I have no idea why Friday the 13th is the supposedly unlucky day. I know that 13 is supposedly some kind of hexed number, but Fridays are good days. The week is almost done. You only have one more day to make it through before the weekend. Tuesdays, on the other hand, are close enough to the beginning of the week that you don't feel relieved that it's here. You're not even halfway through. Your body still is trying to adjust to having your sleep hours pushed back because you're trying to get to sleep earlier and you're waking up earlier, so you're still dependent on that coffee in the morning to give you the jumpstart. So why not pair up an unholy and undesirable day with the unlucky number instead of making those superstitious people crazy on a Friday?

Despite an emotional meltdown earlier today due to some unforeseen news and the subsequent insomnia, there are few things in this life that can't be solved by a couple of vanilla vodka & Diet Cokes and a few episodes of the Greatest Show Ever to Air on TV™, Sports Night.

One of my friends told me today that I have a "strange charisma." He meant it as a compliment, though I'm not quite sure what about me makes him think that.

Top 10 all-time desert island discs (in no particular order): - Everybody Got Their Something - Nikka Costa - Blame Everyone - Grand Theft Audio - Ruby Vroom - Soul Coughing - Whatever and Ever Amen - Ben Folds Five - A Life of Saturdays - Dexter Freebish - Core - Stone Temple Pilots - Songs About Jane - Maroon 5 - Angus motion picture soundtrack - Hackers motion picture soundtrack - The Matrix motion picture soundtrack

Okay, I have no idea who this guy is or why he spent so much time practicing this stupid little parlor trick, but it's fascinating to watch. The really cool part is the end. Piano with balls Right-click and save as, please. Yes, it's work-safe.

I'm beginning to believe that Tom Ridge, Director of Homeland Security, is in cahoots with Pfizer, makers of such fine pharmaceutical products as Xanax. Maybe he's a stockholder. That's the only conclusion I can come to after another in a series of vague and nondescriptive warnings from Ridge that there's a credible Al-Qaida threat, but we don't know when or where or how they're going to strike. I mean, all the man's doing is just ratcheting up the collective anxiety level of Americans all over the country. He's getting us all riled up, as if we didn't have enough to worry about already what with the unemployment and the crime and the fear that a giant meteor will come screaming out of space and destroy the Earth. Now we have to worry about terrorists in our midst who may strike whenever and wherever. And we don't even know who they are! Your neighbor could be a terrorist! Your cat could be a terrorist! And you won't know until it's too late! It's no good to give us these vague warnings -- because all they are are CYA warnings, so that on the chance that something does happen, our government can point back and say, "See? We told you something was going to happen! Our intelligence services work!" But all they're doing is making us all crazy and paranoid and suspiciously look at everyone around us. So the next time that Fluffy carpet-bombs the litterbox, feel free to refrain from calling Tom Ridge and telling him the terrorists have struck at home.

Okay, I've seen this test around (mostly at Skits' place), and I figured I might as well give it a whirl... and it validates my claims to being an evil genius! Take that, Eve! Bwahahahahahaaaaaa... Wackiness: 34/100 Rationality: 44/100 Constructiveness: 32/100 Leadership: 48/100 You are an SEDF -- Sober Emotional Destructive Follower. This makes you an evil genius. You are extremely focused and difficult to distract from your tasks. With luck, you have learned to channel your energies into improving your intellect, rather than destroying the weak and unsuspecting. Your friends may find you remote and a hard nut to crack. Few of your peers know you very well--even those you have known a long time -- because you have expert control of the face you put forth to the world. You prefer to observe, calculate, discern and decide. Your decisions are final, and your desire to be right is impenetrable. You are not to be messed with. You may explode.

