President's Day Weekend

Otherwise entitled:

How Judaism Almost Burned My House Down

So it's Sunday. I have successfully spent a full two days doing absolutely nothing except:

• Watch a ton of basketball. How hardcore were those games this weekend? I was riveted, practically nonstop. Kansas / Iowa State? Beautiful. I love basketball season. From 11:00 in the morning until 12:00 at night, always a game on.
• Play World of Warcraft. Oh yes, that wolf is finally mine. I thought it would be a total letdown, but it was more amazing than I ever imagined. If I had the presence of mind, I would totally post a screenshot, and will once I get organized. So awesome. I don't do anything anymore, besides run around like a madman on a wolf. Badass, thy name is my mounted orc with the funny hat.
• Watch a movie. Constantine? Okay, before we go any farther: I loved this movie. Like, irrationally, with complete acknowledgement that I've lost my mind, love it with all my heart and soul. Halfway through, I turned to Devon and was all "I am so into this movie," and it was so true that it kind of hurt. I think a lot of it has to do with how they managed to fill every single supporting role with an actor that I love. Rachel Weiss. Shia LeBeouf. That creepy guy from Identity ("Whore's don't get a second chance," indeed.). Anyway. LOVE. No idea why, but yeah. So there's that.

This is excellent, and fully how I had planned to spend the entire 3 day weekend, firmly on my ass, never going anywhere that was farther than the kitchen for some more chips. This being Sunday morning, there isn't much on television, and I feel the urge to not play more World of Warcraft, for fear that I become one of those Everquest type people who turn all albino and physically fuse to their chairs and start empathizing with their online persona and start talking in character in real life. You gotta be wary of that kind of thing.

So, I go grab my latest book (the ridiculous third and final book of Alastair Reynolds beautiful science-fiction / soap-opera-in-space series that rocks my world ever so much) and curl up on the couch. Because I shun natural light, and I feel that my apartment is reaching a heretofore unknown level of funkiness, having not left it for any good length of time in 2 days, I decide that lighting some candles would be in order. Now, if you'll recall as part of my weekend of extravagance last week, wherein I bought those hideous curtains, I also got, on insane clearance, that cute menorah and matching candles to add a little religious spice to my apartment. I decide that now would be a great time to try it out, perhaps the smell of sulfur and burning wax would distract from the funk.

I bust the menorah out of its little wooden box, get it all set up - line up and light all 9 candles. It is very nice, understated and classy. Contrasts well with the glowing Virgin Mary on the other side of the room. I get down to the business of interstellar warfare and the story of how this one girl totally stole this other girl's baby to spite her jilted almost lover, who then died in a hideous gravity well accident, and then the baby started sending out messages on how to create superpower weapons because she was all psychic and shit and ohmigod it's just like Passions, only so much better because there are lasers involved.

Anyway. So I'm reading and totally engrossed, when all of a sudden I'm all "what's that smell?" It's a nice smell, sort of campy and warm, and it's just this kind of idle question in my mind, while I'm reading, not anything I'm really focusing on. But, as time goes on, it's stronger and I finally pull away from the book and think, "I should go check that out."

I walk around the corner of my living room and look to the counter where my menorah is set up. There is the biggest goddamn blaze of fire I can recall, right there in the middle of my apartment. You see, when I set up the candles, I failed to properly keep the wooden box far enough away from the candles. I assumed they were slow burning affairs common to most household candles. No, these things were like, quickburning birthday candles who's wax evaporates into nothing. So when they reached the bottom, the flame made the little jump and had ignited this box as if it was full of newspaper or something. I'm talking huge flames leaping up into the air.

At first, I have no response. What does one do when your new religious symbol suddenly starts incinerating other parts of your house? Finally, I start to consider the other options. I settle on filling the nearby sink with water, grabbing a potholder from the kitchen, and then lobbing the flaming box into the sink. This is successful in ending the threat of the flames, but now we have a lot of smoke. I manage to get the oven hood to suck up the majority of it and the rest goes out the front door (it was remarkably clean burning wood) without setting off any fire alarms and getting firemen involved. I don't really know how I would have explained the whole "Menorah tried to burn my house down" thing.

So I learned a valuable lesson about the importance of keeping an eye on all active religious artifacts in the apartment, and all I lost was a small wooden box.

Jason: 1 , Pyromaniacal Religious Symbols: 0.

