I'm not quite sure what's more absurd in today's news, the ruling that R. Kelly has to avoid Michael Jackson at the Grammys or this mug shot of the Godfather of Soul: One of my co-workers who I like very much is leaving our company, which saddens me greatly. I can afford mega kung-fu cable at my new apartment, which I have finally secured, and this makes me happy. If only for a week, I wish I was back in New England. There's something very comforting about a snow day, when you don't have to answer to anyone, when all you have to do is stay in bed, watch TV, watch -- and listen to -- the snow fall and eat comfort food like mac 'n' cheese. There's nothing like hearing the snow fall -- it's quiet in a way that is almost unnatural for a city. But believe me, after a week of below-zero temperatures... L.A. would look pretty damn attractive again. Annual corporate meetings will usurp my time today and tomorrow, then I'm off to San Francisco for the weekend. Wheeeeeeeeeeee!

I came to the realization recently that I write because I like to. Because I enjoy the kind of picture that words can form in my head, and I like generating those words to form the pictures in others heads, and I like generating the words to express what pictures are in my head. It thrills me to see the words of my own pictures. So I sit here, at my desk, at my computer, freezing because the heat is broken in my apartment. Yes, Virginia, it gets cold in Los Angeles, and my roommates have neglected to call the repairman because, hell, they're moving out in three weeks and spend 80% of the time with their girlfriends now anyways, what do they care? Me, I'm temporarily homeless, and I hate being cold. The landlord for my new place told me today that the person whose apartment I'm taking has told him she's not moving out of state after all, so I sit here, shivering because it's my home right now and I shouldn't have to wear a jacket in my own damn home, hanging on until the landlord gets back to me on Wednesday to tell me what's up. Never mind the fact that I already signed a lease and gave him a deposit check so my mind should be reassured that there's no way he can back out even though I don't have copies of any of that because I foolishly thought that this guy would be trustworthy because of the rigamorale he put me through in order for me to get the place, that since I'm dating a law student whose entire family is made up of lawyers that all like me and will gladly serve as my legal pitbulls, never mind that my compulsive behavior to plan things ahead of time so I have everything worked out seamlessly is screaming for me to work things out now so I can reserve movers and make the appropriate arrangements for utilities. No, never mind all of that, I'm sitting here in the twilight of a dimly lit room, shivering and thinking to myself, I have nothing to complain about. What I'm going through does not even compare to the hell of war, not even the dramatized hell of war I'm watching on these Band of Brothers DVDs. The Battle of the Bulge. A fierce battle that was the turning point in the Allied invasion. Months spent living in holes in the ground in the freezing cold of a French forest near some little worthless town called Bastogne with no winter clothes, little ammunition, little food and few medical supplies. My grandfather was there. He fought. He survived. And I'm here because of it, and as my mind turns back to the Bastogne on the TV in my room and my memories of the time I actually visited the real Bastogne, I wonder how much of my shivering is sympathetic cold. On a completely unrelated note, if you have any desire to go see that awful Ashton Kutcher movie The Butterfly Effect, don't. Ashton doesn't need your money, he needs to slip into obscurity. Instead, read the Ray Bradbury short story that started it all, that actually coined the phrase "butterfly effect," that was the basis for one of my favorite Simpsons Halloween episodes, that haunted me for years after I read it in a high school English class because one of the subjects my mind likes to twist around when I can't stop thinking is temporal mechanics and causality. Then think about seeing the movie coming out this summer that's based directly on the story. I guarantee it'll be better than any Ashton Kutcher film ever could be.

A Saturday night filled with a Special Someone™, old-school Nintendo (yes, I have an original NES that still works and we played Super Mario Bros.), ice cream sandwiches and other herbal substances. It was damn fun. While in the haze of herbal substances, these two thoughts occurred to me: 1. You ever wonder who invented certain things that we take completely for granted? Like nodding and shaking your head to signify "yes" and "no." Someone had to have done that first. And it's a universal symbol that's not even contained within the English-language speaking world! Or how come extending your middle finger at someone has the meaning it does? Who came up with that? And language too -- too many times, we've said, "Well, that word in English comes from the Latin/French/German/Bulgarian root blah blah blah," but where did that root word come from? 2. Why is it that TV shows seem to be written by people who are only thinking episode to episode, without taking the grand scheme of things and the season into account? Take, for example, Sex & The City, where a few seasons ago, Miranda and Steve were doing great, then he suddenly turned into an asshole in the space of a single episode, so they broke up. The same thing happened later on with Carrie and that writer guy she was dating (played by Ron Livingston) who broke up with her on a Post-It. And recent events in Alias seem to reflect that as well -- with Lauren very suddenly working for the Covenant, it seems like her behavior has become shifty and suspect in the space of a single episode. Why weren't there hints on this kinds of things?

