I think I'm having not just a bad hair day, but a bad hair weekend.

I feel blah.
I feel depressed.
I'm sniffling and I feel a cold coming on.
I've slept more than 8 hours, and all I want to do is crawl back into bed.
I saw "Underworld" and loved it, so I must be more of a goth girl than I thought.
I feel like I need new clothes. All my clothes are so boring, so conservative. I want to be edgy and daring, and wear black leather. It's my goth girl coming out.
My stupid pair of $11 DKNY ribbed tights, which I just wore the first time yesterday already has a run. Damn!
I'm starting to think Rush Limbaugh has a point about people who live in California, especially the left wing feminists women.
Maybe it's getting close to that time of the month, and I'm having a major PMS breakdown, because I just want to slap everyone who pisses me off.
I never get PMS, so the world must be ending.
I miss my grandma, and keep dreaming she's still alive.
I'm starting to question the writer thing.
I think my acting teacher was right when he said my biggest fear was fear of failure. He said it's what drives me and stops me from being a great actor.
I hate that I might be driven by the fear of failure, but I hate failure.
Somtimes I feel like if I'm not successful at something, I'll go insane.
I think my biggest fear is living a life of mediocrity, and I'm hiding from the fact that I'm already living that kind of life.
Sometimes I wish I wasn't weird, artistic and creative, since it must be nice to go through life and not worry whether you're any of these things.

So shocking. Robert Palmer, of "Addicted to Love" fame, died at age 54 of a heart attack.

I don't think of him as old. I don't think of any rock and roll guy as old. But they all age don't they? And then they die, which is normal but still shocking nonetheless.

The radio news is reporting that 7.8 earthquake hit Hokkaido Japan. That's huge!

Nanowrimo novel working title: Dallas is a State of Mind

Characters:
Marshall B. Raker - failed dot com executive, living in Dallas, divorced, missed his window of opportunity when the dot com market bottomed out, his big idea in 1999 was building a bigger pipe to move data through, voice and data over IP with a bigger pipe than a T3, Microsoft and IBM said it couldn't be done, the technology wasn't there. He's 5th generation Texas native, family still owns a working ranch in west Texas, republican, former rodeo bull rider, speaks and writes four languages fluently including french, smart, suave, Mr. modern day Texas Cowboy incarnate, loves 19th century literature and quotes Dickens and Melville, sees himself as a character in a Dickens novel battling against society and himself, has old fashioned values bordering on sexism, but manages to cover it up with his magnetic charm.

Jane B. Cartano - SF journalist who is researching an article on executive casualties of the dot bomb era, flies to Dallas for a week to interview him. She's hip with inner hippie, hates 19th century literature - too many long winded sentences and boring middle class values, she grew up in a commune located along the Hanapepe river with her very hippie dippy rich parents. She's ambitious, a vegan who eats meat when she's on assigment because it makes her aggressive, and of course she's attracted to Marshall B. Raker because he's everything she despises about men and dot com executives.

Harlequin romance, here we come!

My structure, subject to change, is 12 chapters about 10 pages each. I think it will be fun to write from the Marshall's point of view and then from Jane's, so it will 6 chapters for her and 6 chapters for him, alternated of course.

Chapters 1 & 2, intro
Chapters 3 & 4, first meeting - Day 1 in Dallas, lunch at the Hyatt Regency Dallas
Chapters 5 & 6, Day 2, lunch at The Mustang Cafe at Las Colinas
Chapter 7 & 8 - Day 3, dinner at the revolving restaurant at Reunion Tower, the passion night
Chapters 9 & 10, Day 4, The Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza
Chapters 11 & 12 - Day 5 - DFW Airport and goodbyes

I received an email from the Nanowrimo folks asking if I was going to write a novel in 30 days in November again. I wasn't sure if I was going to do it, but I told them to put me on the list.

I was at a cafe last night writing in my journal, and I came up with an idea for a novel, and even outlined a possible chapter structure. I didn't think I had any more novel ideas I wanted to pursue, but this one came and I like it.

My last two Nanowrimo novels weren't complete novels, but just the start of novels. I didn't know back then anything about how to structure a novel. Not anymore.

I learned a really cool trick in my writing seminar at Learning Annex last month, on how to outline a story, and so far it's been working. Actually, I'm combining outlining ideas I learned in my screenwriting class with the new technique I learned in last month's class.

So I'm going to attempt to write a novel from start to finish this time, and it will be a romance of sorts.

For some reason I was thinking about my good friend B from Dallas, who I don't talk to anymore because he said he couldn't be friends with me without wanting soemthing more. I still miss him, but he did what he had to do for his own well-being and I can't him fault him for doing that. But B from Dallas was such a trip and a character, that I was thinking he would make a great fictional character if I amped him up big time.

That governor debate was scary. Peter Camejo of the Green party is a lunatic. The man is so scary! Ariana is a fright.

Actually liked McClintock a ton, but I could never vote for him because of his social views who will have the right to appoint judges. Can't have judges with McClintock's social views legislating from the judicial bench.

Arnold was scary, and Bustamente, well, I am a democrat voting NO on the recall after all and I could never vote for a republican for the any high government office.

The LA Times last week ran an article on the old Al Pacino movie "Scarface" because there's a new print of it in theatres right now, but I couldn't read it because the darn LA Times is now charging about $40 a year to read their Calendar Live articles. I love the LA Times, but I don't know if I love them enough to pay $40 a year to read one of their sections.

I'd never seen "Scarface", so I went out and rented the movie. It was a great movie, and definitely a classic.

Now the NY Times also followed suit and wrote an article about "Scarface", 'Scarface,' a Foul Mouth With a Following. The article says it's now an underground classic among hip-hop fans and how college students are throwing "Scarface" parties.

Brian De Palma directed the movie, and Oliver Stone wrote the screenplay. Al Pacino has a really bad cuban accent, but his performance is so over top and great, that it makes up for the fact that his accent is more italian than cuban.

A DVD is being released by Universal which will include prominent rappers talking about how influential "Scarface" is to them. P. Diddy says he saw the movie 63 times.

I really loved the movie up until the very end, when the Tony Montana character started to just make me mad. The end of "Scarface" reminded me of an F. Scott Fitgerald novel I hated so much because of the ending that I've blocked memories of the novel from my mind. I hated that Fitgerald novel so much, the experience made me think Fitzgerald only wrote great short stories and wrote awful novels.

I really should reread that Fitgerald novel again, if I can remember which one it was, just to see if it makes me crazy again. I read the novel sometime during college, and my values were definitely different then.

If you haven't seen "Scarface", or it's been awhile, watch it again because it really is a great movie classic and showcases a young Pacino at this best.

NY Times columnist and middle east specialist Thomas Friedman was interviewed on KGO AM this morning. His insights are so great, and he had some interesting comments about the war in Iraq and politics in general.

Below are a few of his gems but I'm paraphrasing what he said:

France wants us to fail in Iraq, and won't help us and will do everything to insure we fail. They are not an ally, they are our enemy.

To my liberal friends, some things are true even if George Bush says them.

To politicians - Never put yourself in a political position where when you succeed the US fails.

I still stand behind my position that the US was right to go to war with Iraq, even though I had strong reservations.

There is freedom of speech in the arab world, but there is no freedom of after speech in the arab world, and that's why I supported the US led war in Iraq.

It's good to be a baseball fan in the SF Bay Area. Both my boys, my teams - the SF Giants and Oakland A's, won their divisions.

Already dreams of a Bay Bridge World Series are going thorugh people's head.

It's good that baseball is good here, because both the football teams are sucking the big ones right now!

It looks like the Raiders may have missed their window of opportunity for a Superbowl with the current roster. And the 49ers ... okay you have a new coach but there's no excuse for the mistakes they've been making on the field.

So I'm flipping through this Sunday's SF Chron Book Review, and I see a familiar face and name.

Some guy I went to college with wrote a book on russian history, and his book was being reviewed. So weird. From his picture, the guy hasn't changed at all.

The guy lived in my college house for awhile, and we even had a brief flingie. His girlfriend moved into the house later, and we became really good friends. The review said the guy is a historian and a former professor of history at Harvard.

As I remember, the guy was really smart, studied constantly, was constantly in writing lab for his papers, is very tall and hails from Kansas of all places.

He's the first person I know from college who wrote a book that's been reviewed in my local paper.

Is it a small world or what?

The funniest line I heard on that show "Queer Eye for the Straight Guy" was "Say no to crack!", which for guys would mean don't let wear your pants too loose that when you bend down everyone can see your butt crack.

But what about for women? Do we need a show called "Queer Eye for the Straight Chick"? Low rise pants for women are really in, but that means when women bend down there's not a lot of material covering their butts.

I've seen so many chicks' butt cracks lately, hairy ones too, and it's so not attractive. I mean, maybe guys get turned on by seeing a chick's butt crack, but I sure don't.
If you don't see a chick's butt crack, you see their ratty panties or worse, you see their thong. I saw this girl yesterday, and when she bent down her white thong was huge! And what's with thongs? I thought women were wearing thongs so don't you see panty lines. It's so not true.

Sure you don't see panty lines on the butt itself, but then you see the thong line at the top of their tight pants. What's up with that? I thought the whole point of wearing butt floss was so you didn't see any panty lines at all on the whole butt, and not just on the cheeks. Seeing the thong line looks like you're wearing a pair of panties with the part for the butt cheeks cut out, and it looks very weird under tight pants.

