Having 666 in my address means people either laugh or look at me blankly when I say I've got the address of the beast.

Egad! It should never take thirty minutes to call out sick. But since you're home, insent. I'm bored and emailing people. You've been warned.

Anti-migraine ~ma for ita. Is there another nerve block scheduled anytime soon?

Oh, man. Today is not quite a disaster for me, but I am a giant ball of stress.

• Husband was up several times during the night, sick.

• Due to the fact that the driveway behind our house is being torn up and replaced, the local roach population has been disturbed and is making appearances in our house. (Please note: we are not horrible unclean people. Roaches are an unavoidable fact of life in the south.)

• I'm putting together an online auction to benefit my mother's chorus. A friend of hers got people to donate all sorts of amazing music-related items, and I am paranoid that I'm going to do something to mess it up.

Is there another nerve block scheduled anytime soon?

I don't think the last one worked, but I'm not above giving another one a shot. I have a headache specialist (as opposed to neurologist or GP) appointment in early May. He's supposed to be worth this whole wait, so I can't wait to hear his recommendation.

Great. I do feel lightheaded now. Plus the tube on my CRT is acting up, so the image is slightly pulsating.

At least I hope it's the CRT.

t Waving to Nicole, with whom I hadn't posted in quite a while How are you doing, bored lady?

Dana, I hope the rest of today is stress-free, or at least stress-minimized.

And shoots interstallar death rays out of its head.

I'd be happy if they just did the corners.

Wow, Dana. Monday seems to be kicking it up a notch, doesn't it? I hope the rest of today is a vast improvement.

Hi, Nilly! I'm doing well. And I'm sort of enjoying the boredom, actually. It is such a rare thing these days.

I can't believe that Japanese girls are still doing that crazy loose socks thing.

I'm sort of enjoying the boredom

Well, that's good. Somebody has to have a nice sort of Monday around here, right?

I just had a 4.5 years old girl here (a daughter of a friend, who couldn't find a babysitter so she brought her here), bossing all of us a around, assigning us all names of fruits, then vegetables, then confusing them all up, then trying to force us all to make a train (that's where we rebelled). Not a bad way to spend an afternoon.

How Lara Croft Steals Hearts

A less conventional view of Lara Croft's appeal to guys....

...I think young boy gamers loved Lara for reasons that were considerably stranger. They weren't just ogling her: They were identifying with her. Playing the role of a hot, sexy woman in peril -- surrounded by violence on all sides -- was, unexpectedly, a totally electric experience for young guys.

I am not merely pulling this argument out of my butt. I'm basing it on a famous piece of film theory: the "Final Girl" concept of slasher movies.

...

The Final Girl theory emerged in 1985, when Carol Clover -- a medievalist and feminist film critic -- was dared by a friend to see The Texas Chainsaw Massacre....

...as Clover sat in the theaters, she noticed something curious. Sure, the young men would laugh and cheer as the villain hunted down his female prey. But eventually the movie would whittle down the victims to one last terrified woman -- the Final Girl, as Clover called her. Suddenly, the young men in the audience would switch their allegiance -- and begin cheering just as madly for the Final Girl as she attacked and killed the psycho.

This, Clover argued, was not mere garden-variety sexism. On the contrary, it was a generation of young guys who apparently identified strongly with the situation of a woman who faced agonizing peril yet came out victorious. The slasher dynamic was unprecedented in film history: "The idea of a female who outsmarts, much less outfights -- or outgazes -- her assailant (was) unthinkable," Clover wrote. With this new crop of slasher movies, the young men in the audience essentially became the Final Girl: exhausted, freaked out and ultimately triumphant. They weren't just ogling the sexual violence. They were submitting to it.