Suck it.

Et tu, Seth?

The OC is slowly killing my soul. Why, oh why, does everything I love turn to suck? Buffy, Angel, these late seasons of The Amazing Race. I swear to God, if Arrested Development ever begins to slide, I'm gonna find me a cabin in the woods and go all survivalist on everybody.

Do you understand, that now my three favorite characters on this show are Julie, Alex, and my former (and future, lets not kid ourselves) arch-nemesis Marissa?

Goddamn Marissa is suddenly the most compelling thing on this show? I feel like vomiting a little just from typing that. Sandy is dead to me, Seth and Summer have officially dragged on for 3 episodes too long, and I'm so over Lindsay that I really want to go back and AU the entire season so that she actually did get drunk and drown in that one episode, all Dawson's-Creek-Abby style.

I love Ryan's hair (even if it is a bit much) but for the love, he is boring boring boring. Is it possible to contrive any more situations in which he has to deliver bad news to someone he loves for dramatic impact? Can adults no longer speak for themselves? I mean, Jesus, it's only the second season, there's still time for some variety.

But in other ways, there is no time for variety. Do you have any idea how long it's been since someone got punched at a party on this show? Far too long. I don't watch this show for fake FBI storylines involving the reanimated corpse of Kim Delaney, I watch it for the glitz and glamour fisticuffs, along with the not-so-subtle homoerotic subtext that runs through the very fiber of the show, both of which have been sorely lacking this season.

It got so bad last night that during the first FBI scene, I switched over to Survivor to escape the pain. Of course, as soon as I did, there was a crazy old lady standing in a boat singing a creepy Pirate Survivor song that she had obviously made up in her spare time and it disturbed me so greatly that I ran back to Fox with open arms, but still.

I liked the new characters. I thought the introduction of a band venue was trashy, but they brought in good people, so I let it slide. But now we're just rehashing the same crap, the characters have lost all their likability and I'm actively considering other TV shows. It feels like we're breaking up. How did it come to this?

This next episode better deliver all the resolution the previews promised, lest I actually do turn to Survivor and its creepy singing old ladies. Even that is better than the dreck Fox is spitting out these days. I have to stop writing, this is just painful.

I mean, I still watch, and it's still dramatic, but it kind of sucks. Even if the lesbians are kind of impressively natural and not overwrought. And Julie continues to be the most awesome thing I see on TV each week. Why I can't I be more like her.

Sigh, whatever. Please just bring back my pretty, pretty, Season One. I'm not even coherent anymore.

Chocolate and Compulsions

You know what ticks me off? When you're eating, like, those random little chocolates in a Valentine's Day heart and the very first one you pick is soooo delicious. Because then you know that you're totally going to be disappointed with the rest, because you're gonna get that, like, goopy, rotten-cherry liqueur one after you've already had the best. It ruins the whole rest of the box, because you're dreading the upcoming badness.

Man, that's annoying.

In related news, my boss gave me a box of chocolates for Valentine's Day. It sounds sort of sexual harassment-y, but there was chocolate involved and I am a whore for chocolate. So I'll let it slide. God, I love chocolate.

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So I got sick of the current arrangement of all the furniture in my house. I believe this has been ingrained in the very fiber of my soul, because my dad could not physically restrain himself from rearranging our house at least once every three months. However, I still cannot find an arrangement for the living room that comes close to matching the sexiness of the current setup. Anything else always has a couch just hanging out in empty space, or two couches just wedged together into a hideous looking L.

So instead, I redid my bedroom. My initial bedroom setup was done out of necessity, rather than aesthetic sense. I needed the computer to be A) on a wall where the window wouldn't create a glare from all hell, and B) near the cable modem outlet, since my Ethernet cord would not reach anywhere else. But with the advent of my atrocious new curtains (which are so awesome, in that it is pitch black in my room at night) and my wireless hub and new Ethernet cords, I was able to get a setup that allows for optimum computer and bed placement. Now, I can reach the phone, use the computer, and see the living room television all at once. Which is something of an overload to the senses, but sometimes you need to be playing Warcraft, watching basketball, and arguing with someone on the phone all at once. God bless technology, helping me waste time more efficiently than ever.

