(later in the day) And for those of you who need a touch of cheering up, those feisty folks at The Onion are doing their job... check out Nation's Wealthiest One Percent Demand Minority Status. Haw.

10/13 Saw some silly movies this weekend. Got rained on a lot. Four seagulls just winged by the lower edge of my window. A plane is slowly rising out the upper corner. Right across from me are the famous Bostongas tank, decorated by Corita with broad brushstrokes of color. A controversy in the 70s when it was decorated: someone said they saw Mao's profile in the edge of one of the brushstoke. Wanted it painted over cuz it was unpatriotic, especially re: our boys dying in vietnam. For real. It was a big deal in Boston.The tank is on the water, at the edge of South Boston, from whence came many of the young men who killed and died. Southie, now fast being mythologized by film and video, no nostalgia for me in those depressed and hostile streets.

Boston is a weird town. "Boston Mass is the rippinest town" (a prize to anyone who identifies that goofy song from my goofy past.

I don't know if other people have these moments, when you lie in bed before your alarm goes off, or on the weekends when you know you don't have to get up, and you're half dreaming. i try to have thoughts, but bizarre sentences form in my mind: "life is a merciless bar of gold." Can anyone decipher that for me?

I must have stayed up too late.

10/9 Northward, ho. I'm going to Sweden in mid-november. My parents are there until December cuz my mom got a fellowship to an Research Institute there. They paid for her and my dad to fly out an' live there for a semester, out there in the socialist paradise. I'm so curious. Never been so far up north. They're in Upsala, which apparently is not too far from the Arctic Circle. If anyone knows of kool people or things to do in Upsala or Stockholm, tell me.

10/8*crampy. cranky* Okay so the republicans in the senate just killed the chance that contraceptives would have to be covered by health insurance. There really isn't any sane justification for this, whether you are pro-choice or anti-abortion, pro-welfare or anti. And today, I am pondering another case; tampons. As a friend of mine puts it, chicks don't use'em (or pads) just for themselves. Guys would be pretty distressed if women walked around leaving a trail. or collecting it in bags. She suggested that women set a day when they all have their periods, wear clear plastic pants, or skirts, and stand on the steps of the white house. nasty, eh? Sometimes a visceral response is just what is needed. So anyway, for the public good, I *must* buy these things. I say, tax everyone. The state should pay. Or health insurance should. Actually, I say the state should pay for health insurance, but we've been there before. (Same with contraception. Even celibate people and gay/lesbian folk benefit...lower population means better living for everyone.)

10/7 While reading my economic history, I came across this information: that the engineers at Ford and Co. had gotten some of their ideas about an assembly line from seeing the Chiacgo slaughterhouses, the way the carcasses swung down a line on chains, being disassembled piece by piece. And I thought: such a rich image, and whose idea was it to reverse that image, so that it was one of assembly, of adding-together, instead of taking-apart? Such a filmic response, isn't it, to run the slaughterhouse in reverse? It's happening at the same time as the rise of the movies: the early 'teens, and I can't help thinking there's something so timely about it, the way early films were constantly playing with the ability to thread it backwards and have people miraculously un-eat food, buildings spring to life and be kissed by the wrecking ball, the hero unsticks from the ground and flies up to the top of the tall building. And here is someone who runs the slaughterhouse backwards, building cows. And from that takes inspiration, that you can have a moving line which accumulates parts until voila, a finished product, an automobile, a model T-for-time-runs-backwards. I love synchronicity.

On an entirely different note:
I have to say that any interest in that new flick "What Dreams May Come" is almost completely offset by the scene in the preview where black sidekick/helper guy sez to whiteguy main character "It's your world!"
Somebody oughta be ashamed of that moment.