Imagine my surprise when I logged into Nerve to check up on one of my online dating accounts and saw Bazima's face staring back at me, since she was listed as one of the "featured profiles." Someone told me recently that I was being too specific in my search for women. When I asked her what she thought I was looking for, she replied, "Jewish, smart, cool, good-looking." Personally, I think that's pretty broad, especially since the latter two are fairly subjective and what's cool to one may be major uncool to someone else, and attraction is a mystery of human chemistry I'll never understand. But again, it's back to the Jewish thing, and all I can say to that is Los Angeles has the second-largest Jewish population in the world (second only to Israel!) so there's got to be someone here who I can activate my Wondertwin powers with.

It's been an interesting few days, and I'm still trying to catch up on sleep from last week. I spent a fair chunk of yesterday chained to my apartment -- one of my upstairs neighbors died (it was most likely old age -- she was 80), and the building was crawling with cops and the coroner who were all trying to figure out when she died. Apparently, she'd been dead for 2 or 3 weeks, and they only noticed now when one of her friends came over and tried to see her but couldn't get in. The police had to take a statement from everyone around -- and that included me. Personally, I couldn't remember the woman, but I still had to stick around and talk to the cops. And it made me realize that I hope I never get to the point where I'm 80 years old but my death goes unnoticed for 2-3 weeks because I'm sitting home alone most of the time. Today, I hit two parties, the second one of course being Eve's and Sheila The Famous Non-Blogger's. Joelle, Mikey, Fran and Wendy all showed up to enjoy the Flaccid Terrorist Cupcakes, incredible amounts of Easy Cheez and incredible amounts of sugar and alcohol. Have I mentioned how much I love these people?

I went to see Fahrenheit 9/11 tonight with a friend. And I kind of think that this whole situation -- not just Iraq, but also our administration as well -- is turning into this generation's Vietnam. The quagmire of doubt and dissension we're slowly sinking into is starting to, bit by bit, eat away at the country and cause the same kind of internal and emotional strife that was going on in the '70s. However, as my friend who saw the movie with me commented, there's no real unifying point, no rallies of hundreds of thousands of people descending on Washington, no one leader to lead the masses. I responded that that kind of protest almost seems to have become commonplace, what with everyone getting Million Man Marches and Million Mom Marches and whatnot together. It just doesn't have the impact it had anymore. One of the topics the film dealt with is fear, and I think that fear is running rampant through this country right now. Hell, I'll fully admit that there are moments when I'm gripped by it -- I remember seeing a Reuters story a few weeks ago that quoted experts saying that we should expect a terrorist radiological attack on a U.S. city soon, and that terrified the crap out of me. But we've become a nation driven by fear, where every day we're warned about the hidden dangers of society. If it's not terrorists and looking out for people who might be suspicious, it's whatever the local news can come up with to shock us for the night to make us watch -- how your babies can drink your household cleansers, how plastic bags can kill, how escalators can maim. I sometimes wonder how people living in places like Israel manage living in that kind of situation on a daily basis, where their lives truly are threatened. They're not going to die because some escalator sucked them in, they're going to die because of a truck or car bomb or a suicide bomber. My moviegoing friend was in Jerusalem three years ago and literally missed being killed by five minutes -- he was late to a café where he was meeting a friend, and five minutes before he got there, a suicide bomber blew up the café. Had he been on time, he would've died. Three years later, after living in Jerusalem for several months and being on edge, he still suffers from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, where even the explosions in the film tonight made him tense up even though they were only on the screen... but then again, he's told me that ever since he came back from Israel, he hasn't been able to watch the news. I think that I've made it pretty clear that I don't support our president or his reasons for going to Iraq. But I do support our people overseas, and I hate to sound so wishy-washy, but I really do wish for world peace. I've never understood why people are so willing to fight and kill and die for something. And that old saying of "if we all took an eye for an eye, we'd all be blind" really is true. What we all need to do is just stop. Hate and anger just breeds more hate and anger, and violence begets violence. If you're so hell-bent on going out and blowing up some people -- these people who are someone's son or daughter or sister or husband or parent -- why not think about how you'd feel if someone killed one of your loved ones?