The issue of abortion is not a new one to ponder, but it is a law that most pro-choicers have come to take for granted. Pro-choicers are starting to get defensive about the issue, however, now that our president himself is a pro-lifer. Meanwhile, the pro-lifers are becoming more assured of their position for the same reason.

Although the reasons for identifying with a stance on the issue vary between individuals, the real point of divergence seems to be on the time when individual life begins. Many pro-lifers believe that life begins at the point of conception. But in medical terms, a pregnancy does not actually begin until the fertilized egg implants itself into the wall of the mother’s uterus. Many fertilized eggs are not even able to implant, but are flushed out of the mother’s body. Others are miscarried early on in the pregnancy, often without the knowledge of the potential mother. Pro-choicers believe that individual life for the fetus does not begin until it is able to live outside of the mother’s body. The law does not recognize a fetus as a “person” until it is able to live outside of its mother’s womb.

Most abortions, over 90%, are performed during the first trimester of the pregnancy. These can be medical abortions, in which drugs are given to the woman to cause the small ball of tissue, which would become a fetus, to be expelled from her body. The pregnancy can also be aborted by dilating the cervix to allow the vacuum to be inserted in order to remove the contents of the woman’s uterus. Other abortions, which are not performed at all clinics, can be done in the second trimester, and sometimes the third, although that procedure is very rare. An abortion after the first trimester is much more complicated and often traumatizing for the woman.

First trimester abortion was legalized in the 1973 landmark Supreme Court case, Roe v. Wade. A woman using the pseudonym Jane Roe (a play off of John Doe, and Roe as in fish eggs) appears before the Supreme Court to contest the constitutionality of a Texas statute, which makes “it a crime to ‘procure an abortion’ or to attempt one, except with respect to ‘an abortion procure or attempted by medical advice for the purpose of saving the life of the mother.” She claims that the Texas statute violates her right to privacy, a right extrapolated from the First, Third, Fourth, Fifth, Ninth and Fourteenth Amendments.

The Court lays down the facts of the case: Jane Roe was a single woman who, at the time of her pregnancy, desired to get an abortion. She instituted a federal action against Henry Wade, the District Attorney of Dallas County, Texas. The court denied her request to declare the criminal abortion statutes unconstitutional, so she appealed her way up to the Supreme Court.

The Supreme Court practices English Common Law, the fundamental aspect of which is a reliance on precedents. Mr. Justice Blackmun, who delivers the opinion of the court, looks to every precedent he can find. He claims that in the Persian Empire “criminal abortion was several punished.” But that, for the most part, in Ancient Greece and Rome “law afforded little protection to the unborn,” and abortion “was resorted to without scruple.” “Ancient religion did not bar abortion.”

He then notes that the Hippocratic Oath has long stood “as the ethical guide of the medical profession (created circa 400 BC), states that a doctor “will give no deadly medicine to anyone if asked, nor suggest any such counsel; and in like manner will not give to a woman a pessary to produce abortion.” Though, it is theorized, based on the attitudes found in texts such as Plato’s Republic and Aristotle’s Politics, that the Hippocratic Oath was not as strictly followed by the general Greek population as it was by the Pythagoreans.

Then he moves to the English Common Law (which was the basis for most state law into the 19th century). Early English law did not criminalize abortions preformed before quickening. Quickening is the point at which the fetus becomes animated. It was believed that this was the point at which the soul became a part of the fetus. Christian theology puts that time of quickening at 40 days for boys and 80 days for girls. An abortion before this point was not considered homicide. “Whether abortion of a quick fetus was a felony at common law, or even a lesser crime, is still disputed.”
The first English statutory law, the Lord Ellenborough Act of 1803, “made abortion of a quick fetus a capital crime, but it provided lesser penalties for the felony of abortion before quickening, and thus preserved the ‘quickening’ distinction.” In 1837 the quickening distinction disappeared. In 1927 willful abortion, except in the case of saving the mother, became a felony. In 1967 abortion became legal in the case that the child would cause more physical or mental harm to her or her existing children than aborting the child would, or if there is a “substantial risk that the child would suffer from such physical or mental abnormalities as to be seriously handicapped.”

As was stated before, most early state laws in the US referred to English Common Law. In the mid-1800′s states began to pass legislation criminalizing abortion, before and after quickening. But even into the late 1900′s states could be found that treated early pregnancy abortions less severely than those executed later in pregnancy. The reason for this legislation, The Court points out, may stem from the policy of the American Medical Association, which led a campaign to inform people of the dangers and immorality of abortion at any point during the pregnancy. In 1967 they reformed their policy to give exception to abortions in cases where the life of the mother is at stake, the child may be born with physical or mental defects, or where the pregnancy resulted from rape or incest.

