the chronicles of narnia. the harry potter series. it was only a matter of time.

lemony snicket.

for an adult, I make a great eight year old.

I usually don't go this long without posting, but I just haven't had the mental energy. I barely have the physical energy to do my daily stuff. I wonder if I should see the doctor. I rely so much on my adderall to give me a kick start and I sleep 12-14 hours on nights that I can get away with it. my diet sucks and I don't exercise for crap, though, and I'm sure those are the primary changes the doc would suggest.

however, I am right on top of Christmas this year. most of my gifts are purchased. and get this: the tree is up. and decorated. it may never happen again.

wanna read the most annoying article ever? I advise against it, but here it is. as a guy I feel obligated to say: "um, no." I've come to the conclusion that there are certain men who can't force themselves to commit to a single partner, but they aren't representational. those guys just shouldn't involve themselves in would-be monogamous relationships; they don't deserve them anyway. if you and your significant other have an "understanding" that you're both fine with, that's cool. but pretending to be committed to one individual when you're playing around is deceitful, cruel, and among the greatest harm you can do to another human being short of killing them outright.

steps off soapbox.

the new centre city park is open downtown. gorgeous fountain--it can even be programmed to do neat tricks like the one at the bellagio. even as a taxpayer, I wholeheartedly approve.

oh, and for your consideration was well worth the wait. go. see. enjoy.

hope everyone ate lots of turkey. or tofurky, if that's your scene. you know, of course, that that whole tryptophan business is essentially a myth. so if dinner made you sleepy, it was probably just your aunt tillie's conversation. that or just massive amounts of food that would make you sleepy regardless of what it was.

think myspace is addictive? pshaw. have some fun with yahoo answers. it's such an easy way of making a difference in the world (and, for students, getting free help with homework). I myself convinced a total stranger to buy a volvo instead of a saab. sorry, saab. and the point accumulation is so addictive. dammit, I WILL get to level two if it kills me!

robert altman has passed away. his death is a great loss for cinema. I don't know that there will ever be another like him.

updated my e-mail link at the top and linked to my myspace profile. I know I should shut petrified fountain down for good, but maybe one fine day I'll actually get motivated.

willow doesn't watch much tv with me. tonight, however, she was completely enthralled with fritz the cat. sat and stared for about an hour. I find this both amusing and disturbing...sort of like the movie itself.

speaking of movies, I'm about to piss myself with excitement over for your consideration next weekend. if your're lucky enough to live where it's playing and have seen it do NOT tell me. I want to watch it with a totally clean slate, without even reading reviews.

many "today's special" clips are on youtube. it's wonderful, and a good remedy for the mean reds. watching segments like this one makes me realize just how gay jeff really was. the things you don't notice as a child!

justin's birthday dinner is at buca di beppo this weekend. I'd better not eat between now and then. I probably won't eat for several weeks following, either.

oh, and the insomnia problem is solved. it had been years since I'd tried melatonin, so I gave it another go. I don't remember that stuff packing so much of a punch. talk about sleeping like the dead.

the new version of blogger is nice.

I want to apologize to anyone associated with me for being off kilter for the past week or so. I've just had a lot on my mind. it's complicated. you know, it's terrible to be depressed and not know why. but I think it can be worse to know why you're depressed and not be able to do anything about it.

a lot of it has to do with how little I see justin these days. he's working a crazy schedule (due to the restructuring of eghs's student body after the fire) that means we don't really see each other during the week. he also has a lot of conferencing and whatnot going on. he can't help it, and he's been more than understanding about my weird hours over the years. it's still tough. if I don't start getting out more I could easily go five days a week without talking with anyone face to face.

speaking of socializing, I was psyched to see the prestige with carra today but I had to stay in bed with a nasty stomachache. yecch. there went my sunday.

I'm so over frosted mini wheats. malt-o-meal blueberry muffin tops cereal blows my mind. I'm going straight into rehab over this stuff.

something else I'm excited about: Christmas. this year I'm truly pumped. I've already started shopping and planning the decor. gives me something to look forward to.

hopefully tonight I can overcome the insomnia that has plagued me lately. it's not good to be going to sleep hours after most of this time zone is awake.

do you ever get the feeling that your life is going, slowly but surely, down the tubes? and it gets to the point where you start having to wonder just where the tubes go? [note: have just learned where the tubes go. makes sense.]

just learned: if your microwave has a turntable, always put your food slightly off center. otherwise the turntable does you no good. can't believe I've gone all these years not knowing that.

after a lifetime of hearing about taxi driver I finally saw it. okay, I don't claim--as some film buffs do--that it's the best thing ever. but I understand WHY people think so, and I enjoyed it immensely. and if you've ever heard me describe "gothfield," it illustrates gothfield more than I thought any film could. but we'll save gothfield for next semester.

