a description of michael moore's new book: Stupid White Men...and Other Sorry Excuses for the State of the Nation:

"The government has been seized by a ne'er-do-well rich boy and his elderly henchmen . . . Our great economic expansion is unraveling faster than a set of Firestones . . . Our water is poisoned, the ozone's in shreds, and the SUVs are advancing like a plague of locusts . . .

Remember when everything was looking up? When the government was running at a surplus, pollution was disappearing, peace was breaking out in the Middle East and Northern Ireland, and the Bridge to the Twenty-First Century was strung with high-speed Internet cable and paved with 401K gold?

Well, so much for the future. Michael Moore, the award-winning provocateur behind Roger & Me and the bestseller Downsize This!, now returns to size up the new century -- and that big, ugly special-interest group that's laying waste to the world as we know it: stupid white men. Whether he's calling for United Nations action to overthrow the Bush Family Junta, calling on African-Americans to place whites only signs over the entrances of unfriendly businesses, or praying that Jesse Helms will get kissed by a man, Stupid White Men is Mike's Manifesto on Malfeasance and Mediocrity. Among his targets: George W.: "President" of the United States. The Thief-in-Chief. A trespasser on federal land, a squatter in the Oval Office. Send in the Marines! Launch the SCUD missiles! Bring me the head of Antonin Scalia! Bill Clinton: One of the best Republican presidents we've ever had. The Former Yugoslavia: Bring back Marshall Tito! Nobody in America liked him much when he was alive, but now he looks like Lady Bird Johnson.The Idiot Nation: A friggin' stain on a blue dress. That's what captured our attention in the nineties -- along with slow-moving Broncos, six-year-old strangled beauty queens, and Hugh Grant's dating habits. Corporate America: There is no recession, my friends: no downturn, no hard times. The rich are wallowing in loot -- and now they want to make sure you don't come a-lookin' for your piece of the pie.

The polls indicate that 60 percent of Americans are "upset or angry" about this land in which we now live -- a land where crooked courts select the president and money rules the day. So if you're feeling the same way and you're wondering what's going to give out first -- the economy, Dick Cheney's pacemaker, or your new VW Beetle -- here's the book for you."

mhm..i'm buying it.

i really need to find more things to do that don't cost money and can be done at any hour of the day or night or else i'll go a little crazy - it's as if when i'm not spending money i have Nothing to do - and i can't just read on cue because i have to be "feeling it" - and i'm not tired til around 3 am so when i get home around 5:30, and friends and frasier and the simpsons and newsradio are all over by 8 - and it's not dawson's creek night - i then have about 7 hours with nothing to do. help. last night i freaked out and went jogging. at 1 in the morning. jogging. i may actually start doing that regularly, but it'll be difficult because halfway around my block i had to start walking because my calves felt like they were going to fall off. very strange feeling - didn't recover for some time. though kind of nice to be out in the cool of night with no eyes bothering me (and just hoping i don't wake up sleeping neighbors with my dying-breathing) - umm.... so when it's warm, swim, and when it's cold, jog? sure? ok.. kelly tells me if you start exercising and then stop for some reason you feel like the shittiest person alive.. i can't really imagine that. but anyway
guys please tell me if you're coming to juan's bday bash so i don't have to call you long distance, thanks. i'm guessing you need at least $20.
are you guys usually awake before 3 am? cuz i was seriously considering calling one of you but decided against it.. alan, the rabbit in your headlights video with thom yorke and dj shadow played last night on moby's show he put together and he called it the greatest video ever made (he's a smart smart man) and i taped it, so next time i see you you're watching it. does your cell phone stay in your room all night? were you awake at 2:16 last night? what days do you not need people to be calling you in the middle of the night? ;)

man.. i have to go home now - and sit around for several hours.. somebody please give me attention-grabbing suggestions. wouldn't it be nice to have a place that you and your friends all went to whenever and no matter what time it was, someone you knew was Always there? like Friends, i know.

when does spiderman come out? when does the new batman come out?

i want one of those hand held tape recording devices very badly.. i could just sit in bed and talk into it for hours - and then make a book out of the transcripts..and it would sell because it would be "such a profound reading, such a real depiction of young people in america.." haha

alan, i'm so glad you caught nader on the daily show - is he not the coolest guy ever? well, actually he's the least hip guy imaginable with the hippest ideas imaginable. check out michael moore, as well - he's the same way but funnier and more outrageous, he used to have this show on bravo called the awful truth which was excellent, just revealing terrible things about all kinds of mainstream establishments in our society - www.michaelmoore.com is terribly informative. i want to pick up nader's book as soon as i can. actually that's a good way to spend time.. read all of michael moore's essays on whatnot.. he directed canadian bacon, by the way. little things.