The Court expresses some possible reasons for the criminal abortion laws created in the mid-1800′s. One is that the abortion was discouraged because of a high abortion-related death rate. But, the justice points out, the invention of antiseptics techniques, and the development of antibiotics, reduced the dangers of first trimester abortion to a relatively safe level (“as low as or lower than the rates for normal childbirth”). “Any interest of the State in protecting the woman from an inherently hazardous procedure, except when it would be equally dangerous for her to forgo it, has largely disappeared.” The Court points out that “the few state courts called upon to interpret their [criminal abortion statutes] in the late 19th and early 20th centuries did focus on the State’s interest in protecting the woman’s health, rather than in preserving the embryo and fetus” and therefore theorizes that the criminal abortion laws of the 19th Century largely had to do with the health of the mother and not the protection of pre-natal life.

With precedents laid down, The Court finally gets to the constitutionality of the statute. He agrees that a woman’s “decision to terminate her pregnancy” falls under her right to privacy as described in Griswold v. Connecticut. This basically means that it is not within the interest of the state to regulate her abortion as long as it is safe. It is a private matter like the use of contraceptives. The District Attorney stated that it is within the state’s interest to protect the life of a person. The District Attorney then argued that “the fetus is a ‘person’ within the language and meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment.” The Court points out that the first mention of “person” in the constitution is “in defining “citizens” as “person born or naturalized in the United States.” He says that in “nearly all instances, the use of the word is such that it has application only post-natally. None indicates, with any assurance, that it has any possible pre-natal application.”

The Court also asserts that the woman’s right to privacy dissolves when the abortion becomes dangerous for her in the second trimester, or when the child could potentially live outside of the mother’s womb in the third trimester. In the opinion of The Court since the Texas Statute makes no distinction like this, it sweeps too broadly, is too vague and “therefore cannot survive the constitutional attack made upon it.”

Now, the Texas Statute, and all other statutes like it, have two constitutional attacks on them. One, they violate the right to privacy. Two, they are, in violation of the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, too vague to exist. The Court then goes on to describe acceptable abortion legislation:
“(a) For the stage prior to approximately the end of the first trimester, the abortion decision and its effectuation must be left to the medical judgment of the pregnant woman’s attending physician.
(b) For the stage subsequent to approximately the end of the first trimester, the state in promoting its interest in the health of the mother, may, if it chooses, regulate the abortion procedure in ways that are reasonably related to maternal health.
(c) For the stage subsequent to viability, the State in promoting its interest in the potentiality of human life may, if it chooses, regulate, and even proscribe, abortion except where it is necessary, in appropriate medical judgment, for preservation of the life or of the mother.”

Justices Rehnquist and White submitted dissenting opinions. Rehnquist claims that it is not explicit as to when Jane Roe filed her complaint, and therefore the court cannot rule in light of how the Texas statute may or may not have violated one of her constitutional rights during the a specific period of her pregnancy. “In deciding such a hypothetical lawsuit, The Court departs from longstanding admonition that it should never ‘formulate a rule of constitutional law broader than is required by the precise facts to which it is applied to the case.’” Rehnquist also believes that the right to privacy does not encompass this case, based on the Court’s previous rulings on personal liberty. He also states that “the Court’s sweeping invalidation of any restrictions on abortion during the first trimester is far more appropriate to a legislative judgment than to a judicial one.” In violating the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, Rehnquist points out that “apparently there was no question concerning the validity of this provision or of any other state statutes when the Fourteenth Amendment was adopted. The only conclusion possible from this history is that the drafters did not intend to have the Fourteenth Amendment withdraw from the States the power to legislate with respect to this matter.

Ever since Roe v. Wade people referring to themselves as Pro-life have been trying to reverse the Court’s decision. They have also picketed, held rallies, and some have even blown up abortion clinics. Even Jane Roe returned to the Supreme Court earlier this year, hoping to reverse the Court’s ruling. She did not succeed.

As the members of our political bodies (the Supreme Court, Congress) change and the country evolves, the policies and beliefs that govern this country change as well. As the population of the country polarizes morally and the culture war grows in tension issues like this gain more and more attention. The battle seems to be far from over.

The horrible events of the night before came flooding back to her quickly, sloshing through her memory like the glasses of wine she hadn’t drunk. She had to call in sick. Or maybe she shouldn’t call at all; maybe she should just let them think she was dead. She picked up the receiver and tried to sound as feeble as possible when her boss answered a few rings later.

She had ditched Jeff in the restaurant last night. She had just left. That scrap of paper had seemed so very important at the time, and, if she was completely honest with herself, it wasn’t just the paper that made her want to give him the slip. He was boring, chauvinistic and annoying. It had been inappropriate for him to ask her out, that much she knew. She had accepted, though. Damn it, why couldn’t she have had a spine for once? She began to feel angry: angry at Jeff for asking her out and angry at herself for accepting.

