So a couple of my co-workers and I have a daily ritual where around 4pm, we'll go to Starbucks to recaffeinate in order to finish out the day. It's a nice way to get out of the office for a little while and also to wake up. We're standing there in Starbucks yesterday when this guy walks in with a woman. He looks familiar, though he looks like a misfit -- leatherish-type jacket, weird-looking hat and a beard down to his belt. One of my co-workers who was standing outside the door started waving wildly to get my attention. It was Billy Gibbons of ZZ Top. How cool was that?

Does anyone else realize that Ruben Studdard and not Clay Aiken won American Idol? Does anyone know where Ruben Studdard is?

Okay, so I need an opinion. There's a close family friend of mine who's maybe 2 years older than I am. I've known him since I was around a year old. Around a year ago, he met someone in his law school who he really clicked with, and they started dating. They really clicked. They adopted a dog. They pretty much fell in love. A couple of months ago, my friend, who lives in Boston, went to Hawaii to do a law internship in the court system out there (yeah, I know, pretty sweet deal, eh? He may be getting a job out of it too, the bastard), and his girlfriend came out to see him for his first two weeks out there. They were so close that he had considered popping the question while they were together in Hawaii, and apparently his parents liked this girl and were supportive of him to the point where his mom went looking for diamonds to set in a ring (taking my mom shopping with her, on a side note). However, he decided not to ask her to marry him (among other reasons, he felt that the pressure of the situation -- them being in Hawaii in a romantic situation -- wasn't conducive to him doing it), and he figured that the three months they were spending apart would see if the relationship would be the litmus test to see if they survived -- they weren't breaking up, they just weren't together geographically. She went back to Boston, and he stayed in Hawaii. They talked regularly. Soon after, the calls started coming in at all hours of the day and night -- even in the middle of the night. She missed him so much, she cried to him over the phone, she couldn't stand to be without him, she couldn't deal with him being gone. In the midst of all of this, this smart law student (she really was brilliant) was supposed to be studying for the bar exam. Apparently, she fell apart so much without him there... that she neglected to study for the bar and skipped the test on the day she was scheduled to take it. That was the straw that broke the camel's back, and he broke up with her. He had to do it over the phone because he's not going back to Boston for another month. But he said that he needed someone a little more independent to the point where she wouldn't fall apart if he left for a week or something later on. My question is... was he justified in breaking up with her over the phone?

Among the more underrated actors out there right now: - Eddie Griffin - Jason Statham - Peter Krause, Josh Charles and the entire cast of Sports Night - Ron Livingston - Donal Logue And will someone please give me an example of a film other than The Untouchables and Field of Dreams in which Kevin Costner actually earned the reputation that he has?

Ironic that I would hear those words that comprise the title of this entry being uttered by a Canadian. (Well, he's envious of us and our HMOs -- it's Norm McDonald.) But I have to tell you that I've never liked the whole "America: Love it or leave it" mentality that especially seems to have pervaded this land after 9/11. There's a bumper sticker on a utility box that says that, and I pass it every morning on my way to work and cringe. Since when did this country, supposedly a melting pot that was established as a haven from persecution because of people's differences, suddenly become a land of uniformity and unquestioning loyalty to our leaders and the mainstream ethnicity? I was reading one of my company's competitor's daily faxes, and there was an ad for national talk show host Neil Boortz which read, "The High Priest of the Church of Painful Truth says, 'How can we take airport security seriously until ethnic profiling is not only permitted, but encouraged?'" Hold on there a second, Wonderboy, I've got two words for you: Timothy McVeigh. Here's another two words for you: The Unabomber. That's right, bucko, two of our nation's terrorists were white male American citizens. Ethnic profiling wouldn't have done any good against these guys, you loudmouthed schmuck, and we shouldn't judge people by the way they look or where they came from. And here's a little painful truth for you -- quite frankly, Boortz, one of your ancestors came from a land that wasn't the U.S., so maybe YOU should lead by example and go back to where they came from. Here's a great idea instead -- rather than ethnic profiling, why not make some equipment that actually can scan people and luggage boarding planes accurately and hire some people who can operate the machinery so we can actually see if they're carrying anything dangerous on board? While we're on the topic of stupid talk show hosts, let's go back to another one of my faaaaaaaavorite people, Rush Limbaugh. I wonder if his drug addiction was on loan from God as well. Does anyone else remember a few years ago when he said on his show that drug addicts should be kicked out of the country? I find it extremely ironic that now that he's in the rehab clinic, he's "confessing his sins" to his legions of mindless drones who he expects will forgive him because they eat up every single word he says without question, and he's blaming the drugs for making him addicted. Schmuck.

