Emotionally Disturbed Roommate still hasn't returned back from his little Canadian jaunt yet. We stand at T-plus 4 days from his previously-quoted arrival. Quite odd, if you ask me, but then again, nothing he could do right now would surprise me. The only thing is that every time I hear a door slam in the apartment building next door to ours, I think he's come home and I immediately tense up.

Amy makes a very good point, for which she was inspired by Liz. She says (and pardon me for cutting & pasting, though at least I'm giving credit and link where it's due rather than just lifting the text as people have done to me in the past):

The problem with so many blogs is that they try too hard. Yes, people can go on (and on, and on) about whatever they please- be it politics, various social commentaries, etc- but it gets old and tired at a certain point if the blogger is completely talking out of his/her ass. Hoards of angry bloggers going on about issues that they don't know nearly enough about. The same news stories are always linked by the same blogs, the same subjects are always coming up. The soapbox is never free. 16 year old girls talking about how we should drop stuffed bunnies down Afghanistan instead of waging war, 30 year old man talking about how when they're president in 5 years, everything will be so much better, etc. ... I guess it just boils down to the fact that I like reading about music and drinking stories. I really like reading about music and drinking stories. I'd also rather read about a stranger's day than I would read their lop-sided opinions about the world's vast problems. There are many bloggers that take their own words as gospel. They think because they get a certain number of readers a day, that they're particularly special. But you have to wonder if the bulk of their readers are truely iinterested, or they're so infuriated with the stupidity that they can't help but read.

Personally, I like reading about music & drinking stories as much as the next person. And apparently, according to what Amy says and others seem to have discovered as well, possibly more than the next person. And yes, I do probably fall under the guilty category of ranting about politics more than I probably should. But I write what I write because I've got things to say. These are my own thoughts, and I'd be having them regardless of whether or not I had a blog. If I weren't writing them here, I'd probably be subjecting my poor co-workers to my political tirades and pop culture rants (although I suspect I do anyways). I try to keep myself informed of what's going on in the world and I'm not afraid to speak my mind, so I have opinions. And I voice them without reservation.

Yeah, it's gratifying for me to find that people come here to read what I've got to say, to comment on it and to give me some form of indication that either I caused them to gather a new insight on a topic or that they had a similar discussion prior to reading it on my blog and agreed with me. Or even for them to give me new ideas, or force me to defend my own. And on some level -- and I'll readily admit this -- it's basic vanity in that I'm pleased that people come to my site and that they actually like reading what I write.

But I write for me. I need a safety valve. I need to address these issues in some forum, be they inspired by a headline in this morning's paper or a drunk-off-my-ass moment while watching Dude, Where's My Car? I'm glad that y'all come here and listen to my insanity, but I'd be doing this anyways if you weren't here. All blogging has done is help me converse with some new people that I wouldn't have met otherwise -- people who make me laugh, make me think and sometimes make me sad. This is just in lieu of speaking to them in realtime.

I was beginning to think I'd lost my razor-sharp edge. Then today I realized that the world had just taken a hiatus from giving me fodder, even though the stuff that's now fodder isn't directly happening to me. I'm probably better off that way. If the insanity doesn't affect me personally, that's a good thing, right?

So let's dive into it. The first bone I have to pick is with this self-righteous indignant woman who wrote to the L.A. Times to ask them how they dared write about New York's Ground Zero in their travel section. How dare they imply it's a tourist attraction! It's a sacred place! Oh, the humanity! They should be discouraging people from going, not encouraging them. Now here's where I disagree. First of all, it's a good thing to pay homage to our honored dead, hence the word "honored." That's the reason we have places like Arlington National Cemetery and all those cemeteries in Boston where our Revolutionary War heroes are buried, all of which you can tour. They're among some of the more popular tourist destinations, in fact. This article was giving necessary information so that if people do decide to go pay their respects, they'll know about getting the tickets at the South Street Seaport and where the viewing platform is and all that. Second of all, I've been to Ground Zero, and I can honestly say that it's done completely tastefully. And while I'm a little put off by all the area vendors selling NYPD and NYFD paraphernalia along with photos of the World Trade towers or the New York skyline, I can justify it by saying that people buying them are expressing their solidarity and support for New York and the loss the city suffered.

