>> (1) Bought a twelve-pack of Pepsi Blue.

(2) Went back to work at Old Navy.

(3) Became horribly, horribly addicted to Grand Theft Auto: Vice City.

(4) Began to fear getting sued. Subsequently began to contemplate horribly violent retaliation against such a measure.

(5) Fell deeply in love with one of Liz Phair's supposed "sell-out" songs (Thanks, Matthew).

Will other chapters in this feature be forthcoming? Not if my normal sense of complacency has any input, but I guess the point is, who can say, really?

>> This would be a post for World In Motion but it's pretty important so I'm gonna put it here: The Supreme Court has struck down the Texas sodomy law in a ruling that seemingly applies to other state sodomy laws as well.

Of course I consider this fine news, as it's no longer considered illegal (in my home state of Florida, anyway) for me to love someone, which, y'know, I'm pretty happy about. The ruling was 6-3, too, which is refreshingly "unanimous" for this Court. Of course it did give Scalia and his fellow dissenters a chance to prove that they are DESPICABLE HUMAN MONSTERS. Just try to read this with a straight face:

Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist and Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas dissented. "The court has largely signed on to the so-called homosexual agenda," Scalia wrote for the three, according to the AP. He took the unusual step of reading his dissent from the bench.

"The court has taken sides in the culture war," Scalia said, adding that he has "nothing against homosexuals."

No, no, nothing against homosexuals. We're at war with them, apparently, but we've got nothing against them. You disgust me. Get off the bench.

Anyway. Happy news. Even if a discussion of this earlier this week did lead to a big fight between Josh and I, which I was going to post about but now I dunno.

By the way, the first half of the Metafilter thread is brilliant, though it of course all goes haywire after a while. Best comment: "Awesome! Now my girlfriend has no excuse."

>> Let me tell you about a little game called Car Sardines. (You could call it "Cardines," but that would be ridiculous.) It's quite simple.

Get a large group of people together, all of whom have cars and cell phones. You'll need at least eight people and four cars. Choose a residential neighborhood that is fairly quiet, with lots of interestingly interconnecting streets and, hopefully, some landmarks that aren't just people's houses. This should also only be played at night.

Pair off. Decide which pair is "it." That pair has two minutes (change this amount as needed in your neighborhood) to drive away and find a hiding spot, where they will park and turn off their lights. After time is up, the remaining teams must all drive off simultaneously and search for the other car. When they find it, they park with it in the hiding spot (hence the "Sardines" angle; it's much like that variant of hide-and-seek only, obviously, in cars). After ten minutes, the hiders must call the other teams and give them a clue. The first team to find the hiders hides during the next round.

Obviously one should be considerate. Hiding in someone's driveway is off-limits, as it's private property and is plainly creepy and mean (hiding right in front of their house is also not a good idea). Most other spots are fine. Drive slowly and carefully; reckless speed is not required.

We made this game up a full year ago, but only played it for the first time on Thursday night. And lo, it was amazing. Play responsibly.

(To decide which team is "it" first, might we recommend Cowboy Bear Ninja?)

>> So the computer store just called back. Apparently my laptop is done being serviced. What, I'm sure you'll ask, was wrong with it?

There was a sales receipt from HMV London stuck in the disc drive.

How I managed that I will never fucking know. But FOR FUCK'S SAKE, MAN. FOR FUCK'S SAKE. The good news is, the computer's working fine and it obviously wasn't a major (and expensive) problem. The bad news is, I AM A COMPLETE AND UTTER FUCKING DOUCHEBAG.

Move along, move along, nothing to see here...

:::Body wracked by heaving sighs:::

>> Thanks to everybody who's answered my question from the previous post. It wasn't a cynical attempt to get some non-static content up before vanishing for a few days, I swear.

In reality I've just been suffering from a horrendous case of inertia. Today I realized just how low I'd sunk for the first time, when I realized I actually couldn't be bothered to write a weblog post about how I couldn't be bothered to do anything. I felt a bit like the binge eater who realizes what they've done after setting down their 18th empty pint of Ben & Jerry's. So I washed some dishes and ran a couple of errands and feel only slightly more human, but there's gonna need to be a sea change. I think I may have to go back to work at Old Navy. SIGH. (I'd applied for a job at our amazing local aquarium, but they haven't contacted me since, so I guess that's a write-off, which is a shame because I was actually really excited by the idea of working there).

I've still got a bunch of posts I've been meaning to write, so here's hoping one or two of them squeeze their way out of my occluded verbal arteries...

I'm gonna leave you with an optional, and slightly more specific, question in the comments, which is actually the question I kind of meant to ask the first time. Did you download the new Radiohead album when the unmastered version was released a few months ago? If so, have you since bought a hard copy? Furthermore, what did you get out of each experience?

>> Question. I want you all to answer it honestly.

Am I the last person on Earth who still buys CDs? If you do, how many do you generally buy in a month/year/easily measurable unit of time? If you don't, what are you doing instead? If you do still buy them, why? If you don't, same question. I know it's a very 1998 kind of question, but I've noticed recently that even some of the most hardcore music fans I know seem to have stopped buying records at retail, and that kind of shocked me. So. Instead of just firing out a treatise on the subject, I'm interested to hear from everyone else before I blather on...

>> I had one of my dynamic "let's get things in shape" days today, and organized my room and got it all cleaned up and put in new shelves for my books and CDs. This ought to have made me feel quite good, and it did, for a while. But then I listened to a mix I made in February and it got me all melancholy about London. Can I piss on my own parade, or what? I do have to say, though, it's a damn good mix, although to anyone other than myself it would probably sound completely incoherent...

So. Yep. Back from Tennessee. Actually had a very, very good time with my brother, driving for hours (with the iPod and some very resilient tropical fish keeping me company while he drove ahead of me in the Overfilled Moving Truck Of Death) and poking around Knoxville and moving some incredibly heavy and cumbersome furniture. Advice to everyone: Don't ever develop any kind of sentimental attachment to an armoire. Fuck, don't buy an armoire. They're too big and kind of ugly anyway. And believe me when I tell you that you will never want to move it never ever ever. Ever. Never. Ever.

But yes, I really enjoyed myself, and I'd love to post the pictures to the Photolog but the Mac is still fuct. Am going to bite the bullet and bring it in for service tomorrow and pray to the sweet baby Jesus that it's not going to cost $955 to fix. Oh, and speaking of Jesus, SATURDAY IS THE TRUE LORD'S DAY. SUNDAY IS THE MARK OF THE BEAST AND WILL BE ENFORCED AS SUCH.

Can't take the credit for that one; it's a billboard on I-40 in Knoxville from a crazy seperatist church. But "will be enforced as such" is an excellent phrase that you should introduce into your own social/regional lexicon as soon as possible.

Aaaaaaaaand that's that.