i was writing a list of "things to do" during a meeting, earlier. it went a little something like this:

get more sleep.
sleep more.
go to bed earlier.
make sure to get some more sleep at night.

notice a trend?

tomorrow i'm off. not that it'll be any fun. i have to get my little sister to bring my dad over to look at my car. my dad was a mechanic for a long time, so he knows quite a bit more about this shit than i do. more power to him. i'll just sit on the sidelines and say things like "yeah…i thought that's what it might be."

i may have a newfound obsession for rachel leigh cook, but at least i'm not crazy enough to make her a fansite. thank god someone is…

i'm sitting here typing up this post on what should really be my "lunch break." i ended up running across the parking lot to get some trashy fast food on a quick break, earlier, so now i'm just kinda sitting at my desk mopping up some loose hours, if you know what i mean.

you can now find transmission3000 tracks creeping into the rotation on us against them radio. i talked to john about it for a while last night, and it sounded like a fun idea. i've been wanting to set up a radio stream of the t3k stuff for a while, anyway.

back to the drawing board…

good god…this is so freakin' funny i don't even know what to say about it. every day i thank the fates that i'm alive, if only to find things like this on the internet. now flaster and i just need to get them to start playing harcore and change their name to the short fuses…

the guys from us against them definitely deserve props. their new radio feature just kicks the ass. they've got a ton of great shit in the rotation, including the live hey mercedes set from over there at transmission3000. it's definitely made my workday more enjoyable…

i couldn't sleep last night. i ended up tossing and turning for hours, feeling like the world was sitting on my chest. more in a figurative sense than an actually feeling of my chest about to cave in, but you get the point… i've had a bunch of creative shit dropped on my head over the past week, and i've been rather harsh with some people. i'd like to take this moment to apologize for any hostility or straight out meanness i may have been throwing out there…it's just the way i deal with things.

on a lighter note…i'm leaving this hellhole in 45 minutes. hasta la vista, shitheads.

this from the official rolling stones site:

Dec 6: The Stones arrive at the Altamont Speedway track just outside San Francisco for a free concert. After a few numbers, a spectator takes a gun and aims it at the stage. He is immediately pounced on by Hell's Angels security. The band restarts the concert, but more trouble breaks out as the Angels run rampant through the audience. Keith stops playing and announces, "Either those cats cool it, man, or we don't play." The Hell's Ang els around the stage start to circle the band. With his usual diplomatic flair, Keith notices the burliest of the encroaching Angels and says only, "Fuck you." Surprisingly, the posse backs off and the gig continues for another hour.

ahhh…the power of keith richards…

it's late. too late for me to be up writing this post when i have to work tomorrow. i have a lot on my head right now and figure i'll spill it out here.

it seems that i'm in the middle of a rousing game of "a" against "b". it would seem that i'm stuck being "c", not knowing, truthfully, what the fuck is really going on. i'm about to "c" myself out of the whole situation. i know i should have a lot more faith in people, but when shit like this comes tumbling down on my head on a day like i've had…you tend to want to cut your losses, you know? maybe nipping things in the bud is the best thing that can happen for my situation right now. take a step back say "you may very well be right, but i think it needs to be like this for right now." that's understandable, right? i mean…shit…we're only human.

i've had so much shit lifted off of me over the past week. but true to form, i've had a whole new pile of shit dumped back on me. i'm in a position where i want to take control of my own life. tell everyone to fuck off, and get my own shit straight. i have to sort out my own baggage before i can handle someone else's. i don't think that's too much to ask from people. i've spent the better part of the last 10 years watching the world go by. wishing things would go the way i want them to. i think it's time to gain some measure of control, before the whole thing tumbles down the pot.

on a lighter note, we saw snatch last night and antitrust tonight. a two movie weekend is rare for me, but i think with everything that's been going on, i enjoyed the escape for a couple of hours. it was really needed.

snatch was nothing short of brilliant. it was amazingly written, amazingly shot, and funny as all hell. brad pitt turned in a really fucking phenomenal performance. he really stole the show, along with vinnie jones. it's highly recommended, and i'm sure it'll end up close to the top of my year-end list.

and then there's antitrust. i think i'll let matt's words stand: "that movie was a two hour pile of steaming shit." the only reason we decided to see it was that we had a couple of hours to kill and we all couldn't resist the allure of both rachael leigh cook and claire forlani. two great tastes that taste great together. aside from the beautiful ladies, the movie sucked a dog's ass. honestly. it was summed up by one of the climactic lines delivered by a certain mr. phillipe: "in the real world, you're fucked." as in…for paying to see this sack of crap.

and i swear that thing was funded by red hat…

yeah yeah…"in the real world people die…for real."

i'd like to issue a public apology to a certain someone who was apparently offended by a post i made the other day. no offense was meant, and i hope this clears things up.

thank you. that is all for today.

short but sweet: this ranks up there as one of the funniest things i've read all week, and that's saying a lot. it's a washington post article, at that. [via achren]

after reading matt's most recent post over there, i'm left thinking about fathers.i've always had a strange dad situation. my mom and my real dad never got married, and eventually my mom married a new guy. i've known the new guy since i was 2, so, needless to say, he's always been around. my real dad died when i was 5. i remember one of the things that he always told me was to mind my other dad. back then the new guy was my "dad" and my read father was "daddy". it sounds pretty confusing, but there was a clear distinction.

