The Big Move, Phase II, enters its main stage tonight as I haul all my worldly possessions (most of which are stuffed into five -- count 'em, five -- 95 pound boxes. No, I'm not kidding. I will be personally carrying almost 500 pounds tonight up at least two flights of stairs. No elevator. Pardon me while I go sing Denis Leary off in the corner: Ohhhhhh, life's gonna suck when you grow up, when you grow up, when you grow up...

No bonus points tonight for guessing the source of the quote in this entry's title. Why? Because I'm about to give it to you: it's from Singles. And for some reason, that movie begat tonight's post.

See, I think I'm at that point where I think I fall into like way too easily. And I think a lot. It's just a matter of me meeting someone, or reading someone's writings and getting a feel for who they are, or even seeing someone interacting with another person regardless of whether or not I'm the one they're interacting with, and I start thinking about how much I could see myself dating her. The sound of her voice, the way she smiles or laughs, that cleverly playful twinkle in her eye... it all adds up to one big bear trap that I happily trip into. How does this tie in with Singles, you ask? Well, at the end of the film, just before the credits roll, you hear a bunch of people having conversations about relationships that are all meshed together. However, one of them that clearly stands out is this:
Boy: See that girl? I could spend the rest of my life with her.
Girl: She's a girl in a car, Tommy. All you can see is her head.
Boy: Yeah, but I know my type.

It's like that. It's that easy. Snapshot of a person, and I'm in like. Unfortunately, it leads to a lot of disappointment when I'm in a situation where the other person is either unavailable, attached or uninterested. But at least I'm in like and not in love, because there is a distinct difference and I'd be a little worried if I fell in love every day. That would throw my emotional barometer way off, and I'd probably need some kind of electroshock therapy for that.

Either way, I've promised myself that I'm not going to attempt to penetrate the dating scene here in L.A. until I lose at least 10 pounds. And after all the junk food I've put away in the past month, I probably ought to make that 15. So I think I'll start tomorrow... after I make that run to In-n-Out Burger tonight.

So we've got disturbing search requests, more commonly known in the online world as "DSRs." I'm here tonight to talk to you about another DS- issue that hits a little closer to home and is something that you don't have to have a website to experience. I'm, of course, speaking of DSBs -- disturbing social behaviors.

DSBs can occur in any situation. You could find one at work, at the mall, on the road... everyone is susceptible, everyone is vulnerable. And once you've experienced it, it's a little hard to forget. For example, there was the girl who lived in my dorm during my freshman year of college. I heard so many complaints about her odd quirks from my friends, but the one that really caught my attention was the fact that she identified people by their feet. How did my friends know about this? Because she used to be able to correctly ID them as they walked by the bathroom stall she was using or as they sat down in the stall adjacent to hers. Then she used to strike up conversations with them. I may not know much, but I know this: there's just some times when talking with others is a little uncomfortable, and one of those times is when one or both of you is on the toilet.

At one of my jobs, I had the Boss From Hell. My co-workers all took pity on me since they saw her antics around the office and I was the only one who was working with her, but it took a long time before she was let go. She used to do very odd things, some of which led to the general assumption around the office that she was a Bag Lady -- she always dressed in the same clothing and it was often rumpled as if she had slept in it, she hoarded food in her office (especially the free food that the company would bring in for corporate meetings), she showed up late for work every day and sometimes didn't show up at all, at one point she radically changed her hairstyle and color so drastically in the space of an afternoon that we were all convinced it had to be a wig. And she fit the image quite well -- older, eccentric, kind of a strange accent... she was a Bag Lady. But one thing that really got to me was when she would stand in front of my cube to talk to me, and in the middle of the conversation, she'd start hiking up her stockings, which -- more often than not -- would have big gaping holes and rips in them to show off her wrinkly spotted legs and varicose veins. I almost started a collection around the office to buy her new pantyhose.

