Well you're welcome to come

Myspace is hilarious. Before it was just sorta like the High School "Let's see how many friends I can get" and funny messages, but has since evolved into this whole scheme of 'Top 8' politics. Arguments have been ignited, angry comments left, cities raised. All in response to the hallowed place among the best of the best on their 'Top 8'. It fascinates me very much to go into other's profiles and imagine the precise internal rankings, like an artist choosing the perfect running order of songs on their album.

I'd be a total hypocrite if I said that I hadn't given any thought or plan to my own 'Top 8' though. Back in the good old days (I'd also be wrong to say I was a true O.G., but it still won't stop me from pretending), we didn't get to choose our 'Top 8' like you whipper-snappers today. I remember Charisse bringing me into the fold and, after dropping Tom (I don't know...something about having the millions of "friends", it just comes off as a huge ego-stroke to me), she was my only friend for months and months, holding it down in the #1 slot. Even after racking up amigos/amigas near and far, somehow she always stayed in that spot, regardless of alphabeticals or anything. It was nice. I kept her there like my rabbit's foot when the new 'Top 8' came, harmonizing mine based on such criteria as:

~Charisse in the trad. #1 slot
~Randomizing 3 best friends for 2-4
~Famous person in #5 (Amélie)
~Random 3 best friends for 6-8

Happily now that we can do 'Top 1000's' now practically, it is slowly being diffused as such a hot moral issue. I roll with the dozen now, thereby erasing any lingering "Man...I'm not 'top ___' to him..." thoughts. I think. I hope. Though now my sister is on, so I had to change it all around again (wow she has such a "High School" profile, it's just great), come on... she's my sis...(sigh) so much for consistency.

When the spring is cold, where do robbins go? // What makes winters lonely? Now at last I know

Do you have a National Anthem? Not your opinion of a National Anthem for a country or whatever, but rather a song that seems to perfectly capture the pure essence of your heart. Feist sings my National Anthem. And she played it tonight at her show in Ann Arbor. It was wonderful. She didn't play this song sadly. Actually it was a sad show too. The last song she called couples onto the stage to dance "like you would at the prom" perfectly for 'Let It Die'. Right down to stopping before the last note to say "this is where you dip her", it was a wonderous moment.

If you were on the stage.

I wish I could be on the stage.

Come in out of the cold // Rest your head on my shoulder // and kiss me goodnight

So basically I'm the only one in this hemisphere staying up until 5:00 AM watching live matches of women's Australian Open tennis. Not just any matches mind you. Martina Hingis hath returned!

Oh she was gone for such a long time with those foot/ankle injuries, but then so suddenly she is back after a 4-year absence that leaves her at the near-ancient (by tennis stardards it seems) age of 25. And she is just demolishing people! After surviving the rounds of 128 and 64, she now has a clear path (famous last words) to the quarter-finals, not playing another ranked opponent until at least that round of 8. (sigh) The crush is back. We (by we I pretty much mean 'I') wait with bated breath and alarm clock set for 3:00 PM.

(puts on movie critic hat) Has anyone seen the movie 'Hostel' yet? A nice tip for those with better halves, maybe a good plan to skip out on the first 30 minutes or so. Going with Higgins and his girlfriend it is almost funny how it was just basically a hardcore porno flick during the first 1/3. Then suddenly a horror movie broke out and it was alright from then on. Not really scary as much as just demented. These kids are getting abducted after 'having it' with these girls in this German town and the last guy to survive goes looking for them, only to find out that they are being taken to an abandoned warehouse (one of many clichés that get rep'd in this one) and gruesomely tortured and murdered.

Only it's not just one psychopath running around, but rather a secret business, with cards and everything, that attracts the rich/insane at prices of $20,000 for a European, $25,000 for an American etc. Basically after the guy sees that his friends are pushing up daisies, he breaks out then goes back to save the chick (gruesome scene: after he knocks off the guy that is torturing her, they are almost ready to make a break for it, only she can't stop screaming at the sight {punny} dangling from her eye socket, which 1 pair of clippers and about a gallon of white puss later you can imagine what happens).

One thing that sorta bothered me (outside of the porn first half) was that just as they are about to get on the train and ride off to freedom, the girl sees her reflection of her missing eye and stares for a minute and then runs and jumps in front of the train to her death. It tries to come off as as 'sacrifice', drawing the focus from the few police officers in the station and thus saving the other guy, but it really rubbed me off the wrong way. It was like validation that, since she is now deformed physically, there is nothing worth living for, especially a possible love with this guy who seemed to have turned around and who even until her last moment, begged her to come with him. Evidently aesthetics have that much to do with love and life.

The radio is playing all the usual // and what's a wonderwall anyway?

Contrary to those wild rumors at the root of my inactivity, I am in fact alive and well. Or at least one of those two. The world has been spinning very fast lately, I'm just trying to hold on for dear life at this moment.

A few days ago my Great Uncle passed away. The moments before public viewing at the wake was quite bizarre. The chapter (correct nomenclature?) of his Elk's Club led us in a well-practiced tribute (to the point of being a 'production') that slightly left you with the impression that there was some hidden cult activity in his younger days. The viewing was alright, pictures older than myself of the man that I didn't recognize lying in the casket. Eating cauliflower in the funeral home kitchen with my brothers, I exclaimed to their agreeing ears that if I live 83 years I want my death to be a celebration of my life rather than grief that it ended, to the point of having a huge rigor mortis smile as I lie in the box . I mean if I make it that long, I see no reason for a single tear outside of laughs at those "good old naughty days".

