Friday Random Ten

1. ’Til I Found You—Susan Tedeschi
2. Feelin' Stronger Every Day—Chicago
3. Spring Haze—Tori Amos
4. Spinning the Wheel—George Michael
5. On ne retient pas le temps—Mireille Mathieu
6. Stop Falling—Pink
7. Primitive—Annie Lennox
8. How High the Moon—Ella Fitzgerald
9. One Tree Hill—U2
10. I'll Tumble 4 Ya—Culture Club

A new meme!! Like we all could use another one of them. This one is easy: take your iPod (or other ripoff MP3 player), set it to shuffle (or random play), and write down the first ten songs it plays for you. No cheating. No skipping. No wishing. Just do it. I found this through Melanie and then followed up with Lauren and also Terrance. It seems that no one knows where it started, but whatever.

My list is totally indicative of why I am so in love with my iPod. Where else can I go from the Mamas and the Papas to the Pet Shop Boys via Garbage and Doris Day? Well, OK, maybe that's not such a stretch with me, but I love having every song I own available to me at the click (or scroll) of a button (or wheel)!! Anyway, I've got 5192 songs (14.7 days and 22.19 GB of music), and I'm still not done ripping my CDs. I've got about a dozen left to go, and I'm not even putting all of them on! I love this thing. Why didn't I do this sooner? What a treat!

I don't know if I mentioned it here, and I'm not gonna search for it to verify either, but I love my iPod to tears. I've got me an iTrip attachment that broadcasts my songs in the car, and it works pretty well on the default frequency of 87.9 FM, but every once in a while, another broadcast wipes out my iPod, and I have to wonder who the hell is broadcasting on such an obscure frequency in the Bay Area? But then again, that's about the only channel left to use up here.

OK, happy Friday already. Damn this week took too long!

Unconscious Mutterings

1. Usher :: Movies
2. Cherish :: Madonna and mermen
3. Mistreat :: and be beat
4. Forum :: with Michael Kraszny
5. Systematic :: extermination
6. Warning :: letters suck
7. Wash :: that man right out of my hair
8. I wish :: for love, peace, and happiness
9. Candles :: are cool
10. Metallic :: paint

Podcasting and Easter Eggs

I am slowing discovering the emerging world of podcasting. If you haven't figured it out or haven't even heard about it, you must. It's such a totally cool new way to listen to the world. Our company just moved to a new building in the other part of Palo Alto (the 94304 zip code part of Palo Alto, "West" Palo Alto, that is), and the radio reception is no better there than it was in the other building. So I've been looking for alternative audio to occupy my time at work. Though I just shouted my praise for my iPod and the thousands of songs at my fingertips from the tops of this blog recently, I am loving the whole concept of podcasting and what the world is providing us. It totally reminds me of wanting to be a DJ and producing my own radio shows. Don't worry, though, I'm not about to take this on for myself; although it's totally tempting. If I do, I'll just start another blog. When my father first showed me how to record my 45s on to cassette tapes, I was hooked into audio recording and have wanted to explore it in depth ever since. I love the whole idea.

To take this topic a little further, I was doing some pre-spring cleaning this weekend, and I found a mess of old cassette tapes that I had made during my stint in the navy. This is a completely different cache from what I found in my tacky old storage unit a while ago, a cache that included a bunch of tapes that I made for other people, complete with my own verbal commentary about the songs I played or the state of the world at that time. As with the CDs I make today, I liked them so much, I copied them for myself so I could enjoy them, too. How fucking narcissistic already. Whatever, I love them, and they still crack me up.

I woke up on Sunday morning and listened to a tape that I made of myself, my former roommate Steven, and our dear friend Olah. We were all teenagers, 18 and 19, in the navy and just killing time. (In a total digression, these were the same two to which I first came out as a homo. It was a Friday night, we were in the "billiard room" of the detachment barracks, and they said they had a question to ask me. I remember turning bright red, knowing exactly what they wanted to ask, and somehow managed to crawl under the pool table, in my working whites and everything, before they asked their question, to say the words "I am gay" out loud to them. I started laughing so hard after that. I guess, though I knew what they were going to ask, since I had never said this even to myself, it was a scary deal for me. I'll never forget that. Thanks!) I listen to this tape now and wonder if I've made any progress whatsoever in maturing and becoming an adult. I still have some of the same reactions to people, and I can recognize some of the same insecurities. Do we ever really grow up fully? Anyway, this tape sparked or rekindled my interest in audioblogs, as we can call them today.

