(As posted on surreally dot com)

Our lovely government is issuing warnings that another terrorist attack is "impending." Again with the "we don't know where, when or how, but it's coming" kind of comments.

It's the worst kind of warning that our government could be giving us. Ever since 9/11, our country's stress level has shot through the roof to the point where we've turned against each other based simply on genetics or religious worship, forgetting that those are the same circumstances that forced a lot of our ancestors to flee here. And everyone is terrified that the next attack will take them down, so it's raising the stress even more.

What's the use of issuing a general warning? So we'll all be watching everyone else instead of ourselves? That guy in the car next to me on his cell phone -- he's probably triangulating with his terrorist buddies to coordinate an attack, y'know. That nervous looking dude in the Carl's Jr., he might have a few sticks of dynamite strapped to his chest. And hey, let's go burn down a few mosques while we're at it, since we all know that the terrorists are Muslims and probably hold meetings there, right?

In some ways, I can see how they'd want to put out a warning -- if something happens, the government can say "we told you so, look at how our intelligence is bringing us info," and if something doesn't, they can say they prevented it. If we didn't receive a warning and something happened, we'd be berating our government for its lack of ability at intelligence-gathering and homeland defense. Well, dammit, if they're getting information, why don't they put it towards stopping whatever it is that's coming our way? We can level an entire country in the Middle East, but we can't ferret out some terrorists here.

Pretty much the only thought that was successfully able to penetrate my foggy brain this morning was, "What's this? It never rains in southern California."

For the first time in the three months that I've been here (yes, it's been that long, I can't believe it either!), it hasn't rained at all. Literally. This is the first precipitation I've seen since I drove through Arkansas. I'm told it's been a bit of a dry season, but still, the fact that I can go months without seeing any kind of water-related product fall from the sky still kind of amazes me. Of course, it was done within a few hours and the sun is coming out.

The locals reacted differently to the rain. Some -- as friends of mine predicted -- were lunatics about it and probably ended up causing more traffic problems than were necessary. Others just seemed to kind of shrug their shoulders and say "eh." I was driving to work today behind a guy in an open-air Jeep, and he didn't even bother to attach the roof -- he just put on a water-repellent jacket and put up the jacket's hood.

And yes, my car's a little cleaner now.

So I went to this local dive bar tonight. It had been recommended by friends and co-workers, so I figured I'd make the suggestion to my friends for a place to go tonight and we gave it a shot. It turned out that Saturday night is one of their karaoke nights, which provided extra entertainment. However, the shock of the night came when I was glancing through the crowd, and who should I see but EMOTIONALLY DISTURBED EX-ROOMMATE!! Of all the places in Los Angeles, he shows up at the bar I went to. Thankfully, he either didn't notice me or he ignored me, and I was with friends (one of whom is a current roommate and had heard a bunch of the stories about him) so I had a good time anyways. He got up to sing a Beatles song and he absolutely sucked at it, which makes me feel better. I actually signed up to sing a song as well, but the karaoke guy didn't stay until last call and his time ran out before I could hit the stage and school Emotionally Disturbed Ex-Roommate in the way that things need to be done.

Dammit, of all the places to go on a Saturday night...

Allergies and sensitive sinuses reach more than the nasal problems, apparently. It makes my teeth incredibly sensitive because apparently my sinuses reach down a little farther than others'. The first time this happened, I ran to my dentist thinking that I had a hole in my tooth the size of China. So now I know better, especially since my dental insurance doesn't kick in for another two weeks. Either way, I couldn't chew much today. Thankfully, I was able to eat fairly non-painful food and chew my gum on the left side of my mouth.

I went out with friends tonight and had a ton of fun. I met a bunch of cool people, saw some decent bands and had some beers. However, I'm rather tired, so I'm off to bed...

You know you're starting to make your way around Los Angeles when you see a bar you went to a few weeks ago featured on "Blind Date."

I was subjected to a very loud woman at the gym today, who was having a conversation with her boyfriend while the two of them were on completely separate machines 20 feet away from each other. The majority of that conversation was made up of how much time I had left on my workout so he could take over my machine. She was so loud that even though I turned my headphones up all the way, I could still hear every single damn word she said -- and so did every other person in the vicinity, since she was getting looks from the other people in the area too. I hadn't planned on doing the five-minute cooldown, but I couldn't resist the chance to piss her off a little.

If wrestling isn't fake, then where's the blood and bruises that come from the intense beatings that these guys supposedly give each other?

Well, it's a Saturday morning, did you expect anything else from me after I've just crawled out of bed?