What I can't approve of is the fact that according to Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta, the new "Transportation Security Administration" (or TSA for short), which was created post-9/11 to prevent these kinds of things from happening again, is going to need a budget of $6 billion and a workforce surpassing that of the FBI, DEA and Border Patrol combined. Hello? People, are you nuts? This is just another example of our administration using its 20/20 hindsight and not thinking ahead at all. Yes, there's still a threat from airplanes, but that's not the only way that terrorists can attack us! Unless you do an across-the-board increase in manpower and funding for all of these agencies, the Border Patrol won't be able to catch terrorists as they come into our country and the FBI won't be able to track them down once they're already within our borders and buying explosives. Doesn't anyone remember when Timothy McVeigh blew up a federal building in Oklahoma City using a rental van and some fertilizer? Are you seeing all these terrorists in the Middle East using car bombs and suicide bombers to wreak havoc in Israel? A fat lot of good this new TSA will do when terrorists start adopting these tactics Stateside. Just because this first terrorist attack came from the air doesn't mean that all the other ones will do. If you plug one hole in the leak, the pressure will build until another one forms. It's great that you're making our planes safe, guys, but what about the rest of the country that's actually down on the ground?

Lastly, the violence itself. Another article in this morning's L.A. Times talks about how people are getting upset over the violent content of videogames and how they're encouraging youngsters to commit wanton acts of violence. Personally, I think this is another example of parents and pundits shoving the blame off themselves and putting it on the entertainment industry again. These games have rating systems, enforce them! Don't let 10-year-olds buy Grand Theft Auto 3, since it's rated Mature. Talk to your kids and make them realize the difference between what happens on a video game rather than in real life. Because otherwise, how far can we go with this? Yeah, there's violent movies out there and they're rated R, but kids are seeing them anyways and imitating them, so let's ban every violent thing on TV or in movies and sell the whole entertainment industry to Disney! Folks, I've been watching violent movies since my parents took me to see Die Hard when I was 10, but they also instilled in me the knowledge that it was only a movie as well as the ethics of right and wrong. After seeing it, I wasn't running around my school, yelling out "yippee kai-yay, motherfucker!" and shooting them with a pretend assault rifle. I leave it to the parents -- if you don't want your kids playing these games, discipline them to the point where they're not and make sure that these games are not in your home. Otherwise, sit down, be quiet and quit ruining the fun for the rest of us who can play these games and realize that it's just a stupid machine.

I feel better now. Don't you?

Today was definitely Klutz Day. My bike chain broke while I was doing errands today, so I had to walk 3 miles back to my apartment with bike trailing beside me. I also had to spend almost fifteen minutes scrubbing chain grease off my hands. Then I came home to make dinner and ended up dropping the potato I was cooking on the floor, along with a couple of utensils during the cooking process as well.

Thankfully, I'm not as much of a klutz -- or a moron, for that matter -- as Daniel Carson Lewis. Last October, the inestimatable Señor Lewis shot the trans-Alaskan oil pipeline with a .338-caliber rifle. I have no idea why he did this. However, I do know that not only did 286,000 gallons of oil spill all over the Alaskan frontier, but the cost of the entire cleanup operation ran about $20 million. Who's paying the bill? We are. There's a reason why the local gas prices have shot up to almost $1.70 per gallon. Between idiot things like this spill and our lovely activities in the Middle East, OPEC nations are holding us hostage with our oil. And Lord knows that the Great White Satan wouldn't ever look for alternative fuels. I know it's going to cost money to actually develop and manufacture a car that runs on something other than oil and gasoline, but isn't it a little worth it for us to not be dependent on other nations' exports? You'd think that since the car companies have such a lock on the government, they'd be interested in developing an automobile that frees us from our Arab nation oil dependence in order to hail themselves as helping American interests, especially given our country's recent anti-Arabic mentality.

Speaking of anti-Arabic mentality, let's move onto the situation in Israel. Needless to say that being Jewish, my wishes for a Jewish state are pretty solid. I'm all for peace in the Middle East. Can't we all just get along? Apparently not, since Israeli troops are running amuck in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, blowing the hell out of anything Palestinian. The problem is -- which was illuminated to me by a column in today's Los Angeles Times -- that the Israelis are using rather Gestapo-like tactics to run in and root out the Palestinians. Have they forgotten so quickly about how they were rooted out in Europe not even 60 years ago? They may not be putting the Palestinians in concentration camps, but they're still hunting them down, destroying their homes and killing them. Except they're using high-powered explosives rather than ovens. I'm not so pleased. Apparently, the Israelis have a bit of a selective memory.

