The search for a new place to live continues. I found a really nice place a few nights ago and the guys who I'd be living with seem cool, but the problem is that I haven't heard back from them whether or not I've gotten the place. This seems to be a recurring theme -- find a nice place in a good location with cool potential roommates, then never hear back from them. It's already happened twice, why not a third time? I hate to pester these guys, but I really want to hear back from them, even if they say they've found someone else so I at least know what's going on.

I've always felt that it's proper courtesy to respond to someone, even if it was a negative response. I had an argument with a friend of mine in Boston once about the fact that when she received e-mails through JDate (a Jewish singles website), she wouldn't respond if she didn't like what she saw/read about the person sending her the e-mail. I told her that from a sender's perspective, it was really really frustrating to send messages out into the ether and never hear back. I figured as long as the system had a blind "thanks but no thanks" response option, it was common courtesy to use it. No sense in giving someone false hopes.

It's official. I've eaten myself into oblivion.

I went to an all-you-can-eat sushi place tonight for dinner. Suffice to say that it was reeeeeally good and I definitely put away a lot. So I stumbled my way home and now I've collapsed in front of the TV in order to relax for the night.

Tomorrow night, I get to meet the web goddess kd. It promises to be an interesting night. We're going to a concert up in Ventura County, it'll be my first adventure that far north of L.A.

So in honor of that, I'm updating the music section. Party on, dudes.

Okay, I admit it. I was a band nerd in high school. But it wasn't just any band, it was marching band. You know, the kind where you get on a football field and march around to make all kinds of neat designs when you look at the entire formation from the bleachers. So when we were learning these formations, there was a lot of downtime as the instructors painstakingly showed every single person where their next place was, in addition to all the times we'd run drills to get up to that particular point in the show in order to pound it into our heads. Somewhere in all of this, the inane game of "Wanna Buy A Duck?" started.

"Wanna Buy A Duck?" is by far one of the most addictive and yet annoying games to play with a large group of people. The way it works is, one person has this exchange with the person sitting next to them:
"Wanna buy a duck?"
"A what?"
"A duck."
"A what?"
"A duck."
"Does it quack?"
"Yes."

Then they each turn to the person sitting next to them and have the same exchange. The thing is that once you've played once, you have to keep the chain going -- kind of like the game Telephone. Each time, the exchange has to move one person farther out, but they always "converse" back with the original person who started this whole damn thing. So you're sitting there in a group of 100+ people, passing along these asinine one-liners back and forth around this humongous blob of people. You could be in the middle of a completely separate conversation when one of the questions or replies comes racing through your section of the group, and it might sound something like, "So I called her up the other night -- a duck -- and we talked for..."

It's stupid. I know. But it was one of those inside jokes, I guess, and it kept us all occupied for a little while. But every now & then, whenever I feel I'm embroiled in an exercise in futility or trying to talk to someone who I'm just not getting through to, I'll ask them if they wanna buy a duck.

I'm kind of tired and my brain's a little scattered tonight, so here goes with the randomness...

- It's been a month and I'm still having a blast at my job. Usually by now, the novelty wears off and I'm settled into the drudgery, but this time it's different. This is definitely a good sign.

- It's like SimLemonadeStand.

- It's amazing what you can find online, and how you can prove that Big Brother is watching. Now you can watch too via satellite using the TerraServer. I found my old apartment building and my parents' house.

- Speaking of satellites, now you can track the orbits of all the satellites currently in orbit (in realtime too!) using NASA's J-Track 3D. It's über-cool. - Now you can stop pestering your friends and posting all over online message boards! Check out the Music From TV Commercials site.

- SonicBlue, makers of the Rio line, is giving Apple a big whackin'. They've come up with the RioRiot, a portable MP3 player that costs the same as the iPod, but it interfaces with both Macs and Windows machines, has an FM tuner too, runs on internal rechargeable batteries, and holds 20GB of MP3s as opposed to iPod's 6GB.

- Back east, there's a couple of DJs who are among my all-time favorite disc jockeys. They do weekdays from 3 to 7PM (commonly known as "PM Drive" in "the biz"), and they have this show promotion liner that says, "Driving you home -- with Ingus and Dingus." For some reason, that really cracks me up. I don't know why, but it does.

So when you're in a room and the only other two people in the same room are having a conversation, are you entitled to comment on what they're saying without fear of being looked upon as an interloper? Admit it -- if you're the third person in a room and the other two people are having an interesting conversation, you're going to listen in. It's a natural thing, especially for those of us who have to know everything. So can you comment without them thinking that you're butting in?

