My Valentine's Day did not get off to a good start: I had a nightmare that my parakeets were dead, and I was playing with their decapitated heads. No blood or anything. Just feathered heads.

There's... really no appropriate follow up to that, is there?

I got two presents for Valentine's Day!

My friend Joey, who is absolutely sweet and wonderful, bought two picture frames, one for me, and one for Laurie. She placed some kind of thin paper with dried rose petals inside (you know, instead of a picture). Mine is red, Laurie's is green. On top of the rose petal paper, she calligraphed lines from each of our favorite poets. Laurie got a great Whitman quote, and I got the following, from cummings of course:

(do you think?) the,
i do, world
is probably made
of roses + hello:
(of solongs and, ashes)

I was totally blown away. How sweet and thoughtful, and unexpected. I tried to take a picture of it with my web cam. It came out like a UFO sighting picture, though:

So I took a picture of myself, just to make up for it. (I also took pictures of my boobs, but you don't get to see those.):

Then I came home and found an Amazon box waiting for me. Had someone found my wish list? But it was almost better than that; it was a present from Bruce, a belated Christmas gift, the computer game Alice. It happened to be on my wish list, but he came up with the idea all on his own.

It's entirely up my alley: a macabre Alice in Wonderland which starts off with Alice in a mental institution, and sends her to a demented, twisted Wonderland to go massacre things. But it's all the more appropriate because years ago, when Bruce and I were best friends and while we were dating, we used to play computer games together. If we were bored, we would go to the computer store and pick out an adventure game to play together. We'd play at his house for a while, and then each of us would install it on our own computers, and we would compete against each other, and help each other figure out the puzzles.

Some of the games we played this way: the first Sherlock Holmes adventure game, one of the Kings Quest games (Absence Makes the Heart Go Yonder, I think), one of the Space Quests, the first Laura Bow, and Leisure Suit Larry. All those great Sierra games that I still have a soft spot for.

I decided to be my own valentine today, and take myself out to the movies.

I was going to see Chocolat, which is one of the Best Picture nominees that I haven't seen. Every year, I try and see all of the nominees in the major categories. This year is particularly tough because I missed a lot of movies: Almost Famous and Traffic come to mind. But, Michael and I are going to the movies this weekend (wink, wink), and Chocolat is probably one of those good date movies. So I went to see You Can Count on Me, instead.

I don't know why I had this vague idea that it was going to be depressing. (The House of Mirth. Now that was a depressing movie.) It wasn't depressing. It was absolutely wonderful, with excellent performances by Laura Linney and Mark Ruffalo. Laura Linney has always annoyed me, but she was excellent in this movie and has redeemed herself totally. Mark Ruffalo was robbed of an Oscar nomination, I must say.

The thing I loved about the movie was that it's not a formulaic film. You really have no idea what's going to happen, or how the plot elements are going to play themselves out. It's so refreshing, a nice departure from the usual cop-out catharsis of a character's death or a pivotal courtroom scene.

Oh, before the movie started, I was sitting in the theater, listening to "Movie Tunes" on the loudspeaker, and the announcer came on and said, "And here's a song by the most important rock band of the past decade... Collective Soul." Collective Soul? Who did those guys (or their manager) have to blow in order to get themselves called the most important rock band of the past decade? Nirvana is the most important rock band of the last decade, and Collective Soul is about eleven thousand places down on the list.

Perhaps the statement would have been more ridiculous if the band was Hootie and the Blowfish. But not by much.

And finally, I'd like to use this love-centric day to tell you all, dear readers, how much I love you. There are of course a few of you in particular I'd like to tie up in a bow and have my way with, but I love each and every one of you, one way or another.

"The most important thing to remember here, though, is that he likes to stick ELECTRICITY in his ASS. Don't ever forget that. I know I won't."