough so I could hear them.

If I was going for my favorite band I guess I would have to pick The Cure, but then they have these funny ones like this guy saying "is this a booty call?" or some other guy saying don't answer the phone because it's a wrong number. There's also Darth Vader and Yoda telling you to answer your phone. How funny is that.

Actually, the ones that sounded pretty good were:
- intro to Sweet Child of Mine by Guns N Roses
- Synth intro to Baby O'Reilly by The Who
- All allong the Watchtower intro by Jimi Hendrix
- Wish you were here by Pink Floyd - such a funny ring for a phone

But then I keep thinking it would be kind of fun to have a classical music phone ring, but would I be able to hear the phone ring when it's in my bag? I don't think so.

I'm in a playwriting mood these days. I'm even thinking of resurrecting that play I wrote years ago and finishing it. I had some great ideas for the rest of the scenes yesterday.

This fictional conversation between a male and a female flowed out of me this afternoon. I think it will make for an interesting scene in a future play.

**********************************

Female: You know I used to really think you were something some back in the day. God, you were amazing … but l mean, look at you now.

Male: People change, priorities change, life makes you change.

Female: NO! Not like this, not like you.

Male: I’m still the same person underneath.

Female: No, you’re not. You were strong, you were invincible, you were like Russell Crowe in that gladiatior movie, you could unleash hell.

Male: I still can if I want to.

Female: Unleash what? you can barely pay your rent, you don’t even have health insurance. OH MY GOD, you’re like a, like a BUM.

Male: That’s harsh.

Female: But it’s truth isn’t it? Reality is harsh.

Male: I’ll make a comeback. I always do. I’m in school now at USC, getting a different degree, learning different things. Opportunities will open up for me, you’ll see.

Female: What I see is someone who has, god what is that odd little phrase my mother used to always use, “fallen from grace”. Only you didn’t just fall from grace, you devolved backwards into something very unrecognizable.

Male: Life is a learning experience. We are all here to learn different things, new things. Give me a chance. Look, you loved me once before. Okay, maybe that was a long time ago, but you did love me once. And it was real, very real.

Female: I know it was real, I was there remember. And our souls talked to each other again last night, and it was like coming home after a very long journey. But it’s different. I’ve changed, you’ve changed. I’ve gone forward by leaps and bounds, and you. I don’t know where you’ve gone, I don’t where you’ve been, and I definitely don’t want to be where you are now.

Male: But we can make it work, I know we can. You're not feeling me. You're not feeling me at all.

Female: You're right. I don't feel you and I don't want to feel you. How long before the demons come? How long before you’re hanging out at the bar more than you’re at home with me? How long before you find redemption and forgetfulness at the Temple of Glenlivet.

Male: I told you that part of my life is all over. I’m on the wagon now. For good.

Female: Every alcoholic falls off the wagon, now and again. They’ve done studies.

Male: Not me. I told you I’m committed to changing my life. Besides, I did my time at Harbor Justice. I went to AA meetings. I was even an AA meeting leader for chrissakes. Doesn’t that tell you I’ve changed?

Female: And when was the last time you had a forty?

Male: Last night as a matter of fact. I can drink beer. I just can’t drink the hard stuff.

Female: Did you announce that in your AA meeting? Hi! I’m an alcoholic and I can still chug a 40.

Male: I don’t need those meetings anymore. I told you I’m sober and I’m going to stay that way.
Female: You know what, you’re right. You haven’t changed. You’re still the same stupid jerk I fell in love with, what centuries ago, only this time I’ve changed and I’m not about to fall for your Mr. Genius BS logic. You know what your problem is. You were always just a little too smart for you own good. But if you were so smart, how the hell did you get a double DUI in the first place? You know what, forget it. I’m out of here. It was fun, it was real, and I still love you. You were definitely right about that. But I’m not going to do this anymore. I’m not going to listen to you and your messed up mind twist me and my life around again. You had your chance with me, and you know what, you blew it, yet again.

Male: You can’t just walk out on me.

Female: Oh yeah, watch me.

Male: You’ll be back. You’re like a boomerang, you always come back.

Female: Not this time, babe, not this time.

Male: Fine. Then leave. You know what, I’m going to do you one better. I don’t want you to ever call me again. I’m going to break up with you first.

Female: Whatever.

(Female picks up bag and leaves the room slamming the door behind her. Male sits there with a stunned expression on his face. Male gets up walks to the kitchen, opens the refrigerator door, pops open a 40 oz of beer and starting chugging.)

I'm very torn between wanting to buy the final installment of the Harry Potter series when it comes out or waiting till it comes out in paperback because all the books I have are in paperback. All my Harry Potter books are the UK paperback children's version of the novels. One of these days, I'd like to read the American version of the novels to see if there's a huge difference.

If I buy the hardback version, then the book will really out of place sitting on the book shelf next to its paperback brethren. But, darn, darn, I am dying to read what happens at the end. I am one of those readers who always reads the ending of the book before I've finished reading. I absolutely hate the suspense of not knowing what's going to happen at the end. It doesn't bother me the slightest bit that I know the ending, I mean who cares. What's fun for me is seeing how the author achieved the ending and whether the ending makes sense given everything that's come before.

I still hate the ending of "Cold Mountain". I don't say that about very many stories. The ending makes perfect sense and the story couldn't have ended any other way, but I hate that the characters don't get together.

Speaking of sad endings, Philip Pullman's books starting with The Golden Compass is being made into a movie. Talka about another novel series where the ending made me cry so much. It was very, very poignant and I was surprised that it stirred that much emotion in me. I'm not sure I'd want to see that ending on the big screen. It would be too painful.

Okay, back to Harry Potter. Here's who I think will die in the final novel.
Valdemort, Snape, Hermoine, Ron, Sirius Black and his brother again because they will come back to life somehow but will be killed defending Harry. I also think Lucius and his son Draco Malfoy will die, but it will be sad for Draco because he was more of a coward than an evil person.

They had a Harry Potter movie marathon over the weekend and I got really interested in the books again after watching the movies, so I read The Order of the Phoenix and The Half-Blood Prince last night. JK Rowling is a brilliant plot writer. I love all the story lines are being tied up.

