Blake: The stupidest performance I've ever seen in my life. I took off 50 points because he fooled me into liking him a couple of weeks ago. (negative 35 points)

Sanjaya: A good song for him, and a decent performance. No, really. And I'll try not to kill myself for admitting that he did a decent job. (65 points)

Sundance: I'm pretty sure that he was drunk. I'm positive that I wished I was. (10 points)

Chris R: A decent job with a country song. A little twangy at times. (50 points)

Jared: Look! It's the man with no soul! I thought it was funny when Paula advised him to "color-up" his performances. (0 points)

Brandon: This is some kind of sick joke, right? (negative 473 points)

Phil: Good song. Started out crappy, then got kinda sorta better, then finished crappy. (25 points)

Chris S: Sang some strange song, but I liked it, and I thought he did a great job. (80 points)

I have a tiny confession to make now. One that will come as zero surprise to anyone who's been reading my drivel for any length of time.

I don't know what I'm fucking talking about. Or writing about. What the fuck ever.

Luckily, for me, and for you at home, I sometimes have help. Like tonight. Tonight I've been fortunate and privileged enough to have had The Reverend (370), from the Avery Brewing Company, join me for an evening of contemplation and soul searching.

I've had a question on my mind for a couple of years now. Closer to three years actually, but it doesn't matter exactly how long it's been. This question is eternal, and it's been asked by nearly everyone since the beginning of the beginning of the beginning of consciousness.

It's been asked for a long fucking time, in other words.

It's a two-part question actually. The first part is Is it better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all?

The answer to that question is, of course, fucking yes and yes and yes and fucking yes.

I've written about this before, and it's actually one of the few subjects in which I don't feel like I'm just pulling answers out of my ass.

It's approximately seven hundred gazillion asstillion times better to have loved than to never have loved. Go ahead. Prove me wrong. I dare you to try.

And the really neat thing is, to love and then lose doesn't change a fucking thing. We live to love.

I'll say it again. We live to love.

Losing is, while not quite irrelevant, losing is nothing nothing nothing nothing fucking nothing compared to the loving.

So that's the first part of the two-part question.

The second part of the question is Why is it better?

And, tonight at least, I know the answer. At least as much as someone like me can know the answer.

The answer is actually quite simple.

Because sometimes, like maybe once in a lifetime if you're lucky, you don't lose.

Because sometimes, you get to love and you get to win.

To love is to open yourself to that possibility. To surrender yourself to that possibility of happiness. To allow yourself to have hopes, and dreams, and to imagine just how incredibly wonderful life could be.

If only.

This time.

I could be loved back.

Then I would win.

That hope, that trumps everything else. All of the pain. All of the heartache. All of the disappointment and the depression and the suicidal thoughts.

Hope is what separates us from the animals. Hope is what makes us human. So we keep looking. Even after failure after dismal failure, we keep looking for hope.

And, when we find ourselves in love, we also find the hope that's been buried so deeply within us that we almost forgot it existed. Love unearths it, and breathes new live into it, and resurrects it.

It takes over.

Nothing else matters.

Nothing else exists.

We become hope.

And I can't think of a loftier goal.

Someday, I hope to love and win.

Not a bad night, I suppose. A little irritating at times, but I've already gotten over it.

First thing I did was get something to eat at Wendy's. They have these fancy bread sandwiches, panini or something like that, that are delicious. Especially the steak and mushroom version, which is what I had.

Then I went to The Pub and had a couple Newcastles (3524) and talked to a couple of chicks from Canada, eh.

Oh yeah. I found out something very interesting. But of course I can't write about it. I'll just say that I came within three years of realizing a pretty common male sexual fantasy.

When I left The Pub I was planning to head over to Rich O's and have a Rogue Smoke, but I peeked into the Hard Rock, like I usually do, when I walked by. I was, as usual, looking to see if CoolHairGirl was working. And this time she was!

So instead of going to Rich O's I went in and had a Diet Coke and talked to CoolHairGirl for a while. It turned out that she'd still never made it to The Pub for a Newcastle, so when she got off work I invited her to join me for one.

Then, as I wrote in the previous entry, her boyfriend materialized and he joined us as well. I swear, I didn't even know CoolHairGirl had a boyfriend. Now I feel slightly guilty about some of the thoughts that have been running through my head about CoolHairGirl.

