So I just had to take care of my parents, who are around three sheets to the wind -- Mom may be a little more than that, I'm thinking she might be about 3 1/2 sheets to the wind. It's an odd role reversal in that I'm the one who has to responsible, empty the dishwasher, put away the dishes and fold all the laundry from the dryer. I guess once they feel like I can be a responsible adult, they don't need to act the part anymore. It's still a little hard to believe that in the morning, I'll be winging my way to fabulous Orlando for a week at the Happiest Place on Earth™ (happiness not included, do not taunt Happy Fun Ball®). In ghetto speak, I'm goin' to Didney Whirl!

That word just cracks me up... try saying it without laughing. There's an 80% chance you will fail. When you join the masses in doing the post-Thanksgiving shopping rush tomorrow, as I'm sure many of you will do, keep in mind these two things that I'm not thankful for: 1. A space marked "compact" is for a compact-size car. That's what that means. We're talking Honda Civic-type stuff here. Park your Ford Exploder and your Mercury Megamountainsize somewhere else, pal. Those spots are for teeny-tiny cars and are sized smaller so they can fit more cars in there, which means there's more spots in other locations for your big-ass houseboat -- I mean SUV. 2. One car = one space. It's a simple one-to-one ratio. I don't care how pristine your car is and how much space you want between your car and the one next to you, don't take up two spaces and don't park just over the line. That's just plain rude. Thank you. We now finish this public service announcement and return you to your normal lives. Carry on. Nothing to see here, people. By the way... I was just inspired to remind all of you that I now disavow any liking of Radiohead past The Bends because I hate the fact that they feel that they need to be the Pink Floyd of my generation, and I still don't get the gestalt of The White Stripes -- yeah, "Fell in Love with a Girl" was a great catchy tune and the video kicked ass, but I don't get why everyone thinks they're like the Second Coming of alternative music. And I still fucking hate Hole. Courtney Love, who is quite possibly the most untalented person in rock music in years, deserves the best possible punishment she could ever endure -- obscurity. I think if she's not famous anymore and not given the props a celebrity gets, it would drive her up a wall more than anything. Okay, now I'm finished. Tawk amongst yaselves. And while you're at it, check out Interpol's song "NYC" -- so incredibly haunting and beautiful that it instantly makes images of New York at Christmastime spring to my mind... it almost makes me cry, I miss it so much.

If you say the title of this entry in a high-pitched voice, it kind of sounds like a turkey, right? I hit Tucson at around 4:30am local time last night -- long drive. Thankfully, I'd picked up a Mountain Dew when I crossed the state line, and it powered me all the way through. And the other thing I'm thankful for this Thanksgiving is satellite radio. Man, I couldn't have made this trip without it or I would've gone stir-crazy in the car. Mom's cookin' the turkey and stuffing, Dad's in front of the TV, and I've hooked my laptop up to their Internet connection. Not much changes, even after all these years. I'm thankful that I have them, though, and I'm thankful for all my wonderful friends all around the country. Happy Thanksgiving, y'all.

Sorry I haven't posted here in a few days. It's been a long couple of days, I've been through a lot -- most of which I'd prefer not to post here. Either way, I leave tomorrow after work for Thanksgiving with the parents in Tucson, then on Saturday, I depart Arizona for a week with Mom at the Happiest Place on Earth™ -- Disney World. Wheeeeeee! The night drive to Tucson will do me some good, I think. 500 miles of open road, overnight drive so I can put the pedal down and some quality tunes to blast along the way... life will be good. See y'all on the flipside. Update: Now, how spooky is this? I just punched up my horoscope for Wednesday, and this is what it says: You might be distracted all day by daydreams of a trip you're planning to take, dear Sagittarius. A friend might phone you up and want to discuss it, which doesn't help. Visions of faraway places and exciting pastimes may be dancing in your head, and routine tasks might seem incredibly tedious and not worthy of attention. However, it's best to get them done if you can. Then you can fantasize about your vacation guilt-free!

This is what my Sunday Los Angeles Times inspires in me: 1. Opus is back!!!!! Oh, happy day! Oh, happy, happy day! It's been far too long since that lovable hefty-nosed penguin graced the comic pages of my local paper, and I've reread my Bloom County books so many times, I could quote you lines from them. 2. With a goatee, Senator John Kerry would probably look a lot like Evil Spock.

Rumor has it that some people have been looking for the Paris Hilton sex video. Well, check it out. (And now, I will wait while the tens of hundreds of Google hits for the search string come pouring in.) I'm presently in the midst of Al Franken's latest book, Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right. I am enjoying this book very much. Not only is it funny, but Al pokes holes in the theories of all the people I can't stand, like Sean Hannity and especially that godforsaken blowhard Rush Limbaugh. It appalls me that so many people follow Rush so blindly to the point where they champion the fact that he calls them "Dittoheads." That's an insult, not a compliment, you dorks! I would never want to be thought of someone who just repeats something someone else says without processing it and thinking it through and researching it for myself. So it's in Al's honor that I post this great photo of a poorly placed billboard in Dallas.