Then there was the obviously-older-than-child-age guy who picked his nose and ate his boogers in public. The guy who asked to borrow the compact of the woman sitting next to him on the subway so he could use the mirror to help himself see to squeeze the huge pimple on his forehead to the point of popping it. The woman on the plane who used her husband's Swiss Army knife to clip her fingernails and then eat them.

You know you've seen them, you know you've experienced them. You may have even perpetrated one or two of them by accident, or maybe even on purpose. But realize the anguish that you cause by doing these acts. People, it's up to you. Only you can stop DSBs.

This message was brought to you by the Committee to Stop Disturbing Social Behaviors.

There's another odd reason why I love my job. I've always been a very sound-oriented person. And it translates to my love of a good voice. A great female voice can send shivers down my spine, and getting to talk to all these female radio personalities makes my job all the more enjoyable. If a woman's got a good voice, I can sit there and just listen to her for hours. If she's got a good singing voice, it's even more of a turn-on. I'm such a sucker for a great voice.

I also have a strange love of particular smells that others may not find so appealing. I love new car smell, though that's pretty widely liked. When my parents gave me my first car, they sprayed it with a can of New Car Smell, but when I got in the car, I thought it smelled like marzipan -- don't get me wrong, I love the smell of marzipan too, but it just made me hungry whenever I got in my car. I also love the smell of Band-Aids, especially the fabric ones.

So, at the risk of having it fall apart at the last minute again -- I found a(nother) place! It's a nice townhouse in a decent section of West L.A., the room is big, it's a two-story place, the guy I'll be sharing the place with seems really cool. I'm going over there after work tomorrow to give him a deposit check, then I'll start moving my stuff in and getting it set up over the next few days. I'll finally have a home base set up from which to take over the world -- I mean, live my life. I talked for a while tonight with one of my friends back East, who said that I sounded the happiest that he's really known me to be, and that things sound like they're really falling into place for me and he still can't believe that I just up and went out to Los Angeles. Personally, I can't believe it either. This just kind of feels like I'm in limbo -- I don't have a home or my familiar life in Boston to go back to, yet it doesn't feel real enough yet for me to be here and actually living here. It's hard to explain.

I've often wondered why television networks do that thing where they start programs an hour earlier in Central time than they do in Eastern time. It's not like the networks haven't progressed past the point where it's technically impossible to air programs at the same clock-time as on the Eastern seaboard. In Pacific time, primetime starts at the same time as on the East Coast. And I'm still not sure what hour primetime begins in Mountain time. When I was spending the night in New Mexico on my way out here, the local network affiliates started running primetime programs at 6PM. Doesn't that kind of lose a lot of viewership? People would be inclined to come home from work, relax, eat dinner, spend a little time catching up with their families or friends or both, then maybe turn on the TV. If primetime starts at 6 -- or even 7 for a lot of people who work later than 5 or have a longer commute -- then they'd have to rush home in order to make their favorite programs or they'd miss them entirely. Will someone please explain this to me?

Reason #141,723 why I think our government has gone completely around the bend: They're considering having the leader of some whacko Canadian religious cult/group testify in Congress on whether to allow human cloning. The guy already appeared once, dressed in a white jumpsuit, to talk about how his group's company, Clonaid, was going to clone a human being. His cult, the Raelians (he calls himself the Prophet Rael) is based on the theory that space aliens seeded Earth with life and that he himself has visited a space ship, and his followers will get to join him and the space aliens. Thankfully, Congress is using him as an example of why not to allow human cloning, but I seriously doubt this guy will be able to do what he says anyways.

In other news, some idiot brought a dummy grenade to the L.A. airport yesterday, which prompted the third evacuation in a week. Apparently, it was a gag gift. What better way to transport it than to throw it in a suitcase and bring it to the airport? C'mon people... our airport security may be full of holes, but it's one thing to try to test those holes if you're an FAA inspector and another to make a joke of it and delay hundreds if not thousands of other travelers.

On a personal note, I'm going to take the apartment. As I said in the comments for my last entry, I think I'm just a bit overloaded with all these apartments that I've seen, and I'm just a little apprehensive about rushing into it when I still have appointments to see other places. However, it's a month-to-month lease so I'm not locking myself into anything substantial and if it doesn't work out, I can always move.

