Since I was a little kid, my parents instilled in me the need to be a responsible planner.  Yes, there’s room for spontaneity in my life, but the major things are all planned out; the huge things were kind of mapped out from the start.  There was no doubt that I would take the courses I needed in junior high and high school to get ahead, then go to college, then start a career and work at a job that would pay me and give me health benefits, etc.  My insurances are always paid up, my bills are never paid late, my precautions are taken to make sure I’m covered no matter what happens and that there are few surprises.  I’m also the organizer, because being responsible means you can get stuff done.  My friends know that I can always be counted on to wrangle whatever needs to be done in order to get an event going.  To some extent, I appreciate the consistency that kind of thing brings.  It’s a bit of a stress-reliever.

But then I see people who live a more carefree life, and while part of my brain screams, “HOW CAN THEY LIVE WITHOUT KNOWING WHAT’S COMING NEXT?!?  HOW DO THEY NOT WORRY ABOUT PAYING THEIR BILLS?!,” there’s also part of my brain that longs for the relaxed attitude that comes with being a little bohemian.  For example, when I was just a few months out of college, a friend of mine from my old college a cappella group called me — he and some guys were putting together a group to sing down in the Virgin Islands for a few months and did I want to be a part of the group?  For a few seconds, I actually considered it, but the responsible part of my brain reminded me that I’d just gotten a job, I had bills and rent to pay, I had certain expectations to fulfill.  I turned him down, though to this day, especially hearing the CDs they recorded while they were down there, I still regret not chucking it all and going.

Another one of my old friends (coincidentally, also from the same a cappella group) took a few months off and decided to break out of his rut by biking cross-country.  Yes, his parents gave him the same questions mine probably would’ve about “do you think this is a good idea?,” but he did it anyway.  (A really well-written account of his trip is posted online here.) While I never would attempt to bike cross-country, I still harbor a fantasy of taking a few months off and just driving around the country and seeing all that’s around to be seen.

I’m several years into a career I like, I’ve still got rent and bills to pay (and probably more bills now than before since part of growing up means having my own place without sharing expenses), I’m in my 30s, I’m in a solid relationship.  The only way I could be living the adult lifestyle more would be to marry my girlfriend, buy a house in suburbia and have a few kids (not that I have plans to do that in the immediate future).  But I’d be lying to you if I said I never got those little urges in the back of my head to just take off for parts unknown to see what would happen, just so I could feel free and unfettered for a little while.

I guess I’m starting to have the same kind of blog slowdown that many people seem to hit after doing this for a number of years.  Considering I’ve been running this thing for seven years, I guess it’s probably longer than some who would lose interest after a few months or a couple of years.  That’s not to say the thoughts aren’t there… the time and creativity are being spent elsewhere rather than typing them out here.

Either way, here are a few things that have been rattling around in my skull:
1.  You know the movie PCU?  There’s a great line in it where Jeremy Piven says, “You’re wearing the shirt of the band you’re going to see?  Don’t be that guy.” Sadly, Mexico was full of That Guys.  They may not have been wearing concert T-shirts, but honestly, who wears a T-shirt proclaiming you went to Cancun (or some Cancun attraction like Señor Frog’s) when you’re right outside of Cancun?  Apparently, these people couldn’t even wait until they got home to tell people where they’d been.  I drunkenly tried to educate a 14-year-old about not being That Guy one night at the beach bar, but, as The Girlfriend accurately told me, he didn’t get it.  That Guy never gets it when you try to explain it to him.

2.  Despite the fact that most people seem to think that everything HBO touches turns to gold, I’m still not getting into Generation Kill even though I seem to be one of a very very small minority who doesn’t like it.  I’ve given it a few episodes, so it’s not like I’m just pulling the trigger immediately (pardon the pun), which leads me to my next thought…

3.  We really have become a nation of instant gratification and short attention spans, where everything we experience is instantly either the best or the worst thing.  The Girlfriend pointed out to me that a lot of kids these days will tell you that their favorite movie is the last one they saw, but I think it extends to the general public.  Look at what’s going on on IMDb.  Thanks to the hundreds of thousands of fans, The Dark Knight is now rated the best movie of all time.  I’m not kidding or exaggerating, it can be viewed here.  While I thought the movie was really, really good, I would seriously hesitate to call it the best movie of all time.  Does it honestly stack up against movies like The Shawshank Redemption or Schindler’s List or Star Wars or a truckload of other movies?  Or are people so quick to call it the best thing ever that it instantly just shot to the top of the chart?

