I watched "Maid in Manhattan" last night. Parts of that movie made me cringe it was so predictable, but of course at the end I was sucked in.

Jennifer Lopez is so cute, and there were all those shots of that butt of hers, plus shots of Ralph Fiennes lusting over her butt, and jokes about her "assets". She does have quite a backside, I guess. That gown JayLo wore to the Met was like so "Brooklyn". What's up with that? Natasha Richardson was funny as the ditzy society girl, and to round out the english cast there was Bob Hoskins as the butler.

The ending was really cute, but the story line was so very weak. I think the saddest part of the movie is when JayLo's mother tells her that she'll never be anything more than a cleaning person, and JayLo agrees with her. That was really sad. There's alot of mothers out there who give their daughters advice like that to this day.

The one interesting thing in the movie I thought was when Bob Hoskins tells JayLo that when she's in management she can do anything. That's such misperception about management that people have who aren't in management. It's so not true. When you're in management, you're even more constrained I think.

You always have to be the corporate cheerleader no matter what's going on with the company. You can't really be social with people who work for you or who are below you. You have to act professional at all times, and you can't really confide in anyone either if you're having problems. Then there's the whole social constraint of not being able to look like you're out of control at any time, or showing up with acceptable looking escorts or at some conservative companies, dating and marrying well.

I think this all stems from management having to even reflect the company more than the worker, and the pressure of reflecting well.

But if you're non-management, you don't see any of this and fantasize about how much freedom you'll have as a manager, which is such a lie.

This is from Starf@#*&s, the coffee place everyone in San Francisco totally hates, but it's an interesting concept, Artist's Choice cds.

Your favorite artists picked 16 songs, artists that influenced them early on and songs they can't stop listening to, personal choices, and it's on one CD.

Artists include YoYo Ma, Sheryl Crow, The Rolling Stones, Ray Charles and Lucinda Williams for now. I think there are more artist compilations on the way.

I was trying to think of 16 songs myself, but I think it would depend on my mood as to which 16 songs I would choose.

Here's a list I put together very quickly, but like I said the list will change depending on my mood.

1. The Cure - Boys Don't Cry
2. Stevie Wonder - You and I
3. Prince - Head
4. The Rolling Stones - Jumping Jack Flash
5. John Coltrane - My Favorite Things
6. Jesus Christ Superstar - I don't know how to love him
7. Foo Fighters - Times Like These
8. Rachmaninoff Piano Concerto # 2
9. Alice in the Chains - Man in the Box
10. Depeche Mode - The Love Thieves
11. Al Green - Let's Stay Together
12. Madonna - Crazy for You
13. Velvet Underground - Candy Says
14. Miles Davis - Blue In Green
15. The Beach Boys - Wouldn't it be Nice
16. The Grateful Dead - Fire on the Mountain

Wow, this was hard. I wanted to make sure I had some classical, some jazz, some current stuff, and some all time favourites, you know representative of my all over musical taste. I wanted to put in The Beatles, but aren't they on everyone list somewhere? And no country too, which is too bad because I love country music especially the really old stuff. I'm still trying to find this song which had the lyric, "whiskey, whiskey I love you". Now that's old time country music.

No music from my youth either when I heard really old stuff like Petula Clark and ABBA, and my mom's favorites Englebert Humperdink, Don Ho, Jack Jones and Tom Jones. But she also really liked Al Green and The Doors, especially Jim Morrison, The Police, and yes she totally adored Barry Manilow too. Maybe Al Green is the song from childhood.

It would be interesting to do this list every day for a month to see which 16 songs you have over and over again, and then make the list from the top 16 song that keep coming up over and over again.

Oh well, it's meant to be representative not a definitive list. How can you make a definitive list out of just 16 songs?

"The moment has arrived to divide this tract of land between us and the Palestinians."
- ARIEL SHARON, Israeli Prime Minister.

The problem I fear with creating a separate Palestinian state is where will the Palestinians go for work. Right now, they all head into Israel. Once you separate the two, will there be any companies willing to invest in industries, business or open branch offices in Palestine? I highly doubt a multinational company would be willing to put its workers at risk, when it's clear that the Palestinian government cannot control Hamas or any of their other radical islamist groups in their country.

What I think will happen is Israel will create a wall, echoes of communist Berlin and the Warsaw ghetto cannot help but flit through my mind, around themselves to separate themselves from the Palestinians. Some strategists have called the separation of Israel and Palestine, the makings for an apartheid state in Israel. Separate but equal has never worked in the past, unless both sides have equal economic resources.

Will a separate Palestinian state stop the terrorism against the Israelis? For awhile, I believe the answer is yes, but unless there is a long term plan to make the state of Palestine economically viable then the terrorism will start again.

The next question is, in what state will the Holy Sites be located? My uncle used to always tell me that the war in the middle east was always about who controlled the Holy Sites. The Holy Sites generate a ton of revenue for whoever has them.

I fell asleep listening to the radio, and was awakened at 2 am by birdies screeching outside my window. It's so strange to have birdies noises at that hour. Maybe they've always been outside my window at my new place talking up a storm, but this is the first night I heard them.

Noisy birdies. Usually they start to chatter right before the sun comes up, but at 2 am in the morning, what gives? When I woke up at 6:15 am, I didn't hear any birdie conversations. There must have been something happening in the birdie world early this morning.

I do feel intuitively that something is about to happen, but not to me specifically. It feels more like to the earth, although who knows what that might me. They say animals can always predict earth changes. I hope it's nothing too serious, and the birdies just had some kind of incident happening in their world in the wee hours of the morning that they just had to chatter very loudly about.