Also, my bed can now be placed in the spot that God intended for it, against the back corner of the room. Now, this may sound juvenile, but I really need my bed up against a wall. Before, I had it out in the middle of the room with just the headboard along the wall. Drove me nuts. Because, you see, I am a small, scared child with a ridiculous level of imagination. And if I can have my bed up against a corner in the room, if I'm going to sleep and imagine that: a burglar, psycho, zombie, clown with an axe, etc. is coming to get me, I can curl up against the walls and be assured that there's no way they're going to sneak up on me. Which, I know, sounds a bit crazy (and a little spurious logic-wise: if a clown with an axe is after you, does it really help matters that you can see him coming?) but for some reason it calms my obviously deranged nerves. Don't wade into my psyche, it's a scary, scary place.

Anyway, all of that to say that my new room arrangement rocks.

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Oh yeah, and something else that I just can't adequately explain, but I continue to pick up the coolest, most tacky things ever created to accessorize my apartment. We have gone over the fur curtains, lava lamp, the swirling Virgin Mary of hypnotic awesomeness, the 3-D diorama Van Goghs, and the shag carpet area rug, but now, courtesy of my new roommate (aka LaSister) and her lack of bedroom space, I have something new to report.

When the rearranging was done, I ended up with a huge corner of unoccupied space in the bedroom. Previously this space was just an extension of the closet door area, so it didn't look so goddamn weird. But now, it needed something to distract from the fact that a good 5 square feet of space was being occupied by a standing lamp and a trashcan. LaSister runs to her closet and comes back with a large box and we proceed to install seriously one of the strangest things I have ever seen in my entire life.

It is a huge glass bowl, something that I would normally serve punch in, I imagine, if I ever hosted some sort of everclear rave or similar. It stands in this big-ass curly wire frame and has a tiny decorative bowl in the center. You fill the punch bowl with water and insert this little metal object with a power cord into the water. I swear, for the majority of this installation, I was certain that the entire thing was a joke or a psychology project to see if someone was actually dumb enough to plug a little metal box submerged in water with wires coming out of it into an electrical outlet. Amazingly enough, when you plug the thing in, it starts 1) humming, 2) changing colors (which in turn causes the entire bowl to change colors) and 3) producing this strange, dry-ice type fog on the surface of the water. It is easily one of the most bizarre objects I have every witnessed, let alone had standing in my bedroom. Apparently, it acts as a 1) humidifier, 2) deodorizer, and 3) creepy colorful decoration.

I don't know what else to day, other than it actually does work really well as a humidifier - my breathing is excellent these days. But boy is it creepy. And I have to turn it off at night, lest it act as a beacon for the zombie-clowns.

I told you not to get in too deep.

American Way

Hi, I'm officially the most boring person left on earth. My big weekend? Buying tires, so I don't end in a fiery death later on this week.

Oh, and I got some new curtains for my bedroom. Look at that. Not only am I boring, but I'm gay and boring. How is that even possible?

The curtains are hideous, by the way. They are a sort of maroon-purple with green accents and clash in just the right amount with my comforter to make me seem both a) completely colorblind and b) incredibly tacky. And while I may be b), I'm most certainly not a). They were just so cheap, and those lights outside my bedroom window were so bright, my good sense and taste got away from me. At least it's nice and dark in my room at night now.

Oh, and speaking of tacky, I picked up some incredibly cheap artwork for my living room, so there will at least be something on the walls. They're little recreations of Van Gogh paintings, only done in 3-D diorama style and then framed. With glitter and sequins applied liberally. They may indeed be the tackiest thing in my apartment. And I have a glow-in-the-dark, color-swirling backgrounded, picture of the Virgin Mary hanging over my bookcase.

I love my apartment.

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In less stunning news, I continue to play a lot of video games. I am so incredibly close getting my very own cute little wolf to ride around on in World of Warcraft. I know it sounds remarkably shallow and juvenile, but I really want that wolf. It seems like I should have more real-life goals, like a better job, and/or a boyfriend and whatnot, but no, I want that wolf.

In service to me not becoming completely game-obsessed (or, y'know, moreso) last week I reinstated my exercise regimen that I have to complete before I get to play. This just in: Exercise is hard, yo. I'm just talking a little cardio, maybe 20 minutes or so, and it completely wipes me. I'm left panting on the floor, tongue lolling out, vainly reaching towards the kitchen for a glass of water. Someday I will prevail against poor endurance though, and it will be awesome.

