David Bowie -- Looking for Satellites

I had physical therapy today. There's a terrible Catch 22 with physical therapy. The therapy feels great, but it's primarily a healing thing. And when you are really sore, it's kind of painful. But once it does it's job and you're healed, then it starts to feel oh, oh, so good. But once you're healed, you don't need the treatment anymore. That's where I'm almost at with my therapy. I thought I'd need weeks of treatment, but not so, apparently. Which is a shame, because my physical therapist has skills.

Time flies... someone just emailed me asking if I could do a meeting in Denver on October 4th. That's Rosh Hashanah, so I can't do it. Wait a minute! It's Rosh Hashanah already?!? And my daughter turns 12 on the 12th. It's all going by way too fast! How do we slow down time's passage? I can't possibly do everything I need to in this life with everything going so quickly.

Lisa Germano - The Dresses Song

So. I hate our materialistic culture! I really do.

BUT! I don't hate materialism itself. I hate that people generally have no clue how to spend money! People waste money buying stupid things. And the rich are the worst. LA's Westside is littered with boring BMWs and Mercedes, all yawn-causing wastes of money bought more for the brand than the car. The owners of such cars should be flogged and made to donate the cost of the car to charity. But Maseratis... that's different! That's a legitimate use of money. A man in my girlfriend's neighborhood has a 2004 Maserati Gransport, and I shed tears of thanksgiving every time we take a walk and he's left it in the driveway. It's the most gorgeous inanimate thing there is.

Contrast it with the Bentley Continental GT. Loads of people are driving those around LA, but how many of them really CARE about their car? Few, I bet. The Continental is a gorgeous car and it's not to blame, but it's another flavor of the month in LA, like kukui-nut necklaces, and so everyone who can get one has gotten one, and just so they can feel like they are with the trends.

The guy with the Maserati, on the other hand? See, we know he's a real car lover. An aficionado. Someone who appreciates a fine work of automotive art. And someone who doesn't mind sharing with the likes of me. Just his leaving it out in the driveway so we can all gaze at it is a wonderful mitzvah.

This is how it will be with me and my Borsolini fedora! On Saturday night my girlfriend and I were window shopping in Beverly Hills and there was a little Italian store with Borsolini hats in the window, and oh, my hat-craving soul. I'm not sure if this is the model I was fawning over, but God forgive me if it is. It would figure that the hat I really wanted would be $435.

But then again, imagine the role I would assume when I donned such a hat! I'd be an ambassador of goodfeeling and art as I strode around Los Angeles in this unparalleled object of beauty! People would be filled with a sense of wellbeing knowing such style and grace was still extant in the world. But you know, it's the line of the brim that I like, the way the brim is down in front, up in back, the way the line is like half of infinity. I can probably find a nice felt fedora I like for $40 someplace, but oh... that Borsolini.

I never knew I could be so into "fine European" anything, but look at me. Between my lust for Italian hats and my German Rotring and Lamy pens, I'm one Euro-something or other.

Not to mention my high-minded ideals wrestling with base desire. Over a hat. But what a hat.

Los Lobos -- Sabor a Mi

I am so out of it today! I slept well, work is fine, but I am just not connecting with things that well. I am not sure if it's accident-related or just something that happens when one turns 40. But I feel well.

This weekend my girlfriend and I did my idea of a perfect weekend --we lazed about in bed (well, we didn't really laze), walked along the beach, watched movies, picked out a gorgeous dress for her to wear at her daughter's bat miztvah, and ate wonderful food at a Mexican restaurant. It was a great weekend.

