Go here, and breathe the fresh liberal take on Talk radio that is Air America. The conservatives have held the arena on Talk far too long, and it's time to even the score. The best part about it is that not only can the liberals make some really good points, but they're funny too. Seriously, Air America launches today at noon with The O'Franken Factor. For those of you who aren't in a market that has an affiliate or don't have XM Satellite Radio, Air America streams online. And if you haven't read Al Franken's latest book, you need to. Hell, I'll even loan you my copy. Free your mind.

Reflections on a traumatic breakup: I put millions of miles Under my heels And still too close to you I feel I am not your rolling wheels I am the highway I am not your carpet ride I am the sky I am not your blowing wind I am the lightning I am not your autumn moon I am the night... -- Audioslave, "I Am the Highway"

Let's recap the week, shall we? So far this week, I have: - Gotten Clear Channel, the largest radio company in the country, mad at me from a corporate level (meaning, not just one station or a market -- like their corporate heads in the parent company) - Possibly gotten someone fired in Atlanta (long story) - Broken up with the girlfriend again -- to the point where she lost it so badly that she took a swing at me and kicked me (I'm fine, I'm not hurt, I'm stronger than she is and was able to hold her back -- and was also able to hold myself back from returning fire). Who needs a drink?

So, listening to my Yahoo! Launch personalized station today, O.M.D.'s "If You Leave" came on. Yes, that Pretty in Pink song. It wasn't the fact that it came on that bothered me, it was the reason why the computer included that song in my playlist. According to Launch, people who recommended Van Halen also recommended that song.

I normally don't like posting forwards... but this one had me laughing so hard that I couldn't even get up and walk to the office of the person who sent it to me to tell him how much I loved it. How to Clean Your Toilet 1. Add the required amount of shampoo to the toilet water, and put both lids up. 2. Pick up the cat and soothe him while you carry him towards the bathroom. 3. In one smooth movement, put the cat in the toilet and close both lids. (You may need to stand on the lid.) The cat will self-agitate and make ample suds. (Never mind the noises that come from the toilet, the cat is actually enjoying this.) 4. Flush the toilet three or four times. (This provides a "power-wash" and "rinse".) 5. Have someone open the door to the outside. (Be sure that there are no people between the toilet and the outside door.) 6. Stand behind the toilet as far as you can, and quickly lift both lids. 7. The now-clean cat will rocket out of the toilet and run outside where he will dry himself off. The toilet will be sparkling clean! Sincerely, The Dog.

Oy. The drama. After a five-hour conversation, the woman and I are going to try to work things out. It was odd in that kissing her afterwards last night felt like I was on a first date, but then we immediately fell back into old patterns. In other news, someone else died while watching The Passion of the Christ. But I have to admit, I saw the best headline ever about that film -- it was last Friday when Dawn of the Dead was opening, and the headline said "Jesus Battles Zombies at the Box Office." Can it get any better than that?

