Checkmarks can be fulfilling.

In the past couple of days, in the process of writing my last entry and cleaning everything up on the ol’ blog here, I realized something – I haven’t done a checklist in a long, long time!

It used to be a late-spring ritual of mine when I wrote my blog at LiveJournal and then later Myspace;  before the summer started, I would always sit down and hammer out a checklist of things I wanted to do over the summer.  I can’t remember ever completing any of these checklists, but they were fun to put together, and it was kind of a motivator for when I was bored.  So, even though the summer is half over – I think I’m going to whip up a short checklist for the rest of the season.

Wasting my time?

It’s been so depressing around these parts lately.

My birthday is coming up soon, and it’s caused me to jump back into thinking about my own mortality.  After all these years of dwelling on it, it’s still really kind of a hard thing to wrap my head around… I mean, eventually, we will all just cease to exist.  There’s no way to prevent it.  (And honestly, even if you could, would you?)  The thing that fucks me up the most is thinking about how we will be perceived and remembered by the people that are still around after we die.

Cry more, crybabies. (It’s all for naught.)

The backlash over the American Idol results is deafening – I couldn’t get on any of the social networking sites last night without hearing about it one way or the other.  Myself – I haven’t been keeping track of Idol that closely this year; I’d pop in from time to time when the roommates were watching it, just to see who was who, but that was about it.  I had heard of Adam Lambert – mostly because I was pulled into our living room once to hear him completely butcher Johnny Cash’s “Ring of Fire”… and from that point on, I just couldn’t stand the kid.  (I mean c’mon, he completely ruined a genuinely good song – that’s hard to do!)  He had to lose – honestly,  I didn’t know if I’d be able to stand going to work if I had to spin an Adam Lambert single on the air ad nauseum.

Positive, for no real reason.

Have you ever just been feeling super good about things, even when you know you shouldn’t be?  I’ve been feeling that way a lot in the past week.  Sure, I’ve got collection agencies calling me twice a day; and I’m not really sure if I’ll ever have a steady full-time job in this town ever again; and my car is on its deathbed, figuratively; and seeing/speaking to friends back home makes me want to move back to be with them… but y’know, I’ve got a spring in my step, dammit, and it feels kind of nice for once.

Where the hell have you been?

I don’t get why I don’t write more.  I guess when I’ve gotten in a pattern where all the writing I do is for work… writing in itself starts feeling like work.  Boo that.  Boo that indeed.

The current state of my life is… not so great.  Not to complain – I’m able to keep a roof over my head and keep myself fed.  Ha… that rhymed.  Really, that’s what’s important though, right?  Money is easily the biggest cause of stress in my life right now – and I know I’m not alone, but it doesn’t make things any easier.  It’s to the point lately where I’ve been having some serious thought about moving out of Vegas and just seeing if I can get a job back home.  (Word is that jobs are slightly easier to find up there.)  I can’t bring myself to do that though – too much pride.  I think I’ve said it before, but I feel like moving home would be admitting defeat to a certain extent.

Buncha Crap© – Now with 50% MORE CRAP.

What in the hell, I’m some kind of ethereal being when I’m online.  Sometimes I’m here, sometimes I’m there; but I’m ALWAYS somewhere.

Lately, the only thing I’ve been reliable about updating is my Twitter.  Everything I was doing so good on updating before has kind of taken a backseat, this blog and My Year In Discs taking it the hardest.  I want to get back to MYID so damn bad, but I get easily sidetracked.  I’m determined to get myself back on that horse somehow.  All of *that* stuff has gotten shoved aside for a few reasons; first, my role at work (the station) is constantly changing, and a lot of it has to do with online stuff.  My new boss had me create Twitter and Facebook pages for my station, and updating both semi-regularly.  It’s kind of cool (apparently I’m that “kid who knows the internet stuff”), and at the same time kind of daunting.  I dig it, though.

You took too damn long!

So, maybe it’s just in this cluster – but has anyone else noticed a surge in using old-school sung jingles for radio spots lately?  I somewhat know the reason for it here (an agreement between a off-site production house and our sales staff), and I can’t STAND it.  Mostly because 90% of the jingles are HORRIBLE.  For example, one of the ones we play now is for Las Vegas Half-Off.com.  The jingle?  A drone-like voice singing “It’s the bomb/Las Vegas Half Off Dot Com/It’s the bomb/Las Vegas Half Off Dot Com” over and over for 20 seconds.  Who approved that?  Who thought that it was even a novel idea?  (Who didn’t realize that the phrase “the bomb” has been dead since the late 90’s?)

They’re a little melty, but DAMN are they exquisite!

I can’t eat chocolate-covered pretzels without thinking of Mallrats.  Anyone else ever get that?

So, I’m officially more than a week behind on My Year In Discs.  That sucks, bad.  I know why, too – I haven’t worked out since my hospital visit.  I always got my good, uninterrupted music listening done during my daily workout.  Thus, I haven’t gotten any good listening time in.  I really need to start working out again – mainly because I’ve felt like shit since I haven’t been.  Hell, right now I’m sick – I think that if I had been working out, I’d probably not be.

Our future is in their hands.

I haven’t taken a phone call like this in some time, so I thought I’d share it with whoever cares to read.

You see, once in a while, you get a supremely face-palming reminder of the state of the young kids these days.  I took the following phone call about 5 minutes ago.  This is recalled from memory, but I’m not embellishing or overexaggerating – I promise:

Time stops for no man.

I was reminded today of a poem that I co-wrote with my friend Paul.  Feels like just yesterday, but we wrote this thing two freakin’ years ago.  It’s crazy to think.  Anyhow – I went through some trouble finding it, so I figure I’ll repost it here.