Today after work I met up with RealTrainGirl at Rich O's. It was very nice to see her - it's been a couple of weeks.

Normally after work I'll have an NABC Cone Smoker but this evening I knew I'd be staying a little longer than usual so I had a Smithwick's and then a Guinness.

Ordered a pizza from Pizza Hut and left at around 6:30. Stopped and said "hey" to VigilanteGirl on the way home.

It's days like this that make me wonder if I should bother posting at all. I do try to care about stuff enough to write something interesting, but I'm just not capable of giving a flying fuck about anything right now. Even if I try to stir up old pains, they just don't hurt, and so I just don't care.

Okay, so last week I never got around to writing anything about the results show. Neal left, and I'm glad. I've actually been right about who should go home three weeks in a row. Yay me!

Tonight started out looking like a pretty boring bunch of performances, but things got interesting later. And not always in a good way.

Jordis: Begging for audience participation always turns me off a little. Sang great though. (80 points)

Suzie: Nothing really wrong, just a little boring. I blame the song. I also took off 5 points for breaking out the harmonica twice and playing a total of like 5 notes. She's still hot though. (75 points)

Jessica: Hot. Part haunting, and part bad Cher impersonation. (80 points)

Mig: Pretty good. The best he's done so far. (85 points)

Brandon: Very distinctive voice that I never noticed before. He mumbled a lot and was very pitchy. (70 points)

Ty: Fucking awesome. Why is this guy not already famous? Is it the goofy hair? (95 points)

Heather: Something very wrong. She says she's been sick, and I can tell. (50 points)

JD: Complete crap. I couldn't listen. He blamed his sister for his poor performance. (minus 846 points)

Deanna: I still don't get it with her, and it seems that the band is finally coming around to my point of view. (40 points)

Daphna: I farted and it sounded better than Daphna's performance. The band guy said she'd murdered the song, and I agree. (minus 42)

Tara: I hate that song. She did okay with it I guess. (60 points)

Marty: Really surprised me. The night's second-best performance. (90 points)

I'd really like to see JD finally stop showing up on my television, but I'm afraid that Daphna will be the one leaving tomorrow. We'll see.

(update Wednesday night: Wow, they kicked both Daphna and Heather off the show. I don't really agree with the Heather thing. It also scares me a little that JD wasn't even in the bottom three. Things like this are why I've been getting so frustrated with American Idol the past two seasons. The sympathy voters have way too much power.)

This past week's Pisces Horoscope from Free Will Astrology:

"When truth is buried underground it grows," wrote French novelist Emile Zola, "it chokes, it gathers such explosive force that on the day it bursts out, it blows up everything with it." I'm delivering this as a warning, Pisces, not as a prediction. In fact, if you act quickly, you have an excellent chance of ensuring that Zola's scenario doesn't unfold in your own life. There are important truths that are buried, but if you dig them up and expose them to the fresh air now, they won't explode in a few weeks.

I guess these things are published each Wednesday. At least that's when I see them, in the weekly LEO paper. This particular horoscope I first saw last Wednesday, July 20th.

The guy was a week late. If he'd published this at the same time that this happened, I'd probably still be freaking out over it. Hell, even at a week late it's still a little freaky.

I don't know what caused this particular bit of truth to exhume itself after so many years. I seriously doubt that it had anything to do with Saturn conjuncting with Uranus or whatever. I guess all that's important it that is did reach the surface, and that it did finally, mercifully, kill every last vestige of hope left in me.

Now, if I believed in this shit, and if this horoscope had been published two weeks earlier - or at any other time during the past year - I'd have figured that it was referring to a completely different secret. One that I don't think I've been too good at keeping, but one that still threatened to explode fully into the light at any moment. It still threatens to do that, actually, but it's been completely neutered by now.

This horoscope certainly caught my attention, one week late or not. Another thing that caught my attention is this little homework assignment that the guy put at the end of his horoscope listings. I don't see it anywhere on the site but here's part of it:

Homework: Do a mental exploration exercise and write about the place you're half-afraid to travel to even though you know it would change your life for the better...

