a pervasive feeling that Something Bad was going to happen on the mall, a natural intelligent shrinking from the 100+ degree heat, and agoraphobia kept me from tripping downtown yesterday to enjoy the fourth with the masses. instead i hung out with dearliz and her wacky sister. we rented movies, picked up our friend jay the mideastphile who recently spent three weeks in israel and since he’s returned has done nothing but plot his next trip, not to mention his aliyah; and we made it over to lana’s, where her parents and their friends were bbqing. lana made lovely veggie burgers from scratch (and in some cases, from eggplant and chickpeas.) we chatted, we laughed, we tried to compose a queer ABCs along the lines of lynne cheney’s primer. certain letters posed challenges: i, for example. others were just fun.

but it didn’t attain any independence-ish-ness. patriotism failed to stir me. the preponderance of american flags everywhere you look has rather numbed me to the sight of them. all the same, of course, i’m glad and grateful to have been born in this country. the usa has noble ideals, even if we fail to live up to them for the most part. and as tempting as this is, i’m going to hold out for a more sensible, if less amusing, solution.

there is cornbread cooling on my oven rack. granted, said cornbread is 80% trader joe’s mix and patient instructions, and 20% me flying around kitchen with one hand on heart (patriotism, anxiety – it’s all interwoven nowadays) assembling eggoilmilkcupmeasuresbowlfork8x8x2pan. the product virtually glows with wholesomeness. i haven’t attempted a bite yet. i’m still at the suspicious prowling in circles about it and sniffing stage.

yesterday, my first full day of work ( = a full day face off with a computer monitor) and the heat index reaching 110 and walking through that foul air combined to floor me, by evening, with a migraine that invited henry james in on the fun. by 7 i was a wreck; by 8, i had finally managed to throw back some of my sedative-stuff and merge with the night. by 12:30 i was awake and fine, only none of my friends were around to play with. sad. i read winnie-the-pooh and eventually fell back asleep.

the day itself, by contrast, was relatively painless. my research allowed me time to chat w/ miz becca, who is angsting over her latest Possibility, a young man who edits at a Mainstream Men’s Magazine. a google search for his name returned interviews with shannon doherty and pamela anderson lee, the latter window i had to immediately close for fear wandering associates would think i was ogling porn. but i was suitably impressed.

the three intern fellows and i went out to lunch. their identities came further into focus: guy #1, leftist, speaks knowledgeably of mother jones and ms. and started a weekly film showing on his campus. he and i are seeing minority report on saturday. guy #2, sweet smiley blond and a self-revealed republican, b.b.. guy #3 reminds me of a former jds-er named aaron: shaggy, outspoken, very self-confident. he told me i reminded him of “that girl from american pie.” turned out of be natasha lyonne, of course — i’ve been told that before. course the way he put it made me shudder a bit: “you know, that one they run into at skool, who couldn’t have orgasms.”

and met liz at union station, after wandering while waiting through Waldenbooks. i discovered lynne cheney’s American Primer: a kid’s a-z on the usa. just looking at the cover i knew what “G” would stand for. sure enough: “G is for GOD, in whom we all trust …” happy 4th, lynne.

finally succumbed to the popular “yourname is” meme impulse. so according to highlights of the first 6 pages of a google search, ester is:

– assuming an increasingly important role in the oleochemical industry

– number twenty-eight in order of magnitude

– purified by steam stripping

– made using vegetable oils, animal fats, algae, or even recycled cooking greases

– a fun cartoon character

– Ms. Nubian American 2001

– used as an insect repellant against mosquitoes

– 5

– fat soluble

– in her late thirties and has a quiet demeanor

– doing well in the 6th grade

– author and editor of over twenty books and more than a hundred journal articles and book chapters

– a colorful community of artists, writers, Bohemians, and people working in Fairbanks

AND – not to be written.

my ambitious plans for today didn’t amount to much. i spent the morning lounging in pajamas, finishing divine secrets of the ya-ya sisterhood. i’m glad i’ve read it but i found myself skimming because, while parts made me laugh (and weep, like a good little woman), i was also often put off by how overwritten and overwrought it was. friends appeared, diverting me from my fruitless stabs at starting the screenplay or, in irritation, at the computer. we discussed love and waxing. one of my friends recounted how she’d just been waxed in a very sensitive region by an afghani woman who got her degree there in engineering but had to leave when the war broke out in ’84. aside from shudders of sympathy pain, this prompted me to think smilingly about ben who told me he didn’t care if i shave my legs. reminder perhaps that if you can’t even take security in your country for granted, you certainly can’t a person.

after they left, liz called, deciding she’ll come visit tomorrow, and then my grandfather. he and i had a spirited talk about recent supreme court rulings and the 1st amendment. i love agreeing with my grandfather — he’s such a staunchly intelligent man, i find it comforting when our opinions align.

now, much calmer, i have a decent start, about ten pages. thanks to everyone who commented here or offered off-screen ideas (including “isn’t that a little close to home?”) the consensus seems to be that dotty doesn’t quite work as her name, so i’m willing to swallow my affection for it and try something else. morgan maybe?

further details: morgan’s mom is a republican congresswoman from ohio. no i don’t like “morgan dwight.” hmm.

