U.S. Launches Ground Assault on Puerto Rico

...in response to recent loss in Olympic men's basketball.

In expanded coverage: China Makes Claim for World's Best at Everything.

Monitor Burn.

I'm a little depressed. Not so much emotionally but there are some physical signs. I don't eat much, and I forget to eat, and lately I just don't know what I want to eat. I miss Bay Area food a lot. I ate McDonald's twice yesterday and felt like that guy in "Super Size Me," like, hello lumpy grease spots all over my body. I probably live in the one area of Los Angeles where it's really difficult to find any good reasonable food (with the possible exception of Ethiopian cuisine) because there's no real strong ethnic enclave here except, well, really health-conscious gay people, and Beverly Hills right next door. I should cook for myself, but it just feels like a drag for one person. I'm starting to experience the familiar feeling of Los Angelene isolation again, and it's just like it's always been, except now I have DSL, so it's a bit different then it was in college. Now instead of "should I really get in the car and drive to meet someone when I'm gonna spend more time in the car, hot and lost on some freeway, than I am with that person" it's "should I really get in the car and go face someone in person when I can sit here and ecommunicate with them and possibly others simultaneously under the comforting cloak of our epersonalities?"
....Identity. Man. It's such an issue.
...Anyway, I should be working on the movie now, but that's always the case, so why not blog? If I was in Berkeley right now, I would be at Top Dog so fast it'd make your head spin. Here, I can go to Pink's, where the dogs are pretty good, but not really good enough to stand in that line, which I'm sure is papered with extras and non-hot-dog-eating scenesters (some places have Flash Mobs; in LA we have Flash Lines). Also in the Bay Area I could have real Indian food, real Chinese food, a kickass monster burrito, even a frickin sandwich at EZ Stop is like three times better than the sandwiches I can get in my neighborhood for $8.95. And I could get a Vietnamese sandwich without having to get on three different freeways.
...OK. Probably leaving the house now.

What is "Manchurian" anyway?

Saw the remake of "The Manchurian Candidate" the other day. It was a bit creepy how in the movie the brainwashed soldiers parrot the military exploits of the Candidate in a similar way to how John Kerry's military record is constantly being trumpeted by the Democrats, to the point of sounding like a prefab slogan. Then I thought about it, and realized that even if the Democrats did put some sort of zombie assassin up for election, I would still vote for him over mass-murdering rich boy Bush.
...But other than that not a very good movie. Cannot stand Jonathan Demme's obsession with close-ups. I did see a very weird good movie today called "Code 46." It's a sci-fi story, very hard to tell what's going on, but beautifully made. It uses cities in Shanghai, India, and I guess Dubai? to look like cities in the future and it really, really works. I guess it helps not having been anywhere, those places look really alien and strange to me.