She had already decided not to go looking for the old man at the Lucky Dragon. After she had waited for a waitress to pass the bathroom door and then slipped down the hall and out past the kitchen door to emerge among the dumpsters, the old man and his fortune cookies suddenly didn’t seem so important anymore. At that point she was relieved to be away from Jeff, but her reason for leaving was quickly abandoned when she realized she just wanted to go home. She hailed a cab and the scrap of paper in her purse was soon forgotten.

As she thought of this she decided she was also angry at the old man for complicating her life. She hated complications just like she hated conflict. It was these two hatreds that Jeff had to thank for her acceptance of his invitation as well as for her stealthy departure the night before. The one thing she hated more than conflict with other people, however, was conflict with herself. But the conflict was over now that she had decided against visiting the Lucky Dragon. Now she only had the problem of lying to her boss.

“I’m not coming in to work today. I think I’m coming down with something,” she told her boss when she answered the phone.

“Oh, I’m so sorry to hear that!” her boss exclaimed, her voice rife with insincerity. “Well, get well soon, okay? We need you around here.”

“Okay, I’ll try,” she responded trying to sound both weak and insincerely cheerful.

She felt slightly guilty, but she made herself a cup of tea and settled down on the couch to watch TV and to try to forget everything complicated or conflicting. She still felt a little sick to her stomach, but she tried to forget that, too.

She went out to buy a few groceries and managed to forget. That is, until she saw the package of fortune cookies in the grocery store. She was suddenly thrown into a state of panic. She felt the same thing she had felt the night before: the insuppressible urge to go to the Lucky Dragon, to find Bill and to tell him she was ready to learn the secrets of the happiness cookies. Tiny beads of cool sweat broke out all over her skin, and she left her shopping cart where it was to turn and walk down the aisle towards the exit. When she got outside she tried to breathe, slowly and carefully. Her body was shaking and she had trouble thinking clearly. She forced her steps toward her house and her senses slowly righted themselves as she measured each breath and hugged her elbows.

She made herself some dinner and tried to watch some more TV. She couldn’t help it; Bill, the strange drink he’d given her, happiness cookies, and the scrap of paper kept surging up through her other thoughts. She decided to go find the piece of paper. She just wanted to look at it again, she thought. She’d just read what it said and then throw it away. She found it and stared at it. She had to go. So she got up and went.

The waiter with the blue hat recognized her immediately. Probably because I’m the only white person in here, she thought. He asked her to come into a little office in the back of the restaurant and disappeared down some stairs next to the office. The restaurant was nice, well, expensively decorated anyway. It was one of those swanky, dimly lit places with fancy carpets and leather-cushioned booths. There were tall green plants in pots decorated with oriental designs. She couldn’t help wondering what Bill had to do with this place.

The waiter in the blue hat returned after several minutes and led her down the back stairs. They passed through a long hallway at the end of which was a small, wooden door that the waiter opened with a small key on a key ring dense with keys of various sizes. The door let into another, much narrower, much grayer, hallway, which met the first hallway at a ninety-degree angle. This hallway was very long and ended in another door, which he unlocked with a second key. On the other side of this door was a narrow staircase that spiraled down into the darkness. At the bottom of the staircase was another locked door, and this one led into and underground passage that resembled those she had seen the night she had fallen through the sidewalk.

When they reached Bill’s room with the typewriter, he had a glass of the happiness drink waiting for her. He smiled eagerly and introduced her to the waiter, “This is Humlee, he ret you thoo side doo’ aftah tonight. I give you addless latah.” He dismissed the waiter and gestured for her to sit down and have her drink. As he expostulated about her job as a fortune writer and gestured wildly with his short arms, her mind was pulsating with questions, memories and doubts. He paused in his enthusiastic explanations only to repeat his friendly command of the first night, “Dlink! Dlink!”

She looked down at the untouched drink in her hand. I might as well, she thought apathetically. As she felt the liquid slide into her stomach, however, she knew she’d be calling in sick the next day.

After seeing both the advertisements and the preview for "Click," I was extremely surprised to see that it received a favorable review from Mick LaSalle, one of the Chronicle’s harshest movie critics. I was also surprised to find out that he was right and that the advertisements had been misleading. "Click" is far from the comedy that its advertising portrays. It is a healthy blend of comedy and seriousness that gives it a realistic quality which movies that pick one genre do not often achieve. Although the previews seem to appeal to the allure of having a remote with which you can skip tedious or unpleasant tasks, the movie ultimately warns against this kind of living for the future, a state of being which occurs when you are fast-forwarding through your life, called being on "auto-pilot."