Top five all-time desert island movie scenes that never fail to inspire me or make the shivers run down my spine (in no particular order):

1. The end scene in The Natural when Hobbs is rounding the bases as the shower of sparks comes down on the field.

2. The scene when Kirk and Company break the Enterprise out of Spacedock completely against orders in Star Trek III.

3. The end scene in The Hunt For Red October when Jack Ryan welcomes Captain Marko Ramius to the "New World."

4. The end scene in The Shawshank Redemption when the two old friends finally meet up in Mexico.

5. The scene in Remember the Titans during football camp when Julius and Bertier finally put their differences aside to bring the team together.

Everything today came back to cars. It started when I went down to Lenscrafters to get new lenses for my glasses. I had noticed while I was driving a while back that I was having some trouble reading street signs because they were small and I needed to be able to read them farther away than I was able to see them, especially since I was running around a brand-new city. So I biked down to a local Lenscrafters and on my way, I saw a license plate that made my day. It said "4NICK8." I have no idea how that made it past the California license plat censors, but it did.

The hour I spent wandering around the Westside Pavilion while waiting for my new lenses was one of the disconcerting hours I've had in a very long time. It's been a while since I realized just how much of an integral part of my life that my glasses are, and how I'd taken them for granted. I couldn't see a damned thing. And it scared me. Thankfully, I can see again. And I tried the new lenses out on the road. I drove up to Malibu to see some family friends' new condo, and it turns out that my New England driving habits aren't out of my system as I previously suspected after all. I still drive with a lead foot. The odd thing is that I remember when I was a freshman in college, the guy who lived next door from me was from L.A. and he kept saying how the people on the freeways zoomed along at around 75 or 80 miles an hour. Having had my license for only a year and a half at that point and also having never been anywhere west of Chicago at the time, I thought I'd be terribly intimidated if I ever had to drive in L.A. Now I'm probably contributing to the intimidating.

On my way back from Malibu, I stopped off at a grocery store to pick up some essentials, and while I was there, I thought I'd buy a bottle of something to get me a little silly. Except it made me look silly, not act silly. The California DMV took my Massachusetts license when I got my new California ID, but the stupid temporary printout they gave me doesn't have my picture on it. So I have no picture ID until I get my new license in the mail. And the guy at the register carded me, then told me since I didn't have a picture ID, he couldn't sell me the bottle. Argh.

Did everyone remember to change their clocks? Even the ones in their cars? I told you this all came back in some way, shape or form to cars.

My Los Angeles Times didn't show up this morning. Again. That's twice in the space of one week. So either someone in the building is pilfering it, which isn't cool, or the delivery person is an idiot. Either way, I have to take my unshaven and unwashed heathen self to the grocery store down the block because I'm out of milk, so I'll pick one up there.

It's not that I'm upset about the fact that the paper's missing. Well, I am, but that's another point. It's that I've always felt that my morning routine isn't complete without breakfast and the paper. It's kind of a comfort in that I can catch up with what's going on in the world on my own terms while I eat. It's not being fed to me via a flashy morning news show with idiot anchors, it's news I can take in at my own speed and it's something to help gradually bring me back from the land of the consciousness-impaired.

I once saw an episode of "The Simpsons" where Homer designed a car that had a horn that played "La Cucaracha." I thought it was damn funny because it was so tacky and moronic that no one would actually get one in real life. I've been proven wrong by the masses once again. Someone who lives in the apartment building down the street has a car horn that plays that song, I hear it at least once a day. My question is: are you so proud of that stupid horn that you feel you have to play it daily? Car horns are meant to alert other drivers that they're doing something rude or stupid or dangerous, not to entertain yourself as you're driving down the street. I can think of a ton of other things that this person could've gotten that would've been money much better spent rather than this stupid-ass novelty horn.

Emotionally Disturbed Roommate still hasn't arrived back from his little vacation to Montreal. I sent him an e-mail today telling him I was moving out because I wanted a time/date stamp on my notification, that way I could tell him I wanted part of my deposit back. If he complains that I didn't call him, I'll merely say that I had no desire to put an international call on my phone bill, and tough crap. I only have to live with him for 2 more weeks. The wheels are in motion, I called the movers today & made arrangements.