I bought some low rise bikinis when I bought my low rise jeans, because it did disturb me that my bikinis were hanging outside my jeans when I sat down. Scary!

For men as well as women "Say no to crack!"

The California Recall election is on for October. The 9th circuit court of appeals just issued their decision.

The ACLU will probably appeal, so the next question is will the Supreme Court take the case or turn it down.

The news is reporting that republican Rep. Darrell Issa of San Diego County, the guy who started all this recall mess, said at The Commonwealth Club that "if there are still two republicans in the race when we finally get to vote, to vote NO on the recall." Meaning Davis is way better than Bustamante.

What a freak!

The presure is definitely on for McClintock to get out of the recall race.

Those 9th circuit court of appeals judges are very funny. They won't let you BS them that's for sure, and they will call a lawyer for laying on the gloss.

KGO 810 AM is broadcasting the 9th circuit court of appeals 11-judge panel hearing on the California recall.

It should be interesting to listen to just to hear what the arguments are on both sides.

Look for the station on Google. You may be able to listen online if you're interested.

Here's a twist on democratic presidential candidate Wesley Clark; Latest contender for president comes from long line of rabbis.

That Erasure song got me started on a synth pop kick, having been a huge Joy Division fan in my youth.

I've been looking at cds by Kraftwerk, New Order, Style Council, The Jam, more Erasure, OMD, Level 42, Men without Hats, Bronksi Beat, and of course Depeche Mode.

As my friend Drew used to say "techno pop and disco!"

This is so cool. Erasure doing a cover that old Elvis Presley tune, Can't Help Falling in Love. Click on the song to hear it. You'll need Real Player to hear it.

This is one of my favourite love songs! It makes me cry every time I hear it.

This cover version is almost as good as the time I heard Bob Weir and Rob Wasserman doing a cover version of "Misty" in Golden Gate Park.

My friend and I went to see free Shakespeare in Golden Gate Park. It was a hot day, which is rare in that part of San Francisco, and I roasted my legs while sitting in the full sun.

They're like burnt and on fire right now, but I put some after sun lotion on them so hopefully I won't peel or burn. The sun was so hot today, and it's still hot at 8 pm.

Usually the fog rolls in on hot days, but not today. The whole city seemed be out enjoying the park, and it was great to see everyone out.

We watched "Love's Labour Lost", which was done with late 50's costume La Dolce Vita style. Everyone was good, except for the page who was played by a girl. She totally annoyed me for some reason. She was very cloying, and really not that funny.

Usually the pages are played by guys, and it's a different part when it's played by a guy. The page part is supposed to be a young boy in his teens, and most actors play it that way. This actor chick played it like a some 20 or 30 something chick, which was so off putting in a way.

I don't know. The rest of the audience seemed to like her, so maybe I was the only one who kept praying for a giant hook to get her off the stage. The critic at the SF Chron thought the performances were uneven, and for once he and I agreed.

At Sharon Meadow the local radio station Alice 97.3 put on their annual "Now and Zen" festival, which featured Liz Phair, Maroon 5, Seal and Duran Duran.

The music was so loud from Now and Zen, that we could hear it during the Shakepeare play. It was kind of annoying but kind of fun, because we had wanted to go to Now and Zen but decided we didn't want to pay that much money for the tickets.

I kind of felt that I got my wish. I saw free Shakespeare in the Park and I heard Duran Duran and Maroon 5, the two bands whose music I really like.

The music was so loud that you didn't really have to pay money to hear the concert. There was a ton of people sitting in front of the flower conservatory enjoying the concert, because the sound at that location was so clear.

I heard that Maroon 5 song they keep playing on the radio "Harder to Breathe" (they sound Bon Jovi to me), Seal's hits (saw him in concert a few years ago), and all my Duran Duran faves. YAY!!! And I didn't have to pay $40 to hear them.

My friend had seen them in their young and beautiful days, and we both wanted to remember them as those pretty young boys on that boat sailing on the ocean and not have that be spoilt by an older and I'm sure more weathered version of themselves playing their old hits at some kind of reunion concert.

Simon LeBon was beautiful and I want that memory of him preserved!

Here's a very interesting article on The Darwin Awards website, Stupidity should be cured — Watson.

The best bit from the stupidity story:

"If you really are stupid, I would call that a disease," he was quoted by The Times of London as saying. "The lower 10 percent who really have difficulty, even in elementary school, what's the cause of it?

"A lot of people would like to say, 'Well, poverty, things like that.' It probably isn't. So I'd like to get rid of that, to help the lower 10 percent."

I got into a Second City Television mood, and started surfing the internet for news about them. I remember watching their show a long, long time ago, and thinking they were so funny and just as good as Monty Python's Flying Circus. I love Monty Python!

The big news is the Second City Televisious group is releasing on DVD next year their shows from NBC. I bel they'll be expensive, but definitely worth getting.

Then I went surfing for Monty Python stuff, and they have a 14-dvd set of all of their Flying Circus shows. It's not cheap, but it might be worth getting one day.

I have this one memory of an SCTV show, where there some kind of murder on the show and the people involved were all children's television stars. It must have been very funny if I still have memories of it to this day.

I have a couple of Monty Python Flying circus memories as well. One is a sketch where there's a bunch of people in a boat, and they're out in the middle of the ocean. They're starving and have to decide which people to eat.

My other vague memory is when they used to go out and interview people in the english countryside, and the interviews were always so strange, but funny in an odd way. It wasn't until I saw British television years later, that I realized they were spoofing BBC interviews.

BBC news is a riot. They're so different from american news. When I was there in the mid 90's, I couldn't believe they didn't show satellite pictures for the weather report. Instead, they showed what looked like felt cutouts for rain over a felt cutout of the British Isles. What a goof!

Following in the Dark - tentative chapter divisions and titles

1. In the Beginning
2. The Mother of all experiences
3. Alone with him
4. Darkness pulls you
5. Darkness Descends
6. Following in the Dark
7. You can't see in the Dark
8. You can't hear in the Dark
9. You can't move in the Dark
10. Darkness has no pain
11. Alone in the Dark
12. In the Darkness all is revealed
13. Entombment
14. Between the Darkness and the Light
15. Out in the Light
16. The Darkness hides all
17. The Stranger in the Light
18. Light hurts
19. Light lets you move
20. Light lets you hear
21. Light lets you see
22. Leading in the Light
23. Light lifts you up
24. Light invites you
25. At one with him again
26. The start of something new
27. Another beginning

These chapter titles are so structured, and I've never done that with my stories before. Usually I just write and write, and then afterwards step back to see what I've done.

Not this time. This story is structured like a pyramid. You go up, get to the top, and then descend in the way you went up, so the chapters for the ascent and descent mirror each other.

I don't know why I made it so complicated, but it makes sense somehow to structure the story this way.

But who knows? I could change it all next week.

I went to the library last night to do a writing session, and oh my god, it was so hard. I don't why I just can't sit down and write. I think I'm a little down because I'm not sleeping well, and when I don't sleep well my whole world feels off.

It's not like I even sleep that much either, but I need my 6.5 hours of sleep to feel good and I'm not getting it. Not sure what's wrong other than I'm having disturbing dreams.

I didn't think I dreamed very much, but I've been dreaming 2-3 dreams a night. They're all very disturbing, and I wake up in a sweat. I go right back to sleep, but it's the waking up that's disturbing my sleep.

I usually sleep like the dead, and have slept through parties, roommates, etc. But not these last two weeks.

Since I couldn't write, I decided to work on my structure for the novel, "Following in the Dark". I was able to do that, and I now have 27 tentative title chapters. OY! That's a lot huh?

I didn't even think of having chapter titles, but I'm reading "Cold Mountain" by Charles Frazier and he gave each chapter a title. I thought it was so cool, that I decided to do the same thing for my novel.

These are just tentative chapters divisions and titles. 27 chapters might be too many, and I think I could even whittle down the chapters to 15 or even 13 by just combining what I already have. But I'll decide that later. This is just a first pass at dividing the story into chatpers.

I'll post them separately.

Sayings of Zen to start your day with a smile

1. Do not walk behind me, for I may not lead. Do not walk ahead of me, for I may not follow. Do not walk beside me either. Just pretty much
leave me the hell alone.

2. The journey of a thousand miles begins with a broken fan belt and a leaky tire.

3. Its always darkest before dawn. So if you're going to steal your neighbor's newspaper, that's the time to do it.

4. Sex is like air. It's not important unless you aren't getting any.

5. Don't be irreplaceable. If you can't be replaced, you can't be promoted.

6. No one is listening until you fart.

7. Always remember you're unique. Just like everyone else.

8. Never test the depth of the water with both feet.

9. If you think nobody cares if you're alive, try missing a couple of car payments.

10. Before you criticize someone, you should walk a mile in their shoes. That way, when you criticize them you're a mile away and you have their shoes.

11. If at first you don't succeed, skydiving is not for you.

12. Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day. Teach him how to fish, and he will sit in a boat and drink beer all day.

