In a vain attempt to remove the image of the "baby suicide bomber" -- I am not linking to the article because I don't want to ever see it again -- from my mind's eye and counteract the numerous depressive conversations I've had recently about the state of every freaking thing ever, I'm jumping on yet another Internet trend. In no particular order, here are 25 Things That Are Good.

Pottery; irony; the word "quintessential"; Tomato Nation; moving into the big beautiful yellow room with morning light; people who talk with their hands; Friday afternoons; Jorge Posada's ears; having one's hair played with; anticipation; the fall (as in "autumn," not as in "of humankind"); fountain pens; the existence of Jim Henson and Charles Schultz; beards; iced coffee with milk; Silly Putty; feeling understood; Powell's; Rock Creek Parkway; the way my mother says "take it easy" when getting off the phone and the way my father signs emails "love love love"; thunderstorms; people who are cynical, sarcastic and smart as all get-out; Nalgenes; basil; "Pomp and Circumstance."

Baseball game last night. Was fun. Hot as hell below but very merry. Literally nail-bitingly, sitting-on-the-edge-of-your-seat-ed-ly exciting toward the end. Yankees lost, heart-breakingly, in the bottom of the ninth. The O's are still big losers (and their fans are big gloaters) but I will say that they're a scrappy little team and the Y's were definitely not in peak form. Have gone to four baseball games now, have yet to see them win or any starting pitcher other than Fake Yankee with Bad Anger-Management Skills Roger Clemens, but am not complaining. Yelled a lot. Watched a sunburned bald guy whack another sunburned bald guy with a plastic Budweiser bottle when fighting over a foul ball. Am tired. Quite. Baseball is lovely.

Three separate dream-vignettes from last night, somehow easily remembered:

1. I was dog-sitting for a woman in my writing group, and Ginger -- a beautiful Weimeraner, a queen among mere canines, who has more personality than a lot of people I know -- kept trying to get up on two legs and walk. By the end of the dream, she was reasonably successful.

2. I opened the front door of my apartment (in the dream, not my actual apartment) to a giant cardboard box, which was full of books. As I started unpacking it, I realized it contained the contents of my Amazon wishlist -- the entire wishlist, all 15 or 17 books. I could visualize each cover perfectly, although I'm not sure now if they were the actual covers of the actual books (I don't think so), or the dream covers of the actual books, or the dream covers of the dream books. In any case, I was extremely excited.

3. I was sitting on my bed (actual bed in actual room this time), staring at my hand, which had long glass shards embedded in it. This might not be as random as it sounds, because in the last month my roommate and I have both accidentally broken copious amounts of glass on the hardwood floors of our apartment, and pieces have lodged in my foot more than once. But I started sliding the glass shards out of my palm, and they were incredibly long, two inches or more, and buried underneath the surface. Each one made a thin line of bright red blood. All of them were horizontal and perfectly straight. And they hurt. A lot.

From azcentral.com: "On Sunday afternoon, fire crews began placing red cloth tags on Show Low homes deemed too vulnerable to save, such as those with shingle roofs or near heavy brush. White tags went on homes they felt they could rescue."
Everything west of the Mississippi is going to burn to the ground; everything east of it is going to suffocate on its own smog and pollution as we enjoy yet another Code Red Day -- when the government declares that perfectly healthy people shouldn't go outside in the ozone-clouded, heat-choked air -- and it's not even July. Once again, humans destroying the planet. I can't even describe how profoundly disturbing I find all of this, there aren't words.

But hey, let's talk about the new Google fun snagged from Jess: When you type in your name followed by the word "is," making sure to use quotation marks around the whole thing so Google recognizes it as a single idea, you get fabulous results:

· Gwen is committed to Tucson
· Gwen is recognized as an engaging, powerful speaker who is an expert at inspiring and encouraging people to defy their laws of impossibility
· Gwen is an undiscovered gold mine
· Onze Gwen is een heel aanhankelijk hondje
· Gwen's in Trouble.
· Gwen is well known in the Niagara Falls community for her charity work
· Gwen is really more of a singer than a rapper
And, my personal favorite: GWEN is designed as an ultra-high powered VLF [150-175 kHz] network intended to survive massive broadband destructive interference produced by nuclear EMP.