I watched an interview she did on some BBC program where she said she cried after she wrote one chapter, and I think she cried about Snapes dying. I think it's obvious that Snapes has to die. I think RAB has to be Sirius Black's brother. I mean why bother to mention the man twice and not have him show up somewhere. I'm speculating that Sirius comes back from the dead with his brother and they both help Harry to defeat Valdemort, but then they both go back to where ever they came from. They could even come back with Dumbledore, who went out without much of a fight, like Obewon Kanobi in Star Wars.

JK Rowling said that the colour of Harry's eyes and the fact that he has his mother's eyes is an important plot point. My speculation is that Voldemort will either make Harry look like him or make himself look like Harry, and that the only way to tell them apart and kill one of them would be by the eye colour.

I don't like to think of Harry dying, but after The Order of the Phoenix I was getting the feeling that he might. There's too much talk about dying nobly for one cause and going into a fight with your eyes open. But he might not, I just got a feeling that he might have to die to make his character arc make sense.

I'm also thinking that Hermoine and Ron might die to protect Harry, which would be just like his parents. There are paralells between Hermoine and Ron's relationship and his parents. Ron is a pure blood just like Harry's father, and Hermoine is muggle born like Harry's mother. Harry's mother hated Harry's father when they first met, but got together their last year at school. I think before Hermoine and Ron die that they will get together and realize they love each other.

Poor Harry Potter. I hope this Ron/Hermoine scenario doesn't true but Harry seems to have a lot of anger and revenge feelings about this parents' murder right now, which is making him very dark. I can't help but think of Luke Skywalker who had to give up his anger and hatred before he became a full Jedi. One way for a person to give up their anger is to reexperience the tragedy which caused the anger, only under different circumstances. Maybe Harry has to live through his family, because Ron and Hermoine are his chosen family, dying again to realize the futility of revenge and anger.

I can see Harry becoming Headmaster at Hogwarts, and him marrying Ginny, who would be like Minerva McGonagall. There are some nice parallels there. I read somewhere that Dumbledore was too isolated. Dumbledore told Harry that witches and wizards do not understand the mystery of the human heart, which explains their seeming cruelty. Even Harry's own father was quite cruel when he was a teenager. But love changed him, and for the change to be complete in the witch and wizard worlds, there has to be a leader who has both the wizard/witch gifts and the gift of a human heart which can love and make unexplainable sacrifices.

Wizards and witches really hates muggles, but what if witches and wizards helped muggles with their issues. It's odd that muggles and witches and wizards live in such parallel existence with each other, when it would be much better for the world if they could somehow work together.

It's what people are saying the "revolution" is all about; that there is a spiritual awakening going on with the countdown to 2012. People are realizing their true potential, their true powers which they have learn to use because things are supposedly going to come completely apart at 2012.

I'm at the Alameda County Fair watching Peter Noonan and Herman's Hermits with my friend K. I'm sure my real mom loved this band.
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There's a line in the movie "Queen of the Damned", where Lestat says something like - in LA which feeds on the beauty of youth I didn't eve cause a ripple.

I'm at a seminar at the Beverly Garland hotel in North Hollywood, and I think I finally get the differences between LA and San Francisco. Nothing causes a ripple in LA. It's too big, there are too many people, and everyone who lines here is too jaded and too cynical to care.

San Francisco is for all its big city talk is still a small town. I don't think in Los Angeles it would make the front page of the LA Times if the mayor was accused of doing cocaine.

Los Angeles' jadedness is calling me, just like NYC's anonymity called to me in high school. I like that LA is warm and I love that if I lived here I could disappear and do my own thing and not draw too much attention to myself. I can't really disappear in SF; I've lived there for too long and I'm always running into people I know.
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I'm sitting in the sun on the sand at Santa Monica state beach. It's warm and my brother and I are watching my neice frolicking in the ocean. I love southern Cali! It's nice and warm here.
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I just saw the movie "DOA - Dead on Arrival", and it was actually quite good. Good if you like pretty girls who can fight like boys, which I absolutely love. But boys will love it too as all the girls were pretty much half naked while they where fighting. The plot was shaky, but I've been subject to much worse. And in a kung fu action movie, who cares about plot because it's all about the fighting and the fighting was excellent.
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A view from my balcony at the Royal Hawaiian Hotel - a rainbow over Waikiki beach one rainy morning. This was the only rainbow I saw on my trip. I saw three rainbows on the first day when I was on Kauai last January

Another view from my balcony at the Royal Hawaiian hotel - Waikiki beach in the morning with Diamond Head in the background. Notice how they are already people in the water and surfers already surfing.

Speaking of Van Morrison, I saw Van Morrison at a Bob Dylan concert I went to years ago. Dylan asked him to join him on stage for a couple of numbers. Van Morrison's daughter joined the stage as well.

I would love to see Bob Dylan and his son Jakob Dylan (The Wallflowers) play on stage together. Bob Dylan is cool and such an icon! Bob Dylan's music has been playing in my house since I was a baby, so when I saw him I flashed back to my early years like to about age 5. I think I was cognizant of his music at age 5. That was weird. My mother taught me how to sing "Blowing in the wind" when I was little.

I was going to do some yoga tonight, so I'll guess I'll put on my Police cds and listen to them in honour of their concert. Wikipedia is so bad! We looked up The Police Reunion tour and got the set list and checked out the stage. My friend K is upset that Sting's son's band is the warm up band. When she saw the Rolling Stones in concert (another free ticket), Van Morrison was the warm-up band.

I think it's rock and roll nepotism at its best. Why not be the warm-up band for your dad's band? When a dad owns a business, the offspring take over when dad retires. Who says the same thing can't happen in a pop band?

My friend K is going to the Police Reunion concert tonight. I am so jealous! A friend called saying her other friend cancelled and asked my friend K if she wanted to go. It's all last minute, as my friend K only heard about the free ticket today. She's always going to concerts at the last minute. That kind of stuff never happens to me.

We both have the Police boxed cd set, and my friend K is a HUGE Sting fan. She has seen Sting in concert by himself before, but not when he was with The Police. My Police connection is that they played at my college before I attended, so I thought the school would get a ton of good bands coming through and playing. NOT! Nobody famous or on the way to being famous played during my four years there. Heck, I saw more famous bands playing for free at Justin Herman Plaza (like Live, Radiohead, Kansas) than I ever did at my school. What a rip!

She said the tickets are in the nose bleed seats, like probably Mt. Davis, which swings and shakes when it's really windy. But who cares! It's The Police! I want to hear "Roxanne", "Don't stand so close to me","Tea in the Sahara", "King of Pain", and "Every little thing she does is magic" live.

