Lets keep it short and sweet.

Sunday night: Pitt women beat James Madison in the first round of the NCAA tournament. Great atmosphere at the Pete. Everyone should buy season tickets for next year.

Monday night: The Hold Steady brings it. The crowd was acting too cool. Citrus lead off the best encore ever. My favorite moment was when someone in the crowd gave the guitar player a black and gold hat to wear. He had his back to the stage when he put it on and everyone was getting ready to go crazy when he turned around (someone even jumped the gun and yelled "go, Steelers!"), but it turned out to be a Pirates hat which totally killed the buzz.

Tuesday night: Open studio. We are a well oiled machine. Please come again.

Wednesday night: Lindsey Buckingham is a wild man. His fans are even crazier. Dead center in the front row of the balcony is a great place to watch a show but not the best place to get into a show.

Thursday night: Pitt men break my heart again. When will I learn? When will I learn?

Saturday and Sunday: Listened to Phil Collins sing One More Night over and over and over. What the hell?

I took the lights down. I guess that means Christmas is really over.

This should be an interesting week. We're going to see the Pitt women in the NCAA tournament tonight. Monday is The Hold Steady at The Rex. Tuesday I'm on open studio at AIR. I finally got my ticket, so I'll be the guy in the first row of the balcony yelling for Lindsey Buckingham to play Time Bomb Town on Wednesday, and Thursday is the Pitt men vs. UCLA grudge match. The rest of my time will probably be spent sleeping.

Don't you hate it when none of the neighbors' wireless networks intersect with the tops of any of your desks or tables?

I'm beginning to think that everything I'm doing now is merely practice for later in life when I'm living as a recluse.

I used to wonder if I was playing the Jerry Lewis or the Dean Martin role in the buddy movie of life, but, as I've grown older, I've come to realize that sometimes you play the Jerry Lewis role and sometimes you play the Dean Martin role. Today I was Jerry Lewis.

I've been watching a lot of movies on HBO lately. Yesterday they had a theme of uptight women loosening up when they get involved with a man who is their opposite. The movies where Something New (she's black, he's white), Prime (she's 37, he's 23), and Just Like Heaven (she's a ghost [but still alive???], he's alive). I learned many valuable lessons about living life to the fullest. Something New was the best of the lot but Prime is also pretty good. Just Like Heaven isn't much of anything, but I really dig Mark Ruffalo.

HBO has also been showing Star Wars and The Empire Strikes Back a lot (as well as those other movies that I don't recognize as being part of the canon). The only one they haven't been showing is Return of the Jedi. The beginning of Empire is just about perfect (except for when Leia kisses Luke. Except that it is okay because I don't think Luke and Leia are actually brother and sister, so kiss away, kids). You see, on Saturday I watched the end of Terrence Malick's The New World and I decided that it was actually Episode Two in the Star Wars saga. Pocahontas was Luke and Leia's mother, Christian Bale was Anakin Skywalker, Colin Farrell was Obi-Wan Kenobi, and the native American's were Jedi or something. I guess Jonathan Pryce would be Bail Organa. You need to juggle somethings around a little in your head but it works much better than the official prequels. Anyway, in The New World, "Anakin" and Pocahontas only had the one son ("Luke") before she died, and I guess "Leia" would be Elizabeth of Bohemia.
It's getting away from me. I'm getting out of here.

I hope David Fincher ends up making some videos for this.

A helicopter has been hovering over towards the Mt. Lebanon/Dormont border for the last ten minutes. It's making me uncomfortable.
What have you done now, Dormont!

edit: it was out there for about a half hour!

It's not that I enjoy being filled with hate,
it's just that there are so many thing that deserve my scorn.

I got something in the mail today from the Art Institute of Pittsburgh that says I owe them $1.00. I'm confused. It's been, what, nine years since I graduated from there? Also, the postage on the thing is thirty cents. It just doesn't seem worth it.

It was amazing, this mystic business. You tell them a lie, and then when you don't need it anymore you tell them another lie and tell them they're progressing along the road to wisdom. Then instead of laughing they follow you even more, hoping that at the heart of all the lies they'll find the truth. And bit by bit they accept the unacceptable.

Guards! Guards! by Terry Pratchett.

I hadn't listened to any music on my computer since 12:50 pm on the 15th (Ella Fitzgerald doing Begin the Beguine). That's almost exactly five days. That's was two days of headache, two days of coughing and mucus, and one day of general malaise. My nose will probably be running for another week and the cough will probably stick around for another month, but I feel much better.

Lets see if I can give a taste of what I was going through last night. The headache was finally gone, but the coughing and the mucus were in ascension. Maybe slept for an hour between 2:00-3:00 am. Maybe slept for another hour. Maybe not. Had a dream where we were back driving through the mountains in Arizona. We were lost. I had the brilliant idea to turn the clock in the car back an hour so no one would know how lost we were. It makes sense when you're delirious. After more coughing and mucus creation, I dragged myself out of bed because I had to pee. While I was in the bathroom I decided I'd had enough, so I took some cold medicine. I've been raised to not use over the counter medication. I really need to break that hang-up. When I got back into bed the clock read 4:49, and I had an epiphany that it said "chang". I knew that my life's work would be spreading this message through the world. At this point I also composed a much better and more concise version of this post in my head. The cold medicine did reduce the frequency of my coughing fits and the amount of mucus, but it also made my head feel kinda funny. I think I managed to fall asleep around 8:00 am. I am greatly looking forward to no longer being sick.

Arizona pictures are up.
Debilitating headache only lasted for two days.
I woke up every couple hours last night thinking I was a hockey team.
Weeeeeeeeeeeeeee.

Also, I want to party with you, cowgirl.