Although the plot of the movie is fairly simple, the script is so well written that the audience gets the sense that the characters are real people, despite the implausible universal remote. Sandler delivers an excellent performance, which may be only one on the road to a career of serious acting. He plays a dad who is trying to become a partner at his architecture firm, but who doesn’t have enough time to work his way up the promotion ladder and to spend quality time with his family. He continually blows off family events so that he can work hard to impress his boss, presumably so that he can become partner, make more money and have more time to spend with his family while those under his command do all the work. In the movie he is forced to rethink his plan for success and ask himself if it will be worth it. The moral of the story is that sometimes you need to look around and make sure you’re not fast-forwarding through things you don’t want to miss. The movie does a wonderful job of conveying its message by drawing in the audience with the allure of being able to fast-forward through life and then pointing out what they could be missing. It illustrates the way many Americans are living today with the state of "auto-pilot" and asks us to reassess what we’re fast-forwarding to achieve.

On Monday she went to work more disillusioned than ever and, although her hangover had subsided, she felt a slight nausea of discontent. She did her copy-editing without pleasure, took her lunch break and tried to think of anything distant and unrelated to newspapers. When her lunch hour had passed, she returned to her cubicle, only to find her path blocked by the ungainly mass of Jeffrey Brothwell.

"Hey," he said in the confident way that he always said ‘hey,’ which sounded as though he thought she would be talking to him of her own free will not simply because he was addressing her.

"Hi, Mr. Brothwell," she responded, only somewhat coldly.

"Hey, hey, what is this Mr. Brothwell stuff? Call me Jeff."

"Alright, Jeff," she said, barely trying to mask her annoyance, "Can I get by please? I have work to do."

"Whoa, no need to be pushy. I just have to ask you one thing before I let you by," he said in what seemed to be his idea of playful, flirty tone, "How would you like to go out to dinner with me tonight?"

She didn’t know what to say. Of course she didn’t want to spend more than a few seconds talking to him, but she also didn’t want to make their working environment awkward by refusing him. Then there was the fact that he was a big-shot reporter and could probably make or break her career with a snap of his fingers. "Well

I first became aware of the practice of leg shaving when I was in sixth grade. All of a sudden everybody was doing it and if you weren’t you were nobody. So, of course, I needed a razor and some shaving cream to make myself cool. Unfortunately for me, my godmother with whom I was living at the time had different plans for my leg hair. She told me that I was too young to start shaving my legs and that I would only regret it later, because my hair was so fine and light and it would only grow back darker. These words only made me roll my eyes. Why would I regret it? To me it seemed like a lifelong commitment that everyone made. Well, that all women made anyway. It was just the normal thing to do.

I decided that I needed to shave my legs, and never mind that the hair on them was barely visible. When I was on vacation with a friend I tried it for the first time. She had a junky, little disposable razor that she let me borrow. Of course I didn’t know what I was doing and I sliced into my leg pretty badly. I still have the scar, a little healed gash that the razor bumped over during every subsequent shave, to remind me of the first.

I didn’t stop there, though. I had to keep doing it. I bought a razor at my dad’s house without my godmother knowing and proceeded to use it whenever I visited my dad. I wasn’t very good at it and I would cut myself often, but I had to keep shaving my legs. Eventually my godmother caved in and I began to shave my legs all the time. I loved the smooth, silky soft feeling of my shaved legs and didn’t mind the fact that they were often spotted with cuts.

I bought a better razor, improved my shaving technique and continued to remove the little bits of blonde hair that kept poking through my skin. As I matured, I saw the strangeness in this unnatural practice and I thought about quitting, but it was hard. Every time I would stop shaving, my legs would get all itchy and prickly and, after a week, I would invariably start again. I convinced myself that I really liked the smoothness of my shaved legs and that that was why I couldn’t stop. It wasn’t that I couldn’t, it was just that I didn’t want to stop, I told myself. Finally I decided I needed to stop to see if I really would rather keep shaving. Once my legs got past the itchy stage, I realized that my leg hair was very nice. It became silky and soft. When I walked down the street in shorts or a skirt, the wind riffled through the hair on my legs producing a nice sensation. I never had to worry about shaving, but my legs were always soft and nice. They were never prickly or itchy because of my gross leg stubble. And that was when I became hooked on the natural state of my legs.

That I say I was hooked on it may seem strange, but in our society it is considered strange for a woman’s legs to be in their natural state. In truth, when I became hooked on the natural state of my legs it was more comparable to becoming hooked on breathing oxygen or having a nose, but that is not the generally held belief. This is because women are expected to shave their legs. Period. That’s just how it is. Sure you can choose not to shave your legs, but then you must also risk social ridicule. The hair on my legs is barely visible, but I often wonder when I’m wearing a skirt if people on the bus notice it and what they are thinking about it. Women’s leg hair is always a question. Even if a woman chooses not to shave her legs, she is faced with a whole new set of choices such whether to cover the hairy legs. Men are not expected to shave their legs, but they are also expected not to wear revealing clothing, especially clothing which shows much of their legs. Even if women were to scale one superficial barrier, they would simply run into it again in another form: People in the United States find body hair unsightly and gross and it is to be hidden or removed. As hip women’s clothes get smaller and smaller, more and more body hair has to go. As adults, there are really some places where body hair should remain intact, but even those places are not sacred in the practice of body hair removal, which can become an obsession.

