New Get Your War On stuff is up and stingingly funny as ever. Can we get rid of the president we have and elect the Get Your War On guy instead? 'Cause I think he'd do an outstanding job.

I've been thinking about that feeling you have after coming back from a long trip, when you've traveled thousands of miles and you're dirty and exhausted and exhilerated, and you open your front door back on your life, and you take the hottest shower you can stand and crawl into your bed and everything you've returned to feels old and new and perfect. I haven't had that in ages. My head feels more like that woman in "The Yellow Wallpaper" who's wearing a track around the walls of her room.

I wrote another article for Gig Matrix about Joe Millionaire. Ugh. I hate Joe Millionaire. I hate myself and Joe Millionaire. I'm interested to hear if anyone has thoughts about it, though.

"I have really never considered myself a TV star. I always thought I was a neighbor who just came in for a visit."

Sad day. Thanks for the visit, Mr. Rogers.

For anyone playing along with the really cool NationStates thing Escoto found, I've had to evacuate my original country. Something was wrong and I wasn't getting updated issues. The new country -- non-creatively named Gwenalia2 -- can be found here. Beware the uranium mines, but be sure to hug the fluffy poodles frolicking freely in the lush forests.

For anyone not playing along with the really cool NationStates thing, you should start. It's pretty amazing. God bless the world wide web, and god bless Mr. Seattle.

Interesting column by Amos Oz (a wonderful Israeli author whose name is pronounced like Ohs, not like the Wizard of) in The New York Times today:

The protesters have it wrong: this war campaign does not emanate from oil lust or from colonialist appetite. It emanates primarily from a simplistic rectitude that aspires to uproot evil by force.

I recently saw a breakdown of just where the US gets its foreign oil, and was surprised. I can't locate the numbers right now, but Canada was our leading importer, then a collection of Middle Eastern countries (including Iraq and Saudi Arabia), then a few loose odds and ends in South America. I still think oil is a huge issue in this soon-to-be war -- and that "no blood for oil" has some serious resonance -- but I think Amos Oz does have a point about the philosophical underpinnings of the administration. All the religious rhetoric, all the casting about for metaphor, certainly points in that direction.

And I'm not so dovish that I believe evil never has to be uprooted by force (thinking Nazis here), but I don't know that it's the answer to enemy that we're supposed think is a lone dictator rather than entrenched country-wide infrastructure. I also don't think it's an answer to a whole culture of people who are angry enough with this country to try to kill its citizens. If elusiveness is the order of the day, even if you're sure what the evil is, it seems to me that uprooting it becomes a little tricky. But what do I know.

How to Spend a Snowy Weekend by Way of Food, by Gwen

Saturday afternoon: Welcome three friends from New York to your house. Go to cute local bakery and pick up eight cupcakes of various flavors.

Saturday night: Cook vegetarian chili, homemade cornbread, and a big salad. Watch it start to snow.

Later Saturday night: Walk home from a really really bad movie, exclaiming, "hey! it's really starting to snow." Demand tea and cookies.

First thing Sunday morning: Wake up. Exclaim: "wow, it's still snowing! yeah." Eat cupcakes, breakfast of champions.

Sunday afternoon: Now in veritable blizzard; walk to Safeway to buy more food. Comment on how 17th Street (normally a major DC four-lane road) truly resembles mid-19th century painting, complete with hooded figures in black huddled against the wind and absolutely no cars. Slide down middle of street. Have inordinate amount of fun by way of sliding down middle of street. Rent videos. Drop videos in snow due to excessive intentional sliding down middle of street. Buy a lot of food.

Sunday evening: Cook lasagna, bread, roasted garlic, more salad. Attempt to locate car. Laugh.

Sunday night: Attempt to locate car again. Do not laugh quite as sincerely as before. Try to shovel car out preliminarily using a small plastic trash can. Give up. Return to house for popcorn and hot chocolate with peppermint schnapps. Resume laughing. Play Clue knockoff with friends. Knit. Watch videos. Have more hot chocolate. And more schapps. And a little more, thank you.

Monday morning: Shovel friends' car, for real, with gigantic heavy metal shovel some kindly neighbor left for public consumption due to stupid citified losers like self who do not own one. Be continually amazed at depth of snow. Exclaim repeatedly about depth and impressiveness of snow. Hire two unresponsive 12-year-old boys to help shovel. Then hire them to do other car. Watch, defeated, as gigantic snowplow pushes back gigantic pile of snow onto car once again. Go inside. Eat buttermilk pancakes made from scratch. Forget about stupid car.

Monday afternoon: Say goodbye to friends, who manage to get car safely out of space. Say goodbye to other friend, who makes it safely to Union Station. Eat leftovers. Make plans to catch ride to work Tuesday. Pretend car doesn't exist until next July.

