Hey, it's almost mid-September! Here are a few random thoughts about recent events.

1) It just galls me, to the point of wanting to choke, cry, scream, to see Bush willing to pay $87 billion for one year in the occupation of Iraq, while things to to hell in this country. That $87 billion could have paid for every state's budget deficit, or it could have paid for expanded health care coverage, more public works (remember when our freeways were actually less filled with potholes than the highways of Mexico?). In an era when my nursing-care budget is balanced against reductions in my attendant-care and ventilator, something's seriously wrong. It's wrong enough that I begin to doubt my reasons for living in this country anymore. My latest fiasco is that the county wants to cut off my IHSS support. That means I have "excess income" that exceeds my share of cost for IHSS services. What does this mean for me? Well, I can get by without IHSS for a month or so. But Harold will lose the job he needs for his own family. Is Harold rich? Am I? NO!! But, God forbid we should raise the vehicle license fees up to what they were three years ago, lest some fat idiot in his gas-guzzling SUV be forced to pay a bit more for it. Now, why these people whine so much about the vehicle tax, when the can afford a $60,000 SUV and two-dollar a gallon gas to put in it, I just can't understand. It's like Bush giving away tax breaks while cutting back veterans' benefits and requiring moms and dads in the reserves to spend a year or more occupying Iraq. Sacrifice? No thanks, just keep them pork rinds on my plate and let somebody else slaughter the hogs.

2) I was watching Mulholland Drive on cable last night. It's one of my favorite movies. Truly a deep dive into the world of dreams. And it occured to me that Mulholland Drive is a sort of modern Wizard of Oz. Dorothy, aka "Betty," arrives in LA, the real-world Oz, as an innocent igenue. Or is she? Diane Selwick is the other side of Betty, the dark, jaded and schizo side. The Oz of Diane's dreams meets the sordid reality of her quashed desires in the suicide at the film's end (or beginning?).