By now, I'm sure we've all heard Anne's famous quote about "in spite of everything, I still believe that people are really good at heart." It's one of those lines that I can attribute only to naïveté based on her youth.

I thought for a while that I was becoming an optimist. Things were good with me in life, so I had a positive outlook on things. Now I see only that because things were going well for me, I was wearing the rose-colored glasses.

There are some good people out there. I try to be one of them. It's basically a rule of "if I wouldn't want anyone doing this to me, I'm not going to do it to them." But far more often, we hear about the bad things that happen and not the good things. A friend of mine told me today that she is the victim of identity theft, and one of my co-workers' car was stolen out of our parking lot this afternoon. The Ten Commandments state "thou shalt not kill," but we kill often in the name of God and the grand sanctity of our Way of Life. And it just gets me that people act this way -- they see nothing wrong with stealing or killing or what have you. There's no little voice in their head that tells them, "Hey, maybe we should join a bowling league instead of doing this."

I guess I'm just kind of disgusted with things and people. It makes me wonder how technological progress I'd give up to go back to a time when manners and kindness meant something, but then again, there's always been bad parts of society like slavery and Jack the Ripper. I think I'm about ready to go find my secluded breakaway Island in the Sun republic. Who's with me?

Some new tunes have been posted in the Music section. If by now you don't know how to access it, you don't deserve to listen to them. Either way, special thanks to my pal Matt Sledge at 97X in Cincinnati for giving me the heads-up on a couple of these tracks. It was from him that I quoted the below line about playing Elvis on an alternative station. They rawk hard, so give them a listen since they're pretty much the last bastion of good alternative music in the country and they're independently-owned. Yes, they still stream online!

As always, be kind & rewind. I mean, be kind & don't hog bandwidth -- if you want to hear a song, download it once to your hard drive and play it from there. If you like the song, go buy the artist's CD. For the eighteen millionth time (and I keep saying this, but I know I'll still have to e-mail some schmuck and tell them to take down the link), do NOT link directly to the music page or to any of the files themselves.

Otherwise, enjoy. And try not to get too upset about the breathing on your phone line that's disconnecting your modem connection. It's only your friend and mine, John Ashcroft, keeping us safe. He can hear terrorism-related data transmission, you know...

So I ran across this dumbass this morning thanks to one of my new reads. Please tell me that the "Save Karyn" website is some kind of parody, because if it's for real, the girl deserves some kind of smackage.

She's $20,000 in debt. She wants your help. Forget the fact that for the past few years, she's lived more lavishly than most of us ever will, forget the fact that she exercised no responsibility and no restraint, forget the fact that the $20,000 she spent was on items like Prada shoes and lattes, forget the fact that money going to relieve her debt could've easily fed a whole ton of starving people... she wants absolution without consequence.

I've been in debt. By several thousand dollars. By my own doing and the mental influence of my evil ex-girlfriend. And I worked my ass off to get out of it. And I learned a very important lesson in the process -- never spend more than you take in. I'm not making much money, so do I need to spend $4 at Starbucks every morning to get coffee when I could drink the Corporate Coffee my company provides and save myself $20 per week that could go towards a meal? I started bringing lunch to work because I couldn't afford to spend $5-10 every day and watch anywhere from $25-50 float away every week. I made the sacrifice to spend a few weekend nights at home with the TV because I knew if I went out, I'd end up spending $60 in drinks and food. I didn't have to have that new CD or DVD and went home without it. I spent nights laying awake in bed, staring at the ceiling and worrying that I wouldn't be able to pay off my debts. I prayed to the car gods that my car wouldn't need any sudden repairs because one day at the mechanic would erase several weeks' worth of hard saving work.

And today, I'm debt-free. Thanks to my own hard work and sacrifices -- and, of course, the extreme generosity of my parents who helped assuage some of that "I can't live withouts" by sometimes taking me out to dinner or sending me DVDs or giving me a little more cash than necessary to fill my gas tank when I went to visit them or generously getting my car tuned-up when they brought theirs in too. And right now, I'm still sitting at home on weekend nights, making sure that I'm not spending so much out at the bars, watching movies on TV and making lunches to bring into work, since I'm still not making very much money at all. But I still had a fairly long time to worry about what was going to happen to me, and for that reason, I never want to be in debt again. I think Karyn needs to sit and stew for a while, despite the fact that I have absolutely no intention of giving her any of my hard-earned cash. In fact, I believe I'm going to give some money to a more worthy cause right now.