And a good middle, too, because H & K have just won the wedding contest! Woo! I am so excited for "Swirling Hearts" balloon centerpieces, I can hardly express it in words. An excellent middle, yes YES.

Last night, I stayed with Kelly Ann S. in her hotel room. It was lovely and fun and it's so great to see Kelly so genuinely happy and excited. There is something impressive to be said for an organization getting new employees off on a foot so right as this: expensive hotel stays and meeting with high-ups and bonding with the other interns -- it is truly a wonderful sight to behold.

This morning, I woke up to say goodbye and see her off, and lounged around the hotel room for a while. As I was getting ready to get in the shower, watching a segment on the Today Show about the code orange alert, a man's voice came over the PA system in the hotel. Its first words were, "Attention, hotel guests." Of course, my immediate reaction was, "Wow, I didn't know they had PA systems in hotels... that's so weird... wait, stop thinking about that, because a bomb has just gone off in DC. You are in Alexandria right now. Start thinking calmly about what you're going to do." Its second words were, "We will be testing the fire alarm system this morning."

I felt that was a sign that I needed fresh melon, waffles, hashbrowns and coffee, so I treated myself to the continental buffet in the lobby of the hotel and started reading Kelly's copy of The Sweet Potato Queens' Book of Love, something I'd never have picked up myself but was finding immensely enjoyable. And then, to top it off, I heard "Can You Feel the Love Tonight," the official H & K wedding song of the universe, on the restaurant radio station. A good start, yes yes.

Carl, I almost forgot:

1. cabal: the artifices and intrigues of a group of persons secretly united to bring about an overturn or usurpation especially in public affairs; also : a group engaged in such artifices and intrigues
2. junta: a council or committee for political or governmental purposes; especially : a group of persons controlling a government especially after a revolutionary seizure of power

Totally interchangeable, and both of them are fantastic words. Personally, I prefer "junta." I am honored to be a member of the junta. A junta. ANY junta.

Ihadalotofcoffeetoday. I now have comments, too, so say hello if the mood strikes. Be forewarned: Liss and I are on the same YACCS account, so if a user is banned from one of our sites, s/he is banned from both. Behave, all ye who enter here. Whee!

Q: What happens when it looks like your hubcap is falling off, so you take your car to the garage to get it repaired?
A: You spend $400 on new tires.

I know. It doesn't make sense to me either.

I heard on NPR this morning that, for whatever reason, January's approval rating for The Impending War soared to 66% -- up from December's 53% -- and reversed the downward trend of the last few months. Great. Fine. Whatever. I give up (not that it mattered what I thought anyway) and I'll stop talking about it here. For today, at least.

I saw 25th Hour last night. Liked it a lot. I honestly think Spike Lee is pretty brilliant. Sure, he needs an editor and stuff, but his movies are really entertaining and I think it's amazing that he's not afraid to bang the same drum he's been banging since forever. That drum is still relevant, and his perseverance is admirable. Racial tensions still exist, even if we're all sick of talking about them. Plus, I think I could watch Philip Seymour Hoffman and Edward Norton stare at a wall for three hours and be entertained... those two, in that order, might be my favorite living actors . Both of them tend to play the same roles over and over, but I like both of their signature characters enough that I don't care. One of my favorite journal-writing people said that already, but I thought it too, I swear. She augments hers with a funny story about my pal Phil, too, so you should go read hers.

OK, I just erased something here because it would spoil the movie for any of you who might see it. But the ending is so good. Oh, what an ending. Really, really good. I'll stop babbling now, but only if go see it for yourself.

Have you ever wondered what a quintillion pennies would look like? It looks really, really big, and that is really, really cool. (Link stolen from The Morning News.)

Oh, and: In the process of gaining our rightful place we must not be guilty of wrongful deeds. Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred.

Just about once a year, I find myself at Polly Esther's. This is never by choice -- efforts to go dancing at a BETTER place are usually shouted down by the 80s contingent, also known as my old roommate L., who was visiting this weekend -- but if you grit your teeth and make a determined effort to embrace the atrocious cheeziness, it usually isn't too painful. But. Standing underneath a 30-foot poster of Wham!, watching a gigantic Rubik's Cube suspended from the ceiling flash its lurid colors in an indistinguishable pattern, standing amidst hundreds of weird Polly Esther's-loving people screaming out the lyrics to "Wild Wild West", holding a drink that contains both vodka and grape Kool-Aid, having Aaaahnold install his bionic eye in the Terminator video above the dance floor -- I cracked. Cultural overload from a period that I only truly remember through television and the playground equipment at my old elementary school and the words "Iran Contra Affair." It wasn't funny any more; it was just profoundly sad. Cosmic dissonance, I salute you.