I wanted to yesterday, but I held my peace. The discussion was about guys (yes, it was two women talking). It was a general guy-bashing session actually, and I was so tempted to stick up for guys and say something along the lines of how women can display the same behavioral tendencies that they were complaining about. Having been in an abusive relationship and also having been on the Dates From Hell, I can definitely say that all women aren't perfect angels.

After a four-hour trip to AAA this morning to take care of car stuff, I now have California license plates for my car. It's official, I'm a Cali man now! Unfortunately, in the process of getting car insurance this morning, I discovered that my parents neglected to put me on their insurance policy for the 2 weeks that I was in Connecticut. Basically, what happened was that once they decided that they were taking my car and I was taking one of their cars to California, we re-registered my old car in Connecticut in my mother's name and put it under their insurance policy which basically voided my own insurance since I technically had no car to insure. However, my parents never specifically told the insurance company to add me as a driver to their policy, so according to the insurance company out here, there was a month where I didn't have insurance. This disqualifies me from getting a "prior insurance history" discount since my 9 years of constant past insurance are now broken, and it jumps my already-high insurance rates another $350. I left a message on my parents' machine telling them this to keep them updated on the situation and also to tell them they could take the car I have now off their policy, and my father wrote me an e-mail back telling me that he "didn't like my tone of voice" in the message I left. Come on! He cost me another $350 that I can't really afford since now I have to pay for movers and another deposit on a new apartment, does he expect me to be jumping up and down for joy and yelling "woo hoo"? I tried my best to make light of the situation but he probably misinterpreted my dry tone of voice (as he usually does) as being rude, but honestly, I specifically asked them to make sure I was on their policy and they insisted that since the car I was driving was insured, I'd be okay. So it really is their fault. And even my new insurance agent who was sitting at her desk and heard me leave the message said she was surprised that I didn't seem that angry with them.

So now I have more apartments to look at tonight. Thankfully, Emotionally Disturbed Roommate is away for another few days.

The question occurred to me today while I was driving into work: some artists write lyrics that rhyme in English, do artists also write lyrics that rhyme in other languages? I was flipping through the radio dial and heard Shakira's "Whenever, Wherever," which does rhyme in English. However, there's also a Spanish version of the song and I don't know if the Spanish version rhymes. If it does, did she change some of the lyrics to cross the language rhyming barrier, or did it just naturally happen that way (which I really doubt)? But, when popular artists are writing a song in just Spanish or just French without taking the English translation into account, do they try to make it rhyme in that language?

- I seem to be growing hair at an even faster rate. Now I get five o'clock shadow at around noon, even though I just replaced my razor blade three days ago. Also, I need a haircut but I'm reticent to get it quite yet until I get really shaggy, since longer hair looks better when one has a little weight to lose.

- I'm oddly addicted to the morning show on Fox 11 here in L.A. It's a fairly bad morning show as far as morning shows go, but it's rather addictive. Kind of like Fat-Free Pringles.

- Some commercials are really starting to aggravate me. They're just trying so hard to be natural that they're so obviously canned. Number 1 on my list: the Verizon Big Deal commercials. Who honestly calls up their phone salesman to banter about "you know, my family likes to talk!" or ends up listing off all the states where they have friends?

- I want to be like Seth Green.

Some of you have either commented over IM or by e-mail or in my comments sections about my constant derision of America and our current administration, and a good chunk of the feedback has disapproved of it. Let me start out by saying that I'm not pissed about that. I welcome other people's opinions, and if I expect you to let me freely rant here, then I also have to freely allow others to tell me they disapprove of what I'm saying. It takes at least two people to debate, and I love a good debate.

My ability to criticize this country and its administration is precisely why it's great to be an American. Free speech kicks ass. I fully take advantage of my ability to use it and I appreciate it to the fullest extent. While I may disagree with what some may say or some may think, I still recognize their right to say it. I can say that I think Howard Stern and Opie & Anthony are disgusting pigs and I can't understand why people would want to listen to them, but people apparently like them. Personally, if I were running my own radio station, I wouldn't let them within ten miles of it, but they still have the right to go on the air and people have the right to listen to them.

In terms of my views... yes, I'm partially an idealist. I see things and I realize that there's a better way of doing it and I'd really like for them to be done that way. However, I also realize that there's pretty much little to no chance that things will get better and they will just plod along in their usual fashion, so that makes me a cynic. It's a weird combination and it causes me to get into some rather interesting discussions. It also causes me to get angry at things beyond my control on occasion because I know they should be done differently yet they couldn't be.