We saw Fight Club. How did I miss that movie before? It was an amazing movie and very eerily dealt with issues I've been complaining about for years -- the dehumanization of modern life, the remaking of Americans into simple consumers, our identification of ourselves with our possessions. The idea that we suffer a spiritual crisis. And the places that the movie goes are places I tend to go in my simplistic fantasies. So for the last six years, my societal and political ramblings have been unwittingly echoing Chuck Palahniuk's 1996 book, and poorly at that? That's a depressing realization. All this time I thought I was unique, but it turns out I really am an easily identified and targeted demographic. Also, the movie puts the logical result of my ideals and prejudices into an unflattering light. I don't like my tendency to see the world as being primarily a matter of money that can only be put right by means of violent revolution. It's something I have been working on for years, but still struggle with. It's like my kneejerk response to any problem, my fight or flight instinct, is wrapped up in revolution. I feel a kinship with Emma Goldman, both in her young and naive idealistic phase, and in her later mature and disaffected rejection of every regime that claimed to put these ideals into practice.

Walking along the beach was great -- right at sunset-- the tide was out, and these large jellyfish, around 1' in diameter, were washed ashore. I flicked one back into the sea with a bamboo stick I found, but I'm not sure if the jellyfish was even alive, or if I injured it flicking it back in.

We get quite a bit of bamboo driftwood on the Santa Monica beaches, and I wonder if it comes all the way from Asia or if there are stands of bamboo in Central and South America -- I guess if I read this book I'd find out, but it seems a bit complicated and in-depth, even for me.

I am leaving here in a bit to take my daughter to the dentist for her checkup. This is a normal thing, but until a couple years ago, getting my daughter to let a dentist look at her, let alone touch her teeth, was a major struggle that entailed many tears and knotted tummies -- mostly mine! So while it's a boring and normal thing to take one's kid to the dentist, I am thankful to God that my daughter is now able to go and have her teeth checked and worked on without having a panic attack.

Spoon - I Summon You

Spoon's Gimme Fiction is one great album musically. I have been listening to it over and over. However, it is frustrating that the lyrics are so opaque. I can't tell if they are meant to be that way or are just bad. For instance --

The signal’s a cough
But that don’t get me off
I summon you to appear my love
Got the weight of the world
I summon you here my love

But you know, Britt Daniel sings this stuff so well that even the really mysterious lyrics come off as fraught with meaning I'm too simple to comprehend.

I am feeling woozy today but better as far as my achiness. I wonder if the Advil is to blame for the woozy feeling? I haven't taken medication in a long time.

Oh. I think Cindy Sheehan should shut up and stop whining. I am on MoveOn's mailing list, and when I got their emails asking for us to protest in solidarity with her, I rolled my eyes. I wish my political stands and opinions were so simple that they'd fit onto a t-shirt or bumper sticker, but they don't. I am not going to stand and protest in support of a woman who says that the war in Iraq is the fault of neo-conservative pro-Israel lobbyists, and then, when called on it, denies she ever said it. I'm not going to ask Bush to meet with this woman again. He already met with her once. And why should he meet with her again? So she can ask her stupid rhetorical question? I am sick of extremist simplistic leftists as much as I am of extremist simplistic rightists. I just want people to start being reasonable.

And another thing. I have decided that the "shul to which I do not go" is definitely Orthodox. I am never going to be THAT observant, but I think I ought to be more observant than I am. Meaning that I am typing this on Shabbat but I want to get to the point where I don't type stuff on Shabbat. I am starting to really feel that there is nothing for me in liberal/rational/Reconstructionist/Reform Judaism. Although some things about Aish Ha'Torah and Chabad irritate me, I am drawn to much of what they have to say in a way that isn't true of liberal Jewish stuff. And it's because liberal Judaism often ends up discarding mitzvot, deciding that practices are just silly, obsolete, indefensible. Things like kashrut, things that supposedly don't make sense, and well, if they don't make sense, we aren't going to do them. For me, G-d is especially present in weird commandments that don't make sense. When I wasn't practicing at all, I used to love ham. Since I became a vegetarian and then started practicing Judaism again five years ago, I haven't eaten anything trayfe, by which I mean pig or shellfish. And I love the taste of all pig products and I even like some seafood, especially squid. Why can't Jews eat this stuff? Who knows. It's certainly not for health reasons. It may be to make it hard for Jews and non-Jews to mingle. But that isn't as important as the fact that it's a commandment that I take on because it's part of being Jewish.