Operation TIPS. The "Terrorism Information and Prevention System." Basically, a free writ for all of us to spy on each other and call the special "Am I driving patriotically enough?" toll-free number conveniently displayed on bumper stickers in order to rat out our neighbors to the government, who will promptly whisk them away and strip them of any Constitutional rights whatsoever. How patriotic.

Let's break down the numbers, shall we? Here we go:

- Approximately 1 in 50,000 Americans will die each year from terrorist acts. When all was said and done over the course of September 11, 2001, around 6,000 Americans died in that one day, but maybe a handful have died since.
- According to a statement on National Domestic Violence Awareness Month for 2000, 1.5 million American women are raped and/or physically assaulted annually. That breaks down to around 2.5 American women raped or beaten every minute.
- According to Sarah Brady, wife of Jim Brady (for whom the Brady Bill on gun control is named), 30,708 people in the United States died from firearm-related deaths in 1998; 12,102 (39%) of those were murders.
- According to a study by Second Harvest, 23.3 million Americans sought emergency assistance from the Second Harvest food bank in 2001. Nearly 40% of the families who received food from Second Harvest included an adult working full-time but who still couldn't afford to feed their family.
- According to the Lance Armstrong Foundation, 555,500 Americans die each year from cancer. That's more than 1,500 deaths from cancer daily, and it is the cause of 25% of American deaths.

This is just a short sample of the everyday dangers we encounter as Americans, and none of them get the kind of front-page top-of-the-hour attention that terrorism has gotten -- and we've only been exposed to terrorism for less than a year, while cancer deaths and hunger and rapes and murders have been taking place for years and years and years, yet none of them have the staying power in the news that terrorism does.

We've poured billions of dollars and thousands of man-hours down the drain to fight a war against terrorism that, quite frankly, is a lot less destructive so far than almost all of the ordinary things that we face every day. Imagine if we were to direct as much of our energy and money toward Homeland Security -- but security from rape, murder, hunger, disease and other crime -- as we have done for terrorism, how much we could accomplish.

I ask you, President Moron: since you've overrun Afghanistan and tried (so far unsuccessfully) to bring the shining dawn of democracy and prosperity to the Afghans, what have you done to help us on the home front -- those of us who pay the taxes that fund your little war thousands of miles away, and who work day in and day out and are directly affected by the laws you pass? What have you done for me to make my life safer since 9/11?

Here's a TIP for you: why don't you let one of your daughters walk through a dark neighborhood in the middle of a city one night without the Secret Service or anyone else to protect her, and see who's going to jump out at her first -- a rapist or a mugger (either of which with a gun or a knife), or a terrorist. Then maybe you'll reconsider where you should be pouring your efforts.

So, I've written once or twice about the fact that I'd suddenly seemed to develop speech problems in that I'd try to say two words at once or I'd end up repeating myself -- kind of like a stutter, but not really. I attributed it to nerves. I have a new theory.

Watching Robin Williams tonight on HBO, I saw and heard him do the same thing a few times. And I know, for him, it probably wasn't a confidence problem, despite the fact that he was up in front of a live audience. It was edited by HBO, so they could've easily taken it out. I think that he's just so manic -- his brain is running at such a high speed -- that his thoughts form more quickly than he can verbally express them.

I kind of know how that feels, since I do get that sensation sometimes that my brain is running too fast for the rest of me. So maybe it's not a confidence problem, which makes me feel better. And that gives me a bit more confidence back.

So I succumbed to the pressures of advertising and bought a bottle of Vanilla Coke. I used to go to this drive-in theatre outside of Boston that made real vanilla Cokes and they were soooooo good, and I figured I might as well give this bottled stuff a shot. It's not bad. Really.

But I keep wondering when Chazz Palminteri is going to jump out of my closet.

I've made a new friend. It's because I'm a loser with a soft heart. Or rather, it's because I can't stand PDA, especially when it's rude and blatant and deliberate.

Two nights ago, I was standing out on my patio... umm, well, not really doing much of anything. Pondering life, I suppose. Waiting for a phone call. Either way, there was no one on the street besides me -- until this couple pulled up in their car, parked across the street and began arguing loudly as soon as they got out of the car. They crossed the street, still arguing loudly, until they walked up directly in front of my patio (which is on street-level) -- where the guy grabbed the girl, whirled her around and proceeded to suck her face off for over a minute.

