Life is good when the distance between you and one of your long-time best friends is suddenly reduced from 3000 miles to 2 miles. It's no longer a matter of keeping up via infrequent e-mails and phone calls, you can actually do stuff together, call each other on the spur of the moment without worrying about time differences and make plans to get together seriously and not jokingly. We've never fought, we've never gotten angry with each other, we always have a good time together and we always laugh a lot when we talk.

Conversation turned tonight to the fact that we both seem to go for members of the opposite sex that we can't have. She is just getting over a long-term relationship with a guy who kind of wasn't right for her but whom she fell hard for, and me... well, I have this tendency to go for women who are either already attached or completely uninterested or out of my reach. And of course, whenever I'm around those women I'm attracted to, I get a little self-conscious so I probably come off sounding like a moron, which does me no good at all. I firmly believe that the line in High Fidelity is true: "You've got to punch your weight." So I've thrown The Tao of Steve in the DVD player to help me learn the ways of the master, at least until my health insurance kicks in and I can attempt to convince them that they should pay for liposuction for me. (Just kidding. At least on the liposuction part. I really am watching the film.)

I'm finding more and more than this town is all about who you know. When I needed some additional information for something I was writing for this week's issue, I went to my co-worker who originally forwarded me the piece. When he said he didn't know anything more, he told me "let's find out," pulled out his cell phone and called the regional head of a huge nationwide company, introduced me and then handed me the phone. I don't know what made me more dumbfounded -- the fact that he could so casually call this guy, or the fact that he trusted me enough to just introduce me and hand me the phone to speak to this executive.

The sprinklers are turning on outside my window, which means that it's officially the middle of the night and I should get to sleep.

I'm beginning to think that the people who tell us that eating right is the key to living a healthy life haven't got the whole picture. On a whim, I took a look at the ingredients of the Sweet-n-Low and the non-dairy creamer I just used to enhance my coffee, and I can honestly say that I don't think I've seen those words anywhere in the English language before. I'm running a regular chemistry experiment inside this little Styrofoam cup, and who knows what havoc it's wreaking on my system? Twenty years from now, we'll probably discover that melanoma wasn't caused by the depleting ozone layer, it was caused by non-dairy creamer.

The "justify your existence" e-mail came down from management today at work to everyone in my department, and while I was told that my place is secure and it's just the CFO wanting to know what we do, it still didn't stop that cold feeling from swelling outwards from the pit in my stomach to the tips of my fingers and toes. What better way to start the week, no? And we got the e-mail barely an hour after I put in my vacation requests with my boss for later on this year, not that I'm not entitled to vacation, but I really don't want to rock the boat at all.

On the other hand, I'd like to think I'm proving my worth to them -- I took on some additional duties while one of my co-workers is gone on vacation this week, and I'm told that I did a good job today on it.

I tried to watch "The Osbournes" last night. I really did. I sat down with one of my roommates and his girlfriend and we began the episode that he had TiVod. And it's not that I'm not a fan of Ozzy, I like his music and I think that he had a real impact on rock. In a High Fidelity-esque discussion with some friends, I nominated "See You On The Other Side" as the top song I'd want played at my funeral. But I just couldn't stand the program. His kids are complete brats, he has the brainpower of a self-licking toad, and it's just plain not entertaining to me. If people think this is reality TV, then I wonder what reality people are living in.

In honor of my own mother, who is 3000 miles away and, for the first time in many years, will not even be in the same time zone as her son on Mother's Day, I decided to reprint this. The story behind the rest of the present is as such:

When I was a little boy, my mom used to read me this book called Puddleduck. The subject matter is irrelevant, but Mom loved this book. As I grew older and started to learn how to read, I began reading the book to her rather than the other way around. (Mom likes being read to when she goes to bed, I still occasionally do it when I'm back at their house, the good son that I am.) Either way, somewhere along the way, Mom gave Puddleduck away, but came to realize a few years later that she wished she hadn't. She mentioned it more and more frequently, but unfortunately for all the research I did, I kept finding out that the book was out of print and no one had it. So for her 50th birthday, I called in a favor. One of my best friends (the one who's actually here in L.A.) was doing an internship in Washington, D.C. with her congressional representative, and therefore had access to the Library of Congress. I found out the ISBN number for Puddleduck, asked her to track down the Library of Congress' copy (since they have everything) and made a photocopy of the book's pages. She managed to find the book, copied it and sent it back to me, which I took to be bound so I could present it to my mom for her 50th birthday. But I added a foreward at the front of the book, and she seemed to think that had just as much if not more impact as the actual book itself. Here's what I wrote: 11/12/1997
Once in a great while, someone comes along that touches the lives of many. Someone who, in their infinite kindness, patience, and caring, makes it a lot easier for the rest of us to make our journeys through this world. I am lucky enough to be able to call this one "Mom."

For almost 21 years, you have raised me with all the loving in the world, and have shaped me into the person I am today. You say on countless occasions how proud of me you are, and how it makes you happy to hear others speak of me with fond memories. However, you must realize that every one of these compliments is not directed at me, but towards you in recognition of the wonderful job you have done in molding me into the person I have become.

On this, your 50th birthday, reflect back upon not just the past 21 years, but also the rest of your life and realize how many other people you have touched. Your presence has been a steadying hand of reason and help to guide us, a laugh to lighten the moment, and a cradle of support.

I hope to give back some of what you have given me through this present, in acknowledgement and grateful thanks for the years of your life that you have invested in me. I love you very much, and wish you nothing but the best for your next 50 years.

Five years later, the sentiment still holds as true as ever. Happy Mother's Day, Mom. I love you.

I started the new round last night and will finish it today. But I woke up to a bunch of e-mails in my inbox saying that they had never heard back from their Blogger Insider partners, and that it wasn't the first time this had happened, so they were giving serious thought to quitting the program. Honestly, with this kind of participation, I'm giving serious thought to shutting the whole damn thing down. If people aren't going to participate in it, why did they sign up? If they didn't want to do it anymore, the nice thing to do would be to let me know so they're not screwing me over and they're not screwing their partners over. This is a people-intensive program -- you kind of need to participate in order for it all to work.

I think the thing that makes me more fed up than anything is the fact that people are writing me to tell me they're dropping out because they never hear back from any of their partners. This was supposed to be a fun program, but when people just sign up and then don't do anything with it, it doesn't make it fun for anyone involved. And if it's not fun for anyone, why should I keep putting in all this work to keep it going?

We'll see if I run another round after this one finishes.

I ran across this list of "The Top 100 Things I'd Do If I Ever Became An Evil Overlord." The author definitely had too much time on his hands, but at least he did something pretty creative and humorous with it. We need to seriously start some government-funded programs for people who can't do that when they have too much time on their hands, otherwise they go around trying to make national smiley faces with pipebombs.

Over drinks tonight, I was talking with friends about how the spread of technology really has affected civilization, and that I think the emphasis on certain kinds of technology has definitely skewed our pressures away from necessities. Case in point: last winter, when I was in Mexico, we took a daytrip to Chichen-Itza to see the Mayan ruins. On the way there, we passed through some really rundown villages -- I'm talking no running water, chickens running all over the place, tiny thatched-roof huts, the usual thing you see in movies when the characters go through this itty bitty villages in the middle of nowhere. Except these little villages in Mexico had a small difference in that outside of several of these tiny thatched-roof huts without running water but with running chickens, satellite dishes were mounted.

There's been a lot of furor going around regarding this post. I don't think I want to comment on its particular subject matter.

I thank my lucky stars every day that I was born into an environment that I am, because it completely shaped who I am and I rather like my personality. I make no qualms nor do I try to cover up the fact that I am open-minded, I attempt to be as tolerant as possible and I am liberal. In my eyes, people are all okay until they open their mouths and can be judged. Skin color, religion, sexual orientation, lineage -- it's all good, it just matters what's between their ears.

The conflict in my mind, then, is if I'm purporting myself to be open-minded and tolerant, then how can I disapprove of closed-minded and discriminatory people? How can I look down on them and tell them they're being inferior, they're being judgmental when they don't have that right, they're not worthy to tell others they're wrong when I'm doing the same thing to them?