Strangely enough, when I was in the shower on Sunday morning, I thought to myself, “If there’s going to be an earthquake, this week might be a good time for it....” Sunday morning, I got on a plane with The Girlfriend and flew to Mexico for a vacation — and then a couple of days later, L.A. got hit with an earthquake.  I’m not worried about finding stuff all over the place when I get back to my apartment though; it wasn’t strong enough.

We had a great time, and I learned the first day that sunblock can be a wonderful tool… except I learned that lesson a bit too late and fried the hell out of my shoulders.  Aside from that, it’s been a wonderful trip — we swam with dolphins, we went parasailing, we might’ve discovered that my, ahem, distaste of snorkeling might be a permanent thing and not a one-shot deal and also that she doesn’t like snorkeling either, and we discovered that she does in fact like certain types of tequila.  And we found the only beach bar at our resort, which also happens to have swings at the bar, where the bartender makes what has been dubbed the Best Margarita Ever.  Pictures are available on Flickr and Facebook.

It was well-timed.  I’ve been kind of coming apart at the seams over the past few weeks thanks to an increasingly stress level with no pressure release, and now I feel much better and more relaxed.  I can return to the Real World and jump back into the fray, and it’s been a perfect length of time to spend away from home, since I’m looking forward to getting on a plane today and heading back to my life as I know it.

I do give money to various charities every now and then.  I figure there are definitely some worthy causes that are deserving of some attention.  But, like everything else, I have a problem with it — after I give them some cash, they put me on some kind of list, and then I get mail from them literally once a week.  I’m not exaggerating here, every week I hear about a problem they’re facing or some issue they’re trying to fight, and every week they ask me for more money.  Here’s the issue:  Instead of spending that much time and effort sending out mailers asking for money, why not just use the time, effort, materials (think of all the trees they’re killing!) and money they’re expending on asking for money and put it towards actually using the money I’ve already given them, they wouldn’t need to keep asking me for any more.  I figure they probably spend more per year asking me for money than they actually get from me, so no wonder they’re operating at a loss.

The stupidity and insanity of the day started early… like, right at the beginning.  My mom is coming to visit for the weekend, so I called a cleaning service to clean my apartment since my mom is allergic to just about everything, and I wanted the place in a condition where she’d be able to stay for a few days without any issues.  You know, a state in which she wouldn’t think I was living in squalor.  I scheduled the cleaning service to come in at 8am.  At 8:15am, the phone rings.

Cleaning service: The cleaning crew is there, but they can’t get past the callbox, can you let them in?
Me: Uhh… I don’t have a callbox, I think they’re at the wrong building.
Cleaning service: Hang on. 
[Puts me on hold]
Cleaning service: Okay, someone let them in, they’re coming down to your apartment.
Me: I seriously think they’re at the wrong building.  I don’t have a callbox, and I’m standing in front of my apartment, looking down at the street, and there’s no one coming down the path. 
Cleaning service: You’re at [address]?
Me: Yes, but I don’t have a callbox, I can see straight out to the street, and there’s no one here. 
Cleaning service: Okay, well, someone let them in and if they’re not there in 10 minutes, call us back. 
He hangs up on me.  10 minutes passes… and I call them back.

Me: The cleaning crew is at the wrong building.  They were talking about a callbox, which I don’t have, and the last guy I talked to said they were here 10 minutes ago.  I’m sitting in my apartment, there’s no one here, and no one’s even walking down the short path from the street to my place.
Cleaning service: Hang on, we’ll call them… [puts me on hold] Okay, so someone let them in, they’re already set up and cleaning.
Me: I’m sorry, what?  How could they be cleaning already?  They haven’t even gotten to my apartment!
Cleaning service: You mean they’re not there?
Me: Yes, I’ve been saying that for the past 10 minutes!  [Here’s where I start wondering not only how bright the people of the service are, but also what idiot allowed an unexpected cleaning crew into their apartment.]
Cleaning service: Okay, we’ll call them again.

As it turns out, they did go to the wrong building; the woman told me that they went to the building behind me.  Then the day started going seriously downhill from there, but it’s not amusing like this episode was.  Tomorrow, Mom arrives.

Dear Guy Next to Me at the Stoplight,
I don’t care how off-center your hat is, how much bling you’re wearing or how loud the rap is blaring from your vehicle.  You’re driving a Toyota minivan, and I’m afraid that’s just not gangsta.  Better luck next time.

Dear Katherine Heigl,
Don’t bite the hand that feeds you, stupid.  If you don’t like the jobs you have, leave them.  You should feel lucky that you get to be on a top-rated TV show every week during the season and have been in a high-grossing and popular movie with some of the most currently successful names in Hollywood associated with it.  You’re a household name now.  Don’t become a punchline, and don’t become a diva.