This here is like he's writing directly to me, for I've caught myself imagining this trip several times. He's got it wrong with the half-afraid part though. Perhaps he really meant to write totally-fucking-terrified. No matter, I'm still going to write about it. I have serious doubts that what I write will be published here though. We'll see.

Was talking with FutureDude yesterday about yet another reason that I could never work at Rich O's. Specifically, we were talking about these idiots that had taken over the living room area. More specifically, we were talking about this one particular idiot that had decided to put a chair right in the middle of the walkway so he could sit his fat ass down and block everybody's path.

This was not the first time that I've mentioned to FutureDude that I could never work at Rich O's, and he suggested that I make a list, suitable for framing, of all of the reasons.

Well I doubt that Roger would ever permit such a list to adorn his walls, I'm going to make a list anyway, and adorn my website with it.

Reasons that I could never work at Rich O's

I'm sure that, given any time to actually think about this, I could come up with a couple of dozen more reasons that I could never work at Rich O's.

I guess things are pretty much back to normal at work. I certainly hope so anyway.

Time for me to start easing that real life thing back into my existence. Not really sure what that means anymore though. I've completely lost focus.

Something will ground me I guess. I can't drift along forever, no matter how pleasant these past couple of weeks have been. Hard to believe that's all it's been. Seems like an eternity. Who was that guy, anyway? What a loser.

So I just drift. I muddle through. I have nothing for long for, and now I have nothing to fight against. I go to that haunted place and I sense no presence. My phone rings and I simply pick it up. I pull into the parking lot and all I look for is a place to park. Nothing more. Nothing less.

I live completely in the present. The present is fucking boring.

Meanwhile, there are fleas in my house. I find this odd because none of the cats seem to be carrying any.

Okay, this is strange. I'm having a fucking panic attack. My hands are shaking like crazy. Prescience, perhaps, or just too much caffiene?

Either way, it's an awful lot like having an actual feeling, so I'm going to enjoy it for a while.

Today I was presented with a nice little conundrum.

I got the following text-message:

Are you avoiding me?

This coming from a person (who does not read this 'blog) that I am, in fact, avoiding. This is a rather simple yes/no question, but it's one that I cannot answer.

If I answer "no" then I'm lying, and I'm not going to lie just to make this person feel better.

If I answer "yes" then I'm telling the truth, but the mere fact that I'm answering is ending my avoidance, which makes me a liar again.

So my choice is to not respond at all. Not the most grownup way to deal with this, but I never said I was a grownup.

I've gone ahead and put in a page to list all of the quotes that may come up on my main page.

Now, everybody that asked owes me a blow job or something.

You people piss me off.

This is a picture of the controllers for one of our storage arrays at work.

It's broken, so I'm still at work waiting to see if it can be repaired.

The entire show paled in comparison to last week's. I think they're giving the performers a list of shitty songs on purpose just to see what they do.

I'll probably just update this entry after the results show instead of making a new entry.

Marty: Exhausting to watch and listen to. (80 points)

Daphna: Just didn't like it very much. Boring I guess. (70 points)

Ty: Sang the shit out of some stupid song I never heard before. (85 points)

Suzie: Another stupid song. I could listen. She's hot though. (70 points)

Mig: A decent Tyler impersonation, but not great. (70 points)

Neal: This is some kind of a joke, right? (40 points)

Heather: Song seemed too slow. She also seemed to have something in her mouth, like a wad of chew or something. (50 points)

JD: Still a dork. (65 points)

Tara: Finally, a good song. Decent job. (80 points)

Deanna: ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ (65 points)

Jordis: Great song. Great voice. Fucked up hair. (90 points)

Jessica: Seems quite full of herself. Hot though. Sang well. (85 points)

Brandon: CCR is perfect for him. INXS, maybe not so much. Did an awsome job. (95 points)