- One of my co-workers puts together an encyclopedia of songs catalogued by lyrical content -- meaning that if the lyrics talk about a particular subject, he'll catalogue the song by that subject. He's about to release the fifth edition. I took a look at a copy yesterday and was simply amazed at the wealth of the information that's in there. I mean, the book is HUGE. We're talking put three copies of War and Peace together and it might be as big as this book. The amount of work that must've gone in there is insane. And there literally is a listing for any topic you could possibly think of. On a whim, I counted the number of pages that contain listings for songs about sex -- 10 pages. I didn't bother counting the pages containing songs about love or angst.

- Candi posted a link to this article on the insane caloric and fat value of pizza. See, I really didn't want to read it, but I had to. Pizza is one of my absolute favorite foods, but it's one of those situations where if you don't think about it and don't know the particulars, you can still enjoy it and put it away. I mean, pizza boxes don't come with a nutritional label on them. But seeing this makes me think it'll be a while before I have pizza again. Thankfully, I seem to be in a sushi phase at the moment, and that's relatively good for me. I can't believe how many food commercials are on TV, though. It's like every single commercial break has at least one if not more commercials for some kind of fast food chain or some grocery item. We're being bombarded with all this in addition to the fact that there's a Dunkin' Donuts or Krispy Kreme on every corner opposite a McDonald's or Burger King or Carl's Jr., and the surgeon general wonders why we're tubby? It's almost impossible to escape.

When I was in college, I had a friend who was rail-thin. Literally. To the point of boniness. You should see each of his ribs, and he frequently walked around the suite without his shirt on despite our protestations, so I did see his ribs. It's not that he wasn't eating well enough. He ate everything under the sun, and everything that was horrible for him. At least four times a week, he'd have cheeseburgers. Pizza, Mexican food, Chicken McNuggets -- anything that was bad for him, he put it away. And it's not like he took two bites and was done with it. This guy was the kind of person who would go into a fast food place like Taco Bell, order $15 worth of food and eat it in one sitting. And he never exercised either. He made me so damn frustrated that he was blessed with such an incredible metabolism, and by nature, if I had even $3 worth of Taco Bell, I could see my gut get bigger because of it the next day.

The only saving grace was that he was so thin-framed that he couldn't build up any muscles. He tried -- he asked me to take him with me when I went to work out, and we went together for over a month, but he never built up any muscles. It's the only aspect that I had him beat.

The week so far, by the numbers (idea blatantly pilfered from Kacy):

Number of Simpsons episodes I've seen: 5
Number of times I went to the gym: 2 (being that it's been 2 1/2 weeks since I've been, I'm a little sore)
Number of times I've spoken in an accent other than my own normal speech: 8
Number of times I've dressed as a tiger: 0
Number of laundry loads I've done: 3
Number of times I've had sushi: 2 (3, as of tomorrow night)
Number of miles I've either walked and biked (combined, and not on an exercise machine): 18
Number of times I've referenced Freud: 1
Number of signs of the Apocalypse I've seen: 6
Number of times an argument I've been involved in has jokingly degraded into fifth-grade-level name-calling: 1
Number of offers I've had to have my palm read (by people I know, not strangers on the street): 3
Number of meals I've actually cooked myself: 4

A friend of mine e-mailed me this morning from Boston -- he's now a proud father of a boy. It's his first child. As he said, it was rather ironic that a pop culture maven such as himself should become a father around the same time that Rachel on "Friends" was giving birth as well.

I'm hearing and seeing way too much of Eminem around. I didn't like him to begin with, but it was just not pleasant to wake up to his song on my clockradio and then see his video when I flipped on MTV2 this morning. I have no idea why the boy's so angry and why he has to go around insulting all these other artists in his songs (and for that matter, I'm getting rather tired of rap artists putting out all these battle songs insulting the other person they're fighting with), and I have no idea how he got so popular.

I'm trying to decide when I'm going to go see Episode 2. It's been panned by almost all the reviews I've read, though I should probably see it on the big screen. I'll probably go Wednesday or Thursday next week to give all the fanatics a chance to see it their requisite four or five times over the weekend so maybe the theatres won't be completely crowded.

I've always thought that "Moments of Clarity" would be a good name for a band. I had mine tonight at around 1:24AM.

