I went to a party in Oakland on Friday, and woke up feeling really run down on Saturday. I only had 1.5 manhattans because I was driving, but now I'm thinking I might have picked up a flu bug of some sort.

Not to let illness mess up my weekend, I took a shower and headed off to the San Francisco International Art Exposition. If I had the money to do it, I could have bought myself a Chagall, a Picasso drawing, a David Hockney painting, or an Andy Warhol or two.

One gallery was even selling a polaroid picture that Andy Warhol took of Maria Shriver, in her younger days. I'm like whatever.

There were representatives there on Saturday morning from Bay Area museums on shopping sprees, and if there were stars and famous people there, and I'm sure there were, I didn't recognize any of them.

It was fun to check out what the commercial galleries were showing, and there were several galleries from New York, as well as galleries from Charlotte, Chicago, Houston, Moscow and Seoul Korea.

Some of the work coming out of Korea was really, really cool. One artist named Sung Tae Park worked in wire mesh, and showed horses sculpted out of wire running along a wall. The artist did the same thing with a wire mesh curtain panels sculpted into the shape of babies at the end. Very, very interesting stuff.

Aside from the famous stuff, the only other artist I really liked was David Bates, from the DC Moore Gallery in New York. I particularly liked a piece he did called Oranges. The paint was very lush and textured, and I loved his orange colours which reminded me a little of how Cezanne does his orange colours.

I was listening to a friend of mine tonight, who thinks I'm crazy for listening to conspiracy radio, regurgitate Bush bashing rhetoric that I've been hearing since 1999. She kind of got mad at me because I told her she wasn't telling me anything new.

She said "Don't you care?", and I said, "Of course I do, but you're telling me theories and stories that I heard two years ago." I wanted to tell her that it's not my fault that you're just finding out all of this stuff now, but I didn't. I wanted to tell her that all this stuff she's been hearing about Bush has been talked about to death on conspiracy radio since 1999, but I didn't. She was already so mad at me that I'm not outraged more by what's going on.

I don't know. I guess I'm not as outraged as she is because I've had two years to get used to Bush and all that he's doing to the country. And you know what, I'm over it. It's an old story to me.

There are a ton of other things in this world to get outraged about. How about the continuing devaluation of the dollar for one? Or the whispers of there being two currencies in the country - an international dollar to keep the world markets stable and a national dollar that the government can inflate the hell out of?

Or the political turmoil going on in Pakistan? Or the continuing nuclear problem in North Korea where analysts have been predicting for years that the country will be the first to detonate a nuclear device? Or the rumors of an upcoming draft because we need more soldiers?

"Forearmed is forewarned" someone once said. Information is power. Those who have it, use it and react appropriately. Those who are blindsided by information can only be reactive, and when you're reactive you often don't make appropriate decisions.

I had Film History class tonight, and it's like so karmic that there's a cute Kevin Spacey lookalike in class. I never thought Kevin Spacey was all that cute, until I saw him "Hurlyburly" with Sean Penn. And even then, I thought I found him attractive because he's such a great technical actor.

But the Kevin Spacey lookalike in class is really cute, which lends credence to a friend's theory that all Hollywood actors are damned good looking people.

Tonight we watched "Double Indemnity". Dennis Quaid looks like Fred MacMurray, and even plays the same kind of roles. Not sure who is the current Barbara Stanwyck though. Stanwyck's clothes and shoes in the movie were just fantastic.

I like Film Study, but wasn't happy shelling out $80 for the textbook. I didn't know this was a two part film history class, with my class being part two. The textbook is for both classes, so if I take part one of the class next fall I won't feel so bad about paying bucko bucks for a textbook.

Okay I know people love christmas decorations and the lights, but enough already. It's January 15, and there are still christmas lights, christmas trees, and christmas decorations up. I even saw a manger scene still on someone's lawn today, and there are still fake plastic santas in the windows.

I know the greek orthodox religion has a longer christmas season, but there can't be that many greek orthodox people in San Francisco. And it's not just my neighborhood. The Christmas stuff is still all over San Francisco.