Now, I am not really trayfe-free. Because when you look a little closer, you'll see that I eat non-kosher cheese all the time. And challah that isn't really kosher. And non-kosher wine (though I doubt any pagans were involved in its making). But it's not that I don't think the idea of kosher cheese or wine or challah isn't mportant, it's just that I haven't got that far yet in my practice. It's the idea of working on doing more mitzvot as I can that's appealing to me. And I don't see anyone besides Orthodox (or Conservatives leaning towards Orthodox) with this sensibility. And the idea of Jewishness without mitzvot is appalling. While we may vary in our levels of observance, I guess I am pretty Orthodox in feeling that the 613 mitzvot are there for us to follow as best we can.

So this is my last day being 39. I'm not sure if this really means everything, and I certainly will listen to Carol and not act my age, but then I have the problem of deciding what age I should act. Older, younger?

I'd type more but my wrists are hurting. It's my age creeping up on me. :-)

Spoon -- Sister Jack

So. I am at work. I am working. My neck and back hurt. And in irritating ways. When I move my neck a lot often it hurts less then when I move it a little, like shifting my gaze from screen to paper. And then it's not always consistent. It's the sudden and unwelcome twitch, and that's the fun part! Also, I got a lot of sleep last night and I still feel very woozy and out of it.

So it was good today listening to the new Israelisms podcast and hearing Charley and Carol talking about Disengagement and Gaza. The whole thing on TV and in the papers makes me so proud of Israelis. While Israel is not perfect, I believe that one cannot be a Jew in today's world and not be a Zionist. There's just too many places in time where Jews thought themselves safe, integrated into society, and then the other shoe dropped, the new laws came, the pogroms, the expulsion. I am not even sure this will not happen in the US. I have people scoff when I say that, but I am not at all convinced the US does not have a fundamentalist antisemitic future coming. Jews need a safe place in the world.

And the high ideals and convictions of the Jewish state are on display this week. The way that in Israel we have people disagreeing vehemently and still being civil to each other in the vast majority of cases. I know Israel has come a long way from its pioneer days, and that the country is not as idealistic and socialistic as it used to be. But it's still a remarkable place and a remarkable people of which I'm proud to be a part.

So it's a sunny, perfect day outside and I'm feeling happy underneath all my muscle aching. I hope everyone has a good weekend, and Shabbat Shalom.

Beatles - Across the Universe

This is the song I find myself returning to when things are messed up. Today, things aren't really messed up, but I want to hear it. I'll be 40 on Sunday, and Lennon died when he was 40. More reason for me to live the best life I can.

Oh! Check out the damage to my car! There's damage to the front that will cost hundreds to fix but it's really subtle misalignment of the hood panel and bumper and it's no fun. The rear damage is more fun to look at. It looks like the car is repairable but I'll wait to see what the insurance companies say, of course.

I went to a doctor through my network. And while it really doesn't matter that much, I was trying to find a Jewish-sounding name, but there weren't any. The nearest doctor was Suleman Hakimi. I didn't realize till I got to his office that it was Solemon Hakimi, and everyone is obviously Arabic-speaking Jews-- I'll have to ask where from -- mezzuzah on the door, even a Mitzrach on the wall of the examining room (it was a really cool one that looked to be a print from the 20s). And I got a prescription and I got therapy. Now, I don't like getting massage. But this ultrasound thing-- oh my god. And electrical stimulation, and then massage. It felt so good. Then I went home and to sleep, and this morning I slept all morning, and now I am going to go to work for a couple hours because there's some stuff I have to do. My neck is more generally sore than it was yesterday, my shoulders too, and my lower back hurts. Also, my left arm hurts right where it meets the shoulder. That must be from the seatbelt hitting it... ANd there's this one spot right at the top of my neck that is really tender to the touch. And I feel generally out of it. Besides that, I am fine! And I get to have more therapy tomorrow.

