By the way, I forgot to mention that she of the mother who asked for my number at the JDate event (for history, read this instance of Evil Things That Eve Railroaded Me Into here) called and left a message late last week. I have not returned that call yet. I'm not quite sure why. Perhaps it's because I'm not sure what I'd say when she picks up or if I have to leave a message. "Hi, this is Keith, the guy who your mother got my number for you..."

So, a new phone (eeee! new toy!) and a new week. This one at least will be short -- Wednesday, I leave after work for the 8-hour overnight trek across the desert in the Silver Bullet™ (that's my car) to go visit my parents in Tucson. Just me, the car, the open road and the radio. I just hope I'm not drafted to help fight the wildfires while I'm out there. I'm tired and drained and spent a good portion of the afternoon doing work (which I hate doing in my time away from the office), and the possibility that I may have to find a new apartment by the end of the year has been officially raised. I hate the fact that I should be happy since things really aren't all that bad in my life, but instead all I can think about is what I don't have, how worn out I am and the lurking jealousy of others that I'm trying hard to quash. Here's the Sunday Most Listened-To Song o' the Week. I've been listening to the a cappella version done by UPenn Off the Beat, and I've fallen in love with the woman who does the lead... she's got such an amazing voice. Of course, I'm kind of in love with the original artist of the song as well... Sheryl Crow - "Anything But Down" I light your cigarettes I bring you apples from the vine How quickly you forget I run the bath and pour the wine I bring you everything that floats into your mind But you don't bring me anything but down You don't bring me anything but down You don't bring me anything but down When you come 'round You are a raging sea I pull myself out everyday I plea insanity Cause I can't leave but I can't stay You say, won't you come find me and yes is what I say You don't bring me anything but down You don't bring me anything but down Everything is crashing to the ground Maybe I'm not your perfect kind Maybe I'm not what you had in mind Maybe we're just killing time You with your silky words And your eyes of green and blue You with your steel beliefs That don't match anything you do It was so much easier before you became you You don't bring me anything but down You don't bring me anything but down Everything just crashes to the ground When you come around When you come around No more playing seek and hide No more long and wasted nights Can't you make it easy on yourself I know you wish you were strong You wish you were never wrong Well, I got some wishes of my own...

In the interests of full disclosure, I will confirm what has been hinted at in others' blogs. Yes, I have the Worst Sunburn Known to Man. Yes, my face is bright red and could probably be used as a roadside flare. Yes, because I was wearing a t-shirt all day, it's a farmer's tan. Yes, I was wearing sunscreen. The Very Larry Olympics were a blast. We hung out all day on the beach in Hermosa Beach on Saturday -- we're talking 9 hours here (hence the WSKtM) -- and drank beer and played numerous rounds of caps, bocce ball and horseshoes. Admittedly, bocce ball is easier on a lawn rather than a beach, and horseshoes is definitely easier on a lawn since they won't inadvertently get lost by being buried in the sand. Despite the fact that my teammate and I lost every single game we played (but not for lack of effort -- we found out that not only have many of these teams been competing in the Very Larry Olympics for years, but they also go home and practice with their own horseshoe and bocce ball sets), we still managed to win three games by default because one of the teams in our pool dropped out. Oh, and hellooooooooooooo, scenery! Dinner with Fran & Wendy & Eve & Sheila ensued, during which I was ridiculed (but what else is new? Eve is evil and loves to walk all over my self-esteem at any chance she gets) and had Mexican food. Then I came home and collapsed after having been up since 7am. On a weekend, I got up at 7am! Can you believe it? I can't. UPDATE: Among one of the dumbest questions people could ask me today is "Did you get sunburned?" Unfortunately, my faith in people's intelligence has been shaken a bit, as three people have asked me this after seeing me. Personally, I don't think there's any other way I could've changed skin tones this quickly unless I'd liberally applied paint to my face and limbs, so I'm thinking a more intelligent question might be "Wow, what were you doing that you got so sunburned?" or a variation on that.

Happy Independence Day, everyone. This is the day when I thank my lucky stars I was born in this country, a place where I can actively and loudly protest and make fun of our leader and various other governmental policies without fear of being dragged off in the middle of the night and "disappearing." I've always found it interesting that Americans seem to be the only people who are more proud of their heritage than the country they currently live in. Ask anyone "what are you?" and they'll tell you "I'm Irish/Latvian/Chinese/Russian/Scandanavian/Kazakhstanian/Albanian/etc." How many people, when you ask them that question, tell you they're American? Granted, we are the land of the melting pot and, unless you're a Native American, you can't really say that your ancestry is American. But, dammit, I'm a third-generation native-born American, I'm damn proud of it, and I do answer "American" when people ask me what I am. My country, right or wrong -- and while I do readily admit we do some pretty stupid things here, don't mistake my criticisms as my being willing to forsake my birthright and move away. I wouldn't want to live in any other country, and my ability to criticize this country and its government is part of what I love about America. In any event, I've taken some allergy medication before heading down to Eve's little Margaritas & Mayhem shindig tonight since she has a cat and I'm allergic to cats, so I'm a little out of it. Now I'm going to go out, terrorize the roads while under the influence of Allegra and then drink large amounts of tequila! Tomorrow, I'll be out all day drinking beer and playing bocce ball and horseshoes at some male-bonding event in Hermosa Beach with an old friend who grew up two houses up from me and who moved to Los Angeles last week. Did you follow all that? Good, because I didn't. ¡Viva la gente!

