Just watched The Dark Night. Frickin' bad ass.

"What kind of overconfident nemesis are you?"

I wish blogger had an option that allowed you to make posts "friends only."

Oy!

Debate night! So not watching it on CNN, where I'll have to listen to dumb-ass commentators. I guess if you have HDTV you'd be able to see their reactions real time! Joy.

I think I can catch it on CSPAN, where they just play it without people bothering you.

ETA: John McCain is so effing disrespectful. I hate his damn smirk - it's like George Bush all over.

I missed the first 20 minutes because I guess C-Span is stupid after all.

ETA 2: Where's McCain's flag pin? Doesn't that make him "un-American"?

I heart Josh Lyman.

So Bradley Whitford seriously needs to star in a new show on television. Because he is that awesome.

Too bad Studio 60 got all weird and moved away from the relationship it should have been focusing on, that of Whitford's and Matthew Perry's characters (or just Whitford, that's fine with me), and started up with some stupid romances.

"Danny began working at Studio 60 as a segment producer, working his way up to become a co-executive producer. He resigned in 2002 as a display of support for the firing of his friend Matt Albie and went on to direct a critically acclaimed film penned by Matt. The two proceed to watch each other's back, Matt's decision to go back to Studio 60 is a show of support to Danny, because Danny is a recovering drug addict, Danny relapsed in 2006 after eleven years of sobriety. He tested positive for cocaine use in an insurance physical, and as a result cannot get bonded as a director until he has been drug-free for eighteen months."

So much wasted potential on that show. Whitford playing a recovering drug addict? And that friendship between the two male lead characters? I mean, come on.

Whatever.

So McCain wants to "postpone" the debate. Whatever. I should hope that a president would be able to focus on more than one issue at a time, thanks.

They socialize the losses; privatize the profits.

We don't have money to fix Social Security or Medicare or provide health care and take care of our veterans, but here we are bailing out effing Wall Street and MILLIONAIRES.

It's bullshit.

I did try to look at how my Roth IRA account was affected but a) I don't care much because I won't need this money for decades, so it doesn't really matter for me and b) I couldn't make any sense of it anyway.

Luckily, when my dad switched jobs, he had to wait a while to do something with his 401K from his previous employer. So right now it's sitting in the safest place possible. Whew.

"Where the pellets of poison are flooding their waters"

Okay, I am loving Bob Dylan at the moment. I always love him, but now I'm listening to him about 24/7, especially the albums Nashville Skyline, The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan and all the bootlegs with Johnny Cash (two of my favorite people ever, together!)

It's sad that so many of Dylan's lyrics are still relevant to many situations today.

So every sports team I follow basically got slaughtered this week. My old high school got killed; they didn't even make it on the scoreboard.

The Browns better win today, or this rivalry with the Steelers isn't even a rivalry. It's a dominance. To be a rivalry, there has to actually be COMPETITION.

My brother and our friend watched The Ohio State Buckeyes play in a bar last night. Oy vey. That was just embarrassing, too. Our best player was injured and didn't play, though, and it's always best to lose early in the season.

Yeah. An employee at the bar last night was incredibly rude, unprofessional, and lacked decent customer service. I think he was the night manager, which makes it worse. I don't want to get into the specifics, but let's say he lied to our face about what we could use a discount on, and refused to grant it at the end of the night; charged us for drinks the guys didn't order; and our bill was messed up in other ways, too. I say he had poor customer service because none of the things were corrected. So I wrote in a letter of complainant to the corporate office, and someone better respond, because it's the principle of the thing.

Ha.

OMG.

The women on The View slaughtered John McCain today. They're better journalists than the actual media - except for Elisabeth. She's just ignorant.

I'm impressed. They shot down all of his, okay, a lot of it, bull like whoah.

Barbara pointed out that Palin sold her plane at a loss and that McCain also used the lipstick on the pig line, they pressed him to name one of her reforms and he couldn't, and they pointed out that Palin has accepted earmarks. And they called his ads lies.

