Here's a good article on two of the intellectual loves of my life, Christopher Hitchens and Thomas Friedman, The Liberal Hawks.

I'm adding it to my list of labels, "Brenda Elfgirl the Liberal Hawk". Even former peace doves will fight when attacked. I still haven't read or heard any cogent arguments for the other side that can stand up to Hitchens and Friedman.

My fantasy is to write fiction and stories as well these two can argue and write.

**For Hitchens, a confirmed atheist, the real war, the ongoing war, is ages older. “I think everything is a clash between secularism and religion – my original allegiance to the left was on this point,” he said. “You hear (the left) saying ‘Well, we mustn’t offend Muslims.’ Do they think the Muslims will return the compliment? Do they think the Muslims will recognize gay marriages? Yes, actually they do."**

Stress is good for one thing; weight loss. I've lost 8 pounds since February 4.

My new goal weight is 126 pounds, which will be first thing I get up in the morning weight, but more like 130-132 pounds if I were to weigh myself during the day.

Ediets.com says I can get there by June, and I'm hoping they're right.

I haven't been working on my novel since stress is not conducive to my creativity, but I did come up with three new ideas for story tonight. I had the first session of my "Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror" writing class tonight, so I guess I'm getting inspired.

1. "Confessions of a Chocolate Shiksa Goddess" - came up with this one on the way to class, semi-autobiographical story on the joys and perils of dating jewish men. It takes place in NYC, and is supposed to be very comical. Thinking about the title "confessions of a pineapple flavoured chocolate shiksa goddess" as well, but that would be way too biographical sounding.

2. "The Dwarf who heard voices" - some weird scifi story about a female dwarf who hears weird voices in the night, and finds out that she's living one some kind of evil site for the Belial (another name for satan in the bible). She loses her job, her man, and gets booted out of her home and into the crazy dwarf asylum. But she escapes and starts to investigate the evil cult of Belial. She was journalist before, so becomes an underground journalist investigating satanic cults. She disguises herself as a homeless person, but then gets caught and is killed and cursed.

3. "Confessions of a Robot Sex Worker" - a variant of the chocolate shiksa story but changed so it could be a science fiction story. It would be fun to write a diary from a robot sex worker. I would model her on those spooky robots chicks from that bizarre movie "Cherry 2000". Should be a comical story because robot chick sex worker would be so clinical about sex, and there would be dominatrix stories and things of that nature. I don't know, I think it's funny.

Sorry for not posting. I took the day off on Friday because I had to use my birthday holiday within 30 days, a company rule I didn't know existed until this year. Spent the whole day studying for my film history mid term next Thursday.

I was expecting to get a call back from that company I interviewed for on Tuesday, but there was no call. God, I hate interviewing for a new job!

I got so depressed and woke up sick and tired on Saturday, and spent most of the day in bed. I finally dragged myself out and called a friend and felt better after that. I was supposed to go to the Orchid show on Saturday too.

On Sunday, I woke up feeling the same way so I skipped church and slept till the late afternoon. I don't know if I'm really depressed or just coming down with something. One of my therapists told me once that sometimes it's okay to just do nothing except sleep. Sometimes your body just needs to shut down for awhile.

Went to bed on Sunday dreading my job, dreading my life, wondering how I was going to face it all. Some 12-step voice in my head kept saying "one day at a time, one day at a time".

Once I started working this morning I felt better. I have a ton of work to do this week preparing for a new client presentation on Friday. I called my boss this morning to talk about what I have to do for the week, and he was trying to be nice. Don't trust him though, which I feel bad about.

The consultant I work with called and asked me how the job was going. I told him I was looking for another job, and he said he was going to try and find out what was going on from some exec VP he works with. It's nice that he cares, but there's nothing he can do about my job situation.

I think I'm depressed because I really wanted that job I interviewed for on Tuesday. It was more responsibility than I'm used to, but I think I could have done it. The job was perfect too since the offices are in downtown San Francisco, and I wanted to work downtown again.

I keep telling myself it's okay, it was my first job interview in four years and I blew the interview because I'm so out of practice. But what freaks me out even more is my intuition kept telling me I had the job. I never get intuitions about any job I'm interviewing for, so I was really hopeful.

What a hoax! My intuition was so off! How can my intuition be so wrong? It's never been wrong like this before. It makes me think I can't trust myself, can't trust my intuition and that's so depressing. If I can't trust my gut instincts, what can I trust?