February 28, 2002 | 9:57 AM

NON SAGA UPDATE.

Great great day yesterday. Saw Michael Moore speak, and was so psyched and inspired. Roger & Me is one of my favorite movies, and I love The Awful Truth and TV Nation. My Mom actually wrote him once and he wrote her back. He is such a neat guy and so funny. This country is lucky to have someone like him asking questions in these sick sad days of complacency.

Michael Moore�s publisher wasn�t going to put out his current book Stupid White Men because they felt the climate of the country had shifted towards the right since September 11th. They said the book wouldn�t sell. They had already printed all 50,000 copies, but were going to shred them. They told him he had to re-write the book and include a chapter on how good a job Bush was doing in the post September 11th environment. Can you imagine that? What fucking country are we living in?

So he told them �No way.� and they said, �Then your career as a writer is over�, and he said, �You are dealing with someone very dangerous because I just don�t give a shit and you can�t intimidate me because I�m not in this for the money.�

A couple days later he gave a talk and mentioned what was going on. During his speech he read one chapter of the book that would (supposedly) never be published. In the audience was a librarian who was outraged. When she got home, she went online to some librarian chat room and told all these other librarians about what was going on with Michael Moore�s book.

The next day, Harper-Collins was flooded with angry letters. Eventually, they agreed to publish the book.

See , it doesn�t take a whole helluva lot to enact change. Just a few squeaky wheels.

Now, the book is #3 on the New York Times Best Seller list. So much for the sales predictions of reactionary publishing executives.

Michael Moore is right. People are pissed. People are fed up.

You say you wanna revolution well you know....

After the movie I dashed to meet Outer-Jessie and Plastron Cafe (whom I had never met before)and some other people to go see M at the Harvard Film Archive. I had seen it before but never on the big screen. Jarring. Brilliant. Uncomfortable. Forboding.

Fritz Lang made the film in Germany during Hitler�s rise to power circa 1931. The Nazis are never mentioned overtly, but the film sustains a sense of dread of a highly political nature for what is ostensibly a crime thriller. The scenes of the storm troopers goose-stepping down the streets, the soundtrack dead silent, are chilling.

And Peter Lorre� don�t get me started on Peter Lorre because I will be gushing all day, and I have too many things to do to just spend the day gushing. He is such a genius. Such a creepy slithery little man. Pale and weak and as he says, �controlled by an evil within� that he cannot disobey. Perhaps a metaphor for the appeasement and complacency of a country that allowed a syphlitic psychopath to murder millions, eh?

The cinematography. Jesus. Such beautiful work. The shot of Elsie Beckmann reading the notice on the post as Peter Lorre�s shadow eclipses her. Phenomenal. Absolutely fucking phenomenal.

Fritz Lang fled Germany shortly after this film came out. Needless to say, he wasn't a Nazi sympathiser.

I forget sometimes how much I love old movies.

Plastron Cafe and I split a cab home, and strangely enough, she mentioned to me that she knew Willie who died in the fire, and the weird thing was she didn�t read my diary entry on that subject. It was just a random conversation, the topic of which she brought up. The world, I swear, is so small. And there is a synchronicity to the universe I find both comforting and scary.

I hadn�t thought about that fire or about Willie in awhile, and then all of a sudden I became obsessed with it. Started dreaming about it. Wrote about it. And then someone I just met out of the blue mentions it to me. What kind of weird cosmic force dicatates these series of events? It happens to me all the time.

Anyway... when I got home I sat back and drank a glass of wine and reflected on how... good things are for me right now. I can get out of work and not have to worry about what�s going on there. Unlike The Stupid Company where an atomosphere of constant paranoia was consistently fostered, my current job is tension free. It's just a job and I leave it behind when I walk out the door at 4PM on the dot each day. I can go to readings and out for drinks and to movies at the Harvard Film Archive or the Brattle. I go to my class. I work out at the gym. I make new friends. I am losing weight and am in better shape physically than I have been in a long time. My eating and drinking are becoming more moderate. I feel really... OK about almost everything. In most aspects of my life I am breathing easy again.

Although I wouldn't be me if I weren't waiting for the other shoe to drop.

Expect a couple of updates today. I may or may not do a SAGA update. If I don�t do one today, I will definitely have one for tomorrow.

So much to write about. So little time.