Everyone needs to have a moment of sympathy for poor Kelly. Her Evil Dentist story surpasses mine, unfortunately. Sigh. There are too many Evil Dentists out there in the world. I know there are good dentists out there (like someone's dad), but the bad ones are running amok (amok amok amok) and ruining everyone's day. Gr.

I saw "Monster's Ball" Saturday night, and I've been thinking about it ever since... not sure what about it, exactly, just about it. About limits, I guess, and how far people can be pushed before they fall off the other side of what they thought they could handle. And what happens after they do fall. Hm. It really is quite a movie.

The Friday Five didn't seem inspiring to me today -- the concept of hobbies makes me feel kind of blechy -- so I did something else I saw on smattering.org: The Poem Tag Project.

Sad news for all the Hogwarts fans out there: HARRY POTTER AND THE ORDER OF THE PHOENIX delayed indefinitely.

Two writing-related links: Chicklit.com and afterDinner.com.

I'm happy to report that the third and final FilmFest movie, "Graduating Peter," was fantastic, thought-provoking, original. The director was at the screening, and took questions afterward, and the whole thing was great.

It's really a shame that web radio broadcasting might be legislated out of existence. A thousand dollars a day. Gah. Do the big guys always have to win?

You two have fun in Miami. Find good apartments and vets and beaches and things.

Thanks to the DC International Film Festival, I saw two of the strangest movies of my life this weekend. "Karmen Gei" and "Platform." The first was an African version of Bizet's "Carmen," and interesting but kind of incomprehensible; the second was from Hong Kong/Japan/France, about China, and utterly incomprehensible. And long. Oh so long. Three-plus hours long. At one point, H. leaned over and said, "I've been doing math in my head..." and even though there was an end to that sentence that made it make more sense, I couldn't stop laughing enough to listen. I feel like an uncultured boob. But we do have another FilmFest movie tomorrow night, so we'll see how that goes.

In News of the Definite, I'm definitely going to be in DC another year, I'm definitely leaving my current apartment at the end of the summer, and I'm definitely moving in with the friend in the five-person house in Adams Morgan. It's a beautiful house and a great area, and it's cheap as hell. There will definitely be trade-offs (can anyone say "parking nightmare"), but I'm quite excited for now. And a little sad. As Sarah Harmer would say:

Look at the day dropping away
hear the traffic pass along
a distant sideroad down the way
But I don't care, it was so calm
I knew I wouldn't stay forever
I knew I'd get some things together
and move on...

Because I had to pay for a dumb mistake last night and come into work obscenely early to rectify it, I feel like I've already been here forever, and it's time for The Friday Five.

1. What's your favorite TV show and why?
"Six Feet Under," along with the recently discussed "Queer As Folk." The first is my favorite because the writing is so compelling and the actors are so, so good; the latter because it just has this inexplicable power over me. Sometimes my roommate tapes "The West Wing," and I still will occasionally catch "ER" even though it's dumb now. Those are pretty much the only shows I ever watch deliberately, except when someone sends me six campy hours of "Trading Spaces" on tape.

2. Who is your favorite television star?
Hm. I dunno. Keith or David or Claire or Nate from "Six Feet Under"? I don't know any of their real names, so I think that means I don't really have one.

3. What was your favorite TV show as a child?
A tie between "The Cosby Show" and "Family Ties." And "A Different World" and "Head of the Class."

4. What show do you think should have been cancelled by now?
I can't believe "Survivor" is still on. The first two seasons were such delicious folly, but they should have stopped while it was still interesting.

5. What new show do you hope escapes gets the axe this season?
Is "Fear Factor" a new show? I've never seen it, but its promos are horrific. If I never again saw a Playboy bunny suspended from a cliff in a glass box with worms crawling in her mouth, that would be fine with me.

Would anyone be interested in restarting some kind of dream weblog on leafygreen? I don't know if it's the heat or what -- in my greenhouse of a bedroom (in an apartment building that will not turn the air conditioning on until May 1 no matter what, thankyouverymuch), I've been having to sleep with a fan blasting five inches away my face for the entire night, and that's bound to do something weird to your mental state -- but I've been having the craziest dreams lately and I'd like to record them. Wanna?