The answer to this question boils down to, but is not limited to: women should be hairless and show it off, men should be hairy and hide their hairiness. The real question here is: why? No, more importantly, why can’t we change this? Both women and men should be able to choose whatever they want to do and this includes body hair preferences and clothing choices. Women should not be ridiculed for having hairy legs, but men should not be ridiculed for shaving their legs either. So, next time a man makes an unsavory comment about your hairy legs tell him that you fully support his right to shave his legs and that maybe he should try it sometime.

The Clay has been playing midnight movies for years. They are all cult classics and they all draw the same kind of crowd, varying only in numbers. This year they have shown such classics as "Pulp Fiction," "The Goonies," "Harold and Maude," "The Princess Bride," and "Rushmore." In the past such titles as "Army of Darkness," "The Warriors," and "Dazed and Confused" have been among their eclectic assortment of well-loved films. Sometimes there is a long line outside of the theater, as there was for "Army of Darkness" and this mostly depends on how many devoted cult members the movie can attract, not necessarily on the actual merit of the film. Fortunately, there is always parking around at that time of night which is a good thing considering how infrequent Muni tends to get in the wee hours of the morning.

Although the movies they play are almost always guaranteed to be good, the best thing about seeing midnight movies at the Clay is the weird crowd and the activities that the theater plans for the pre-show on Saturday nights. The same guy goes up on stage every Saturday night during the series and talks about the series and has everyone cheer if it’s their first time there, and then has everyone cheer if they’ve been there before. Then he asks for volunteers and the games begin. Another guy who works at the theater invariably comes up on stage at some point to be a part of the games. For example, before "Harold and Maude" the second guy came up on stage dressed as an old woman and the theme of the games was to "seduce grandma" (the themes are usually related to the movie that they will be showing). The games then consisted of several tasks that the competitors must complete with eliminations after each task. In this case there were four competitors. The first task was to retrieve a large piece of cardboard on which was written "Viagra" which was supposed to represent Viagra, from the back of the theater. The second task was to chug two bottles of "Ensure" and the final task was to give "grandma" a lapdance. All in all it was very amusing to watch, but you have to wonder why people put themselves through that kind of humiliation willingly.

So, in conclusion, midnight movies are not just about seeing your favorite movies on the big screen, although that remains the major allure of them. They are also about the weird sense of community you get from crowding into a theater at the witching hour with a bunch of hip, urban youngsters with the same taste in movies as yours: culty.

She walked sometimes briskly and sometimes slowly and ponderously, her footsteps making unnatural sounds that she occasionally noticed. There was a smell of rotting food in some places and trash bins lining the sidewalks. Flattened cardboard boxes were strewn around the trash bins and slipping over the curbs onto the street. The new moon shone its darkness over the city and what dim streetlights there were only added an eerie glow to the quiet of 3 a.m.

She was in such a state that when she cast her eyes down to the sidewalk and kept them there, she could see that the sidewalk was jumping up towards her face with each step she took, but when she looked up at the buildings around her, she felt as though she was floating by them effortlessly, and she forgot her steps. Sometimes she would look at a building or bus shelter and realize that she was slowly drifting towards it. It was at these times when she would realize how drunk she really was. After this she would think that maybe she should be afraid to be walking alone at three in the morning in dimly lit, deserted streets, but her state did not permit any real sense of worry to enter her mind, and she would soon find herself thinking of other things.

It was at one of these such moments that the sidewalk gave in beneath her feet. She had stepped on one of those strange, metal trap doors which usually lead to mysterious underground storerooms. But when she came to her sense which told her she had senses that she better use quickly, she saw that she had landed in a gigantic bin of very small strips of paper. She looked around the room and saw that it was full of other such bins with similar strips of paper, some were visibly different colors or textures, and others looked the same as the strips she had fallen into. There was a dark tunnel that led out of the room, and she saw a small light moving through it towards her. As the light came closer, she saw that it was a kerosene lamp being carried by a man. He looked like he was about 60 years old and he was very small. He was Asian, and his hair was partly black with little white patches, and it had become very thin. He was wearing plain black pants and a plain black coat and on his feet were little plain black slippers. He looked at her sprawled in the bin of paper strips and as his eyebrows raised in surprise, making his forehead burst into tiny lines of wrinkles. Then he smiled and a million more wrinkles on his face were put to use, making him look as many years older.

"Sody, the dooh, it is bloken," he said in an Asian accent that was hard for her to understand through her already clouded mind.