When I was in college, I acted in a musical called Company. It's about a single guy and his married friends who continuously try to set him up, all the while trying to keep their own crazy marriages together. Whenever I become freshly single, I always think of one song from the show called "Another Hundred People." It's sung by one of the single women who the single guy is dating, and it's basically about the plethora of people pouring through the life and city around this person. I think about the difficulties in meeting people -- and even more keenly so now that I'm in Los Angeles, where it's generally agreed upon that it's hard to meet people. And here I am, limiting myself to women who are Jewish. The ubiquitious "they" say that there's not one person for you out there, there are several. Whether or not I believe that seems futile when I look at the speck that I am in this sea of people. I live in the second-largest city in the country, which is home to a few tens of millions of people. I live in a country that is home to 270 million people. Hell, according to Friendster, I'm linked to over half a million people just through third-degree separation. And yet, you expect me to be able to meet that Special Someone™ amidst this swarm of people, most of whom I will never meet, many of whom I may stream past on the street or brush by in a bar or a restaurant without ever exchanging a word? And even if I were to say a word or interact with them, who's to say they'd want to interact back with me? The possibilities are endless, and yet it's almost like I'm paralyzed and saddened by the overwhelming crush of it all. Which is really bad for me, Mr. Instant Gratification. "Another Hundred People" Another hundred people just got off of the train And came up through the ground, While another hundred people just got off of the bus And are looking around At another hundred people who got off of the plane And are looking at us Who got off of the train And the plane and the bus Maybe yesterday. It's a city of strangers, Some come to work, some to play. A city of strangers, Some come to stare, some to stay. And every day The ones who stay Can find each other in the crowded streets and the guarded parks, By the rusty fountains and the dusty trees with the battered barks, And they walk together past upholstered walls with the crude remarks. And they meet at parties through the friends of friends who they never know. "Do I pick you up or do I meet you there or shall we let it go?" "Did you get my message? 'Cause I looked in vain." "Can we see each other Tuesday if it doesn't rain?" "Look, I'll call you in the morning or my service will explain." And another hundred people just got off of the train. It's a city of strangers, Some come to work, some to play. A city of strangers, Some come to stare, some to stay. And every day Some go away Or they find each other in the crowded streets and the guarded parks, By the rusty fountains and the dusty trees with the battered barks, And they walk together past upholstered walls with the crude remarks. And they meet at parties through the friends of friends who they never know. "Do I pick you up or do I meet you there or shall we let it go?" "Did you get my message? 'Cause I looked in vain." "Can we see each other Tuesday if it doesn't rain?" "Look, I'll call you in the morning or my service will explain." And another hundred people just got off of the train. And another hundred people just got off of the train, And another hundred people just got off of the train, And another hundred people just got off of the train. Another hundred people just got off of the train...

The apartment enjoyed its first group of visitors to be entertained today. Well, it was my singing group, so I guess you could say that we entertained ourselves. However, the apartment was well-received -- Top Gun happened to be on cable when they arrived, so the first 20 minutes of rehearsal was spent in utter enjoyment of the new couch and watching the movie. After rehearsal, we went out to a local bar (which, by the way, is like a little Boston outpost of the West -- I felt like I was back on Comm Ave when I was in this place, which was great), where dating was discussed since several of us are single. The whole dating Jews thing was brought up, and I was asked if I'm allowed to touch women. How can you ask me that kind of question and expect me to answer seriously, especially after I've just eaten bacon? Of course, I had to do the whole "I'm not touching you, I'm not touching you" thing while keeping my hands less than an inch away from her.

Sorry for my absence, I've been successfully attempting to keep myself busy. I've been working, I finally got myself back to the gym after gaining somewhere in the neighborhood of 10 pounds (which I am not happy about, though I suspect that I gained the weight because I wasn't happy and therefore eating for comfort) and fixing up my apartment. Things are almost completely in place. Last night, I went to Home Depot and bought wire molding and covered over all those unsightly wires that were running all the way around the apartment. Can I tell you how proud of myself I am? Unfortunately, my thumbs are raw from the experience, so giving people the thumbs-up and the OK-sign is a little painful. One of the things I've been thinking about recently is the madness with this whole indecency on the radio thing. Quite frankly, Janet's breast touched off a whole firestorm of controversy that the religious right is using to bring moral goodness to our country. Do I agree with President Moron and his cronies forcing morality on us? Absolutely not. Do I agree that the airwaves should be cleaned up a bit... well, see, there's the grey area. While I personally didn't like what was being aired, I knew that obviously there was a demand for lowest-common-denominator humor. I could change the station if I wanted. But there's a difference between free speech and the right to be balls-to-the-wall raunchy. And the other thing to consider is that radio is free and open to anyone to receive -- it's not like cable where you can regulate the stations by doing the parental lockout on channels you don't want your kid to hear. And quite frankly, if the FCC wants to take aim at something, maybe they should also take a look at song lyrics and call out the record labels. How many songs these days are about sex? On Friday morning, a couple of guys in Atlanta decided they wanted to push the envelope on this whole "zero tolerance" policy their company had on indecency by recording a porn star "doing her thing" and then playing it back on the air backwards. Unfortunately, it backfired on them when someone left a microphone on during the commercial break while they were recording it, and it went out over the air underneath the commercials. I heard it -- damn, was it graphic. That's just dumb though -- trying to push the boundaries in a cute way by saying "look, we're not being indecent, it's backwards!" In other news, I've been surprised at how often I've been looking at people's eyes to judge them recently. It's been said that "eyes are the windows to the soul," and I'm really starting to firmly believe that you can tell how intelligent and how emotionally stable and kind someone is by looking in their eyes. There's just some kind of warmth you can see in a kind person's eyes, an inquisitiveness in a smart person's eyes, a certain kind of "intelligence has permanently checked out" look in the eyes of someone who's not quite there. Call me judgmental, but it's a thought...