Anyway, I've been meaning to post this for a while: Book Magazine's list of 100 best fictional characters in literature since 1900. It's a piece of junk. They're trying to cover themselves by saying "best" instead of "most famous" or "most influential" so they can argue the semantics of the word "best," but it's still a piece of junk. Rabbit Angstrom comes before Sherlock Holmes, Peter Pan, James Bond and Atticus Finch? Some lady from "The House of Mirth" comes before Lolita? Humbert Humbert comes before Lolita? What are these people smoking?

Do you believe that things happen for a reason? Do I?

Am taking tomorrow -- today -- off for a (say it with me, Jason) three-day weekend. Am seeing Sarah Harmer and Billy Bragg at the Keswick Theatre. Am going to relax and not think about the following: future-deciding letters that have not yet been sent and/or the potential shortcomings of the DC postal system, living arrangements of any kind, people who try to view my paper's website using Netscape 3, and large rats with red eyes. You all have a nice weekend, too.

A woman was talking about wine on the radio the other morning, and said the following: "Just because you like a wine a lot doesn't mean it's good. Don't confuse the two. But we like lots of things that are not quantitatively GOOD -- that doesn't mean you shouldn't like them, and that's what makes us human."

That's so completely exactly how I feel about Showtime's Queer as Folk series, it's uncanny. See, the show is bad. Badly written especially, although the actors sometimes rise above their terrible material. It also toes this sketchy line between soft gay porn and a crappy soap opera, falling intermittently between the two sides. And I love it. I may have to move sometime in the near future and the "oh no, I won't have Showtime any more! I only have it now because of our weird cable set-up -- no one normal gets Showtime!" thought crossed my mind not so incredibly long after the "oh no, I'm going to have to move all my junk and uproot my whole life!" thought. If I were moving into my own place, which may or may not happen, I would seriously consider buying some exorbitant cable package to watch a 45-minute show once a week. Frightening, truly.

One might think this is very unusual, a straight white 20-something female having a teensy weensy obsession with a (bad) show about extremely sexually active gay men. But last weekend, when I was renting a video of last season's episodes (hey, I had to get caught up), a very adorable and effeminate video store clerk engaged me in the following conversation:

Him, gushing: I love this show! Do you love this show?
Me, looking embarrassed: I do love this show.
He then proceeds to *pull out a copy of The Advocate from under the counter, already turned to an article on Queer as Folk.* Yah.
Him: Look! There's a whole article here on the demographics -- 1.8 million of the show's 2.5 million viewers are straight white 20-something females!
Me: Huh, I guess I'm not that special, then.
Him, winking: Honey, you're absolutely special! Now who's your favorite character?

...and we proceed to have a 10-minute-long conversation on the merits of each of the characters, their various acting abilities and, uh, other stuff. Shut up. I told him about the unremitting joy of Queer as Folk recaps. And then he gave me another wink, called me "his special customer" and sent me out the door with the video free of charge, right in front of his manager. Too bad I don't inspire that kind of behavior in straight men, hm?

Just because I held a cell phone to a mug of sangria in the middle of a restaurant at 1 a.m. and told someone to talk to it doesn't mean I was trashed or anything. I was just letting her say hi. By "her" I mean Alissa, not the sangria. :)

Saw an interesting production of "Prometheus" Saturday night, with Angie's roommate Jo starring (sort of) as one of the 16 Daughters of Ocean. It was pretty cool, actually, although our seats being about four inches away from the stage resulted in a few of those god-please-don't-let-me-start-laughing-right-now moments (specifically in relation a questionable view of Hermes', um, costume). Good times, good times.

And now another friend is visiting for the next few days, so I'm going to try to take off a bit early -- without even reading the new Trading Spaces recap on everyone's favorite website, Television Without Pity. If you already read it, don't tell.

In the I-can't-believe-I-feel-this-way category: Bush makes it a little better. "Bush appears to have concluded that the cost of continued inaction outweighs the cost of a possibly failed intervention." I would add: "...and that he will look like an unabashed hypocrite to the rest of the world if he doesn't *do* something." Sending Powell there, although it might not do anything concrete, at least makes it look like the US is trying. Better than nothing.

Anyway, the Friday Five.