I may have found an apartment. The guy is cool, the room is nice & big, it looks like it's in a decent location... the odd thing is that I'm suddenly getting cold feet. This last apartment -- the one I got locked out of -- I jumped on because I thought it was cool and I was afraid of losing it to some indistinct person. This one, I know I could lose it because the guy says he's got someone else lined up but he'd rather live with me (for a variety of reasons, more to do with the fact that this is the girl's first apartment out of college and she's working as only an inventory specialist at a shoe store, not because she's a girl and not because she claims to go to AA meetings 4 or 5 times per week because she's been sober for over 2 years now). He wants to know tomorrow. And it's a great place, but I wish I knew what was holding me back from telling him tonight that I'd take it.

It's a quarter to midnight. And I've been sitting here staring into nothingness for far too long now. Time to shut down and go to sleep, I'm not accomplishing anything by having the same thoughts running through my head over and over.

Bonus points to whoever can place the quote that makes up the title of this entry.

Through no fault of my own, I looked like an incompetent ass at work today. Well, at least I thought I did.

For some reason, the phone at my desk hadn't been properly programmed so the buttons either didn't match the labeled functions or they didn't work at all. Either way, my phone was set to accept incoming calls when I thought I had set it to not accept them, so a bunch of people called in this morning and they were routed to my empty desk. Not only was the receptionist displeased because it meant the irate calls went back to her, someone else had to track down the problem and disable my phone until I got in. In addition, I accidentally disconnected a couple of people while trying to transfer them, which made me look brilliant not only to the people I was cutting off, but also the people I was trying to transfer them to. All in all, not one of my better moments, although it technically wasn't my fault. I still feel bad about it, though as soon as I realized what was going on, I had IT reprogram my phone. In other news, what's the deal with Letterman possibly taking over for Ted Koppel on "Nightline"? If there is a Network Lord, he needs to smite whatever bright executive came up with this asinine idea. I can just see Dave grinning at the camera with his goofy buck-toothed smile, throwing pencils at Sam Donaldson while saying the words "Connie Chung" over and over for comedic effect. Not exactly the atmosphere I think ABC wanted for that show. Hey Dave, just because Geraldo was able to get a job as a newscaster doesn't mean you have to follow in his footsteps. All Geraldo did was join a poor excuse for an underfunded network that makes most of its money off ads run during "Temptation Island" and "When Zoo Animals Attack Tourists While Flying Fighter Jets." Then he proceeded to shoot his credibility in the other foot (since the first had already been shot) and make himself the laughingstock of the newsworld.

Connie Chung... Get it, Sam Donaldson? Connie Chung...

After a few years, I think I'm finally and seriously letting go of my last real girlfriend. They say that it takes twice as long to get over someone as the time you were together, so since we were together for almost 2 years, I'm a little ahead of schedule. But not much.

I had a mild breakdown a few months ago when, for some stupid masochistic and unknown-to-my-rational-mind reason, I looked her up on Google. I discovered a few links to stuff that she was doing at the time and checked it out -- and found that she was proceeding down a path that she had talked about doing for a long time. She knew what she wanted and she went after it. And I sat there, my eyes filling with tears and wondering where the justice was in this world because she had treated me like crap and used me, yet she was doing what she loved and I was miserable and unemployed and had little chance of being able to find something that I had a burning desire to do. Months later, and I'm here in Los Angeles having taken a chance on holding out for a job I decided I really wanted. And I feel vindicated for doing so. In my dream last night, I finally was able to stand up to her and tell her to get out of my life. When it happens subconsciously, then I know that it's for real. My id can't lie. For the first time in a very long while, I feel free of that need to prove myself in order to make myself believe that I'm better than her and deserve more than she does because of the hell she put me through.