Now I am listening to the David Bowie version of Across the Universe. If I had the Fiona Apple version I'd listen to that too.

Now I am gonna get into my little rentacar and drive to work and see how much I can get done, then I'm going to lie down and have my girlfriend feed me grapes. :-)

Unk Decemberists song playing @ Starbucks

So! 9am today I am on the 10 freeway East and in stop and go traffic. I am listening to the new Dawn and Drew podcast.

And when I stopped the woman behind me didn't.

All of a sudden it's like I'm at the beach and my car is lifted up and thrown into the car ahead of me by a massive wave. My neck hurts. The tea that was in the cupholder infront of me near the floor is suddenly all over the car. My glasses are off my head at an angle. my cellphone is somewhere on the floor. And Dawn and Drew are still talking about sheep's balls and how big they are. So my iPod came through just fiine. Hoorah. It took me a while to figure out how to turn off my car and my iPod. Then for a few minutes the three of us just sat in our cars in the #2 lane while all the other cars fought their way around us, honking.

And the whole time (well, after the first few minutes, when I was really freaked out and crying and trying to find everything in my car) I thought of the plaintiff in the court case I was a juror on, Mr. Melendez, and how he's in a wheelchair for the rest of his life. And he can't move around. He can't lift his hands. He can't irritate his wife by coming up behind her when she's trying to put on her makeup and caress her breasts and nuzzle her neck.

And so I thank God for my life and my health and I enjoy the whole process of being able to photograph the damage to my car and to the other cars. I send kind and comforting vibes to the woman who rearended me. When I see her business card says she's in design, I ask her what shedoes. She tells me she's an interior architect. She offers to do my place next time I remodel. The woman I was pushed into happens to work at the building next to mine. We make small talk. I'm standing on the side of the freeway socializing. Life is good. Life is so good.

And now I am on hold with my health insurance trying to get a live person so I can get a referral to an urgent care. And my girlfriend is coming to this Starbucks to hang out and help me. And I'll be able to hold her and nuzzle her neck in public and embarrass her. How can God not have me in the palm of Her hand? How can I not be incredibly lucky?

Lisa Germano - Candy

So. I am at work. But today, I am not working. I am trying, I really am! But we have to do this stupid security class online and it takes forever to load each page, so by the time the page comes up, I'm trying to reply to an email or fix something, and then I am distracted five different ways.

But last night was great. I made my g/f cilantro pesto, and it turned out really well. My dinner skills are all pretty much limited to two things--

• 1) Variants on pasta with homemade sauces, like pestos or red pepper sauces
• 2) Variants on basic Ayurvedic stuff -- basmati rice, mung beans or lentils, and steamed veggies with spices

This is, however, lightyears from where I was ten years ago. Back then I was eating TV dinners and processed everything.

Man, I am scatterbrained. Before I started typing here, I was trying to work, but I had all these things I had to type here in my head. Now I am here I am thinking about work stuff.

So back to work.

Elvis Costello - Crawling to the USA

ACK!!! I am a lost soul.

I have had this 'goal' of losing weight for my 40th birthday for months. And while I have kind of exercised, I have not eaten well. It's not I've generally eaten poorly, but I have eaten way too much. And this weekend, I actually lost a few pounds. And yesterday, although we were supposed to fast, it being Tisha B'Av, I totally forgot, and ate. But I did eat sensibly. So this morning, I weigh myself, am happy and committed. So lunchtime coworkers invite me to lunch and I went and ate way too much... I am now falling asleep and feeling betrayed by myself. Truly, I am my own worst enemy. I am the Fool of Proverbs. Either because I am being idolatorous, and have made losing weight into a false god, or because I am always sabotaging the goals I set with my thoughtless behavior.

Destroyer - An Actor's Revenge

It's all disengagement today on the news. I started out my day by getting teary-eyed. I'm sure I'll end the day the same way.