It's a beautiful day in San Francisco, although still a little breezy downtown.

I went for a walk in Golden Gate after work yesterday and most of the roses were in full bloom. I love roses so much. I'm sure people think I'm a nut case because I go around and smell all the different roses to find out which ones have smells. Not all roses have a smell, but when you find one that does it is so heavenly. Whenever I sniff a scented rose, it feelsl like I am stealing the rose's soul somehow. Of course the analogy would work better if after I sniffed a rose, it instantly died and all the petals fell off. Fortunately that hasn't happened yet, and even a scented rose that's half dead still gives out a great scent.

There's also this giant purple sculpture of half a head in the park, past the museums and the rose garden. The title of the sculpture is called "The Dreamer" and it was supposedly installed in May and is supposed to stay up till November. Good luck I say, as the poor artist left a sign saying that if there is graffiti on the statue he has to paint it over and doesn't get reimbursed. The next time I go to the park, I'll take a picture. And no, my blackberry does not have a camera. It's a big deal to me having to deal with the keyboard and a camera would kill me.

Did I mention I loved having my Henry, The Earl of Blackbery with me in Hawaii? I loved being able to check my personal email accounts and to be able to send emails without my laptop. I was so bad, and didn't once go near a computer. If I had to look something up, I used my blackberry. I didn't even check work email which is a first for me, although I'm not sure I could have done it from a public computer.

I finally had the chance the download the pictures from the camera, and I saw that I accidentally erased some of the photos. I was starting to suspect that instead of copying pictures to the memory card, I was actually deleting them. And sure enought that's what I did. When I put the card in the new card reader I bought, there were no images. The pictures I was taking were already being stored in the memory card, and I didn't have to copy the pics to the card. I had no idea I would be taking over 170 pictures. This is what happens I have a device that I hardly ever use, and then decide to use for a critical event. It's a big screw-up and I'm the stupid one to blame. I'm so mad at myself right now.

What I really should have done was put the 1 gig memory card in the camera. Had I done that, I wouln't have had to erase any pictures. Oh well, live and learn. I had such good pictures of Mount Haleakala, and now they're gone. Most of pics I took of my relatives at my cousin's wedding are gone. Damn! That was so dumb! I should have listened to my intuition and put the 1 gig memory card in. There were other people taking pictures at my cousin's wedding so hopefully they will send their pictures to me.

I'm really upset about erasing the Mount Haleakala pictures. I had so many photos of the silversword plant, which is a plant that only grows in volcanic ash. It was so other-worldly looking.

I'm sitting on my balcony which overlooks Waikiki beach at the Royal Hawaiian hotel. It's the pink hotel on Waikiki strip that's been here forever. It's amazingly beautiful! I would love to honeymoon here. The bathroom towels are pink, including the bathrobe.
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On a break from touring in the car, and eating rice and shoyu ahi poke in the parking lot of Star Market in the Honokawai Marketplace. Oh yeah, I'm washing it down with passion orange guava (pog) juice and chocolate covered macadamia nuts.
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My tropical drink came with a backscratcher. How funny is that. It tastes like on on maitai. My first sunset in Maui in years. The weather here is so balmy.
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Everytime I fly off my home island of Kauai it makes me teary-eyed, like the first time I left for college and I knew I was not coming back for on on long time. I think I will always feel sad I'm not a local island girl anymore. Which is so weird because I've been wanting to get off the rock ever since I was little.
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It's very hot on Maui, much hotter than on Kauai where we were for the last couple of days. My friend thinks there are more bugs on Maui than on Kauai. I think they just sprayed more bug spray at the Sheraton on Kauai. Hawaii as I remember was always full of bugs.
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At the Kaanapali Beach Hotel on Maui drinking maitais and listening to some cheesey hotel band singing hawaiian cocktail songs. We're waiting for the hula show, which is supposed to start soon. I haven't been to Maui since I was on on kid and the place looks so unfamiliar.
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I'm watching "Heroes" and I love the show, but honestly it has gotten so boring! I hate Silar! These people with all their powers and they can't kill him, what gives! I feel like it's such boirng and stupid Hollywood tv melodrama. UGH! It's like watching a scary movie and the dummies go and check out the spooky place.

The show started out so intelligently written and I feel like it's devolving into some mushy bad tv show. Kill Silar now and get it over with! I know there has to be a villian but Silar is just stupidly evil. He's not even fun evil, like Hannibal Lechter, he's just plain stupid icky evil. How boring!

I was getting my nails done tonight, and I heard a woman say her boyfriend was coming back tonight from a nine month tour of duty in Afghanistan and she was getting her nails done because of him.

It's interesting to me that in my isolated world reality pops in once in awhile n the oddest of ways.

That woman was getting flowers painted on her big toe, so I decided to do the same thing. My big toes look so cute with the flowers painted on them. It looks so feminine and sweet. The painted flowers makes my feet look so cute!

Speaking of photos from my $100 camera .... From a recent trip to Point Lobos.

The things you learn when you thoroughly read your camera manual. So I think the reason my photos haven't come out so well, was because I had the resolution set too low. It's a $100 Vivicam 3750 camera and it was a gift, so I can't complain.

I've now set the resolution to 3.1 mega pixels, even though my web search tells me that 4.0 pixel pictures are now the standard, so hopefully my pics will come out better. I can't compete with my cousin's $500 camera, but then again I don't think I would spend that much money on a camera. And despite my camera's cheap price, I did win a prize in my department's photo contest. It's never about the camera, it's about what the photographer sees. But it is great to have a camera that can take good pictures.

I'm going to Hawaii in a couple of days, and I was trying to figure out what do for a camera. My cousin gave me a camera a couple of years ago, but the camera didn't hold many photos. I'm not bringing my laptop, and I was trying to figure out how I was going to download the photos. I was even contemplating bringing my old camera on the trip because I still have couple of film rolls left.

So I'm reading the digital camera manual and the camera can take mem0ry cards. I check out the memory card area, and I must have forgotten I had one, but I have an 128MB SD memory card. I can store photos on the memory card! DUH! I feel like such a camera dummy. I have no memory of putting the memory card in there, but it's there and if I take 3 pixel shots I think I can store around 200 photos. I'm going to have buy an SD card reader when I get home, but when I checked prices I found they weren't that expensive.

