Run Away, and Never Return.

I get to interview a New York Times best-selling author later this afternoon, and coincidentally one whom I love to read and admire a lot professionally. It's no big deal. I'm sure you guys get to do that kind of thing all the time, right? Right? No? This is something of a big deal, you say? Well, great, thanks. Now I'm nervous.

Netflix is a many-headed beast: once you cut off one of its loading times, a dozen more rise to fill the void. Such was my experience last night trying to show Dear Little Sister the last episode of the first season of Sherlock (read: one of the most riveting episodes of television history). It basically stopped working altogether for the last 15 minutes unless you consider loading ten seconds at a time to be working. Which I do. But the folks? They're not so inclined.

I thought of something: I'm going to list some things about some of my friends that I really appreciate, without identifying which friends belong to which attribute. Then a witch-hunt can ensue to ferret out the offending parties and pop their positive influence like so much bubble wrap. Ready? Set? Go.

One is that they just naturally take in anything you say without ever letting it influence their opinion or outlook on you. That is, they don't ever take what you say and silently reevaluate you on its basis and treat you like a machine that they just found out has a faulty part to it. If the very next day you were to take the opposite stance or do something completely contradicting what you say or do today, they probably wouldn't notice, or if they did they wouldn't care, because they're not keeping score. They're just being your friend, no matter what. Go friendship!

Now when I say "you," I mean "I" or "me," case depending. The style guide is your Alamo. Remember the style guide.

Now I'll do one about a fictional character I admire. He killed his brother so he could become king, but instead of tying up potential loose ends, he sowed the seeds of his own demise by knowingly letting his only witness escape unscathed (save emotionally from watching his father die). I don't really admire him, actually. More like, "have participated in works of fiction in which he figures prominently." But I'm not made of precise wording. I'm made of carbon mostly, from what I hear. And some vitamin B12, I hear there's some vitamin B12 in there.

To Sleep, Perchance to Dream.

Two days ago somebody suggested the moderately unreasonable notion that Julia Roberts has reduced herself to feasting on the heads of orphaned children. Now I know what you're thinking. This blog used to be family-friendly, before I mentioned that. Well, it might be a valuable family policy to read my blog together with your parents so you can discuss thematic elements like this as they come up, on a case-by-case basis. I want families to be stronger, and this might just be the way to do it. I have an expanded outlook, is what I'm saying, and let's hope I know what I'm doing.

Anyway. I heard that, thought it sufficiently singular, moved on, and proceeded to have the weirdest dreams I have ever experienced that very night. It even flowed over into last night. I'll leave it up to your imaginations and parental discretion to figure out how far down this rabbit-hole you want to go. As you can imagine, things got weird. Fast.

Anyway, not only did America's Sweetheart have a cameo the last few nights, but so did a couple of my friends who are about to leave on missions, and it bummed me right out to wake up and realize they were still about to leave and not having zany good times with me at Julia Roberts' Orphanage and Coincidentally Cannabalistic Soup Kitchen. Dreams: where dreams and faceless innocents go to die.

Like I said. Downright bizarre.

Fun fact: she kindly took the time to explain to me why she wasn't in Ocean's Thirteen. It was something dull, like not supporting or wanting to glorify grandiose heist schemes any more. Or a scheduling conflict, I forget.

Have at You, "The Man."

So I've got this friend. He's long been a fan of all kinds of music I judged harshly as being the front lines on the wrong side of the musical battle of good vs. evil. For regular readers, I considered all of the bands he liked heavy metal. Well apparently, like he's been saying for some years now, I am totally wrong on this count. Last night I willingly searched for specific songs on YouTube that were stuck in my head by three such bands (read: bastions of wickedness). Not only did I seek these songs out intentionally, but I did so mindfully with intent to enjoy them. Now either I have fallen far, or I have been wrong all these years, and those bands make pretty music. I just don't know what to believe. Friends, right?

I was certain, I tell you certain that I saw the president of my university playing foosball in my apartment complex yesterday in the common area. First of all, a "common" area is neither fit nor becoming for one with so exalted a station as he; secondly, foosball, sir? I do declare. Never liked that game much. Granted, when I say I was certain, I tell you certain, I do so without any of the willingness to defend my position that the word implies. As a matter of fact I am certain it wasn't him. But, you know. Blog fodder. You gotta do what you gotta do.

The other day I fought the system and won. I regularly stay at my friend's apartment and park in the two-hour visitor parking spots. I thought I had a solid strategy to avoid the local parking Gestapo's wrath, with regard to getting tickets or fees or boots: obey all signs. Turns out they're not so big into that, as in the last month or so I have gotten no less than three boots. (I'm not saying I didn't have more, but I didn't have less. No, I didn't have more. Three it was. You guys got me.) I mean, I even set an alarm on my phone a little before two hours are up to go move it to a different spot, which they have told me is allowed. Very kind of them.

Well I got a boot. Normally the guy who comes to take it off says that he doesn't have anything to do with anything but taking it off, so I just started complaining a bit and explaining my situation. He took out his camera they use to take photos every two hours, apparently, and I showed him that I was in two different spots. He politely agreed and just went ahead and took that bad boy right off.