Awesome. I'm an acronym for some scary nuclear-age readiness network. Rock on.

Sondheim is fun. Friday night was Sweeney Todd, and Saturday afternoon was Sunday in the Park with George. I must admit -- "admit" because it's the obvious choice, and I hate liking the obvious choice better, but -- "Sweeney" was by far my favorite of the two. "Sunday in the Park" was very cool in a lot of ways, and the end of the first act where the cast poses as Seurat's painting and then the backdrop comes up to reveal the painting itself was absolutely breathtaking, but the Powerpoint presentation in the second act was disappointingly weird and it just lacked the same kind of edge-of-your-seat energy that Sweeney had. Really, that was probably one of the best shows I've ever seen... when Brian Stokes Mitchell brandishes that razor with his mad mad claws, you quiver. I never would have made it to the Sondheim festival at all had it not been for the organizational forethought of Anne, and hanging out with her and Lauren and Jenny (and Amanda and Tom and Hef, for "Sunday") this weekend was as fabulous as the shows. Ah. On the fifth and sixth days, they saw the work Sondheim had wrought, and the work was good.

So, I've purloined one of these. It is a beautiful, beautiful little iBook. It is cuter than any inanimate object has a right to be. For all of you skeptics who sneer and scoff, "Computers? They're not supposed to be CUTE," well, keep it to yourself. I even -- unexpectedly -- like OS X so far, although I've only played with it for about half an hour. And the darn thing has voice recognition software built in... you ask this teeny tiny 5-lb. computer "what time is it?" and it tells you, say "close this window" and it does. Yah. Unfortunately, there's no "Open the pod bay doors, Hal" command, but still. It does tell knock-knock jokes.

This is the first time I've ever owned a new computer. I am darn excited about it. It's such a clean slate, although hopefully I'll get my act together and start transferring my files on there tonight... the incredible deal from the computer store at the college where my father works came through so fast I didn't have time to give it all that much thought, but I went to CompUSA today and redeemed my coupons for 25% off zip disks. And while I was there, I got The Sims. I couldn't take it anymore -- it sounds so fun and addictive and bizarre, people at work talk about it all the time, it was 25% off too, I have absolutely no willpower.

More fun computer updates to come. I'm a little wary of all the modem configuration figuring out-ness that is going to have to come soon, because I'm not such a hardware geek and don't know a lot about this stuff, and it looks really different from the OS 8's and 9's Remote Access panel thingie, but who cares. Maybe I can just ask the computer out loud and it'll tell me. I wonder if it recognizes me grumbling, "What the @#$%#@^@#$ is wrong with this freaking thing."

I've started reading The Morning News, although not usually in the morning. I like web-only content providers. Wave of the future. I'm just sayin'.

But far be it from me to rag on good old-fashioned newspapers (especially since one signs my paycheck); this story, about a board game called "Life as a Blackman," is the best thing I've read all day. And there's just no substitute for ink on your hands.

Never say it's too late to increase your vocabulary. Yesterday, most of us woke up having never heard the term "dirty bomb;" this morning, we not only know what it means, we also know how one is made, just how unprepared we would be if there was one and why they're so darn attractive to terrorists.

In that spirit, I figured we should also know what a "dirty martini" is, because if I'm going to learn these scary Cold War words, I might as well learn more about alcohol too. (That, and my roommate and I were watching "Sex in the City" the other night and whatsherface orders one, and we both turned to each other simultaneously and said, "what's a dirty martini?") So, courtesy of Webtender:

· 2 oz Gin
· 1 tblsp Dry Vermouth
· 2 tblsp Olive juice (from the olive jar) [Ew? Ew. Ew. --Eds.]
· 2 Olive, garnish

Let's stay away from both dirty bombs AND dirty martinis, shall we? Ew.