I was lame enough to record the war at home sunday just because seth macfarlane guest starred. what a crap show. his voice is beyond orgasmic, although I'm not sure he wasn't fudging it a little for the role (if you're a family guy fan, he was using the "brian" voice). if he ever spoke to me in person in those dulcet tones it would be all over. I don't know what "it" is, but it would be over.

am VERY pleased about the election results on the national front. on the local am somewhat disappointed. I'm unsure just how much the fire station bond was needed, yet it passed (eghs fire a factor?). I know how much the auditorium bond IS needed, yet it didn't. but I have no right to complain, having sat this election out. had I known that I could change my registration info at the polling place I would have done my part, but I truly didn't. well, all stats will be up to date by the next go round, and how.

well, justin's school burned down today. fine kettle of fish. the powers that be have until monday to decide just where everyone is going to go until it's rebuilt...whenever that happens. oh, he'll have a job. it's just a matter of where. still.

hope everyone had a good halloween. nadine threw a smashing early all hallow's eve party last saturday night. I'll get pictures up by the weekend. and no, I haven't forgotten about the car pics. just gotta take some. he/she's still wonderful, by the way. initially he was a boy named xander, but that doesn't feel right. I've yet to be truly inspired. maybe some of y'all can give me some ideas.

I think I can add good ginger beer to my list of culinary weaknesses. it's up there near skippy reduced fat smooth peanut butter, slightly above linguini with red clam sauce. I doubt anything will ever surpass scottish smoked salmon, though. it's my kryptonite. one whiff and my knees buckle. I have actually been known to collapse from the sheer joy of bagels and lox.

we seem to have gone from having unseasonably cold weather to the other extreme. it sure doesn't feel like november. if it doesn't cool off, my annual repeated references to a particular guns n' roses song will be completely irrelevant.

some talented and enterprising film maker HAS to make a pic about this guy. I haven't been able to dig up much info about him--as he would have wanted, I'm sure--but what I have found is fascinating. read this, for example. for some reason I'm picturing him played by david boreanaz, I dunno why.

do you ever get the feeling that all your acquaintances--bosses, co-workers, coffee shop employees, etcetera--secretly dislike you? maybe you detect a note of exasperation in their friendly banter or sense eyes rolling behind your back? I hate being paranoid. guess it's just part of my genetic makeup.

a phrase I hate: "titty bar." tit, titty, and titties in any other context don't bug me. it's only been used in my presence a few times, but I've cringed. probably because the people who've used it are generally not vulgar.

the reason that t---- bars come to mind is because I've heard so many radio commercials for them lately (although they're demurely referred to as "cabarets" or "gentleman's clubs"). and every commercial encourages couples to attend. hmm. I don't know how the majority of straight women feel about attending strip clubs with their mates, so I asked myself, "would I want to go to a male strip club with justin?" the answer: yes. but not for titillation purposes. I'd just want to keep an eye on him. I wonder how many women who go with their men to strip clubs secretly go for that reason.

speaking of nudity, I wonder if animals ask themselves why people bother wearing clothes?

is it possible to become addicted to frosted mini wheats? well, I guess I could have worse habits. I've started keeping a box in my desk at work and periodically munching the little nuggets from about 10 pm until I get off work around 3:30. better that than tater chips.

in the great gatsby, nick mentions his belief that every man suspects himself of having one of the "cardinal virtues." his own, he says, is true honestly. I've asked myself what my own greatest virtue is from time to time. my usual conclusion is humility. I've achieved some fairly impressive things, but I was raised never to crow about them. generally, only when someone else mentions some accolade that has come my way will I discuss it, and then I try to stay as factual as possible.

of course, having written this, can I still claim to be humble?

on a related note, there are few actions that I despise more than hurting other people to achieve personal gain. I'm not sure I've ever done that. I'd make the worst reporter that the enquirer has ever seen.

sorry, watching l.a. confidential has raised some moral issues. fancy cinema making someone think! although I sometimes wish I had less to think about lately. I'm not the most savvy person when it comes to current events, but I try to stay abreast of major stories. and let me tell you, reading the news gets more difficult every day. so many horrible things are happening over which I have no control. in today's society, there is no reason why mankind shouldn't be more intelligent than ever before. so why does it seem that we're backsliding?

