I wanted to blog my ass off tonight. I headed straight home after work. But then, when I got here, I got sidetracked by lawn mowing, bill paying and just general worrying.
As I may have mentioned here before, Ive got a little bit of a problem with Quicken, the computer program that Linette and I use to track our finances. Im in the habit of every day or so entering everything weve spent money on – all the checks weve written, all the quarters weve spent on newspapers, all the nickels weve put into parking meters. Everything gets accounted for. Im obsessive about it. Well, during Crimewave production, there was no time for this one particular obsession. Id just jot my expenses on little bits of paper and toss them onto the corner of the kitchen table. I kept thinking that Id get to them, but I never did.
Finally, tonight, I tackled it. It took me about three hours to make my way though three weeks of receipts and notes, and it stressed me out to the point where I now have a fist-sized knot on the back of my neck. Im painfully tense. My shoulders are hunched up so far that theyre practically covering my ears. In addition to this, I think I must be entering some kind of manic state. I keep running back and forth between the filing cabinets and the computer. I cant sit still until theres a stack of stuff that needs to be filed. I need to keep jumping up and sprinting across the room. I feel like someone at the plant might have dropped a crack rock into one of the textured vegetable protein meatless meatballs that I had for dinner tonight. I just cant stop moving around and worrying about the missing checks (there are some that weve apparently written but cant account for). Fuck it. I need to make myself sit down on the couch that smells like Freeda and watch the episode of Frontline that my good friend Tivo recorded for me. The episode is called, Truth, War and Consequences, and the review in the Times made it sound worth watching.
Also of interest today, if you like the news, are a few pieces of the Valerie Plame leak. First, President Bush, explains to the press that the Executive Branch of government is pretty darned big and that we might just never know who it was that leaked the identity of agent Plame to Robert Novak and other members of the press. Theres a good Washington Post piece on Bushs response to the affair. Heres a short quote from Bush taken from the article.
“Now, this is a large administration, and there’s a lot of senior officials. I don’t have any idea.”
Well, I dont know about you, but Im satisfied. He tried his best to ferret out the person responsible, but it was just too darned difficult.
Heres anther good piece from the Washington Post on Plames career as a CIA operative. It sounds, based on the quotes given by her fellow spys in the article, that leaking her name really might have put some of her former contacts in jeopardy. When Id first heard that suggested, I thought that it was probably a bit exaggerated, just liberals taking advantage of a mistake on the part of the administration to make it seem even worse. After reading a few comments by people at the CIA, who are furious about this leak, Im beginning to think that this really was a very shitty thing that was done to Wilson and Plame.
And here, lastly, is an article that someone somewhere probably thought was real. Its a well-done parody of a CNN story in which a group of scientists announce that women who perform felatio once or twice a week are 40% less likely to get breast cancer OK, I just went and checked and its been yanked down. Apparently CNN threatened legal action. Thats too bad. It was pretty funny. Heres a short quote that I excerpted earlier:
“I think it removes the last shade of doubt that fellatio is actually a healthy act,” said Dr. B.J. Sooner of Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, who was not involved in the research. “I am surprised by these findings, but am also excited that the researchers may have discovered a relatively easy way to lower the occurance of breast cancer in women.”
I actually thought the article was real until I got to the mention of Dr. BJ Sooner.
It’s kind of neat to think that somewhere in the world there’s a woman who read that and rushed home to protect herself from breast cancer.
Speaking of law suits, Linette and I just got something in the mail from a law firm thats pursuing a class action suit against the apartment complex we lived in when we were in LA. Apparently, according to the papers we just got, there were harmful airborne particulates and such floating around, due to some poorly contained demolition. The entire suit was only for $275,000, so, if we won, wed probably only get something like $25. Since we haven’t been coughing up blood or blacking out, we figured we didn’t need to join in on the lawsuit… We’ll let the people having the kids with their hearts on the outsides of their bodies split it.
And lastly, Id like to congratulate Crimewave contributor and friend, Gregory Hischak on getting married. I had no idea that he’d gone and done it until I got his note today in the mail. If I had, I wouldnt have hounded him so mercilessly for a submission last month.
OK, Im going to watch Frontline now.