13. If you lend someone $20 and never see that person again, it was probably worth it.

14. If you tell the truth, you don't have to remember anything.

15. Some days you are the bug; some days you are a windshield.

16. Don't worry; it only seems kinky the first time.

17. Good judgment comes from bad experience, and a lot of that comes from bad judgment

18. The quickest way to double your money is to fold it in half and put it back in your pocket.

19. A closed mouth gathers no foot

20. Duct tape is like the Force. It has a light side and a dark side, and it holds the universe together.

21. There are two theories to arguing with women. Neither one works.

22. Generally speaking, you aren't learning much when your lips are moving.

23. Experience is something you don't get until just after you need it.

24. Never miss a good chance to shut up.

25. We are born naked, wet, and hungry, and get slapped on our ass...then things get worse.

26. Never, under any circumstances, take a sleeping pill and a laxative on the same night.

27. There is a fine line between "hobby" and "mental illness."

28. No matter what happens, somebody will find a way to take it too seriously.

29. There comes a time when you should stop expecting other people to make a big deal about your birthday.. . around age 11.

30. Everyone seems normal until you get to know them.

31. THE MOST WASTED DAY OF ALL IS ONE IN WHICH WE HAVE NOT LAUGHED!

32. Man can learn nothing except by going from the known to the unknown.

33. Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach him to use the Net and he won't bother you for weeks.

34. You can demonstrate a program for a corporate executive, but you can't make him computer literate.

35. Well-written software is its own heaven; poorly-written software is its own hell.

36. The more beautiful the rose the deeper cuts its thorns.

37. There’s nothing wrong with a one-track mind, so long as its on the right track.

38. If you wish to drown, do not torture yourself with shallow water.

39. It is better to practice a little than talk a lot.

40. In a hundred-mile march, ninety is about the halfway point.

I'm bad. I just think this walking Mr. Hippie Lettuce Leaf is so darn funny. I stole it from fbombcompany.com. He's so cute.

Here's an interesting website to check out, Sumerian Artifacts, because sometimes I just can't take the crazy political freakishness in this place called the city and county of San Francisco, which is located in the messed up country called the California Republic.

At least the supervisor, Jake McGoldrick, from my former neighbourhood voted for it. I definitely need to move back to my old neighbourhood!

I'm so upset about the San Francisco Board of Supervisors not passing Care not Cash, I just sent a slammogram to my neighbourhood Supervisor.

I told her she should be recalled, and that I will not vote for her in reelection or for any other public office she chooses to run for in the future.

Everyone who votes in San Francisco should do the same thing. Recall the supervisors who didn't vote for Care Not Cash!

Talking about recall. I think the voters of San Francisco should recall each supervisor who didn't vote for Care not Cash, Proposition N.

Over 60% of the voters in San Francisco voted for it. Getting that kind of voting majority in any issue, yes or no, in San Francisco politics is next to impossible, talk about waiting till hell freezes over.

And now it gets voted down by our neighbourhood board of supervisors. Recall those idiots!

The only upside to this issue is hopefully it will guarantee the election of Gavin Newsome as mayor of San Francisco. We may have lost this battle, but WE WILL WIN THE WAR!

The radio talkshows I listen to in the SF Bay Area are going nuts over Wesley Clark. Everyone seems to love him, although everyone does caution their enthusiasm saying that he has problems.

One talkshow host said that Clark is short-tempered and doesn't suffer fools. Hmmmm... maybe the government needs some of this though. He'd be just like Rumsy, and I adore Donald Rumsfeld!

Thanks to Daniel at The Wall of Sleep, here's Wesley Clark's bio - General Wesley K. Clark, US Army.

The guy definitely fastracked his way to the top. All I can is interesting. Maybe we'll see a "I'm just like Ike" campaign strategy developing.

The man definitely knows his war stuff, and his insightful comments on the war on Iraq were fantastic.

But there are two issues at stake here:

1) America's military commitment in foreign countries which includes Iraq, Afghanistan and everywhere else.

2) The economy. The LA Times has a great article here on our countrie's looming government fiscal crisis, Federal Budget Disaster Seen, but Won't Be Heard.

The Shrub nation has decided to just sit and do nothing, and wait for the company to heat up to create more jobs thereby increasing revenue not only for the states but for the federal government as well.

It's not just that the US is spending a lot of money, which we are, it's also that the tax revenue for both the federal and state governments have gone down dramatically.

If the economy heats back up, then some but not all of the deficits at both the federal and state level will go down, which is always a good thing. The federal deficit can then be pared down by judicious cutting of extra spending and not the badly needed programs that truly help those who cannot take care of themselves.

Here's a thought. If illegal immigrants want all these rights like driver's licenses, wage protection, etc, which all cost the state and federal governments money, then illegal immigrants should pay taxes to help fund their "so called rights".

You want to use the federal and state services, then you need to pay for them. The US is not a welfare state for its own people, so why should it be one for illegal immigrants?

Interesting. Wesley Clark in the race for the presidential democratic nomination. I loved watching him during the CNN coverage of the war on Iraq.

In fact, I remember watching him and Aaron Brown when CNN first ran live coverage of the war. The both of them couldn't believe it, and sat there with their mouths hanging open in disbelief that they were watching the war in Iraq happen in real time.

I'm not sure Clark is qualifed for the presidency, as far as domestic policies are concerned but he'd be good for these war times.

I sound like the James Caan character in "The Godfather" movies. "I need a war time conciglieri!"

I watched the movie "Falling in Love" tonight, starring Robert DeNiro and Meryl Streep. WOW! Talk about watching to acting pros at work. It's an old movie from the 70's or 80's with totally cheesy bad movie music, but their acting was just so incredible.

They played ordinary people having awkward ordinary conversation. You don't get the feeling they're saying lines or they're even in a movie, but that you're a fly on the wall watching some very human drama taking place.

I was watching some bad TV movie a few months ago about two people falling in love, and the acting was so bad! It was such a pleasure to see Streep and DeNiro show how acting is really done, and done brilliantly.

Now granted the TV movie had a really bad script, and this movie's script was much better, but so what. A really good actor can deliver a great performance from a bad script.

What was so amazing was their delivery of the lines. It was so natural and unforced, like they were real people falling in love, and not bad actors looking like they were trying to fall in love. They made it look so easy, whereas the TV actors made acting look so difficult because they were doing it so badly.

This was a nice deal: Life
-- Warren Zevon, Songwriter / 1947-2003

Thanks to Josh, here's the link to what Howard Dean is saing about Hamas, Dean takes heat for Hamas statement.

My modern art teacher told me I made an original comment about modern art that no one else is saying. I think this is good. Here's what I told him.

Jackson Pollock's drip painting are a physical rendering of performance art. Pollock painted as if in a trance, like a performance, and it's captured in physical form in his drip painting.

If you took a movie, which is made up of frames, and laid the frame on top of each other you'd get a Jackson Pollock drip painting. Time is layered like the painting, one of top of the moment, moments are layered together to make one physical piece.

The concept of snapshop in time, what the impressionists were trying to achieve, doesn't exist in Pollock's work because his work is result of hundreds of snapshots in time, layered one on top of the other, to create one cohesive work of art.

In Pollock's drip paintings, you can also see the influences of cubism because in cubism you saw on one painting, faces, body parts from different angles, as if they were in different time periods. You get the same in Pollock's work because you can see how over time he layered the paint over and over again.

I think Pollock was also borrowing from Dada art, because of the performance aspect of his art, but also taking Dadaism and turning it on its head.

Dadaism is where performance art start, but really performance art for Dadaism was anti-art, a reaction against art, questioning what is art if it's not physical. Pollock took performance art and made it physical, made it art.

In studying how Jackson Pollock made his famous drip paintings, you can also see the birth of conceptual art, especially some of the pieces created by Yoko Ono, and the birth of performance art, in the work of Laurie Anderson and even Andrew Goldsworthy.

I can't believe no one else is making these connections, especially about Pollock's work being performance art, and him birthing conceptual and performance art, not as anti-art, but as an art form.

I need to find the link for this, but apparently Howard Dean defended the terrorist actions of Hamas by saying that Hamas was at war so their actions were justified.

Yeah, like right. Dean was started to look appealing, but if he really did say what he said about Hamas, then I don't know. I cannot vote for someone who has this view. No way, not ever!

The plumber guy guy is here fixing my sink, and listening to Michael Savage angrily rant on and on about the 9th circuit court of appeals decision to delay the election.

Savage's vitriol makes me wonder what he would be saying if a republican governor was being recalled, and it was the democrats who initiated the recall. I somehow sincerely doubt his show would be so invective as he's being now with his tirade about 9th circuit court of appeals.

A three judge panel has blocked the California gubernatorial recall. Shocking! The bets are this case will go all the way to the supreme court. The court making the decision was the 9th circuit court of appeals, those crazy people who wanted to take God out of the pledge of allegiance.

Phil Matier from The Chron said, "Once again, the chads win!"

I have no idea what's going to happen. We're either going to vote in October or March of next year.

Welcome the California Republic! We are definitely our own crazy country.

I wanted to go see "The Order" this weekend, but I was too busy. It got really bad reviews, but the trailers looked so interesting. The reviews must have been right however, because it's not even in the Top 10 movie list this week. That's not a good sign for a movie that just opened last week.

I'm really looking forward to seeing "Underworld". Once again, the previews looked so intriguing. I hope it's not a stinker. Those trailers looked so promising.