They talked about separation of church and state, Roe vs. Wade. He gave some bullshit answer, and Barbara said that's an answer from someone who wants to overturn it. People in the audience were pissed when he then admitted Roe vs. Wade shouldn't have happened.

More on the interview.

I'm just impressed that they stood up to him and weren't afraid to ask him anything they felt like.

Look at the Date, redux.

I was looking through some old posts on here, and remembering what date today is, I thought it'd be appropriate to repost this snippet from an entry on Monday, Sept. 11, 2006:

Look at the Date.

I haven't watched any of the memorials or human interest stories or "how the U.S. has changed" or etc. (the polite term for it) segments on the television this week. I just...don't want to. Too many emotions would come from them, bad or good. I don't think I'll ever be able to watch any of those movies dealing with September 11th.

It just feels surreal still. I can't believe what happened. I can't believe what terrorists and OUR OWN government have done to us. I can't even read lj entries about it because I never know if they will make me want to cry or throw something--either at the media or the government or the poster. Wow. I think I just realized George W. Bush makes me angrier than terrorists. Maybe because they are abstract and so far away and Bush is supposed to be HELPING us, not making everything so much, much worse.

But I did watch Ellen today, and she had a segment about a woman, Ann Nelson, who died in one of the World Trade Center Towers. A while after she died, her parents found her Life List on her computer. (Ellen has been all about life lists this season: those lists where you write down everything you want to do/be in life.) Ann's story has been in The New York Times, Cosmopolitan, etc., and she has inspired people to keep their own life list (one such woman was also on Ellen, with Ann's parents). Her list was all about bettering herself and the people around her, not superficial things like "own a car" (which might actually be a big thing for some people).

I don't know what is was about her and her story. It was her picture, her parents, her love of life, the woman she inspired and what she told Ann's parents, the shots of her actual list...But my mom and I looked at each other, and my mom was crying, and I said, "I know! I feel like crying!" and then I started crying and...even if I had spent all day watching stories about 9/11, no other story would have touched me as much.

I tried to find something online about her with no luck.

I should make a Life List...but I'm almost afraid to. Like I'm afraid I'll never accomplish anything on it. I don't even know what I'd put on it.

ETA: I found The New York Times's article! Read it below.

***

May 17, 2006
About New York
Hope, Saved on a Laptop
By DAN BARRY

For a long time, Ann Nelson’s laptop computer remained dark.

It had been returned to her family in North Dakota, along with the other belongings she left behind in that great city 1,750 miles to the east. She was 30, lively, working near the very top of the World Trade Center, and — you already know.

In the small town of Stanley, halfway between Minot and Williston, a fog thick enough to blur time’s passing enveloped the Nelson home. Amid the many tributes to Ann, amid the grieving and the absence, it became hard to remember just when and how the laptop wound up in the basement of the one-story bank that the family owned.

There the laptop sat, for years, tucked away from sight in a black case. It was a Dell Inspiron 8000, bought shortly before Ann called home that day in early 2001 to say she had gotten a job as a bond trader at Cantor Fitzgerald — in New York! Soon she was living near the corner of Thompson and Spring, and working in an office 104 stories in the air.

Ann’s parents, Jenette and Gary Nelson, say the laptop remained unopened because they are not computer savvy. But it was more than that, Mrs. Nelson admits. “To tell you the truth, it was just too painful.”

Three summers ago, during an art class Mrs. Nelson was teaching in that basement, a couple of students showed her how to use the computer. After the class, she says, “I just left it there.”

Who knows why never becomes someday, and someday becomes today. One day last fall — “when I got to feeling stronger,” she says — Mrs. Nelson finally opened her daughter’s computer. She pushed its power button and started by looking at the photographs stored in its memory.

Soon Mrs. Nelson was learning how to play the computer’s games, including solitaire and hearts. These distractions both relaxed her and reminded her of the games she used to play with Ann. Somehow, this little black machine made Ann seem present, there beside her.