But to less stressful things. eMusic has all the Destroyer albums now. Previously, they only had Streethawk, a Seduction. So I am overdosing now on the exhilarating Your Blues and This Night. Destroyer is one of those bands that's one guy plus whoever he has record with for that particular album. So this Daniel Bejar guy is basically Destroyer. His voice and singing style are really close to Bowie in his Ziggy period, but the lyrics remind me of later Bowie -- very cut-and-paste and opaque. The music is kind of Decemberists, kind of. Lots of fun. Bejar was part of the New Pornographers at some point, so he's the vocals on some of Electric Version.

Anyway.

My g/f is back from her trip to the East Coast. It was fun picking her and her girls up from LAX and seeing everyone again. Her girls have their dad and I'm not trying to compete or anything. But we have a relationship of sorts, and I do miss them when they're not around.

Yesterday my g/f and I we went bra shopping! It's hard to beat bra shopping for sheer weirdness of the usual rules being out the window. Normally we try and avoid staring at breasts. At Victoria's Secret, it was a salesgirl and I intently inspecting the way my g/f's breasts looked in one bra vs another. Very weird and fun. And we discovered the demi was the way to go.

Then we saw Broken Flowers. Gorgeous movie. Bill Murray is wonderful. Very ambiguous ending. It's like the movie was one long shot of an ice-covered lake. At the end, the ice begins to crack. And that's it. Of course, the movie is not just one shot of an ice-covered lake, but Bill Murray's character Don Johnston IS frozen in the movie, very passive, paralyzed into inaction by an unknown event or life crisis. And when he ends up flying around the country to visit ex-girlfriends to see which one of them wrote him an anonymous letter saying he has a 19 year old kid who is on a road trip to find him, it's only because his internet-savvy wannabe-detective next-door neighbor tracks everyone down and plans the whole trip. Nothing in this movie is caused of Don's own volition until the last minutes of the movie. There is a great arc in this movie. It's not fair to compare Bill Murray's character here to his character in Lost in Translation or The Aquatic Life or any other of his recent roles since he suddenly became one of our finest actors. But it's safe to say that if the other recent movies he's done irritate the hell out of you, Broken Flowers is definitely not for you.

Something hit me as we watched the previews --- I feel so unusual and odd most of the time, in my taste in movies as everything else. But when these little indie moviehouses get an audience for movies like Broken Flowers together, the theater is suddenly filled with people that share my taste in movies. And all the previews are often movies I want to see (mixed with one or two pretentious period costume drama pieces geared towards women). And then I realize that I am part of a neatly defined demographic that can be advertised to and classified and compartmentalized, despite all my feelings of uniqueness. Which is comforting, or scary, depending on what's going on in my life at the time.

Anyway. Back to work.

No Music -- Forgot my iPod

OK. So this week I've been driving to work because I have been missing the train by a couple minutes. And I've been having fun listening to podcasts. So this morning, I'd listened to all the podcasts and hooked up my iPod to my laptop to get a couple new podcasts that came through like Dawn and Drew and The View From Here. And in the rush to get my daughter and myself out the door, I forgot the iPod. Oh, well.

The View From Here guys had an episode where they went to this Israeli Arab town and had really good hummus. Except I discovered the pronunciation is really hOOmus where the h is the Hebrew "hairball-in-throat" sound. The whole idea of hummus makes me excited because I never knew it was so easy to make, and now I make it all the time. Probably not good stuff, but as good as the stuff in the stores. I did have one of our friends, an Israeli, tell me once that my hummus was good, so maybe it doesn't suck. And I'm even buying the garbanzo beans and soaking them and everything rather than using cans! And I'm discovering that tahini from the middle-eastern grocers is so much cheaper than in the supermarkets. Not to mention spices like cardamom and coriander and cumin. Cardamom is SO expensive in the supermarket, like $12 for a typical-sized spice jar of ground. You can get a huge bag of pods for a few bucks at these markets.