This is quite possibly the most amusing thing I've read in a while. My favorite part is where they say that 3% of the people they've surveyed say that they expect they'll have morning-after regrets about the way they acted at their holiday office party. Oh, and Sledge says that Fox may resurrect Family Guy. My response? Sweeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeet.

In what can only be termed the most absurd claim by the stupid dumbasses at PETA, PETA VP Dan Mathews said that "if Clay Aiken intends on staying famous, he has to learn to take a joke." This from the lunatics who have protested anything and everything that even a nun wouldn't deem offensive? Hypocrisy, hypocrisy, hypocrisy. I can't believe that these people would even think about suggesting someone would need to learn how to take a joke when the PETA collective is by far one of the most humorless organizations on the planet. And all because Clay said he didn't like cats and was mildly afraid of them. So they embarked on an ad campaign with the slogan "Get Neutered, It Didn't Hurt Clay Aiken," which they've held back on distributing until Clay apologizes. If Clay knows what's good for him, he'll never apologize. He stated an opinion. He doesn't like cats. End of story. Because they disagree with his opinion, they feel they need to blackmail him into apologizing for it? If that's the case, they why haven't they apologized to me for offending me by being pompous, self-righteous blowhards?

I'm not conversationally anal-retentive, but I occasionally do like lists. They help me organize my thoughts. So here goes. 1. I am sick of spam. Not only did I log in this morning to find 50 spam e-mails (that's since 11pm last night!), MTBlacklist apparently needs an update on the IP addresses some of these spammers have been using because I had to delete a bunch of comments here. Do they really think I'll be dumb enough to follow the link to loseweightandhavemonkeysex.com? 2. I neglected to mention that while in Vegas Baby Vegas, I saw both O and Mamma Mia. O was amazing in that the things the Cirque du Soleil people were doing with their bodies was unbelievable -- they must not have any bones -- but the show was exhausting in that there was so much going on that I couldn't tell where I should be looking at any given time and I walked out ready for bed. Mamma Mia was really cute and both I and my parents really liked it -- but I don't know ABBA's songs well enough to know if they adapted the lyrics at all to fit the storyline, can anyone out there tell me? If not, they did an incredible job inventing the story around the songs; and if so, it was still damn good anyways. There were about 15 women sitting 2 rows behind us who got up and were disco dancing in front of their seats during the encore songs. 3. A Coldstone Creamery opened right up the street from my apartment. Literally like 3 blocks away. Walking distance. I can't even begin to tell you how bad this is, because I've been really good about eating relatively healthfully and losing weight, and having fabulous ice cream within walking distance will kill me. The problem is, I really want to try it, but -- like everything else I eat -- I know that if I open the door once, the pressure behind it will force the door open wide and I won't be able to stop going. 4. The people at ABC are dumbasses. They put a great show, Karen Sisco, up against perennial ratings-winner Law & Order and they wonder why the show's not doing as well as it could, so rather than just moving it, they're putting it on hiatus until January. It's so typical of this Internet-speed lifestyle that if a show doesn't get ratings in the first month, they yank it. Hell, it took Seinfeld two or so years to build up the following it had but NBC stayed with it, doesn't anyone remember that?

Dad & I went to see "Star Trek: The Experience" at the Hilton. It was way cool, except they really do need to update it. Hello, people, the Next Generation version of the Enterprise blew up like five years ago! They've had two movies out with the new ship and new uniforms and everything! Anyways, they're opening up a new exhibit in the spring called "Borg Invasion 4D" that's supposed to be way cool, so I'm going to have to go back and see that. There was a Borg wandering around the Promenade area, though he strangely had an Australian accent. This is back inside the Bellagio. They've got this whole fall motif going on with a pumpkin patch, a haystack and a small farmhouse with some giant glass leaves. I knew I'd acclimated to living in L.A. when I first saw all the glass suspended from the ceiling and I thought, "Man, if there's ever an earthquake, this place'll turn into a deathtrap!" This is the inside of the Paris hotel, it's the main shopping "street." Here's New York New York (which was easily my favorite hotel) and the MGM Grand during the daytime. Here's the Strip during the daytime... ...and what a difference a few hours makes. Here's New York New York all lit up at night. This is a night shot of Excalibur. This is our hotel (the Bellagio) at night. I still can't get over how nice it was. A lot of people don't believe me when I tell them that I drive with a lead foot, so I snapped this picture on my way back to Los Angeles. Yes, admittedly, it's hard to speed on city streets, which is where I do a lot of my driving, and while I'm occasionally aggressive enough to speed and dodge traffic a bit on city streets, I'm more careful there. However, on the open highway where there's nothing but a few hundred miles between me and my destination, I have no problem with stepping down on the gas pedal. Here's your proof that I'm a speed junkie, you doubters.