I may (and do) think that Howard Stern is the Antichrist of Radio and I wish he'd quit already and take all of his imitators with him, but I still recognize his right to be on the air and entertain the masses. So how come when someone says they think that being gay is wrong or abortion is murder or I'm going to hell because I'm not Christian, why do I immediately think that they're wrong and shouldn't be allowed to tell me what they're telling me?

Yes, I'm drunk. Yes, I had a kick-ass night. We went out to a local bar and I drank a decent amount while ogling the scenery. Life is just damn good.

As I told my roommate tonight, it seems like I just walked into town and someone handed me all the keys. Between work, my friends and and my roommates, I'm hooked up. The only unfortunate thing is my tendency to put my foot in my mouth so I might've goofed up at work today while I was still hazy from sleep.

Either way, tomorrow promises to be a good day, as does most days after that. As Grand Theft Audio said, "I get the feeling it's a new day, sun is rising/I get the feeling everything is gonna change." Everything is changing and I'm loving the fact that I'm on my own two feet here in Los Angeles, living a totally new life on my own terms and doing something that I enjoy. Life is gooooood. Pardon me while I gloat some more.

The fog in the mornings is taking longer and longer to lift. This is a bad thing. I'm beginning to debate the merits of coffee every morning, not just Mondays and Tuesdays, but today I've settled for Diet Coke to give me my shot of caffeine. One of my co-workers described my hours as "swing-shift," which I can understand, and she said that it's one of the hardest shifts to do, which I'm glad that she thinks that even though I think that coming in late (or what I consider to be late) three days a week is a luxury. For some reason, I just believe there's a biological tendency for some people to be morning people and some people to be night people, and as much as I go to sleep early (or at least try to), I'm still a night person. It doesn't really matter how much sleep I get, it matters what time I wake up. If I sleep 7 hours from midnight to 7AM, I still will feel groggy, while if I sleep the same 7 hours from 4AM to 11AM, I'll wake up feeling fine and ready to go.

My roommate is dispelling my myths of actors being nice people. Apparently, Ben Stiller is quite the screamer and is known as one of the worst people to work for in the industry. Ed Norton isn't much better, so working together on Keeping the Faith was a rather explosive situation for them. So far, the only person who both the roommates have agreed is a cool guy is George Clooney, which means that he's not acting once he gets off the screen as well since he generates that feeling that he'd be a cool person to hang out with and have a beer on a Saturday night. The other roommate grew up with George Clooney as a next-door neighbor, so I guess he knows this first-hand.

Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you:

- The Leonard Nimoy Should Eat More Salsa Foundation
- The World Mouse-Clicking Competition
- Sushi Fortune Telling
- Ten Haiku for Crispin Glover
- The Flat Earth FAQ (he also claims that Idaho does not exist and is on maps because of a conspiracy by cartographers)

With stuff like this, why leave home?

I was stuck behind Zippy the Wonder Driver this morning on Santa Monica Boulevard on my way to work. Somehow, this person managed to take up both eastbound lanes without noticing the traffic building up behind him as he trucked along at somewhere between 20 and 25 miles an hour. I don't think a cell phone was involved. I can only imagine the chemicals needed to make this activity passable in the driver's mind. Maybe he thought he had been sucked into Frogger.

I walked the two miles from my apartment down to Best Buy tonight to pick up some CD-Rs and CD-RWs. Arrrr, much pirating to be done, mateys. Despite my best efforts to convince myself that the store really was open until 10, my best efforts didn't convince the store of this and they closed at 9PM -- 10 minutes before I got there.

Plans for my summer camp 10 year reunion seem to be solidfying and I spent a good deal of my trip back from Best Buy trying to figure out the logistics of a whirlwind East Coast trip that would encompass the reunion, seeing my parents and visiting a couple of friends in Boston all over the course of 6 days, including flight time. I have to admit to being a little apprehensive about the whole deal. I haven't seen most of these people in 10 years. I don't know what they'll remember of me, how they'll perceive me now and whether or not this whole deal is even worth it. Part of me is screaming to go, especially since I'm in a position in life where I can be happy about it and feel satisfied that I'm one of those people who's "made it" on his own terms and I'm secure in who I am now after all these years. Part of me is telling me I should just write it off as another time in my life when I was a completely different person and I should just forget about it. I think perhaps the weirdest thing will be rolling in there behind the wheel of my own (rented) car, facing that place as an adult and seeing how I react to it in this state of mind and maturity rather than that of a pre-teen/teen's.