I have this little blue notebook I use almost exclusively to write down -- while driving, which is no easy feat -- books I hear about on NPR and would like to read. Today, as the notebook almost got drenched by errant water from my misbehaving Nalgene, I decided to join the age of technology and create an Amazon wishlist. It's mostly so I can keep track of books I want, but if you feel compelled, I certainly won't argue. If you're the slightly creepy (but I'm sure perfectly nice! especially if you want to buy me stuff, right?) guy who wrote to me a month ago asking me to post a picture of myself, this would be a lovely means through which to make up for said creepiness. Except that you don't know my last name. And I'm not going to tell you. So, uh, yeah. Forget I said anything unless you know me and have enough money to get me stuff for no reason, OK?

THIS week's moral, because I am apparently a sadly infrequent writer-on-the-blog these days: Your memory is a finite resource.

Pretend with me, for a moment, that you are at a party in New York Saturday night, dancing in the sweltering apartment of an acquaintance thrice-removed, in the company of a lot of other acquaintances and one very old friend. You are dancing. Dance dance dance. The music is silly and fun. You're NOT drunk, but you're in the process of drinking. You have invented a new drink involving Dr. Pepper and orange rum that actually tastes fantastic. Seriously, you like it. It's really good. Others agree. Then, to your delight and astonishment, George Michael's "Freedom '90" comes on the stereo. To your utter horror, you do not remember all the words.

You are unhappy with this. Specifically, the part of you that hung out in someone's (names have been glossed over to protect the innocent and the people you lost track of 10 years ago) bedroom and kissed the Tiger Beat poster of George, complete with earring and beard stubble and bad-boy glare, is gone gone gone. The only lines you really remember are the loud ones... "sometimes the clothes do not make the man".... "all we have to do is take these lies and make them true"... "I don't belong to you, and you don't belong to me". But that's it.

How many times have I wished I could make room in my brain for something else and get rid of the lyrics to, I don't know, the Les Mis soundtrack, or "Puttin' on the Ritz," or anything Michael Bolton ever wrote? I don't wish it anymore. It actually made me a little sad to not know the George Michael words. Everyone else in the room was apparantly suffering the same fate, although I don't know if they really knew them in the first place. Our 12-year-old selves: Not pleased.

Anyway. Lots of other things happened this weekend, including but not limited to: the very nice wedding of two very nice people; the visiting of an old friend in Brooklyn; the verdict that Brooklyn isn't bad, actually; the very first-ever taking of the Long Island Railroad, which is more satisfying when pronounced as its acronym, LIRR; the eating of a world-famous cupcake and the drinking of the best sangria I've EVER had (sorry Cactus Cantina, consider yourself deposed); the whiling away of a gorgeous hot sunny morning in Prospect Park; the meeting of another friend who had her very first story published in the New York times because she's incredible and awesome; the bailing out of a free ride to DC to spend time and $87 on a cool quiet Amtrak train with other nice people; the intense conversing between myself and a kick-ass woman who is a physicist for NASA on said train two days before. That was in no particular order, by the way, and was not particularly effective in giving a complete picture of the weekend. Better and more consise posting soon. Hopefully.

This week's moral: If you are an animal, stay away from me.

I watched a pigeon die in the parking garage at Union Station on Sunday, after running around trying to find a Union Station employee that might care even a tiny bit and help me. Needless to say, that was a totally fruitless and frustrating endeavor... at least I gave five separate people a good laugh. Someone finally handed me a phone book (after she finished laughing -- I never realized a living thing dying slowly and in great pain was so hilarious! or maybe it was just the idea of someone trying to help it that was so hilarious? someone should explain that to me someday) and I called the humane society and then animal control. I didn't really think they'd be able to do much except put it out of its misery a little faster; they told me to go back and wait with it until they showed up, and, 40 minutes later, it died. I know that animal control has more pressing things to do than care about a pigeon in a sweltering parking garage that can't be saved -- maybe pigeons in general -- but it would have been nice if they'd showed up. It was pretty horrible. And it was compounded by the Jane Goodall book I'd purloined from Alissa to read on the train, which basically details how evil people are ruining this planet, killing off all its animals and destroying everything natural because we're greedy, impatient, calloused, willfully ignorant idiots. Which, as far as I can tell and as far as the personell of Union Station are concerned, is completely true. (OK, so that's not exactly what she said, but I'm extrapolating here. And she does imply it. And I hadn't gotten to the reason for hope part of "Reason for Hope" yet, which, frankly, isn't as convincing as all the reasons for not-hope.)