I mean, it's not like I haven't been doing this already. For the last ten years, at least, I've had a hand-held tape recorder with its simple, built-in microphone available to record any thought or rant whenever I wanted or needed to record it. The first time I did this, I was driving across the country in my Golf, back to my hometown, for a three-week vacation (that was about two weeks too long, I might add, but which is clearly irrelevant here). On the two-and-a-half day trip, I talked almost incessantly into this tape recorder. I recently transferred the cassette audio to a digital format so I could preserve the recording. I listen to this, too, and just have a ball laughing at myself. I talk about anything into this recorder, and on my frequent road trips around our lovely reddish-pink state, the recording is often the official transcript of the journey.

That's enough of that.

Now for something completely different:

’Tis the season for Easter candy, the best time of the year for candy. What? What do you mean, Easter? Sure Halloween is when all of the candy comes out by the ton, but nowadays we can get the bite-sized Snickers and Butterfingers any time, any where. It's only during Easter that I can find those specialty items like the decadent, 100% pure sugar Cadbury eggs, Hershey's peanut butter eggs, Peeps, giant chocolate rabbits, and those malted milk eggs with the color coating that rubs off on your face and lips if you're not careful, or if you're being creative, as illustrated by another very dear navy friend of mine.

I love Easter candy. And I love Easter eggs. In fact, this year I might just go ahead and make some Easter eggs for myself.

Commute If You Can

I have been commuting for the last couple of months or so with a co-worker who lives a few blocks from me. We alternate days, and we drive in the carpool lane. We talk and bitch and moan and complain and laugh and make fun of the other drivers. It's totally soothing and relaxing to sit in the passenger seat and watch the other traffic go by for a change. It's a relief to have someone else to talk with, someone who works for the same boss and who can feel my pain. Someone who is not afraid of not being PC and constantly polite. Someone who swears as much as I do. It's totally cool. No bridge tolls. No more road rage. No more screaming and fist-pounding. It's so much better. Do it if you can.

Friday Random Ten: The TGIF Edition

Fire up the iPod, set it to shuffle, and write down the first ten songs that play. No cheating. No skipping forward.

1. Stir It Up—Patti Labelle
2. Love of My Life—Carly Simon
3. To Be Loved By You—Wynonna (as in "Judd," and I can't remember for the life of me where on Earth I would have picked up a song by any of the Judds)
4. Trip Through Your Wires—U2
5. Too Late—Jennifer Lopez (pre–J. Lo days)
6. The Right Moment—Olivia Newton-John
7. Love Don't Live Here Anymore—Madonna
8. Last Night on Earth—U2
9. Procession—Moody Blues
10. We Might As Well Be Strangers—Keane

Mutterings on a Sunny Sunday

1. Shape up :: or ship out
2. New Orleans :: Anne Rice
3. In the bedroom :: Oooh, baby
4. All the time :: All hits
5. Philosophy :: Socrates
6. Tyler :: Mary ... Moore
7. Disturbed :: Non distubare
8. French kiss :: Great movie
9. Solidify :: Harden
10. Furtive :: glances

So unimaginative, it's almost not worth posting.