You know those thoughts that drift into your head right when you're about to fall asleep? The ones that either contribute to the sleep process or shock you awake? I had one of the latter. See, as part of my job, I'm responsible for posting information on our website twice a day. We set up the morning rollover to go at 1:30AM Pacific for all those early-risers on the East Coast, and we prepare the morning webpage the night before. But we instituted this new system today where the automatic rollover has to be approved -- this way, we can hold the roll on long weekends. Except I forgot to approve the morning rollover tonight before I left. And that's the thought that entered my mind as I was lying in bed and just about to fall asleep at 1:24AM.

I know now that, without traffic and including red lights and creative speed limits, it is possible to get from my home to my office in 9 minutes. And I was thankful that when I got home, the spot I parked in on the street in front of my building was still open, since parking in my neighborhood can be extremely difficult at times. Except now the adrenalin is still running through my veins and I'll probably be awake for a little while longer.

It's really odd to think that at the same time that I'm preparing to end my day and go to sleep, there's people on the East Coast waking up and preparing to start tomorrow.

My second favorite Simpsons episode was on tonight -- the Halloween one with 3-D Homer (my favorite being the Halloween episode with Homer and the time-traveling toaster). For some reason, I thought that 3-D Homer looked a lot like a grown-up Charlie Brown.

I don't read as much as I used to. I kind of miss it. I used to plow through books pretty quickly and I used to plow through a good number of them regularly. But now with the working and the socializing and the kung-fu fighting (yes, I was tempted to write "glavin" at the end of that), I don't seem to have as much time for it anymore. I started The Hobbit several months ago and I still haven't even made it halfway through it yet, which is extremely aberrant for me. At this rate, I'll finish the entire Lord of the Rings trilogy sometime around 2008.

I don't care what anyone else says about happiness being brought by money or power. Happiness is an empty laundry basket and fresh clean sheets on the bed.

What I'm about to say may shock and startle some of you, but this is not a cry for people to try to persuade me otherwise, nor is it just a call for attention. This is merely a statement of what's going through my head: I'm leaning towards not attending BlogCon 2002. There. I've said it. It's several things, actually, most of them having to do with lack of money and lack of time. I've already borrowed against vacation time I don't even have at work, and there's that pesky issue of how I'm going to pay for the trip and the hotel room and all that and how I'm actually going to make it to Las Vegas. It's not that I wouldn't want to meet my fellow bloggers, since I have to admit to being curious about what some of them are like in realtime (and yes, there are specific ones that I'm most interested in meeting, and most of them are already signed up to attend). And I would hope that there are bloggers who are as interested in meeting me in realtime (again, not a cry for comments) but I still think I'd feel a bit like a fish out of water. It's been hard enough for me over the past few months to be thrust headfirst and quite suddenly into an environment that's completely alien to me where I know precious few people, and I'd like to think that I've done pretty well for myself so far. But I'm a little tired of that kind of situation, and I'd like to remain within my own comfort zone for a little while. Time will tell on this one, though I get the feeling that I'm running out of it. It's already more than halfway through May, surprising as that was to me when I realized it earlier today after writing "March" several times on several different pieces of paper. I think the fact that it's perpetual spring/early summer here has something to do with that, it's completely wreaking havoc on my internal sense of the space-time continuum.

Lead me not into temptation, indeed. I walked into work to find three boxes of Krispy Kreme donuts sitting in the kitchen. I went to the gym last night for the first time in about 2 1/2 weeks and found that a good chunk of the weight that I lost before I got sick has mysteriously reappeared. So I have to go full-bore on the restraint now, because I really want to lose this extra poundage. I just keep having to tell myself "it's not worth, it's not worth it" over and over again. But that still doesn't make my soreness go away.

The impending death in the family reaches across the country. I got an e-mail from my father today who tells me that my old car that I left on the East Coast needs a new rear wheel assembly, and she's starting to fall apart. It's a good thing that I left her behind because she probably wouldn't have made it much past the cross-country trip, but I really liked that car. I grew very attached to her, and I'm still not feeling as much of an emotional connection to the Silver Streak that I'm driving now. I get that flash every now and then of feeling invincible, like I'm once again paired with a great machine, and together we're an unstoppable force, but it's not happening every time I get behind the wheel like it used to with my old car. I think part of it may be due to the fact that I know my old car is still out there and she's being driven by my father (who's not that a great a driver, and I feel slightly guilty about leaving her with him), and it's not like she was retired after I left her. Or maybe I'm anthropomorphizing too much.

I wish I knew why I find it so amusing that the father of Robert Englund (the guy who played Freddy Krueger) designed the U2 spy plane.