Personally, I'm thinking, "There's sixteen other apartment buildings on this block, none of them with people standing right there. What makes mine so special that you have to neck two feet away from me? Is this guy trying to prove a point that he can hook up with his girlfriend? Really, I'm unimpressed." And I tried so hard not to look at them because I was so put off that I ended up looking down into the bushes in front of our patio, which is where I saw my new friend.

This all-black cat was standing there in the bushes, looked up, saw me and began yowling. I'm not exaggerating. I'm a bit thankful because it drove the face-sucking couple away, but then the cat jumped up onto my patio wall and then began yowling at me some more. So I did the appropriate thing: I asked my roommate if he wouldn't mind fetching the can of tuna fish out of my cupboard in the kitchen, opening it up and bringing it out to me.

The cat put away the entire can of tuna -- which is a lot for a cat, and I've never seen one eat so much before -- and then I became its new best friend. Purrs louder than construction noises erupted from somewhere within this fluffy thing. And I eventually had to pick the cat up and gently throw it over the porch wall and onto the driveway so I could escape back into my apartment without it running inside after me. Plus, allergies soon set in and I was itching and sneezing and swelling.

Last night, my roommate and I were sitting in the living room watching the aforementioned Swordfish where he says to me, "Your friend is back." Apparently, the cat remembered me fondly and was sitting patiently at our screen door again. When I stood up to see what my roommate was talking about, the cat spotted me and started yowling again. Alas, I had no more tuna and the cat yowled itself out and left after 20 minutes.

So reports are still coming in from Afghanistan regarding the whereabouts of Osama bin Laden. My question becomes -- now that we're nearing the one-year anniversary of our search for him (*cough*cough*incompetent government), what's going to happen if we finally catch him? Are we just going to withdraw from Afghanistan?

Something tells me that our illustrious Head Moron in Charge is going to want to keep attention away from his own shady financial dealings, the other economic troubles at home and other such nickelodeon, so he'll move our troops somewhere else on the planet to fight terror. It's all about misdirection. If we're fighting a war, we can't question our leadership when our way of life is at stake. Which is kind of the premise to Swordfish, which is not particularly a great film but I watched it last night anyways (mostly because Paul Oakenfold did the soundtrack and I like him, but also for the gratuitous and what turned out to be a completely unnecessary yet appreciated shot of Halle Berry topless).

- When magicians turn things into doves or birds or other small animals that can easily get away, where do they go when the trick is done? Do the birds just fly off into the rafters of the room and eventually get sucked into vacuums by the cleaning crew?

- Only the '80s could make a term like "Super-Pursuit Mode" sound cool.

I'm taking pictures of my room, my apartment, my neighborhood, some of my friends and, eventually, my workplace too. It's not that I fear that I won't remember what everything looks like, it's just that I think it'll be awhile (if ever) before friends or family members of mine come out to visit so I'm taking pictures so they'll have images to put to descriptions I give them. It still feels odd doing it though.

Honestly, I've never been away from the East Coast for this long before, and once my parents move to Arizona, I think it'll be even longer stretches between visits. Boston feels like it's another lifetime away.

First we had Mariah Carey go berserk on us. Then Michael Jackson... well, he was always fairly odd, but I think he finally went over the edge with this "Tommy Mottola is the devil and I'm really black" thing. Now George Michael is saying he can't return to the U.S. because's he thinks his life would be in danger. All over some song he did that criticizes the United States for its poor reaction to terrorism, and a bad interview that he did on "Larry King Live."

Honestly, I haven't even heard the song. Around 80% of what is popular in the U.K. never makes the trans-Atlantic trip. So this whole satire/criticism of how America is handling the war on terrorism, well, most of us don't even know about it! Also, the people who watch "Larry King Live" are probably not the people he's targeting with his album -- they're out of his target demographic, so they probably wouldn't have bought it anyways. And on top of all that, he feels that America's homophobia is why his latest album didn't do so well over here. Again, I'm seeing the pattern of "if the album tanks, let's find some reason to blame the purchasers or the record company because it certainly wasn't my fault."

Can someone please find me a nice, sane, mentally stable pop star?

Lord knows I've complained in the past about media hype, especially when it comes to Fox News -- who, on a side note, come up with the most ridiculous things to get you hooked on their news. "Balloons that can steal your cars and rob your convenience stores! Tune in to see if one is in your home -- tonight on Fox News at 10!" And it's been criticized enough by a lot of people. But now the media is jumping on its own bandwagon. Seems that Friday's episode of "20/20" is about media hype, and how it really puts a sensational spin on things so as to make you watch.