The sky here yesterday was... well, for lack of a better term, weird-looking. It looked like post-apocalyptic nuclear winter outside, with all the unnatural greys and strange oranges and the acrid smell of smoke in the air -- and mind you, people, I'm 30-50 miles away from these fires. It still blows my mind to think that a good chunk of the state is literally on fire, and it's even more disconcerting to me to think that a good portion of these fires were set by arsonists. A few minutes gathering some brush, toss on a match, and watch nature rage out of control to the point where hundreds of men trained to stop this kind of thing can only get out of its way and hope it hits an area that it can't cross. I have friends who've had to evacuate, and I'd have to say that if I were in that position, the scariest thing would be the waiting -- trying to figure out what to take in packing the car, wondering how long it'll be if/before the fire would get to my house and whether the house would burn, destroying everything.

People never believe me when I tell them about the Garden Gnome Liberation Front. Well, here's proof. Seems that ever since the GGLF liberated about 75 gnomes in 2001 and left them on the stairs of a church in a French town (the gnomes were seeking sanctuary, apparently), the police have been holding on to them while waiting for their owners to pick them up. While the recent "Gnome Return Day" failed to match up too many people with their missing garden gnomes, police are hopeful that some locals will adopt the gnomes and give them a good home. Hey, at least they're not eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee-vil.

Okay, phew. The damn site is working again. For those of you who were temporarily freaked out by the loss of this wonderful outlet (namely, me), here's what happened. The domain registration expired and no one told me. Thankfully, I'm kind of obsessive-compulsive when it comes to being in contact with people, so yesterday morning when I woke up and turned on my computer to check my e-mail and I couldn't access it, I punched up my site to see if I could access it and figure out what went wrong. And there I found the oopsie. But it's all better now -- or at least it's getting better slowly -- and special thanks to Eve for not only calling me to make sure I knew what was going on, but also for listening to me rant last night about the stupidity of it all and how I needed everything to go back to the way it was RIGHT THEN. In other news, you know what else sucks? Actors who get their own TV shows where they play a character somewhat based on themselves that has a normal life like the rest of us to the point where they even keep the same name. Like they'd be stretching their acting abilities to respond to a different name? We have Life With Bonnie starring Bonnie Hunt, According to Jim starring Jim Belushi and Luis starring Luis Guzman, to name a few. Don't you think they're being paid enough that, in order to make the plotline a little more believable, their characters should take on a different name? Like we'd actually believe -- and find funny -- situations where actors are doing "real-life" things as if they weren't rich and famous. I can't honestly see anyone saying to themselves, "Ooh, I wonder how Jim Belushi would react to this situation that I was just in where my wife told me to get off my lazy ass and take out the trash or I'd be sleeping on the couch! I bet it'd be a whooooooole lot funnier on his show than it actually played out here!"

Perhaps I should clarify the fact that I was using dramatic license in my last entry. I'm not really scared of flying. In fact, I'm not scared of flying at all. I'm just scared the airline will lose my luggage. I'm serious. Out of everything involved in the flying process, that's what worries me the most. My anxiety level begins to rise once we've touched down at our destination, and it increases steadily the longer I have to wait by that damn luggage carousel. Although I do find it a wee bit interesting that I was on an Alaska Airlines flight only a week before that same flight crashed, and I was on American Airlines Flight 11 from Boston to Los Angeles only a few weeks before 9/11.

Okay, so how many millions of dollars are being spent on airport security and how many extra hours are we spending in line at the airports while they check everything from our changepurses to our shoes to make sure we're not carrying nail files on planes? We're safe from terror now, right? Enter Nathaniel Heatwole, a North Carolina college student who decided to test airport and airline security by placing six items on six planes, including box cutters, bleach (which would simulate that a corrosive liquid could also make it through security) and modeling clay made to look like plastic explosive. He even sent an e-mail to the government telling them on what planes and when he'd be trying to place the objects. Let me run that by you again: He even sent an e-mail to the government telling them on what planes and when he'd be trying to place the objects. In his e-mail, he provided his name and contact information as well, and our paranoid government who was considering rounding up Muslims and putting them in detention camps after 9/11 for fear they'd all spontaneously rise up and form terrorist cells, did not respond. Can you see where I'm going with this? Five weeks later, Southwest Airlines maintenance workers found the items on the planes. No, folks, the government or the TSA did not find the items even though he let them know they were there! Meanwhile, the Feds finally caught up to Nat and arrested him. The icing on the cake was when I was watching The Daily Show last night, and they aired a clip of the head of the TSA holding a press conference, saying that they "didn't need help pointing out the flaws in their security." Well, pal, apparently you do. You had plenty of advance warning -- I mean, what more do you need besides the guy's name, the time and date he was going to do it and the flights he was going to put it on? Do you need him to streak through the airport, screaming "I'm gonna put stuff on the planes right now!!! Wheeeee, look at me!" Airport security has failed. Period. Despite all the money and time and bureaucratic effort, it has failed. Plain and simple. We had the biggest breach in security in our country's history two years ago, and despite all the money they've thrown at it, they've still failed to plug the holes and fix it. It's a wonder that despite all this, I'm still planning on flying in 5 weeks.

