it's a shame that it took john peel's death to call my attention to the undertones. that said, I've got some cd shopping to do today.

I had an unfortunate realization at carolina's this morning with nadine. being a friday late night, the place was jam packed with drunks, and there was an especially amusing booth behind us. they were having a conversation about sky bar, and some guy that they'd all met there. "he was not gay," one of the guys said. "he was wearing baggy clothes. gay people don't wear baggy clothes."

nadine and I looked at each other. then we looked at my sweater and jeans. and an epiphany! I like girls after all! none of this homo bullshit for me. the truth has been with me all along, in the generous cut of my garments, and I was too blind to see. all these years I've been living life as a spandex swishbuckler, when I've really been a saggin straight guy. time to hitch up my belt, revel in the acres of fabric swathing my testosterone laden, lady lovin bod, and pick me up some girls. or do I mean score some chicks? or procure some pussy?

idiots.

earlier today I headed to the dryer to get out some socks. before I knew what I was doing, I opened the fridge instead.

they weren't in there.

shawn colvin is releasing a greatest hits album.

huh?

dr teal's jasmine vanilla vapor bath is the greatest stuff ever.

stupid clouds, making everyone miss the lunar eclipse.

at least it's thursday.

john peel died. what a terrible loss. the music world will miss him deeply.

thppt. monday. humph. at least the weekend was a great one as they go. the barbecue festival was as festive as ever. and despite some major traffic problems, justin and I got to raleigh in time for dinner and to see jeff dunham at charlie goodnight's. quite funny indeed.

visiting with family in winston yesterday was nice, but the highlight of the weekend is most certainly willow! the new kitten has arrived, and I'll take photos to post asap. she's the cutest. she slept next to me all day. which will improve weekends indefinitely--I get the guy at night, and the cat during the day. sleeping alone is overrated.

eez time for shower and to pick up medicine.

grr. aargh. the past couple days have found me in some very obnoxious moods, ranging from depressed to annoyed to downright postal. you know those times when you look around your life, see it as a prison cell, and muscle up to the bars and yell "LEMME THE FUCK OUTTA HERE!" yeah. perhaps it's the promise of the barbecue festival that has lightened my mood. at any rate, I'm now once again semi-sane.

this is where I have to interject that justin is perhaps the only aspect of my life that I tend to run to rather than away from. he's a saint to put up with me. hell, what I'm talkin? we're saints to put up with each other. a match made in heaven. heh. saints, heaven. I made a funny.

sunday I see the 'rents and granny and get my kitten! monday the new couch arrives. so many nice new things. well, my parents and grandmother certainly aren't new, but they're nice old things. um, that came out wrong. never mind.

did anyone see the video of fidel castro falling down a few days ago? I heard that he fell, and thought, "aw, shucks. that's too bad." then I saw the video. I'm sorry, but fuh-nee. he even knocked over some chairs, a la mary catherine gallagher. fidel castro, SUPERSTAR! I'm a mean person, but at least I know it.

P.S. have just learned that castro did in fact break some bones in the fall. dammit! why is it still funny? I'm going to hell.

maria shriver rules.

yeah, another monday rolls around. spent a nice/productive weekend cleaning 4109 and hanging out with some of justin's family in mount airy. also bought the sofa, but not the one I mentioned--I got to the store and realized that I hated it. so I found another, which will be here a week from tuesday. hooray for spending $900. time to crack open a savings account and start socking dough away for the house.

as much as it pains me to do it, I'm cancelling my netflix membership. I just don't have time to make use of it. oh, well.

so early voting got underway in palm beach county today, and issues have already arisen--as in paper ballots missing pages. other areas of florida have experienced computer glitches in the voting process. dammit people, get it together already.

oh, and if you're a friend of mine named chris and you left your number on my windshield today: sorry to have to ask, but which chris are you exactly? gotta narrow it down for me.

well, monday night was...unexpected. I found myself with no one to see rilo kiley with, so I just drove to carrboro to offload my tickets (I sold one, but not both) and back home. thought of calling charles, since he's also a fan, but he probably wouldn't have gone anyway. everyone else was just plain tied up for the evening.

found a sofa, yay! and stephanie's taking the old stuff off my hands. I'm going to see if they can deliver it on saturday.

got a swank new cell phone. it be havin a camera and shit.