Anyway, I had a Newcastle (3544) and then a couple of Diet Cokes while I talked with CoolHairGirl and PajamaDude.

Plus there was this one chick who I thought might be a friend of my sister. So I went over and asked her. It turned out that I had her name right, and that she did know a girl with the same name as my sister, but it still wasn't the girl I'd thought she was. Still pretty weird.

At 1:00 or so I came home.

I did two things wrong tonight. At least, two that I noticed soon after I did them.

First, PajamaDude asked me what I did.

I've written about this recently. About how I shouldn't identify myself by what I do for a living, because it's too boring.

But I did it anyway.

PajamaDude asked me what I did, and I said that I worked with computers.

Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

So that was the first mistake.

Later, I was taking a piss, and I realized that I'd identified myself incorrectly. That I'd broken my own rule. So once I got back to the bar I told PajamaDude that I'd been mistaken earlier. That, though I worked with computers for a living, I preferred to consider myself as a writer.

So then he asked me what kinds of things I wrote.

"Mostly drivel," I answered.

"Like what?" he asked.

"Stuff about relationships," I said. "Or the lack thereof."

So that was my second mistake. I mean, I do write about crap like that, but it's hardly ever the main point of my writing.

What I should have said is that I write about things that annoy me.

Like when I invite a hot girl, who I've been interested in for months, out for a beer, and she agrees, but then her boyfriend materializes out of thin air and joins us and turns me into a third wheel.

I should have said that I write about shit like that.

Just a couple of surprises, both of the pleasant variety. So I was worried for nothing.

I got to Rich O's after 9:00. I got a parking spot in the actual Rich O's parking lot, so like a dumbass I thought that maybe it wouldn't be too crowded.

Wrong.

It was packed as fuck. With mostly strangers but quite a few weirdoes as well. Luckily I didn't see any fuckheads or idiots. I did see my cousin Jamie sitting in the loser section when I first walked in. I count him as a stranger.

Inside Rich O's proper, I gave Bubbles some shit for the crowd. It was supposed to be her night to keep the weirdoes away. She said that she didn't get the memo.

Anyway, the first pleasant surprise of the night was that Rogue Smoke was on tap. So I had one of those (530). I stood at the end of the bar for a while, then I moved some dude's jacket so I could sit at the kiddie table, then when the jacket dude left the throne I moved there.

Then it got boring for a while. But then a familiar and lovely shape darkened the doorway. I looked up, and it was HatGirl!

Yay!

So the next couple of hours were fun. Even though one drunk dude stole my seat when I went outside to take a phone call from work, and when I came back in I had to sit on the sofa. It was very nice to see HatGirl, and LuckyFucker seemed to be in a much better mood.

So all was good.

When I was about halfway through my second Rogue Smoke (550) a bit of reality started to sink in. Even though I've been doing my best to ignore and deny it. So I was glad that I could at least tell HatGirl a couple of things that had been on my mind. Then, of course, I apologized to her for dumping my problems onto her shoulders. She can take it though. And now maybe I can be a little less cryptic when I write about how bothered I am by all this.

Anyway.

I'd been kinda sorta halfway expecting to maybe even see SassyGirl last night. I talked to her Sunday, and she and JauntyGirl are slowly but surely making their way back towards Southern Indiana. But they didn't show last night. Oh well.

Once HatGirl and LuckyFucker left I had a Diet Coke and talked to FutureDude for a bit. Then I came home.

I'm feeling the anxiety brought on by a mild case of surprisaphobia tonight, while I wait for my shirt to dewrinkle.

Though it's more than that. More than just a feeling that I'm not ready for certain surprises. Tonight, I'm also noticing an almost palpable certainty that if I'm not surprised, then the entire night will end up being a waste of time.

So yeah, it's kind of a lose-lose situation if I go. I should probably just let fear win and keep me at home. But I won't.

Wish me luck.

Thanks.

The Louisville weather forecast for Saturday.

A slight chance of snow showers between 8am and 11am, then a slight chance of snow showers between 11am and 1pm, then a slight chance of snow showers between 1pm and 4pm, then a slight chance of snow showers after 4pm.

I'm not really sure how to express this. I might write some drivel and then delete it because it's stupid. Or maybe not. Some of you people have come to expect, and even desire, drivel from me.