Plus, it's been incredibly nice outside for the past couple of days, so I've also been requiring at least a half hour of outside time per day. Which is somewhat wasted on weekdays, since I don't get off work until sunset, but I'm gonna try to keep it up. I've reached something of a backlog in books that I need to catch up on, so I'm trying to knock through a few of them while getting some fresh air. Sunlight is awesome, even though it makes me sneeze and blink alot. I'll beat that computer science gene yet.

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Blah blah, I have nothing to say, no stories to tell, but I don't feel like doing anything else. My parents were in town this weekend. It was nice and relaxing, just swapping stories and pretending to be an adult. I think my parents were a little scandalized by my Virgin Mary picture. And my menora, that I got on sale at Linens and Things which is just a little too awesome for words. I've become all seemingly multi-faithed on them and it creeps them out. They did help me out on those new tires though, which is right cool of them. I think we have a much better relationship nowadays. Everything is well-repressed, and they totally call me back when I try to reach them. Which is much better than the state of things in college, everyone can attest to that.

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I found out that my brakes are shot too, according to the tire place. Which means that next weekend will be even more fun as we slowly go through the process of replacing every essential part of the Truck of Malfunction, bit by bit. This week: the armrest in between the driver and passenger seats fell off. I sort of reattached it, but it requires a torque wrench to attach properly, and damned if I'm not a bit too gay to own a torque wrench. But not too gay to know what one is. It's a very fine line that I walk.

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All right, all right, you win, I'll stop rambling. You're lucky I'm in a good mood. Stupid Valentine's Day. I'm gonna go buy me a big thing of chocolate and watch a lot of TV. That'll show all y'all. Patricia Arquette is the only one who understands me. And who can see into the future. Or the past. Present. You know what I mean.

Is This Because I'm a Lesbian?

Because it is that kind of day:

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First some backstory: A bunch of my friends when to a karaoke bar last night. This is the same bar I went to last week for the night of horror, so I passed on going. In the past, at that bar, I have done an excellent rendition of a classic George Michael song.
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So I'm getting on the elevator to head back to the office after lunch. I check my phone to see if anyone has called lately. I see that I've received a text message sometime lately that I haven't read yet. In the elevator, I punch it up to see what it says.

"From: Devon
Time: 12:05AM
Message: Two lesbians are singing Faith!"

I then let out the loudest, most inappropriate comment ever: "HA! Lesbians?!"

Yeah, I'm not so much alone on the elevator. And it would take way too long to explain it all, so to 5 people in my building, I'm now that schizophrenic homophobe on the third floor.

Hot damn, it's good to be me.

American Idiot

Sometimes I seriously wonder how I make it through each day intact.

[Scene: Jason's Place o' Business. There is a television in his boss's office that is always tuned to CNN to track the stock market. Jason's boss is out, and he's in the office running reconciliation reports on the boss's computer.]

CNN Reporter: And next up, they've got one of the best-selling albums of the year and are up for [some sort of award, probably a Grammy or something, I wasn't really paying attention at the time and it's not really vital to the story, I'm just trying to be thorough], we talk with the driving force behind Greenday.

[At this juncture, they start playing some seriously old Greenday. Suddenly it is 1994 in the office. Jason enjoys himself some Greenday, so he sort of bobs along with the music, maybe sings a little under his breath.]

Jason [typing away]: ... it all keeps adding up...think I'm cracking up. [head bob, shoulder tilt]...la la la...

[He finishes the reports, hits print and wanders over to the printer. At this point, the station switches over to the new stuff off of American Idiot. New song, Jason alone, he does a little dance and sing along. Door is closed, who is to know?]

Jason [dancing and sort of hopping in front of the printer, waiting for the job to cycle]: Welcome to a new kind of tension...all la la la...across the la la la nation...

[The job finishes printing out, Jason grabs it off the tray and does a nice dance turn to head back to his office. Stops mid-turn. The door to the office is now open. The building floor manager is standing sort of open-mouthed in the doorway, holding a sheaf of papers in her hand.]

Manager: Umm, I was just dropping these off for you guys to sign...[incredulous stare and uncomfortable silence.]

Jason: Oh! Uh! Yes. [Realizes he is still bobbing his head along to the music. That ended about 15 seconds ago. Stops it.] Well I'll just leave them on the desk here and then go back to my office [and curl up into a little ball under my desk and die.]. Thanks.

