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!