Along similar lines -- I bought a few mortars and pestles last year to help with grinding and pounding herbs, and started making pesto. Pesto, of course, is named for the fact you make it with a pestle. Except no one makes it with a pestle. They make it with a food processor. But when you make it with mortar and pestle it's so good! And my boss recently told me about cilantro pesto -- basically just replace the basil with cilantro. And I've made that recently and had it turn out very well. And cilantro is an herb that's very good for me according to ayurveda.

Back to work.

Rufus Wainwright - Imaginary Love

Well. Jury Duty is over. And while I was all into talking about it last week, the whole thing is so Last Week now. It was a case with a bus speeding down a residential street and slamming into a car driven by a guy with a .17 bac who was backing up. He's in a wheelchair for life. He'll need 24 hour care for life. We ended up decided the case 50/50. That would make his award around 7 million, but the MTA is going to appeal. By the time it's all done, he won't get enough money to really take care of him, I'm afraid. The plaintiff's attorney is an up-and-coming attorney Arash Homampour, who will probably end up very famous at some point. He used a computer for his case -- had all the evidence on there including videotaped depos. The software he used allowed him to rapidly find ANYTHING quickly. It really made things interesting, especially because a defense witness couldn't even make his laptop-projector connection work. While I don't think all this made a difference in our deliberations, it probably did.

Anyway. Being at work again is weird. At the conclusion of the trial I had a strong feeling I wasn't doing anything important and needed to change my life and take on more responsibility, like get my masters and do something more life-changing than my current job. We'll see. Now that whole feeling is fading. Soon it will be as wispy and faint as a dream and I'll wonder if I really felt anything at all, so pulled back into my normal life I'll be.

Having fun with podcasts. Currently I listen to

• Israelisms
• Keith and the Girl
• Dawn and Drew
• There are Jews in Alabama?
• Elvis Mitchell's The Treatment
• Soccergirl, Incorporated

and I have to say, that of all of these, Keith and the Girl is closest to me unsubscribing to, because they are too productive for me. It's fun to listen to -- Keith and Chemda are very interesting, very am ha-aretz, I think, in a good way, but they do an hour a day. It's too much to keep up with! Soccergirl's shows are so amateurish and patched together, but they are short. Same with Dawn and Drew. And Jews in Alabama and Israelisms come out less often so you can look forward to the shows and enjoy them and keep up with them.

Back to work!

No music -- too busy working!

On jury duty, but have morning free, so I went into work. What a mountain of stuff I'm behind on.

Jury duty is very odd. I am not going into detail now, not enough time. But what a frame of mind I am in.

Today is our 5 year anniversary! I thought my life would be different five years ago, but I also assumed we'd be together, so things are going well in that regard. I'm not sure what we'll do tonight. We've got lots of "stuff" going on all at the same time right now. Life is often hectic, but our relationship is like what Spender called the "still center." Or was it "centre?" Oh, whatever.

No music - jury duty

I am in the jury room at lunch. I am actually on a case that'll take two or three weeks to resolve. It's odd to be on jury duty. I did it before about 8 years ago and each time I feel really overwhelmed, being so close to a vast eternal truth. We are trying to draw as near to this ideal of Justice as we can. And though we are mortals and flawed, together we seem to get really close at times. I pray to G-d that we do so this time.

Being on jury duty means I am not working my regular job. But my employer pays for unlimited jury duty. As much as people poop on corporations, big companies don't have to give nice things to employees like unlimited jury duty days, but they do. And it's a little bit of goodness. It's an absolute good. You go, huge corporate behemoth that I love!

I got to go and get lunch. I wonder if anyone ever reads anything I ever write.... perhaps it's better if this is my secret journal that's technically public but hiding in plain sight....

Bruce Springsteen - Paradise

It's Friday. I wish I was the kind of person that had lots to say and wrote it in an intelligible manner. Well, I sometimes am, but not today. I want to do an entry but am too busy to actually do anything beyond ramble. There you go.