I got a forward yesterday from someone I know who is pro-Israel to almost a rabid point. The forward was about how Dick Armey said something on CNN to the effect of "Israel is for the Jews, we should work to ensure that especially since there are a lot of Arab-friendly nations around that the Palestinians can go to," and how happy the Jewish community should be that a member of the American government publicly said something like that, supporting Israeli Jews. I am not so rabid about this despite my religious and cultural background. I liken what Armey said to what might happen if the government suddenly knocked on your door, told you they were taking your house and that there was plenty of land around that you could move to that afforded a similar situation. That's not the point. The point is that it's your home and you don't want to move, and you'll fight to defend it, though here in the States you'd probably resort to legal recourse rather than guerrilla warfare. I just wish they could all find a peaceful solution to the situation, and that this whole "well, they started it so we're going to hit them back by retribution" mentality would quit.

Apparently, our lovely president was warned a month ahead of September 11th that terrorists would attempt to hijack airplanes within the U.S. According to Ari Fleischer, Moron only thought this meant "hijackings in the traditional sense and not using planes as missiles." So? Shouldn't have that been enough to upgrade security? At what point does hijacking become okay? It's okay if it's a puddle-jumper but not a 767? Our president should've forwarded that warning onto the appropriate agencies so airport security would've been upgraded enough to prevent any kind of hijacking. Instead, he was off gallavanting on his Texas ranch.

Jack Black may be a freak of nature, but he's incredibly funny.

When I was in college, I was suckered into living with this guy who was absolutely a horror to live with. Thankfully, we had separate rooms within our suite, but we came to live with him because the other people I was living with didn't want to leave him alone -- they had lived on the same hall together for 2 years and they felt kind of bad leaving him behind and we needed a 6th person for a suite anyways... not knowing any better, I said okay.

He was the kind of guy who you never took anywhere, but it was all right because he never left his room. He (literally) never showered and his hygiene was absolutely horrible, his room was an unholy mess and he had this kind of "I know more than you so I look down upon you" attitude that was absolutely irritating to the core. When we moved out and we had to clean up the suite, he filled up nine full-size garbage bags with trash from his room that he never threw out, and that was despite the fact that we intentionally put him in the smallest room so he wouldn't have much room to spread his mess. I found a minor ant infestation in my room once and traced the line of ants through the wall to his room, at which point I blew up at him and he just kind of shrugged as if to say that all those pizza boxes with scraps of food in them and dirty dishes in his room weren't the cause of anything, not even the smell. One of the reasons we kept him around was because he was a computer whiz. Plus, he always got copies of new software early somehow and he occasionally deigned to give us copies. I was working on a paper once when he offered me a copy of the brand-new Microsoft Office upgrade. Surprised, I said sure and installed the program on my machine. I had used it for a week and liked it a lot, it seemed to be working really well so I started using it exclusively for all my word processing. Then at the end of the second week, the program stopped working. The bastard had given me a demo copy. The problem was that the upgrade was so advanced that my old Word program wouldn't read the files that I had created with the new version, and I had a paper saved on my computer that I couldn't open even though it was due the next day.

So I banged on his door, because I knew he was home. He never left, except for the occasional class and animé shows that he organized on campus. When I told him what happened, he said, "Yeah, that was a demo version," to which I told him it was great of him to tell me that in advance -- his response was another shrug. When I asked him what the hell I could do because I had that paper due the next day that I couldn't open, he replied that I could buy the full version of the program, which I couldn't afford because it was almost $500 in the store. He then offered to sell me a copy of his full version, since he was on the cutting edge of technology and had the program already as well as a CD burner (which really weren't widespread at all at that time) for $50. I was stuck. I had to pay him.

I'd like to think that I got him back a little bit, since I was in charge of paying the cable bill in our suite so I slightly increased his share of the bill in order to get some of my money back. I didn't recoup the entire $50, but at least I got some of it. But it's a sad reminder of him every single time I use Microsoft Word on my computer, because I remember how I got it and who I got it from. When I save up enough to finally get myself a laptop and upgrade to Mac OS X, I also will upgrade to Office v.X so I won't have that reminder anymore.

Have I mentioned that I'm rather looking forward to the prospect of a Lakers/Celtics playoff? That would completely kick ass. The only problem for me would be deciding which team to root for. The same will happen when I go to see the Boston Red Sox play the Los Angeles Dodgers next month. In Boston, people are such diehard fans of the local boys that any dissenting opinions will result in a beating. Literally. If you dare to root for anyone other than the Celtics, Red Sox, Patriots or Bruins, you will get into a fight.

While I've been told that L.A. fans are more tolerant and less rabid, I still wonder about the safety of wearing a Red Sox hat to Dodger Stadium.