Divorcing Jack: Really good movie. Rent it now.

Yes, you can understand what they're saying. It's really not that difficult. Jeez.

Is it a blog faux-pas to blog about blogging? Because that's what I just did. I thought it was interesting, but I'm easily amused.

Another note: Wendy wants me to make clear that there is a vast difference between Great Plains people and Mountain people. She is a Mountain person. As I am originally an East Coast person, I tend to think of everything between Chicago and California as ... I dunno. Those westernish things that suck to drive through. They aren't real differentiated to me, even if some of them do have bumpy bits. Whatever.

This just in: FiendishPlot is not banned in China.

This does not mean, however, that anyone from The People's Republic of China has ever checked the site out, that I can tell. Hong Kong, yes. Taiwan, yes. China? Nope.

But they could! If anyone wanted to. Because I'm not banned.

How do I know? I checked here. It's very cool. So this means I am not as subversive as Google.

I was feeling a little depressed about that -- I mean, I'm a fire-breathing liberal type! I brake for feminists! I don't heart totalitarian, authoritarian or otherwise -arian regimes! I have been known to say that Jiang Zemin is a weenie! (OK, I've never said that, but -- hey! There it is!) I threw up all over Guangzhou after choosing poorly at a deli in Hong Kong! I used the bathroom on the train from Guangzhou even when it was stopped at the station, in flagrant disregard of the rules and regulations! (Why is it against the rules, you ask? Because it's just a hole that goes straight onto the tracks. Now you know.) I attended a June 4 memorial rally in Victoria Park in Hong Kong! I don't like clothes with a Mandarin collar! None of my books are little and red! I'm dangerous, I tell you, dangerous!

But I checked, and The Portadown News isn't banned there either. So that made me feel better. Hey Newton -- who do you think can get banned first?

Site statistics are cool. That's how I could tell that I probably haven't had any visitors from China. I have, however, had several visitors from the UK and Ireland, Australia and New Zealand, Canada and the US. I can see where all of those are coming from -- The Portadown News links to me, which is where I get the British Isles hits, most likely. Thanks, Newton! I know people in Hong Kong and Japan and Australia and such, so that could be the source of those hits.

Then there are the other ones. I've had hits from all the continents except Antarctica (Thank you, lone visitor from South Africa! I owe you one.) I've been checked out by all of Scandinavia -- yes, even Iceland -- which is just tremendously cool. I'm guessing the Danish last name has something to do with that. All of the places that I visited when I lived in Asia -- Hong Kong, Taiwan, Japan, Thailand, the Philippines, Malaysia, Singapore and Indonesia -- have returned the favor, which is nice. (Hmm, maybe that's why no one from China has stopped by -- I didn't get a chance to vacation there when I lived in Hong Kong, and the few day trips I took were either for work or ill-fated, like the food-poisoning trip. And the countries I missed in SE Asia -- Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos and Burma/Myanmar -- are also AWOL from my hit list.) Most of Europe is represented, from the big boys like Germany and France to the little guys like Lithuania and Andorra. Brazil and Argentina have checked in for South America. How much of that is because of the Brazilian Bikini Wax story, I wonder? (That, by the way, is far and away what gets hit the most by search engines. Bizarre)

It's all very cool. I'm beginning to see why Mahir, the "I Kiss You" guy from Turkey, put out a plea for places to stay.

Now, just what sort of link whorage/gratuitous mention do I have to do to get an Antarctica hit? Have I mentioned my penguin fetish? That should count for something....

Thanks to everyone who checked in with me. I'm ok, I promise. That was kind of the point -- that you can be sad and depressed and emotional while still functioning as a human being. But I appreciate the calls.

Right now Angie and I are arguing about how to pronounce my sister's name. She wants to say "Lora" when it's more like "Lawrrah." Except not. And it's definitely not "Lair-ah", which, as far as I'm concerned, is how you pronounce the name "Lara." Hmmm.