Getting lost in the computer became part of Mrs. Nelson’s after-work ritual, though she never bothered to open a file that said “Top 100″; probably some music, she figured. Then, two months ago and who knows why, click.

What she found was a catalog of goals, humanly incomplete: a list that reflected a young woman’s commitment to the serious, to the frivolous, to all of life. That night, Mr. and Mrs. Nelson sat down with the list, and were with their daughter again.

1. Be healthy/ healthful. 2. Be a good friend. 3. Keep secrets. 4. Keep in touch with people I love and that love me. 5. Make a quilt.

Mrs. Nelson used to sew all the time, until it simply became too hard to guide a needle properly with a joyous little girl frolicking in her lap. Then, when Ann grew older, mother and daughter decided to sew a tablecloth.

“I don’t think we ever finished,” Mrs. Nelson says, laughing. “She had to be doing 100 things at a time, and consequently some of them didn’t get finished.”

As for this goal of making a quilt, she adds, “I’m sure that I would probably have been deeply involved in this process.”

6. Nepal. 7. Buy a home in North Dakota. 8. Get a graduate degree. 9. Learn a foreign language. 10. Kilimanjaro. 11. Never be ashamed of who I am.

“Ann was in many environments where being a girl from North Dakota may not have been the most sophisticated label to wear,” Mrs. Nelson says, recalling that her daughter had traveled to China and to Peru, and had worked in the high-powered environments of Chicago and New York.

Even so, Ann always conveyed pride in who she was, who her parents were and where they came from — though never in a boastful way. “It’s an important point about her personality,” her mother says.

12. Be a person to be proud of. 13. Always keep improving. 14. Read every day. 15. Be informed. 16. Knit a sweater. 17. Scuba-dive in the Barrier Reef. 18. Volunteer for a charity. 19. Learn to cook.

By her late 20’s, Ann had actually become a fairly decent cook. Still, her mother laughs in recalling late-night calls, like the one that began: “Mom, what’s drawn butter?”

20. Learn about art. 21. Get my C.F.A. 22. Grand Canyon. 23. Helicopter-ski with my dad.

Then Ann Nelson’s list repeats a number.

23. Spend more time with my family. 24. Remember birthdays!!!!

Birthdays loomed large in Ann’s life. She would celebrate her birthday not for a day, but for a week — in part because her father’s birthday came the very next day, in part because she was proud to have been born on Norwegian Independence Day — which is May 17, today.

“Ann would have been 35,” says Mr. Nelson, who turns 65 tomorrow.

25. Appreciate money, but don’t worship it. 26. Learn how to use a computer. 27. Visit the New York Public Library. 28. Maine. 29. Learn to write. 30. Walk — exercise but also see the world firsthand. 31. Learn about other cultures. 32. Be a good listener. 33. Take time for friends. 34. Kayak. 35. Drink water. 36. Learn about wine.

Ann was supposed to attend a wine class the evening of Sept. 11, in keeping with Nos. 13, 19, 31, 36 — the whole list, really.

After 36, there is a 37, but it is blank.

Mr. Nelson reads the list as an inventory of his daughter’s values. “You don’t see any Corvettes in the garage or any of those material things you might expect from someone that age,” he says. “She recognized that you appreciate a few things and kind of live your life wisely.”

Mrs. Nelson interprets the list as another way in which Ann seems to communicate with her when she is most in need. So, just about every day in a small North Dakota town, halfway between Minot and Williston, the screen of a laptop computer goes from darkness to light.

E-mail: dabarry@nytimes.com

Wacko.

From ABC News: Sarah Palin Defends Experience, Takes Hard Line Approach on National Security:

On the anniversary of the worst terrorist attack in U.S. history, Gov. Sarah Palin took a hard-line approach on national security and said that war with Russia may be necessary if that nation invades another country.

Well, of course. She is an expert on Russia, what with Alaska being located next to it and all.

"There ain't no reasons things are this way."