I know I've talked a lot about this recently, and you're probably all sick of reading about the Adventures of Keith in the City of Angels. But quite frankly, I need this. I need this more than I've needed anything before in my entire life. I've basically drifted through life so far, taking control in moments that are few & far between. I went to the college that I did because my parents were pushing for it and I really didn't care where I went, so I applied early decision there and got in. I spent 3 years in public relations because a personality test that I took suggested I'd have an aptitude for it (the test was right, I am good at it... I just don't like it so much). And I finally hit that point where I saw myself miserable behind a desk at 45, looking back on my life & wishing I'd done what I'm doing now. I had to try. Not to sound trite by invoking P.O.D., but for the first time in a long time, I feel so alive.

The Santa Ana winds are bringing in odd emotions tonight along with the cool evening air. The mixture of despair from having my apartment situation fall through combined with the elation and all-around peace of mind of having one of my best friends close by for the first time in four years and being able to spend time with her on the spur of the moment without having to fly six hours each way and make definitive plans weeks in advance has all come together to make today feel a bit bittersweet.

If I hear Pink's "Get the Party Started" one more time, I think I'm going to kill someone.

It's been a little over a year since the Los Angeles Times leaked that report about President Moron coming up with a war plan against several nations that included using nuclear weapons. And here I thought that having the nukes was supposed to be a deterrent and they would only be used as a last-ditch effort. Well, excuse me for enjoying my decadent American way of life and not wanting to have to forage through rubble and abandoned buildings to find food on a daily basis. So we threatened the Arabs that if they didn't chill out in the Middle East, we'd level them. They didn't listen. We leveled them. Saddam Hussein moved against us with the nukes that he kept assuring us he didn't have. He got in some good hits and we lost a few ships at sea to nuclear blasts. So we leveled him too. The Chinese weren't so happy about that, they launched against the mainland. We lost San Diego, Denver and Omaha in the first strike; after we decimated Beijing and Shanghai, they took out New York and Washington. Philadelphia was all but evacuated since the radioactive dust between the two cities kept flying around between them, and Philly was stuck in the middle.

Meanwhile, our country fell apart. Somehow, Donald Rumsfeld was out of Washington when it was hit, so he's running things now and insists on being called "Overlord Don." It just doesn't have that ring to it that I think he expected it to. And I think that move of reprinting all the new money with his face on it was a bit much.

I had been saying for a while that the lunatic idiot in the White House was going to get us all killed. And I was mostly right -- he didn't kill all of us, just a good chunk of us. There's a distinct difference between preparing a war plan with nukes as a last-ditch effort and preparing a war plan with nukes as an active participant in the fight. Need I remind everyone that this is the only planet we've got? Well, it's too late now.

I'd like to get in touch with all those people who were so supportive of President Moron when he finally "won" the election and ask them how they feel about him now (if they're not dead from the nuclear bomb blasts or dying from radiation sickness), but the phone lines are still kind of touch-and-go so placing any calls outside the local grid is a little difficult these days. Either way, the martial law makes things a little difficult -- what with the Armed Forces censoring most of our newspapers and such anyways. Dear Lord, we can't say anything bad about the government! Oh yeah, and we can't be out on the streets past 9PM either.

[Australian Croc Hunter accent]
Welcome back, and we hope you're ready for a wild ride as we watch Keith tackle the unruly and often-fast-paced concrete jungle of Los Angeles in search of the elusive Apartment. This clever little bugger has managed to slip away from him a few times, but he's being tenacious and keeping on the job.

While you were away enjoying your morning coffee, Keith was out scouring some not-so-savory neighborhoods and other assorted mishmash looking for the Well-Located And Roomy Yet Cheap Apartment, an extremely hard-to-find breed of this species. His first outing took him to the aptly-named Stoner Avenue, where he met up with some... well, stoners. This Apartment came with a Small Room and Not-So-Savory Street Parking, so he was on to other locales in search of his prey. He then ventured off to Santa Monica Boulevard, where he was greeted by a Loft (which is known in some circles as a Wannabe Bedroom) and an extremely hyperactive terrier/chihuahua mix. Unfortunately, this was not the specific prey he was after either, so his hunt continued.