It was also an interesting contrast to the protest I went to on Saturday. (This essay from the Post, although written in a tone more dismissive than I think is respectful, actually sums up the day nicely.) I had been very, very anti-protest in the last few years, after the infamous incident with the "I mock your value system" guy and the billions of dollars the WTO shrillsters have cost a city that can't afford to fund its schools, but I wanted to show up to this one. My usual pessimism and apathy were defeated by those very WTO protesters, actually -- my rationale was that the more thoughtful, logical, regular people attended, the harder it would be to dismiss the whole protest as bullshit.

And there were a LOT of people there. Sure, a lot of white college kids with hippie trappings (and I'm not saying that their voices don't deserve to be heard too, blah blah), but also a lot of families, a lot of older people, a lot of people with sensible shoes and sensible signs, a lot of veterans and soldiers in uniform. I saw a round, middle-aged woman wearing a little stars-and-stripes elephant pin and carrying a sign that said "Republicans against the war." OK, then. Not that I think this will do a damn bit of good, or that anyone who matters is paying much attention to a few hundred thousand people milling on the mall on a brilliantly cold January morning... but maybe someday, after this inevitable war, there will be a P.S. in a history book that reads, "not every American in this country supported this idea or this administration." Maybe.

I called today, and it's official: We're an org for another year. Long live leafygreen!

In the spirit of spending money and being technologically enabled, I have it bad for iPods. I've wanted one forever -- recently, I've been going to "visit" it online the way that H. "visits" her prospective canine pals on Petfinder. And although it pains me, I'm going to skip two sessions of pottery to save the cash. Sad, I know, but it's the easiest way I can think of to find $300 without involving my mutual fund, which I loathe but don't want to touch. My sole iPod reservation used to be that I couldn't hook it up to my car stereo, but now two different places have come out with little $30 gadgets that let you broadcast a weak FM signal so that your car radio can pick it up. Score, as they say. I feel very self-indulgent, in a not entirely bad way.

"We see again today the severe nature of the things the state of Israel is facing," Prime Minister Ariel Sharon told a group of young Jews visiting Israel for the first time. "All attempts to reach a cease-fire, even today, are failing due to the Palestinian leadership that continues to support, fund and initiate terror."

"The Palestinian Authority has condemned these operations," Ghassan Khatib, Arafat's labor minister, told al-Jazeera in a live interview from Cairo. "Sharon escalated the policy of killing, especially in the past few days during which the dialogue in Cairo aimed at finding a way out of the ongoing cycle of violence became more serious."

Unbelievable. Just unbelievable. It's amazing how things in Israel can continue to get worse and worse and worse and worse -- there's always a new low, always a new way for it to degenerate. But then again, there's always the same old people to blame for whatever new horrible thing has happened.

From Ellen Goodman:
"If Trent Lott is nostalgic for the wonderful yesteryear before civil rights, this administration is nostalgic for the days before women's rights. Is it any wonder that some Americans have responded to 34 Million Friends? This is an idea that comes with an address, a place where we can offer aid as well as dissent, a dollar as well as a message of connection to the women of the world: US Committee for UNFPA, 220 E. 42nd St., New York, NY 10017." Here's their official website, too. Wow. Awesome.

The books page has a spiffy new look for 2003. I think I'm going to have resolutions this year -- usually I'm too lazy or cynical, or cynical because I'm too lazy, but I feel like some goals might be in order. I'm rethinking my have-low-expectations policy... maybe it's better to be disappointed than never to be appointed at all. Hee!

So I got a postcard from register.com informing me that leafygreen.org's little registration-y whatnot expires in the beginning of February, and if it weren't for the other sites being hosted here, I'm not sure if I'd renew it.

Actually, that's probably a lie. I kind of have this thing about having to finish things I start, and I think this would fall into that category -- although I don't know how exactly it could or would be finished. And I do like writing here, but somehow I haven't been finding the time or the words recently. And that makes me feel guilty (why?), so I avoid it and write even less.

But it's interesting how this metaphorical place comes to feel like a literal place, an actual somewhere to go. I like this place, and I'm not going to give it up, so I think leafygreen will live to see another year. Remind me to renew come February, OK?

Um, yeah. Clearly I'm on some sort of hiatus, but I'm still alive. Thank you for your concern. I think I'm just busy or distracted or something. Nothing to see here. Move on through.

One of the things I've been busily, distractedly doing is writing freelance articles; here is one, a cynical ode to our nation's capital on a co-worker-friend's site. Another Chicklit article to be finished (fingers crossed) by the end of the week, and a third that's currently germinating somewhere in the nether regions of the ole' brainstem.