Dear Bicyclists,
There’s no need to get all uppity — share the road.  Yes, us drivers are supposed to share the road with you and not edge you into the sidewalk or dirt or anything on the side of the road.  But (and forgive the pun) the road goes both ways.  If we have to give, so do you, and that means not riding down the middle of the lane just because.  You’re going significantly slower than we are, and while you have a right to the road, police officers give tickets to drivers who tie up traffic because they’re going too slow because it’s considered reckless driving.  By going that slow and riding so far out in the lane that cars can’t get around you, you’re doing the same thing.

I don’t know who I’m more pissed at right now, President Moron for wiping his ass with the Constitution or the Democrats who let him do it.  I am so sick of my political party taking the high road and not wanting to upset things and just going with the flow and not responding to anything.  The country has collectively said we’re mad as hell as we’re not going to take it anymore, that’s why we voted the Democrats into office during the last Congressional turnover!  So why’d we do that if we were just going to let the Republican minority run roughshod over them?  If all the Democrats were going to do was roll over and play dead, then why did we bother with the trouble of having an election in the first place?

And Karl Rove… quite honestly, who the fuck does he think he is?  This self-righteous asshole decides he’s just going to ignore a Congressional subpoena — which is not a pleasant invitation for tea and scones, this is an order to appear before a court (or, in this case, Congress) — but he’ll deign to discuss matters with them off the record?  Screw you, Karl.  You are not above the law, and you don’t get to decide that you’re above the law.  Get your ass to Congress.  Now, before there’s a riot.

The time has come to drop the bomb
On all the pain you’ve been selling
You see I don’t like you or your attitude
Or the company that you keep

And this is war now
I’m gonna wipe that smile off your face...
--Our Lady Peace, “Wipe That Smile Off Your Face”

I was supposed to have a session with a personal trainer last night, except he called about an hour before my appointment and cancelled.  Apparently, he’d gone to Mexico over the holiday weekend but had no idea that the rules had changed and now you need a passport or a birth certificate (which I don’t get because that’s not a photo ID… unless you use it in tandem with a driver’s license) to get back across the border into the U.S., and he was “being hassled,” as he put it, by the Customs & Border Patrol guys.  I couldn’t stop laughing, not just from the mental image of someone being stuck in Mexico.  How does one not know about these things?  It was all over the news for the past year.  You couldn’t go anywhere in Southern California without hearing about it. 

It’s like these idiots who are still holding their cell phones up to their ears while driving in California.  How do you not know it became illegal on July 1?  It was all over the news, on TV, in stores selling hands-free devices… hell, it was even on those electronic street signs, I continue to see 3 or 4 notices about it on my way to and from work every day.  How oblivious do you have to be and how detached from reality do you have to be to not know these things are going on?  In some ways, I wish I was that blissfully ignorant, though in some ways, I’m really glad I’m not, and it kind of scares me that other people are because you don’t know how it’ll impact your life.

Speaking of which, two of my friends got into a car accident over the holiday weekend — they’re fine, but they T-boned someone who thought my friends had a stop sign (they didn’t) and thought she had right-of-way (she didn’t because she had the stop sign and only did a rolling stop).  Again, someone was being oblivious and careless.

So The Girlfriend™ and I went up to Malibu for a sweet Fourth of July party on the beach with Nicole and Lori, and it was actually right up the beach from Adam Sandler’s place — when a couple of people came back from a walk on the beach saying they’d seen him at his beachhouse just a little ways up, a handful of us headed up to see his place and him.  He had a frizzy Jewfro and a goatee and was wearing bright lime green shorts. 

We had a great time (photographic evidence here, as usual)… except for That Guy.  There was one of those douchebags there who pretty much epitomizes everything I hate about Los Angeles — not only would he not shut up, but he wouldn’t stop spewing crap that he was obviously pulling out of his ass, and he wouldn’t stop name-dropping.  It got to the point where I got up and said quietly to The Girlfriend™, “I have to leave this area right now because there is way too much douchebaggery going on here, I’ll be inside for a few minutes.” I did return eventually, and I will admit that The Girlfriend™ might’ve jokingly egged me on a little bit, so I did engage That Guy in a bit of an argument… in which he naturally was twisting things and talking so fast that he was contradicting himself and spinning everything this way and that, so I was happy when someone came out and said they were leaving so I could bail out of the argument.  I was ready to punch him in the face. 