Manager [big smile]: Sure. Not a problem.

God, don't you just love Fridays?

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Oh, and I maintain that this is entirely different than the other times that people have caught me dancing and/or singing at inappropriate times. For reasons that will come to me at a later time.

There must be some kind of job where this sort of thing is acceptable, and I refuse to rest until I find it. Because I obviously can't find the will to stop myself of my own accord.

Breakdown

I finally gave up and got a haircut. It just wasn't workable anymore. I had, like, those wings of hair that you get when your hair is so long that it curls around your ears. That's just the final straw - I refuse to fall that far back into the 80's. I don't care that there are leg warmers everywhere I look.

I actually went to a nice place, something that billed itself as a "unisex beauty salon," which, come on, is pretty awesome in and of itself. There a cute little girl, who I estimate to be about 16 years old, did fantastic things with my hair. This is the first haircut I've gotten in ages where I was actually sort of pleased with the result, even if I have sneaking suspicions about how it makes me look.

I was a little worried, when about half way through my hairdresser begins to recount her story of yesterday, wherein she decided that she wanted a mohawk. Seriously. So she went to her salon and asked for one, but the hairdresser refused because she thought my haircutter had the wrong head-type for a mohawk. And then, once my 16 year-old friend explained that she wanted to not only get it cut mohawk style but she also wanted to dye it bright orange, the hairstylist relented and was going to give her the mohawk. Because apparently that would make it okay? I was a little unclear on that part. But then they found out that the salon was all out of orange hair dye, and so she would have to wait at least 3 days until the supplier came back into town.

So yeah, this story all unfolds as we're getting the preliminary hair stuff done, and then we get to the real cutting. So I was a little nervous. But it came out excellent. Normally my hair is wicked fine and flat, which makes all styles inherently fail on my head, so she went around and "texturized it" which at first seemed like trying to give me split ends over my entire head, but turned out to be much more sophisticated and made me look all hip and stylish.

She also managed to keep the sides of my head in decent shape, which is something of a miracle due to my oddly shaped head. I have two large bumps on my head, or points, if you will, that define my cranium. One is right on top and completely unnoticable. The second is at the base of my skull and it is big and pointy and scary. And when I've just gotten a haircut, oh man, does it stick out obviously. But not this time, for my hair is uniformly good, hiding all unsightly blemishes and head deformities.

So I still basically have the same haircut that I've always had, only now it looks kinda decent. As Frank said, it actually looks like an adult haircut. And I would totally post a picture, if my camera had batteries, my computer cord wasn't lost, and if I didn't have the strong suspicion that people would tell me that it looks like I have the same hair as Jamie Lee Curtis in Freaky Friday.

Because I kinda do. Only it's not red. And I'm not a hermaphrodite.

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God, it's boring around these parts. 6 paragraphs about a haircut? Stay tuned for tomorrow, when I go over, in exacting detail, just how much the grass has grown in my front yard. You know, if I had grass. Or a yard. Whatever.

Clouded Judgment

Warning - God, this is a horrible story. It involves coarse language, poor judgment, bodily excretions that are better left unsaid, and adult situations. It's probably better if you don't read it. But I feel like I should explain what I've been going through for the last few days. I'm not sure why. Some sort of compulsion, I suppose.


So I had determined to go out for a night of fun on Thursday. It had been a while since I'd left the apartment voluntarily and I was due for a change of pace. But that afternoon I got a weird feeling that I know only too well - my jaw started to swell up.

See, I have a wisdom tooth that is in dire need of extraction. And when I went to the dentist, he explained that taking out one requires taking out two, and if I'm gonna take out two, I might as well take out four. And since I don't have any dental insurance (thanks a lot, my job) I've been putting it off forever and indefinitely. Which sucks on occasion, but I have two stopgap solutions. One is an anti-inflammatory sort of cough syrup/ sort of mouthwash bottle that reduces the swelling, the second is a more dramatic gelcap type thing that is used in extreme cases, in pill form.

By the time we were ready to go out, my jaw had noticeably grown in size, to the point where you could actually see it. That's not a good sign, in general. But whatever, I was determined to go out, dammit. I threw down some of solution number one and hit the bar.