oh me oh my..
out of boredom whilst babysitting an unconscious lass i came online and found alan to be Away and his buddy info to be ridiculously intricate and FROM THAT i found a wonderful site i'd never heard of called bored.com and FROM THAT i found an online game type thing called GUESS THE DICTATOR AND/OR SIT-COM CHARACTER - oh my sweet jesus, it's fun. i act like one of those people and the computer guesses who i am from yes or no questions.. so far i've been jack from will and grace and brian from queer as folk, and it's gotten it, and it's made me laugh hysterically! great fun! there's also a "guess the tv show or movie" that i can't wait to play once i've played this one for hours and hours... oh hurray. thanks, alan. AXEL, ARE YOU COMING TO JUAN'S BDAY BASH!?

lovemelo

hey kitty cats: juan's birthday is the 28th and he and i made tentative plans to go to daytona and spend the night this friday and go to this strip club and have a good old time. so that means alan and axel need to come down to orlando this friday so we can all stay in a hotel room in daytona and laugh hysterically as melody puts one dollar bills in strippers' g-strings - it's for juan. so please email me saying you're going, and i'll talk to juan, and we'll work out specifics later. juan love, melo

debonair is not a french word, as i had thought, even though it resembles french in every way a word can, without the use of little symbols whose names i do not know - i use it (debonair) to perfectly describe a man i'm falling a little for, his name is Cary Grant. dashing..deliciously handsome..debonair.. i didn't really mean that deliciously handsome part, because it is really just a repeating of dashing, but i wanted another d.
so i'm renting his movies, one is north by northwest, a hitchcock, and it's good, but a little silly, even though put on AFI's top 100 movies list.. dunno why.
there are two types of dictionaries - prescriptive and descriptive - and vonnegut then says: prescriptive dictionaries are like honest cops, descriptive dictionaries are like drunken friends from virginia. my dad's huge immaculate amazing dictionary (which we call "the big book of all knowledge") is a descriptive dictionary, it turns out, and you can tell by looking up the words "ain't" and "like" (substituting for "as") - you see, descriptive dictionaries say the use of these words is abominable and a sign of severe stupidity and ignorance of the english language - but prescriptive dictionaries are more realistic and they explain the way we use these words, and why, and get into how the language, slang or no, is furthering itself within our culture, which, as most would agree, is a much more interesting take on things. so now i want to run out and buy a prescriptive dictionary.

words can be exciting. if only for nerds like me - and brittany bernstein as well - we once giggled hysterically all thru a sociology class as we played words games on her mechanical spellcheck. if that's not nerdy, what is?

"i'm covadinbeeeeeees!"

does anyone know how to move my comments to the bottom of each post? or how to change the link color? cuz i tried to change it thru yaccs and it did nothing.. um, asian languages are really neat, they're being spoken all around me.

waiting to hear from only college friend Anthony about the results of his HIV test.. i have a video ready called Living Proof about living positively with HIV and AIDs.. it's really wonderful. a little nervous

i'm having visions lately of the end of the world (after constant listenings-to of tool's aenima, the song, after finally buying the album of same name, which is great but too angry for me, cept that song, a fantastic song, - reminding me of how much better i like APC and maynard was so smart to let his voice do other wonderful things and he should inspire serj Soon; i'm a little in love with maynard)
"learn to swim" - ok, and that artwork behind the cd of parts of california breaking away.. thinking LA would go..san francisco..and we'd suddenly find out that christianity was truth and god was trying to kill off all the freaks and queers and feminists and unitarians - and then we'd overpower him with this huge strand of love we'd make and we'd kill him and then everything would be ok. strange thought.

definitely a lot of serious thought about being a gay rights activist..

the laramie project, about the death of matthew shepard and the effects of it on his town, is a fantastic play where 8 actors play over 70 real-life people they interviewed, there is no original writing, only editing of interview excerpts, and you're no more than a few feet from the actors, and it was overwhelming and everyone was crying and it was amazing
and then the vagina monologues
(i'm starting a theatre craze)
i saw it first on HBO, where the creator performs most of the play by herself and it's EXCELLENT and important and hilarious and heartbreaking - and then i see it at ucf, with a bunch of women, and they're kind of terrible and you can't hear or see anything and it's big big disappointment, especially when you bring friends and sit among all these strangers looking forward to them being blown away by how great it is.. try to catch it on HBO, it's tres tres bien.