Now my fish at work, after surviving his eventful trip down a drain and back up again, has gone to the big fishbowl in the sky. Meatball, everyone's favorite fish at home, has some kind of gigantic fish tumor on his back. Sigh. I'm doing OK with people, I think, but if you have fins or wings, keep your distance.

I decided more Jane Goodall might cure me, so I just bought two more of her books on Amazon. Jane Goodall rules. "Reason for Hope" was decent, but every time she started talking about God I was wishing we could just know more about the chimpanzees. Maybe the new books will help my animal karma...

I interviewed this woman tonight who had her first book of poetry published at age 78. Her poetry is fantastic, and she was fantastic, although I don't think her fantastic-ness is coming off in the article quite as well as it should. Anyway. She basically took a 30-year break from writing poetry to be a bustling married person, and she was saying something about how the poems her 20- or 25-year-old self would have written were so completely different from the ones her 75-year-old self has written. I asked if she ever tried to get in touch with that younger self when she was writing, and she kind of stopped fidgeting and looked me directly in the eye and said, "No. I leave her alone." It felt all profound and stuff.

And then, later tonight (tonight has been rather long), I was looking for something entirely unrelated when I found an old notebook I kept in Israel. It wasn't a diary or anything like that -- basically it looks like I used it to copy down the magnetic poetry fragments that my roommates and I wrote on the fridge, to write baaaaaad poetry of my own (the magnetic stuff was better, truly) and to copy down quotes from books I was reading. Weirdly enough, out of those three categories, the quotes are the most revealing of my 19-year-old self and what she was thinking and feeling at a time when a lot of things were changing for her. Some of them still speak to me; others, not so much. One interesting one, from Carol Shields' book "Swann":

"I want to live for a time without irony, without rhetoric, in a cool, solid metaphor. A conch shell, that would be nice. Or a deep pink ledge of granite. I've tried diligence, done what I could, applied myself, now I want my sweetness back."

That one makes sense -- I definitely felt at the time that I was losing sweetness at the rate of a barrel a day back then... and, in retrospect, I'm not sure that isn't actually true. Another, from some psychobabbly-sounding book by Jeanette Winterson whose title I didn't write down:

"In this antisceptic world we try to purge ourselves of difficult things. Don't dwell on it, switch the light off and go home. But this is home. I have to be a home to myself. I am the place I come back to and I can't keep hiding difficult things in trunks. Soon the house will be full of trunks and I will be perched on top with the phone saying, 'Yes, I'm fine, of course I'm fine, everything's fine.' The trunks shudder."

Hrm. And then, the big payoff, a phrase I think all. the. time. and never know where it came from:

"Tendrils of Virginia creeper crept down as far as the window-frame, and progressed on little circular suckers across the glass, at huge vegetable speed."

A.S. Byatt's "Possession," folks: huge vegetable speed. Honestly, that phrase crosses my mind at least once a week and I never truly believed I'd find its source. My 24-year-old self thanks the 19-year-old self profusely for writing that one down.

Sometimes you can't help but think about what you can't and aren't and don't. That is all.

A Salon article on weblogs -- pretty much the first article about them I've read that didn't make me vaguely ill. Interesting:

... to lazy reporters, the world of blogs represents their worst nightmare: It's an endless parade of experts in every conceivable subject they might write about, all equipped with Internet-style megaphones ready to pounce on errors. Careful and thoughtful journalists will nevertheless welcome the advent of blogging: At worst, it should keep them on their toes and give them an incentive not to slip up, and at best, it should give them a chance to do their job better.

I never really thought about it that way -- and I don't think Take It Easy really has the kind of audience that's in a position to hold sloppy journalists accountable, and not that I'm an expert or anything -- but just in case, could someone please write something that's a little less biased and a little more thoughtful about the Middle East conflict? Because the media's treatment of Arafat's "announcement" has been pretty wretched. Do it, or I'll beat you over the head with my Internet-style megaphone.