"Oh, it’s okay," she answered, and immediately wondered why her first words to this strange man had been lying ones.

There was a short silence before he said, "Come een, come een," in a sort of grandfatherly way.

At first she thought she would refuse him, but then she remembered that since she had just fallen ten feet through a trap door in the sidewalk, there weren’t a lot of other options for her. Besides this obvious problem, she had become very curious about the strips of paper, the dark tunnel, and of course the strange old man who was still holding his little kerosene lamp and now motioning for her to follow him into the tunnel. She had to duck to enter the tunnel and she realized that, in her heels she was at least a foot taller than him. They turned a sharp bend in the tunnel and it began to slope downwards. The slope was very gradual at first but as it got steeper she suddenly panicked. He was not taking her out to the street level again. He was taking her deeper and deeper into the underground tunnels of Chinatown. She had heard about these tunnels where there were cock fights, drug dealing, prostitution, sex-trafficking, and maybe even slick Asian men with stone faces and machine guns gambling and waiting for women like her to fall through the trapdoor upstairs. She was scared, but if she ran she would trip over her heels, and even when she reached the other room she would have no way to get out of the trap door. He wouldn’t have left the door open anyways, although she had no idea how he would have closed it. She continued walking with him.

She was trying to keep her head from hitting the ceiling when suddenly they emerged from the darkness into another room. It seemed to be inside the partially skeletal frame of a very old building, though she could not see what was beyond the frame. There was a table in the room with a large typewriter on it and a few chairs. There was a lamp hooked to the side of the table that cast a stingy amount of light around the room. The man motioned for her to sit down in one of the chairs and then disappeared between the posts of the building’s frame. He returned holding a glass with a strange-looking liquid in it. The liquid was clear, but it seemed to be sparkling. She assumed that it had bubbles in it, although she could not distinguish any. He smiled again and handed the glass to her.

"Dlink, dlink!" he said.

She looked at the glass suspiciously and thought about date rape drugs. But when she looked at the old man’s face and saw his eyes waiting for her to drink in a way that seemed not lecherous but simply hospitable, she tried a small sip. The drink was the most disgusting thing that she had ever tasted, but she forced herself to swallow it and smile at him. As she swallowed it, she could feel the liquid moving down her throat, and it felt warm. She thought that it must be alcohol, but the warmth seemed somehow different. She took another sip and this time the taste did not bother her so much. It warmed her down into her stomach. After her third sip she could not help but smile, and she felt a surge of what seemed like happiness. By the time she had finished the glass she felt calm and complacent. In fact, she couldn’t remember when she last felt so very happy, and she realized that she had not been happy in a long time. The old man was still standing there smiling at her.

"You rike it?" he asked.

"Yes," she responded, "very much. What is this place?"

"Oh," he said, "this fotchun cookie undahground."

She looked at him absentmindedly thinking of the strips of paper in the other room. "Do you make fortune cookies here?"

"Mmm, no," he said and then looked as though he were searching for the right thing to say. "We make…happiness," he finished.

"Oh." She thought about this. A few minutes ago she would have thought that the man was not familiar enough with the English language to express what he actually meant and that happiness was not the word he would have chosen in his own language. After the drink he had given her, however, she thought that maybe there was something more to it. "How do you make this, uh, happiness?"

"Aaaahh," he said and his eyes became suddenly mysterious and a little light shone through them. "That is seclet."

She nodded and looked around the room again. It, too, seemed mysterious and she could not see where he had gone to get her drink. She couldn’t see into the darkness behind any of the posts and the lamp seemed to cast only enough light to cover the space between the posts.

"Theh is a way fol you to know," he interrupted her thoughts. "I need you’ hehrp." She was puzzled by this and he could tell. He began wringing his hands and gesturing with them as he said, "My Engrish, not good, but happiness should be engrish too." He paused and saw that she was still confused. "I need you lite engrish fotchuns fol happiness cookies."

She pointed at the typewriter and looked at him. He nodded enthusiastically. She thought about it. She did want to know more about the fortune cookie underground and the drink that he had given her. She wanted to understand the secrets of happiness that the old man understood. He was looking at her with an almost childish eagerness. "Okay," she said. "I’ll do it."

