She looks around for me // Don't you know i'm always gonna be here // She doesn't wanna leave

These last few days have really felt like they've gone by in slow motion. Mostly a good slow motion. They announced the lineup for Coachella! It's right here: http://www.coachella.com/. That is going to be insane. I watched Tombstone with "The Man" Saturday, I had never seen it before somehow, and it's just crazy. Val Kilmer is such a madman it's hilarious. I'll probably be telling people "I'm your huckleberry" for days. I also saw "Pompeii: The last Day" last night on Discovery, and it was terrifying. They basically used Hollywood graphics and a soap opera story of a few people and reinacted what happened back when Mount Vesuvius erupted in AD 79. Like it talked about how it had the strength of 2000 atomic bombs and it sent something like 150 billion tons of ash out and the whole time, people were going about their daily lives, like it was no thing. Could you imagine a mountain miles away just basically exploded and sent enough ash to block out the sun all over the planet, and you're just like "mheh....brb going to the market." I wonder if it like covered the sun over America, I bet it did, I wonder what the Native Americans thought. It was so scary and sad, at the end the volcano just sent this like wave of hot ash across the city of Pompeii and it just literally melted people, like it said that the ash went into their lungs and mixed with mucus and turned to cement and people's brains fried in their skull and their heads exploded and etc. They found people's skeletons like cuddled together with their love, some cuddled together with their gold, and then they had the people that the ash like encased and they decomposed with that shape in the ash still there and when the archaeologists used plaster, it made these like casts of what they looked like when they were frozen in place in the ash, and you could see like their mouths open and another guy cuddled in a corner of a room holding his hands above his head. It got to me.

I don't know where I am, I don't know where I've been, but I know where I want to Go

It's that time of year.


Bright Eyes 'I'm Wide Awake, It's Morning' is just great. What a terrific album. I think it's a perfect album for a guy to pick up and say "This is our album." to a gal or the other way around. Like I would only barely be kidding to say it, but pick up the next gal or guy off teh street and grab this album on the way home. I would recommend it like that, great for driving in the car together, great for playing when you're alone thinking about him/her, great for lying under the covers together and reading the lyrics out of the great booklet. Just great (he's like our Bob Dylan, at least on this one). Every couple needs an album or a song like that, like it's yours and even though in reality, many people hear it and have it, no one thinks of it even close to the same way as you two do, it's special to you. Close friends the same. Like a fingerprint. All 10 songs are wonderful, I just picked this one because it's the track that was playing when I started (well that's not all true) and it sounds like the guitar is being played with feathers. (Climbs down from soapbox). My younger brother Shaun/Baun is the funniest to watch tennis with. Australian Open tennis live at 2:00 AM is quality brother time like whoa in "The house where someone is always awake". My CIS1050 (I'm not sure what that stands for, Com. science or something like that) has a paper recycling barrel in the lab, so now I can take all the paper I'm stuffing in my pockets all the time and drop them in there instead of the pile in my room that I have to lug to the Jayno Adams for recyclins. I'm really phobic about 'waste'. I looked that up to see if there is a phobia for 'wasting things', but there isn't. There is one for fear of Ventriloquist's dummies though. That's Automatonophobia.

'Cause you can run and have your fun, but don't come around when she gets home // Oh baby, don't go out alone

(scroll down and check the video out if you want, I'm not much interested in throwing more time into trying to format it to fit up here anymore, thanks for your understanding, on with the show!)

My favourite part: at the end when the guy starts dancing with the kids with all the arrows sticking out of him. Or maybe the drummer's argyle shirt. I finally tracked down one of my own!! It's on E-bay, I'm less than 24 hours from winning it, don't you dare outbid me. That's sort of been my "White Whale" the last couple of years: I can never for the life of me find not only the perfect argyle sweater, but nary an argyle sweater of any kind. So I called Shannon yesterday night and she said "Hello" and I said "Let me come visit you." and she said "Okay." Some time later we hung up with each other, but then she rang me at like 1:30 AM EST (10:30 PM the night before out there anyway) and said she would suddenly be flying out to this snow buried part of the globe this weekend so. Hahaa. So something is going to happen, one way or the other. It's great. We'll see. Met up with Rajala, Isaacs and Higgins up at the bar to watch the ballgame (Patriots = dynasty), and Isaacs started his crusade to get us someplace warm and exotic for spring break this year. He was a man possessed. I laughed. So we all get home from the game and get on the i-net and behold, he's got the flight, the hotel, the everything basically holding the pen out to us to sign on the dotted line and it appears that March 9-14 will be a very Ft. Lauderdale vac. I'm sure I'll have a test for each one class period I'll miss for my three classes. Just watch. Just watch.