I normally don't obsess over weirdness like this -- ok, that's a lie, I obsess over all kinds of trivia until something else catches my eye -- oooh, shiny! -- but Dawn sent around a link to a survey/java applet that is trying to map out who says "soda" and who says "pop." The best is the list of "other" terms that are used. Jimmy Juice? Tonic? Babyarm? Code fuel? Who the hell are you people?

If you're a soda person, go vote -- Pop is outstripping us, and that's just wrong. If you're a pop person -- well, you're wrong. So there.

That page also contains a link to a long dialect survey some folks at Harvard are doing. Check it out -- I had no idea there were so many different ways to pronounce things. I entered my Delaware-centric pronunciation history. Someone probably needs to counteract that. They've had very few people from the Great Plains states (Wendy?) and no one from Nevada. So, um, someone go take care of that, ok?

I don't know what to say today. Some friends of mine have been leaning towards "get over it," but I'm not there yet. A few people are also on the "Let's bomb the fuck out of anything that moves" (that's grossly oversimplified and not what they said, but that's what I fear), and I can't go along with that. Many are decrying the commercialization, the exploitation of the tragedy, which I find appalling.

The Chicago Tribune has World Trade Center debris in one of its windows. I saw it yesterday and nearly spit. What are you saying -- "Hey, we're the Trib, and we're important enough to have a relic?" Fuck that. Bastards.

I won't -- can't -- watch the TV coverage of the memorials. I won't participate in a televised frenzy of grief. That doesn't feel real to me, it feels put on, acted out for the cameras. I don't do well in organized outpouring in emotion. I never have.

But I can't "get over it." I'm not built that way any more.

I used to be able to compartmentalize very well -- too well. When I was 16, my grandmother had a heart attack. I knew it was serious, but I also knew that I wasn't supposed to let my emotions get in the way of my life. So I filed it away in my brain. That night, it was my turn to say grace at dinner. As I was praying, I knew there was something I was supposed to mention, but I just couldn't remember what it was. So I thanked god for the food, and asked him to watch over us, and, um, yeah, that's it, I guess. And then my mom said "Sarah, you didn't pray from Grandma." I hadn't. I'd forgotten about her. That's the only way I knew how to work it.

Years later, when my other grandmother was dying, I was with my parents at her nursing home. I called my sister Laura on a whim, for something trivial. It didn't occur to me that a call from our grandmother's deathbed, for most people, would probably only mean one thing. Why should it? I was getting on with life, not letting my emotions get in the way, "getting over it." (Laura ripped me a new one. As well she should have.)

All of that is a drawn-out way of saying that I've learned that I can't just "get over it," I can't give myself the approved 10 minutes or after-work hours to grieve. I've learned it doesn't work that way for me. Unless I let myself feel grief and rage and fear and sadness as it happens, whenever it happens, I won't let myself feel it at all.

There are times when I don't necessarily think that's a bad thing, times when I wish I was as walled off as I used to be. I liked being untouchable, unflappable -- it made things easier. But that wasn't real, either.

If you can get over it, if you can go on as if nothing has happened -- more power to you, I guess. But I'm still scared, and sad, and furious, and mournful. And I can't make that go away -- not without denying it's there at all.

September 11 wasn't my tragedy, in that no one I knew, and no one they knew, was killed or hurt. And I thank god for that. But the fact that it happened at all is reason enough to grieve. So that's what I'm doing. You can tell me that I'm a slave to marketing messages or a bleeding-heart liberal or a soft-headed, soft-hearted wimp or whatever you like. It's just something I need to do. And if you need to as well -- well, I'm here with you. I don't know if it matters, but I am.

I just got this from my aunt Elaine. Can you tell she's my godmother?

Dust if you must but wouldn't it be better
To paint a picture or write a letter,
Bake a cake or plant a seed.
Ponder the difference between want and need.