I wonder if ostriches have the right idea.

back in the day I made a post about how some people just aren't sexy, and strongly implied that I was one of them. lately I've started thinking again about how true that is. it's not just that I don't meet society's accepted attractiveness criteria, although that's part of it. I just don't feel that anything I could do would make me feel attractive enough. okay, looks aren't everything. but they're something.

so fuck it. I'm not going to try anymore. trying doesn't make a difference.

a thousand thank yous to the mysterious ms. hopper who posted the road construction link. I've been looking for a website like that, since ncdot's main site offers precious little info.

in ireland, stores charge a tax equal to $0.15 on each plastic bag given to you. so if you buy five bags worth of groceries, $0.75 is added onto your total bill. bring your own bags and pay nothing.

that is such a good idea. when will america get with the program? I never put my stuff in a bag if I can carry it otherwise. what I don't understand is why I get treated like a criminal for doing it. take harris teeter, for example. I go though the self checkout, skip the bagging, and take my stuff. I've gotten everything from weird looks to yelling cashiers for doing this, and ALWAYS get my receipt checked. if I was stealing something, wouldn't I put it in a harris teeter bag to make it look less suspect? the logic seems completely wrong to me.

went in the browsery bookshop for the first time in years yesterday and bought a couple of books that I'd been wanting for ages. I love edward mckay's, but so many greensbohemians seem to think it's the only used bookstore in town. not so.

I adore the new wheels, but my finances are in the worst shape they've been in for a while. no more major purchases for me until I get back on my feet. so much for the villa in the bordeaux region that I've been scoping out.

people seem to be into halloween a lot more this year. more elaborate haunted houses, bigger pumpkin patches, more crowds than ever at party city. but that could be my impression because there are few people more halloween crazed than justin. any day I expect to come home and find the entire house covered in synthetic spider webs. it's adorable.

I wish that I'd liked halloween more as a kid, but it's just a testament to my laziness that I didn't. I mean, why dress up and walk around the neighborhood to get candy when my parents could just buy it for me? of course, I was also cripplingly shy. I guess I could always make up for lost time. my last attempt at a costume, though, was "disheveled man." thankfully only justin, nadine, and several thousand strangers in chapel hill witnessed that caper...although the legend lives on.

friday the 13th lived up to its name. I got stuck in stalled construction traffic and was late to work for the first time in perhaps a year. I don't know what the hell they're doing on US 29, but it had better be impressive.

I'm relieved that jean shepherd is dead. it means that I'll never get the opportunity to meet him. I'm glad of that. I'd be so terrified that he wouldn't like me. if shep gave me the brushoff, I'd lose all will to live.

so what happened to lea thompson, anyway? she was everywhere for a few years. I kinda miss her, actually.

have you ever noticed that, in pretty much any film made pre-1960, when a car has three people in it they always sit in the front seat? was it in vogue to cram three people into the front seat of a studebaker? was it gauche to sit in the perfectly good back seat? I'll never understand.

I keep finding out that guys I knew ten years ago have kids now. what disturbs me is that I find this titillating. maybe I'm starting to understand those calendars that have the sexy men posing with the cute babies.

it always amazes me that gay men who hook up with random guys they meet online for sex (as opposed to actual dating, which is, ahem, another kettle of fish) seem to think they're not running any risks. they are. not that anyone deserves to be beaten down--it's the aggressors who are the real scum, of course. but if you're so horny that you resort to slimy behavior, you might pay for it. it's just never been worth the risk for me.

sorry, but I work hard to be an upstanding homosexual citizen. I get rankled when stereotypical gay activities get press, thereby damning us all.

in other news, NEW CAR PURCHASED TODAY! pics to come.

enough of this e. coli crap. it's going to get to the point that the only safe eatin' is human flesh itself. maybe jonathan swift was on to something.

speaking of food, I've gotta do something about my diet, and not just for lardass related reasons this time. I'm tired alllllllll the time lately, although I sleep 8+ hours per night and eat regularly. I guess it may well be the crap I stuff myself with. I pretty much live on hot pockets and barf buckets (by that I mean heat and serve manwich). bad scene.

just when I thought I knew all the best useless trivia:

the name of the shark in jaws is bruce.

I try to refrain from comments as judgemental as this, but sienna miller is a dumb whore. there. I've said it.

I've always been a cologne snob. 4711 has changed that. if it was good enough for george washington it's good enough for me. and I love people telling me that I smell great--I just don't clue them in to the fact that said smell costs a mere six bucks a bottle.

jean shepherd is corrupting my brain. I am still listening to nothing else at work, which amounts to over six hours of shep per day. my conversations are becoming peppered with antiquated slang like "dad" and "bad scene." it's only a matter of time before I start offering people the brass figlagee with bronze oak leaf palm. and it'll make me so sad when they look at me funny. kids today just don't know what's cool.