The show portrays a wealthy Southern California family struggling with their family business after the patriarch of the family, George Bluth, is arrested for white-collar crime. "Arrested Development" revolves around the experiences of Michael, the good son who seems to be the only sane one in the family. As the narrator’s voice states in the opening credits he is "the one son who had no choice but to keep them all together." This task is much more difficult than it may seem, considering that each person in the family has their own selfish agenda. Michael is the only one in the family who has the skills needed to run the business and who realizes that you must make money to spend money. His mother is an incredibly rich, incredibly rude old woman who has many issues but admits to none of them. Michael’s father is spacey but equally as critical and crazy as his mother. His siblings are not much better; his older brother is a sleazy magician and grade A idiot, and his twin sister is a gorgeous but insecure blonde who is extremely selfish. His sister’s husband is a nutcase psychologist turned unsuccessful actor and their daughter, Maybe (who was made in a test tube), is a disillusioned teenager whose saneness is adrift in the household along with Michael’s. Michael also has a son named George Michael, who is an intelligent, shy and socially awkward teenager. George Michael is portrayed as wanting to make his own way while his father holds him a little close (George Michael’s mother died when he was young). Another odder character in the family is Buster, the never-weaned thirty-year-old youngest brother. He still lives with his mother and often acts childish or just plain weird. He has spent much of his life studying but still seems to know nothing about the world from lack of experience. For that matter he actually doesn’t know much about academics either.

Such a plethora of eccentric characters obviously creates an offbeat and interesting sitcom, but it is the comedic writing and the cohesive nature of the episodes that really make "Arrested Development" worth watching. This show has a following and the writers know it. New episodes often make references to other episodes, so if someone made a blue handprint on the wall in one episode you might see it again a few episodes later if you enjoy observing such details. The show is not presented as a model of how one should live, and there are no life lessons at the end of each episode. It simply depicts a crazy, dysfunctional family trying to live and work together. Although it is a hilarious sitcom and the antics of the characters are often outrageous, the family also has a human element. Addicted viewers, like me, find themselves relating to the characters and invested in what happens to each of them. At that point you realize that you are no longer watching just to see what crazy thing they will do next (although that will always remain part of the allure of the show), but that you actually care what happens to these crazy people.

He knew that they were going to shoot him. They had not told him so in so many words, but the new cell and their refusal to answer his desperate questions was indication enough that these were his last hours. When they brought him a double ration of food, he was sure of it. He could barely eat the food, but its presence in the cell tortured him; it was a sign of his defeat. It was some kind of universal custom that they always fed you a little extra before they killed you.

Now, he was only waiting. Should he write down a few last words to send to his wife? No, no, what good would that do her now? She needed him at home to support their family of six; his last words were of no use to her. He felt a pang of sorrow at these thoughts. Why had he been so selfish? He had been part of a radical political group that had been rounded up and thrown in jail for conspiracies against the tsar. And what had all those conspiracies achieved? Nothing, he thought grimly, it would have been better to have stayed home with his family and lived out his life happily. He didn’t even know what had become of his comrades; maybe they had already been shot or maybe they were out of jail and fighting for the cause. It made no difference now.

His thoughts were interrupted by heavy footsteps in the hallway and several men appeared at the door to his cell. "Rodion Mikhailovich Golovin?" a man with a dark moustache asked in a tone that indicated that he already knew very well that he was correct, and he had already begun to unlock the cell when Rodion Mikhailovich replied.

"Yes, I am he." Two hours ago he would have asked where they were taking him, but he had become so resigned to his fate that the thought to question it did not even cross his mind.

"Come along then. On your feet," the man demanded rather unnecessarily as Rodion was already standing and waiting for the guards to pull him out of his cell. They marched him down the hallway and up some stairs and then he was pushed through a door into the cold, gray sunlight. The reflection of the sunlight on the snow hurt his eyes, but he continued marching with his head down although he could barely see where he was going and his vision had become spotty. It was a rather warm day for Siberia, and Rodion Mikhailovich took a moment to notice this and to think that he had never liked the cold. If he had to die in Siberia, at least his teeth would not be chattering out of his head, he thought.

They reached a little walled in area and entered it through a gate. Rodion Mikhailovich tried not to look up, but he could not control his neck and it lifted his head to look around him. They were headed right for the post. Behind it there was a wall dotted with bullet holes. His heart was beating steadily, but he could feel the fear trying to grasp and crush it. As he felt the fear of death tightening around his heart, he suddenly wanted to lash out at the guards and scream and cry for mercy. But he didn’t do this. Instead he stood still while they tied him to the post. His let his eyes glaze over and stare into the air. He was no longer taking in the day around him; he just wanted it to be over.

When they placed the blindfold over his eyes he suddenly panicked. His right arm tried to free itself and rip the blindfold away as though this spasm were a reflex, but the ropes were tied so tightly that his arm barely stirred and the guards didn’t even notice it because they were already walking away from him. In the few minutes that followed, every second seemed like an hour to Rodion Mikhailovich. At first he did begin to cry, but his sobs soon gave in to thoughts and reflections on his life. He could barely remember his childhood, but it seemed a happy one. He thought of his youth and of his wife, and their first meeting. He had loved her right away for her quick wit and clever jokes. They had been at a ball and he had asked her for nearly every dance, digressing only when his mother suggested that he was being quite obvious. But he didn’t care. Apparently his wife had not been particularly beautiful, but she made riveting facial expressions that so affected him that he asked her to marry him within the week. Their marriage had been idyllic and they had five children together.