and then i'm seeing the merchants of venice sunday with jenn and niko at SCC - shakespeare with modern remix..sounds fun.

the problem with theatre is it's expensive (compared to movies and much else) - and i'm suddenly very broke until dad pays me back.. which could be a while. so minimum expenditure (a word?) is welcome.

i need to make a gainesville trip, which is obviously frightening, but then i'm realistic and i calm down - so . it's as simple as that.

lovemelo

naps
already leave me confused
a little disoriented
let's add to that
? yes
oh hello mom
RUN from "i love you", RUN!
please everyone in the world, stop saying it to me. stop saying it
i recoil from it
can't say it back
don't want to say it back
i hate it
it means very dirty things
run

check out oscar nominees from eonline.com - go moulin rouge, go A.I., go lord of the rings.

also, rosie o'donnell came out. go, rosie.

lovemelo

Happy Valentine's Day to the boys in my life.

finally a written-on-paper-first post, from last night around 4:15:

-is anyone ever completely blown away by amazing things disguised as commonplace? like how we get humans by little eggs that grow inside of us - or how we move so quickly and largely and easily in cars - with so few exertions from ourselves - imagine taking away the car and we have millions of people floating as quickly or slowly as they please over miles and miles of land - just moving.
or how extremely bright the sun is that it fills everything - Everything - up with light, even the things that are shaded from it - every crease of earth is bathed in light, that's kind of incredible - imagine feeling, smelling, touching light - seeing it as a thing all around you like fog or something.

coming home from a night with friend Kelly Kaufman who i find it very easy to break into spontaneous deep conversation with even though we've never been really connected or close - we watched My So-Called Life tapes at Becca's dorm and reminisced and we both love love Loved that show, and still do, and i still feel angela completely and still feel just like her in so many ways (has she subconsciously shaped me?) and OH the sighs at thoughts of jordan catalono - such beautiful, excrutiating love and obsession we share. Ricky is Axel - how wonderful. And so coming home very late i thought of all the nightshift workers in the world and how i'd kind of like that but then i'd be placed in that unnatural social category but these fears of night are foolish - because the creatures of darkness are every bit as beautiful and intricate and awe-inspiring as the creatures of light - Night is just as brilliant as Day. Let's all stop fearing the Night. Its shadows and shadowy people.

I've finally gotten the perfect circle cd and i love it and i think 3 libras is one of the greatest songs ever.. i sing the end over and over to myself.

words on a piece of paper.. i've been so afraid, let's just keep playing the impersonal communication game, i'd be very happy to - for days i silently hoped it'd been lost in the mail - but no, i don't want that - because i know i Must get out there, i know he is all worth the turmoil because: and i see pictures and pictures here - him remembering my awe-filled face at watching dear ephesus; bus rides and knees; lost in crowds of people waiting for a band to go on as tool blares overhead, very close; leaving history, overwhelmed, having to read the letter again; riding with him to school at night and a joke turning into news i never wanted to hear; loving him sitting there with the girl in the lovely yellow dress sitting across him, lost in their world; "God, i love your smile". and after the pictures, through the fear, it is inconceivable to not move.