About a year ago, I discovered folk/pop singer-songwriter Brett Dennen. I love him. I love his voice, and I love his lyrics, filled with social commentary. (Although, I admit he looks nothing like I thought he would!) Some of his songs really speak to me, particularly: "Ain't No Reason," "There is So Much More," and "I Asked When."

Yea!

May not seem a lot to anyone else, but I achieved my highest score ever on Bookworm today!

Rank 21 - Wordmaster
400,870

My best word was "panty," at 2,790 points. That's embarrassing!

And I'm a bit annoyed with Bookworm. It didn't recognize some of the words I tried to play, although they are certainly words, just maybe not words people should say.

Donate!

Today I donated $80 to the Barack Obama campaign and $20 to MoveOn.org. I can't donate thousands of dollars like some people (I'm always amazed at comments on AMERICAblog about people donating that much), but I figured EVERYONE should contribute what they can, even if its $10 to $20. It makes a difference and adds up.

If you've been reading news online, you'd know that the Obama campaign needs donations, in part because of the way its rejected using public financing. The campaign relies on donations from people like us.

From The New York Times: "After months of record-breaking fund-raising, a new sense of urgency in Senator Barack Obama’s fund-raising team is palpable as the full weight of the campaign’s decision to bypass public financing for the general election is suddenly upon it."

Maverick? Must be opposite day (or year, since it's not like anyone in the media challenges him on it...)

QUESTION from MATTHEWS: Are you proud of the work and the work and the leadership of the commander in chief in this war?

MCCAIN: Yes I am. I think the President has led with great clarity and I think he's done a great job leading the country, don't you all? [MSNBC, Hardball College Tour, 4/23/03]

MCCAIN: The President and I agree on most issues. There was a recent study that showed I voted with the President over 90 percent of the time, higher than a lot of my even Republican colleagues. [Fox News Channel, 5/22/03]

MCCAIN: The fact is that I have agreed with President Bush far more than I have disagreed, and on the transcendent issues, the most important issues of our day, I have been totally in agreement and support of President Bush. [Meet the Press, 6/19/05]

Hee.

We've always been at war with Eastasia.

From AMERICAblog:

McCain campaign: Palin won't do any interviews, she's just going to read speeches from now on

Okay, if it looks bad when a small-town official refuses to grant interviews, then it's gottb be a catastrophe when someone who is running for VICE PRESIDENT refuses.

Classic.

Oh, the Republicans can pretend in public that they like the pick of Sarah Palin, but you know they're really as irritated as the rest of us.

As a segment with Chuck Todd ended today, Republican consultant Mike Murphy and Wall Street Journal columnist Peggy Noonan - both conservatives - were caught on a live mic ridiculing the choice of Sarah Palin.

"It's over," said Noonan.

She then responded to a question of whether Palin is the most qualified Republican woman McCain could have chosen.

"The most qualified? No. I think they went for this - excuse me - political bullshit about narratives," she said. "Everytime Republicans do that - because that's not where they live and it's not what they're good at, they blow it."

Murphy said, "The greatness of McCain is no cynicism, and this is cynical."

The family and I went to the Great Geauga County Fair this Labor Day weekend (and that is the official name!).

We always go to the Democrat booth to get stickers, signs, and the like. No signs this year! Bummer. And we had to pay for stickers and buttons, when usually they're free.

I did buy some buttons, mine just says "Obama '08" with the campaign symbol and the Web site address. My mom's says "Women for Obama" (she still prefers Hillary, but she says she was just trying to rile me up whenever she defended McCain. Palin firmly pushed her over, though.).

Anyway, mom was, like, "Let's go in the Republican tent!" With our buttons on. I was, like, no, no, we can't do that! She wanted someone to claim that McCain was for women, too, so she could argue with them, I guess (she was mostly kidding).

But we didn't go in. I'm too chicken, I guess, or too polite.

At the fair, it was $5 a bag at the library, so I shoved about 20 books in the bag! Good deal.

All in all, I had a v. nice Labor Day weekend.