This morning's just not going well at all. My alarm woke me almost an hour late -- I don't remember hitting the snooze button at all, which is very scary in and of itself. I managed somehow to shave, shower, get dressed and get out in under 20 minutes, so I was only 5 minutes late to work this morning. The lack of sleep (I couldn't fall asleep last night for some unknown reason, was up until almost 2AM) combined with that cup of coffee I downed this morning made for an interesting matchup in my system. My brain was kind of fogged to the point where I couldn't even form a coherent sentence when speaking with a co-worker this morning, yet I was physically wired to the point where I felt like Beavis after he'd had a few too many cans of Coke.

Let's see what this afternoon has in store, shall we?

While we're on the topic of music and I'm once again being a little insomniac...

Last Sunday night at around 1AM, conversation during the trip back from Coachella somehow turned to what music works well for making out. I nominated Hooverphonic, Portishead, selected Garbage remixes (namely the Full Siren Mix of "Milk"), Poe, selected Meredith Brooks tracks (namely "What Would Happen"), Nikka Costa, selected Primitive Radio Gods tracks (namely "Fading Out"), various tracks from The Beach soundtrack and selected Sneaker Pimps remixes (especially the Umbrellas of Ladywell remix of "6 Underground"). All in all, a fairly trip-hop intensive selection -- basically, a lot of what I like to listen to when it's late at night and I'm feeling mellow. My friend added Sarah McLachlan, Enya, the "Pure Moods" CD, selected BT and Moby tracks, and some old school standards including Marvin Gaye and Barry White. She cracked up when I told her about someone we knew in college who liked to have sex to the Mighty Mighty Bosstones and Ben Folds Five, which is something I'll never understand.

So what do you get your groove on to? Have any of your friends ever confessed they ever listen to some really odd stuff while they make out with their significant others or even during random hookups?

I'm starting to get pissed off with a fair amount of people on the Blogger Insider membership list. Too many people just sign up and then never respond to when their partners send them questions -- I get around 25 e-mails each round from people who say that they never heard back from their partners, or people e-mail me at the end of the round to tell me they're not going to do it anymore when it might be nice to hear at the beginning of a round so I might be able to re-assign their now-partnerless partners. Some participants tell me that their partners tell them they aren't participating anymore -- nice of them to tell me, y'know?

Look, people: if you signed up, participate. I don't mind if you drop out, just let me know ASAP and at least let me know period, because it's really not cool of you just to let it slide without letting me know. I put a decent amount of effort into running this program, don't screw it over for everyone else.

Forces of Nature are being tampered with. Scientists are playing God. Is there no end in sight? Not when Sara Lee is introducing crustless bread. I've never understood why people don't like crusts -- personally, I do. But there are some who want their crusts cut off and there are some people who grew up without crusts because Mom always used to remove them pre-eating.

In what can only be called a big transgression over the line of Church and State, a Florida mayor has banned Satan from her town. As if a proclamation would get the little minions to clear out. Hell, lawyers' cease & desist notices probably wouldn't do much good either, and even a Congressional subpoena's effectiveness is debatable. But the thing is, she invoked Jesus' name a few times in this proclamation, the good Pentecostal that she is, but doesn't think she was doing anything wrong because she wasn't "establishing" a religion. So where does that leave all the rest of us who don't believe in Jesus? Are we to be run out of town attached to a burning stake? Not to rail against Catholics, but I've come to believe that they can be some of the pushiest people around. It's always a matter of "we're doing what's right and we're trying to save you from an afterlife of eternal damnation." Well, what if you're wrong, what if I'd enjoy an afterlife of eternal damnation, and how would you feel if I followed you around yelling at you all the time about how you're going to Hell and you need to repent your ways? I don't bother you, you don't bother me. That's the way it goes. Just leave me alone and in the end, the balance sheet'll work itself out.

Family issues that I would prefer not to speak of here and the joy of washing my car consumed most of the day (along with a lot of coughing, since the sickness seems to have moved from my head into my chest), while a fair amount of beer and Spider-Man with a friend took up the night. The film was pretty much what I expected -- nothing substantial but still entertaining. However, the best line of the evening came from the two guys sitting behind us, who, when Tobey Maguire as Spider-Man delivered a line to Kirsten Dunst that he had just said to her a few minutes before as Peter Parker, said, "Put two and two together, you dumb bitch!"

