mmmmmmmmm skanky gary oldman in new harry potter movie....

it occurred to me a few days ago that i could buy a new powerbook and (hopefully) get a loan from apple, and pay it off over a year or something. because i don't have the hunk of cash to put out on it right now. it is bad that i thought of this because now i really REALLY want a new powerbook. sigh.

Public Domain Acronym/Abbreviation Database. kind of interesting, kind of really not interesting. i can't decide.

Harry Potter Haiku. which is awesome because it's like 10 and 12 year olds writing it. nothing wrong with getting kids to learn about poetry by writing it, i say.

dear robert smith,

i understand the whole I'm Robert Smith of the Freaking Cure thing, but fer pete's sake, it's 2004, and it's about time to get a haircut.

kisses,
-e.

i actually just did a shoulder stand in the office of one of my coworkers. in front of him. because i mentioned that i could do one and he (in a married, harmless coworker sort of a way) wanted to see it. um. it was weird. also i feel like i now have rug burns on my elbows. ugh.

aww, it's true, lenny is leaving!

NBC.com > Law & Order: "The case marks the end of an era for Detective Briscoe as he transitions to the District Attorney's investigative squad. "

but yay, spin-off!

oo, quick! go to vh1.com and hear the new Morrissey cd. the whole thing. whee!

yesterday, my sister woke up with a horrible flu. today, my mom came down with a horrible flu(she was working an overnight shift, so i really can't say she woke up with it). hmmmmm...wonder what I'LL be doing tomorrow!! oh boy, it's going to be a fun weekend.

i'm not sure how i feel about this yet, but my dream celebrity prom date is apparently Ashton Kutcher...

finally, something's cheered me up today!

this is too funny: RateMyTeachers.com. i looked up my high school and it's so nice to see that some things indeed never change. meaning, some things students have posted about various teachers that i probably said verbatim 13 or so years ago:

"Tries to hard to be a friend, I have friends just do your job!" (Mr. Cassidy, who was my 8th grade history teacher at Union School, now is some sort of administrator at the high school. might be vice principal.)

"She is great for people like me who have crappy parents, she is supportive and tells me what I need to hear, not what I want to hear. I love her." (Carol Brown, my former guidance counsellor. i do love her.)

"SUGARBEAR" (Mr. Loucks, gym teacher. swear to god, kids were calling him sugarbear [why? no idea] back when my brothers [5 & 8 years older than i] were in high school. tradition lives!)

"rojo just doesnt understand that he's corny and doesnt know how to teach i think he should just get out and get a wife and get marry" (Mr. Rojowski, my former chemistry teacher. jesus he was weird. like, in a way where you might think he's harmlessly eccentric, but then again, he could've been running a meth lab in the back of the room on his lunch break.)

"If there were ever a teacher who should retire quickly, Madame is that teacher. She doesn't bother to give tests or teach lessons anymore: she exists just to insult hapless students" (Miss Weir, french teacher. i remember that one day where someone in my class got into a pretty big argument with her because she called us her 'fluffy little bunnies' about 50 too many times. she also talked about tennis far too much. now, she was probably harmlessly eccentric, but still, annoying.)

ah. good times.

skipping yoga class to lay on the couch and read harry potter and the prisoner of azkaban all night is a bad idea. right? i can't decide.

the world still sucks, but this is a nice toy: Mr. Picassohead.

i feel so awful today. i so want to go back home and crawl back in bed. i woke up feeling quite ok for once, for some reason. did all the usual things (fed the cats and fish, fixed a bowl of cereal) then sat down to watch the news for a few minutes. i watch fox's good day NY in the morning because the people on it are completely silly--it's not even a news show, they really have very little to do with news. except that today they showed a clip from the new video making the media rounds, the one of the American prisoner in Iraq being decapitated. thank goodness they don't show anything actually that bloody, just the prisoner sitting in front of his captors, and the captors (ski-masked ones, real brave) reading something that the newscasters paraphrased but i can't remember what it was.

anyway that's when i started feeling awful. i think it was exactly at the point that the newscaster used the phrase 'hacked off his head.' what an awful world we live in. what an awful, awful world. i'm not just saying this because it happened to an American, but because it happened to a human being. and because the god damn media has to be all over it--they had a reporter 'live' in the hometown of the (as she so politely put it) 'decapitated prisoner'--which amounted to her standing in the middle of the street somewhere. who gives a shit what town she's in? does that make the news any different? not to me. and i'm so disgusted with our government, and this whole war, and i just really feel like the entire world is on its way to hell in one gigantic handbasket today. and i'm not sure there's anything anyone can tell me to make me feel differently.

my manager just gave me (and other people, but let's say me for argument's sake) a bunch of those little snickers bars. which is an evil, evil thing to do when my monthly visitor in here. i feel about to slip into a sugar coma or something. argh.

nice!

eBay item 4167793215 - UnusedCoffee Mug, sent by a crazed stalker, with a pic!: "You could drink from the cup that was once held, and then mailed to me, by a real live psychotic, delusional stalker! She's insane, and she sent me a coffee mug."

