I was going to have someone edit by blog entries for things that I’m bad at like, run on sentences, grammar, and general do-you-really-want-to-say-that-ness. But I decided to just put a disclaimer on my blog and go forward and blather like I used to do. Then I considered doing a thing where you have only pre-approved people who can look at your blog so I could talk about, I guess – sex or something PRIVATE and not have nieces and nephews reading it. But then – well, first of all I can’t at the moment think of something I wouldn’t want them to read, (I’m not going to talk about sex – and frankly I don’t think anyone wants me to) and second the whole thing started to seem like so much work all I could think of was,.. forget it. So, here I am.

Early this morning I called Michael who is in Brussels and found out from him about the terrorist scares. And how you couldn’t get on a plane unless all your valuables and identity cards were in a clear plastic bag and all I could think of was how glad I am I am not about to fly with a six-year-old who needs to take fifteen stuffed animals with her wherever she goes and then also have a movie to watch on a computer screen or ELSE. Or else… you are involved in a non-stop interaction-conversation-hug-reprimand extravaganza with a six-year-old for fifteen hours. I feel so sorry for all those people I saw trying to fly somewhere. What is going to happen to us? Eventually one of these plots is going to work for them and then… oh. Oh dear.

I calm myself down by imagining myself moving to Spokane and never going anywhere, ever. I mean, if the atmosphere heats up ten degrees in the next decade or two, Spokane is not such a bad idea.

I know, I always say that. And then, what if the super-volcano under Yellowstone goes? Spokane won’t be such a great place to be then, eh? The thing is, it seems like we all need a big dose of illusion about our safety to just live a regular life which includes cars and busses and cancer and bullets and heart attacks that to focus on possible terrorist attacks doesn’t seem very rational. But, still. Scary.

I was wondering, now that there are so many more people who’ve been killed by terrorists in the last ten years, does that make the chances of getting married after age forty go up? I think Newsweek needs to redo that prediction.

I watched the news from the stair master at the gym. People were putting their toothpaste into garbage cans. Toothpaste? I wonder if dentists are happy about this or sad. Worse breath, but more business. Dentists: the newest profession to find itself a war-profiteer. What is considered a gel, anyway? That is a question that has probably had many opinions expressed today. I was wondering about mascara? What about super-wet mascara? What about those lipsticks that you squirt on, and who is going to get all this loot? I think of all the millions of little stork-shaped-manicure scissors that have been confiscated in the last five years, and now the gels! Oh you devious terrorists! NOT OUR GELS!!!

I actually think I am now in favor of profiling. I know that is very not pc of me. But it's so much more efficient. We need security clearance cards based on probabilities of a person blowing up a plane. It doesn't have to be based on ethnicity or skin color. But honestly, spending billions of dollars so little old grandmothers can get searched is ludicrous. Plus, they need their gels! More than anyone else!

Last night I saw “Riding Alone For Thousands Of Miles” – a Chinese film, made by Yimou Zhang http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0437447/. I saw it at Sony, at the studios. I went with my friend Greg. I thought it was a little in-your-face melodramatic and had a horrible voice over that explained every emotion that the actors were perfectly capable of portraying on screen. But as of this morning, I think the film grew on me a little. Part of it was filmed in Li Jiang, a city I spent some time in, in China. It’s such a beautifully preserved old town near the Yangtzee. It all made me determined to take Mulan to China in the next couple of years. But how will we get on a plane when we are all quarantined from fear? The film was shot to avoid the expanse of ugly communist architecture that surrounds the “old town” of the Li Jiang. It is romantic to think of China looking like it did in this film. Unfortunately, I found little beautiful spots like that were always surrounded by stinky polluting manufacturing centers and diesel truck engines turned into open cars with as many people as you could cram in them.

Okay, this is what I’ve been thinking about in terms of religion lately. I think it’s all about culture transmission. So, it’s hard for me to get on the bandwagon and imagine a world without religion in it. Because religion provides too good a method for transmitting culture. It has rituals, music, codes of behavior. And culture matters, too. And I am thinking that those terrorists, while they may be hopped up on religious ferver, what they really care about is that their culture is not killed off. But big parts of their culture (and really, nearly all cultures) SUCK. Authoritarian, misogynistic, and – well, those are the first two words that come to mind. I may have written about this before. It’s just what I’ve been turning over in my head a lot recently. I haven’t worked out anything yet for myself, but that’s what I’m thinking about.

O jeez. I have to work. I’m goofing off. More, another time.