"Get bent! TAX MAN!"

I am supposed to be blogging about how I want a garden this year, and I'm afraid I have waited too late. And I don't want to call my mother-in-law to ask her advice about canning vegetables. I'm supposed to be blogging about springtime and the economy (which sucks) and why I didn't grow veggies last year during the drought.

I'm supposed to be writing about my guilt, and my worry, and staying awake at night while I worry that I have waited too late and I will never make a difference even though I love "The South" and "The Boonies" and "The Environment" more than anyone else ever has or ever will --

But I am completely and utterly derailed as "Stranger Than Fiction" comes on TV again. I love this movie. I love Will Farrell. I love Emma Thompson. I love Queen Latifah. And I love, I love, I love Maggie Gyllenhaal with her punk rock soul and her F-U attitude and her love of all things baked and yummy.

We all need that. We need anarchists who love cookies.

But ... Most of us are judgmental yuppies who think WalMart is more evil than, say, pushing little old ladies into traffic.

These are the things that keep me from blogging about gardening.

If you're here because Amy and I haven't posted a new podcast yet, don't worry -- we will. Amy went on vacation with her husband for his birthday, and she's enjoying San Francisco, the one city that resides at the top of my "wish list" for cities I want to visit before they're gone.

She's having a marvelous time, and so is Paul. Try not to be as envious as I am!

Watch a good movie instead. I recommend "Stranger Than Fiction." Not "No Country for Old Men," which I just saw Friday night with my husband. "No Country for Old Men" is not a good movie, and I can't understand why it was nominated for so many Oscars. "There Will Be Blood" was much, much better, and I can't say that it was sunnier or any more cheerful than "No Country for Old Men." I am genuinely confounded as to why the Coen brothers or anyone else thought "No Country for Old Men" would be a good movie. It isn't. It's bereft of good guys for whom to root. The sheriff (Tommy Lee Jones)? Good guy. His wife? Good guy. The wife of the main character (Kelly McDonald)? Good guy. Otherwise, no one is a good guy. I just can't figure that flick out, and my husband tells me that all Cormac McCarthy plots are similarly handicapped by unhappy endings for all concerned.

The last book my mother loved was "All the Pretty Horses" by Cormac McCarthy.

Lots of Knoxville bloggers are utterly enamored of McCarthy only because he was from Knoxville.

I love the fact that Cormac McCarthy doesn't hang out with writers. I agree with him. Writers are, for the most part, terrible, awful, jealous, mean, stingy people. I don't want to hang out with writers, and I am a writer. I don't even want to hang out with myself.

So "No Country for Old Men"?

I don't get it.

I loved "There Will Be Blood," though. Loved it. Go see that movie. Don't waste your time on the other depressing movie that won so much attention from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

Seriously.

Now I have to get back to "Stranger Than Fiction," where Emma Thompson is about to tell Queen Latifah, "I don't need a nicotine patch, Penny. I smoke cigarettes." I have quit smoking since this movie came out, and I still love that line.