However, someone doesn't automatically gain respect just by being a human being, and the office does not make the man. Clinton earned my respect on a professional level because he was a good president. Personally, the fact that he couldn't keep himself from trying to get his winky wacked was a big downfall for him and I disapprove of him for that. But I think that overall, he did a good job. However, I think that George W. is tearing this country asunder and there's a decent chance that he may get us embroiled in something very dangerous before his term is up. He constantly displays a lack of brainpower and lack of tact and a moral sneering that I find repulsive. He hasn't earned my respect.

I was groggy for a very large portion of the day since I took a Benadryl last night to head off symptoms of an allergy attack. Thankfully, it's finally worn off either naturally or it's been circumvented by the three bottles of soda I've sucked down already today.

The L.A. Times ran a rather unsurprising story this morning about all the empty promises of food, improved roads, hospitals, schools and other assorted amenities that we made to the Afghans if only they'd help us fight the Taliban. So they helped, they ran off to die in the hills and mountains of their own country, now our forces aren't lifting a finger to help the Afghans and an Army civil affairs officer actually openly said, "I'd imagine Special Forces would say whatever they needed to, to win cooperation from locals. That doesn't mean we're going down there."

I'm seeing an appalling comparison to the Iraq situation, which we undertook with President Moron's father. We went in there, demolished the country, urged the locals to rise up against their leader with empty promises to help in the fighting and give aid after it was done, but we never supported them while they were slaughtered into submission by the very government we wanted them to topple. Instead, we helped enforce a U.N. embargo which cut off food and other aid to the Iraqi people so they starved to death while Saddam Hussein still sits pretty in Baghdad.

And you ask me why I don't fly an American flag from my car? Well, I try to stick to my promises. I'd prefer not to be associated with the image of "America: Land of Hypocrisy -- a/k/a 'Do As We Say, Not As We Do. And We've Got the Firepower and the Self-Righteousness to Enforce It.'"

I don't begrudge what's-his-name from 'N Sync for wanting to shell out the $20 million to go into space, and I'm not going to make fun of him for it or claim he's being excessive. (I can't keep track of all the members of all the boy bands, sorry. I think it's Lance that's going.) Ask any six-year-old boy if he wants to be an astronaut and I guarantee you that at least 90% of your sample population will say yes. The desire never really goes away, it's just tempered over time with maturity, the crushing drudgery of everyday life and the lack of $20 million needed to hitch a ride on a Russian Soyuz capsule.

But if you offered the chance to any adult male, there's a decent chance he'd say yes. Adult female too, most likely. So given that he's got the cash to do it, I think there's nothing wrong with him fulfilling a dream like that. I applaud him and I'll probably end up following his trip with a decent amount of envy.

Some of you may say that he's wasting $20 million that could've easily gone towards charity to help a whole lot of people. To that, I say these two things:
1. That $20 million will be fed directly into the Russian infrastructure, which is teetering on the edge of collapse because of lack of money. They need it. It's a decent cause. I'd rather they get the $20 million from an American boy band member in order to rocket him into space than from some radical group who's buying excess nuclear warheads off the Russians.
2. Where do you think he got that $20 million from in the first place? You don't honestly think it rained from the sky like Skittles, do you? So if you're so indignant that he's blowing this cash, you shouldn't have given him the money in the first place by buying his group's CDs and other merchandise and buying tickets to his group's concerts.

Have I mentioned how much I love my job? They gave me beer! I'm having a blast! The big topic today: what was up with Gwyneth Paltrow's hair, makeup and outfit last night?

In other news, the hunt for an apartment resumes. I'm going to have to find myself a new roommate, since I can't really afford to live on my own. As much as I thought the single I just came from was cool, I can't afford it. So I basically need to go around looking for telltale signs of instability from potential roomies, since I can't afford to move again after the next place either.

And yes, it's official that my current roommate has emotional problems. I wasn't kidding or exaggerating for comedic effect. I found fliers in the dining room from a self-help mental therapy group -- his weekly meetings he goes to in order to "better himself." Apparently, bettering himself means getting rid of his high anxiety, feelings that events are constantly spinning out of control, depression, violent mood swings, insomnia and other assorted emotional difficulties. At least that's what the flier advertises. I don't think the self-help groups are doing the job though.

I had another blowup with the roommate this morning. It's a long story that I'd rather not get into at this particular moment, and it's also a matter of how he reacted to it that got to me. So I've decided to find another place to live.

