i was afraid that since i haven't talked about my cancer fundraising in about, oh, 48 hours, you all might think you have escaped the constant blog begging. NEVER! GIVE ME MONEY, SUCKERS! PAYPAL IN SIDEBAR.

anyway i just wanted to post on the status of it all. things are looking really good, actually, and i'm feeling confident that i can raise the $2,000. running the 26.2, now, not so sure.

i'm feeling happy about the money for a few reasons: one, the vinyl sale is going super well. i've raised about $100 through it. i posted the albums on craigslist recently as well, and some dude wants to buy about 300 of them, so that's exciting.

two, my coworker and i recently went around to a few bars in d.c. to see about the possibility of holding a happy hour fundraiser or two. an adorable irish manager at fado who served us some beers on the house was very amenable to the idea, as were people at mimi's, cafe savino, and front page. hopefuly some of you can make it out for that, whenever and wherever we decide to hold it.

three, the fantastic tom dixon just donated a whopping $100 (and he also donated when i was running the race for the cure). i promised to send him a hooker in return. all i can say is that his company must be doing pretty darn well. which i'm glad for, because he totally deserves it. so if you ever need a company to do whatever the hell it is that his company does, you should hire him!

i'm off now--going to see the bourne supremacy tonight. yay! happy weekends, everybody.

update: the bourne supremacy was excellent. also, three more donations came in over the weekend - from matty, and my roommates julie and naomi. thank you all!!

Salon's got another good article today, this one picking Donnie Darko apart. It's a well-written, accurate and thorough article. Unfortunately, it exposes an uncomfortable fact: Donnie Darko's director and writer, Richard Kelly, is dumber than his movie. Spoilers follow.

I first saw Donnie Darko at the UVA film festival with Scott. It may, in fact, be the only film festival movie I ever attended at UVA. I immediately had a strong affinity for it. A messy, rambling sequence of events with a dreary view of free will, disposed to ponder then avoid uncomfortable philosophical questions, a tendency to take itself too seriously, and a Northern Virginia setting? Yeah, that sounds sort of familiar.

Unfortunately, it appears that Kelly didn't actually figure out how his movie's plot worked before filming it. After the fact he seems to have invented some DVD bonus features/ fake primary source documents that provide a rather lame sci-fi justification for the events of the film. Although he initially seems to have done this on a whim, presenting it as a tentative and non-authoritative explanation, his website and the new director's cut DVD imply that this account is now canon.

I think that's too bad. Donnie Darko is a confusing movie with more than its share of plot holes. But after enough viewings, I concluded that really, it was a story about god taking Donnie aside for a bit in order to show him that although he was to die in an arbitrary way, his death would not be meaningless; and that although his fate was predetermined, that didn't mean that the choice wasn't authentically his.

At least, that's what I thought. Apparently it was actually about some bullshit with wormholes. Oh well.

i would just like to say that this has been an extremely great week for women in politics, and i am super proud of every one.

we've got, in no particular order:

a) the security moms ("if you don't vote bush to make my baby safer, i'll blow your head off with my glock")

b) annie jacobsen, championed by aforementioned security moms, who was so vigilant that she actually "was in danger of panicking other passengers and CREATING A LARGER PROBLEM ON THE PLANE," according to the federal air marshalls on the flight

c) cathy seipp, who makes this fantastic and really forward-thinking statement while guest-posting over at the volokh conspiracy:

Speaking of which, I have some Orthodox Jewish friends who don't like it when I wear my usual sleeveless/low-cut tops on TV -- sends the wrong message, they say, and I suppose they could be right. But ever since Sept. 11, I've become fonder of anything that offends the Islamofascists. "Step on a crack, break old Hitler's back," kids used to say during World War II. These days I sometimes think to myself: "Dress like a tart, break an Imam's heart."

d) and the uber-exclusive madison group on the hill ("i couldn't get my MRS at college so i had to join a third-rate grown up sorority to feel attractive")

good job, girls! i sure am proud to be a woman today.

..
excuse me. hangovers make me bitchy.