I went out for a low-key night with one of my co-workers for dinner and a movie. We saw Kissing Jessica Stein, which turned out to be a really funny & well-made film. It may have helped that we are also both Jewish and very familiar with the New York area, as well as the people who live there. But I still recommend it. We also saw Big Trouble a while back at a preview, which we both thoroughly enjoyed as well -- if you liked Get Shorty, you'll like Big Trouble.

Did you know that a killer asteroid is headed for Earth? Lucky for us, it's not going to hit us for another 880 years. We'll need to freeze Bruce Willis so we can thaw him out and send him up there when the time is right. But I -- well, I'm not exactly sure how I feel about the flippant attitude of the JPL guy who basically said, "By then, we should have the technology to take care of it. I'm not worried." Okay, well, thanks for the "eh, let's worry about it later" attitude. Should I take this opportunity to remind you that the universe is a pretty big place and we can only scan about... oh... 5% of the heavens? There's tons of crap out there that we just don't have the time, manpower or technology to sift through! There could be thousands of planet-killers only a few years away and we'll never know about them! But let's not worry about that and let's not come up with any contingency plans because we don't need them now, let's put it off until we really do need them and we only have a month or two to take care of it. Besides, what happened when our country faced the previously-unknown threat of terrorism? What did our All-Knowing Administration do? That's right -- they went to Hollywood and asked film directors what to do! So, since we've already had not one, but two films already made about this scenario, we don't need to think any more about it. Problem solved.

Who needs a drink? In fact, who needs several drinks?

Will someone please tell me what the people over at Fortune magazine are smoking -- I think I might like some. For some God-knows-why reason, the brilliant minds over there have named Enron as #5 on their Fortune 500 list of the most successful corporations. Fortune may be going by revenues to generate these lists, but I think the fact that there was some shady accounting covering up billions in debt that caused the company to implode would kind of negate these so-called revenues, wouldn't you think? This shady accounting has been pounded into our heads, I think even the Fortune magazine people might've heard of it -- I mean, they are in New York, after all, it's not like they're living somewhere north of the Arctic Circle.

Next thing you know, they'll be telling us that the most successful car ever was the Ford Pinto or the AMC Gremlin, since years later people are still talking about them.

I don't think I could handle being a famous rockstar or movie actor. Here's why:

Rockstar: I honestly believe I'd get bored performing the same songs over and over and over again like 300 nights a year. Plus, you don't get to see much of the cities you're performing in because it's basically get in, sound check, eat, perform, party, go to sleep, wake up, eat, leave town and move onto the next city for that night's performance. And I like a quasi-routine. I like knowing it's Tuesday and Fox is showing a TV show that I like, and I can go home after work to watch TV or go out with friends if I want. Being on the road just seems kind of like a lonely life.

Movie actor: While outtakes always make it look like it's intense amounts of fun to make a film, you're under a lot of pressure to get things right. In the deleted scenes section of Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back, Kevin Smith talks about how much money was wasted because Ben Affleck likes to ad-lib and make stuff up and it blows the scene so they have to reshoot it which takes time and money. Plus, it gets monotonous to do the same scene over and over again exactly the same way in order to get the multiple camera angles.

I work less than a block away from the Herbalife building in Century City. Herbalife makes a diet drug much like Metabolife. And in this morning's Los Angeles Times, there was an article about a woman who had a stroke from an ephedra-based diet drug and is suing the company that made the product she used.

I used to take Metabolife. It was great in the beginning -- I lost 5 pounds in a week, I was hardly eating, I had the energy to exercise all the time and I felt great. I was sleeping less and I thought it was an added bonus of being in shape.

Then I started to notice the side-effects. I started getting heartburn. I got the shakes -- often. I had problems concentrating. I wasn't sleeping to the point of insomnia. I became short with people, and my temper got to the point where I was irritable all the time. Once I started to notice all this, I stopped taking the pills.

I'd lost 10 pounds in 2 weeks. My co-workers commented that I looked "lean," which was a great compliment because I'd never felt anywhere near "lean" my entire life, but at what cost? You'd think I'd have learned my lesson, but a year later I started taking them again. I figured I could take a smaller dosage, but then I started to notice the same side-effects starting to surface and I stopped again. It gets to a point where it's just not worth it.