Decided to go to Macy's on Saturday to check out the new styles for fall.

Thing that I liked:

Suede - it's so in. I started seeing it last year, and now it's in the store all over the place. I saw the cutest brown suede belted jacket at Costco, but I wasn't sure when I would ever wear it. I would love to buy a suede skirt and suede boots. In fact, I must have suede boots. Not sure if boots really work here in San Francisco though. I was such a boot wearer in college, but when I moved here boots just didn't seem the thing to wear. I hate to buy shoes that I never wear, so I'm gong to have to really ponder buying suede boots.

Short denim skirts - my favorite outfit in college with tights and boots. They're back with a vengence, but when I tried one I felt like I was 20 years old again, because short denim skirts were my uniform at that age. Not sure I want to feel that young again. I like my age.

Long denim skirts - I tried a bunch on, but couldn't find one on sale that fit. I found one today at Ross' for $20, and it's very fitted on me. It looks like one of those skirts those "what not to wear" people say you would wear, so I thought what the hell. You can't beat that low price.

Short brown corduroy skirt - so adorable, but again wearing one makes me feel like I'm still in college. And then there's the boot thing.

I definitely want to start wearing more skirts. Some women at opera commented as I walked by, how it w as a shame that women don't wear more skirts. It's so true, but pants are just so comfortable.

Switching to skirts would be hard, because most of my shoes are for wearing with pants. When it's hot, I don't mind wearing skirts because they look great with sandals and I have them to wear.

When it's the normal 60 something degrees here, I'd have to wear shoes and either tights or panty hose. I have very formal work skirts, which look great with pantyhose, but they're too business like to wear to go shopping.

I saw lots of tights and Macy's, and picked up a pair of black ribbed DKNY tights. I was looking for cotton tights, but couldn't find any. Maybe cotton tights aren't in style anymore. Maybe it's an midwest/east coast thing, and they don't carry them out here.

Cotton tights are so great to wear. They breathe, and they don't make you feel clammy.

I saw some very cute BCBG skirts at Ross', but didn't buy them because I wasn't sure what I'd wear on my legs, and I'm still trying to pay off my trip to Hawaii.

I think they'd look cute with tights, now that I think about it. I'll have all my debts that I've incurred since May paid off next month. If they're still there next month, I'll try them on. They're summer skirts, but with tights I could get away wearing them all the time out here.

I don't what it is about this song called "The Love Thieves" by Depeche Mode that is so haunting that I have to hear it every once in awhile.

The lyrics are so great!

From SFGATE.com

"In an earlier incarnation of this newspaper, the yahoo movie critic Joe Bob Briggs wrote warmly of a phenomenon he called "bimbo fu'' -- a movie genre marked by the feisty brawling of leggy, well-endowed females for the titillation of their male fans."

Would that recently released Charlie's Angels flick fit into the "bimbo fu" genre?

Richard Walter is being interviewed on the radio, and he says you have to write a dozen screenplays to get really good at it and find your voice.

OY!!! That's a lot!

I can't believe John Ritter is dead. He wasn't sick at all, and now he's dead. I liked him, and always enjoyed his work.

And Johnny Cash. He was so great! I knew he was sick though, but it's still sad that he also passed.

It was so cool when he did that cover version of "Hurt" by Nine Inch Nails. He should have won an MTV award for it.

I'm bad. Someone wrote a comment that I didn't like, so I deleted it. I've only ever done that one other time because the comment was x-rated and inappropriate. This time the comment, in my opinion, was just plain nasty and anti-american.

Oh well. It's my blog, and if someone makes a comment that offends me in anyway it's my right to delete it.

Ronn Owens on KGO 810 am ran a piece on 9/11 with music by Creed for the intro to his 9 am radio show.

Man, I cried. 9/11, it's like it happened yesterday for me. I still cry, I stil freak out, I still feel everyone's pain.

I never want to forget. I don't think we should forget. 9/11 happened and my life changed. No, I didn't reach for the nearest person and bond because I thought the world was going to end.

What happpened was that I realized that people hate us for absolutely no reason. That it doesn't matter what you do, people will hate you anyway. My naivete is gone, and I guess that's a good thing.

People around the world hate America, have always hated America. The New Yorker ran some essays awhile ago about what the Europeans thought about the founding of America in the late 1700's.

What's to interesting is that in the late 1700's, Britian and France feared America even then. We were a nation in it infancy and they feared us.

And what did they fear? They feared the revolution that Martin Luther started. They feared a country ruled by its people instead of by a divinely ordained monarchy. They fear this baby America, who said to the world that government by the people is the only kind of legitimate government that should exist.

How threatening this concept must be to the rest of the world, who are ruled by despots who claim some kind of sovereign right to rule through dna lineage or through god. Government by the people and for the people, what a revoluationary concept.

Do we get how threatening the american version of government, this thing called democracy actually is to the rest of the world? Do we get how we totally upset the balance of power in most of the countries of the world.

We've lived with democracy all our lives, we so don't get how foreign it is to the rest of the world. What we take for granted in the states, is a revolutionary concept in the rest of the world.

Government ruled by the people, government ruled by the workers, the people of the country, and not just the rich people. How frickin' revolutionary was that in 1776, and still so very subversive in 2003.

America threatens the world. We have done so since our founding, if those New Yorker essays are true. America is the abnormality, the nail that stands out and must be hammered down, the odd guy on the block, the freak.

Is it any wonder that they hate us? We threaten the usual world order. We are step-children of what Martin Luther started in his religious revolution from the Catholic Church in Rome. We are what the catholic church feared about Martin Luther, we are a country ruled not by some authoritian power from god, but from the majority opinion of our people.

God Bless America!

I had a writing group meeting tonight. I love my writing group. They know how hard it is to create a story, the struggle you go through, the insecurities you feel, all the BS you think about kin thinking your voice is not good enough for anyone else to read.

I love being with a group of people who are struggling like me to create, to reach outside of their regular lives and want something more, that something being a story that people want to read.

The act of creation takes will, takes everything you have from whatever you haven't already spent in your regular life just trying to survive and live, even though whatever you have left is just enough to get you to the next sentence, the next paragraph, the next story.

Writing should be the easiest thing in the world, but it isn't, because everything else gets in the way. To write is to have the strength, the will to create more than what you have, what you are.

To write is to struggle to do what no one else is doing, to fight against the forces of sloth, laziness, how about just plain exhaustion.

It's nice to be with a group of people who are struggling in the same way that you are, to know that there are other people fighting the same fight, and sometimes winning and winning well.

A friend from writing group just had a reading of his work in public, and people loved it. How cool is that? How cool is that to have people love your work?

Go Jon! You'll get your own column on SFGate.com some day. You are so much better than Mark Morford, who is irrelevant and doesn't even know it.

Another great Christopher Hitchens essay on 9/11, Don't Commemorate Sept. 11, Fewer flags, please, and more grit. Wow, I want to marry this man. He is so cool, so intellectual.

Okay, so he's a hard drinking, ciggiliscious smoking kind of guy, I don't care. I want to marry him. He is the ideal of the kind of brain power I want in a guy.

Kudos to the Pete Wilson show on KGO 810 am for turning me on to this article.

A great essay on the second anniversary of 9/11 from David E. Early of The Mercury News that I heard on the KTVU Fox Channel 2 news this morning, In California, feeling vulnerable.

A memorable line from the piece, "As a nation, we have not exhaled since Sept. 11."

Very true. I know I'm haven't exhaled yet.

I went back on my eating plan starting August 18 to try and lose the weight I gained on vacation and from all the stress I've been going through. I only gained about 10 pounds, but all my clothes are tight again and it was seriously bumming me out.

In April I was contemplating the purchase of a pair of size 6 Ralph Lauren low rise jeans because my size 8's were too loose, and I was so excited. I haven't worn that size since college.

Now, my size 8 jeans are so tight that they're uncomfortable. I hate that! It's so depressing, what 10 extra pounds can do to the size of your body.

I've been keeping track of my measurements, and since April of this year, I've gained 9.5 inches back. Dang! That's like an inch for every pound I've gained back. How scary is that!

Today I stepped on the scale and I've lost 5.5 of those pounds. YAY me!!! My pants feel so much looser than they did last week, and it makes me so happy. It's amazing what a difference 5+ pounds make.

I'm going to stick to my eating plan this time and not slack off, and try to get to 135 pounds, which was my original goal weight. This means I have to lose 20 or so pounds.

It's been about a year since I started my second weight loss journey, and I lost 28 pounds in April and then gained 10 pounds back. Bummer! I definitely need to get back on track.

I actually started trying to lose weight in May 2001, and managed to lose 20 pounds, but then gained 10 pounds back.

I've been tracking my measuremnts since May 2001, and as of today, I've lost 33 inches. That's almost 3 feet of me gone.

The only rewarding thing about the weight loss journey is I haven't gained all the weight back. I gained some of it back, but then I got back on track again and took more off and then gained some back.

But at least since May 2001, I've managed to take off 30 pounds and keep it off, so I'm ecstatic about that. I can maintain, and not feel like I've been on a diet for 2 years and 3 months, which is what I've been doing.

I just need to go one more round, and I think I'll finally achieve goal weight. It's been one snail slow process, but at least it's been working.

