Today is one of those days when I would love to pick a fist fight with the first idiot to cross my path. Fortunately, there is a plethora of idiots available from which to choose. Even more fortunately, my meds are adjusted so that instead of taking a swing (or a swig, as the case may be) I'm only cursing like a longshoreman (and only in my head) and sticking very close to the computer.

But my mood is soooo black, so foul, so teeth-grindingly angry that I can't stand to be in my own company. Free-floating anxiety and anger.

And why? Who knows. My primary car is in the shop waiting for its brainbox to be replaced. The emergency back up car is idling hot and its radio (which was one of its finer points) decided yesterday morning to just up and die. I was listening to Public Radio and the story was about how America's foreign policy has placed us in the top five "most likely to be hit by terrorism" countries on the planet. I snapped the radio off with a pithy remark about the current occupant of the White House and how he helped us make that list. When I tried to pop a tape in the deck as an alternative listen, there was nothing but silence. The sound system had died.

So what? Really, these are all minor, petty annoyances, not life-altering problems. It is just that my tolerance is at an all-time low.

And I'm tired of the rain. PHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHTTTTTTTTTT.

On go the headphones, and I am going to retreat to the black lagoon of my mind.

One would think, after all these years, that I would know better than to take my husband's recommendations for movies. But, no. I went with him last night to see "The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen."

It blew. It blew large, frothy chunks. What unadulterated, misbegotten crap with a side order of dreck.

There was a plot... just less of one than the comic book on which it was based.

There were recognizable characters, but only by name, and only if you'd read a lot of Victorian-era literature, or at least had seen the movies based on those books. Having said that, only the names were familiar, because the characters were mere caricatures of the originals. And original this shlock was not.

How anyone with even a passing knowledge of "Tom Sawyer" would extrapolate that wild youth in to a "Wild, Wild West"-style government agent speaks to the theory of alcohol abuse or pre-frontal lobotomy.

Mina Harker, the widow of Jonathan Harker of "Dracula" fares no better. She has become a, uh, um, chemist? scientist of nebulous specificity. She is also a daylight-dwelling vampire with never-healing neck wounds. Mina also makes dubious wardrobe choices, appearing alternately in widow's weeds with a net veil (I'm guessing that passes for her sunscreen), a marvelously tooled black leather corset and an 1890's stenographer's white middy blouse and walking skirt -- worn with her long hair loose, which, as any indifferent student of the era can tell you, was acceptable only for young, un-married virgins.

Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde in the house: Jekyll with red-rimmed eyes and an ability to see (and talk to) Mr. Hyde in mirrors and other reflective surfaces. Hyde himself wears a top hat made to fit, despite the fact that the rest of his costume is shredded like the Hulk's clothes after a transformation. In one of the more jarring stylistic anachronisms, Mr. Hyde also looks like he was designed by Todd Mcfarlane. When one of the bad guys drinks the Hyde juice (an entire retort of it in one face-wetting, Gator-Aide style splash) he becomes more Hyde-like than Hyde, and his head and neck appear to be sprouting from somewhere around his sternum. That's when I started laughing and my husband had to poke me and tell me to be quiet, not everyone in the theater wanted to be informed as to the exact points of suckiness.

Alan Quartermain, Dorian Gray, Moriarty and Captain Nemo all make appearances, as does *an* invisible man, but not *the* Invisible Man. This invisible man even refers to "the franchise." Ugh. The dialogue, such as it is, relies heavily on late 20th century American slang.

The star of this mess is probably the Nautilus, Nemo's ship. (And remind me again how Nemo became an Indian, a pirate and a worshipper of Kali?) This is not the Nautilus from Disney's "Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea." No, this a Nautilus the length of a 7th Fleet aircraft carrier and the width of an original VW bug. Except on the inside, in true fantasy film form, where it is incredibly spacious and impeccably white. Despite its size, the Nautilus is capable of navigating the canals of Venice, going so far as to be seen passing under the Bridge of Sighs.

That was when my mind overloaded from the impossibility of it all, and so I cannot explain how the League went from Venice to Inner Mongolia where they destroyed a lot of things and, uh, beat the bad guys (Moriarty and Gray) and lived (?) happily (?) ever after. Except for Gray, who saw his portrait and the evil transferred from it to him and caused him to spontaneously discorporate, and Moriarty who gets shot in the back from half a mile away and goes down, and Quartermain, who may be dead and buried (back in Africa), but who may not stay that way, because there's a witch doctor doing the hoodoo that he do so well over the grave and then thunder splits the sky and the credits roll.

And then so did my stomach, and not from the popcorn.