L-L-Love, there's a magic in you // and I'll be under your spell

This song lifts the opening from 'Tomorrow Never Knows' by The Beatles at the beginning badly enough that they (Brazilian dance-pop sibs, Astaire http://www.astairemusic.com/site.html ...hey c'mon don't give me that look about going to their website I....oh see there you did it again!) could've gotten thrown in the clink, but somehow it's like that pop song that somehow gets through you know? Like how everyone has that song that they can give no rational explanation for enjoying. Rajala has the Sea Lab theme song, Isaacs likes that new Lenny Kravitz song, and don't get between Higgins and his J.T. 'Rock Your Body'. I have movies like that too. I cannot change the channel on '10 Things I Hate About You' or 'The Mummy' (??) I don't have any clue, the man likes his 'Taming of the Screw' remakes and his Egyptology thrillers (?). This lady at my work was funny but in a "leave now" sort of way. She came through our drive-thru at the 2nd lane and I was helping her out, and this older gent pulled up to lane #1 and was getting really irate about something or another (it's health care) so she left and we got grumpalicious all set and the next day the lady came into the store for her other Rx and would not leave me alone about how bad the guy was and on and on (I'd dealt with it already I guess, you find your best is frequently not good enough in this field), but she kept saying "that guy should take a chill pill or something!!" . Again and again and again. I wanted to tell her to take her Prozac (Fluoxetine 20mg, i t po qd, #30 for all the techs out there) that I just sold her and loan him one. This job will be the death of me. If a train doesn't get me first, but I've come to a conclusion that that won't happen until I'm in my early/mid-70's, so really it's almost like the food chain, with a locomotive being a peg up on me at that point.

I only listen to top forty // "N'Sync rules!"

Alright does it bother you as much as me when there is a full screen movie on tv (and it really seems the worst here/now with 'A Few Good Men'), or on tape/DVD when, to make up for how dumb full screen is, the projector literally has to scroll over on the film to where someone to the side of the center of the screen is talking since you only get like 85% of the picture. Bothers me to no end. Tom Brady is the greatest NFL QB since Montana, there I got that on record. Not Manning-like numbers (whom I'm a fan of as well, he only led my '$exual Mornhinwegs' to the Kroger Year 3 Fantasy World Title), but all Brady does is win. Like teh Sports Guy says, Manning dominates lesser teams, but then against the Pats he gets the "Kevin Bacon "I can't believe Colonel Jessup just admitted that he ordered the Code Red" Face going." (rolling right along with 'Few Good Men' references) Well 'House of Flying Daggers' was an unreal film. I need to call Shannon and tell her that I'm coming out there just to take her to see this! With all the Martial Arts films she's seen, I still think this would knock her socks off. Coldplay did the same thing The Cardigans did a few years back, they took a whole bunch of songs they worked on (something like 40) and just basically deleted them. That makes me really sad, it's like you'll never hear them, never will turn up on bootlegs or anything, those moments are just gone. I wonder about the songs The Cardigans destroyed before coming out with their flat last album, like maybe they were just amazing, but the people around them thought they couldn't "market" them the right way, the same reason Fiona Apple's new one sits on the label's shelf (save the wonderful (leaked) 'Extraordinary Machine', something you'll never hear on your radio I bet). I wonder if all those Coldplay songs were just crazy great and maybe all their people convinced them that they weren't Coldplay-ish or something, I don't know. I guess I'm just againt getting totally rid of memories of something, even if your feelings about it have changed. Preserving moments is like life itself to me. I am totally Mikey from 'Swingers'....damnit. Ha.