lovemelo

i've just lost two sets of somethings.......... wow
axel, to salvage some of what i responded to you in length about..ah
lol about sigur ros video reaction
i loved that brian and justin kept making out during the france video, it was like..oh, they're still doing that, well good.. (several making-out-with-brian fantasies here), what a lucky actor justin is, eh? oh before i forget, there's a lovely article in the new Advocate with brian on the cover.. that's a really interesting magazine, i might subscribe. anyway, that guy, gale something.. he's straight,(as is michael and what's his head, short guy) so sad for you but glad for me. and apparently incredibly smart and politically minded and generally fabulous.. go find it.
i don't really like joey's english professor only because i find him strangely unattractive, but he does seem genuine, and sure i'd date my english professor if those circumstances were there, it would be a fun dangerous kind of thing. sure. i was watching the jack lying next to frat boy scene with my brother and we were like "Kiss! kiss him! oooo, you looooooooooove him.." to the frat boy. so obvious. and such a bitch he turned out to be! well i bet he'll be back, calling on jack. mhm.
now the other endlessly greater and more interesting jack:
it's so easy to fall in love with him, i know. i hate that people like jack die. too much alcohol i think. but it seems so natural for something like that to happen.. like.. how would you live otherwise? i don't know.. i'm probably much more normal than these great people so i will survive, but sometimes i have my doubts, so maybe that makes it interesting. the dharma bums is my favorite book of his so far, i've only read two, and it affects you even more than on the road, it's a lot deeper, it teaches you a lot of things, you want to sit on a straw mat in the woods and meditate afterwards - it's beautiful. there is the most pure of happinesses after reading a particularly wonderful passage from one of his books.. i'd leave class after reading it and just look at the light on the trees and kind of feel like i was floating above all these people walking around me.. it's unlike most things. i'm going to read his the subterraneans next. looking forward to it.

oh how things change for worse and better and no one can stop them and you just have to feel your way back to where you want to be. but where do i want to be?

thinking about jack,
lovemelo

well of course THAT works at a public library.. let's try something meaningful and watch it fail miserably, hm? i hope i don't get a crush on bonnie's boyfriend.. it feels inevitable even though not likely (strange) - of course that wouldn't go along with my tendancies as of late to write letters to random people confessing my love.. make that just one. not as nerve-racking as high school..hmmmmm... more comfortable yet still as scary (strange..) what is this? Bagombo Snuffbox - an excellent title for a book of short stories. why not? vonnegut knows all. and so does kubrick, and i'm reminded when the shining comes on tv.. hbo. better. i have to rush home soon so i don't miss the lady in the bathtub for the nth time. ahh lovemelo

i hope i never have a daughter is dumb but i understand..testing..

axel,
i understand. i really do. i know those desperate grabs at hope and whatever else you may think is fleeting.. and other people never feel like they understand because they just don't live inside your head. and that's true. we'll never completely know - but we just wanted to make sure you weren't going to somehow hurt yourself in the long run - of course i am one who does nothing out of fear of hurting myself, probably hurting myself more - so i say go for it. do what you think you should and just deal with whatever consequences.. it's probably better that way. also you never want to live questioning whether you should've done something. so there is the big picture. good luck. that was all about the billy situation. now the parents situation. same applies. no matter how hard it gets, for however long, could be 20 years of them not talking to you, but it's still better than living a lie.. and it is living a lie. don't lie to yourself. don't cop out by saying they know but are scared.. take a stand. think about the gay rights movement. be a role model for gay youths everywhere. you have plenty of cheerleaders at your side no matter what the outcome. think about it. your mom will probably be upset but still talk to you and love you.. your dad may be harder, as it sounds, and distance himself for a while, maybe something more drastic.. but in time they both will get over it. they always do. this isn't the 1800s. and even then people got over it. it's not going to be easy, but nothing that is worth anything in life is. think about how much better everything will be after they've gotten over it and accepted you and you guys can all talk casually about whatever's going on in your life.. think about how amazing that would be. i think so anyway. let me know when you decide.

lovemelo

Axel, i love you THIS MUCH.

i love love loved your first post to me.. wow.. thank you so much for getting so involved and caring and responding, it feels so good.
i am a bit concerned about you and billy's desire to live together because more often than not that leads to serious relationship turmoil and eventual messy breakups.. i always think it's best to wait at least six months into the relationship to live together.. the jolt from seeing each other 2-3 times a week to every day all day isn't going to feel as good as you think, i bet.. at the very least consider trying to have seperate bedrooms to escape to if need be. but really, i think you underestimate how serious a step it is to live together and maybe you should hold off a while. for the sake of the relationship. especially with the few doubts i've heard from you on the phone.. just think about it very very thoroughly before you do anything.

i've been thinking a lot lately about living with friends, how nice it would be.. maybe even moving to gainesville and living with people there.. hopefully axel ;) but no school.. no no. i'd just love to live outside of parents house and work and just exist for a while. i think that would be really great. just thinking.

alan, do you want to keep considering a spring break trip? i might be able to pull it off and i think we should at least try. that whole fly to new york, spend a day and bus to boston thing sounds mighty fine.. talk to drew and give me a go for hope.

i'm so late for class but i have new dark burgandy-ish hair that i feel supercool with so i'm fine.

lovemelo