I really, really want to see the movie bright young things, but it ain't playing here yet. if anyone reading this is in a more cosmopolitan area than greensbohemia, please go and tell me how it is.

peace out.

I just read that belle and sebastian is one of parker posey's favorite bands.

dude.

ah, what a lovely couple of days. went to justin's bel canto concert on saturday, which was smashing as expected. out with him, rachel, josh, and heather (!!!) to friday's later that evening. yesterday off to asheville for dinner and to deliver rachel back to unc-a. she has a darling pet hedgehog now. I've always wanted one.

as for today, justin has been very naughty and taken a day off work to lie around with me and run errands. talk about nice surprises! later, this jet setter is off again to carrboro for the rilo kiley show.

tis shower time.

saturday's here and so is my long weekend! off work on monday to see rilo kiley. beautiful.

I was unaware that saint bernards were still used to rescue people in the alps. well, they are, but they haven't rescued anyone in 50 years. so the group of monks in charge of the dogs is putting them all up for adoption. wow. best Christmas present ever, people. hint, hint.

random observation of the day: some people aren't sexy until you hear them laugh.

office mayhem: nadine and I spent 20 minutes trying to think of the name of the quidditch announcer at hogwarts (lee jordan). finally we had to seek out ginger, the administrative assistant, who knew--more proof that she is an invaluable asset to the o.d. team.

wow, that was a lame story. I apologize.

speaking of lame stories, think I'll go catch a few minutes of degrassi.

I'm starting to find it disheartening that, in the generally articulate world of national politics, both "flip flop" and "flip flopper" have worked their way into the working vocabulary of the--gulp--punditocracy.

just needed to share.

it wasn't the best night at work. we got quarterly evaluations, and I didn't get the raise I was expecting. well, I guess I just have to work a little harder.

and my job has become such a conundrum. I like it, and I love my salary. and honestly, I've started to think that wouldn't bother me to do it indefinitely. but the world doesn't keep my hours, and I feel like everything's just passing me by. I don't know what to do anymore--if I ever did.

yep, it's been one of those days.

marvelous weekend. tate street festival with justin and nadine, indian food to follow. sunday was shopping at southpoint (nordstrom in particular) and cheesecake factory. the weekend's highlight was my confession to justin. yep, the l-word, and make no mistake about it. imagine me saying it first! meaning it and everything. but I've seen enough to know wonderful when it's staring me in the face. with its beautiful eyes. okay, I'm going to stop before I get into "middle school girl" mode and start tracing names on notebooks.

sorry, snapple sub zero. I love ya, but tropicana twister raspberry lemonade has surpassed you as my fave bottled beverage. it's astin-tastic (a dumb and annoying expression that I keep using anyway).

must buy new furniture this week. not look, not pick out, but buy. I just don't have time to go traipsing all around the triad looking for THE perfect sofa that's within my budget AND is made in n.c. so I'm hitting three stores max and getting something already.

I think I'm going to scotland next summer for the edinburgh arts festival. it just occurred to me as something that I really want to do. but hopefully I'll have bought a house by then, so my budget may not allow it.

I dozed off on justin's futon an hour ago and had some dream involving the city of south el monte, california. maybe I can pick up with that now and find out what the hell that was about.

