So, Colin Powell made his presentation to the U.N. today about Iraq.

Someone must've been working late at the Pentagon this weekend, trying to get all those PowerPoint effects to fly in and wipe out correctly without making it look overproduced.

You ever have one of those nights where you're dead tired but your mind is running at warp speed and every time you try to close your eyes, your brain just kicks into high gear and it keeps you awake and tossing and turning and you keep looking at the clock and getting more stressed because it's getting later and later and you need sleep because it's going to be a damn long day at work the next day and you know that you're going to get less sleep as every minute ticks by and you're exhausted but you just can't fall asleep and it's 3am and there's nothing on TV except infomercials and B-films and you desperately want to fall asleep but can't?

Yeah. My night was kind of like that.

Well, I'm famous and published now -- at least in a publication that doesn't employ me and pay me to write for them. Check out this week's edition of "Heaven & Hell" on Salon.com, and you'll see one of my Dates From Hell -- it's now living in infamy. (There's an option to get a "free day pass" by clicking through a short ad if you're a cheap bastard like me and don't want to pay the subscription.) Special thanks for my friend Greg, who caught it and realized it was me and not one of the other people with my name running around and e-mailed me to let me know it was up.

In other news, I woke up an hour and a half early to truck my ass out to the doctor's office, only to get there and have them tell me that I was outside their medical group so they couldn't see me, regardless of the fact that they accepted my HMO and that I was referred to them by another doctor. So this morning was all for naught. I have to call my HMO, make this change, then wake up early again on Friday and truck my ass back out there. And I came in to work today to find an e-mail from some random person out there in Podunk, Arkansas telling me that all the information I'd posted on my workplace's website on Friday was wrong -- despite the fact I'd posted a ton of info, so I have no idea what he was referring to.

I love Mondays. Don't you?

Round Two of the Sound Wars has been fought and won within a short two minutes. Suffice it to say that I am pleased with the outcome. After hearing the walls thump for hours because of the fuckers next door, I'd had enough -- especially since it was approaching midnight and I would be going to sleep soon -- and I asked my roommate if he would mind if things got a little loud for a few minutes. He said there was no problem, especially since he thought the bass he was hearing was coming from my room, when it was coming from the apartment next door. Basically, he was hearing music that was being generated next door, coming through my room and going into his -- and both of us could hear it well over our TVs.

So, I again turned the speakers to face the wall, placed the subwoofer flush against the wall with the bass output turned all the way up, cranked the volume up to about 8 and let the artillery fly with an MP3 of Anthrax's "Only." I turned it down after about two minutes of the song (which involved the opening, the first verse and chorus and a small portion of the second verse), and heard beautiful silence as the bass from next door had stopped.

I may actually be able to sleep peacefully tonight...

Not everyone can be as lucky as Ethan Embry. I just saw the first couple minutes of the new Dragnet on ABC, and I realized that Ethan grew up to be Luke Perry.

I had a great time last night with the other L.A. hooligans -- I mean bloggers -- at CityWalk. Seriously. Got a chance to catch up with some people I hadn't seen in a while, got a chance to meet some new and interesting people. Much fun was had by all, except for the Captain Kirk doll that eve brought for me that everyone took such delight in posing suggestively for Francisco's camera. I'm sure co-ed naked buttered Kirk will be showing up on his blog pretty soon. On the downer, I left the meatspace gathering around 10 to go over to the apartment of someone I've been casually seeing. We went for a couple drinks, then we went back to her place, then we went to the emergency room. Well, not in that compressed amount of time, but after holding her hair back for an hour and a half while she threw up and putting a cold compress on her forehead because she was burning up and then wrapping her in a blanket because she was freezing, I finally called her parents at 2am to let them know what was going and was there anything that I should know about any medications she was taking, and they told me to call an ambulance. It was a hell of a way to meet her parents -- something I hadn't planned on doing so soon in our dating timeline -- especially given the fact that I met her father in the ER waiting room at just past 3am, since I was not exactly in best form at that hour or in that situation. I finally left close to 4:30 when her father said they'd stabilized her a bit but he didn't think there would be much change and I should go home since it was late. She's doing better now (just spoke to her father again) and she's at their place now, so I guess that's a good sign that she's out of the hospital. Keith's gallows humor says, "Hell of a way to spend a Saturday night: drinking, having fun, going to the ER. Sounds like a bad anti-drug commercial."

It's a somber moment here at Remix Central as we look back and realize we forgot some anniversaries.

The first is actually a serious one and one we've lowered the flag to half-mast for. And now, NASA should know better than to attempt any kind of spaceflight during this week.
- January 27, 1967: The Apollo 1 capsule catches fire while still on the ground, killing the three astronauts inside, including Gus Grissom, the second American in space.
- January 28, 1986: The space shuttle Challenger explodes a minute and a half after liftoff, killing all the astronauts inside, including Christa McAuliffe, who was to be the first teacher in space.
- February 1, 2003: The space shuttle Columbia breaks up on re-entry, killing all the astronauts inside, including Ilan Ramon, the first Israeli in space.

While I don't mean to make light of the situation, at this point, I think NASA should know that late January-early February just isn't its time to be conducting space activities. However, Columbia was the oldest shuttle in the fleet and all of their vehicles are sorely in need of repair. Then again, I also have problems with all this money we're pouring into the space program when we've got all these issues to deal with back here on Earth, and I don't think that space research is really helping us forward the efforts of science enough to justify the effort being put into it. "Oooh, let's see how mice screw in space!" Well, same way they do on Earth, except there's a lot more flailing around. I don't think that their kids are going to grow up to be supermice simply because they were conceived and born in zero-gravity. Meanwhile, people are dying from strange and horrible diseases back here on Earth, and researchers have to beg Congress for money that's already been designated to see how plants spread spores in space.

The other anniversary is actually a happy one, and it's one that I can't believe I let slip by me. On January 28, 1993, I reached a milestone I'd been waiting for for years: I got my driver's license. As of this week, I've been driving for a decade.

Those who know me know that I'm a road warrior. I love being behind the wheel. There's no greater feeling for me than to be bombing down the open freeway on a great day with the windows down and the moonroof open and some great music on the radio. It's pure heaven. I love dodging through traffic and leaving everyone else behind. I love that I can get into my car and go anywhere -- truly, it's a feeling of freedom that I had been awaiting for many years until I finally got my license.

I saw this poem once in a "Bloom County" comic... it seems apropos to post here now, I suppose, for both situations discussed here today.

"High Flight" by John Gillespie Magee, Jr.

Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of earth,
And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;
Sunward I've climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth
Of sun-split clouds, -- and done a hundred things
You have not dreamed of -- Wheeled and soared and swung
High in the sunlit silence. Hov'ring there
I've chased the shouting wind along, and flung
My eager craft through footless halls of air...
Up, up the long, delirious, burning blue
I've topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace
Where never lark or even eagle flew --
And, while with silent lifting mind I've trod
The high untrespassed sanctity of space,
Put out my hand, and touched the face of God.