and thanks to whatever big fat changes they made over at blogger this time, for some reason, i can't get my posts to come up on this page newest-first anymore, so i changed it to just showing one days' worth of posts. so if you want to see something from a previous day, go to the archives. bleh.

it's monday morning, and i would just like to let everyone know that i hate my body, and i'm pretty sure it hates me. today marks the THIRD time my girly-doctor appointment, originally made for 4/19, then 5/3, then today, now 5/17, had to be rescheduled. this time it's because my favorite monthly friend decided to show up a little early. BASTARD!! i am so cranky right now, i'd be surprised if you can't feel the venom coming right through your monitor. and you know it has to be bad, because i'm writing about my bodily functions on my blog, and do i ever do that? (hm, do i? i hope not...)

going to go drink copious amounts of coffee now. thinking about skipping all other responsibilities i had tonight (fixing dad's printer, washing all the dishes from yesterday's mother's day shindig) and going to see mean girls instead.

re: the big Iraqi prisoner abuse scandal:

Wednesday, Bush said only that the abuse was "abhorrent" and "does not represent the America that I know." His lack of a formal apology was striking, and his spokesman assured reporters later in the day that the president was indeed sorry.

but on Thursday, he apologized. because on Wednesday, the media was all over pointing out how he didn't apologize on Wednesday. what a fucking weasel.

i am so embarrassed by our government this week. i'm embarrassed that our president doesn't even pretend to be genuinely concerned about this. all he does is try to show everyone how he knew nothing about it. does that make him look better, really? i don't think so. everyone wants to pass the buck--he says he didn't know, rumsfeld claims to have not known about the pictures (but he knew the abuse was going on! why was nothing done about that immediately?)...

i don't know, i'm just not sensing any real embarrassment on the part of our elected officials here. and they should be embarrassed, because--and i know this could entirely not be the case, but as far as i've seen, this is how things tend to run in any kind of 'business' situation--this obviously shows a lack of good management. the people lowest on the chain of command don't do stupid shit if they know they can't get away with it. yes, it's the fault of the soldiers who committed the abuse, but also, it's the fault of the people who perhaps did not train them well enough in the procedures for guarding prisoners, or stress to them enough how any slip-up on their parts might be viewed by the rest of the world, or what sort of recriminations their slip-ups could elicit from, say, angry Iraqis.

ugh. how can any of us take our government seriously when it doesn't seem to take anything else (besides 'catching the terrorists' and 'alienating the UN' and 'making sure those gays can't get married!') seriously? and by seriously, i mean, in a straightforward manner, in a well-run, well-planned way that shows they are in fact concerned with the wellfare of all people (Americans, Iraqis, whoever) and not just with winning? this is too much of a 'PAY NO ATTENTION TO THAT MAN BEHIND THE CURTAIN' administration. too concentrated on surface images, on trying to make the president and his staff LOOK good, not so much caring about them BEING good.

aaaaaaaaggggggggghhhh. i have to stop thinking about this now. it's making me angry.

so, um. Friday. yay!

New York Post Online Edition: gossip: "Photogs for the London Mirror snapped (Britney) Spears with two Kabbalah-inspired Hebrew symbols on the back of her neck. 'She had hoped it would say 'new year' or 'new era,' ' says the Mirror. 'It seems she's got the words the wrong way around. It is meaningless.' Last year, Spears got a Chinese symbol on her hip that was supposed to mean 'mysterious,' but turns out to mean, 'strange.' "

sucka!

i ate peanut butter on three separate occasions today. not huge amounts, about a tablespoon at a time. but that's still not good, is it? that's like, a sign of a problem or something.

i am so bored. and i have blog. yay me.

funny? waste of time and resources? weird? i can't decide. some nyu students are doing this project called Pac Manhattan, wherein they create a real-life version of the PacMan video game, using Manhattan's streets as the grid-like board.

ok i've decided, that's really effing cool. they're broadcasting it on the web this saturday and i hope i remember to watch it.

have i mentioned lately how much i absolutely adore e.e. cummings?



spring omnipotent goddess Thou
dost stuff parks
with overgrown pimply
chevaliers and gumchewing giggly

damosels Thou dost
persuade to serenade
his lady the musical tom-cat
Thou dost inveigle

into crossing sidewalks the
unwary june-bug and the frivolous
angleworm
Thou dost hang canary birds in parlour windows

Spring slattern of seasons
you have soggy legs
and a muddy petticoat
drowsy

is your hair your
eyes are sticky with
dream and you have a sloppy body from

being brought to bed of crocuses
when you sing in your whisky voice
the grass rises on the head of the earth
and all the trees are put on edge

spring
of the excellent jostle of
thy hips
and the superior

(ee cummings)

i'll admit it, i really want to see mean girls. and i'm thinking that i may do so tonight. i'm feeling like i may need a pick-me-up after going to my girly-doctor appointment, and what could cheer me up more than a catty teen movie? plus, it was written by tina fey, from saturday night live, who is pretty cool. first female head writer on the show and all. that's cool.

i really want to try knitting this sweater (the top one), but the yarn it calls for goes for, at cheapest that i've seen, $21 a skein. and i'd need, oh, 8 skeins. poop.

oh, monday morning. how i hate you.