hello blog! oh i'm getting these gushy rushes of emotion for things i haven't appreciated in a while, sloppy drunk style - i gave my brother a big long hug the other day just for scuz. (home for the holidays, go rent it)

seriously, go download "beware of the boys" by Panjabi MC feat. Jay Z - indescribably cool.

speaking of indescribably cool.. the deftones still rock my world.. chino is still like warm water running over the top of my head (i think that may be the most fantastic physical sensation on second and third thoughts). the new album is wonderful. it feels very grown up, very much a natural progression. it reminds me a lot of adrenaline somehow - but i can completely see their albums as the developing stages of a human being - adolescence, 20s-30s, midlife crisis, zen 50s.. i dig. they're a comforting constant in my world. i love hexagram, it's a wonderful opener, so was feiticeira - they both have this great aliveness to them. the cd-rom footage of chino is a delight - i've so seldom seen him speaking and being a regular person.. it was a great addition to everything. this album has made me really want to revisit white pony, which has made me want to just listen to everything all over again. i'm so glad they're here. i missed them on loveline the other night.. and here's what i don't understand - you know how if you just don't know about something it won't bother you? it would be fine if i never knew, and adam and drew so rarely talk about their guests of the night before, but last night, of all nights, i was just listening for a few minutes when i was taking a shower and they start talking about "the deftones last night"! how dare them! oh well, little bits of sadness with big bits of happiness.

have i talked about X2 yet? well i was flabbergasted.. i loved it immensely. i enjoyed it about 300 times more than the first one. a great comic book movie. very nearly as good as spiderman.. batman is still the best ever though, both 1 and 2 i think - Returns just because of that scene where michelle pfieffer and michael keaton are dancing and they simultaneously realize who each other are and there's the saddest, sweetest moment between them.. i LOVE that moment. and the matrix was lots of fun, but a bit of a bore in the downtime and a little hard to understand, a little pretentious, actually, a lot pretentious, but you can't beat Neo taking a pole to all the agent smiths. and "cursing in french, it's like wiping your ass with silk, i love it" - that's hilarious.

i get to find out who the american idol is tonight.. in about 2 1/2 hours. but we all know it's going to be rueben. is it wrong that i should root for all fat people? no but that's not it, he's just better. i wouldn't get tired of his voice everywhere. i love clay too, but he belongs on broadway - he's going to make a killing, it is true.

i want to be in europe right now.. i can't understand how we can be here and experiencing this and at the same time they can be over there experiencing that.. like how do those two experiences exist in the same dimension? one day, me too.

i'm really drawn to africa lately. i keep thinking seeing africa and experiencing those cultures, so different from ours, would change my life. not just any culture without cell phones, but africa in particular - it feels like the soul of the planet - it's been so scarred and raped, it still is, and we hear now that humans probably originated there, so it's like all of our homes. it's this big beating heart that will change us if we ever get to it. what an incredible place.

and i want to go to the Caribbean and feel that - i just read this book for my Caribbean Lit class about this mother and daughter from the Dominican Republic - it was fascinating. great book, called In the Name of Salome. the mother is the national poet of the Dominican Republic and she dies when her daughter is 3 and it goes back in forth thru time to both of their perspectives, from the mom's early days and the daughter's retirement and then older and older for the mom and younger and younger for the daughter until the time overlaps in the end. it was incredibly moving. and i had to read it in two days so it sort of took over my life for a while, in a nice way. a lot of it was about the daughter's life paralleling her mother's and her coping with not having her mother in her life but still living off of the memory, so that was interesting. i'm thinking maybe i can do that. lately i've been smiling at little happy memories i have of my mother. maybe the end resolution of everything is that i can learn from the bad, and then toss it away, and feel content in the memory of the good, and then there will only be watching singin in the rain when i was 5, or tulsa christmases, or dancing in the living room. k thats enough