It's been raining, but then, this is the rainy season in the tropics. One may as well complain that San Francisco is foggy. It is the nature of the beast.

The nature of my own personal beast is this: I hate my job. I really, really, hate my job. I hate sitting in front of a computer. I hate working in an office. I hate dressing up and wearing make up every day.

Today I had my headphones on and listened all day to a little compilation of MP3s I call "easy for ME to listen to". This is so it won't be confused with the concept of easy listening by anyone else. It is heavy with Bob Dylan boots, but there are a smattering of cuts by Frank Sinatra and Billy Joel and John Lennon. Mostly though, it's boys with bad voices singing about bad relationships and crummy life choices.

It makes me feel better. What would really make me feel better is a vast quantity of very, very cold vodka with a splash of vermouth and a matching large quantity of olives.

Another thing that would make me feel better would be for my father to accept that my mother's Alzheimer's has reached a state where we would all be better off if she were institutionalized.

This has to be one of the most horrible diseases to inflict man. Everything I read could not prepare me for the reality of it. I can deal with her not recognizing me for the simple reason that I can no longer recognize her. This mean and bitter creature is not my mother. My husband has a much easier time than any of us dealing with her. He says it's because he knew so many acid casualties back in the day that he can talk to someone who is so totally in the now, so completely owned by their paranoia and hallucinations and delusions.

I never liked dealing with burnouts. That's probably why I have such a low tolerance for Deadheads and alcoholics. And now, for the person who was my mother.

This entry started out about work and weather, but like everything else my mind touches on these days, the spiral just goes around the drain to the sucking vortex of my mother's dementia.

Drinks, anyone?

Longtime readers may remember my posts from December, when I was in a crash course for ColdFusion. When the instructor asked what our expectations were, I said I expected to be reduced to tears at least three times.

That was then, this is now. The time has finally come for me to convert the hospital's web site from GoLive to Dreamweaver. I can't get the test server to run right. I can't get the text to line up right. I can't add line padding where I want it. I can't remember dick about what I learned in that class last December, except that I can calculate my age in dog years, and my instructor spoke with a very interesting Pakistani accent.

I'm fighting with the code. I'm fighting with the cascading style sheets. I'm fighting ennui. I'm staring out the window and wondering how I ended up designing web sites when all I ever wanted to do with my life was be an artist.

I have foot-high stack of books and I'm trying to figure out how to do everything I knew how to do in GoLive. This is why I'm such a huge fan of Adobe products. The interface is easy and intuitive. Things work. Drop and drag is active across the board. There are no unexpected results like an "onmouseover" command when you want it to be an "onmouseclick" command. Adobe makes sense to me, because whoever writes their programming code does so using the same logic I would use if I were writing it.

Macromedia seems to be written in another language and then translated to English and then to code. I just don't get it. But I will. I have to.

Did I mention that a friend gave me a hip flask? It's really more of a garter flask from the Roaring Twenties. I may have to start wearing garters to work.

It has been beastly hot here in the Magic City... which is, I think, what the Chamber of Commerce calls Miami. Ninety degrees and ninety percent humidity. Water is in suspension in the air, which is almost body temperature. Periodically the air cannot hold any more water in suspension and it rains. This gives no relief from the heat, it just makes everyone even wetter. The asphalt is so hot that once the rain stops, the steam just rises from the streets, putting the hot water back into suspension. This phenomenon happens even after dark, when it becomes quite lovely to watch... from inside the air-conditioned living space.

This morning, there were waterspouts over the Bay. We could see them from our office windows.

This is very scary. I made up my list of the concerts I remember seeing, where I remember the name of the group. I ended the list by saying until I found the box of ticket stubs, that would have to do.

This weekend I found the box of ticket stubs. Uh, how do you explain that I have a ticket from Emerson Lake and Palmer from Madison Square Garden, with my handwriting on the back, and no recollection at fucking all of ever having seen them perform? Yeah, I know. That's pretty much the ONLY explanation. Nor do I remember going to see David Bowie, but there is my ticket stub. Not a whole ticket, but one which was torn in half.

There were a number of stubs from the Bottom Line or the Other End, with no notes, and no names. I saw somebody. Maybe they are already on the list. Who knows.

And then there are the stubs with only half a name. Hen--- Henry Higgins? What rocker is named Henry? Or group? Not Herman's Hermits. Not Don Henley. Not Harry Chapin. Henr---. Well, now I'm totally stumped.

So I guess until I pull out my old journals, and try to match entries and dates, the list will remain incomplete and my memory will continue to be like swiss cheese.

Mind like a steel sieve, I swear.