I am married to a man who was just listening to I'm So Excited.

On purpose.

We just finished watching season two of Alias on DVD, and despite the fact that not only had I seen it before but we are well into season three now, I am pissed off all over again that Vaughn is married. Stupid Vaughn. But the show, oh the show, is so good. So good. You really don't know what you're missing.

Last week we finished up Firefly, the best show you never watched - the best show the nation didn't watch - the show Fox screwed with its terrible time slot (sci-fi? on Friday night? huh?) and by not letting Joss Whedon air the 2-hour pilot at the beginning of the season. That show. Viewed as a whole, it's even better than I remembered. Fourteen episodes of televised perfection. Really. It's better than Buffy. (Would I say that lightly? I would not.) As pissed off as I am at Vaughn, I'm more pissed at Fox, because they destroyed something fantastic. I have so many unanswered questions! What the hell was in Book's past? Did Mal and Inara get together? Kaylee and Simon? What was really up with River, anyway? Did Zoe and Wash ever start a family? The death of these fantastic characters is devastating. If they don't make the movie I will mourn forever.

Did you know that the Bush administration has pulled their team of weapons hunters out of Iraq? Could it be because...they haven't found any weapons? Could that be because...there aren't any to find? Could it be that...our government, and most of all our President, lied to us about weapons of mass destruction to give them an excuse to invade Iraq?

Of course not! The President? Lie? Presidents only lie about who they're sleeping with - didn't you know that? Because when Presidents lie, Congress impeaches them! Bush hasn't been impeached, so he must not be lying! Right?

Hello?

While I'm discussing this, has anyone else seen the report that the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace released today? The one (as Joe Conason boiled down at Salon so well) that concludes that Iraq had no nuclear program and no chemical or biological weapons of any consequence; U.N. inspections had worked and were working to contain any latent threat from Saddam Hussein; our intelligence community badly overestimated Iraq's arsenal; U.S. and British officials exaggerated and misrepresented that intelligence; there is no significant evidence of cooperation between Saddam and al-Qaida. That report.


But Carnegie opposed the war, so naturally their report A. won't get much press and B. will be discounted, because everyone knows that people who opposed the war are not only unpatriotic, but stupid as well.

Right?

We've been taking the Christmas tree down over the last couple of nights. Is there anything more depressing? It hardly feels like we had a holiday - I don't ever remember sitting in front of our tree, just sitting, and admiring it. It was a spectacular tree. Probably the nicest we've ever had. Now it's bare in our living room, waiting to have the branches cut off so we can spread them over our flower beds. (Poor tree.)

Scattered over one of the side tables is most of my Christmas music. In years past I have listened to little else but Christmas music from Thanksgiving til December 25th. Not this year, for some reason. My holiday music listening was scattershot. One reason is the Return of the King soundtrack - I had Into the West on repeat until I'd memorized the words, and even now, I listen to it almost daily. Another is that the season seemed very rushed this year and I had so much paper to write and house to clean etc. that I never really settled into Christmas. My Peggy Lee Christmas CD stayed in the plastic for the second year in a row. I bought some new ones this year, but I think I only listened to the new Harry Connick Jr. twice (it's not as good as the first, but it deserved more than two cursory listens) and I don't think I listened to the Nat King Cole even one complete time.

I want my holiday back. If Howard Dean can give me my country back, can he give me Christmas back too?

Christmas has recently passed, and I have been having my annual (okay, this is the third year) holiday re-read of Susan Cooper's The Dark Is Rising series. I tried to read these books years and years ago and could not get into Book One, Over Sea, Under Stone - so I never finished the series. A few years back I thought I would give it another go and bought Book Two, The Dark Is Rising. I'd forgotten which was first and guessed that Book Two was actually Book One, since Book Two's title is the title of the entire series. Well, I was wrong - but I ended up loving the series by starting with Book Two. I have never gone back and tried Book One again. I guess I'm afraid I won't love it like I love the others. Book One doesn't have Will Stanton in it. How can I love it if there's no Will Stanton?