When they were introduced, he made a witticism, hoping to be liked. She laughed extremely hard, hoping to be liked. Then each drove home alone, staring straight ahead, with the very same twist to their faces.

The man who’d introduced them didn’t much like either of them, though he acted as if he did, anxious as he was to preserve good relations at all times. One never knew, after all, now did one now did one now did one.

–David Foster Wallace, Brief Interviews with Hideous Men

I leave tomorrow morning on a flight to St. Louis. Going to spend New Year’s in Carbondale, Illinois. I’ll be back January 3rd. A couple days later I’m driving to Rochester to say hello to Tim as he passes by on his epic drive out west. (Lengthy parenthetical: Most of the people I worked with at all of my jobs while living in Southern Illinois pronounced “Illinois” the wrong (”ignorant”) way: Illinoi-s. I found it really aggravating. The other day someone (I don’t remember whom) caught me pronouncing it “Illinoi-s” in a conversation, and quickly pointed it out and corrected me. Can you imagine? I was horrified! Damn osmosis.) Hopefully, the security check goes smoothly. Last time I flew from St. Louis to Minneapolis it went rather badly. Something beeped as I walked through the metal detector. Airport security promptly confiscated my shoes, my socks, my jacket, my scarf, my gloves, my hooded sweatshirt, my purse, my backpack (Alas, I hardly had any clothes left!), and painstakingly picked them apart, checking them for explosive residue, razors, etc., while ordering me to sit on a chair, to the amusement of fully-clothed passerbys. Oh the ignominy! Why, considering that experience, it’s a wonder I’m willing to fly at all.

At the suggestion of John Barach and Gideon Strauss, I finally saw Wit the other evening. I’m not sure any comments I could make on the film come accurately come close to describing the emotional trauma chronicled therein. Emma Thompson did an absolutely brilliant job — perhaps the performance of her career — of playing Vivian (stoic English literature professor who’s diagnosed with terminal cancer). Some of the expression’s on Vivian’s face immediately occurring after epiphanies about her life — or while undergoing the humiliations of treatment — are heart-breakingly obscene. At first she voyeuristically revels in the paradoxes and ironies of her grave and absurd situation, as only an English professor or student could. However, she eventually begins to unravel emotionally as the situation worsens and she eventually is completely isolated from humanity. The Runaway Bunny scene at the end really got to me. I resent when films make me cry; it’s really bothersome. It makes me feel really irrational and weak-headed. I’m probably just paranoid.

Here’s the review from Amazon:

Deservedly hailed as one of the best films of 2001, Wit makes it clear why top-ranking talents seek refuge in the quality programming of HBO. Unhindered by box-office pressures, director Mike Nichols and Emma Thompson turn the most unglamorous topic–the physical and psychological ravages of cancer–into an exquisite contemplation of life, learning, and tenacious, richly expressed humanity. In adapting Margaret Edson’s compassionate, Pulitzer Prize-winning play, Nichols and Thompson open up the one-room setting with a superb supporting cast. But their focus remains on the hospital experience of Vivian (Thompson), a fiercely demanding professor of English literature whose academic specialty–the metaphysical poetry of John Donne–is the armor she wears against the cruel indignities of her cancer treatment. While losing all that she held dear, she reassesses her life as an aloof intellectual, and Wit illuminates her bracingly eloquent and deeply moving struggle for dignity, meaning, and peace at life’s ultimate crossroads.

Friday afternoon I went to Augusta Haslach’s funeral. She died on Christmas Eve at the age of ninety-five. She is survived by a huge family and her husband, Harold, whom is ninety-five as well. Really remarkable people. Harold and Gusty were married for seventy-five years, imagine that. They were our next-door neighbour at my parents’ cabin. My little sister, Jessica, really loved spending time with Harold and Gusty and, during the summer months, would often wander over to their porch and sit with them. Jessica regarded Gusty, I think, as something of a grandma. She has absolutely no concept of death, so there’s no way that we can effectively relate Gusty’s passing to her. People, from time to time, in Jessica’s eyes, must randomly disappear from her life. That’s got to be rather strange and unsettling for the child.

GROUP CLAIMS: FIRST CLONE BORN; IT’S A GIRL!

O brave new world. So it begins…

A baby has been born through cloning, French scientist and member of the Raelian sect Brigitte Boisselier has told AFP.

The baby, a girl, was born Thursday by cesarean section. The birth “went very well,” said Boisselier, president of the human cloning society Clonaid, on the telephone.

As the effort by the Raelians to achieve the first human birth by cloning was carried out in secrecy, it was not immediately possible to obtain any independent scientific confirmation that the baby was in fact a clone.

The baby born Thursday was the first of five the Raelians have said were due.

The Raelians, who claim 55,000 followers worldwide, believe that life on Earth was established by extra-terrestrials who arrived in flying saucers 25,000 years ago, and that humans themselves were created by cloning.

The movement’s founder, Rael — the former French journalist Claude Vorilhon — lives in Quebec. He describes himself as a prophet and claims that cloning will enable humanity to attain eternal life.

I took my little sister to see the new Harry Potter today. Heh, it wasn’t bad.

The strangest thing I got for Christmas this year (and I got some really great things (down comforter!, lovely brooch!)) was from my mum: Ann Coulter’s Slander: Liberal Lies About the American Right. Oddly, though I’ve never so much as mentioned her name to my mother, I often frequent her columns and regard her, if nothing else, as a really entertaining (and often hyperbolic) read, and a knee-jerk reactionary. I first encountered her this spring, when I went to see her speak at SIU’s law school. I was taking a speech/communications class at the time (to complete my general education requirements) and had an assignment to see a “real, live speaker.” This lady, from what the local paper had printed about her, sounded wacky enough. Here are some of the statements they quoted her as saying:

God gave us the earth. We have dominion over the plants, the animals, the trees. God said, “The earth is yours. Take it. Rape it. It’s yours.”

I think [women] should be armed but should not be [allowed to vote.]

If those kids [in Columnbine High School] had been carrying guns they would have gunned down this one [child] gunman. Don’t pray. Learn to use guns.

To say that Muhammad was a demon-possessed pedophile is not an attack, it’s a fact… Muhammad makes [Church of Scientology founder] L. Ron Hubbard look like Jesus Christ.

[From the column that resulted in her getting fired from The National Review] We should invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity. We weren’t punctilious about locating and punishing only Hitler and his top officers. We carpet-bombed German cities; we killed civilians. That’s war. And this is war.

Her lecture was rather interesting; people ranging from just about anywhere on the political spectrum attended; some in support, some in protest. Miss Coulter’s appearance was the most odd, seemingly paradoxical spectacle of the entire evening: Woman about thirty, blonde, very tall, wearing mini-skirt and heels, legs tantamount to Barbie’s, railing away at the Left with her sharp, fluent, and inflammatory wit.

In the interest of killing two birds with one stone, I later did an “informative” speech on her, and concluded that people ought to cut her some slack, and realise that it’s only fair to let right-wing pundits make sarcastic and snide remarks. I pointed out that the right-wing didn’t react in outrage when the liberal-minded Mr. Cop Killer himself (Ice-T) came and spoke. Hostility overtook the facial expressions of my fellow students. It is no small wonder I made it out of the room alive.

I have no idea when I’ll be able to read this book. I’m not particularly interested in liberal lies about the American right. I’ve got more pressing fish to fry, so to speak.