so, i don't know what the dido album is. but i do know who dido is, she's from the Aeneid but she's more famous because someone wrote an opera about her. she helps aeneus, and i guess they probably sleep together and he leaves her to go claim italy. so she kills herself. its the same thing that happened to ariadne. only ariadne didn't kill herself, she ran off with baccus instead. - CSE

Ah, yes, that little section behind the cathedral of Palermo. The geometric interlace of the apse, the little fountain there, the kind of dusty plaza. It was about 20 years ago (give or take a week) when I sat in that plaza and sketched the back of the cathedral. I agree, it's one of the best corners of the city. But there are others, like the courtyard of San Giovanni degli Eremiti, built over the old Arab mosque. I also love the way that you see snippets of medieval houses, wild interlocking arches, flitting across later houses. I would walk around for days on end, eating a greasy arancine in my hand and stopping every hour for an expresso whose price dropped from 400 lire to 250 lire to 150 lire as I got into lower and lower class neighborhoods. Did you visit the capuchin boneyards this time? - ML

Athens is as you described it. We had planned to go to Spetsos, but it stormed for four days and no ferries or hydrofoils were running. So we went to a resort outside of Athens on the Aegean which was nice enough, but still. And we went to Delphi which was great. - TL

i was once dumped ruthlessly for a girl named vivian, and for a while it made me really dislike anyone named vivian. but now i work for a really frumpy non-threatening vivian, which has sort of healed that. she wears a track suit everyday. no, EVERY day she wears a track suit. i think her husband is cheating on her. i have no evidence of that at all, its just a story I made up in my head about her, it seems logical. if i were married to an old frump who wore track suits, i'd look around. - (censored for obvious reasons)

i've read a little about BSE and i'm convinced that you can't get it from eating the muscle only from eating the brain or nervous system. even if you can get it from the actual meat, it must be pretty rare or tons more people (and tons more cows) would have it, i mean its not a closely correlated phenomena like say cigarettes and cancer, for instance, or coffee and migraines, or shlitz malt liquor and pregnant. - CSE

So I got over to the highway yesterday in my little rental car, I'm at the last stoplight before getting on the Kennedy and the car behind me rear ends me and pushes my car into the car ahead of me. If this is an Oreo, I'm the white part. I've never had an airbag deploy on me before—at my height, it's more than a little scary to have this big plastic bubble jump up in front of you. I'm fine; I'm sore in odd and not so odd places. But it really screws up the getting out of town thing I had planned. So I'll screw around on the internet for as long as I can sit this evening. - anothergirl

so - tonight, being friday night, i decided not to be a total nerd and go to the library, instead i would go to goodrich, where i could read and do email, like at the library, without actually having to BE at the library but when i got there, it was full of kids, and the kids were all - are you ready? square dancing. so. it made me feel better about going to the library, because even though i'm a loser at least i'm not a square dancing loser. - CSE

the other day, i opened your page on a public computer and didn't realize the computer had speakers...! (most of the public ones here don't) and was SO incredibly embarrassed. i don't know why but i couldn't press the 'stop' button either to have the sound stop loading. i almost died. do you want me to die? - VYC

the only hemingway i've read so far was 'the sun also rises'. i don't understand why i liked it so much, considering most of the book was just a few people sitting around and drinking (and then drinking some more). oh, and i read 'the old man and the sea' too. that was a long time ago, though, so i don't remember it much - jessica

5 am now: The Brits are buying up diamonds, while the equally wealthy Scandinavians have no interest in diamonds at all. The Nasdaq fell off the table. Today on Forum, Michael Krasney will host the discussion, "What to do about people that urinate and deficate in public" on KQED public radio - VN

i talked to my mom the other day about bowie, and she said that her favorite album was ziggy stardust (sadly, though, she doesn't have a copy). pretty much everyone else i've talked to have been like, 'hey, isn't he that weird guy from labyrinth?' ha, i like that movie. gets weirder every time i see it. - jessica