As things end, so has this. I'm single again. Not that I am terribly torn up about this -- I mean, I'm a bit sad because the good times were good, but the times where I was upset or we were fighting were tending to outweigh the good times. I guess that I'm happy I learned early on that there was something lacking in the relationship rather than 5 years or so into it. I'm just surprised at how spectacularly it blew apart in only the last few days, though given my thoughts on her personality, I probably shouldn't be. So, anyone know any hot single Jewish women in Los Angeles?

Anyone else ever had that sensation that your cell phone is vibrating when it's actually not? I've reached for my phone a ton of times over the past couple of weeks when it wasn't ringing or vibrating at all... and the scariest thing is that I've felt the Phantom Vibration even when my cell phone's not in my pocket. Oooooooh... it's the ghost of cell phones in my pocket! In other news, I may be single again soon... time will tell on this one, but I think it may be for the best.

In perusing my longer list of bookmarked blogs (rather than the five or so I hit daily), I have come to the conclusion that there are some pretty fucking spectacular and interesting people out there. In other news, my furniture -- at least everything besides a chair -- will be delivered between now and 3pm. Which means I'm chained to my apartment for the next 3 hours. Good thing I have food, Diet Dr. Pepper, satellite radio, high-speed Internet and 250 channels on my cable system. Otherwise, there's a good chance I might have gone stir-crazy. But I'm still running to the door every time I hear a noise outside, thinking it might be the furniture delivery guys.

Today, I did a Good Thing which may, in turn, leads to more Good Things. One of my co-workers had her last treatment for breast cancer this morning and was given a clean bill of health. As such, I ran out to the supermarket, bought some ice and margarita mix and hosted a Happy Hour celebration at the empty cubicle next to mine. It was proposed that I begin running a regular event for the entire office -- we rarely all fraternize, so maybe I'll do it every other Friday. Open the bar for an hour, charge $2-3 a head to recoup liquor costs and give the office a chance to unwind before the weekend. Wheeeeeeeeeeeee!

There's a man lying dead in a cabin in the middle of a deep forest. He has not been shot, nor he has killed himself. There are no other people there. There are no tracks leading up to or away from the cabin. What happened? (Any questions for hints may be left in the comments, but they must be yes or no questions.)

July 4th weekend in 2002, I locked myself out of my apartment. Not knowing when my roommates would be getting back, since I was under the impression they had left for the long weekend. I didn't know anyone around to ask to use their phone to call a locksmith, and I didn't have my cell phone with me. I was trying to pry open the sliding glass door from the outside patio when I probably put too much stress on the pane of glass next to it and broke it. Seizing the opportunity, I stupidly reached through the glass to unlock the patio door and let myself in. That sliced open the skin on my hand and arm pretty deep, and I began bleeding all over the floor. I let myself in, and the kicker is that 10 minutes later, one of my roommates came home. Meanwhile, I was still cleaning the blood up and bandaging myself. I later had the glass replaced at the cost of somewhere around $300, but the scars still remain on my hand and arm. The lesson? Never leave home without keys. I have a permanent reminder.