In what can only be called a rather karmically interesting turn of events, my old lamp that used to belong to my grandmother and that I've had with me since my sophomore year of college has just stopped working. Apparently, it knew that I was planning on selling it, so it chose death rather than being owned by someone outside of the family. How Shakespearean.

I've never understood why people constantly second-guess you about the silliest little things when you assure them that it's okay. I had two people stop by tonight to take a look at lamps and other fixtures I'm attempting to get rid of, and both saw that I was barefoot so both asked if they should take off their shoes before they came in. I assured them both that it was okay, they could leave their shoes on, but both asked at least two more times if I was sure and that they could take off their shoes if I wanted. Personally, I just enjoy the freedom of being barefoot in my own personal living space, but that doesn't mean that I automatically make people take their shoes off once they enter. If I tell you that it's okay to leave your shoes on, I'm not going to change my mind if you ask me three more times. I will get annoyed, but I won't suddenly change my mind and tell you that yes, you do need to take off your shoes, especially when I expect that you will be in my apartment for less than five minutes.

Sexuality is such a double standard in society. A man can go out and sleep with half a city's metropolitan area and he's considered a stud and is held in high regard among his peers for his "achievement," but if a woman does the same, she's shunned as a slut. In some countries like Japan, it's almost a given that a man has a mistress on the side in addition to his wife, but women can't take lovers in addition to their husbands.

I don't understand why the identity of Elizabeth Hurley's baby's father was kept quiet for so long and why he didn't really own up to it once the information came out. I'm sure I speak for most heterosexual men when I say that if I were her baby's father, I would've come right out and said, "Yeah, it was me! I'm screwing Elizabeth Hurley!"

As I said before, moving is like Judgment Day for pack rats. And I'm realizing just how much junk I can live without. But there's something that's causing me a little consternation.

When I went to Puerto Vallarta a few years ago, my souvenir to myself was a small shampoo bottle that I poured the shampoo out of and filled with sand and water from the beach at the hotel -- from the Pacific Ocean. It was my own little piece of the West Coast back East. And I kept it on my dresser for years. But now that I'm moving to Los Angeles and finally getting out West, it seems almost pointless to hold on to it when I'll be only a few miles from the Pacific Ocean all the time. But yet, a sense of sentimentality keeps me from tossing it in the trash, since it's a reminder of where I've come from and the fact that I'm finally going ahead with this move.

I'm just trying to get rid of a fair amount of my stuff as soon as I can, so I'm holding my own little fire sale as the snow is falling outside. Thankfully, I've managed to cut loose some dead weight -- I'm selling one of my friends my TV, and I found someone to buy my Sony amplifier. Now all I need to do is lose the dresser and nightstands, and one of the furniture buyers I talked to this morning said it shouldn't be too much of a problem to get them out by the end of the week. The one thing that I'm worried about now is hauling my music collection to California -- I took it down to Connecticut last night and it's rather heavy and I need to fold down the car's back seats to make it fit. But I really don't want to part with it, even though I probably should in order to make more fit in the car when I haul my stuff out to L.A.

Two more trips, and everything should be completely gone. I leave Sunday morning for my interview in L.A. for another position, then take the red-eye back to arrive here on Wednesday morning and drive straight back to Connecticut. As of Sunday, I will no longer live in Boston.

7 1/2 years in this town are drawing to a close for me. As much as I have said that I really am sick of Boston and rabidly want to leave, I'm feeling that this departure is kind of bittersweet.

Attention Jared Fogle of "I lost a bazillion pounds with my Subway diet" fame: Your 15 minutes are more than over. Your half-hour is over. Go home. Avoid the public spotlight from now on unless you win the Nobel Prize in physics or something.

So the polls are in, and President Moron has the second-highest quarterly approval rating since Gallup started taking surveys. He's only 1 point behind Truman's tenure at the time of the end of World War II. Can someone please explain to me what Moron has done in the past three months that warrants such a high approval rating?

Let's recap a few of his administration's more notable acts, shall we?
- Sent troops to Afghanistan in response to September 11th, bombed the hell out of a poor country whose defenses we mostly supplied when they were battling the Soviets in the 1980s, drove their leaders from power yet failed to catch the one man they were really after
- Participated in Enron's coverup and subsequent implosion, which cost thousands of people both their jobs and their life savings and retirement plans
- Abrogated the Constitutional rights of Arab-Americans and held almost a thousand people in jail without charging them
- Pretzel 1, President 0

And all this makes him deserve an 86% approval rating? This makes me think that I could run for President, do nothing but run around the White House all day belching at the press cameras and the American people would still think I'm a better President than Jimmy Carter.