I like the digital camera because it's small and it was free, but I miss the resolution of my Fuji camera. I took some great photos with that camera. Some of the photos are sooo good, people have told me to frame them. But the Fuji camera is heavy and not good for travel. I think I still want to keep it and take photos, but for travel the digital camera is the best.

The Musings of The Right Honourable Henry, Earl Blackberry who lives in sinful digital bliss with the Elfgirl in the City

I'm living with a new woman now, who at least had the decency to purchase a brown leather home/case for me. I was getting rather tired of having my body mangled by the things she keeps in that Coach purse of hers. In god's honest truth, those nasty pens of hers were doing all they could to scratch and terrorize me. At least I now have a home that is befitting of someone of my station, and a protectant from the horrors of whatever environment I'm deposited in.

My former owner never quite understood me. He returned me as soon as he could, preferring that nasty old Palm Treo. He was such a plebe! My new living mate understands me perfectly and loves the fact that I deliver her personal email to her instantly; I know she loves me. She can hear me too, and was able to pick up that I wanted a name and that my name is Henry.

All in all, I think I've come into a very good situation. I sit in my leather home most of the time, where I can rest because it turns me off automatically. Of course, I still deliver mail but at least I do it in a restful state. I really wish however, she would download some better themes for me. They must have better themes on the RIM website. I deserve to have the very best theme there is because I'm worth it.

The one thing I'm dreading is the migration of the HanDbase database to my memory. The data has been sitting on a Palm Tungsten E. I detest the Palm Family! They are such pretenders to the smartphone/PDA kingdom. They promise instant email delivery, but EXCUSE ME! It's not real time. They deliver mail at 15 minute intervals, and in what dictionary does every 15 minutes mean "real time". Really, the nerve of those Palm press people. But I like my owner's expression of "whatever". Whatever is right. She picked me and not a Palm to be her companion.

My stay so far with the Elfgirl in the City has been delightful! And she's even letting me post on her blog so I can have a voice out there in cyberspace. She has been most kind! I am looking forward to all of our adventures together.

An interesting read on french history and the new president they elected.

http://www.opinionjournal.com/federa.../?id=110010049

Can Sarkozy Save France?

A reform-minded politician is the next president. Now what?

BY MICHEL GURFINKEL, Wednesday, May 9, 2007

French elections can be as entertaining as Russian roulette. Twelve years ago, in early 1995, it was taken for granted that Edouard Balladur, a conservative prime minister, would succeed the outgoing Socialist president François Mitterrand without further ado. The left was then a spent force. So, evidently, was Jacques Chirac, another conservative Gaullist and a former prime minister (and unsuccessful contender for the presidency). But then a satiric TV show, "Les Guignols de l'Info" ("The News Puppets"), started featuring Chirac as a French-style Forrest Gump who would answer questions on any topic, political or economic, with the phrase "Eat apples." In April 1995, Jacques "Apple" Chirac won out over both Mr. Balladur and the socialist candidate Lionel Jospin.

Two years later, Mr. Chirac called a new parliamentary election, not in order to solve a crisis between the executive and the legislature but simply to suit his political convenience. This, though allowed under the constitution, had never been done before, and the public did not like it. His parliamentary majority was ousted and replaced by the socialists. Mr. Jospin now became prime minister and remained in place for five years.

The next presidential election, in 2002, was even more sensational. Bidding for a second seven-year term, Mr. Chirac was challenged again by Jospin, who this time looked sure to win. But then France's two-ballot system came into play. In the first round, a plethora of left-wing candidates pulled so many votes away from Mr. Jospin that he was reduced to the third position, behind Mr. Chirac and the far-right agitator Jean-Marie Le Pen, and was ejected from the race. On the second ballot, some 80% of the voters backed Mr. Chirac over Mr. Le Pen. Mr. Chirac was foolish enough to believe they had elected him.

And now we have the elections of 2007. First the presidential election, with its first ballot on April 22 followed by a runoff between the two top vote-getters this past Sunday, in which the maverick conservative Nicolas Sarkozy beat Socialist Royal; then the National Assembly elections in June.

Two years ago, everyone would have sworn that the presidential winner would be Mr. Sarkozy, France's minister of the interior. Then his fortunes declined sharply, while those of another star--and another maverick--were rising: Ms. Royal, governor of Poitou-Charentes in western France. Early this year, Mr. Sarkozy made a strong comeback, and Ms. Royal fell from grace. At that point a third candidate, Fransois Bayrou, a nice, decent, articulate, overambitious centrist, unexpectedly entered the picture, effectively challenging both Ms. Royal and Mr. Sarkozy. Complicating matters still further was the perennial candidacy of Ms. Le Pen.

Now that Mr. Sarkozy has won, what does it all mean? Common wisdom--in America at least--is that the French are and will always remain an utterly fickle people, as individuals and as a nation. This may be true--up to a point. My own belief is that the vagaries of the French vote tell us a great deal about the profound uncertainties the country is now facing.

Books about "national decline" and the "growing national crisis" have been best sellers in France for at least the past four years. The first and still the most trenchant was "La France qui tombe" ("Falling France," 2003), by Nicolas Baverez, a lawyer and a graduate of the immensely prestigious Ecole nationale d'administration (National School of Public Administration, or ENA). The same year saw the publication of "Le Grand Gaspillage" ("The Great Waste") by the distinguished Sorbonne historian Jacques Marseille, followed by the same author's "La Guerre des Deux France" ("The War of the Two Frances," 2004) and more recently "Les Bons Chiffres pour ne pas voter nul en 2007" ("The Right Figures for a Sensible Vote in 2007").

Both Messrs. Baverez and Marseille can be described as moderately conservative free-marketeers; both write columns for Le Point, the right-of-center weekly of news and opinion. Two other declinists come from a very different background. Michel Godet, a professor of industrial economy, was originally close to the Christian left but over time developed a robust critique of French industrial and social policy. His 2003 book "Le Choc de 2006" ("The Shock of 2006") pointed to the exorbitant price the country was paying for its extensive welfare state, a thesis elaborated this year in "Le Courage du bon sens" ("The Courage of Common Sense"). Claude Allègre, a geologist of repute, served as a minister in Mr. Jospin's government, where he tried and failed to reform the French educational system. Subsequently he became one of the country's best columnists, first at L'Express, the left-of-center weekly, and then at Le Point.

