Seems like the bad habits of the East Coast have followed me out here. I've been awake since quarter to 5AM. Insomnia's a bitch, ain't it? At least this time, I'm not worrying about the pressing issue of what to do with the rest of my life.

To continue my thoughts of last night (and again, Michele has just beaten me to it -- have you been reading my mind again?), the war on terrorism is almost 6 months old. The one man who we set out to catch is still running around and we still have no clue where he is. We've overrun an entire country, threatened a few others, deluded ourselves into thinking we have a brave & benevolent leader, suspended a few civil rights here & there, and what do we have to show for it? Not much, except for increased wait time at the airports, and even that's not that effective. A recent test by the FAA showed that undercover agents were able to get weapons and explosives through security and simulate the "mass destruction" of several airplanes and airport facilities. So if our government is so concerned about our safety, how come they're still allowing morons to run the security machines? These people aren't even required to have a high school diploma! You need at least a high school diploma to be a police officer, and they're responsible for enforcing our safety & security, why not airport security people? It should especially be a requirement now that the government is running the show. What's the use of having all this fancy equipment if no one knows how to use it? It's like handing a socket wrench to a five-year-old and telling him to go change your car's oil -- he may have the proper tool in hand, but would you honestly feel comfortable with this kid heading out to your garage and playing around under your hood?

Again, it's all about the illusion they're creating rather than the actual situation. We're deluding ourselves into thinking we're safe again because there's people with guns at our airports when in truth, it really doesn't make a lick of a difference. We're deluding ourselves into thinking our leader is Fearless and Brave and Smart when in truth, he's been out to lunch for years -- all he's done so far is prove he can read what other people have written for him kind of well, but take him off that TelePrompTer and his foot automatically jams itself so far down his throat that his last stomach ulcer had a Nike symbol imprinted on it from his sneaker.

In other news, my boss took me to a great sushi place for lunch yesterday. The odd thing was, the sushi chef was literally like a Sushi Nazi. He just made up dishes and gave them to you, you didn't order, and he told you whether or not you could use soy sauce with each particular dish. It was so good though.

It's kind of surreal to think that while I'm watching the Grammy Awards on CBS, it's actually taking place less than 10 miles away from where I'm sitting. I'm amused by the orchestra's efforts to cut short acceptance speeches.

One problem I have with the increasing commercialism of music is most evident in the ads for movies. Inevitably, they'll feature some song that has absolutely nothing to do with the movie itself -- not contained in it, not featured on the soundtrack, not even remotely relating to the plotline -- yet is prominently featured in the audio track of the movie's ad or preview. Case in point, the Dave Matthews Band song "The Space Between" was in almost every ad I saw for the movie Black Hawk Down, but I still can't understand the relationship. It just seems like basically, they decided to stick it in there because the song was popular at the time that the movie was being released and the studio thought using it in the ad would draw people to see it. Are there really any people out there who would pay $10 for a movie ticket just because a song was featured in the ad?