last week, for the first class of this screenwriting course, which i missed, being both sick and at swat, we were supposed to have a pitch. this week we were supposed to have 15 pages. i have neither; i’m scrambling to catch up. here’s my thought:

main character: girl, 16, dorothy dwight. her parents have been separated since she was little but both are local. her mom is a republican politician, her dad something more low-key. she has generally normal, imperfect relationships with both. focuses more on high school dramas, particularly that she’s dealing with the fact that somehow she’s fallen into bed with another girl though she’d never thought of herself as queer. as she’s struggling with the come-out question, her father drops the bombshell: he’s met this other woman and he wants a formal divorce so he can marry her. other woman lives some distance away; he’s willing to move and he wants dotty to accompany him. dotty’s infuriated mother wants dotty to choose.

dotty’s girlfriend suggests that dotty reveal her sexuality and let her parents’ reactions determine who she goes with. that leaves dotty to wonder whether she’s sure enough of it to declare it, and whether if she did either would still want her.

three other interns, white collegiate males, sit side by side at computers. i sit perpendicular to them at one end. the guys smiled at me as i came in, bobbed their heads as i was introduced, and later guy #2 came to my table to move my monitor over because it was blocking my face from view. attempting studiousness and with unaffected shyness, because it’s been a long time since i’ve been in a majority-male atmosphere, i largely kept my face turned down towards a 25 page brief my immediate boss handed me to get me started. a woman from the office came over and chatted with the guys. she, she said, had gone to catholic school but had since renounced it. everyone does, said guy #1, closest to me: in fact, we should encourage vouchers for catholic schools, they’re so reliable at producing liberals. the woman opened her mouth and laughed but no sound came out. a few minutes later, she started describing escorting last saturday at a clinic in silver spring. one man, 6 feet tall, she recounted, stood there in a fetus costume, flailing with his umbilical cord and shouting, You’re killing my brothers and sisters!

i had to laugh at that. she turned to me briefly and smiled, then turned back to the guys. i should get back to my office, she said. i’m procrastinating. the supreme court’s ruling is on my desk and i’m trying to avoid losing my breakfast on o’connor’s opinion. you should go over to the court and lose your breakfast on o’connor, suggested guy #1.

later i passed by guy #3 on my way to learn how to use a search program, and a brief talk established that he lives next door to becca at penn. we share a deck, he said. small world. this is a terrific office, he added, one of the best i’ve ever been in. you’ll love it.

i had to leave before too long, to see a gastroenterologist who concluded i probably picked up giardia from mother russia and perscribed another round of antibiotics, so i think it’s too early to pass judgement on the office myself. but it seems promising.

my mother just called from sydney, where it’s monday afternoon and she and my little brother have landed safely. my older brother was there to greet them, having timed his own arrival from his jaunt to fiji, to coincide with theirs. when i think fiji i think of how jim carrey lingered on the word in the truman show — adam gets to remember falling out of a palm tree. apparently he wasn’t hurt.

apparently he also brought back a bottle of 120 proof coconut rum. when, in a prototypical bloom family gesture, my mother produced the tinfoil block of grandma brownies, my brother proposed a toast. so, in little paper dixie cups somehow amazingly my mother had, she and both my brothers drank a round of fiji rum and feasted on the sugarless brownies my grandmother has been making, from the exact same recipe, for as far back as i can recall.

we’re thinking of you, she said, and she didn’t forget to wish me luck on my job or my doctor’s appointment. wish you were with us. remember it all for me, i said.

as you may have realized, i spent a lovely 28 hours with miss lana, who supplied the bon mot below. as our first order of business we watched y tu mama tambien, which ross maintains is everything you could ask for in a movie. if that’s not entirely true, it’s close, and ross can be forgiven for exaggerating. at first, it’s mexico, sex, adolescence, and identity enjoyed as though (and literally) from the window of a moving car. when the car stops, the movie gently guides characters and audience into confrontation, and it assumes a gravity entirely free of pretention. think an NC-17 harold and maude via stand by me, only funnier and in spanish.

naturally lana and i spent much of the subseqent time discussing relevant issues. when we took the conversation outside, sheba lay goofily next to us but was too distracted by passing cars to contribute. this morning, my father, all that remains of my household now that my mother and little brother judah have joined older brother adam in australia, took us to annapolis where we wandered for a bit, ate broiled crabs, and ferryed around the bay.

it’s strange adjusting, after four months of denmark, two weeks of family and two of swat, to crowdlessness. but work starts tomorrow — and my screenwriting class — and on wednesday a feminist book group on manifesta. thatall should help.

men are to quiche as women are to pussy: they eat it when nobody’s looking

after reading reviews of mulholland drive i’m less skeptical than i was when i finished viewing #1. that was, in fact, viewing #2 of the day, the first being a spontaneous visit to 13 conversations about one thing. reclining in the theater i realized one thing, especially when it’s as banal as un/happiness, isn’t enough to make a satisfying movie out of — and in my living room i realized that nothing, however seductively dolled up, isn’t either. of the two i’m more willing to give lynch another chance. still i’m irritatingly tempted to try a third movie, as i’m now craving something that makes straightforward narrative sense and is risky and original. perhaps that will be nolan’s following which i bought onsale and onawhim at the same time as m.d. or perhaps it’ll be y tu mama tambien which i’m seeing w/ lana tomorrow.