I have stone lions on my mantle.

life is good.

before I get on to the main post...HAPPY BIRTHDAY, DAD!

and now, the top five things that have recently begun to irritate me:

1) car washes turn their bill changers off at night. this inconveniences me to no end.
2) my apartment is being taken over by giant mutant crickets. some mysterious radar always leads them into one of the many plastic grocery bags lying around the apartment, where they make incredibly loud rustling noises that sound like rats scurrying around.
3) this is over a year late, but I really, really miss fresh samantha. best juice drinks ever. stupid odwalla discontinuing the whole damn line of em.
4) hotmail's lack of support for any browser but IE. I'm teetering on the edge of going back to a yahoo address--I'll keep everyone posted.
5) lindsay lohan. in general.

must get to bed; the whole department has had to go in at 5 every day this week, which has fucked over my sleep schedule. one day I'll get my full eight hours again, and what a day it will be.

so josh and I saw wilco in raleigh saturday night. excellent, as always and expected. they didn't play most of the songs that I'd really been aching to hear, but the asheville show would have been hard to top as a jeremy pleaser.

over the past few days I've had a couple of revelations that have really altered my outlook on life. seriously. I now realize that, after 23 years of feeling inferior most of the time, I've developed a genuine superiority complex. and I'm thoroughly enjoying it. in fact, I'm going to start introducing myself thus:

"I have better taste than most people. I'm probably more intelligent than you are, and I'll only be feigning interest in 90% of what you say. if you're already offended, than you might as well give it up. but if you can say any of that about yourself, stick around and we'll see how long we can tolerate each other."

I know it's extreme, but I've got a lifetime of meekness and self-deprecation to make up for.

also, this morning I took inventory of my life, as I am wont to do on occasion. I have a swell automobile. I have a nice apartment. great friends, great family. as far as I know I'm healthy as the proverbial horse, and in almost the best shape of my adult life. the cherry on the cake, of course, is justin, aka The Wonderous One. after taking stock I realized that there's not a lot more that I could want. a house, but that's pending. my dream job, but since I haven't ascertained what that is yet it can wait. I'm damn lucky.

ordinarily I shy away from making statements like that. when I do I usually knock on the nearest door frame hard enough to fell a mighty redwood and mumble something about "jinxing things." well, I'm tired of waiting for the other shoe to drop. I'm just going to sit back, relax, and remind myself that there isn't always another shoe. because you can't enjoy the ride if you're too preoccupied with crashing. I'll worry about the carnage when AND IF it happens.

that said, my superior ass is getting into my holier-than-thou bed so I can get some arrogant sleep.

my mind has been in random overdrive lately:

Q: if charlie tuna had a band, what genre would it be?
A: alba-core.

the next time someone starts telling me how great the atkins diet is, I'm going to respond with, "well, personally I'm a big fan of the edgar atkins teagarden diet. alllllll watermelon!" if the person actually knows what I'm talking about, I'm proposing marriage right there (sorry josh, you're disqualified; I'm already aware you're in the know on this one).

I realized tonight that time travel will never be discovered. if that was destined to happen, no high profile war/assassination/atrocity would have occurred. ever. at some point some enterprising person would zip back in history to stop them all. yeah, I know that's paradoxical, but everything about time travel is anyway.

okay, so I found my stepmother is an alien in the $5.50 dvd bin at wal-mart, which pleased me to no end. I remembered that alyson hannigan plays dan aykroyd's daughter, but forgot who plays her date. seth green. fellow buffy fans, isn't that the most twilight zone-esque thing ever? it's willow and oz, age 13.

since I haven't mentioned him in a bit, let me take this opportunity to say that justin is still the greatest. weekend + sexy, funny, sweet, intelligent guy = happy me.

it's 9 am. why am I awake? must remedy that posthaste.

random blurbs:

the september issue of GQ has so many pictures of iman in it. I like that.

how often do you wonder what would happen if you stopped worrying about everyone, everything, and the future in general and just went for broke? personally, I try for 5-6 times per day. it's like window shopping at neiman marcus when you're on a big lots budget. frustrating, but such pretty possibilities...

white chocolate kit kats rule.

angelica huston is the greatest living film actress. no contest.

the frigid breeze tonight means fall is definitely coming up, and fast. I've always professed a dislike for autumn--especially in the piedmont, where the leaves just turn brown for a day and fall off--but somehow it seems to be the season when I'm most in tune with myself. maybe I'll crank out some good prose before the first snowfall. I should designate a lucky writing sweater before october rolls around.