floorpie

There are two ways I can go after yet another night of very little sleep… I’m sure you can guess: either I’m really tired the next day, or completely wired. Today, despite 4.5 hours of sleep, I’m completely wired. I can’t sit still, don’t want to sit still, and can’t wait to be doing something other than sitter here, still.

I assume at some point I will come crashing tragically down, but it seems pretty unlikely at this moment.

This insomnia thing, which has been plagueing me inconsistently since around high school, is an interesting phenomenon. I went on a fairly good stretch of actually sleeping nearly like a normal person over the last year. I still woke up a few times per night, and it still took at least 20 minutes to actually fall asleep, but I would be tired by around 11:30 and want to go to bed. No more. Now, as in last night, I have to actually bargain with myself to go to bed. It’s 2:30 in the morning, I should have been asleep for a couple of hours, but there I sit, bargaining with myself:

OK, it's 2:30 now. If I brush my teeth and go to bed, I'll be asleep by 3:00... which gives me 4.5 hours of sleep until morning. I should get moving
I’m not tired
I will be tomorrow!
Am I sure?
I...no. I think I will be. Don't normal people get tired after 4.5 hours of sleep for 2 months at a time?
I don’t think I would call me normal.

And on and on. In the end, I just have to force myself to go lie in bed; under the premise that it’s for my own good. Every time I do, though, I get the distinct feeling that I could just as easily stay up all night. It almost feels like I finally fall asleep out of boredom.

Panel Opposes Silicone Breast Implants

Thirteen years after most silicone-gel breast implants were banned, federal health advisers on Tuesday narrowly rejected a manufacturer’s request to bring them back to the U.S. market, citing lingering questions about safety and durability.

I am shocked! Shocked and appalled!

True love is hard to find, sometimes you think you have true love and then you catch the early flight home from San Diego and a couple of nude people jump out of your bathroom blindfolded like a goddamn magic show ready to double team your girlfriend…

This weekend I declined an invitation to wine tasting that I would have enjoyed, and lifted heavy bricks instead. The things you do for friends. Of greater importance, though, is that we are now on the edge of beach weather. Which, as with all things good and true, is my favorite type of weather of all. I am already looking forward to the surfing, and the volleyball, and the after-BBQ’s, and the sand everywhere.

Beach weather also brings more opportunities for self-exploration and meditation which, honestly, I’m not looking forward to all that much. There is something extremely humbling about getting off work early, making it down to the beach, paddling out past the breakers, and realizing that you are completely alone in a body of water larger than you can process. If the sets are flat, you spend a lot of time just bobbing up and down, letting your mind wander. Hopefully, I’ll be by then wandering to some good things… or not, whatever. More likely, I’ll be singing Elton John’s Tiny Dancer at the top of my lungs, which I am wont to do when I find myself alone.

Guess what?

I’ve got a fever… and the only prescription is more cowbell!!!

John Hartigan: I'm looking for Nancy Callahan?

Shellie: Eyes to the stage pilgrim, she's just warming up.

I knew I would like Sin City, I just didn’t know I would like it so much. It has several things going for it that I’m completely in support of:

.: it’s weird
.: it’s comedicaly violent
.: a storyline that actually completes the full-movie arc so many films go for
>.: Quentin Tarantino
.: Jessica Alba

.: Also, Jessica Alba

Not everyone will like this movie. If, for instance, you really liked Men in Black , II you will probably not like this movie. If you thought Unbreakable was way better than people said it was, have fond meories of Dead Alive, and you own a copy of Reservoir Dogs, you will love this movie.

There is the hyper violence a la Kill Bill which, for some reason, is not terribly disturbing. As I sit here, I can think of at least 7 severed heads featured as main plot points. If I saw 7 severed heads in real life, I might actually be motivated to seek therapy. In the movie, though, I found myself fairly full of glee.

It occurs to me that I suck at movie reviews… at any rate, I give this movie 5 out of 5 floorpies.

I’m going to see Sin City tonight, which I’m pretty stoked about. Being a past comic-book nerd, I’m looking forward to it. Also, I fully expect that Jessica Alba (hello Google-referred teenage boys!) will call me tomorrow night, thanking me for my support of her movie; as my understanding of the movie business tells me that she certainly pours over daily lists of movie patrons searching for that one, love-lorn, regular guy to sweep her off her feet.

I should probably vaccuum.

For whatever reason, I’ve been running a lot lately (whereby “a lot” I mean 1 or 2 times a week for the last 3 weeks). One night, I was sitting alone in my apartment, realizing that this was my life for the next bit, and decided that I really needed to start running away from things like that. And so, for no particular reason, I decided to go for a little run. So I ran to the end of the road. And when I got there, I thought maybe I’d run to the end of town. And when I got there, I thought maybe I’d just run across L.A. County. And I figured, since I run this far, maybe I’d just run across the great state of California. And that’s what I did. I ran clear across California. For no particular reason I just kept on going. I ran clear to the ocean. And when I got there, I figured, since I’d gone this far, I might as well turn around, just keep on going. When I got to another ocean, I figured, since I’d gone this far, I might as well just turn back, keep right on going…

Huh? Where was I? Ah yes, if you look at my cam link, you’ll see me as I type this, sweating and listening to Massive Attack, freshly back from tonight’s run.

For the most part, someone telling you that they’ve been running lately would be boring to the nth degree… and it is. If you knew me, though, you’d be surprised (though still bored). I hate running. I do, in fact, loathe running. The reason only being: I suck at it. Basketball running I can handle. Up and down the court at a full sprint for game after game? Tiring but manageable. The whole distance running for cardiovascular fitness? Ugh. Too boring, too long, too regimented, too hard.

There is something cathartic about running at 10:00 at night, though.

Besides, desperate times call for desperate measures; and, my demons are not going to out-run themselves.

So I live a few blocks inland from Venice Beach in this one story duplex… except for how it’s a quad-plex. It most likely was meant to be a duplex though, as my address ends in 1/2. At any rate, it is a long building with all of the doors on the same side, one after the other (obviously).

My quadp-plex faces another quad-plex, and the two create a mutual courtyard between them. The advantage of this is that everyone can keep an eye on everyone else. The disadvantage of this is that everyone can keep an eye on everyone else.

There’s an interesting (to me) dynamic in the duplex across from me, in that there’s an entire family living in two of the apartments. There’s mom, who seems to live alone, and I have yet to see actually outside of the courtyard… let alone outside of a five foot radius around her front door. She is, for the most part, a shut-in. There is also the son, older than me, I think, who doesn’t actually seem to live with mom, but clearly lives close by (possibly in another quad-plex in the series). Two doors down from mom, the two sisters live together in their own apartment. All of them seem to be unmarried, very single, and extremely overweight (except for the son, he’s freakishly tall, but normally aportioned). From what I can tell, they’ve all been living like this for a long, long time.

And that’s just weird.

No offense to mom, but there’s no way I could live two doors down from her. I mean, with all of the wild parties and strippers I have over all the time, she might get the wrong impression of me.

As with all problems, violence is the answer:

Drop the mouse and step away from the PC

The first few moments in any crisis response are critical, and mistakes can be costly. So it is with misbehaving computers.

Yet the first step for many users after a computer crash is to hit or yell at their machine, according to a new survey…

And that’s a man, baby!