Where to start?

I had a brief lunch with NotHideousGirl today. And it was nice and pleasant, and she's lovely and witty. I talked to EllaGirl for a while after that, and it was intriguing and enchanting, and she's pretty and funny.

Perfectly normal stuff.

But then, after EllaGirl was called away, I allowed myself to imagine that MixedSignalGirl was there with me. And it was poignant and burning, and she was beautiful and incredible and delicious. And I wanted to cry.

And, after a while, I went back to work. And I was fine.

I went to Rich O's after work. And while I was there I saw the ghost. And it was heart-rending and exhilarating and stunning, and the ghost was sparkling and burning and radiant. And I wanted to cry.

And, after a while, I came home. And I was fine.

I am, for today anyway, I am in control of my emotions. I can feel what I want to feel, when I want to feel it. And then I can turn off those feelings when I no longer want them.

This is fucking huge.

Because I don't want to bury these things so deeply that they're effectively absent from my life. But neither do I want them to control my life and maybe even define my life.

I want what I want, but only when I want it.

This is fucking huge.

I hope it lasts beyond today.

I'm afraid to go to sleep.

Nineteen years.

Ninefuckingteen. Ten plus nine. Twenty minus one. And, more importantly, forty-two minus twenty-three.

That's a lot, right?

That's too much, right?

Now, if I were retarded, then maybe. Maybe I wouldn't care so much about the total lack of commonality between our lives. Maybe I wouldn't spend all of my time wondering when someone new, someone better, someone at least fucking younger would come along and lure her away from me with his fucking full head of hair and all his fucking teeth.

Or if she'd grown up homeless on the mean streets, learning about life the hard way while other children her age were singing along to Barney and fighting with their siblings over who got the biggest slice of cake at Grandma's birthday party, then maybe. Maybe she'd be wiser than her years. Maybe she'd be ready to settle down into a nice and safe and boring domesticated life.

Or maybe if I was 80, and she was 61, then maybe. Maybe she could help me remember my own name, and wipe my ass for me, and stay with me because she'd know that I didn't have much time left and then, cha ching! Life insurance money!

Nineteen years. That's 600,000,000 seconds, give or take a few tens of thousands.

Yes, that's definitely too much. Maybe. I think.

Damn she's hot though.

It wasn't my idea. I was just being a friendly person.

What the fuck was I thinking?

Before I get into my reviews of the girls this week, I should point out three things.

First, I will typically watch the performance, then write my thoughts. Then I'll listen to what the judges had to say. Randy I can always ignore because he's a racist asshole. Paula I can safely ignore because she's too damn nice, and she may be drunk. Simon, I usually end up agreeing with. Sometimes, if Simon and I really disagree, I'll write something about that fact. But usually not.

Secondly, I'm in a bad mood.

Thirdly, joining me for tonight's viewing was Brother Thelonious from the North Coast Brewery (50).

Gina: Very good. That one loud and out of tune background singer should be fucking shot though. I like Gina. (75 points)

Alaina: A good job, but this week her voice seemed very generic. There are lots of people on the radio who sound worse than her, but there are lots more who sound better than her. I gave her a million bonus points for being so hot. I thought the judges were way too harsh on her, and I'd like to hug her and pet her to make her feel better. (1,000,070 points)

LaKisha: She had her hair redone. It looks good. She looks her age now. She did an amazing performance of a great song. Give her the fucking title right now. (100 points)

Melinda: Stupid song, but an incredible performance. She finished particularly strong. No flaws. (100 points)

Antonella: She looks hot in a groovy dress. A good song, but her performance was wavering at times and flat at others. I adore Antonella, but not her singing. Now I'm in a bad mood. She seems so nice. I give her a half-million bonus points for not being stuck-up. (500,065 points)

Jordin: Disneyesque performance of a stupid song. Much better than last week though. (80 points)

Stephanie: Maybe it's all the fault of the horribly stupid song choice, but I thought this was a train wreck. (5 points)

Leslie: Adorable. Boring song. I took off 100 points for that stupid skat stuff. (negative 40 points)

Haley: Disconcertingly pretty. I really like her voice, and I thought she did a good job. (80 points)

Sabrina: She's managed to gain some depth to her voice in the past week. Wow. (85 points)