This egg is made of blue packing bands, silver string, wire, metal discs, wooden beads, cigarette filters, and resin, and all of the (thousands and thousands of) others are so incredible and cool, I can't even begin to explain it. You need to go to wabi-sabi.net yourself and take a look. I'm sure it's a zillion times cooler in real life, but when you click on the cities where the artist's exhibit is going to be, all that pops up is a box that says "art is interesting... art is fun..." Heh. Her web site itself is wabi-sabi. (If you're looking for a definition of wabi-sabi, click on "Public Relations." And be sure to check out the picture of her studio, too. Go thither!)

Larry King is a freaking tool. OK, buddy, we get it, there are a lot of straight people playing gay people on "Queer as Folk." They're ACTORS, and if I understand the meaning of the word, it means that they get paid (sometimes) to PRETEND to do stuff like be in love with people they aren't actually in love with no matter what their gender, so does it really matter all that much if a straight guy is kissing another straight guy on TV? And even if you find this totally fascinating, could you please not preface every single stupid thing you say with "as a straight man" or "as a gay man"? Could you please ask a question about something besides the actors' own personal sexual preferences? Loser. Pretend I didn't link to that article. Even though most of the actors came up with intelligent answers to his lame questions, reading it is definitely not a worthwhile use of your time. Moving on...

I need to summon up some self-discipline this weekend and get some writing done -- two short things for my writing group, a preliminary draft of one freelance article, notes for another and a proposal for a third. Unfortunately Lancaster, where I will be spending said weekend, is not usually conducive to getting work of any kind done. The couches in my parents' house are too comfortable and the dog is too adorable, and there are too many nice people who make me want to hang out with them and watch seven consecutive hours of Trading Spaces and go to the Linden Diner at 3 a.m. Alas. We'll see. Here's to a relaxing, fun, productive, Larry-King-free weekend.

Just got back from taking a friend on a say-goodbye-to-D.C. tour. She's moving to Indiana to go to law school, and has had to leave suddenly because she needs to take a summer class. S., although not one of the only friends who's taking part in the annual summer exodus from D.C. and will be sorely missed, is one of the only people I know here who feels very affectionate toward (parts of) the city the way I sometimes do. She's been here a few years too, a long time by D.C. standards, and was feeling nostalgic tonight -- egged on by yours truly, who never passes up a chance to be nostalgic -- so we went for a little drive down Mass. Ave. to Pennsylvania to 15th Street to Constitution Ave.

It's so foggy and rainy outside that it felt like the inside a snow globe of D.C., with the Washington Monument illuminated and towering in the mist, the Vietnam Memorial lurking invisibly in the darkness, the Lincoln Memorial's pillars glowing from within. "Home in the rearview mirror," she says, halfway joking, halfway serious, already halfway in the next place, already halfway gone from this one.

A new journal entry. I was about to preface it by apologizing for yet another round of Gwen Talks About the Middle East, but you know what, this is my weblog (my journal, as the case may be), and if I want to rant depressively about scary matters I can't control, I'm going to. So if this doesn't interest you or makes you upset or causes you to think I'm a lunatic, just don't read it. Hey, I never promised you a rose garden. :)

If your birthday is in October, there is nothing quite so fine as a birthday present -- a beautiful, funky, hand-made, fabulous birthday present -- on a cloudy morning in May. Thank you, lady, I love it.

Happy birthday to my favorite hairy arm lover! She's turning the big two-three today. Woo!

A link courtesy of my favorite link-provider: Legends of Ahimsa. Before I take my whiny self home, I will leave you with my favorite Ahimsa pottery story. Let's all contemplate its wisdom over the weekend.

The Master's former apprentice Soba was visiting. He said, "Master, would it be too much to ask if you would give me the recipe for that green glaze?"
"Of course not," said the Master, and wrote it out for him.
Later, Soba came back. "You remember that green glaze? It looks entirely different when I use it."
"When I gave you the glaze, it became yours. Why do you now complain because it looks like your green glaze instead of mine?"