It was actually really satisfying to wash my own car using a hose that my roommates had bought a while back and a few rags. Rather than pay someone else an absurd amount of cash to do it, I performed the task that I hadn't done in years -- I'd not really had the chance to do it given the fact that I didn't have a hose and proper materials at my disposal. And I've almost got the entire Connecticut emissions sticker off my windshield, since the damn thing was annoying the hell out of me. Given enough Windex, I can dissolve just about any adhesive, I think.

I look forward to the day -- hopefully very soon -- where this cold completely leaves my system and I can laugh without causing a fit of coughing. At least I can breathe again. Happy Cinco de Mayo.

Bill started it. If you want someone to blame, go poke her. Then Michele took it one step further. Now I'm bringing it to its next logical conclusion.

So Bill posted random lyrics from her WinAmp playlist. Michele posted lyrics, then told you later what songs they were. I'm posting random lyrics, then actually giving you the chance to listen the songs they come from. So once you've puzzled over where the hell these lines came from, you can head on over to the updated musical funhouse page and download the songs so you can remember when you heard them for the first time. (Remember, that's download to your own machine and only do it once rather than streaming from my site since I don't have the bandwidth to support streaming. And please don't link directly to the music page either, because then I'll have to take it down.) No cheating! Read 'em first, then check to see if you're correct.

So put on your musical thinkin' caps, and away we go:

Could it be the sound of the engine?
Do I hear the sound of the door slam?
Your world is different than mine
I've got to get over, I've got to forget
Everybody's lover, everybody's brother, I wanna be your lifetime friend
Now we're sliding, it's intriguing
So young yet too old to learn
I gotta get away, and find something to do
But everything I hear, everything I see, reminds me of you
You'll steal my heart, I'll count to three
'Oh, and there's one more thing:
Nancy and I are hooked on heroin'
I'm usually driving but today there are no regrets
We were going some place and she could lead me there
I go, 'Mom, just give me a Pepsi please,
All I want is a Pepsi'
All around I represent the sound
That's New York-bound but don't get it twisted
Minimum wage, hyah!
She tells me, fling, fling, 'I kissed him'
Now it's out into the open
I go out drink drinks, I can't stay in
I'm easily moved, it don't leave me no room
Don't make me no criminal
Now all you sucker DJs who think you’re fly
There’s got to be a reason and we know the reason why.


Have I stumped you yet?

So I've been in Los Angeles for around 2 1/2 months now, and I remarked to one of my roommates tonight that it still seems vaguely surreal. It's hard to explain. Life goes on here and I feel like I've made the adjustment -- there are things that I'm very quickly getting used to, despite my "I'm a fresh transplant from the East Coast" act that either gets me out of trouble or gets me a spot of attention occasionally. I know my way around in a general sense, I no longer really have to look things up to figure out my bearings. I've been able to establish my essentials and my local habits are starting to show themselves. But it still seems odd that I'm here, given the fact that less than 3 months ago, I was living an entirely different life. It's almost like I fell asleep one night and woke up here, never to return to the life I had. In some ways, it's very disconcerting, but exciting in others.

One of my roommates took me to a local bar tonight, one that had been recommended to me by several people. The place was very cool and apparently my roommate knows the bartender well since he only charged us for one round of drinks even though we had 3. I like this place, I think it will become my new favorite local hangout.

There are definitely too many interest groups out there all laying claim to their specific "days." Some of them even conflict. For example:

May is:
- Direct Deposit Month
- National Egg Month
- National Hamburger Month
- National High Blood Pressure Education Month (don't hamburgers and eggs usually cause high blood pressure?)
- National Physical Fitness and Sports Month (again, see above with the burgers & eggs)
- National Promote Graduation Safety Month (don't fall off the stage while getting your diploma, Junior)
- National Moving Month (I shan't be celebrating this one, I've already moved 4 times this year and that's enough for me)

- May 6 & 11 are, respectively, No Diet Day and Eat What You Want Day, while May 12-18 is National Running and Fitness Week and National Transportation Week as well (the contradictions abound)
- May 24 is National Radio Wise Guy Day (please, as if they need a day for this?)
- May 17-23 is National Pickle Week
- May 23 is World Turtle Day

I'd love to see the greeting card aisles in local pharmacies if we really celebrated all this stuff. And that's just the tip of the iceberg.

Ever wonder if you're a character in someone else's dream? Your own dream, for that matter? A Matrix? A holodeck program? A vastly superior being's science experiment? A screenwriter's film being played out? A child's imagination?