The back to back bombings in Israel are bumming me out. And people ask me why I'm not pro-palestinian. Like I'm supposed to support this kind of terrorist bombing, which for me would be like saying America deserved what happened on 9/11. No way! No effing way!

I mean, it's why I can't stand to go to peace rallies in San Francisco. All peace rallies in San Francisco eventually turn into a pro-palestinian, ant-semitic rant. Like the palestinians are not guilty of their horrid terrorists acts against the state of Israel. And as a friend told me the other day, part of the philosophy of the Infitida is to have as any "innocent"
teenagers get "killed" by Israeli's as possible so world opinion goes against Israel.

How bad karma is that. How so not "do unto other as they would have them do unto you". That's what karma says. Treat me a certain way, and I'll treat you the exact same way, only three times worse. Or as most futurists are saying, karma is speeding up now, so you get it back 10 ten times worst.

If being a strong supporter of the state of Israel, the only democracy in the middle east, the only friend of the US in the region, means I get labeled a right wing neo conservative Bush lover, then so be it. Better to be a Shrub loving neo con than an anti-semitic enthusiastic supporter of terrorist bombing.

And you know this is the same group who had the nerve to say the day after 9/11 happened, that those people who threw themselves off the World Trade Center buildings because they were freaked out, deserved to die that way.

Yeah, like some poor schlub who was working as a bus boy or girl at the restaurant at the top of World Trade Center, making minimum wage, deserved to die because of some islamic extremist.

Yay! The comments are back.

A friend just forwarded to me the Thomas Friedman column from 9/3/2003. In it he says the most talked about news story in the arab world was their version of American Idol called "Superstar"; 52 to 48 by Thomas Friedman of the NY Times.

I only got into American Idol this year, and the best part of the show other than Simon, was the beginning shows where they did the tryouts. It was the funniest thing to watch people get up and sing, who clearly can't sing.

I wonder if the Arab American Idol show had their version of Simon, and if they had people try out who can't sing.

My friend made a point of saying that the appeal of American Idol, which originally started in Britian, is that it's human.

I think the appreciation of music as expressed through the human voice is part of every culture. I think competition is also part of every culture. Put the two together, and you have a show that will appeal across cultural lines.

How the heck did Israel get a 550 pound bomb? This is not good, not good at all; Abbas Resigns; Israel Bombs Gaza City.

This new move of theirs is like even pushing the limits of my support for them. How can you even think of dropping a 550 pound bomb in a city? What in heck was the state of Israel thinking?

It feels very weird to me right now, that I flew to LA this morning and now tonight I'm back home in San Francisco. I know I got on a plane and left the area, but it went by so fast that it doesn't even feel like I was away.

But then again, I used to fly to NYC for the weekend from San Francisco three or four times a year, leaving Friday night and coming back Sunday, so maybe I have to leave the state to feel like I'm really away.

I'm exhausted. The Los Angeles County Museum of Art was great! I definitely need to back and see their regular art exhibits. I was so burnt out from so much visual stimulation that after about four hours I couldn't take it anymore.

I looked at stuff, but didn't stop to study them, didn't marvel and at the end didn't really care. LACMA has some great exhibits too and it's huge. There were parts of the museum that I didn't even get to because I was so tired.

All in all a very worthwhile trip, except for their transit system although I learned alot from my mistakes. Their Metro, BART like system is great. Their bus system is confusing and worse than the NYC bus system. No wonder people don't take the bus in LA.

I definitely want to fly back down there perhaps in December, and see the rest of the museum that I missed. I was so tired I didn't even want to go into their museum store. Now that's tired.

I keep wondering if I should play Fantasy Football league every year. I've always wanted to do it, just to see how I would do.

At this one company I worked for, there was an in-house fantasy football league. My boss, the director of Planning and Analysis, said I could be part of his team, but it all seemed like a big deal. All the bigwigs (the CFO, COO, Pres, VPs and directors) in the company played, and you could only play by invitation only.

And I think if I had played, I would have been the only girl playing. Like either the guys played by themselves and if there were teams, there were all guys. I was only allowed to play because I worked in Finance, and since the league was started by the CFO, anyone in Finance could play.

I didn't play because I didn't know any of the players. These same people played in either the weekly football pool and/or the March Madness pool, which I always participated in.

I didn't play because all of the horror stories I heard about the draft. The big thing in this fantasy football league was the draft. You sit around the room with everyone and dicker over players. My boss kept telling me how nasty people got, especially about picking quarterbacks and running backs.

The whole thing sounded like one giant testosterone fueled nightmare, only now played by people I worked with, sent reports to, sat in meetings with, even reported to.

I mean, it was bad enough sometimes having to sit through meetings where I was the only woman in at the table. It was part of my job, and I put up with it and everything was very business like and very civil.

I couldn't imagine having to do the same thing, but now for fun with bigwigs in my company who took the fantasy football thing way too seriously. Just reading the memos that were sent via email just to put the draft meeting together were enough to scare me off.

The draft had serious rules, you couldn't be late for it, and there was a whole bunch of warnings about the kind of behaviour not tolerated. I was reading them thinking, guys it's only a game, it's not like you're even a real owner of a team.

I mentioned this to my boss and he gave me a stern look and told me "if you aren't serious about it, maybe you shouldn't play because these guys are really, really into it." And I was like, fine, whatever.

It's just a game right? How serious can you really take fantasy football?

Watched football last night, and wanted to the Jets to win but I guess not. I like Herman Edwards way more than I like Steve Spurrier, especially after the way the guy was so hyped coming from the college ranks.

Poor New York Jets. The Redskins picked up four of their free agents, their young star QB is hurt, and poor Vinnie Testaverde looked so old.

Heard on the radio that Jimmy Johnson is interviewing Bill Parcells on Sunday. That will be an interesting interview, seeing as how Jimmy Johnson used to also coach the Dallas Cowboys.

I like Jimmy Johnson. For an older dude guy with helmet hair and leathery skin, there's something about him that's strangely attractive, like I would definitely not kick the guy out of my bed. I'd have to think about whether to boot Antonio Banderas or Brad Pitt out of my bed, but not Jimmy Johnson.

So I've gotten myself hooked on a TV show, this time a Brit one called MI-5 in the states and Spooks in the UK.

I've watched bits of it here and there, but there was a marathon on Labor Day and I really got into it.

I'm in love with Tom, the main character. He's definitely a stud-muffie, femmie boy brit style. Oh those femme boys from the Brittish Isles ... what is it about them that are so attractive?

This one is on paper is not even that physically attractive with his pasty white face. But at least thank god, he's doesn't wax his chest hairs. The hairless chest look on a guy is just so icky!!!

They're femme, but they look like they could slit your throat open without a second thought. It's such an odd combination, but bizarrely attractive.

They have the femme boy eyes and mannerisms, the skinny but buff bods, and that sense that they're mean as heck underneath it all if crossed and or in the right mood, but also sweet too like puppy dogs. Like I said, they're attractive but you're never quite sure why.

Maybe I just love his character. He's so sharp, knows everything, and boy can he fire that gun and kill those terrorists.

The comments website is still down, which is a bummer.

It's been foggy in my neighbourhood all weekend, so I headed downtown just to see some sun.

I saw 28 Days Later, the movie by Danny Boyle of Trainspotting fame. I liked it, but it had nothing new to say in terms of survivalist type films. The Trigger Effect is the best survivalist movie in recent times, and that old Brit scifi series "Survivor" was good as well, showing all the different groups of people that will probably emerge if a disease wipes 99.9% of the planet out.

I loved the opening of how the disease gets spread though. It was an evocative political commentary.

On Saturday, I went to see an exhibit of "Italian Manuscript Painting of the Middle Ages and Renaissance." I love this stuff. I saw a ton of it England at the various museums I visited.

The colours are so vivid and I love all the little painting they artists put in letters and those amazing borders. If I had oodles and oodles of cash to burn, I would love to buy and have the stuff hanging in my house.

I have a friend who owns a couple of museum quality pieces of italian manuscript, and I am so totally jealous. To see them up close and unframed is just fantastic. The colours are so alive and beautiful.

On Sunday, I ran errands, worked out, even wrote for a bit, which was nice. I'm still recovering from my cold, and I've been feeling too tired in the evenings to write. My cold is over, but the cough is hanging for dear life.

If I don't leave the house and go somewhere and write, I don't write. It's just too tempting to watch TV, zone out, or putz around the place when I'm at home. I have to leave and go somewhere and make myself sit down and write.

I was invited to go see Shakespeare in the Park on Monday, but I just couldn't stomach sitting in the freezing fog and being sick for another week.

I went to see "Step into Liquid" the surf movie instead. What a great movie! If you love surfing, you have to see it. I'm definitely adding it to my surfing movie collection when it gets released on DVD. The surfing footage is just spectacular and beats anything on TV or that movie "Blue Crush".

I also finally watched the movie, "The Shipping News". Cate Blanchett was amazing, and overall the movie was good but not great. All the reviews say to read the book, so I might just end up doing that because I loved the story.

Below are links to pictures from my cruise sailing down the California coast line to Catalina Island and then to Cabo San Lucas and back.

The Celebrity Cruise ship

Catalina

More Catalina

Another view of Catalina

Typical Catalina Car - they use golf carts to get around

Cabo San Lucas

A famous Cabo site

A Cabo beach

A little blurry but the famous Cabo San Lucas Arch

I don't why people are making such a big deal about Madonna kissing Britney Spears and Christina Aguillera.