Hold up a second here. You mean to tell me that the same show that aired an exclusive interview with O.J. Simpson after his flight in his white Bronco, a news organization that put a huge graphic of a gun and locations of all these school shootings and talked about how kids everywhere are going to school these days, and the same host of the show who sensationalized genetically modified foods to the point where parents revoked their approval to air interviews with their children... this is the same organization that's whistle-blowing on media hype?

Admittedly, it's a pretty decent PR stunt. By bringing the issue to light and reporting on it, they're among the first to "expose" it (and I say that with heavy amounts of sarcasm), which lends them a bit of credibility. However, that doesn't stop them from being incredibly hypocritical about the situation.

Media hype is one of those things that as a news media organization -- and especially one guilty of media hype -- you can't report on. By reporting on it, you're creating hype around the topic itself: they're media hyping media hype. I mean, take a look at the web page that talks about the episode: "And the reason for all those shark attack! reports last year was NOT an increase in the number of attacks, it was just hype! We'll show you how, and why. And what aren't those glossy magazines telling you about those cars they love? Some important news. Maybe it was because the media are 'on the take.' OK, not really 'on the take,' but we get influenced by people being nice to us, or giving us things, or advertising with us. We'll tell you about the cozy relationship between car magazines and car makers." My word, it's an exposé! Alert the media! Oh wait...

Media hype exists as part of our society. It's what makes us the paranoid, Xanax-downing, therapist-visiting culture that we are. We, as Americans and as viewers/readers/listeners of this media, just need to learn how to filter through the bullcrap on our own to get the truth and realize what we're really at risk of -- and I can assure you it's not anything that you see on your local Fox News at 10. If ABC News really wants to help the situation, they shouldn't compound it by hyping the hype, especially since they're guilty of doing it in the first place. They should just quietly stop generating it.

I'm succumbing to peer pressure and posting an entry from my archives. I chose this one because, well, it's one of my more infamous stories, and I told it to others today when the topic came up of illegal activities and the dumb-ass police. Especially given this whole hoo-hah about the cop who beat a 16 year old kid in Inglewood and who was caught on videotape. Dumbasses. Can anyone say "Rodney King"?

November 16, 2001: Stupid, stupid, stupid...
There is absolutely no explanation for the moronic act I pulled about 20 minutes ago, save only for the fact that while walking down Newbury Street earlier tonight, I looked in on the diners at T.G.I. Friday's and saw a girl I used to date (ending things was her decision, I rather liked her) sitting at a table with her new boyfriend -- thankfully, she didn't see me. But still, that's not really a justification.

Let me first preface this by saying that in Boston, pedestrians have right-of-way no matter what, which leads to interesting circumstances where they cross streets at any place and at any time, crosswalks or walk/don't walk signs be damned. So I was walking home from Poker Night at my friend's place downtown, and was crossing a divided road at an intersection. I saw the incoming traffic had a red light and there was no traffic on the street I was trying to cross, so I went despite the "don't walk" sign. I made it halfway across and stood on the median while a car coming against me made a right turn onto the road in front of me, then I proceeded to cross the rest of the road behind the car that had just turned. Guess what? The car that made the right turn was a cop car, and put on its lights and pulled over to the side of the road immediately after I made it across.

The cop jumped out of his car and started yelling after me, "Hey! Hey you! C'mere!" So I stopped and turned around and looked at him, and he said, "Do you realize that you just jaywalked? That was a 'don't walk' sign." I looked right back at him and said, "So? Do you realize that you just made a right turn on red without signalling or coming to a complete stop when your lights and siren weren't on? Some example you're setting."

Now, I don't exactly have the level of respect for the police that I should have, mostly because they pull stunts like that and seem to feel that because they enforce the law, they can skirt above it. But as soon as the words were out of my mouth, I immediately started mentally kicking myself and saying, "Stupid, stupid, stupid... you can think these kinds of things, but you can't say them." However, Fate was smiling on me because the cop just kind of thought for a second, scowled at me since I had called him on it and he really had committed the more grievous of errors between the two of us. Then he got back in his car and drove off, and I breathed a huge sigh of relief that he hadn't given me an absolutely huge ticket or something worse.

Oh, and I lost $1.50 at Poker Night.