Remember, there are some (including myself) who might say that there isn't a God, just beings who are far more genetically and technologically advanced than we are. If we dropped into Christopher Columbus' time, we'd probably seem like gods with our instant fire and our horseless carriages and our flying machines. Plus, we'd be able to rivet any man of that age with our instant access to immense amounts of porn on the Internet. Hell, many men of this time period are riveted by it.

Signs it's going to be an interesting day:

#13: For the first time in God knows how long, I absentmindedly put the milk in my cereal bowl before I filled it with cereal. I never do that.
#57: For the past two days, my horoscope has talked about marriage, engagement or finding true love. Not that I actually lend creedence to that kind of thing, but...
#42: I dreamed about going back to camp last night. Maybe I'm getting anxious about this so-called upcoming "10 year reunion." Maybe I'm regressing again.

I can't even begin to tell you in how many ways it's wrong that Ben Affleck is playing the Jack Ryan character in the movie version of Tom Clancy's The Sum of All Fears. Jack Ryan is supposed to be an older, coarser and worn-out version of the character in the previous two movies/books. I actually prefer Alec Baldwin as Jack Ryan over Harrison Ford, since Jack Ryan is supposed to be a Bond-like (but not quite Bond) government official who's fighting against the bureaucratic system, slick yet a bit naive, cynical and rough around the edges yet experienced good guy. Ben Affleck is just too young and not deep enough to play that role.

In other Hollywood tales, I got an e-mail from the now-infamous Kat Corbett this morning. Seems she threw on her shiny new "Free Winona" t-shirt before heading out the door to the El Rey to introduce a few bands last night. Just before she was about to step on stage to introduce the final band, someone dragged her over to the theatre's entrance -- where Winona Ryder herself was walking in the door. Photographers rushed to take snapshots of it. When I called Kat tonight to harass her about it, she said that the only thing running through her head at that particular moment was -- and I quote -- "Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck fuckfuckfuckfuckfuck..." Only in L.A. would such a thing happen.

Pardon me while I go enjoy the benefits of Benadryl and go to bed. Mmmmm... Beeeeeenadryl... [insert Homer Simpson passing out from drugs and collapsing on the floor noise]

It's not that I have any strong feelings about sick. Well, given the choice, I'd prefer not to. It's that I read The Stand and saw the miniseries on ABC, so there's this little paranoid voice that speaks up in the back of my head every time either I get sick or people around me get sick. It always asks me So what if this is the last time you ever get sick? It's a little disturbing. Again, it's my overactive imagination.

I realized something else that I miss from the East Coast -- extreme weather. Originally, I thought that sunny and beautiful every day would be a great thing, but listening to a radio station from Richmond, Virginia, and hearing the DJ talk about the thunderstorms moving through their area makes me think about all those times when I'd stand outside and feel the swirling energies gather as the sky grew darker and darker. Then I'd run inside and watch the rain pour down, see all the lightning light up the sky and listen to the thunder crack from the safety of my apartment. It was something I really enjoyed every now and then, and I won't experience that here in L.A. I also liked sitting inside on a cold winter's day in the warmth of my bedroom watching the snow come down in a blizzard, and sometimes I'd even open the window up for a few minutes and listen to the absolute silence that descends when the snow starts falling. Snow has that magical ability to coat the world and make it look fresh and virginally clean because it covers up everything all over, not like rain where it just washes away the dirt and grime to make it look like it's been power-cleaned. That's definitely something I won't experience here. Then again, I can tell myself it's a good thing that it doesn't snow here, because then I won't have to shovel it or bundle up in a heavy winter coat or worry about slipping or skidding on ice or when the snow picks up all the yuck kicked up off the streets after a few days and becomes gritty and black.

Believe me, though -- sun all the time has its benefits. I was outside for a couple of days over the weekend and I've already lost the pastiness that comes with being a cube warrior or an East Coaster winter hermit.

So I e-mailed my parents last night telling them that my under-the-weatherness had blossomed into a full-grown cold. This wasn't a plea for chicken soup to be FedExed to me, this was only an update on my life since my parents like to know what's going on with me, and this is what's going on with me at the moment.

Instead of just leaving it alone, I got an e-mail back from my dad this morning asking me why I was burdening him with this information. He's 3000 miles away, there's nothing he can do, why should I tell him I'm sick? And, for that matter, how come I never ask him how he's doing?

