I gotta car! I gotta car! I gotta car!
And I saw Farenheit 9/11. It’s been a good weekend.

Iwas supposed to make dinner for friends last night, but I got stuck at Carmax for a million hours trying to finalize the deal on the new used car. They appraised Bert and I got a whopping 200 bucks for the hunk of junk. It sucks but I was honestly expecting to have to pay them to take the thing off my hands. For the record, auto loans are a bloody racket, but to get something worth having I had to play the game. But I am going to pay off the principal ASAP so I don’t get totally screwed.

The Carmax experience was great. I dealt with a woman named Ruth. She was small, bubbly and very honest. She was quite surprised that I did not want to look at any automatics. “I think you are the first woman to say that” she exclaimed as I demanded to see the manuals. There were several choices in the smallish car range, but I found Roja pretty quickly and she won me over with one test drive.

Stats: 2000 Ford Escort SX2 - 2 Door - Red w/ gray interior - manual (of course) - 6 disk changer - moon roof - power locks and windows (not a requirement but always nice) - 30K miles and no body damage.

She is a zippy little bitch and I love driving her. So I am now the proud owner (again) of a red car and I actually have a car payment and insurance. I feel like a grown up and it’s scaring me.

So instead of dinner, my friends came over (2 hours later) for some porch time and drinks. I felt terrible because I didn’t have anyone’s number on me so I could call them and tell them I would be late for my own gathering. Luckily, they are sweet, understanding people and all was well. Thank god for good friends.

Fahrenheit 9/11 - This is a very powerful, moving, disturbing piece of film. I applaud Michael Moore for taking on Bush and the Washington slime-machine. I was amazed how the tone moved from hysterical to damn near soul crushing. There are images, views that we don’t get with our Americanized, watered down news media and it was refreshing to see his truth in black and white. One of the most powerful scenes of the film dealt with 9/11 itself. The screen went black and all you hear the planes hitting the Twin Towers and the chaos that follows. You hear it. You don’t see it. It haunts me still because my eyes were not distracted by the teary faces and the pained looks of horror. Hearing it hurt so much worse.
There is another scene (one of several done with Iraqis) where a woman rails against the senseless destruction of her family’s home. She stood in front of the remains of her uncle’s house calling god down to strike the forces that killed her family - her civilian family. Her pain - pure and horrific - tore at me. This was no actress. She screamed and fell apart and it was real. How can we do such things to people?
There is more than I can comment upon, but I just want to say one thing - go see it for yourself. It’s important. Go. Go now.