So, I keep seeing all these late-night advertorials on TV for these supposedly "amazing" products that will do everything from banishing body hair for weeks on end to enabling you to stop smoking in 5 days to making you lose 20 pounds in only 3 weeks, etc. My only question is... how many people actually believe this stuff actually works? Isn't there a small voice in the back of their heads that says, "Hey, hey, hey... maybe if this were legit, I wouldn't have to hear about it by staying up until 2am and watching poorly-acted commercials on basic cable in the wee hours of the morning."

I think it would be appropriate to say that I have been deluged with spam e-mails over the past few weeks. I didn't know if anyone else had noticed an increasing amount of spam flooding their inboxes, but it's gotten to the point that over the few hours while I sleep, as many as 40 spam e-mails will pile up in my e-mail -- and what really amuses me is that there's a good chunk of them advertising for ways to stop spam. Has anyone else noticed this, or is there some kind of silent campaign to flood me with spam? Or... is Eve signing me up for mailing lists as part of her mysterious evil plan to wreak havoc on my life that she won't tell me about? (I wonder if she realizes that I'm going to blame her for everything bad that happens in my life because I'll never know if it really was her who did it.) Without going out, finding spammers and putting a machete through their computers, is there anything that can be done?

Okay, so I am debating the debate that every man does every morning: Do I shave or do I let it grow? I'm unfortunately one of those guys who can grow a full beard in about 3 days' time. So me not shaving is a big deal because I will definitely look scruffy and/or lazy -- I really do need to shave every day or else it will be obvious, as I have grown a full beard just by not shaving over a weekend. And I'm the type of person who feels that if I'm going out into the world, I should be presentable. Unless I'm going straight to the gym, I always shower and brush my teeth before I leave my apartment. And not shaving means that I will look a little unkempt and careless in my appearance. But damn it, I feel lazy and it's just something I really don't feel like doing. If women don't shave every day, why should I?

It's been a long couple of days. We had some meetings at work that kept me in a conference room for the better part of two days, then I had to run out of the meetings and help write stuff for our daily faxes. On top of all that, there were personal issues to deal with. But I survived, and I even managed to get out last night to have some fun at the Queen Mary Shipwreck with Wendy, Fran, Eve, Mikey & Joelle. (Amazing how much typing needed to be done in order to generate those simple 5 words & links.) As such, here are some notes on last night: - Francisco really enjoys making us all nauseous by making us stay in these rooms that are optical illusions where you feel like the room is spinning even though you're not moving at all. I believe Joelle told one of the supposed scarers that she was not scared of him but she was listing to the right. - For some reason, the people dressed up in the mazes believe that marracas are scary, because a lot of them had them and were shaking them at us. I dubbed them "the Marracas of Doom," because that's the only way they possibly could be scary. - Wendy actually offended one of the scarers by commenting that she was tired so they just weren't scary. He replied, "Let's see how tired you get after trying to scare people for 6 hours." - Francisco likes ponies and alpacas. But he doesn't like goats. Despite that, while waiting on line to get into one of the mazes, I proposed forming the Goat Liberation Front to Joelle, with Fran as our figurehead leader. - Mikey has cool shoes. I have a picture of them on my camera, which I'll post later. - She of the Technological Touch of Death (a.k.a. Eve) claimed she touched my car. On my way home last night, I kept a careful eye on all my gauges and warning lights on the dashboard. The appropriate righteous indignation was displayed upon learning of her dastardly deed.

Technologically, it's been a pretty sucky few days. First, my server went completely down on Monday night. Then my cell phone hard-crashed and locked up while I was in the middle of a call for some inexplicable reason. Then my satellite radio reception in the car went completely to hell. Now I can receive e-mail, but I can't send it. I think someone's out to get me where it hurts, and I have an inkling as to who it might be, as I have been receiving threats that she will do something evil to me... Confound you, woman! What evil mysticism is this that you have wrought upon me?? Someone once told me that you need two things in life: duct tape and WD-40. If it moves and it shouldn't, use the duct tape. If it doesn't move and it should, use the WD-40. Extremely wise words to live by, but spraying WD-40 at my laptop or stupid DSL modem is not going to help this situation, I don't think.