My favorite foods are mangos, dark chocolate, and sushi...tell me that you disagree with me. My goal in life, (well, if I ever become really sexy) is to have Japanese businessmen eat sushi off my naked body. That's an actual job, you know...At first I thought it would be nice to be a stripper, but I can't dance in those shoes. - m

Callebaut is really good chocolate. It is the king of chocolate. Actually, no, Neuhaus in Belgium is amazingly good. Godiva comes from Belgium too, but I boycotted it and only ate Neuhaus. It was around Easter when Sarah and I went to Belgium, and they had chocolate eggs there bigger than my head. And some chocolate hens. - m

i figured out how to write "Ohio" in katakana during Japanese class. i'm getting all torn up about one of the guys in class. he's cute. he smiles like the Grinch. everyone laughs at me when i talk about it. but i'm not the only one. supposedly it should be easy for girls. i should start by making eye contact or something. - m

the two things i remember about you are that you sent me a Lichtenstein picture and you licked either rain or snot from the tip of your nose when i met you. - sarita (2 years later)

Voted one of the top 100 films of all time in a 1995 poll of film professionals conducted by London's Time Out magazine, Andrei Tarkovksy's exquisite film blends history with autobiography. A fragmented work containing shards of memories, dreams, and newsreels, this moody reverie evokes the director's childhood during WWII and his relationship with his mother and poet father, whose verse is heard on the soundtrack. A prime example of how the personal, in the right hands, can be made universal. New 35mm color print! Subtitles. 106 min. Members and CIA students & staff $5. - staff

Mirror, however, looked beautiful. The theatre was probably 80% full for the Saturday showing. I had never seen Mirror on film or with such a large audience, so I wasn't sure what to expect. But the film clearly "works" — I was often surprised by the laughs it generated (the narrator's "Is his name Dostoevsky?" line probably got the biggest one) and by the tension it created. Both the hand grenade and the slaughtered chicken scenes produced audible gasps from the crowd. And I'll admit that my eyes teared up during my favorite scene — the cut from the archival footage of the young girl in Spain to the balloonists. The print was almost flawless, with only a few small scratches. - DH

Sad. On the plus side, that's one of the stupidest blogs I've ever seen, almost a parody of the whole blogging concept. It's so dull and self-centered that one can only assume that the author is ridiculously hot. One hopes so, for her sake. - PFB

Dear Will,

You have several of my articles such as Not Your Childhood Cheddar on your web site. These articles are under my copyright and belong to me. Please remove them at once or I will contact my attorney regarding legal action.

Sincerely,
Sam Gugino

She’s an attractive early 20 something writer with gender issues who pushes her entire 3 DVD collection consisting of Breathless, Satyricon, and Joan of Arc which was relentless and i fell asleep to too. - SS

After Saigon fell, they moved to Thailand for a minute and then after that moved to Iran. They were in Iran for a couple of years until the hostage crisis in Tehran happened and they were like, "Efff this! Seriously." They moved to San Antonio in '79 and a year later they had me. Eight months after that they moved the family to V-town cos it was small and quiet. - CHP

fyi i was totally just looking up where to get a donut around here, because apparently Doughnut Plant is CLOSED on monday, right when i'd decided i don't care, i'm not going to bed anymore, i am just going to go to the lower east side to get a pb & j donut, and now i can't because it it closed today. and guess what? the answer is nowhere. unless dunkin donuts counts, and now it doesn't because after reading reviews of the two dunkin donuts around here, they are apparently the "worst dunkin donuts ever" which totally i doubt is true, but who cares, now that i've read it i don't want it anymore. but that's all that is open except bagels and bagels will not do when one wants donuts. - AF

YOU call me when it is very late at night. we will probably be sitting around the space heater drinking (admittedly good) australian beer. here is what you do: 011-612-9399-3152. ask for the plumber and grandma will say, "what?" (she is deaf) and then pass the phone to someone else saying "it's a yank i can't understand them" and then a small boy will say "hello?" but he'll be too quiet for you to understand because the phone is too big and his mouth is too far from the speaker and then he'll put the phone on the couch and maybe get one of us, or he'll just say "she's asleep" so he doesn't have to leave the tv. and then a cockroach will walk by but no one will notice. - AF