The kisses were sorority girl type kisses, the kind of kiss you have with your girlfriends to have fun, experiment, to tease the guys at a party, or when you've had too much to drink and just want to kiss someone.

Like girls kissing girls was so normal, so standard in college, nobody thought twice, cared or thought the girls were lesbians.

As a society, it seems like our collective minds are in the gutter if people can't be a little too friendly with their own sex and not have people automatically assume they're having sex. What is up with that?

The Christian Science Monitor has a quiz to see if you're a NeoCon; Are you a neoconservative? Take this quiz to find out.

My results were: Based on your answers, you are most likely a neoconservative.

Neoconservatives…

Want the US to be the world's unchallenged superpower
Share unwavering support for Israel
Support American unilateral action
Support preemptive strikes to remove perceived threats to US security
Promote the development of an American empire
Equate American power with the potential for world peace
Seek to democratize the Arab world
Push regime change in states deemed threats to the US or its allies

Historical neoconservative: President Teddy Roosevelt
Modern neoconservative: President Ronald Reagan

Wow, surprising but the questions aren't easy ones and I gave very conservative answers. I thought for sure I'd fall more in the middle, but I guess not. And I so can't stand Ronald Reagan. Teddy Roosevelt I like, but not the actor president, no friggin' way!

I think I need to rethink my american foreign policy views if I end up on a silly newspaper quiz in the same group as Uncle Ronnie. SCARY!!!

So even though I've been warned not to do it, because there are so many predators on line, I signed up for a free trial at a christian singles dating website.

How many predators can there be on a christian singles dating website?

I've never had good luck with these things as far as permanent relationships, but I've gotten great dates out of them.

I didn't even obsess over the writing of my profile, and just zipped through it and posted it along with a some recent pics.

It was fun and it felt evil to do, because I was warned by all my friends to never do it, but what the heck, right?

What's the worse that can happen? I'll get a catholic or a bible banger. Maybe I should have said something about wanting to only date my own denomination, because I'm not switching churches for anyone, unless it's for another presbyterian church that I like and doesn't freak me out.

I watched a history of Martin Luther on TV, and the end, I was like "no wonder I'm not a catholic." I love Martin Luther! He was like so spiritual and so cool. I don't know how anyone can remain a catholic after having watched that show on TV about him.

I told my very catholic uncle in Hawaii about being presbyterian, and he laughed and said "Presbyterian is catholicism without the pope, rome and all the rules." My church has a communion service every other week, and for easter there was a class on confession and lots of people made a confession before Easter. Go figure!

Not even sure I'd switch churches anyway, because lots of people have two faith marriages. Just as long as the person doesn't hold that many opposite views to my own, because then we'd fight alot and that's not fun and not something I would ever put up with for very long.

If you haven't done it already, go to www.donotcall.gov, and register your phone numbers so the telemarketers can't call you.

You have until August 31, 2003 to do it. If you register after this date, the telemarketers won't update their lists for three months if they update them at all.

Here's a new novel idea that I was tossing around with my writing group. It would be way too much work and research for me to do, but it would be interesting to write.

From what I've been able to gather, a group of people got together and decided which books should go in the bible and become part of the official cannon. There were others gospels, but they got rejected. My church has copies of all of the rejected books of the bible.

I thought that writing a novel about being a rejectee of the biblical conference would be so cool. It would
totally fictional of course, but I could create a character who actually knew christ when alive, and wrote a story about it which has been handed down through the generations.

His descendant has a mission to get his ancestor's gospel into the bible, and he or she goes to the biblical conference where he or she finds politics, intrigues, backstabbing, etc. Sadly, this gospel is rejected at the
end, but it still survives in the family's possessions.

I was also thinking the story would be fun if you start it in present time, and then flip back and forth to the present.

Like having the main character, a man comes to mind, inherit the document, and then start investigating it. He's the last of his line, and he has problems with relationships, so the line may die with him if he doesn't have kids.

Many of Christ's follower were jews, so I'd like him to be descended from the same tribe of Jesus, which is the Benjamin tribe, and tie that into the whole abraham line - Abraham, Jacob, Joseph & Benjamin
from Rachel, King David from the Benjamin tribe as is Jesus. I like the symmetry of that.

He'd have to have a love interest, so I'd add some university nerd chick, cute of course but nerdy as alll hell, archeologist type that he contacts to investigate the document. They fall in love investigating the family document, which is wrapped in benjamin tribe cloth, echoing how moses was found wrapped in jewish cloth floating down the nile. Not sure if cloth would survive that long, so some kind of benjamin tribe ancient relic.

You could plot it two ways; 1) have the family document reveal something they left out in the bible, which you'd have to make up and it would have be something very controversial, or 2) since there was no printing in those days, documents had to be written down and copied, so maybe his ancestor wrote a place down wrong or got some kind of obvious detail wrong, which would be why the ancestor's document was rejected as an official bible book.

Make fate be a small and simple thing, which affects everthing. But the story ends happily with sad lonely descendant finding love with cute archeologist nerd and the family line being carried on along with the secret.

This novel would be hard to write though, because you'd first have to come up with a some kind of biblical gospel that would closely mirror one of the four gospels in the bible as the secret text. I don't think it would be that impossible, but it would definitely require much
thought.

Each gospel had a point of view, so you'd have to come up with a new point of view which would mean reading all the rejected ones and knowing the major ones well enough to fake a copy of one.

I love the idea of the novel though.

I'm watching the Oakland Raiders and Dallas Cowboys preseason exhibition football game.

I totally forgot that Bill Parcells is now the head coach for the Cowboys. It will be interesting to see what he can do for the Cowboys. He brings such a different philosophy of playing than what the Cowboys have been used to.

Parcells is old style football; smash mouth with a good running game and long bombs. You won't see any of the vaunted west coast offense of a short passing game and racking up the yardage in the air.

It will be interesting to see if Parcells can turnaround the Dallas tean, and if owner Jerry Jones will play a big role on the team as he's done in the past.

So my evil secret favorite tv show is on tonight, Temptation Island 3. I think it's one of best shows that television has ever produced. I have so much fun watching it, and it is the best reality show out there.

My friends think I'm crazy for watching it, and that it's the sleaziest and crassest show on tv, but that's what so fun about it. It's pure schlock, it's tv trash in its purest and highest form, no dilution, no high brow BS to get in the way, no aren't we artsy fartsy cultural for watching this show.

No, you watch the show because it's so much fun to see people acting trashy, questioning themselves, screwing their lives up, it's like they're filming a train wreck in slow motion. How fun is that?

I love it how when girls get together they revert into slutty sorority girls, and start treating men like trash. I love how the men agonize and fight over the single women, and how whoreish the single girls get. The single guys don't get trashy, they get territorial like dogs over the women.

You know life is really like this sometimes, and it's just so great to see it confirmed on Temptation Island.

Trippy. There was a power blockout in London earlier today. Their power was only out for half an hour, but still.

Conspiracy theorists discuss!

I was talking to someone I've known for a couple of years, and all of sudden religion and God came up in our conversation. I don't usually bring the topic up unless it comes up in conversation, and then when it does I'm very careful about it.

Religion, faith and God have always been very personal issues for me, and unless I feel a certain comfort level with a person I don't talk about it. Religion, faith and God seem to such a hot-button issue, so controversial, in some circles so politically incorrect, that it's so worth the stress of getting into it unless it's brought up.

Some people are so entrenched in their beliefs on either side of the issue, that to me it's a waste of my energy and breath to talk about it. They're not open, they'll argue and freak out, why bother? Life is stressful enough, why add to everyone's already stressed out life.

Anyway, I think my friend fears religion, fears Jesus, and fears God, and her fears really shocked me. I've never feared religion, Jesus or God, ever in my life.

I mean, maybe that's my problem in life, that I don't fear far Jesus, God or religion, but I don't have memories of ever fearing these things. I don't even get how anyone can fear religion, Jesus or God, and I don't think I want to know.

It's sad to think that my woman friend has been treated so badly sometime in her life by people in the name of religion, Jesus and God, that age 60+ she still fears it.

What's weird is that as we were having the conversation, I could feel my reptilian brain activating because I could sense, no feel is a better word, feel her fear. I've never had that sensation before. She was afraid of me, because I told her I believed in God, JC and was a christian.

People fear Jesus. This is such a strange concept to me.

Everyone I know has read Dan Brown's "The Da Vinci Code" and are raving about it, so now I have to read it to see what the fuss is all about.

It's chock full of conspiracy theories, so I'm sure I'll just love it since I just love the conspiracy theories.

I've think I've seen Mars in the wee hours of the morning. I've been having trouble sleeping, and often get up to go to the bathroom. I leave my shades open at night so I can look up at the stars from my bed, and I've seen this really bright orange ball these last few nights.

I hate when I can't sleep. I know when I'm sleeping well because I sleep straight through the night, and don't dream. The only good thing about not sleeping well, is finding out how much I really dream and how fantastic they really are.

I've been dreaming some wild dreams, which I think is a good thing because that's supposed to mean my subconscious (or is my unconscious) is working things out and doing what it's supposed to do.