More reason for me to express my distaste of the Church. Honestly, I just don't approve of any group that uses guerrilla tactics to try to force their beliefs on others, especially when it means screwing with thousand-year-old traditions with the rationale that you're "educating the unwashed heathens as to the True Way."

Seems that there's this several thousand year old tribe of Indians living in a secluded area in Mexico called the Huichols. They've gone out of their way to seclude themselves by moving to a place where the land allows them to more easily repel invaders and keep outside influences from affecting their culture. But noooo... people came along with their airplanes and dropped solar-powered radios tuned to Christian evangelical stations and Spanish-language versions of the Bible from planes into the Huichol settlement. So far, the radios and Bibles have contaminated the Huichol culture to the point where some do not participate in Huichol rituals anymore because Christianity considers them "pagan" and are therefore forbidden. Several Huichols are complaining about how they're losing their culture to those being influenced by the missionaries, while the missionaries are convinced that if it weren't for the intimidation of the tribal elders, 80 percent of the tribe would convert to Christianity and give up their ways of "witchcraft."

I really don't understand how people can blatantly disregard other people's rights to practice what they want and what they believe, and to the point where they think that more people would be willing to convert if they weren't being "oppressed" by their age-old traditions and elders. Did you ever stop to think that maybe you're the oppressor by forcing these people to practice what you want? Personally, you can scream until you're blue in the face that I'm going to Hell and you're just trying to save me from eternal damnation, but it's still not going to affect the fact that I believe what I believe. It's my right to think what I want to think and to tell you to piss off. If you're so convinced that your way is the right way, then stop to think how you'd feel about someone coming to you and rabidly trying to convert you to their religion. Then realize that's what you're doing to these poor people around the world. Enlightenment is a personal journey of discovery, not a forced jump off a cliff.

Seems I'm not the only one facing a momentous decision at this particular point in time. My parents love the Tucson area and they have an option to buy a piece of land that they really like, but the problem is that they need to move on it if they want it because if they wait, it'll be gone. If they buy it now, it means they'll have to move in a few months because there's a time limit on how long they can hold onto the land without building and without having to pay extra taxes. My dad is staying for an extra few days in Tucson to scout out potential jobs and such, my mom is freaking out because she didn't expect to have to make this kind of decision so quickly and she's definitely a meticulous planner, and I'm watching from the sidelines bemusedly.

So much for an idle Sunday morning with my Boston Globe. I need to make another run to Connecticut to bring down my CD collection and some of my electronics today.

We were yelling at the TV so loudly, I'm sure that people two floors away heard us. When the Patriots kicked the field goal in overtime to win the game and make it to the AFC Championships, we all jumped up screaming, high-fiving each other and giving each other manly congratulatory hugs.

We're currently getting our first real snow of the season. By real, I mean that it's not just a light dusting or a few flurries -- we've got over an inch on the ground. I'm happy, I really wanted a decent snowstorm before I left. Unfortunately, I need to make another run to Connecticut tomorrow, so I hope that the roads are cleared before I have to leave.

So the subletter came by today, met my roommate and they seem to be okay with each other. The new guy wants to move in within a week, which means I've got to move my ass to get my stuff out of my room. Thankfully, he wants to keep the parking spot and the cable modem, so I don't have to worry about making any radical changes to anything before I leave and I won't be inconveniencing my current roommate too much.

I expect that I'll be getting out to Los Angeles either in late March or early April, but we'll see. It's all up in the air right now, but it's still very exciting to be taking charge to make these changes that I want to make. Me go, boy!

Let's just say that getting out of bed this morning was one of the more painful things I've had to do in a while. I suppose my boast of never getting a hangover is probably catching up to me -- either that, or I'm getting old and I just don't want to admit it.

I'm the product of liberal parents. They never really had a problem with me drinking, their only concern was that I made it home safely and that I didn't attempt to operate heavy machinery (translation: a car) while under the influence. Thankfully, I've either had a designated driver, a mediocre public transportation system or my own two legs to get me home. I suppose that's the reason why my parents okayed my drinking at a younger-than-legal age, though a fair amount of my drinking was done in their presence -- a glass of wine with dinner at a restaurant, a purchase of a bottle of brandy in Quebec City (because I could due to their more lax liquor laws), stuff like that.

My first real experience with getting drunk, though, was when I was 12. At temple, they used to pass around these little plastic shot glasses with Manischewitz so that we could all have some after the blessing over the wine. However, they'd pass them around and then leave the leftovers available for public consumption. I was at one of my classmate's bar mitzvahs and someone else challenged me to a kosher wine shot glass competition, and I stupidly accepted the challenge. I did win -- I took down 15, since I'd had many years to build up an immunity to kosher wine while my challenger wasn't Jewish and hadn't had it before. But this strange feeling of the world being tilted and mildly two-dimensional was fairly new to me.