Sort of like how in Mexico they celebrate 'El dia de los muertos' and camp out in graveyards for a grand fiesta (Mmmm... painted sugar skulls). Sometimes I feel like people don't celebrate death/religion as much as they mourn it. If someone lives a long and full life I say "a toast!..."

I went to the DQ cause I thought I might see you // I went to the Super-K, "Have you seen any recent stray?"

You know what is irritating? In the harsh Michigan weather, when the needle is at empty and you pull into a station and you put down $20 on pump 4 and the pump doesn't have that small groove in the handle that allows you to sit in your car as the gas is pumped...and then, as you are holding the pump, it slows to snail's pace at the $19.50 mark. Come on. It becomes a game of "elements/pump vs. patience" at that point, testing you to see if you can hold out and thus earn that last 50 cents of the petrol.

Sort of like when you work through your 4 days in a row and wake up on your day off with a near paralyzing strain in your neck. Sigh. It has been indoor recess all day with the icepack routine. So I didn't get a chance to make a 2nd all-time visit to the faraway Abercrombie and return the clothes I got for Christmas (thanks Mom, I guess I don't fit that mold, though you did try) It isn't all bad anyway. I actually have time to both eat clementine oranges and also defragment my brain/heart a bit.

Things are slowly beginning to shape together into sensible forms.

Perhaps all the better that I had an entire day spent indoors in rest, as anyone in the know regarding college football might know one of the all-time greatest games ever played went down over the course of late Wednesday night and early Thursday morning. One of those "I really wanted the other team to win, but it was so good that it almost doesn't matter" games. And you could add one more to the column of those who had a emotional interest. Watching that last drive, that 4th & 5 with my Ms. Hagle was one of the most exciting experiences I've had with another watching a game.

Not only had she proudly announced earlier to the rest of her Restaurant staff that she'd learned how downs worked and confided to me in great comedy that uniform color was only #3 on her list of relevance as to her support of USC, I was drawn back to my earliest memories of watching the game. Specifically the disappointment of my California team of destiny, my beloved 49ers, and their struggles before conquering the "hated" Cowboys (I say "hated" in jest mostly; I don't hate anybody & hate is such a strong word, though back then it didn't seem like it was strong enough).

We've known each other for forever, though seemingly in cameo appearances during phases of each other's lives. And it was so great to stand side by side watching that last play and to agonize the predictable yet dramatic result. We hugged tightly and I drifted off into the typical rain of a January Michigan night feeling found.

How I miss your ranting // Do you miss my all-time lows?

2006. Life begins again. I think I'm game. Down with falling short of those same targets. This is going to be fun. I'm going to imagine it all as a red balloon and I'm letting the string slip past my fingers. I am taking hold of this example of the principles of Singularity that might just crumble a particular wall that bears my bloody faceprint:

"If you feel that giving 5% of your income to charity isn't enough, and that the moral ideal is 10%, try giving 6%. Make the best choices you can make with the willpower you have. The choice isn't between giving 5% and 10%; you don't have that much willpower in the bank. The choice is between giving 5% and 6%. The better choice is 6%. Now you've made a better choice; feel happy. Feeling guilty about not having willpower doesn't contribute to the development of willpower. Rather, try for the proper exercise of available willpower, and the slow reshaping of the self that results."

"Remember, it also takes willpower to choose a particular purpose or to accept a particular result. Let's take the 5%/10% problem again. One reason to bump up to 6% is that it increases the eventual chance of giving 10%. But maybe even contemplating this path, and the sacrifices that lie at the end of it, takes too much willpower - thus decreasing your chance of giving 6%, or increasing the amount of willpower needed to do so. Fine. Just give 6%. No further increments planned. It's still better than giving 5%."

Solid. With all this extra work I've had to do because of sick days from the staff, there hasn't been much time for much deep thought, mostly idle fantasies and drive-by ideas like:

~ If I get married, I want one of the first dance songs (do they play more than one? I don't know these things) to be that theme from the Disney 'Beauty and the Beast'. I was in hysterics the other day thinking about the puzzled reactions that would greet us as we glided across the floor to:

'Tale as old as time,

song as old as rhyme

Beauty and the Beast'

One of my few wedding ideas, outside of the famous (or infamous, depending on where you sit) white tuxedo attire, carrying on the tradition started by my all time hero, Robert C. Bentley:

(just an awesome figure, but also notice how it appears that just as this photo is snapped, he has only now fully realized what he's gotten himself into) Hells ya.

~I discovered recently that sandwiched perfectly between 'Fox News' and 'Turner Classic Movies', lied hidden 'The Disney Channel'. So I was quite delighted at the chance to someday spy some 'Duck Tales' or 'Darkwing Duck' or some other mallard-related childhood fanfare, but the days have turned to weeks and nary a duck has been found. The channel is just pasted over with 'Lizzy McGuire' and 'That is so Raven' (spelling on both?), I raised this issue to Rajala and the Raj had this to say:

"No shit man, we had Turtles and Ducktales back then...now these kids have like sitcoms, they're way cooler than we were then apparently..."

It seems true, I mean I've always felt like I was being a bit out of it to say that I can't believe that some of these "young kids" are as hip to things as I was in my High School days. Maybe that is not a good thing. I mean already women are being herded into 'zero waist, huge breasts and $-E-X' by the media, and it does seem like even in pop music some of these people are in the business machine before they can even smoke a cigarette. Pretty soon they'll be coming out of the womb with an iPod nano...