I've heard the best way to torture someone is to not them dream. You wake them just before rem sleep so they don't drean. And when someone doesn't dream, they slowly go insane because their subconscious (unconscious) can't work things out. I never really understood what your subconscious has to work out, but apparently it's got to do it or you go nuts.

In the last James Bond movie, the korean guy who got a face change couldn't sleep because of the change. He had have a special machine so he could at least dream if not sleep. I think he even said, if he didn't use the dream machine, he'd go insane.

It's been foggy lately, so I'll probably miss the big Mars show tomorrow. I wonder what it will mean for the world that Mars is so close to earth. All the astrologys sites are saying that things are going to happen tomorrow, because this Mars event is such a once in a lifetime kind of thing. I hope that whatever happens, it's a good thing.

My favorite futurist said that WMDs will be found in a valley on the border between Syria and Iraq next month. He predicted that when WMDs are finally found in Iraq, it will so shock the world and will destroy the democratic party. He's a cali born republican, so he might be just a little biased.

I've always believed that Iraq possessed WMDs, and it was just a matter of finding them. Iraq had a history of WMDs from previous weapons inspections, and it just didn't make any sense or seem logical that they would give up the program so easily. People or countries don't change that easily, especially when the change is imposed because they lost the war.

I mean, what better reason to develop WMDs. Your country lost a war, you're bitter and you want revenge. It's simple, it's human, it's common, it's logical and entirely plausible.

What's unbelievable and not very human is to just give up and die, and be a happy defeated country. The only times that's ever happened is when the country was bombed to hell and completely destroyed. In Iraq's case, Bhagdad was left intact.

Only time will tell. But if WMDs in Iraq are found, what happens to all the people and the countries who said they weren't there. What will this do their credibility?

The futurist also predicted that the US would invade Syria because of the WMD find. I hope not. We don't need any more of our soldiers killed.

I saw an old movie last night called "The Gift" with Cate Blanchett. She's such an awesome actor! She's so adaptable, playing everything from this southern white trash psychic to Queen Elizabeth, and she seems to authentic. Her southern accent was very fine.

Surprise, surprise! Keanu Reeves was also in it, playing a redneck wife beater. He does a great villian, especially if he has facial hair which makes him look not so baby faced.

I think if he weren't leading man material, he looks too heavenly for words, he'd be one heck of a great character actor specializing in evil villians. He brought alot of pent up anger and hostility to his role, and like Jason Isaacs the english actor, he comes across as just plain mean.

The story was good and scary, and it was co-written by Billy Bob Thornton. He and his partner did a good job of making the movie really creepy and scary.

Greg Kinnear, whom I started to despise in "As Good As It Gets", was also in it. I don't know, I just don't look the guy. I never liked him on "Talk Soup", and his switch to acting hasn't helped my opinion of him either.

Gary Cole was in it. He seems to be in every movie about the South, playing some kind of villian. Katie Holmes was also in it, and I guess she's trying to shed her school girl image because she did have some semi nekkid scenes where's she's only g-string knickers.

Giovanni Ribisi was also in it, and he was riveting as well. He's young, but already he's a very good actor. He's not the best looking guy in the world so he's not leading man material, but he is a compelling character actor.

A friend gave me her laser printer, which she managed to drag home after her office closed. It's one of those huge office laser printers, an HP 4050 TN, the kind you see in most offices which are shared by the whole floor.

I was so happy to get it, because I was just about to buy one of those cheap $100 samsung laser printers. The inkjet printer just doesn't cut it for printing documents over 100 pages.

Now I just have to figure out where to put the laser printer, and how to connect another printer to my computer.

So now I have three printers at home. My work printer, which is a combo printer/fax/copier/scanner. My old HP colour printer I bought in 1998, with the original colour ink cartridge still in it. And my new work horse laser printer from my friend's law office.

It's not excessive, is it?

My last post about working with men in corporate america stirred up some comments, especially about men in positions of power. I don't think it gets any better with women in power.

That same company had a female CFO, whom everybody was afraid of. She was the nastiest women, and chewed anyone over anything and people left her office crying. She got away with being really nasty simply because she was a woman.

I had a couple of confrontations with her myself, and I stood my ground and she never chewed me out. She did chew a friend of mine out, who quit over the incident.

I don't buy into the mythie anymore that all men are jerks, and women aren't. That's just so untrue! Women are jerks too, especially if they're in positions of power of power-hungry. I think there's even a book that's been written about aggression in teenage girls.

Well, take those aggressive nasty girls from junior high and high school and watch them climb the corporate ladder of success, and you know what? They're still just as nasty as they used to be junior high and highschool, only now the stakes are higher because your paycheck os involved and not just your popularity in school.

Think of the girls in that movie "Heathers" as corporate executives and you get the picture.

I worked with a bunch of female project managers once. Talk about a hell hole. There was so much backstabbing and gossiping going on, that it was like being back in junior high or high school.

These executive women running million dollar business projects would do anything to get you fired, make you look bad, etc, just because you weren't part of their clique. Talk about major sabotaging going on left and right, and they do it with a smile on their face too.

So yes, guys are nasty because they make sexual jokes sometimes and treat you with no respect and dignity, but women don't treat you any better except for the lack of sexual jokes.

People just behave like jerks when they are in positions of power, or want power, regardless of their sex.

I went to a cocktail party tonight, and all anyone could talk about was Rosanna Arquette's new movie on Showtime "Searching for Debra Winger." It's about women aging in Hollywood and what they have to go through to get parts.

I hope it comes out on video because I'd like to see it, since I don't have Showtime.

Apparently there's a scene in the movie where the actresses say that when an actress leaves an audition, which is usually run by men, the guys then go around and say to each other "she was good, but would you have sex with her?"

This scene reminded me of something one of my exec type corporate boyfriends told me. Corporate director boyfriend said that the guys in upper management would talk about, when women weren't present of course, the physical attributes of all of the women in the corporation. And one of the questions that always came up about women executives was, "would you have sex with her?"

Corporate director boyfriend said they would go around the table and offer their "two cents" about the desirability of the woman executive.

I used to think that corporate director boyfriend was making all of this stuff up, and I used to just listen to his stories and think nothing of it. But maybe he was telling the truth, because the Hollywood guys do it too. And if the Hollywood guys behave that way with actresses, they probably treat female writers the same way.

I've worked with corporate america upper management most of my working life, so I'm no stranger to the way guys in corporate america treat women. But maybe this is a good thing because I'll be familiar with how I'll get treated and I'll know how to react. I've definitely had to play that game before. I don't like it, but I know how to operate in the game.

It's ill, very ill I know. But sadly, it really does seem that way. And the higher up you go on the corporate ladder, the worse it gets. You just get used to it, and you adjust, and you learn to use the rules of their game to your own advantage.

I remember going into a difficult meeting with a corporate controller, where I had to talk about why my group was over our department. He was not a happy camper about our expenses that month.

I made sure I wore a very tight sweater to the the meeting just to make sure that I had every advantage. Not sure if it worked, but the meeting went better than expected and I managed to calm him down and we figured out a way to show that my group really wasn't doing that much damage to the corporate bottom line.

I got what I wanted, but I did get sick of the "hooter jokes" that he kept making. I figured it was a small price to pay to calm the poor man down and to keep my group out of trouble. And after that incident, my boss promoted me and gave me a big fat raise.

Hollywood can't be that much worse than what I've had to go through in the halls of publicly traded corporate american executive management.

Borrowed from "Hooray For Anything"

What turns me on- intelligence, smells, sweetness
What turns me off- lying, lack of pragmatism and/or common sense (is there a difference?), right and left wing puppets and parrots, smells, petty meanness, people who don't have facts and figures to back up their claims (we used to call this marketing math)
Favorite Sound- laughter
Least Favorite Sound- static
Favorite Word- obdurate
Least Favorite Word- schadenfreude (media's new fave word)
Dream job- bestselling writer
Currently Reading- Possession
Currently Listening To- Dusty in Memphis
Currently Worried About- weight, finances, terrorism, what' going on in Iraq
Currently Happy About-lists as a way to create a story's structure, plot and architecture

A quote from a NY Times article today on fashion with the headline, "Fashion recalls 1950's nostalgia."

"Fashion is so fragmented, so indefinable," Mr. Doonan replied. "So, many people are looking for what they recognize." The retro trend "mirrors the chaos in our society."

I have the view that art and fashion are at the forefront of what's happening with society. This 1950's nostalgia reinforces my view that american society in general is only becoming more conservative because society is changing too rapidly.

When changes in society happen too quickly, it's too much for most people. Most people fear change as it is, and right now changes are forced and in your face. In fact, everything about american society in so in your face, so out there, so not private.

It's perfectly normal and reasonable for people to start clinging to the past, not because they don't want to move forward, but because the past is familiar and safe. Changes in society are happening so quickly that people are clinging to the past so they can slow the changes down, so they have time to adjust, reorient their lives and values.

What's sad is that you can't slow the change down in the end, but you sure as hell can go kicking and screaming into the future.

I think people are going to start doing that now, if they haven't already. And one sure way to slow to change the change down is to bring back values from the past.

The 1950's was such a dark time in America. I mean, sure you had family stability and all that stuff, but there was also McCarthyism and a darkness and violence in society underneath the sugary sweet stability. And the 1950's didn't last that long either, because then the beatniks and the hippies came along.