It was some good times. We only spent about two hours or so out on the town, watching people butchering as much karaoke as possible while I continuously downed Shiner after Shiner. Now, I did not have that much to drink. Well, more than I would have on a normal night, but nothing out of line. Or so I thought. I was pretty actively drunk by the end of the night. And somewhere along the 30 minute mark, I lost whatever pain I was feeling in my jaw and decided that it would be a good idea to exercise my mouth as much as possible. So there was a lot of singing along going on, especially by the last few minutes of the night. Good times and all that jazz.

In any case, so we pack into the car just after 1:00, so I can get home and be ready for work at like 7:00 in the morning. We make it halfway to my house before I am violently ill in the backseat. Now, I have enough presence of mind to at least get my head out of the side window beforehand. This is marginally better than what could have resulted. Sort of like having a safe land just on your foot, rather than your head. Not only am I drunk on a Thursday night and I've vomited out the window of a moving car, I have now coated a dear friend's car in my internal workings.

(Speaking of which, Devon is the most awesome person in the world. Witness the next day -

Jason: I am sooooo sorry.
Devon: Oh please, don't worry about it. It's not the first time I've washed vomit off the side of my car at one o'clock in the morning. And it won't be the last.

I love her.)

So I'm rocking this night so far, right? We get to my house, I wander inside. Still very drunk, but coming down quickly now that everything is gone from my system. Suddenly, my jaw is aching. Soooo bad. Within 20 minutes or so, I realize that, drunk or not, this is a level of tooth pain that I haven't dealt with in a long long time. Right here, I completely lose track of my rational thought processes. I look back now and I can find no explanation for what I end up doing. I wasn't THAT drunk. I was in a lot of pain, but I should be able to think. Apparently not.

So I go and down a bit of solution number two for toothaches.

No, I really shouldn't have. The drug interaction is almost immediate, and it is horrible. That night, I took the concept of vomiting to an entirely new plane. For a rough estimate, I took the pill sometime around 2:00, probably a touch earlier. It wasn't until 4:00 that I can consciously remember stopping. And even then, I was still doing it occasionally, once every 15 minutes or so, as the spirit took me, so to speak.

I woke up at 6:45 am. I was on my couch, with my head hanging off the side. I had a plastic bag in one hand and my face was at all times less than a foot from it. I look up and the television is on, tuned to the Christian Evangelical Network and there is some guy waving a Bible in my general direction.

Somehow, I made it to work on time, knowing that I had to go in, since everyone else was out sick with the flu and I had the only key to the office. I quite possibly have never felt as bad as I did on that morning in my entire life. But I even managed to pick up the Starbucks for the meeting they were holding at 9:00.

I thought I could handle it. After all, it was my own fault for drinking. It wasn't a hangover, per se, since the main problem was a drug interaction, but still, one reaps what one sows. I make it until about 9:30 when I take a drink of water and the final two remaining alcohol molecules collide with the remaining two tooth-drug atoms left in my weakened stomach.

Jason (on the phone): So then all we'll need are a couple more documents from you...[takes drink. Pause one beat.] Can you hold? [Jason hits hold. Then vomits yet again, this time into a nearby trashcan. One more beat. Wipes mouth.] Okay, sorry about that. We'll need a copy of...

I mean, who does that? I have officially become the most pathetic person on the planet.

In any case, I ended up going home pretty soon after that, since the meeting ended and no one else was in the office and my boss didn't have anything else for me to do. I then slept all day long and spent the entire weekend in a fugue state. I literally pulled a muscle in my chest/shoulder during the heave-fest and had to wince every time I took a deep breath. Heck, it still sort of hurts right now.

So yeah. Lesson learned. Alcohol and drugs are bad mm'kay?

Sorry for subjecting you to all that. But I feel much relieved now that it's all out there. No secrets between us, right, baby?

Uninformed Sports Blog

Okay, every year I get like this, but seriously, I love basketball season. I love March Madness and all the college related hoopla. Yes, it is painful to watch teams shoot 33 percent and win a game 62-55 sometimes, but on the whole, it's just so much fun. And even though I know SMU will never get any big time recognition, I watch the whole thing with great interest. With such short seasons, every single game has this cute desperation to it, like these players will have an aneurysm with a loss. That's always fun.