Meanwhile, Live Free or Die Hard hit cable this weekend, so I got to watch it again (this time in fabulous HD!), and I happened to notice that during one of the final scenes when they’re supposedly driving through/blowing the crap out of Baltimore, there was a sign for the 118 freeway west.

So I’m (almost) caught up on sleep, and here are some random thoughts of mine for your holiday weekend:

- Last night at the gym, some woman was popping her gum repeatedly so loud, it sounded like someone was snapping their fingers right next to my ear.  Never mind the fact I had an iPod in and she was about 15 feet away, it was that loud.  I turned around to see who it was, and she was as annoying-looking as the sounds she was making:  Hot pink lipstick that was overapplied, eyebrows that looked like they were drawn on with a Sharpie, and skin-tight clothes that barely contained the 42LLL-sized beach balls she had installed on her chest. 
- You know the economy’s doing poorly when the Bob’s Big Boy across the street from your office closes down.
- Has anyone really listened to the lyrics of Death Cab for Cutie’s ”I Will Possess Your Heart”?  I’m not much of a Death Cab fan to begin with, but listening to the song again makes me realize how Ben Gibbard’s deceptively sweet voice and tender melodies are masking what is actually a pretty disturbing song that basically talks about a dude becoming obsessed with a girl and telling her how he will have her, no matter what she thinks.
- Strangely enough, there are people who still believe global warming is a myth.  I found out earlier this week that one of my bosses is apparently one of them.  Awkwaaaaaard… especially when you’re writing an article on a program to raise environmental awareness.
- Happy Fourth of July weekend to everyone.  To blatantly steal a line from one of my favorite radio stations, “Lighting firecrackers out of your ass might look cool on YouTube, but please don’t try it again this year.”

So, I’m back from a whirlwind trip to Minneapolis, where I got a total of 17 hours of sleep over the course of 4 nights, drank copiously, had beer-flavored bratwurst at an indoor baseball game, saw Isaac Hayes (about whom I had earlier made a joke regarding how he was combining “Shaft” and Chef into his new superhero “Chefft"), and Rita Cosby gave me her cell phone number.  I made some cool new friends, caught up with some old ones and got screwed sans lubricant when Northwest conveniently “forgot” my seat reservations and stuck me in a middle seat going there and was going to do the same on the way back until I coughed up an extra $25 for an aisle.  We saw four bachelorette parties on Saturday night, and there was a women’s golf tournament going on with many of the participants staying in our hotel, so it was lots of fun to dispatch a friend to drunkenly hit on one of them… especially when he came back within 45 seconds with the news that she was gay.  There were inside jokes involving a Genie-Lift and ‘Fro-toes.  It’d be pretty hard to convince you I was there for work, even though I basically mainlined caffeine to get me through the day, then downed a crapload of vodka to slow me down and put me to sleep.

However, I did have actual work to do, and part of that was a request from my parents.  They knew I was flying into the Northwest terminal in the Minneapolis airport, which is where Larry Craig was caught deploying his “wide stance,” so they wanted a picture of the bathroom where it happened.  Needless to say, airport personnel have been quite open about their disdain towards being asked about which bathroom it is and how they’re trying to discourage people from searching it out.  So I snapped a shot of the first men’s room we hit after we got off the plane.  Ladies & gents, I present to you the Senator Larry Craig Memorial Men’s Room… maybe.

The Girlfriend was housesitting up in Bel-Air for a couple of nights, and she invited me up to experience the wonder that is a totally ridiculous house that someone could almost get lost in.  The kitchen had 2 dishwashers and a separate freezer and refrigerator that were both built into the walls to look like cabinets, the main living room had a gigantic big-screen TV (sadly not HD) built into the wall with surround sound speakers built into the walls, and I was walking through the house when I first got there, saying, “Oh look, a living room… oh look, another living room… oh look, another living room...” The closet/place-to-get-dressed area off the main bedroom was bigger than my living room.  There was a big in-ground pool next to the in-law house in the backyard.  Suffice it to say, the people who lived there were pretty damn well off.

However, I am glad to be home and in my own apartment again, and it’s not because I missed my HDTV.  Yesterday morning, I told The Girlfriend, “You know, these people are obviously rich and can afford a crapload of nice stuff, especially considering this huge house… so I’m a little surprised they opted for the 1-ply sandpaper toilet paper that you’d usually find in a public restroom.”

I spent last weekend out in Tucson, visiting my parents.  There were some high points and some low points — the high points mostly being able to spend time with my folks, the low points being outdoors in 109-degree heat and stopping for gas at the state line on my way home and realizing regular unleaded went up 12 cents per gallon in less than 72 hours.  It was literally highway robbery. 