Seven hot dogs in the package... eight buns in the package. Seven things to put inside eight other things. I'd have to buy fifty-six of each in order to have an equal number of hot dogs and buns without unmatched items. I swear it's a conspiracy between Hebrew National and the various bread-producing companies.

I moderate a message board among other things, though it's mostly populated by teens -- kids in their early teens at that. It deals mostly with music-related stuff, but we have a section that's dedicated to off-topic ramblings where they can basically post whatever they want (within reason) and several way-off-topic subjects have been brought up. Among them, pot smoking, drinking and cigarette smoking have been posted about recently.

I found it kind of amusing to see what these kids thought about those topics -- or rather, how staunchly opposed to all of them they were. It kind of reminded me how I was at that young age, where I was thoroughly convinced by my parents and the media that smoking cigarettes (or other substances) was evil and would lead to incredibly bad things. These kids are too. On the flipside, though, every time I read one of those topics in order to make sure that no one's stepping outside the bounds of decency, I get a little angry about all these assumptions these kids are making and I keep wanting to post something along the lines of "until you've tried it yourself, you can't make these statements." And I so want to use that old and trite line -- as much as I hated it then -- about how their views will change as they grow older and more mature. Unfortunately, I can't post in the topic since I am a moderator.

At that age, I was convinced that smoking tobacco or otherwise and drinking to excess was evil. Now, years later after I've been drunk many many times to excess, smoked my fair share of cigarettes and gotten high as a kite, I can say that I don't see anything wrong with it when done once in a while and when it's not done destructively. And I laugh when I see these kids talk about how smoking pot makes you violent and you'll instantly become addicted -- personally, I've seen some pretty belligerent drunks in my time starting fights all over the place, but all getting high made me want to do was sit and watch TV and order some pizza.

Those of you who know me know that I hate endings. Hate them. They make me come unglued, especially after a 15 hour workday and only a few hours of sleep. So it was with a little bit of stupidity that I watched the final episode of my absolute favorite TV show ever, "Sports Night" -- one of the very few episodes I've never seen before. And I am extremely thankful that in the neverending circle of things, Comedy Central aired the series' first episode -- which I've also never seen -- only 10 minutes after I finished watching the final episode on TiVo. It was like as soon as the ending came, so did the beginning and the cycle began again so I didn't have to come unglued and depressed for too long despite the fact that I knew everything that was to come.

But that's not why I came here tonight. I came here to talk about me, as I usually do, and to reference a great line from a great film. A film that helped launch me into the career I'm in today, actually, and that has a kick-ass soundtrack. The film that first paired Samantha Mathis and Christian Slater together, something that has only happened once more in live action film. But I digress.

In the "love scene" in Pump Up The Volume, Christian Slater admits to Samantha Mathis that he can't talk to her. Despite all the talking he does behind the microphone to his fellow students, he can't even get up the guts to speak to her in person. And I know exactly how that is. I can always tell when I have a crush, especially when it's unrequited, because I come unglued when I'm around her or when I have the opportunity to talk to her. Now I'm usually pretty handy as far as conversation goes -- I'm not socially inept and I can hold my own very well, sometimes even better than very well. But it just seems that right now, there's two women in my life who I very much want to impress, but I feel that every time I attempt communication with either of them, I come off like a simpering moron. He who is never at a loss for words... realizes he doesn't know what to say. He who is usually quick-witted and smooth in replies... stumbles over words and says the most mundane and uninteresting (and sometimes abjectly stupid) things. He who can run the gamut in conversation from physics and philosophy to cartoons... resorts to talking shop because he can't think of anything else to say. Even in e-mails or instant messages, I have this problem.

It's annoying, really. Aggravating to the point of despair. And it's something I've really got to get past, otherwise I may never be able to present myself as something more than the sum of my physical appearance, and they'll never see the appeal of my intelligence or my maturity or my personality. On top of that, if I can't even prove myself interesting to be around as a person because of this, then what's the point of keeping me around even just as a friend?

He spends his nights in California
Watching the stars on the big screen
Then he lies awake and he wonders
Why can't that be me
'Cause in his life he is filled with all these good intentions
He's left a lot of things he'd rather not mention right now
But just before he says good night,
He looks up with a little smile at me and he says
"If I could be like that, I would give anything
Just to live one day, in those shoes
If I could be like that, what would I do?"
-- 3 Doors Down, "Be Like That"