Friday Random Ten: The Three-Days-Late Edition*

1. Love in Disguise—Debbie Gibson
2. Changes in Latitudes, Changes in Attitudes—Jimmy Buffet
3. Candyman—Siouxsie and the Banshees
4. Stormkeeper—Culture Club
5. We've Got a Groovy Thing Going—Simon and Garfunkel
6. Candy Perfume Girl—Madonna
7. Sweet Surrender—Sarah McLachlan
8. One—Thievery Corporation
9. My Lover's Box—Garbage
10. Now or Later—Dionne Farris

* I have a really good excuse. See, all last week, my allergies were killing me. I mean, my eyes were watering for fuck's sake. My eyes never water from allergies. Eventually, my immune system was so damaged by the repeated attacks by pollen and such, that I came down with some sort of flu-like symptoms: you know, fever, chills, coughs, delirium, the whole thing. I had taken Friday off as a personal day, and I had to spend the damn thing in bed with a fever. So, that's why this wasn't really posted on Friday, even though up there it says it was.

So then on Saturday, I woke up feeling a little better, but in exchange for my fever, I had the worst stomach cramps I have ever had. I thought it was simple gas, but four hours four hours later, I was still in pain. One thing led to another and a trip down the rainbow highway behind the wheel of the porcelain bus later, my horrible cramp is gone, and I'm sick again. Fever and coughs and, as an added bonus, bruised intestines from all the "massaging" I thought my delusional mind was giving trying to coax the cramp away. Wheee.

As for Sunday, see Saturday minus the cramp, but still bruised. By Sunday night, I'm watching "CSI: Weekends" and the beautiful George Eads, and I'm hoping that I would be sick again so I could stay home from work. But no, I was fine, and there you go. Now it's Monday night.

Easter Humor

Friday Random Ten: The Might-As-Well Edition

Seems to be one of the only things I can write about anymore, so why not? Fire up the iPod, set it to shuffle, and write down the first ten songs that play. No cheating. No skipping forward.

1. Jezebel—10,000 Maniacs
2. Dear Diary—Moody Blues
3. Alone at the Drive-In Movie—Grease [OST]
4. Be My Yoko Ono—Barenaked Ladies
5. Là-bas—Natasha St. Pier
6. Blue Denim—Stevie Nicks
7. Monkey—George Michael
8. Il me reste à voir—Laurence Jalbert
9. You're Not From Here—Lara Fabian
10. Everybody Dance—RuPaul

I have been considering the worth of this place for a while now, you know, why do it? I mean, aside from owning the domain until Jesus comes again, why keep this blog? It was originally meant to be an online diary, a place where I could write my thoughts and stuff, where I could keep track of my goals and dreams. The fact that it was on the world wide web was, at the time, an interesting coincidence.

It's been four and a half years, and while I still see the value of keeping a journal, I have become a little insecure about putting everything down. I have PC'd my thoughts to the point that they're insipid, so embarrassing that I don't even want to admit them!! I have been depressed, paranoid, more misanthropic then when I was a teenager, and most of all just plain sad. I don't write about this stuff because I've always thought that putting these feelings in words on the Internet was either bad form, insincere, another sob story, or all of the above. So I never wrote and the blog laid fallow, and you know, in December 2004, I had so much to say that no archive page was even generated! I had to make a special file just to explain it and not have a dead link on the archives page!

Then I read a post by WilliamTed who summed it all up pretty well. It strikes me as funny that so many people should feel at the same time the same way about blogging, or at least their reasons for blogging, unless it's another facet of the blogging fad. And speaking of fads, I never liked them to begin with, and I try really hard not to follow them, except for like when Britney was a fad ’cause that was just fun.

Anyway, I would like to keep this thing going until Jesus comes again. So maybe I'll change the tack a little, and write as if no one on Earth will ever see this thing. I mean, it's awfully presumptuous of me to expect a huge audience anyway, right?

Big Ol’ Christian Rant

Since when did it become permissible for the Christian bigots of America to stick their noses in everyone else's business without any regard for privacy or decency? It was only a matter of time before stuff like this began to permeate society. Pharmacists are there to do a job, not to decide which prescription is morally fillable. Where does it stop, this Christian-sanctioned bigotry, which is so much of a paradox it's pathetic?

I am sick and tired of listening to these self-righteous morons impose their fucked-up view of modern life on the rest of us. Like quoting scripture and praising Jesus gives them the authority to cast judgment on the rest of us. What is that old cliché: "judge not lest ye be judged?" Or "those who live in glass houses should not throw stones?"