things, things, things like those things

THE JANE AUSTEN BOOK CLUB is just as brilliant and perfect as expected so far and makes me just want to snuggle into bed and read until the end.

Christopher's making chicken fried rice with bell peppers and peas and stuff. It smells great.

Lots of things from the newspapers, which are depressing but necessary.

The first is this column from Newsday about Iraq -- it's manipulative, but it earns the emotion it pulls out of you because it's true.

Then there are the John Hinckley stories from today's Washington Post. Well, this one is a story, about his family wanted him to have unsupervised visitation priveleges at their home and this is commentary about it.

This is the part I found most interesting:

In 1997... Indeed, Hinckley had failed to tell doctors about his relationship with the hospital's chief pharmacist, a woman who resembled (Jodie) Foster -- an interest some doctors considered obsessive.

Hollywood agents are on their way to the medical facility now to confirm whether the woman really does look like Jodie Foster. "Jodie doesn't work enough. If this woman really does date sociopaths and look like Foster, she could be a star."

Or something like that. (If you don't know much about Hinckley, Foster is an obssession of his -- just go read the story and you'll see how much.)

OH, and there's this weird thing. I never read the lame comic soap opera strips, like Apartment 3-G, but one caught my eye last week. It was a very melodramatic thing (of course) about a stalker. Dah-duh. And this storyline has continued in a most hilarious and irrelevant (if what they're trying to do is raise stalking awareness, which I sincerely hope is the motivation) way. You can go see online at the 3-G website here. (From Wednesday: "The stalker has a mustache, Margo?")

Favorite headline for the day has to be this one: "Evolutionary quirk unites man and octopus", which has to be the clunkiest euphisms for "octopii get erections" I've ever seen.

And I swear, last of the links, two little things in the New York Times. One is a story about the website The Memory Hole, where a guy puts up government documents. Some "they" don't want us to see. Favorite graph of this one:

(Among the 50 things you are not supposed to know: the C.I.A. commits over 100,000 serious crimes per year; blood relatives of Hitler are living in the United States; an atomic bomb was dropped on North Carolina.)

And, oh, forget the other one. Christopher needs help.

George smells better. Someone better claim this One Story -- it's really good!