What really got me angry though, was that out in the desert, there were a series of billboards, all of them supposedly signed by “God.” You know, stuff like “Believe in Me, and I will save you” and “Need directions?  All the answers are in My Book.” What I wanted to see was a billboard that said “You really want to please Me?  Quit doing such crazy shit in My name, do it in your own.” I just feel like there are so many people who use God as an excuse for the things that they do.  I’m not saying that religion is bad, and I’m not saying that faith and belief is wrong — what I am saying is that there is a ton of stuff that’s done by people who claim to be doing God’s work, and they’re hiding behind God’s name as an excuse to justify what they’re doing.  I’ve yet to meet anyone who got an e-mail or text or phone call — or a personal visit from God, telling them specifically to take some kind of action, which means every time someone’s doing something in God’s name, they’re interpreting something from the Bible and running it through their own filter.  And let’s not forget… the Bible itself was written by men.  Fallible men.

One of the expressions I use fairly often is, “I’m like Delta — I love to eat, and it shows.” So it’s not really a wonder that I’ve got a subscription to Zagat.com and check up on sites like Eater LA and belong to programs like the American AAdvantage Dining Rewards dealie.  But I started to lose faith in the last one when I got their latest push e-mail, which, naturally, was tying in with the upcoming Hallmark holiday:  “Treat Dad to a fantastic meal!” the e-mail breathlessly began.  “Your fellow dining members are a tough crowd, so when they say ‘The Best Food,’ it means a lot.  These local restaurants made the grade.  Treat Dad to a visit.”

...Except the first place on the list was Quizno’s.

So I’ve been in a bit of a lull.  Part of it is that I’ve been under the gun at work with one of my co-workers on vacation, so every single word of copy generated in my office has been filtered through me over the past 2 weeks, which can be really draining, making me feel creatively… well, drained.  The other part of it is that what else is there to say that’s not being said out there?  I’m probably thinking the same thoughts as most Americans are these days:  Gas prices are skyrocketing to the point where I’ve seen stations jack prices a dime overnight (although interestingly enough, the L.A. Times says that gas station owners are getting pinched hard too, which means it’s another example of high-up corporate greed running unchecked), prices for everything are going up as a result, people are still dying in an unpopular war, job security is not what it used to be, weather is going berserk all over the country, and every day, they’re finding something new that will accidentally kill you — now, not even the vegetables are safe.  Does anyone else feel like things are falling apart here?  Dump in the usual crap of deadlines at work and increasing commute times and all the other crap running through my head, and you’ve got a nice stew of Not Awesomeness.

My parents tend to believe that I’m a stress junkie.  Not true.  Personally, I hate stress.  Life is so much better when I can just chill out and not have to worry about anything getting screwed up.  What I am is a worrier, and my folks should know something about that — they made me this way.  The other problem is that I’ve been given plenty to worry about.  Not just that, but I’m being bombarded with it from 19 different directions all at once, thanks to the sped-up lifestyle we now lead where news is flying at us all the time and we need the latest up-to-the-second update.  Now if I fart too much after a meal, I don’t think that maybe I had too much soda, my mind starts assuming the worst — that I’ve got salmonella or listeria or Lord knows what else, simply because I’ve been exposed to so much hysteria in the news that I can’t seem to avoid.

News organizations are saying that Americans are becoming generally unhappier and that our stress levels are too high.  Personally, I kind of blame them for causing it.  When the news became more about terrifying you into watching in order to get ratings, things took a turn.  What?  Exposing a guinea pig to sunlight could make it turn rabid, causing it to gnaw through my skull while I sleep?  I must watch tonight at 11 to find out how to prevent it!  Ignorance really can be bliss sometimes, and I’m finding it harder and harder to be ignorant of things going on out there.  And I will admit that it’s partially my own fault because I do like to know what’s going on and I like to be able to intelligently hold up my end of conversations when people are talking about stuff, but at the same time, there’s so much news out there thanks to the Internet and the 25 different cable news networks and regular TV newscasts at every other hour that it’s hard to avoid — or know what to pay attention to. 

I guess what I’m trying to say among this rambling mess is that I think I’m once again hitting overload.  Time to start thinking about unplugging and seeing what life is like on a beach somewhere for a few days.  I can only hope that while I’m away, I won’t start freaking out, worrying about all the stuff going on at home that I’m missing and how I don’t know what’s happening.  I’ll just have to keep in mind that much to my own chagrin (and disappointment), the world will keep rotating normally if I weren’t around for a little while.