Today: Library, CVS, gas (why is there no method that does not require getting out of the car to fill up - other than taking a spouse along?), Staples (no cable to connect my iPod to the laptop), Radio Shack (still no cable), bookstore, massage, movie. Laundry mixed in there as well.

Movies:
1. The Quiet American - The early American presence in Vietnam was anything but quiet. It was subversive and damaging and led to a generation of devastation, for both Americans and the Vietnamese. We tend to look at our interests with a very short-term perspective, though the narrow looking glass of western democracy, as is evidenced by the policies of the current administration. Michael Caine gives a wonderful performance in this movie, as a British journalist who drifts through life until the ugliness of American involvement in Vietnam wakes him up. Brendan Fraser was startlingly good in his portrayal of a CIA agent masquerading as an economic aid worker. The triangle that includes the two of them and a young Vietnamese girl seems peripheral to the political story that is the basis for the plot.

2. Return of the King - the final and best of the trilogy, though disappointing in what it left out (the scouring of the Shire and the true end of the story, which included the waning of the realm of man and Aragorn's departure over the sea). Though the movie was long, there were few wasted scenes; all moved the action to its culmination. Too bad that Peter Jackson will not film The Hobbit, though that was by far the weakest of the four books.