Thus beginneth Keith's foray into alcohol. And as far as my present-day situation is concerned, now that I've been upright for a little while, the effects of last night's abuse are thankfully fading.

Good times, good cigars, good people.

I spent the night with some friends, first drinking at a friend's place and then we moved to a bar and then back to the friend's place. We enjoyed good conversation, Cuban cigars and many Bud Lights. (We're poor, what do you want?) Strangely enough, an argument erupted around 1:30AM as to the nature of psychology -- this is what you get when two psych majors start discussing the field -- and its roots in science. We carried this discussion out of the apartment onto the street around 2AM, where some random person thanked us for not having one of the usual arguments heard at that time and location, which mostly have to do with hitting on women and who owes who money for beer. On my way home, I saw a fight erupt on the street (I don't know the reason why, though I expect it might be one of the above reasons) that the Boston police broke up, it's been awhile since I've seen people take such drunken swings at each other.

Life is looking brighter. Though my bedroom is looking more barren and I anticipate a couple more trips to Connecticut before my move is finished, I expect that I'll be able to move to Los Angeles sooner than I expected -- hopefully by the end of April. My friends here in Boston have told me that I need to come visit them while I'm still living in Connecticut and that I'm welcome to crash at their places.

On to sleep. Tomorrow will be laden with football playoffs and more drunkeness. All in all, I expect it will be enjoyable.

I fall asleep with the TV too loud
Spending time staying in with the out crowd
Dreams come and leave me in cold sweats
Tomorrow feels like a new day coming
I can't see it being all for nothing
And I know it's as good as the whole world's gonna get

I get the feeling it's a new day, sun is rising
I get the feeling everything is gonna change...

-- Grand Theft Audio, "As Good As It Gets"

I FOUND SOMEONE TO SUBLET MY PLACE! Woo hah! Unfortunately, this means I need to accelerate my moving schedule as well as get rid of my furniture, but that's minor considering the fact that I've finally been able to unload this place!

The initial steps in my world conquest and domination plan have begun!... Well, not really. But I am one step closer to my dreams. A few months' worth of time with the 'rents to save money, then I'm off to sunny Los Angeles!!!

My perfectly good mood was ruined by a cranky old self-righteous bastard at a gas station in Connecticut. I had unloaded the car at my parents' house and went down to one of the local gas stations to fill up the tank before heading back to Boston. The station is set up so that there's two rows of islands, with three islands in each row. It makes for four "lanes," two of them in the middle and one each on the outsides. I pulled into the station in the entrance and saw that all the pumps were taken, and I'd either have to wait or do some fancy finagling to turn around so my tank latch faced the pump. Then I noticed on the far inside lane, someone was pulling out on the end, so I quickly dashed around the station so I'd be able to back in and I saw that all three cars were pulling straight through so I felt better about taking the last pump -- I wouldn't be blocking anyone in. All three cars left the station, I pulled around and put the car in reverse to back in towards the pump. This godawful old man in a huge-ass Ford station wagon pulls into the back of the lane and barrels down to take the last pump, effectively blocking me out. I blew my horn and he waved his hand at me. I was damn pissed, especially since there were two open pumps behind him that he went right past in order to block me out.

Luckily, another pump had opened up so I went back around the station and pulled up to the new pump. Then I went over to the guy and let him have it. I was yelling at him about how rude he was and how it was my pump and what business did he have blocking me? He started yelling back about how it's a one-way (it's not) and when I asked him where does it say one way only, he pointed me towards the signs that say "entrance" and "exit." Well, great, old man -- one side is for entering and one side is for exiting. Does that mean the station is one-way? No! Does that give him the right to be a prick? No! Especially since I did use the entrance to come into the station.

Either way, at that point, it wasn't worth it so I just walked away. But it really made me pissed to think that someone would seriously go so much out of their way to inconvenience someone else just because they thought they were in the right. All I can say is, he better come to a complete stop at every stop sign, never speed and obey all traffic laws perfectly in order to be Mr. Gas Station Cop.

Someone once told me that dreams were the time when our minds got to play, freed from the rational drudgery of processing life as we know it. So how come mine last night were all about taking an exam? Again, my dream was populated by people I haven't talked to in years -- high school friends -- and I was sitting in a large lecture hall filled with people, taking a college-level final exam. So much for my mind at rest. And here I am, awake at 7AM and feeling particularly unrested. There's something inherently disturbing about waking up while it's still dark out. It means that eventually today, I will probably end up taking a nap. Naps are the great equalizer of the masses.