The guy's got problems. Serious emotional problems. And I just can't deal with them anymore. Home is supposed to be a sanctuary for me, and while the apartment itself is in a great location and I love the amount of space I have and the conveniences, the stresses of living here are just too much. Thankfully, I have a bit of time and I'm not crunched as much or under as much pressure to find a place quickly as I was last time.

Ugh. I'm really not looking forward to this. Three moves (including one across the country) over the space of two months was a bit much, I was seriously hoping to be able to put down roots and not have to worry about moving again for a while. Four moves in three months is more than a bit much, but it's got to be done before I either go insane or this guy goes completely psycho on me.

...but this one just appealed to me too much not to take and post the results. Especially 'cause it's so damn true. (Link blatantly pilfered from Erin.)

You are Stupendous Man! You are simply amazing, whether you are battling your arch-nemesis Mom Lady, the nefarious Babysitter Girl, or the fiendish Annoying Girl. And you have absolutely nothing to do with mild-mannered Calvin. Take the What Calvin are You? Quiz by contessina_2000@yahoo.com!

Car insurance is going to cost me somewhere in the neighborhood of $2000 annually. You've got to be kidding me. I was paying less than half that in Boston, and the drivers there are more selfish and more stupid and more reckless and the city is in ruins.

Last night, Kat said something that my best friend had also mentioned to me before I moved out here. She said that L.A. can be a very lonely place, and that the first year out here is invariably the hardest. Making it through that first year, that's apparently the key.

I understand what she means. In Boston, I had several networks of friends. On any given free night, I had at least a handful of people that I could call up and get together with. Here, I don't know that many people at all, and, on top of that, those that I do know have their own lives with their own networks of friends that they have plans with and that I'm barging in on. It'd be unfair to them if I were to keep calling them incessantly and asking about plans every night or every weekend, not to mention that some of the people I know here are significantly older than I am and it wouldn't be the same kind of time spent together than if I were to grab a few beers with a friend.

This leads to a double-edged sword. Do I sit back and wait for them to come to me and be a little lonely sometimes, or do I pick up the phone and call and perhaps make a minor pest of myself on occasion? I hate feeling like I'm forcing myself in on other people's plans, but sometimes I just crave social interaction and I like meeting new people as well in addition to hanging out with friends who I enjoy spending time with. I also now need to factor in the fact that I've taken a rather large pay cut in order to take this job, so I can't run around spending cash by going out several times a week like I was in Boston.

I've been in Los Angeles a month now. And I've managed to keep myself busy socially so far, which is a good thing especially considering that I've only really been settled here in my own place for around 2 weeks. I'm thinking maybe it won't be as hard as I'm imagining, but there will be some times when I may have to bite the bullet and make my TV my date for the night. It's all about the gentle compromise.

Through a very gracious mutual friend back East, I was reunited last night with the lovely, talented, also very gracious and very intelligent Kat Corbett. For those of you in the L.A. area, you might follow her exploits during her airshifts on the world-famous KROQ.

Kat invited me to go with her to see Unwritten Law play at the Palace last night -- needless to say, my first L.A. show and my first time at the Palace, which is apparently kind of an institution here as far as show venues go. Unfortunately, I confused Beverly Drive and Beverly Boulevard on my way over to her place and got a little lost, though thank Jeebus I had my cell phone with me -- it's one of those times when it definitely proved its worth. Unwritten Law kicked ass and we scored backstage wristbands from a friend of hers who works with their label since she was doing the on-stage introduction. Unfortunately, the lead singer was running around the alleyway behind the Palace with a bullhorn just before they went on stage, and I was partially deafened before they even started playing because he decided to start screaming into it about three feet away from my head. We then went to a bar in Hollywood to meet up with some of her friends and ended up waiting outside because there was an issue with the list we were supposed to be on. While waiting, I experienced another first -- my first celebrity sighting. Michael Rapaport (currently in "Boston Public") was standing about five feet away trying to get in the door. Kat spotted him and pointed him out to me, he's taller in person than I would've thought.

We bailed on the bar and went to another place called "Formosa," which is apparently a landmark and has also been used in several films, including L.A. Confidential. We exchanged music philosophies and stories over several beers, then went to Canter's Deli to grab a bite to eat at 2:30AM -- the first time I've taken advantage of a 24-hour eatery in Los Angeles.

All in all, I had a kick-ass night and we both thanked our lucky stars we didn't have to get up early this morning. Unfortunately, now I have to run down to Torrance to continue the legalities of moving to California by heading to AAA to see about car insurance so I can re-register my car here and get my California plates.