Finn Brothers -- Edible Flowers

I have been wearing black mostly for almost five years now. Partly it's because my g/f has been kind of dressing me and she says I look good in black. That's partly because she's in West LA and the black thing is big there. Secondly, it's easier to just have things match. But I've been in a funk of sorts for ages and I finally touched the long-standing ache under a lot of stuff in my life.

Bush.

I've been in mourning of sorts for almost five years now. I haven't said Kaddish because America's not dead, but America is kind of in a coma and she may never come out.

XTC - Millions

My mother is English, and I lived in England for a year when I was a kid. But you know how childhood is. That single year (and four years in New Zealand, in many ways an extension of England) had an immense effect on me. I am much more English in temperment and outlook than American. I prefer English music to American. I have more of an English sense of humor. My ideal vacation involves a year, my girlfriend, and England. And I am taking the terrorist bombing in London very personally, much more than with Madrid last year or Bali before that. Al Queda, in my opinion, made a mistake with bombing London. First, there are thousands and thousands of old Londoners who lived through the Blitz. My mother was evacuated to the countryside with the other kids back then. These pensioners have seen carnage and suffering beyond comparison with today. This makes a difference. It's not a shock in the way the Eleventh of September was a shock to America. Secondly, everyone too young to have direct experience still has a collective-memory kind of thing where they are shaking it off and going about their lives just as the English did during the Blitz. Third, low-level terrorism is nothing new to London. They are used to occasional bombs here and there for decades due to the IRA. Of course, the IRA were relatively gentle about it, calling in warnings beforehand, but still.

So the terrorists tried to terrorize people that are not going to be easily terrorized. It's like blowing up a bus in Israel. It's so played now that although it's a tragedy for those involved, it doesn't have the desired effect on the people that they want.

Blur - Ambulance

Oh. Tarnation is the best damn thing I've seen in ages. Is it the best thing I've ever seen? I dunno. It's amazing. Partly because I've messed with iMovie and so know the mechanics of how the movie was made, I can appreciate how the mechanics of the movie are irrevelant to the story it tells. It is at the same time one of the most disturbing and hauntingly beautiful things I have ever seen.

Elvis Costello - Watching the Detectives

War of the Worlds -- spoilers aplenty.

The movie was a beautifully well-done failure. I guess they couldn't hire someone to give the script a simple once-over to spot all the obvious flaws because all the money went to CGI.

The EMP flaw is so bad my 11 year old protested loudly at all the electronics suddenly working. Add to that all the irritating junk like the airplane burning but none of the neighborhood being set on fire, the constant inexplicable open road in front of the van on crowded highway and rubble-filled streets...

Some have jumped on the aliens dying of bacterial and viral infections. But aliens not having immunity to germs isn't a bad angle. It's classic and sensible. It makes sense that there would be unforseen problems in an invasion... but why do we end up with the aliens apparently like the Bush Administration? All this planning and a brilliantly executed plan involving ships buried on earth tens of millennia ago, thus meaning the aliens had been to our world before, but then no awareness of germs on this planet they've been to before, and no plan to "secure the peace?" If they had gone with HG Wells where the aliens landed, that would have been fine. But no. The aliens came here eons ago and planted their ships and waited? For what?

If the movie was emotionally engaging, few of us would have noticed the flaws. But the movie failed miserably. So we noticed all the crap.

Patti Smith - High on Rebellion

So it's Friday and we can leave early cuz it's July 4 weekend and I want to leave but there's this spreadsheet work I gotta get done but it's Friday and I'm in a casual Friday state of mine so I'm not motivated and I tell myself I'll do it at home but I know I won't so I sit here paralyzed and not being able to motivate myself to do anything beyond read the news and handle the most basic customer needs and now the phone isn't ringing at all and day is quiet outside and even the streets are empty today in LA.