In my neverending quest to infect the Internet with all kinds of crazy fads and idiosyncracies that people will eventually credit me for finding and/or introducing, I present you with this. However, I offer up this disclaimer: I am sick to death of this damn song. But the way it's presented here was actually cute enough to make me watch the video the whole way through. Banzai!

Try this on for size. I think there were at least four people in my office playing it at once this afternoon, and I hold the office record at 319.7 feet. One of my out-of-office friends, however, scored 325.6 feet, the evil, evil person that she is. [UPDATE: Apparently, that version's been shut down, but someone posted a link to a new version where it's easier to get distance. Current record: 532.8 feet.] Also, I got hit with the jury duty -- have to call back tomorrow between 11:30am-12:30pm to see what my reporting instructions are. I'm hoping I don't even have to report, but if I do, they won't empanel me (which sounds like a painful process in itself). Several suggestions have been made on how to get me out of the empanelment process, including answering "I'm Batman" when they call on me, screaming "White power!" when they call me and/or telling the judge how I hate just about every single race, religion and nationality in the world.

So I signed a lease yesterday. On an apartment. That I will be moving into in a couple of weeks. It's not far from where I live now -- only a few blocks away, so I'll still be basically in the same area. And for the first time in my life, I'll be living alone. I think that was hammered home to me last night when I got home from work around 11:30 and spent literally 25 minutes driving around the neighborhood looking for a parking space, then walked the 2 1/2 blocks back to my apartment and got inside and just closed the door to my bedroom because I was tired, but felt a little rude that I didn't stop to talk to my roommates. I won't have to worry about that. I'll have my own parking space, I'll have my own place so I can leave all the doors open and still feel like I'm able to spend time with myself if I don't want to talk to anyone and not be rude. For the first time ever, it will be my apartment. My home. No one else's. Man, that's a nice thing to think about.

Words cannot express how much I love the people who run Adult Swim. I think one of my dream jobs would be to work at Cartoon Network and come up with those clever little liner cards they throw up before and after commercial breaks. Not only that, but they're brilliant enough to air Futurama and Family Guy back to back. Man, that's an hour of power. Oh, and by the way? Eve rules -- she upgraded my MT. The one thing I wish they'd fix is this whole pinging problem.

1. I am sick of all this 9-11 hysteria. It's more than 2 years later; it's got to stop. I'm not talking about forgetting about what happened because it was horrific and we should never forget what happened, I'm talking about all this special eerie significance that people seem to attach to the number sequence and date. I was listening to the radio on my way into work today and right before a song started, the DJ said, "I wrote down today's date [Ed. note: 1/16] on a piece of paper and left it on a table, and then I came back later and happened to see it upside. It kind of wigged me out... think about it." Give me a fucking break. Yes, it was 911 when you looked at it upside down. So what? Do we have to be terrified of every single instance of those numbers? We bombed Hiroshima on August 6 -- and that one incident was more horrific than any terrorist act so far because it killed more than 200 times the number of people that were in the World Trade Center and did unspeakable damage, not to mention the fact that it was a weapon that the world have never seen before. But does that mean that the Japanese are scared of the number 86? Have they banished all of the 86th floors from the buildings they built since 1945? If they look at "98" upside down, do they talk about it on the radio? 2. There's a new station in town, Indie 103-1. I think they're pretty decent. Yes, Clear Channel has their hands in the station in that they're selling the ad time, and I know they're involved in the programming even though they're not supposed to be. There's a movement in town of people -- mostly people who, I think, seem to believe it's cool to hate anything that's corporately-related and not cutting-edge-to-the-point-of-bleeding like KCRW (a.k.a. "too cool for the room") -- who are railing against it simply because Clear Channel is involved, so therefore they believe it sucks. Does it really make that much of a difference? It's still playing great music -- when was the last time you heard Catherine Wheel or X or Frank Black or Phantom Planet or The Pogues on the radio? The fact that Clear Channel is involved does not make the playlist any less good. So shut the hell up and let me enjoy my music. You can tell it's been a pretty bad night, haven't you?