1. What are the first things that you do in the morning to start your day?
Um... wake up to NPR, stretch, yawn, shower, that sort of thing. I realized after looking at other people's answers to these questions that I don't actually have a snooze button because I use my stereo as an alarm clock -- if I'm really tired, I'll turn the alarm back five minutes and reset it, but seeing as that takes a fair degree of brain power, I don't normally do it. Instead, I'll lie there with my eyes closed and listen to the soothing voice from the radio for a while.

2. What are the last things that you do at night before going to bed?
Read, flip on the environmental noise machine thingie, flip off the light.

3. What daily routine have you recently added to your day?
A vitamin. And a Viactiv calcium chewy chocolate.

4. What routine do you wish you get rid of?
Taking out the trash... emptying out the dishwasher... cleaning of any kind... :)

5. What's the one thing that makes you feel like something is missing if you don't do it some point within your day?
Talking to certain people on the phone, emailing certain others (although that only feels weird during the week). Driving, unfortunately. Feeding the fish -- I woke up in the middle of the night last week thinking I'd forgotten, only to remember I was on another continent and a few zillion miles away from said fish.

Oh, and I updated the books page, finally. I'm not sure if anyone ever looks at that (I'm not sure why you would, come to think of it), but I'm finding it's my favorite part of this new site -- already I'm finding myself saying, "yeah, I remember reading that... sort of... "

And then Sharon makes it so much worse. I realized that just about 5 years ago, the first week of April in 1997, my father visited me in Israel. We toured a lot of places I hadn't seen, including the Church of the Nativity. Weird.

But it's good when a blog can make you laugh out loud -- the Fabulous Hulk. Hee. Brad (of The BradLands) makes my day sometimes, and he doesn't even know it.

However you say hello in Celtic! I did make it back this weekend, but I haven't made it back to posting until now. Hello, Blogger. Hello, leafygreen. Hello, take it easy.

Anyway, it was a wonderful trip that felt a lot longer than a week. Irish coffee: yes, yum. Tate Modern: yes, fabulous. LSE: yes. Cliff walks: yes, unbelievably beautiful. Book of Kells: yes, interesting but overly touristy. Guiness factory: no, too far away and too expensive. Weird tower place: oops, totally forgot about that one, but we did get to the Dublin Writers' Museum. Seder: yes, hilarious. Bowling: no, and no punting either, but seeing Cambridge was great. I would absolutely love to go to school there -- the place is like a dream, honestly. Iceland Air: um, not again. Five hours of delays due to a snowstorm in Reykjavik does not make for pleasant travels, although I did meet several amusing fellow passengers and learned about international yarn and fabric exhanges. Who knew?

Also, I learned that I really like this:

If anyone has the burning desire to purchase it for me, please feel free. :)

Also, I am still exhausted. And actually kind of happy to be back.

Also (shifting gears now), the situation in the Middle East has me really worried, angry, unhappy. I tense up every morning before looking at the paper, and I react to the media's rhetoric and vocabulary instead of the situation itself because that's easier to handle. I can't believe things are this bad... I can't believe Sharon thinks isolating Arafat and rolling tanks into West Bank towns will accomplish anything, or that Arafat and other Arab leaders can continue to call for the destruction of the state of Israel and condone suicide bombings and NOT be condemned for it. I can't believe the media continues to use uninformed, ignorant, biased language like "occupation" and "offensive."

(A preface to the next paragraph: Way too many Palestinians have been killed, too. Way, way too many. I'm focusing on Israel and its casualties, though, because they're comparable to the US side of the equation.)

Israel is the size of Rhode Island, and hundreds of Israelis have been killed already this year. There have been suicide bombings -- acts of terrorism, if you prefer -- every day for the last week. Every day. How would this country be responding if this was done to the US on a comparable scale? Bombings? Invasions? Nuclear weapons? And our government has the nerve to sit back and urge restraint, to ask Israel not to respond with violence, to continue to try negotiations, to offer a hand of peace. I think the Israelis have been pushed to their limit and are responding with too much violence, and I believe in these pacifying actions in varying degrees. But to have the US request them is the ultimate in hypocrisy.

I could continue in this vein for quite a while, but I'll refrain. I'm feel like I've been forced to clarify my beliefs, and own up to them in a way I never had to before... and although it's certainly my choice, in a way it feels like being pushed. To be pro-Israel at all, even a pro-Israel leftist who believes a Palestinian state is the only way to have lasting peace, is to be on the defensive now.