Laundry beckons. I need something to wear to work tomorrow besides jeans. I'm trying to look moderately respectable, y'know.

I've never been what people might call a "shiny, happy person." I mean, I'm relatively good-natured (except when people piss me off) and I think I'm pretty happy, but I'm not someone who believes in Forces Beyond Our Perception. Higher beings, miracles, karma, feng shui, chi, positive energies, auras, whatever you want to call it. I consider myself a pretty grounded kind of guy. There may be a fair amount of things that I don't understand about the world and the way things work, but I feel that until I know that mildly scientific proof of something exists, it'll be pretty hard to argue its existence and power to me.

Which leads me to these conclusions:
- People need to get angry every once in a while. Occasionally, really angry. It's a completely natural thing and shouldn't be feared, but rather welcomed as a release of tension.
- People who don't get angry and who run around singing Celine Dion songs and preaching to me about how I should love everyone and everything and never get mad make me angry.
- Therefore, those shiny, happy people might be transferring their anger onto others, causing other people strife while they're preaching love and tolerance and peace.
- Therefore, those shiny, happy people are hypocrites for preaching lack of anger and yet causing it.
- Therefore, let's form an angry mob and show them the consequences of what they do and see if maybe they get angry! Yeah! Git 'em! Then on to the self-righteous people, yeah!

And let me tell you: the first stop my Morals Squad is going to make is at the offices of Dr. Laura Schlessinger. Off with 'er head!

A story came out today about how eight Los Angeles-area high schools are denying seniors the right to walk across the stage during graduation to receive their diplomas if they don't specify their future post-secondary education or training (that includes college, community college, and the military). Let's talk about how much I object to this, shall we?

First of all, those kids earned the right to walk across that stage. Whatever plans they have post-graduation is none of the school's business. There's no law that states that they have to do anything after they leave high school, and there's no ruling that they can enforce to keep those kids from being recognized at their own graduation. To try to dictate to these kids that they have to have some kind of plans in order to be included in their own graduation reaches far beyond the limits of the school's jurisdiction. If they're trying to entice the students to form some post-high school plans, this is not the way to do it. That is their event, not the school's to control.

A student interviewed for the article said that a lot of students will probably lie about their college plans. Personally, I think it's none of the school's business what these students do after they walk out that door. If it were me, I'd tell the school to mind theirs when they asked me what I was doing after graduation, and if I was being denied the right to walk across that stage, I would get up in the middle of the graduation ceremony and walk across the stage myself just to prove the point that it was my right to take part, and maybe to show the parents what kind of megalomaniacs their school administrators are.

I think it'll take a while before I understand the ways of the natives. I witnessed a woman ordering her lunch at Subway today, and she purchased a sandwich that contained salami and cheese, asked for oil to be added to it, but turned down the mayonnaise not because it was repellent to include mayo in this combination but because it was "too fattening." Explain to me how she could rationalize that when eating one of the fattiest meats available at Subway with cheese and oil -- which is about 100% fat?

I went out for a long walk tonight, since I was feeling a bit guilty about the half a donut that I had today and I wasn't going to go to the gym because I was afraid that I'd start hacking up a lung while in the midst of some form of exercise. So I went exploring.

A few random turns set me down in the heart of Brentwood, where I was marvelling at the beautiful houses -- all of which probably cost well over three-quarters of a million dollars if not more than a million. Just gorgeous, really. And I'm walking down this street and I spot this absolutely wonderful house only a block away from the über-elite Brentwood Country Club. This house is awesome. Tall, grand, with columns, beautiful huge windows which look in on exceptionally decorated rooms, overall an extremely impressive house -- with a bright, bright orange Ford Pinto sitting in the driveway.

I'm really lucky that the house's occupants didn't seem to be home, because otherwise my laughing probably would've brought them running outside to see what the hell all that noise outside their home was about.