And I've got it in spades. Thankfully, I've got enough offline to keep me busy. I showed the apartment to someone else tonight who seemed to like it, can move in within a week and said he'd let me know by Saturday whether or not he wants it. I plan on making another run to Connecticut tomorrow to unload some more stuff that I realized last night that I still need to haul down.

Saturday is two football playoffs at a friend's place with much intoxication and the possibility of barbecue ribs. I'll be damned if I'm not going to go through this weekend without some mindless enjoyment.

In other news, my mom called last night from Arizona to tell me she got a souvenir from New Mexico that she didn't really want. Seems the New Mexico State Police nailed her right at the Arizona-New Mexico border doing 90 in a 75 zone, and they gave her a speeding ticket. I was laughing so loud when she told me that I accidentally woke up my roommate. The irony is that I drove a longer distance than she did yesterday, I was going just as much over the speed limit as she was (I averaged 80 in a 65 zone) and I was driving through Connecticut whose state police are notorious for cracking down on speeders, and she was the one who got nailed.

I'm trying very hard to get out the door so I can run my errands, but MTV2 is running a tribute to Ted Demme by showing some of the videos he directed. He did such a great job with so many great songs (including the video for the lovely and talented Nikka Costa's "Push and Pull," which is featured on the Blow soundtrack, and also Bruce Springsteen's "Streets of Philadelphia") that I'm having a really hard time tearing myself away from the TV. It'd be even harder if they were showing clips from his films.

Rest in peace, Ted. I hope you're tearing it up in that great movie studio in the sky.

So "The Tick" is being cancelled, "Undeclared" is in danger of being cancelled, "Futurama" is being pre-empted every week by football because Fox can't put the show on a decent time, but meanwhile viewers are flocking by the millions to "Friends" where the writers can't come up with anything better than to create riveting plotlines by hooking the cast members up with each other? I can't quite understand our nation's love for mediocre entertainment.

These things happen when I can't sleep, unfortunately this time I can't sleep on the flipside. So instead of being up until 8AM, I'm up at 8AM. I guess this will get me in practice for eventually going back to work, whenever that's going to happen. At least I can just sit here at my desk (and eventually, I will probably move back to the bed) and watch the snow come down. Maybe I'll make myself some hot chocolate.

Discussions over at kd's place have somehow gone into how people can tie a cherry stem into a knot with their tongues. Unfortunately, I am not blessed with such talent. However, I used to be able to completely unwrap a Starburst candy in my mouth in less than 10 seconds, though I'm out of practice.

I suppose it should also be noted that I do not listen to NPR. Non-commercial radio just doesn't do it for me. Not that I like commercials, because I don't, but I just don't like their style or all the talking. If I want witty banter, I'll turn the station to one of my favorite DJs. (I feel like I've just stepped into the boundaries of a Monty Python sketch. "Sorry, chap, I just don't understand your banter...") Banter is another one of those words that makes me scratch my head and wonder how it came to be in the English language.

Another school shooting happened today, this time at a law school in Virginia. What I don't understand is how the people who perpetrate these kinds of shooting sprees are distinguished from terrorists. Terrorists are, by definition, people who incite terror. I can pretty much guarantee that someone firing a gun around at people would most likely incite terror. Plus, the guy killed 3 people and wounded a whole bunch more. So his weapon of choice was a gun instead of a bomb. Does that make him any less of a terrorist than some guy who walks into a pizza parlor in Tel Aviv and kills a whole slew of innocent bystanders?

Yes, suicide bombers usually die martyrs and do it for a cause, but in a decent amount of cases, people who do perform shooting sprees either kill themselves or say something afterwards to the effect that they weren't expecting to be taken alive. And I'm sure that these mad shooters have some reason why they did it, so they have their own personal cause to satisfy.

The two music-related Notes of the Day:

#1: While driving back to Connecticut with yet another load of stuff, I was followed for a while by a rather cute woman in her Subaru who was obviously having a great time singing along to whatever she was listening to. This really made me happy because it told me that (1) I'm not a loser nor a lunatic for singing along to the radio or the MP3 player and (2) it got me more into what I was listening to. It was a sunny day, I was bombing down the Mass Pike at around 80 miles an hour, the music was cranked, I was listening to 2 of my favorite DJs (who are sometimes referred to as "Ingus & Dingus," which cracks me up) on one of my favorite radio stations. For several moments, I forgot all my troubles and worries. Music's great that way.

#2: You remember that old '80s song, "Party All the Time" by Eddie Murphy? You know, the one where the chorus goes:
My girl wants to party all the time
Party all the time
Party all the time...
Well, this song is definitely not meant to be sung by anyone with a Boston accent. Someone in my building had probably heard it on the radio, then got it stuck in her head because she was singing it to herself on her way down in the elevator with me. Unfortunately, with a Boston accent, it sounded like she was singing this:
My girl wants to potty all the time
Potty all the time
Potty all the time...

You can't imagine how hard it was to keep a straight face.

Moving is the one time that anyone really realizes how much crap they've accumulated over the years. It's like the Judgment Day for pack rats like me (although I've gotten better), where each person has to decide just how emotionally attached they are to every little piece of junk and/or how useful every little thing will be or how often they use it.