A fifth should be mentioned: Louis Chauvel, a young sociologist at the Institut de sciences politiques de Paris (Paris Institute for Political Science, or "SciencesPo," as everybody calls it), who has produced a short, dry assessment of the collapse of the French middle class, "Les Classes Moyennes à la dérive" ("The Middle Class Adrift"). Like Messrs. Godet and Allègre, Mr. Chauvel was seen initially as a man of the left, and is still supposed to be close to that orientation--which makes his indictment all the more notable.

To understand where these various authors are coming from, it helps to bear in mind the bedrock fact that France is one of the founding nations of Europe--that is to say, one of its oldest nation-states. Since the Great Revolution of 1789, since Napoleon, it has been a modern, secular society. In the 19th and 20th centuries it grew into a world leader in science, technology, finance, culture, art and literature. It conquered and then emancipated a large colonial empire. And it took a decisive role in the formation of what is set to become a 21st-century superpower, the European Union.

Very few countries can lay claim to such a glorious destiny, or to a more stable national identity. To be endowed with a special destiny and identity is, in itself, a political blessing. But what if that glory is challenged, and the national identity eroding? What if the actual stuff France is made of--its shared culture, its assurance of a common heritage--is disintegrating?

It has happened before. The early decades of the 20th century were a time when France, suddenly mired in a demographic and economic slowdown, seemed to hover between national pride and national despair. This culminated in the full-fledged disaster of 1940, when France was crushed by Germany and subjected to nationwide occupation. Fortunately, Germany was crushed in turn by the Anglo-Saxon powers and Soviet Russia, and France was allowed to recover. And so it did, with a vengeance. >From the 1950s through the 1970s, there was much talk in the world of a Japanese miracle, a German miracle, even an Italian miracle. France was a fourth and no less impressive miracle. National independence and national influence were restored, demographics improved, the economy boomed once more. France felt like France again.

Despite warning signs, like the simultaneous rise of Mr. Le Pen's National Front on the far right and of various Trotskyite and other radical groups on the far left, this newfound optimism lasted for two more decades. Since the mid-1990s, however, it has become untenable. Drawing from the works of our four or five whistleblowers and others, we can reliably paint the following portrait of France today.

Demographic Upheaval

Before the 1789 revolution and the Napoleonic wars, France, a very rich agricultural country, was the most populous state in Europe, with 27 million inhabitants. Right after the defeat at Waterloo, the birthrate started to decline, and by the last third of the 19th century had fallen close to zero. From 1800 to 1900, the French population increased by only 30%, whereas all other European nations experienced a growth rate ranging from 100% to 300% or even 400%. (Although differing on the reasons, most present-day demographers believe that France was one or two generations "ahead" of a cyclical population bust that ultimately affected the entire Western world.)

France was dwarfed by its neighbors--a leading factor in its defeat at the hands of Germany in 1870 and its desperate quest thereafter for anti-German alliances with Russia, with England, with the United States, with the small Central and Eastern European States, with anyone. Hence, too, its second and more humiliating defeat in 1940.

After 1945, the country made a startling demographic comeback. This could be attributed in part to another cyclical phenomenon known as the postwar baby boom--whereby, after the carnage of World War II, all combatant nations started to produce an average of three to four children per family. In France, additional factors were also at play, including immigration from other European countries or from overseas colonies. All in all, the French population grew by 25% in the 15 years between 1945 and 1960, leading Michel Debré, General de Gaulle's first prime minister, to draw up plans for a "100-million-person France" by the year 2000.

It did not materialize. By the late 1960s, France had swung, just like all other largely Caucasian nations, from baby boom to an even more drastic baby bust. The overall birthrate fell below the replacement level of 2.1 children per woman. Thanks to the generous natalist incentives of the French welfare state, and to the much higher degree of immigration from overseas countries with very high birthrates, the decline was not as pronounced as in other European countries; nevertheless, by 2007 France's population stood at only 63 million. According to the U.N., it is likely to be no higher than that in 2050.

True, most other European populations are also forecast to decline sharply; by these standards, stasis may sound like good news. But the French population as a whole is aging: in 2005, almost one-fourth of the population was above 60, while citizens between the ages of 20 and 59--i.e., those whose labor supports the rest of the population, either directly or indirectly--amounted to just 50%. Then, too, immigration, which is sustaining the French population, is at the same time gradually displacing the native French community. But that brings us to the next element of the picture.

Immigration Shock

Six million legal immigrants, 90% of them from the Islamic lands of the southern Mediterranean or from sub-Saharan Africa, have entered France over the past 30 years. The rate of entry is accelerating, and so is the rate of naturalization: 150,000 new citizens yearly since 1999. For its part, illegal immigration seems to be keeping pace--at a rate, according to some sources, of 100,000 to 200,000 every year. Most of these illegals stay, and are eventually granted immigrant rights. Moreover, any child born on French soil, whether of French or immigrant or illegal alien parents, is given French citizenship.

The immigrant and postimmigrant community is estimated today at more than 15 million. It is much younger than the native French population, and it tends to have a much higher birthrate. In all likelihood, then, its share of the population will rise dramatically over the next two decades, to the point where the 63 million people forecast for France in 2050 may inhabit a southern-Mediterranean, African, Islamic country that also happens to include native French enclaves. The trend is magnified still further by the growing sense of identification between the immigrant community and the five million nonwhite French natives living either in the overseas "departments" of the West Indies and Réunion Island or in France proper, many of whom are also converting to Islam.

The 2002 presidential election was the first in which immigrants and postimmigrants showed their muscle: when the anti-immigrant Mr. Le Pen was defeated by Mr. Chirac in the second round, thousands celebrated in France's major cities while waving the flags of their countries of origin, especially Algeria and Morocco. This year's election campaign highlighted even more dramatic changes. Every single political party, including that of Mr. Le Pen, wooed immigrant and postimmigrant voters, now a sizable chunk of the electorate. All the candidates surrounded themselves with immigrant aides, and in televised meetings of candidates with panels of ordinary citizens, immigrants, postimmigrants, and nonwhite native French were routinely overrepresented. Political leaders are quite candid about the leverage these "neo-French" will exert, and are entitled to exert, on the nation's future.

Social Chaos

Classic French society--the one that lasted from the revolution to the end of the 20th century, that is on display in the pages of the great French novelists, and that features in the work of the great film-makers from Renoir to Truffaut, from Chabrol to Sautet--was based first and foremost on strong nuclear families. As designed by Napoleon's civil code, divorce was allowed in principle but very difficult to obtain in practice; legitimate children, although strictly equal among themselves, were favored over natural ones; fathers wielded greater authority than mothers.