It seems I've stepped over lines // You've drawn again and again

$140 for a textbook eh?! As much as money doesn't matter to me, I could use the balance of that horrible monopolized bookstore markup and send it to UNICEF or tsunami relief or something. I'll never understand it. After not seeing Melissa on the i-net for some time, my worry slowly snowballed into a panic that she got lost at sea or got carjacked by 4+ people or ran into a Pterodactyl (that she may argue doesn't exist in fact) but she returned my calls last night (I think she was playing a devilish trick with me by not calling the day before, ha) and we talked about things again and life returned to some form of normalcy. We were supposed to go to see 'Phantom of the Opera' for my b-day in March, but she said she couldn't afford it. The plan seems to be that since Jen James showed interest in it when I requested that day off at work that I think like 4 days before the show I will say something along the lines of "Hey, I got an extra ticket for the Phantom, my treat?", hopefully giving Melissa enough time to change her mind and see that it's, in fact, a b-day gift to me by having her there to see it with. HAHHhah yes I got the Travis music videos DVD today for $10 at teh Borders, it's so great!! The look Andy gives after he looks at the food and how it cuts to Dougie giving the same look of confusion in the 'Sing' video (with Neil wearing my/my Dad's wedding suit to boot) and the 'Walking in the Sun' video and their funny Scottish commentary throughout, it's hilarious. If you go to a Borders or something of the like, pick up the more-contemporary-than-thou (top 100 albums all time: #8 Definitely Maybe (Oasis), #15 Sgt. Pepper's, so much for all those 'unwarranted' "I liked Oasis the first time I heard them, when they were The Beatles" jokes....) Q music magazine, this mini-interview with Brain Wilson is crazy. Like these people write in and ask him all sorts of weird questions and I don't even know. Like there was a time where if it was a cloudy day, he wouldn't go outside, or when he wouldn't take a shower because he thought snakes would come out instead of water and kill him. Or when he got to the weight of 311 lbs. from eating nothing but birthday cakes. He talks about the song 'Vega-tables' though too which is great, and he says that despite the lyrics he, in fact, does not like carrots at all. It's funny. Well before I say "in fact" anymore I'm gone. In fact In fact In fact

Between the sea and sky I fall into your California Blue

I am so happy it's obscene! It's like this warm breeze and like I'm floating with it above everything. I guarantee it's because I'm bi-polar, I mean it has to be, but it beats the alt. so the devil may care. Like I want to figure out why it is that I'm in such a spectacular mood, like you know how it is when you are really happy and like you want to bottle it and like save it for "a rainy day" and all that? Maybe by the time I get off this "psychiatrist's couch" we'll both have our answers and all life's troubles will be yesterday's headlines. The burner finally works (somewhat) so I got my Travis GH cd created, their acoustic '(Hit Me) Baby One More Time' still kills me. Think Scottish-folk-emo. So you know how people make their checklists in their head about what "The Perfect Man/Woman" is all about and usually stick strictly to it and all that? I'm not much into thinking like that (I have my own methods of preventive thinking, don't worry), but I do many times keep a list of "Things that would be the best about a relationship" (Preface: these aren't things that HAVE to happen or else bust, but maybe there is somebody like me that has a few and we would share those moments). Like a snowball fight, or lying in the hammock or today I thought of brushing your teeth in the mirror next to her in the mirror. Lying on the couch in Allison's appt. up in East Lasning listing to kissing/Isaacs' head hitting the ceiling 3 feet above her loft bed every half hour between 3:00 and 5:00 AM, you sorta needed something to think about. And Shannon just called and we talked for 5 seconds short of a hour and let's end it with that (the answer?).

Had it been another day, I might have looked the other way // and I’d have never been aware, but as it is I’ll dream of her tonight

I got to see 'A Very Long Engagement' ! After all the hype that I put around it, Melissa and I got to see our actress (after I dropped the ball on the directions for a bit, which led us to chilling here for a moment and me forcing 'Smile' upon her because I am a crazy person) checked it out Wed. night and it was just wonderful. Audrey Tautou is amazing and together with the director, my fantasies come to life. Happy new year! I hope your's was very fine/safe. All us mugs met out at Sabol's house for some cards/laughs/spilling things to make the "Star" H.S. QB fuss like your mother. Good times. Talked to the Shannon just before the ball dropped, thanking her 2-3 more times for the "going away gift" she gave me (this unbelievable Audrey Hepburn framed drawing she had made for me) and more about how much I was going to miss not seeing her for so long (she is moving out to California this Tue for 5 years for school/work), but that it's not even close to a goodbye. I'm very very happy for her and what's she going for. It hailed today, but it was that light kind that when you stand out in it with arms stretched out, you don't even feel it hit you. And then after work the snow started floating in lightly and so of course Michelle and I had a snowball fight out by our cars, she won but I got to listen to 'Martha My Dear' driving home, so really I won.