Given that my bedroom here is only 11' x 13', I've somehow managed to keep things under control, though closet space was an issue at one point. I get these pack rat tendencies from my father, who until recently, had enough junk to completely fill Staten Island. When I cleaned out their garage this summer, it took almost thirty garbage bags to hold all the crap he'd thrown in there over the years. Mom, on the other hand, is anti-saving and is itching to throw stuff out. One year, she complained that I had to completely clean up my room before I left for camp, otherwise she'd clean it for me. Being the kid I was, I didn't understand the concept behind "completely clean" so I just basically threw everything into my desk drawers in nice little piles and pronounced it done. Much to my surprise, Mom had a different idea of completely clean, which I discovered when I got back from camp a month later to find most of my junk missing because she'd taken the liberty of throwing it out for me.

It's not that I have so much stuff now. I've got a moderate amount of stuff, most of it is useful and I try not to keep every little thing that I come across. Unfortunately, a fair amount of my stuff is big, like my computer or my TV or my CD collection, so it makes things more interesting when I try to haul them away. But having an apartment instead of an entire house to spread out in definitely helps keep me in check.

It's that time of night again! My brain has shifted into insanity, and I'm going to ask those moronic questions that I know are on everyone's mind...

- Why are they taking those Taliban POWs to Cuba, of all places? Hell, Americans aren't even legally allowed to go to Cuba.
- Why would anyone go see a movie about talking dogs?
- Why are the only commercials on these days seem to be for fast food, collect call/long distance phone carriers, cars or prescription medications?
- Does being knighted make you feel any different? Is it like having a bar mitzvah, which I can't remember but seemed perfectly meaningless in my eyes?
- I would love to act in a movie. As much work as it might be, I think it would be a lot of fun to work on a movie with a group of people and spend so much time with them, it would be a great bonding session. Plus, then all the fun we were having would be included on the DVD as outtakes.
- Regis Philbin is quickly becoming our generation's Dick Clark. Soon, it will be discovered that both of them are advance android scouts from an invading planet, sent to infiltrate our society.
- I have the sneaking suspicion that Domino's Pizza "Cinna-Stix" are the same thing as their "Cheesy Bread," except without the cheese and with cinnamon and frosting.

Sign #131 that I'm becoming way too dependent on my computer:
I threw a Soul Coughing disc in the player this morning and since they have so many random samples and sounds in their songs, I kept running back to my computer to check and see if someone had IMed me because I kept hearing a noise that sounded like my AOL Instant Messenger chime.

Trip #1 to haul stuff back to my parents' house is complete. Some tidbits from the road:

- For some reason, Rhode Islanders don't seem to like acknowledging the state of Connecticut. I usually take I-95 southbound from Boston to Connecticut, and I've always noticed that after you pass through Providence, the roadsigns all read "95 South: New York." Hello? There's another 30 miles of your own state to get through, plus another 120 miles of Connecticut to drive before you even hit the New York state border! Not to mention the fact that it's another 15 or so miles until you reach the city limits.

- To the woman who got pulled over by the Connecticut State Police and was waving her arms in rage as she was getting over to the side of the road: Driving at 85 miles per hour in a 65 zone when you're passing literally right in front of a State Police barracks is probably not the best of ideas, especially since the Connecticut Staties are notorious for cracking down on speeders. You brought that on yourself, lady.

For breakfast, our establishment is pleased to offer a long, slow waking-up process, topped with much feigned consciousness and several attempts to return to sleeping in bed. For lunch, we feature a four hour round-trip to Connecticut in order to move some random and non-essential crap along with some clothes back to Keith's parents' house while they're on vacation, with a side of loud music and some creative speed limits. Tonight's dinner will consist of a mixture of blogging and TV watching with the option of drunkenness. For dessert, we are offering the opportunity to show Keith's room to someone who does not speak English very well and only needs to sublet for two months.

Would you like to see a whine list?

Moron fainted after eating a pretzel. Even though the initial line of the story says he choked, his doctor's official line was that he "due to a temporary decrease in heart rate brought on by swallowing a pretzel."

So... is this because he doesn't have enough gerbils running on the wheel in his head to keep his body running while he thinks about something else?

Do we really need a Disney movie about talking sled dogs and Cuba Gooding, Jr., as a misplaced Miami dentist?

In other news, the media is having a field day with this pretzel thing. You have to figure that with all the special effects and makeup that Hollywood can come up with, they might've been able to touch up Moron's face so as to conceal the bruise. Though I hear that the White House is planning on shifting their strategy to begin dropping snack pretzels on Afghanistan in the hopes that they will prove deadly against the Taliban.

Sorry folks, but I've closed participation to Blogger Insider. This project took off and became much more popular much more quickly than I had anticipated. There's just way too many people signed up to keep it open, so I've capped membership at 200 people because it's just taking me way too long to organize each round due to the number of people participating. As of now, I'm taking names for a waiting list -- once a participant decides they've had enough or doesn't have enough time anymore to do it, someone new will be admitted.

In a rather ironic twist of events, I found a notice in my mailbox today -- that test I took for the position with the City of Los Angeles? I passed the test, they want me to come out for an interview in two weeks. My first interview in months -- at least I know I'm still desirable. [wry smile] Now where did I leave my corporate mentality?...