He recalled that their only problem had been his political activities, and it was only then that they began to argue. His wife was never terribly disagreeable, but even if she did not say anything to him, she had a way of making him feel guilty, even when he didn’t know why. She often agreed with his political leanings and he had thought that she had been jealous that she could not participate in the political group, because she was a woman and had to take care of the children. But now, as he waited for his execution, it seemed to him that she had only been concerned with his safety. She had often said that she needed him there with her and the children and that their life together was more important than political change. He couldn’t understand this. Before she was a mother she had been willing to put her life on the line for what she believed, but since her children had come along she had changed quite a bit. It was only now, standing with his back to the post, that Rodion Mikhailovich understood his wife. He was too old to change the world. He could only teach his children to be intelligent and to fight the system in their own ways, but his family needed him more than the movement needed him. And he regretted every moment that he had not spent with his children. He thought of Masha, the youngest, only two years old when he left, perhaps she would not even remember him. And here he was, dying for the movement that he had mentally relinquished. If only he could take it back…but it was too late now. He wished that he had more time, but knowing that he did not, he simply raised his blindfolded eyes to the heavens and asked for forgiveness. He asked for forgiveness from God, but also for forgiveness from his family. He prayed then for his family although he could not remember when he last prayed. Only three minutes had passed since he had spasmed for freedom, but now he was ready for the shots to hit him.

But instead of hearing the order to fire, he heard a man’s voice yelling, "Stop, stop! You are not to fire on this man by order of the tsar." To Rodion Mikhailovich, the voice sounded very far away, but it sounded like it was coming from all directions, surrounding him in a wave of impossibility. But he was sure that he had heard it. He blinked under his blindfold and waited. He could hear voices talking rapidly back and forth and then the crunch of the snow under thick boots coming closer and closer. They removed his blindfold and the light seemed even brighter and more blinding than before. It’s a warm day for Siberia, he thought, and smiled.

On our third try going to see the movie, we realized that we could reserve tickets online. As we finally took our seats and waited for the movie to start, my friend and I were squeaking with anticipation. We had been discussing the movie for weeks, and we were excited to see it. My friend and I squeezed each other’s hands when we saw the two gorgeous stars of the film appear on the screen in front of us. Little did we know that they would age about thirty years over the course of the film, gain more facial hair and become decidedly less attractive.

The film Brokeback Mountain was based on a short story written by Annie Proulx, a master at describing lonely scenes in the rural Midwest. Her stories are brilliantly narrated, usually melancholy and sometimes verge on depressing because of the intense sense of loneliness which is typically portrayed in them. The director Ang Lee, did a wonderful job of letting the loneliness of rural life carry over into the movie, which featured wide sweeping shots of mountains, fields and small towns. The only problem in the translation came in the length. Annie Proulx wrote a short story, but Ang Lee made an exasperatingly long movie. I found out that there is such a thing as too many wide sweeping shots of the rural Midwest, as well as too little dialogue. This feeling was absent from Proulx’s story not only because of the length but also because the medium of fiction allows the writer to fill in empty places with description and the characters do not need to constantly be doing something entertaining. The readers of Proulx’s short story, for example, might be interested to read a long but well written description of Ennis cooking beans over a fire, but the audience of the movie probably does not want to see the equivalent of that scene on film.

Although in the beginning some of the love scenes between the two main actors were pretty hot, they were overpowered by the intense loneliness of the story. Their separation was hard to bear, especially because their lives were extremely boring and unhappy when they were away from each other and did not make for a good movie. That said, it didn’t really seem like they were as in love as they were made out to be (no pun intended). Their love seemed to be mostly comprised of carnal acts, longing, and talking about how they missed the other, how they wanted to be together and how in love they were. There were a few scenes in which they showed genuine affection, but more often their affection was conveyed by discussing it, rather than showing it.

The whole movie was depressing in that you can’t help but want them to just be together. Their lives are so sad and they are rarely persecuted for their homosexuality, but the fear of being persecuted costs them their lives together. The film is set in a time when sodomy was still illegal, causing homophobia to be not only rampant, but also legally enforced. Whether one loves the movie or not, it is an undeniably strong case against homophobia, which should not be ignored in the current political climate. When popular opinion discredits same sex marriage it is obvious that we heterosexuals still often view homosexual relationships as somehow less than our heterosexual relationships, even if we claim to accept them. Whether the movie is boring or interesting, it brings gay discrimination into the limelight while using an older storyline to illuminate the still present problem. As art often has the power to draw attention to important social issues, hopefully Brokeback Mountain will make people think twice about homophobia in their own lives. Despite its flaws, it is an important cultural statement and should be seen by every American, regardless of age, sex, race or sexual orientation.