Jason's fun facts about college ball:

• I hate the University of Nevada (at Reno). Still. In case you were wondering. Haaate.
• That Travis Diener from Marquette is my not-so-secret boyfriend. Even with his wack-ass facial hair. But he has a stress fracture in his foot and his team is going down the toilet. Which is too bad. Do you remember a couple of years ago when Dwayne Wade got them to the Final Four? I would totally watch all their games just because of Diener. I apparently have a soft spot for tiny, wiley basketball players who shoot three pointers (see my upcoming talk on Nash, Steve).
• For reasons I can't nail down, I really sort of like Duke. I don't know why, but I always root for them when they get shown on ESPN. I can't even begin to root for underdogs when Duke is involved. It must stem from some sort of childhood trauma.
• But I hate that J.J. Reddick character who plays on their team. He is my exception to the wiley 3-point-shooter rule. I really want to punch him in the face, for reasons that are also undetermined.
• I have no use whatsoever for women's basketball, but I love the SMU women's team with complete and utter abandon. I own posters of the last 3 seasons with the signatures of all the players. I'm pretty sure that almost reaches stalker levels of devotion. But they are totally awesome. And are having a kick-ass season this year.

Compounding this love of basketball is the current NBA season which is totally engrossing me. The Mavs are doing good. Not great but serviceable and getting better. (That Miami game nearly gave me a stroke.) Plus, my dear little Steve Nash (I'm still a bit choked up about his departure) is rocking it in Phoenix and getting all this MVP talk, which is awesome. He is just the wiliest little guy in the world. And he's from Canadia to boot, eh? I miss him so.

These days, I will just be flipping through the channels (have I mentioned that suddenly I have complete cable now? It just appeared. It would totally own me, except for the fact that World of Warcraft still does. Anyways, full cable. Awesomeness.) and I'll happen upon an NBA game, and then I'll look up, the game has ended and 2 hours have passed. Stupid, entertaining sports events.

It's hard to keep a steady train of thought when you have as easily distracted mind as mine. College basketball on ESPN gives way to NBA basketball on TNT at the first commercial, and I forget about Illinois altogether, then I remember that I just walked away from the computer game to get a Coke and I really should be finishing that up, and then I hear an updated score on the Mavericks and, what, the Mavs are playing?, so I go and turn on UPN to catch that game, and then I remember that I just left my computer controlled wolf all alone so I run back to the computer, and then what's that burning smell, oh for the love of god, that's right I was baking cookies.

This is how my brain works (or, you know, doesn't) these days. I'm flooded with too many entertainment options. And I didn't even add in the parts where there are other human beings involved, either on the phone, in the living room, berating me to come outdoors, or playing the computer game online with me. It's just too much for my poor innocent brain to sort through.

I don't know how people do it and manage to keep, like, their kitchen clean, and the clothes ironed, and non-burnt food on the table. Maybe one of these days I'll develop an amazing multitasking algorithm to handle it all, but probably not. My algorithm skills sucked in college.

Diatribe

It completely hit me by surprise.

You see, I haven't made it to an actual store in quite a while. I did some uber-shopping about two weeks ago, such that I'm still going strong in the kitchen, well past the time I finished off the milk. And I hadn't been to a non-grocery store in...well I can't remember the last time, so it was a while.

But I needed both cotton swabs and scented body wash (I don't go in for that wimpy 'soap' stuff anymore; we are high class all the way) as the bathroom area of my house was suddenly sorely lacking. So I wander into Target and it's like a blitz on the senses.

Valentine's Day. Everywhere.

People who have not met me do not understand the depths to which I hate this holiday. It's hard to describe with mere words. I really need to be able to use my voice, hands, gestures, some crayons, markers, posterboard,and a really good multimedia software package to properly convey the level of my loathing. But we'll just shoot from the hip and hope for the best.

Ugh. HATE.

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.
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Hmm? I guess that really wasn't very descriptive. Let's try again.

I just can't stand any of it. I hated it when I was dating someone, I hate the weird expectation, the fakeness of it all. It's just so contrived. Like, not only has it been decreed on which day this little declaration of true emotion and your feelings through the end of time (or until graduation, whatever) will have to be going down, there is a very specific manner in which you have to do it.

Just....no. I mean, I am overstating. You can make it your own thing, but it's a level of inherent commercialism that dwarfs even Christmas, to me at least, by the artificial nature of it all. And there totally aren't cool presents and big family dinners in the middle of February. It's all bad chocolate, wilted flowers, cheesy prepackaged sentiments in card form, and dinner at a nice chain restaurant.