French society rested also on a pervasive but highly respected state apparatus that included the military forces and the civil service as well as the school system, the universities, and a whole array of state-run industries and workshops; on the franc, a gold-related currency; on special arrangements in religious matters according to which a secular government and a large freethinking minority coexisted with a nominally Catholic majority and other faiths; on a very substantial class of small farmers, and an even more substantial urban working class with a distinct socialist or communist subculture; on the predominance of Paris, the "city of lights"; and finally on a broad and vitally important middle class, comprising (in the words of Louis Chauvel) "senior civil servants, academics, engineers, entrepreneurs and tradesmen, executives and bureaucrats, craftsmen and shopkeepers," all sharing a common education and a common culture and committed to the maintenance of the national heritage.

Naturally, there were constant changes and adjustments; but these, until recently, were brought about in a piecemeal and cosmetic fashion. While the modern French polity was proverbially unstable--14 constitutions, three royal dynasties, five republics, and some 50 revolutionary crises from the storming of the Bastille in 1789 to the suburban riots of 2005--French society itself was remarkably stable. Just to give one stunning example: the baccalauréat, the test that monitors access to French universities, and the concours des Grandes Ecoles, the highly selective exams by which a slim elite is filtered into the top superuniversities, were suspended only once, during the German conquest of France in June 1940. Four years later, they were conducted as usual amid the no less feverish liberation of the country by the Allies.

All that is now gone.

The main contributing factor is probably the disintegration of the family. The divorce rate has grown from 12% in 1970 to almost 40% in 2005; 20% of all French couples are unwed; one-third of all mothers are living alone; 40% of all children are born to unmarried parents. Indeed, the "recombined family" has become the French sociological and ethical norm, the result of successive unions and separations in which children wander from home to home under arrangements of "shared parental authority" and must learn to get along with a host of similarly forlorn children produced by the companions of their biological parents. In order to keep up with the trend, the civil code itself has been revised--thus accelerating the process. Full equality has been introduced between fathers and mothers, between legitimate and natural children, between married and unmarried couples; although same-sex marriages are still not legal, same-sex civil unions are.

A series of other, analogous disruptions has affected every aspect of the French way of life. While the state has grown inordinately, most of its rule-making functions have all but disappeared. Everybody knows that the ultimate seat of power, in terms of laws and regulations as well as in terms of judicial recourse, is now the EU rather than the French Republic, the European Parliament and the European Commission rather than the French Parliament and the French government. State schools, once excellent, have been crippled by the combined effects of the feminization of the teacher corps and immigration. In most urban areas, school premises have been effectively consigned to teenage thugs who make a point of constantly challenging and humiliating female teachers and principals. State universities, once outstanding, have steadily deteriorated since 1968, and the superuniversities or Grandes Ecoles have faced fierce competition in the global learning market. (According to a March 2007 report, not a single French academic institution is listed among the world's 100 best universities.) Since the abolition of the draft in 1995, the state's armed might has been reduced to a largely symbolic nuclear capacity and a rather small rapid-deployment force for peacekeeping missions only. And the franc has been replaced by the euro.

As far as religion is concerned, the Catholic Church collapsed in the late 1960s and has never recovered: according to one recent poll, only 51% of the French own to being Catholic, and only 17% of these observe Catholic rituals. Evangelical Protestants are trying to fill the Christian void--there may now be twice as many evangelicals as mainstream Protestants--and the Catholic Church itself, or at least the laity, is attempting to fight back, so far without discernible success. As for the French secular religions (the freethinkers, the so-called humanistic schools of thought, the old socialist and communist subcultures), these are faring even worse.

Agriculture, industrialized and now EU-sponsored, still plays a sizable role in the French economy, but farmers have virtually vanished as a class (constituting only 3% of the working population), and whole sections of the countryside have reverted to fallow land and untended forests. The industrial working class is shrinking as well: from 38.5% of all jobs in 1974 to about 20% in 2005. Workers are deserting both the unions and the left-wing political parties. Thanks to the depredations of urban-renewal projects, historic Paris has been emptied of its traditional working- and middle-class population and turned into a yuppie theme park. Much of its unique vibrancy is gone, and other French cities have so far not been able to replace it or to compete with the so-called Eurocities of London, Brussels, Amsterdam, Munich, Berlin, Zurich, Milan, Barcelona.

The French middle class, Mr. Chauvel sums up, is haunted by "a sense of impending doom." Salaries have not kept pace since the 1980s; meritocracy no longer seems to work as a vehicle of social promotion; unemployment is climbing, devastating the lives of people already deprived of a functioning family; property has become unaffordable unless one inherits; prospects of a secure retirement grow dimmer every year. The parents of today's middle class, Mr. Chauvel writes, "dramatically improved their own standards of living," but the children "know they will not enjoy a similar fate. In fact they fear they will be downgraded to an impoverished condition.

"Finally, as if all this were not bad enough, there is crime. Until the 1960s, France was largely a safe country: people like my parents would slip their keys under the doormat or just leave the door unlocked. It is now an extremely unsafe country, rife with violent assault, arson, armed robbery and murder, often savage. According to the Institute of National Statistics, the overall crime rate--the ratio of reported criminal activity to population--grew from 12% in 1960, to over 60% in 1980, to about 70% in 2000. The rise may be related to all sorts of circumstances, including economic ones. But it is incontrovertibly related to immigration. According to police sources, over 60% of the criminals and over 90% of the crime bosses operating on French soil are either foreigners, immigrants or the children of immigrants.

Bankruptcy

France is still indisputably one of the richest and most economically successful countries in the world. It has a gross domestic product of $2.2 trillion. Its per capita national income is above $30,000. In other words, it is in the same league as Japan and Germany, two much more populous countries.

Present French wealth rests in part on traditional occupations like agriculture, tourism and fashion; in the past 30 years, these have turned into high-value-added activities. It is also rooted in traditional industries and services (think of Airbus in aviation, Carrefour in mass distribution, Accor in the hotel business, Total-Elf in oil, Renault and Peugeot in the car industry, international banks like Société Générale and BNP-Paribas) as well as in high-technology fields (nuclear energy, telecom, pharmaceuticals). But more disquieting developments have been surfacing over the past two decades.

Whereas most big French companies have been profitable for years, the French GDP has been growing very slowly or not at all. What this means is that French industry and services derive the bulk of their revenue from activities overseas rather than from the domestic economy. In fact, some companies have already drawn the logical conclusion and moved out: a flagship French company like Renault is now registered in the Netherlands.