i never got to know my real dad very well. since he died in a motorcycle accident when i was 5, it made it a little hard. all i have of him, these days, are a few photographs. i remember very little. scattered things remembered from your childhood. riding on the back of his motorcycle…the time he took me to pizza hut for my birthday and gave me the spider-man helicopter (finally letting matt know of the importance of that gift)…the times he'd come over to the apartment where i lived with my mom and my new dad. they all got along, which is odd. they were all friendly, and seemed to genuinely like each other. it wasn't odd for my real dad to come visit me and then end up staying for dinner and to watch the dukes of hazard. it's days like this, when i get to thinking about things, that i miss him most.

on the other hand, i've gotten to know my new dad (referred to as "dad" from here on) quite well over the past few years. he divorced my mother when i was about 9 or 10, but he's a good man who has always been there for me. i stayed living with him, due to the fact that my mother is a complete alcoholic. she can barely look after herself, let alone a child. i've had very few deep conversations with him, but the ones we have had have been very enlightening. there have been a couple of times, over the past few years, where i've stopped in at my dad's house on a late weeknight with a six-pack of beer, just wanting to shoot the shit. my dad, like matt's, has made some decisions he's regretted. my dad, like matt's also has to live with some of those mistakes. there's a solid sense of melancholy about my dad. a deep sadness. the family has been in bad financial shape for as long as i can remember. he's moving on in age, and is finding it hard to find work that suits him that can provide for himself, my step-mother, and my little sister. i take a look at things and realize that i make close to double what my dad makes. this hits me pretty hard. making me think about what kind of future is in store for him, what kind of retirement. it makes me sad to think about the situation. i've tried, over the years, to help my dad seek better employment, but he's such a proud, headstrong guy. these are qualities i think i get from him, and i can't say whether that's good or bad.

like matt, i think i'll take my dad out to eat next week. it's time we sat down, alone, over some food and had a long talk.

i slept late today. i worked an extra day at work this week, so i've been tired for a couple of days now. i work ten hour days, so they can get long as hell. spending half of an entire day in that place starts to drive me slightly bonkers.

it seems like cnn has found a way to rebound from the layoff of 400 employees (mentioned here yesterday) by moving to a more apple-oriented approach to newscasting. it seems they'll be using smaller reporting tems equipped with high quality dv cameras and powerbooks. [via as the apple turns]

yes! marilyn manson and rose mcgowan have called it quits! here's our chance, boys…let's make it count.

i have no clue what the plans are for tonight, but i'm sure it will involve seeing guy ritchie's newest film, snatch. it opens here in louisville tonight, and you better fucking believe i'm there.

on that note…

well, just got back from dinner with my father. he picked the Irish Rover, which was great for me, since it's probably my absolute favorite restaurant of all those on the list. overall, it was a good dinner (the food was excellent, as usual), even though we did get the evil waitress from hell. to be honest, i'm surprised she's still working there, she obviously hates it. she was much better this time out, but then again, how could she have been any worse? needless to say, we got out of there before the whole paying the bill / leaving a tip thing came up. but i did get a particular pleasure out of relating the entire story (minus the fact of paul & brian's drunkenness during the events) to my dad, since it at least gave us something to talk about… which leads me to my next observation…

i am too much like my father. i think, all these years, i've blamed my almost morbid quietude in social situations on the fact that the majority of my friends in high school were people who loved to hear themselves talk. i was the kid who could almost never get a word in edgewise. but now, after hanging with my dad this evening, i'm beginning to think it may simply be paternal emulation. getting a conversation started with my dad tonight was like pulling teeth.

me:  "uh. so, uh. how's things?"

how's things!? what the hell kind of question is that to ask your father? and, of course, my father's response:

him: "oh… good. y'know." (or something along those lines)

me:  "… … cool."

<< side note: paul just called me out last night on the phone. he pointed out that i almost always answer any statement or question with just one word — "cool." (in a kind of dull monotone) > >

well, after several false starts, we did hit a few almost good conversations in there, the main one being when he informed me that, when i was four and the family was planning to move to Kentucky, my primary apprehension about the move was… indians. yep, indians, i was apparently afraid that Kentucky, that vague forest-land was teeming with wild, violent, Daniel Boone, Bill Custer at Little Big Horn type indians. and really, i think this is possibly the most important thing my father has ever told me since i moved out of the house and went to college, because, get this, my earliest memory of a childhood dream was about indians attacking our house and the little old lady who gave my sister and i milk and cookies.

well, now i think i understand that dream a little better. obviously it was some kind of anxiety dream about moving to Kentucky.

another conversation we got on was the life decisions issue. it kind of saddened me to hear that there are several things in my dad's life that he sometimes wishes he'd done differently. the only one he specifically mentioned was moving to Princeton. i can't help but wonder if some of the others have anything to do with me. as i've told several of my friends when we've gotten on similar topics, there is only one thing i really regret in my life–the horrible way i mishandled the breakup with the girl who i seem to be mentioning quite a bit lately. that whole situation is probably the only thing i'd go back and change if given a chance.

altogether, i guess it was one of the better father/son hang-out sessions we've had, despite the absurd conversational difficulties. probably the best part was that i got to take him to dinner. normally, he pays for dinner, then slips me a twenty before he leaves. this time, i paid for dinner, and he didn't slip me the twenty… it was liberating, and it just felt good.

in other family news, my sister has been so completely enthralled by the wondrous adventure that is bipolar, she had to go and start her own little weblog. at this point, i've given her a couple days to get into the groove, so go check it out. she's currently living in france, so perhaps she'll be able to expose us all to a little culture… or at least teach us how to say dirty words in french. oh, and that's multi – literate, not mult – illiterate or some such. she's quite the intellectual.

damn. two longish posts in one day… what's up with that?