AND

Then when you aren't dating someone, it's totally worse. Because then, not only do you resent everything about the holiday (see the two paragraphs above) and would wail and gnash your teeth about the whole thing, but you don't even get to participate. Even though you know that you think it's stupid and totally would hate it, it doesn't even matter because you don't have anyone to celebrate it. There is a two person minimum to this holiday.

"You don't get a vote," says Valentine's Day (who, in my mind for unknown reasons, sounds exactly like Quentin Tarrantino) "because you are alone. The holiday doesn't apply to you. Why don't you go play some more video games, buddy?"

It's sort of like hating the popular kids in school, because they act, like, soooo stupid and, like, you can't believe that all they do is, like, get drunk and stuff and that is soooo lame. But in reality, it doesn't matter because you're secretly totally jealous of the popular kids and would join them in a second if you could.

!!--!! Do you see what this holiday has done to me? I'm directly mocking myself in the exact same entry that I started in. It's this holiday. It's insidious, with its destructive powers. With all its stupid hearts and arrows and flowers and stupid naked angles flying around and all the love and togetherness.

Makes me want to vomit.

And we still have 12 more days to go.

Dirty Little Musical Secrets

Sometimes you just have to unburden yourself.

God help me, I really like that Jesse McCartney single that they play on the radio. A whole lot. I mean, empirically I know that it sucks, but I can't help myself. I hum it, I sing along unknowingly and I want you and your beautiful sooooooul...

I think some of the problem is that he did a cameo on that Amanda Bynes sitcom that I love so much and he made me laugh, so I'm somewhat partial to him. It's not an excuse, but it helps me sleep at night.

Yikes. I can feel people's respect for me draining as I type this.

Let's go ahead and get the other admission out of the way here quick too: I really don't like The Smiths. I'm sorry, but no. I just can't get into them at all. I try to pretend and put up a brave face, but I totally would rather be listening to pretty much anything else. I can show my alt rock self to the door, thanks.

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Continuing the cliche of musical entries...

In my iTunes, I'm brushing up against 3000 songs these days. I'm not sure how it got so high. I know a bunch can be filed under "Sean gives me a lot of indie cred with his mp3 collection of high quality tunes" but still. 3000? That's a lot of music.

Let us do a quick run through of the highlights and lowlights of the collection, as done by memory, since I don't have the list right here in front of me (going through alphabetically by artist):

• It takes 7 songs to get to something that isn't a cover. A quick glance over the whole thing indicates that about 1 out of every 8 songs or so is a cover. Which is weird, but I do like covers a lot. Have you heard The Scissor Sisters cover Franz Ferdinand's Take Me Out? Because you should.
• The Beatles win the title of Group With the Most Songs on Jason's List. Which is as it should be. Considering that a) I used to have the most devoted Beatles fan in the world as a roommate, and b) they are the best band. There is no such thing as overrating The Beatles.
• There's a very gay run of songs here that goes on pretty much indefinitely, starting with Bette Midler, Cher, and Christina Aguilara and finally starts to peter out around Eartha Kitt. Because then you hit the Earth Wind and Fire, and there was nothing gay about them. No sir.
• Wow. Do you remember when it was cool to listen to John Mayer? Otherwise known as my sophomore year in college? God, I was so drunk back then. So young, so innocent. I still love Comfortable, though.
• God help me, now that they've sold out and appeared on The OC, I love The Killers. I was resistant at first, but then they were all over the TV. (SNL came next. Where they were on with Topher Grace! Yum.) I just had to embrace the madness, they're so catchy. They probably want to shoot me for saying that.
• I'm trying to remember where my Lisa Loeb obsession came from. I have no idea. Maybe it was also during sophomore year and I just drank away those brain cells. Because I do believe I have every song she ever recorded. I feel a little dirty just typing that.
• Nina Simone is my idol. That's all I've got there.
• And I love that Rufus Wainwright. He's gay, you know.
• Actually, R - T is pretty much nothing but classical stuff. Do you think there's a reason that I only like composers who have names that start with late letters of the alphabet? Or am I just over thinking this waaay too much?
• And to end this quickly, because Jesus this is boring: Yo Yo Ma is awesome, and cellists are hot.

And just so my credibility isn't totally ruined (although it already is) and to make up for all my misdeeds: you really should listen to Dashnine Radio. Easily the best radio station in the history of the world. Not to oversell it or anything.