'rents here today for dad's belated birthday dinner at olive garden, which was great. my present to dad was reminding him that he's now old enough to order from many senior citizens menus. because it really is the thought that counts.

I want to go to frisco and visit tiffany. I also want to go to salem/portland, boston, wisconsin dells (indoor water park capital of the universe), omaha, vancouver, glasgow, dubai, sydney, marrakesh, tokyo, and a few other cities. too bad travel is so time consuming and expensive. if only they'd invent teleportation. of course, then I'd be out of a job.

I'm all in favor of outlawing cell phone usage without headsets while driving. but in return, I think that the cell users of the world deserve better headsets than what are on the market. when I got my razr I got a nifty bluetooth headset. it started gathering dust when I got sick of people being unable to hear more than every third or fourth syllable of my speech. so I got an old school wired earphone. nearly every time I use it, I end up yanking it out and talking on the headset alone so that I can be heard at all. I'm fed up, I tell ya.

speaking of laws: if youtube bites the dust due to all this copyright bullshit, there will be no hope left for me. how can The Powers That Be see a website that only allows 10 minute clips as a threat when full length films are constantly being swapped through torrent usage? some complete movies are on youtube broken up into segments, okay. but if anyone's lame enough to actually download each segment and fuse them together to watch the flick, they will NOT fork out the cash to buy it in the store if they have to.

fun food for thought: you're the hottest new thing in hollywood, and interview magazine wants to run an article on you (in case you don't know--rather than using conventional journalists, interview has celebrities interview OTHER celebrities). who would you want to interview you?

after giving the matter much thought, I'm all about shooting the breeze with julia stiles. we're about the same age, I respect her as an actress, and I think it would be less frustrating to talk with a columbia grad than with some bubbleheaded hollywood poster child.

"fight test" by the flaming lips makes me get all teary. not because it's a sad song--it certainly isn't that--but because it reminds me that college did, in fact, happen. those four years were magic. they really were. I'm happier now, sure. I wouldn't trade my life for anything; I'm so damned lucky! but I miss feeling...that life was finally beginning. I think that captures it pretty well. it was like I spent that time with all five senses maxed out, drinking up the world. there was all this potential, all this electricity.

since I'm not in an overly sentimental mood, time to change the subject. can you believe that there is now a dustin diamond sex tape in public hands? crazy. I have to see it, of course, although it may blind me. I just feel that it's my duty.

I never should have posted about my new car. it's just made me more anxious to get the damn thing. I'll shed tears over ophelia, to be sure. but it's like the week before Christmas when you're a kid, seeing all the gifts under the tree. they mock you, drive you insane with anticipation. there was one holiday season when I was 9 or 10 when, little by little, I picked all the corners off the wrapping paper trying to see what all the boxes were. I thought no one would notice. mm hmm.

by the way, I got a pair of radio controlled race cars that year. they were from the jcpenney catalog. totally sweet.

through some idiocy of mine, I completely vaporized firefox on my computer to the extent that not even a system restore would fix things. all my saved passwords, pfft. all my themes and extensions, pow. and the biggie? about a hundred bookmarks collected over a period of several years, adios. all I can think about are things that I would rather have happened than this. some examples are having all my tires slashed, all my CDs stolen, gaining twenty pounds, and/or the complete destruction of a major household appliance. well. so it goes.

I'm so addicted to old jean shepherd radio shows (shep is best known as the author of and the narrator in A Christmas Story). I don't know if I'm ever going to need audio books again. he's not for everyone. but if you like the idea of listening to a guy ramble aimlessly, yell, and play the kazoo for an hour or so, you'll dig him. best of all, TONS of mp3s of his stuff are available here completely free of charge. the best way to sift through it all is to do a "Search By Artist Name" and type in a random year from the 50s or 60s. my gigabeat runneth over.

it amazes me that, in this day and age, many straight men remain completely ignorant of the whereabouts of the female g-spot. I wonder how many of these guys would also deny the existence of the male g-spot on their own person. I'll bet there's a strong correlation.

speaking of men, here's "a guy thing" that womenfolk should be let in on. don't ever believe a guy when he says, "it's not heavy, it's just awkward" when he lifts something. it's heavy. he just won't admit it.

so I was going to try and keep this under wraps until I had the object in my possession, but I've just gotta say it: I'm getting that new car! I put down a deposit on a black honda fit sport that should presently be en route from japan. it may be a couple of weeks yet, and the anticipation is murder. of course flow honda will have to give me a fair deal on 'phelia or I'll take my money back and tell them to shove it.