Maybe we need to all take a collective look back into the past, take a break for awhile, only to realize in the end that what we have now is so much better that we had back then.

You can never go back, but maybe you can visit for awhile as long as you don't get stuck or lost there.

I checked out the annual US News and World report rankings of colleges to see where my alma mater Grinnell College ranked.

Grinnell College is ranked # 15 for Liberal Art Colleges and
ranked # 7 for Best Value in Liberal Arts Colleges.

Not bad for a school of 1,200 in the middle of the cornfields in Iowa.

I finally finished reading Michael Lewis' book, "Liar's Poker". It's an interesting book, and you can still see the after effects of everything he brought up about the financial markets.

Mr. Lewis has apparently written a new book on major leag baseball and the Oakland A's which I intend to read. From the reviews I've read on the book and the interview I heard with Lewis, you could say that Billy Bean, the Oakland's A's general manager, could be akin to Michael Milken and the junk bond market.

Bean looks for "underperforming players", and using his own set of ratios such "base on balls percentage", signs them for the A's for cheap. These low salaried players, then end up become pretty good players for the A's. You get a good player for a cheap price.

It's the rationale that Lewis said Milken created with the junk bond market. Don't buy the bonds of good companies, when they are overpriced and whose value have nowhere to go but down. Instead, pick a company that is undervalued and if your research is right, will eventually rise in value. Or something like that.

Listening to Linkin Park's "Hybrid Theory". It's a darn good cd! I'd put a link up to Amazon.com, but their site is down right now for some reason. Oh well.

Other cds that I'm considering purchasing, Three Doors Down (Kryptonite, When I'm Gone) and Evanescence (Bring Me to Life). I love that girl's voice.

I love thrasher, semi-headbanger rock and roll music!

I'm listening to Dusty in Memphis. The cd skips on my stereo box in the living room, but works fine on my boom box in my bedroom.

I'm not sure if it's time to get a new stereo box or if there's something wrong with the Dusty Springfield CD. I bought the CD from BMG, and I've had problems with their stuff before.

Damn! Dusty has a great voice too. It's a shame not to blast her music really loud. I love that song "The Son of a Preacher Man," only because I dated a presybyterian's minister's son in college.

He was a cool guy, but confused. He told me he was gay, and then dated one of my good friends which kind of messed with my head. During my senior year in college, he cornered me and told me I was the only woman he ever loved, and I was like "yeah right, whatever, get your hands off of me." The guy was like teddy bear hugging me really hard.

In my recent college bulletin, there was an announcement saying that the guy got married. I'm like what's up with that. I thought he told me was gay. Like whatever!

Having two cups of low calorie soup for lunch and toast is really filling. It's actually a lot of food for me, but I force myself to eat it all because it keeps from feeling hungry all afternoon.

I think what I love best about eating is eating something that tastes good and feeling full from it. That's got to be the best feeling in the world. It's also the reason why cutting back on calories really sucks the big one, because it's hard to get that feeling consistently every day.

Eating soup is the only thing that does it for me. It's what worked for me in the past, so I'm sticking with it.

That's my new thing these days, making lists of what's worked for me for how to do things and what's not worked. If I stick with what works then I get stuff done, I lose weight, I keep to my spending plan.

Now granted the lists have to revised every week, because of what's happening in my life, but as I long as I more or less stick to my list, I'm productive.

It's a sign of aging isn't it? When you have to constantly write everything down to get anything done. You know, no more "I'll remember it all and get it done". If I don't write it down, it doesn't get done. It's a necessary evil in my life right now, but it works.

I wonder if there's a correlation between my spending and my eating. When I overspend, I overeat. When I stay on budget, I maintain my weight. What's up with that?

I'm still recovering from my move, which cost me about $3,000, and my trip home for the funeral, which cost me about $1,500.

Then there's my weight, because I've gained back about 10-15 pounds since may, and I'm at 160 pounds instead of hovering at around 145. I hate this!

I'm back to my soup for lunch and seriously tracking what I put into my mouth, and meticulously writing down what I spend and keeping to my spending plan.

I've calculated that by October, I'll be financially and weight wise to where I was in May before my life went to hell in a hand basket. And if I keep on going with my food counting, I'll be at my goal weight of 135 right before Thanksgiving.

Just for fun, I added a link (on the left) for my Amazon.com wish list. I saw it at the "Hurtline Towards Obscurity" website and wanted to do the same.

On a lighter note, I bought a ticket to fly down to LA for the day to see three art exhibits at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

1. Old Masters, Impressionists, and Moderns: French Masterworks from the Pushkin Museum, Moscow

2. Modigliani & the Artists of Montparnasse

3. Classic to Modern: French Works on Paper, 1800–1950, from the Permanent Collection

I fly down in the morning, and come back in the evening. I'll be on information overload from seeing three art exhibits back to back like that, but I don't want to make more than one trip to LA and I didn't want to stay overnight. I'm sure I'll be exhausted!

Besides computer problems, I woke up with a scratchy throat this morning and my nose is all stuffed up. I felt it coming on last night in art class.

I haven't been sleeping well, and I think my immune defenses are down so I must be suspectible to germs. Or maybe I picked up germs from the barbeque I went to on Sunday. Who knows?

I've had computer problems all day. First, I had install some new patch for the new virus that's coming around on work laptop.

Then I decided to do the same on my home computer, and then all of a sudden my home email on Outlook 2000 stopped working. After reading all kinds of web pages about what to do, I finally ended up deleting the old mail account, and recreating it from scratch which seemed to fix everything.

I hate anti-virus software. Every once in awhile when you get an update, it knocks out something else on your computer that you have to spend a couple of hours trying to fix. Such a pain!

I can't believe people buy Anne Coulter's republican propaganda about "California being the failed petri dish of democratic policies".

Here are some facts first.

46 states have budget deficits for their 2004 budget.

There are only seven states where Democratic governors and legislators control both branches of government.

There are Democratic governors in 24 states, and Democrats control at least one legislative chamber in 28 states.

Republicans have 26 governors, and probably control one legislative chanmber in 28 states, and have control of both chambers in 22 states.

Republican governors and legislators seem to at least have control of both branches of government in 22 states.

If you take Coulter's argument to its logical conclusion, then those 22 states where republicans control the state shouldn't have deficits, because the republicans are like financial geniuses who wouldn't be stupid enough to get their states into budget deficits.

But yet, 46 out of 50 states are facing deficits?

What's the excuse for the republican controlled states facing budget deficits? Failed republican policies?

Granted, California's budget deficit is huge, but California is the 5th largest economy. We are like our own country here. Hello! Of course, we're going to have a relatively huge budget deficit. What's Japan's budget deficit? What about the other countries above California and in the top 10.

Oh yeah, I forgot. The USA is the largest economy. I mean talk about a huge budget deficit!

Wow, my contemporary art history class was packed. 50 people were in the class.

I so don't believe it when the "pundits" say culture is dead in America. I go to art museums now once a month, and every time I go it's so crowded with people, and they're mostly tourists.

My art class has 50 people. Okay, granted it's art class in downtown San Francisco, but still. A class on a Monday night, come on! I'm giving up Monday Night Football to study art. I am like so sacrificing, because I love watching football!

My art teacher gave an introductory slide lecture, and talk about current. His last slide was a shot of Burning Man, and he asked the class, "is Burning Man art? Can people, some who say they're not artists some who say they are, become artists by being part of an event that some people say is art?"

I love studying art history. Studying art feels so necessary for my work as a writer. I don't know why, but it does.

I like studying how other people are creative, and where they take their creativity, what they're reacting to, what they're rebelling against, what kind of statement they're trying to make.

So I'm wearing this outfit to class tonight, and I think it makes me look like some reject from a bad 80's movie. Should I be embarrassed?

I've got a yellow turtleneck on, an a-line skirt black skirt with gray flowers and vines on it, a black sweater, black tights, cotton socks scrunched down and my new black Born mary jane shoes. Like it's so 80's.

I think if I had sleeker black socks, the outfit would work, but all I could find were thick black cotton ones. I'm sure I look like I'm on a retro 80's nerd patrol or something, but I'm like I don't care.

I mean I do care, but I don't have time to go out and buy thinner black socks, and I want to wear this outfit.

All it will mean is I'll just look like any another weirdly dressed San Francisco chick on the train and in class tonight. Oh well!

I'm starting my art history class tonight on the "History of Contemporary Art". It's an in depth look at art after 1940. You know, all the really, really modern stuff.

I took a class from this professor before and he's very good, so I'm looking forward to being in his class again.

He's an artist as well as an art historian, which I think makes his teaching so much better because he's creating art in his life as well as studying it. He's not some frustrated wanna be artist teaching art, because he's a failure as an artist. He's a professional artist, who has shows, teaches painting class as well as the history of art.

The best yoga class I ever took was from a professional ex-ballet dancer, who also still taught dance classes. The guy knew everything about the body and how it worked and about how not to injure yourself. The man has to use his body professionally outside of teaching yoga, and he was just so knowledgable. I mean, I think you would have to be, to teach and as well as dance professionally.

He wasn't like some part time yoga instructor. The guy used his body 5-7 days a week, and not just for a year or two but for most of his life. If you're getting paid to dance and teach dance, I would think you know a few things about the body and how to get it to work.