So, I have a confession: This blogging thing isn't holding my attention as much as it used to. I'm having issues coming up with things to write about, and I've promised myself I'm not going to post for the sake of posting. I guess life's just shifted a little bit -- looking for a place of my own to live, spending time with the Special Someone™, dealing with the fact that I'll be living alone and really supporting myself for the first time in my life and the financial ramifications, and trying to figure out where I want my life to go in the long run. I'm not going to stop posting... I still have things to say. And I appreciate all of you coming by here to see what I'm spewing out over the Internet, despite the fact that there's not so many of you doing so. I just may not be posting as often as I used to... but then again, I might. You never know, do you? You'll just have to keep coming back to check.

So, I neglected to mention that on Sunday, David Duchovny walked into the restaurant while I was eating lunch in (he looks exactly like he does on TV and in the movies!), and today I saw Philip Seymour Hoffman in the building I work in. Then Eve had to go and completely trump me by telling me that she met Mel Brooks today at lunch.

Someone called and woke me at 7AM this morning to ask if the number he called was Christopher Walken's phone, and I was too annoyed and groggy to say yes and have some fun with his mind. My funniest thoughts of Christopher Walken astonishingly are not those of him dancing in the video for Fatboy Slim's "Weapon of Choice," though that video is one of the funniest things I've seen -- my funniest thoughts of Christopher Walken are not even of Walken himself. They're of an imitation Jay Mohr did of him on an episode of The Simpsons where Springfield is having a book fair, and Christopher Walken (voiced by Mohr) is doing a celebrity book-reading of Goodnight Moon. "Goodnight, Moon... goodnight, Moon..." [Children sitting by his feet cowering in fear and slowly moving away] "Children, scootch closer... children, what did I tell you about the scootching?"

Hi there. So sorry to have neglected you recently. It's been a whirlwind. So where to begin? Wendy got a job. Eve remains the most awesome evil person ever. I may have found an apartment -- a one-bedroom for a ridiculous price that even though may be very slightly outside my budgeted range, I'd be willing to cut corners and do things like lower the amount of money I have budgeted for cable to get. I think it's finally time for me to live on my own, and I want a one-bedroom place to live in. I know that could come off as sounding vaguely bratty, but my reasoning is that I'm 27 years old, and since I moved out of my parents' house to go to college, I've always had a roommate. I'd like to see what it's like to really live on my own, and I want a one-bedroom because that, to me, would feel like a home that I could make my own, not a studio/bachelor apartment that's one giant room and reminds me way too much of a college dorm single. I'm tired of trying to cram my life into one room. In other news, out of 153 e-mails I received over the weekend, three of them were actually for me and the rest were spam. Government-mandated drop in spam, my ass. I'm like that guy who was trapped under his books and papers for three days... except I'd have to print out all these spam e-mails and then drop them on myself.

Sorry I haven't posted in a couple of days. Personal crap has kept me pretty busy & occupied, so my creativity level is down pretty low while I'm scrambling over this apartment thing. I actually don't have time to post -- I'm running out to see an apartment, so here's a little sumpin' sumpin' for you: A mother and her small son were flying Southwest Airlines from Kansas City to Chicago. The son (who had been looking out the window) turned to his mother and asked, "If big dogs have baby dogs and big cats have baby cats, why don't big planes have baby planes"? The mother (who couldn't think of an answer) told her son to ask the stewardess. So the boy asked the stewardess, "If big dogs have baby dogs and big cats have baby cats, why don't big planes have baby planes?" The stewardess responded, "Did your mother tell you to ask me?" The boy admitted that this was the case. "Well then, tell your mother that there are no baby planes because Southwest always pulls out on time -- now let your mother explain that to you."

Since today seems to be a day of limited mental capacity and creativity (which is bad considering I have to write a column for work today), and I liked the comment I made at Sledge's place so much, I'm going to post it here: Kucinich Shows Pie Chart During Radio Debate I wonder if, after being told that the listeners couldn't see the chart, he held it up to the microphone.

I'm freaking out over finding an apartment, the woman is freaking out over many things and making me crazy, and in the midst of it all comes serenity with the sequel to the cat in the lime helmet. Courtesy of Arctic Zoo, I give you the cat in the pomegranate helmet. Looks kinda like a sumo wrestler, don't it?