I am fond of Sickday today. Maybe he can be my grad school stand-in.

I was also interested to know the extent to which Malle�s script was autobiographical, as I am leery of descriptions like "loosely based." I went searching for answers at the IMdb and couldn�t find anything definitive except that Malle was born in 1932 � the movie takes place in 1944, so it could work. Also courtesy of the Imdb, here is the opening to one of the User Comments: In Au revoir les enfants Louis asks us to look below the surface. He tells us as we say here in Oklahoma "there are two sides to a pancake". Good to know!

Did you notice how, yesterday, I referred to my tax errand all casual-like? I was proud of myself. I�m trying not to let the money stuff freak me out anymore to the point where I go into denial about it. This strategy earns me no love from, e.g., the IRS and credit-card companies, however, and since I also tend to work myself into a lather about things in general and then feel like an ass later when their true small magnitude is revealed, I was trying to adopt an it�s-all-cool attitude, telling myself that since I earned so little money last year, surely the tax bite would be a mere scrape. Well, ha fucking ha. Basically the only way I could avoid paying in the big four digits was by promising to do this thing that sounds suspiciously dodgy, shunting some money almost immediately into an IRA that I�m only allowed to use within the next three years for purchase of a residence or to buy myself some education. I get a deduction for the IRA and then when I withdraw the money it is taxed at a lower rate plus something about a Lifetime Learning Credit on account of I already have a B.A or some shit like that� I don�t know, I just wrote down what the helpful tax advisor Mr. Funk � I�m not making that up � said I should do, and next week I have to call Karri whom I have been avoiding for months and pay the price for having her set those wheels in motion of also having to withstand her interrogation about when I�m going to start making the kind of money I was a few years ago when I set up that account. Dear Karri: possibly never, so shut up. Whine whine whine. But at least it�s over and I know exactly how bad it is, a sensation that is different by degree and localization from willful fearful avoidance. Also how bad it is is that Mr. Funk tells me that I will not be able to get a student loan until at least one tax-filing year after I have liquidated almost all of my "investments," and I put that in quotation marks because the term seems ridiculous for how paltry they are plus anything that�s depreciated in value by fifty percent or more is not an investment but a sharp stick in the eye especially seeing as how upon selling them, taxes are due on their cost at purchase. Dear IRS: Why, why, why? Dear entire software and telecommunications industries: fuck you.

Still, yeah, it�s good to know exactly how bad things are. Now it�s that sentence I�m re-reading and I�m trying to get at a metaphysical definition of what I mean by "good," so, moving right along. Last night in the bathtub I thunk up a liquidation plan that is so stupid and ill-advised and counterintuitive and audacious that it just might work. In the weeks and months to come, I will seek consultation. And in a strange way it�s also good � just plain old good, all right? Now leave me alone, spectral alter ego of a liberal arts grad student! � to be forced w/r/t classes-taking to put some money, some real money, where my mouth is. Take pity on me, I�m trying to talk myself un-horrified here, to speak in clear concepts to drown out the maybe-maybe-maybe buzzing in my brain. And yesterday as I was leaving I overheard the tail end of a conversation between Dr. Blahblah and Nurse Jenny about her wanting to go back to school for an MBA. "We�ll take care of you," he assured her. She said, But if I had an MBA I don�t think I�d want to stay in health care after that. "No, nobody would expect you to," he said. "Don�t worry about it, though, we�ll make it work for you." So, OK, I do not have the clout of a Nurse Jenny, but mightn�t it be possible that he would one day extend the same consideration to me? I detected in his voice a tone of noblesse oblige, as though it gave him self-reflective pleasure to be able to help Nurse Jenny in that it confirmed his station as one who is in a position to be asked for help. Does that make any sense? Nurse Jenny, who is poised and athletically pretty with tiny hooflike feet and expensive hair, probably wants to be a rep for a pharmaceutical company, a job that when the trainee version of which was offered to MBA-less me right out of college paid fifty large plus bonuses, so I don�t blame Nurse Jenny at all. Please, hospital, hire me already.

Why didn�t I take the job, you are wondering. I will tell you. It�s because, when I heard about it � it was a totally fluky thing, this was through the friend of a friend who happened to know all the right things about me (whatever they were) and I hadn�t applied but it was mine for the asking � I thought, "What, go around selling drugs out of a suitcase and talking about side effects all day long, nodding in an earnest manner when doctors ask questions in deference to their indisputable erudition? No thanks." About so many things it�s easy to second-guess � OK, I mean because of the salary it�s easy to second-guess. But one thing that reassures me is that I didn�t want a job that sounded like a dog in the mental stimuli department, I didn�t want to just do any dumb thing for the sake of a paycheck, I didn�t want to be in the position of having to respond to so-what-do-you-do with irony or self-derision over working in a capacity that I found ridiculous and that, more importantly, was incongruous with how I wanted to see myself. Remembering this makes me feel gladder and more optimistic about the self-reinvention plan. It comes from the right place. What is superfluous to something with integrity, I am tentatively beginning to believe, can be made to fall away. If you let it.

I need another term than "self-actualization." Can anyone help?

About the e-mail from Todd, Steve suggested that I send him a short civil note informing him that the reason I am not responding is that I am not reading it, that if he has a practical question or is looking for the contact information of someone I know, he should put the request in the subject line so I know what he�s after. Once again I am humbled at this evidence that the guys I go out with tend to be much nicer and more forgiving than my hostile nature inclines me to be. But no. In a surreal turn of events, at dinner Monday night when I had been defending this refusal to respond in, I guess, a manner that had more to do with taxonomy than vitriol, he asked me to clarify that things were, in fact, over and done with between Todd and me, and that anything else was within the realm of possibility was so monstrous that I could barely speak.

I am feeling magnanimous today, so in between sending personal e-mail and burning cds, I am going to do work for the rest of the afternoon. Oh! Let�s turn our portent detectors way, way down for this one, but in my driver�s license photo my hair looks great � and I look happy.

(Later:) Holy cats, I just remembered a dream I had last night. I will record it here tomorrow.