Dad seems to miss the point that I'm not asking for help, I'm just telling him what's going on in my life. Obviously, there's nothing he can do from 3000 miles away and he has told me since the beginning of time that people get sick twice a year. Fine. This is my first time this year, and one of my roommates is sick as well so we were probably exposed to whatever it was at the same time. I'm going to take whatever medications I can and be done with it. When he asks me how I'm doing, I'm not just going to automatically tell him "fine" and be done with it, he's my father and if he really wants to know, I'll tell him. Which is why it surprised me that he thought I never asked him how he was doing, because I do whenever I talk to him and he always says "fine." I guess it never occurred to him that I really wanted to know what's going on in his life, and that the bounds of who you tell "I'm doing fine" to don't include immediate family. He says I shouldn't give him cause to worry about things outside his reach, so he doesn't want to know that I have a cold. Well, does that mean that I can't discuss the economy with him anymore because he obviously can't do anything about that?

Speaking of the economy, there are some lovely articles in this morning's paper about how tech companies were falsifying deals, making up financial results and basically living in a fantasy world as far as their finances were concerned. This is why the tech bubble exploded -- we were powered so far and so fast by imaginary money that didn't exist, so when the people finally came knocking on the door looking for where the money was, it burst. Morons, don't you realize that you can't make this kind of thing up? Just because you're not making your earnings doesn't give you license to forge figures! So all these little start-ups were the reason why I was unemployed for so long last year...

I ran out for a quick break from work today to drop off my bike to get fixed. On my return, I was trying to make a left turn out of a side street onto a main road.

Now, let me just preface this by saying that I'm still a fairly aggressive driver -- I was trained by New Yorkers and schooled on the streets of Boston. I still haven't left that behind. And when I'm sick or tired, my concentration isn't as great. But either way, I thought I saw a break in the traffic, so I inched out onto the street to see if the break was still there, then I tried going for it.

From down the street, this motorcyclist takes off from his green light towards me. I noticed him out of the corner of my eye and stopped in time, giving him plenty of room to get around me, and I didn't do anything aggressive like yell at him or give him the finger or anything. He did enough for the both of us by stopping, yelling at me and then kicking my car.

Unwarranted, and not something I'd expect from what's supposed to be the laid-back land of Southern California. I was not pleased -- in fact I was downright pissed when I stopped to think about it -- especially since my car is sacred and I don't go around abusing other people's automobiles. Fine, I might've made a mistake, or it might've been both our faults, or whatever, but that was undeserved. Besides, he took a big risk doing that -- how did he know I wasn't going to take off down the street after him and try to run him down? So much for the calmness of the drivers here, I suppose...

So, the Apple Jacks story. A little over a year ago, my parents went on a vacation down to the Delmarva Peninsula (that's Del-Mar-Va: Delaware/Maryland/Virginia for those of you not familiar with the area) and came back with what they thought would be perfect pets for me. Hermit crabs. Suffice to say that I was really really unimpressed, and gave the hermit crabs back to my parents within a week. They were surprised that I didn't want them, but quite frankly, I was surprised they thought I'd like them in the first place. Hermit crabs aren't fun, they aren't cute, they aren't cuddly, they sleep most of the time and their intelligence is not terribly obvious. Such are the traits I look for in a pet, which is why I enjoyed having my rabbits and my mouse.

The one thing I did discover over the week that I had the hermit crabs is that they had an insatiable appetite for Apple Jacks. I was told initially that they liked having crunchy things as a treat, so I should occasionally throw a piece of cereal or something in the tank along with their food. However, they liked the Apple Jacks so much that they completely abandoned eating their food altogether, and just concentrated on the cereal (it was the only brand of cereal I had in the house at the time). So when I gave the hermit crabs back to my parents, I mentioned this to them and handed them a box of Apple Jacks. The crabs went through that box more quickly than they should have, and my parents were amazed at how much they liked the cereal. They even were able to distinguish between the real thing and the imitation no-frills brand my parents once got them, because they started burying the no-frills brand "Apple Loops" (nice rip-off, by the way) in the sand in the tank they lived in.

When my parents gave away the crabs to a local elementary school, they made sure to tell the teacher that the crabs specifically ate Apple Jacks, despite the fact that they had special hermit crab food. She thought my parents were kidding. But I'd love to see the budget allocation line -- $50 per year for Apple Jacks for hermit crabs.