As for those remaining at home, they are not able to provide enough jobs for the present working population of approximately 30 million. And so about 9% of French residents are unemployed--roughly twice the rate in Britain, Ireland, the Scandinavian countries, Japan or the United States. Among able-bodied persons under 24, the unemployment rate jumps to 22%. To top it off, over 50% of today's jobs are thought to be more "virtual" than "actual," i.e., they fail the test of rational business management. According to an index compiled by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, the average number of hours "effectively" devoted to work is only 617 yearly for France, as against 801 in Britain and 865 in the United States.

How do the French cope with this? Simple: They rely on an ever-expanding welfare state that takes care of the unemployed, the poor who are beyond any prospect of a viable job, the uneconomical state-run companies, and the supernumerary petty civil servants or "public-convenience" workers. And this does not count the various handouts and incentives, usually in the form of tax rebates, bestowed by the government on companies that agree not to shut down and move elsewhere.

This aspect of the system started in 1936 with the introduction of paid holidays and official recognition of the role of trade unions. It became firmly entrenched in 1945 with the creation of Securité Sociale, an extensive program of health, retirement and family benefits. More social programs were to come in the 1950s, including large-scale public-housing works.

A guaranteed minimum wage was introduced in 1950, to be replaced in 1968 by a constantly upgraded "guaranteed-growth minimum wage." Working hours were gradually reduced, either by the constant expansion of paid vacation time (from two weeks in 1936 to five weeks in 1982) or by the downsizing of the work week to 35 from 40 hours. Retirement was made compulsory at age 65, in some cases much earlier. "Preretirement," that is, early retirement with full benefits, became a usual practice in the 1970s. Dismissals were made subject to bureaucratic review, and were frequently compensated by special benefits. Both the civil service and the state-run companies were supposed to create jobs for jobs' sake.

The state also covers education. Elementary schools and high school have been free since the days of the Third Republic; attempts in the 1960s to raise tuition fees for colleges to a meaningful level failed abjectly, as did efforts to introduce more competitive selection for college admission.

The process reached its apex in the 1982 Revenu minimum d'insertion ("minimum social-integration income")--which provides a state income to the long-term unemployed, either French or alien--and the 1999 Couverture medicale universelle ("universal medical coverage"), which gives the same group free access to the (already subsidized and low-cost) health service. All in all, the state budget now eats up 54% of the nation's GDP, while taxation absorbs 44% of real income.

As Jacques Marseille points out in "Les Bons Chiffres," France is becoming a dual country, in which the majority lives on its "guaranteed-growth minimum wage" and a not-so-fortunate minority pays the "tax on fortune." Even so, the state cannot make ends meet and has been borrowing extensively. The public debt grew from the present-day equivalent of 213 billion euros in 1978 to 454 billion in 1990. It then jumped to EU740 billion in 1995, and grew again to EU.2 trillion by the end of last year.

But what is called public debt in France is less than half of what would be listed under that heading in countries like the United States or Canada. The category does not include the retirement funds for the civil service (between EU800 billion and EU trillion), the national-health-service deficit, or various private debts (like that of Credit Lyonnais) taken over by the state. In fact, the true public debt amounts to something like EU2.7 trillion, or 130% of GDP. Mr. Marseille warns that it may double over the next 15 years. This is on the scale of the debt of the Ottoman empire in the late 19th century.

Jacques Chirac was the worst or at any rate the least effective president in the history of the Fifth Republic, the regime founded by Charles de Gaulle in 1958. It was in his two terms--1995 to 2002 and 2002 to 2007--that the French crisis turned into a catastrophe.

In fairness, one must acknowledge that Mr. Chirac realized at the outset that things were deteriorating, and instructed his first prime minister, Alain Jupp, to implement several key reforms. Unfortunately, neither he nor Mr. Jupp managed to mobilize public support for the effort, or for that matter to focus on the appropriate measures. Less than a year after his election, protracted strikes and demonstrations forced him to withdraw most of his reform bills. He would never recover, and never again try in earnest to salvage the country.

If Mr. Chirac presided over a "falling France," the three main contenders in this year's presidential race were all born, so to speak, after the fall. They are younger than Mr. Chirac, by about two decades--Mr. Bayrou is 55, Royal 53, Sarkozy 52--and their colorful personal and political narratives, each in its own way, fit with the present chaotic situation. None of them would have been a feasible candidate in previous elections. But that is not to say that any of them, if elected, could be expected to stop or easily reverse France's downward curve.

Viewed against the grim backdrop of France's decline, indeed, this year's election campaign seems almost irrelevant. For that decline is related not so much to the policies of this or that national leader, past, present or prospective, as to the essential workings of the country's political system ever since the inception of the Fifth Republic in 1958.

France is nominally a democratic republic, with a popularly elected president, a bicameral Parliament (where most power lies with the lower chamber, the National Assembly), 22 regional governments and about 40,000 local councils, a constitutional court, and a more or less independent judiciary. It adheres to the original French bill of rights, issued in 1789, and other bills or declarations including the 1948 U.N. Charter of Human Rights and the two European charters of rights, the first issued by the Council of Europe in 1950 and the second promulgated by the European Community in 2000.

The reality is different. There are strange, outlandish, Pinochet-like authoritarian elements in the 1958 constitution and in the way that constitution is interpreted. The president can bypass the regular lawmaking procedures and call a referendum on any legislation or even on any constitutional change he favors. Under Article 16, he can declare a state of emergency and rule as a near-dictator for a period of months. "Domaine réservé"--"private domain"--a concept that appears nowhere in the written constitution but is nevertheless part of it, gives him almost exclusive control in matters pertaining to national defense, foreign affairs and state security. Even the right to pass a bill, that hallmark of modern democracy, has been largely withdrawn from Parliament, since government-initiated bills, dubbed "projects," have priority over parliamentary bills, known merely as "proposals.

"True enough, there are countervailing powers, most of them unintended by the redactors of the constitution. Referendums can be lost. The executive branch is weakened by latent competition between the president and the prime minister: the former may appoint the latter but may not dismiss him. Even when both belong to the same party, conflicts are frequent, and such conflict can lead to a state of dual authority (a k a "cohabitation"). France then has to resort to ridiculous measures like sending both its head of state and its head of government to international venues like the European Council or meetings of the G-7 and G-8.