It's been almost two years since it happened, and I don't know anyone connecting me to it. I've only been back once since it happened, but every time I see the World Trade Center site on TV or in a movie, I still get chills running up and down my back and my eyes tear up. I miss New York.

MEMO From: Keith To: America RE: Fast food People, take responsibility for what you put in your own damn mouths. And parents, take responsibility for you let your kids eat. No one's holding a gun to your head and making you eat all those Big Macs. Suing McDonald's, Burger King and all the other fast-food chains because they made the food look too good not to eat sixteen times a week is like me saying that it's Adam Sandler's fault that I beat the crap out of Bob Barker because he made it look fun in Happy Gilmore.

I'm stealing this meme from Keith, who -- ironically enough -- is around my age, lives in Los Angeles and is my opposite number at my newspaper's competitor. The top 25 most played songs on my iTunes: 25. Alice in Chains - "Got Me Wrong" 24. Afghan Whigs - "Rebirth of the Cool" 23. A Tribe Called Quest - "Award Tour" 22. George Thorogood - "Who Do You Love?" 21. Del tha Funky Homosapien - "Mistadobalina" 20. Chevelle - "Send the Pain Below" 19. 3rd Bass - "The Gas Face" 18. Depeche Mode - "Never Let Me Down Again" 17. Pete Rock & CL Smooth - "They Reminisce Over You (T.R.O.Y.)" 16. Nickelback - "Never Again" 15. David Garza - "God's Hands" 14. Staind - "Price to Play" 13. Jesus & Mary Chain - "Head On" 12. Grand Theft Audio - "Stoopid Ass" 11. Linkin Park - "Papercut" 10. Finch - "Letters to You" 9. Handsome Boy Modeling School - "Once Again (Here to Kick One For You)" 8. Underworld - "Cowgirl" 7. The Shining - "Quicksilver" 6. The Used - "The Taste of Ink" 5. De La Soul - "Tread Water" 4. The Roots & Cody Chesnutt - "The Seed (2.0)" 3. Outkast - "Bombs Over Baghdad" 2. Linkin Park - "Faint" 1. Finch - "What It Is To Burn (Radio Edit)"

Okay, so Fran has been entertaining you all with tales of his bodily functions. And quite frankly, I've been refraining from talking about my own... mostly because there's something evil living within me that I figured you wouldn't want to hear about. But hey, if he can get away with it, why can't I? I think I'm getting a sinus infection, which causes me to produce strange things -- despite the bad noises I am forced to make while bringing this stuff out. I mean, there I was, standing in the bathroom looking at the sink this morning and thinking, "Wow... can I really live without this green stuff? It looks like it belongs inside my body..." In other news, I'm currently watching Super Troopers... and it's actually funny. Although that could be because I'm from New England and I understand the mentality regarding state troopers.

There are several reasons why I decided to become a Psychology major in college. They are (as follows): 1. I realized -- after receiving a D- in one of my programming classes -- that being a Computer Science major just wasn't for me. I used the excuse of "do I really want to spend 40 hours a week sitting behind a computer keyboard?" but that's really not valid, since I do that anyways -- except I'm writing in English as opposed to C++ or Java. 2. It's fun to play with people's minds. 3. It's incredibly interesting to see what makes people tick and why they do the things they do. I've come to realize that the human mind is a finely tuned instrument, and upsetting the delicate balance of machinery and chemistry can be quite harmful. The thing that really intrigues me is that because of the way the mind works, it could be running completely off-kilter and yet the person thinks that the things he or she is doing or saying are completely normal (which, of course, could be said about many people who are considered relatively normal by society... like, oh, say, "Republicans," but I digress). It's not like a car engine where if something's not right, you know it's not right because you can hear the loud noises or you can see the warning lights on your dashboard -- no, a mental problem is the equivalent of trying to drive an Escalade down the street with no tires on the wheels but there's no sound and you think everything's fine. And I've often used the expression "he's not running on all cylinders" to indicate that there's something not right in that boy's heeeeeed. The reason why I bring this all up is that I (and a few of my co-workers) have been the recipients of, shall we say, psychotic ramblings over the past few weeks, where this guy will send us long missives about how, through the use of various surveillance technologies, record executives have gotten ahold of his compositions and have stolen them. He then goes on to accuse several popular groups of recording his work (I believe today's finger was pointed at 3 Doors Down) and stealing his ideas. And I literally have gotten 5 or so of these long, legal-sounding documents over the past 2 weeks, all with different songs and artists listed. Does he think that he's really being watched? Does he really believe he's written all this material that's been stolen from him and has turned up on popular recordings? Does he live in a cave and try to control the weather using tin foil and some wire hangers? Who knows...

Denis Leary had it right. I've never quite understood why people have this need to create drama in their lives and why they need to use it to make others look bad. Life's supposed to be fun. I'm tired of fighting all of them, it's just too draining. These people are making me want to pack them all off to the Island of Malcontents, where all they have to drive are Ford Pintos -- and for those who absolutely must drive SUVs, there's Ford Exploders there too.