Dust if you must but there's not much time,
With rivers to swim and mountains to climb!
Music to hear and books to read,
Friends to cherish and life to lead.

Dust if you must but the world's out there
With the sun in your eyes, the wind in your hair,
A flutter of snow, a shower of rain.
This day will not come around again.

Dust if you must but bear in mind,
Old age will come and it's not kind.
And when you go and go you must,
You, yourself, will make more dust.

Remember, a house becomes a home when
you can write "I love you" on the furniture....

I'm glad that they included "books to read" on the list of reasons not to dust, as that's what gets me most of the time. Of course, they also need to include "bad sitcom re-runs to watch, cats to pet (thus creating more cat hair debris) and general time-wasting sloth to be perpetrated." But I don't know how to make that rhyme.

On the other hand, they don't mention the possible ramifications for not dusting, which includes nearly killing your allergic friends. Oh well. (Sorry, Brian.)

Possibly the most misdirected spam I've gotten in ages (and yes, that includes the "Make your Member grow!" e-mails):

"Make money on your football knowledge"

I laughed out loud.

If I ruled the world, no one would be granted an MBA until they had demonstrated the ability and willingness to write a simple declarative sentence.

Actually, I'd probably ban MBAs altogether. But failing that, I'd definitely institute a writing requirement. How on earth have people gotten -- and paid for -- so much education without being able to write coherently? Gah.

Bits and pieces:

God damn you, Rich, for bringing up Die Walkure. I've had the Bugs Bunny/Elmer Fudd version in my head ever since, and yes, I have found myself singing it quietly to myself in public. (And let me tell you, the looks I got for absently crooning "Oh Bwunhiwda, you'we so wovwey" "Yeahs I knoaaaahw it, I cayhn't heyalp it" to myself in the Dominicks on Western are right up there with the stares I used to get in Hong Kong. And once someone catches you, you either have to be embarrassed and shut up, looking like you've just been caught, or brazen it out and keep singing, as if to say "Yeah, I'm singing an Elmer Fudd aria -- what of it? You gotta problem with that?" Guess which approach I favor.)

What is it with cats and boxes and/or box tops? I have a bunch of Xerox-paper boxes that I used to move my stuff out of work. I finally got around to emptying the boxes, and Bug has adopted one of the box top as her personal napping couch. It's all very odd.

Angie and Jordan are having still more problems with their aircon -- it keeps breaking and leaking water all over the place and soaking the carpet and god only knows what else. Angie is also due-any-day-now pregnant. Angie's father, Tom (hi Tom!) apparently was talking to her cousin, Chris, and Tom said, in passing, "Oh, yeah, and Angie's water broke." Chris freaked -- "Oh my god! What are you doing talking to me! Get her to the hospital, you freak!" It took Tom a while to assure Chris that he just meant the water in the house, not the water in her belly.

I've gradually been cleaning up from The Great Filing Adventure. This week: Shredding. I had cancelled checks back to 1996. Why? I have no idea. They're gone now. Shredding is very satisfying. I had bags and bags of shredded bits after that was through. Wheee.

Today was devoted to clearing off the back porch so the installer can get to the back window when my Legitimate Business Expense DirecTV with TiVo system comes in. It damn well better be worth it -- good lord, I had a lot of crap back there.

I finally finished The Silmarillion (thanks, Brian!), which I'd tried to read a couple of times when I was younger but could never get past the first bit. It is worth slogging through (assuming, of course, you're a big geek like me): You finally find out why the elves and the dwarves don't trust each other, and what Gandalf and Saruman are, and what's up with all the different elf houses. and how everyone is related, and what's the deal with the line of Kings of Men, and all the rest. Note: Middle Earth was a very incestuous place. It's kind of creepy, actually.

Also read Coraline, the Neil Gaiman kids' book that came out recently. I can't wait until the actual and honorary nephews and nieces are old enough for me to read it to them. Of course, that'll be a while, as it's scary as hell. Highly recommended.