That's called fighting the system, folks. Politely accepting your fate, lightly commiserating with fellow bureaucracy cogs about the status quo, and then watching them reveal more authority than you knew they had in order to reward you for being mildly upset. It's the way of the world. He was a nice guy, and if he hadn't ended up being able to fix it, I would have felt bad later about complaining to somebody who couldn't do anything about it. But, I didn't, and I'm kind of glad about this? Listen. Don't moralize this story. It's kind of not so easy to do.

I notice I've made a habit of hitting about five paragraphs and stopping, so this bonus mini-paragraph is just to reset the status quo. It's the equivalent of a page that reads, "This page intentionally left blank." Move along, move along.

This Is All Just a Big Misunderstanding.

Somebody from home recently went to Comic-Con and had been keeping me apprised of its goings-on via Facebook. That is to say, they posted photos to their timeline from time to time—not so much like a direct channel as I'd like, but just as effective as a direct line to the Kremlin. Facebook was my red phone on my desk that kept telling me that somewhere, someone else was having fun and I wasn't there. I always thought Comic-Con—well, I guess I just drank the Kool-Aid about it being dweebish and unbecoming one of a high station in life as myself (read: over 16 years old). Red Kool-Aid, on my desk, for parallelism's sake. But the Kool-Aid was a lie. It looks awesome.

I was also just alerted by my informant in China—that's unnecessary to this story, but you needed to know that I have powerful friends strategically globe-hopping on the internship phase of their professionalization—to an article about a man with my same name. Middle initial and everything. He was just released from a prison sentence that nearly spanned my complete mortal sojourn, exonerated by DNA evidence for a crime he didn't commit, and he's having the order that set him free framed. Nothing particular about that story, just that I can't imagine what the world would be like without DNA analysis. Well, I can, since it hasn't been here forever, but I mean I'm grateful for it. It's just awful to think about that much of someone's life being taken from them. How do they cope, or make the best of it? Do they, even? Bummer might be as much of an understatement as awesome is an over-, but there it is. It is the ultimate bummer to start your morning off with. And he has my name. Could have been me. Thanks a lot, informant. Let's take it down a notch on keeping me so apprised.

So there's a song that I've taken a particular shine to. It's by a band that I've always assumed was heavy metal—to be perfectly unfair, I apparently thought every single band from before the eighties, sans the Beatles, was heavy metal. Elvis probably dabbled. Anyway I've come to begrudgingly accept my naivety and to see that this song, and presumably this band, is extremely pretty. It's my favorite song of the moment. Meaning it will expire as such in about a week, and I have favorites of more permanence at the moment, but this is this song's time to shine, baby.

Well, it features prominently a name of a girl that I am also starting to really, really love. The name, not the girl. Well, I don't know the girl, so let's not judge unfairly: I at least love the name. I shot it right to the top of my list of favorite girl names for when I have children. It also probably has an expiration date attached. I need some favorite names of more permanence here. To quote Jack Donaghy's surprisingly reasonable advice, you've got to stick to Bible names and kings and queens of England.

Problem, though. I don't want my daughter—my little angel—to be named after a heavy metal song, even one falsely accused as such. Well, really a popular pre-70's rock song isn't going to cut it for my princess either. When they go around the class in third grade to say how they got their names, I don't want her to have to cite a rock band of any generation, quite frankly. I don't often mind what third graders think of me, but if they've heard of that band and made the same assumptions as I have, I will officially be the worst father ever in their little eyes. My little girl needs something better to say. I need to make this name normal. Meaning, today I begin my studies of the Bible and British royal history in earnest. I'll even drum up some forged manuscripts and see if I can get society to buy into them if it will keep me—cool? will that word even be around then?—in the eyes of those (surprisingly judgmental, in my imagination) children. Okay that's why we talk about these things. I've got some serious issues I need to deal with, here. Not the least of which is my rogue underpunctuation and overinterjection.

Greetings, Earthling.

Okay, for better or for worse I've decided to start blogging again. Even though nobody I know does much anymore, I like plopping my brain out there into the big scary world of the Internet for anyone to read. Except that nobody will read it. But that's neither here nor there. If you are a human and not just Google's indexing bot, I extend you my warmest welcome. To Google's bot and all other anthropomorphized indexing scripts out there (I'm looking at you, Bing), may you also enjoy your stay, though I'm afraid we don't have any nuts or bolts for you to eat, or whatever robots eat. Or whatever or whatever. Whatever.

So I'm just working on my client's website... thing's a bear. Much more extensive coding than I've done before, just because of an extremely specific code set that I couldn't find anything open source for. The design was done weeks ago, though the functionality has taken much longer, and it's kind of irritating me to have a job unfinished. I'm just trying to do my best, though, plugging along. Hope he likes it.

And here's a list of some irresponsible expensive impulse purchases I've made recently: an unnamed piece of electronic equipment, a banjo, and several comic book subscriptions. I mean, who does that? Seriously. Out of control. I mean, I love them, but I've never bought them. Duh.

And right now I'm working on my normal schedule where I'm most happy and well-rested and productive. But it is so weird and late night-owl-ish. Not super conducive to a normal student or professional life. But it gets stuff done and I love it. I just wish it didn't seem so weird when people ask about it.

And I'm listening to Counting Crows and loving it. Been a while since my iPod's connected to my iTunes since something or other broke, so I haven't listened to them much. They're my favorite band, far and away. A Murder of One, Mrs. Potter's Lullaby, Recovering the Satellites (language warning on that one, Bingbot, try looking for the non-profane edited version), all unbelievable songs to me. Love 'em to pieces.