They're not getting a cat, I got the place I wanted!!!! I'm moving in a little over 2 weeks!!! Things are seriously going my way now!! And I need one more sentence to bring the declining exclamation point down to one!

Top five all-time desert island games I miss from my childhood that I used to love to play (in no particular order):

1. Red Rover Red Rover
2. TV Freeze Tag
3. Dodgeball
4. Gaga
5. Badminton

Okay, so I know badminton is also played by adults. But I haven't played it in years.

I know right now some of you are scratching your heads and saying, "Gaga? What the hell is that?" Gaga was a great game we used to play at camp that was kind of a fusion of Dodgeball, Kill The Guy With The Ball and soccer (kind of). We even had "Coed Naked Gaga" t-shirts printed up. If you are ever in charge of a large group of kids, like at camp, and need something to do with them, Gaga will win them over. We'd set up this huge arena lined with either benches or gymnastics pads to line the walls. Then we'd all get in the playing zone with a volleyball or two and start playing. The rules are as such:
- You can only hit the ball with your arms or hands.
- The ball has to stay on the ground. Hence, you have to play kind of stooped over, which I guess is why adults don't play the game because we all have back problems. Plus, we're a little more squeamish about bruised knuckles and fingers. But kids don't care.
- You can only hit the ball once before someone else hits it. If you hit it twice, you're out. The only exception to this rule is if you hit the ball off the wall, you can hit it again.
- If the ball hits you below the waist, you're out. Even if you hit it yourself and accidentally brush against it, or if you hit it against the wall and nail yourself, you're still out.
- Last person in the arena wins.

I also remember this game where everyone had a number and stood in a circle, then the person in the middle threw the ball up in the air and yelled out a number as everyone else ran away. The person whose number was called had to run and catch the ball and as soon as they got it, they'd yell "Freeze!" Everyone would stop, the person holding the ball would be allowed to take three steps in any direction and then the ballholder would have to chuck the ball at someone. If they missed, the person who chucked the ball was out and the person who they threw the ball at would get to throw the ball in the air for the next round. If they hit someone, the person nailed by the ball would be out and the person who threw the ball at them would get to throw the ball up in the air for the next round. Make sense?

It's not that I'm a whiner or a complainer -- at least I try not to be. It's not that I'm a perfectionist -- but who could be faulted for waiting everything to go well in their lives? But I'm just not one of those people who can concentrate on the positive and forget the negative, which makes me feel bad because I really don't want to seem like a whiner or a complainer. But I guess I let things get to me a little much sometimes, and there are just sometimes when I want to vent.

This whole finding-a-place-to-live thing is not worth the worry that I'm putting into it. At least I have a place to live and more than enough food to eat, rather than sleeping in an alley somewhere and hoping that my stomach growling doesn't keep me up at night.

My father tells me to have patience, a virtue that I've always had problems with. I'm an instant gratification kind of person, since waiting for things only makes me crazy. My mother used to drag things out for me until I finally told her that I was not like her, anticipation only made me angry rather than more excited about the event to come. I don't like surprises or waiting for big announcements, I just want to know. Again, she couldn't understand that. I suppose that's why she still takes showers at night. Waiting just gives me a chance to worry and make myself nuts over something.

So I wait, because I don't have any other options, even though it's driving me up a wall. And tomorrow, I will hear back from the two guys I want to move in with. If it doesn't work out and they take the other guy so they can get a cat, then I just muddle through for a while with Emotionally Disturbed Roommate and I withdraw into my room whenever I'm home.

I just heard back from the apartment guys. One of the guys has a girlfriend whose cat is having kittens, and they were thinking about taking one. I'm allergic to cats. Very allergic to cats. Which could explain why I start to sneeze when I go into our garage or stand around my car, since I've noticed pawprints on the hood and windshield.

Either way, I really hope this isn't a deciding factor for them. I had a really good feeling about these guys and this place, and they told me that I'm one of their top two choices so I hope this doesn't sway them in the other direction. I had wanted to be able to tell Emotionally Disturbed Roommate tomorrow that I was moving out to this new place, but I guess I'm going to have to wait a while longer and hope he doesn't kill me in my sleep.

Pardon me while I go bang my head against the wall and start screaming in frustration. Did I mention I'm not looking forward to his arrival back tomorrow?