Okay, so I figure I'll take this pretty sequentially... which is good, because I really don't feel like shrinking 17 bazillion pictures and posting them all at once. Day One: Wednesday It was incredibly horrible out on Wednesday; there was a monster storm moving through the region. I'm sure some of you saw some of the pictures of the hail that landed in L.A. These are some of the flatlands in Nevada outside of Las Vegas. However, they're all waterlogged. I have another photo of how they look when you can actually see outside and how dry they're supposed to be. Doc Brown says, "88 miles per hour!" My friend Sam (who is blogless) is one of the coolest people in the world. I had called her the night before to tell her that the woman had broken up with me, and she -- unbeknownest to me -- called the hotel and ordered chocolate-covered strawberries and an exquisite selection of chocolates, which were waiting for me in my room when I got there. The funny thing is that my mom thought the stuff was for her and that they put it in the wrong room, because when she made the reservations at the hotel, she told them it was her birthday, and she opened up the card even though it had my name on it. In the lobby of our hotel (we stayed at the Bellagio), they have these glass mushrooms hanging from the ceiling. They look really cool, because they're all colored and backlit. That's my mom looking shocked to see the camera flash, and you can also see the back of my dad's head. There's some other cool stuff they had in the lobby, but the pictures I took during the day came out better because there's a skylight above it. This is the Paris hotel, which was across the street from where we were staying. Here's a shot of the famous water show in front of the Bellagio. I heard on the Travel Channel that 100,000 gallons of water evaporates from Las Vegas every day. Given the fact that the city is in the middle of the desert and how much water just flows freely all over the city, I'm really not surprised.

After a long drive back from Vegas (which, admittedly, did include a stopover at some clothing store outlets in Nevada), I'm back in Los Angeles. My Internet connection is stable and guaranteed. I will upload some of the 70 pictures I took over the past few days over the next couple of days. So I came home and, of course, turned on my computer. After sifting through the 150 e-mails to delete out the spam and read the actual e-mails (score: spam 130, real e-mails 20, and the sad thing is that it had only been a day and a half since I'd checked my e-mail), I went to My Yahoo to catch up. Here's my horoscope, isn't it eerily applicable? Your spirit is sparkling, dear Sagittarius, and you may feel yourself filling up with tremendous energy as you go about your day. Your sense of adventure is at a monthly peak, and there is very little that can get you down. One area of your life that might be slightly difficult for you to deal with right now, though, is your world of love and romance. For some reason, you may feel like this is the one domain in which things aren't going the way you would like them to. The secret is to be patient.

Yes, there's precious few times when I'll actually admit it, but this is one of them. So I brought everything I need to Vegas to take pics -- my camera, my battery recharger, my computer, an Ethernet cable to hook up to the Internet... but I forgot the damn cable to connect my camera to the computer to download images from my Memory Stick. This means, you lovely 3 people who read my blog, that you'll have to wait until I arrive home Friday night to see the pretty pictures I've been taking. I guess I'm okay with the whole woman thing. I mean, not really, but I have no choice, right? I guess the real hell of it all is that I have to start completely over. And everyone knows how hard it is to meet people in Los Angeles; plus, the fact that I've limited myself to Jewish women doesn't help. And it also doesn't help that I genuinely liked this woman... we got along really well. I thought we really clicked. Will someone please explain to me how you can be friends with someone you still have feelings for and someone you're attracted to? The only real thing I don't understand in this situation is that she says that she really cares about me as a friend, but she also is physically attracted to me and wants to jump me. Isn't that the basis of a relationship right there, or am I completely and totally off? I think my biggest problem is that I can never stop thinking -- unless I get drunk or I sleep, and sometimes getting to sleep is difficult because my brain is always engaged and working. How do you stop yourself from thinking? How do you stop from dwelling on something and going over it again and again in your head and focusing on a single issue when your brain is constantly in gear?

In a very Swingers-like turn of events, I find myself heading out to Las Vegas on the day I try to forget a woman. A few of you know that I've been seeing someone for the past couple of months. Personally, I thought things were going great. She was warm, fun, smart, funny and she was also pretty damn good-looking, and we seemed to be very compatible in several different ways. We were spending a hell of a lot of time together -- to the point where when I woke up this morning alone and in my own bedroom, I was a little disoriented and it took me a second to realize where I was. I really liked this woman, and I honestly thought we had a shot at success in the long run. Until last night, when she told me that even though she thought I was wonderful, she felt like that extra spark of "I could fall for this guy" wasn't there and she just wanted to be friends. Suffice it to say that I didn't see it coming, and it was like I was run over by a Mack truck, despite her insisting that I should've seen the signs. She still feels very close -- we've shared a lot of private details, which now makes me feel a little foolish because there's things about me that I've told her that even some of my closest friends don't know -- and she wants me to "sit at the table" with her and be her friend. I just don't know if I can do that right now. And the problem is that not only do I feel a little betrayed in that respect, I still have feelings for her, and it's hard to hate and like someone at the same time. Three days in Vegas. Is that enough time to lose yourself?

Laughter has to be contagious. Otherwise, watching blooper reels and outtakes and people spontaneously cracking up on live TV wouldn't make us laugh so much.