I'm thinking about moving to Monterey, CA sometime. If you know anybody that knows anybody that works at CSUMB or the Monterey Institute of Int'l Studies, let me know.

My co-worker, Loriver, says she has started using "wherein" every chance she gets in emails. I noticed since I've been in grad school, I'm using "the aforementioned" like nobody's business. I don't think I ever used "the aforementioned" before. See if you can work the word, "heuristic" into a conversation today and I'll give you ten points.

Shrinkie the Bear says:

Stop telegraphing your punches, stupid.

Due to the influence of Safety Neal, I am slowly turning into a map nerd. I was going through a tutorial at the library for this software program called ArcGIS. Interestingly the map example used in the tutorial plots the planned and actual course of Amelia Earhart's last flight. It reminded me of an article I read in the L.A. Times a few months ago about a theory that Amelia Earhart's last flight around the world was kind of a front for a reconaissance mission she was doing for the military to check out Japanese military installations on islands in the Pacific ocean.

One of the theories is that she and her navigator got shot down by the Japanese or crash-landed and were imprisoned as spies. Some folks think she survived and was freed after World War II and changed her identity. Apparently there was this mysterious woman, Irene Bonham, who looked like her. It sounds like a lot of this is bunk, but I like the idea that she was secretly doing spy stuff.

Around second or third grade, I had to do a report on a woman pioneer of some sort. I think we were presented with a small number of books at the school library to choose from and I probably chose Earhart after seeing an episode of "In Search Of" about her. I remember finding it hard to get into writing about her even though she was held up to us as a female role model. I think there was a nagging feeling in the back of my tiny subconscious that thought, "Isn't there a female aviator that wasn't a fuck-up to write about? She was trying to fly around the world and failed." I know Earhart broke a few records and succeeded in many flying missions, but it sucked that she didn't quite have the hero stature of Charles Lindbergh. Just imagine if the only astronaut little boys had to identify with was Gus Grissom who died in a fire on one of the Apollo missions. Y'know?

I wish the book I read in elementary school had floated the theory that she was on a secret, dangerous mission for the USA. Maybe my kid mind couldn't have even processed that kind of subtlety. Maybe I was too predisposed to hero-worship. I wonder who girls are looking up to these days (besides Britney Spears.)

I haven't really had the stomach to read much about the 26-year-old that got beheaded in Iraq. However, I realize why Kermit Roosevelt was on my mind yesterday.Occasionally these civilian "businessmen" and "embassy workers" in foreign countries are actually CIA agents doing crummy things.Y'know -overthrowing or murdering popularly elected presidents like Allende and Mossadeq (sp?).

What a mess Bush has got us into. I hope that little kids who are watching all this horror on TV will grow up not wanting to start wars.

So, is the "Get Your War On" guy only publishing in Rolling Stone now? Bummer. Or is he just being lazy?

For some reason, whenever I try to retrieve the name Kermit Roosevelt from my memory banks (he was the CIA guy who organized a coup in Iran in 1953), it always comes to me as Felix Rockefeller.

To free associate further- when I was a kid, my father taught at UCLA. However, UCLA must not have been as well-funded back then because there was a piece of big graffiti in the parking lot 3 tunnel that said "Stinky Felix" and it only got painted over after standing about ten years. We always kind of liked Stinky Felix. If "Stinky Felix" ever reappears there, I might have had something to do with it...Only maybe it will say Stinky Felix Rockefeller.

Too much scary badness in the news lately. I will now retreat to my happy place.

Here's a little known fact. Watch the documentary "Nazi Prison Escape"about the English POWs held at Colditz Castle during World War II. THEN watch "Chicken Run" and it will become five thousand times funnier. Do what I say.

KBO

RedFive and I were talking about things that date us. I called MasterCard, MasterCharge well into the 1990's until this young whippersnapper at a cash register didn't know what the hell I was talking about. "You mean MasterCard???" I've only just gotten used to calling the RTD the MTA. Remember the days before people had answering machines? Did you ever call "The Machine"? It was a kind of dial-a-joke number. I remember calling it a lot during summer boredom in the '70's.

I should be working on term papers. Whole lotta procrastinatin' goin' on.

Shrinkie the Bear says:
No matter. Confidence isn't that becoming on you anyway.

So, almost TWO FUCKING YEARS LATER they found Danilo's tumor.

Half-baked idea number 8,047: A movie about Melvil Dewey and the creation of the Dewey Decimal System framed in the structure of Amadeus. Guess who will be put in the Salieri role? Hee hee. Charles Cutter, whose own subject classification system gets cruelly overlooked when the mad, womanizing genius, Dewey, takes the spotlight away. Of course they work together on the requiem, er, founding of the Library Journal. I can just hear the over-the-top opera score as the drama unfolds. With Johnny Depp as Dewey and William H. Macy as Cutter...

Million dollar idea number 8: Gross-out novelty candy - Gummi Embryos. The junior high kids will love it.

Jesus H.! Pretty stomach-turning abuse of Iraqi prisoners going on, eh? Ach, du lieber Himmel!