We now find our hero packing up his supplies and getting ready to venture out into the wild again. We wish him luck as he continues his search for the Apartment, as well as his Adventures in Laundry. Tune in for our next episode!
[/Australian Croc Hunter accent]

So the apartment search restarted again tonight. I should've expected that things would continue to be odd with my knack for meeting strange people, but I was optimistic. I really should've thought otherwise.

Tonight's potential roommate could've doubled for Rocky Balboa or an extra on "The Sopranos." The accent was perfect, every other word out of his mouth was "Uhhhh... dood, yeah..." I was almost ready to start looking around for Talia Shire.

Did you ever notice how James Bond can work just about anything? I didn't think that anyone could get so much training that they'd be able to be so suave yet still operate any kind of machinery or computer.

And ever so quickly, my plans are screwed. The person who I was supposed to live with is not supporting herself, she's getting money from her parents to pay the rent. And these parents weren't too pleased with her living with a guy she didn't know.

So I'm homeless once again. Thankfully, the family friends I'm staying with are very gracious. But I'm still not a happy camper. Not by a long shot.

Good morning, everyone. It looks to be a beautiful day in Keithland with only a minor chance of aggravation. Let's start off with the current conditions.

At present, we've got unshoweredness and unshavenness, resulting in a general situation of laziness. The mellow tones of KROQ and 91X will come in and push away the lethargy to bring us an afternoon of enjoyment in addition to some furniture and electronics shopping as we prepare for that move that's coming in late next week. Temperatures will be in the long-sleeved shirt and jeans range with a 80% chance of open sunroof and/or car windows.

Tonight, we expect more of the same with some possible minor aggravation resulting from the addition of several 6- and 7-year-olds into the household due to a family event. Lows will still be in the long-sleeved shirt and jeans area, going down to the pajamas overnight.

Tomorrow's forecast looks pretty much the same as today's. Hell, it's L.A., the weather never changes here!

In addition to the wonderful "security measures" being instated by our glorious administration, did anyone notice that they decided not to renew the Superfund legislation? This means that companies all over the country won't be as tightly bound to reduce their toxic emissions.

And in the entertainment world, we've traded one evil for another. Whlie Dennis Miller is being kicked off of "Monday Night Football" (something that I'm actually thankful for because I didn't think he fit in at all and it always sounded like his co-commentators really didn't want him there), ABC has hired John Madden to take his place. Personally, I can't stand Madden and I think he makes no sense at all, and I also would rather hear Dennis Miller's snarky comments than John Madden blathering on and on about nothing in particular.

I just got off the phone with my mother. They finally reinstated her cable modem connection and the technicians had no idea how to reconfigure her computer from phone modem to cable modem, so I had to walk her through it from 3000 miles away (by memory, mind you -- my computer is still disassembled and sitting in the garage) and in ten minutes, I had her up and running while the tech support people had tried to make it work for over an hour and couldn't do it. This is why I don't trust tech support.

And now, I have to get ready for work. What a great thing that is for me to say, and even better that I'm not unhappy about it!

Monica Lewinsky is on CNN chatting with Larry King. And honestly, I think she's pretty attractive. If I were to meet her at a party and start talking with her, would I ask her out? I'm not quite sure, even though most of the women I've seriously dated have given oral sex to other men. I guess the big difference is that I didn't know about it and I didn't ask about it because I didn't want to know, while in Monica's case it was splashed all over the country and we all know exactly what happened because the Republicans told us all about it whether we wanted to know or not. It was pretty much unavoidable.

I feel somewhat unrooted since I don't have a place of my own to live yet, and I'm kind of freaking out about it. I'd like to get settled down in an apartment already so I can put things in motion as far as getting my life completely in order and back on track. There's certain lifestyle things that are just easier to do in the comfort of your own home -- carefully preparing food that's good for you, for example, and not saying "well, you're still not in your own home so anything goes as far as what you can eat" -- and I'm also feeling a bit guilty about staying with family friends and pretty much freeloading off them.

Has anyone noticed that we still haven't found Osama bin Laden yet?