But what really undermines France as a democracy is the constitution behind the constitution: that is, the role played by the nonelected state bureaucracy. As Mr. Chauvel puts it:
What used to be said of Prussia--other states have armies, but Prussia is an army that owns a state--applies to France today, with a slight difference. Other countries may have a state bureaucracy, but France is a state bureaucracy that owns a country.

Statism in France is hardly a new issue. Tocqueville devoted a book, "The Old Regime and the Revolution," to the subject. He contended that the 1789 revolution, for all its upheavals and radicalism, had ended by reinforcing rather than destroying the monarchical nature of the French state; everything still revolved around the central power and its hierarchically organized agencies. And bureaucratic statism was to play an even more pervasive role in the late 19th and especially in the 20th century.

In 1940, the Vichy regime set up some 60 "leadership schools." After the liberation of France, one of them, located in the southern Alps, became the model for the Ecole nationale d'administration, founded in 1945 by de Gaulle. Better known by its initials--ENA--the new institution was the epitome of meritocracy. Entry was subject to a competitive examination and in practice highly restricted. The curriculum was very broad: it included economics and management as well as public or administrative law. ENA students traveled a great deal, both in France and elsewhere. What was deemed essential, however, was the school's spirit: a fierce resolve to make the country great again, and a feeling that ENA graduates were not so much civil servants as the nation's mentors and guardians.

It took the ENA a decade to mature from a mere project into a full-fledged operation. By the time its graduates, soon renamed "enarchs," became numerous enough to fill up most senior positions in public administration, France seemed mired in disaster again. The Fourth Republic was a weak all-parliamentary regime, riddled with ministerial chaos and corruption and reeling from defeat in Indochina and the outbreak of war in Algeria. On the other hand, the "French miracle" was under way, thanks to developments like the baby boom, postwar economic growth, the Marshall Plan and European integration. The question was whether France could seize the moment.

De Gaulle saw to it. Living in apparent seclusion since the early 1950s at Colombey-les-Deux-Eglises, a hamlet in rural eastern France, he still had many loyal--even fanatical--supporters. In 1958, when part of the French military rebelled in Algeria, a frightened political class called on the old general to "rescue the republic." He obliged, but in doing so insisted on remodeling the constitution in his own way and on having it approved by referendum. The Fifth Republic was born, de Gaulle was elected president, and he stayed in charge for 10 years.

The 1958 constitution was drafted by Michel Debré, a fervent Gaullist who had also been the main architect of the ENA. No French constitution since the Second Empire so drastically enhanced the executive branch or downgraded the legislature. Even more pertinent, however, was its preferential treatment of civil servants and enarchs over elected politicians. In a complete break with the Westminster model, members of parliament had to resign before joining the executive, but administrators could be elected to parliament or be appointed as cabinet ministers without resigning from the civil service. Moreover, the moment they quit politics, they were allowed to resume their former jobs, with full social benefits.

The logic of "enarchization" was overwhelming. It has been estimated that since the 1970s, 70% of all members of Parliament have been civil servants of some sort, including university professors--almost all universities are state-run--and high-school teachers. When it comes to cabinet members, almost 90% are enarchs. Out of 17 prime ministers since 1958, six have been enarchs and another nine have been civil servants or former civil servants, former military men, or former employees of state-run companies. Among presidents, only one, Mitterrand, was a private person; the other four were essentially state servants, and two of them, Messrs. Giscard d'Estaing and Chirac, were enarchs.

What gave the civil servants even more absolute power was their control of the economy. Ever since 1936, many large companies had been gradually nationalized, from banks and insurance companies to railways and airlines, from mining companies to the steel industry, from radio, TV and media agencies to aviation and cars. The post-1958 Fifth Republic went much farther, embarking on large-scale industrial schemes that blurred most distinctions between state-run and private companies. The latter became so dependent on government contracts as to behave like de facto divisions of the former. Some government contracts were also tailored to help favored private companies against their competitors. As enarchs managed the state sector, other enarchs--or the same ones--would be "lent" to private companies in a practice known as pantouflage ("slippering").

One need not be familiar with Friedrich Hayek's "The Road to Serfdom" to surmise that such comprehensive sway over a country will gradually become counterproductive, and worse. The more absolute their power, the more the enarchs have tended to run France in their own interest, while assuaging the citizenry with bribes of all sorts. One such bribe, rhetorical but no less effective for that, has taken the form of nationalistic posturing, usually directed against the United States; a favorite slogan of the enarchs is that France's mission is to uphold and protect a superior continental civilization based on the welfare state against the Anglo-Saxon model of "predatory" free-market capitalism. Structural problems--an aging population, swelling immigration, the public debt--have been ignored.

There was some resistance to the enarchic takeover, to be sure, mostly in the form of social unrest among those who were hit the hardest. There was the so-called student revolution of 1968, which rocked the Fifth Republic for a few weeks and diminished de Gaulle's personal standing, and there was a brief romance with left-wing terrorism in the early 1970s. By and large, though, statism prevailed. One reason was that it seemed to be working, and indeed to have fulfilled its primary mission of saving France. Then there were the emollient effects of the ever-expanding welfare state. Finally, under the Socialist François Mitterrand, just about every single elite or quasi-elite body in the country, including the Communists and the intellectuals, was brought into--or bought into--the system. In the ensuing decades, the only real challenge has been European integration, especially in the form of "single-market" provisions that have brought more transparency, competitiveness, and fluidity into European economic life.

So what chance, really, is there for a change in 2007? Interestingly enough, three of the four presidential front-runners as of the end of March--Messrs. Sarkozy, Bayrou, and Le Pen--were not enarchs. And Ms. Royal, though an enarch, seemed to have fallen out of touch with that milieu. Of the four, Mr. Sarkozy, openly pro-American and a (cautious) critic of the welfare state, was probably the only candidate to have given serious thought to France's necrotic condition, hinting at various constitutional reforms--from the abolition of the prime minister's office to a stronger parliament and stronger parliamentary commissions, not to mention progressive cuts in the civil service--that would bring the republic closer to the American political model. Not to be outdone by Mr. Sarkozy, Mr. Bayrou announced in early April that, if elected, he would abolish the ENA altogether.

But now that a reform-minded president has been elected, who will assist him in carrying out his declared program, when enarchs and other state servants are all there is?

Mr. Gurfinkiel is the president of the Jean-Jacques Rousseau Institute in Paris.